The Change in Me

What has changed in me? I was told by a friend the other night that I have changed and that I am more centered. But what has changed in me to have someone notice it through simple conversation? What has happened to the once dark thinker? I used to bathe myself in darkness, fear, distrust, disgust, hatred, pain and everything that crawled out of the abyss.

At one point in my adolescence, I dubbed my journey through life a free fall in the abyss and it was an eternal fall. The darkness would seem so close. I thought it would remain my constant companion. I felt its caress and we made love. Our exploits together produced an offspring of depression and self-loathing. The darkness and I used to dance together in the pitch black of grief and hatred. The darkness has been with me for so long; divorcing myself from his icy embrace seemed impossible and asinine. We lived together in the depths of a deep despair that felt like home. Together we mastered our hope for a moment in the the light. We became at one with the gloom. I was the darkness and he was me. How do you run from what you've known for so long and what you found a place in?

I grew to think that the darkness was made for me and that it was my curse. At one point, I had been searching for a release from my darkness. I searched through my Mormon beliefs in God and salvation through Christ. I sought release from the darkness by trying to serve God in the Tokyo North mission, but the darkness still embraced me and refused to let me go. So, I embraced him back and surrendered to the abyss. And no matter what friends and family said to the contrary of my courtship with the darkness and my importance to them, I still saw my life within the hands of my lover.

So, what changed in me to actively seek a divorce from the dark and a separation from depression and self-loathing? I wish I could say that it was a blinding revelation from God, the very God I had cursed because He seemed unconcerned with my struggles. I also wish I could tell you 100 percent that I know the reason I am daily changing and actively seeking the stop of the free fall and the descent into the abyss. The one thing I am aware of that has changed is my awareness of the here and now.

I found that the dark would embrace me when I focused on the past: my failures, my sufferings, my pain, and my life that once was. These memories and dwelling on them only brought them to the surface and allowed me to soak in them for hours, days, weeks, and even months. I would allow things that cannot control me years after they happened and passed into a memory, made permanent on a neuron, to control how I thought and felt. The past became a reason for me to insist on my continual residence in the abyss with my lover, the darkness.

Also, always looking forward into the unspeakable, unknowable future allowed my fixation on despair and pain to keep me wallowing in the abyssal free fall. I would look at the future and feel that I don't deserve happiness and joy. The future and its eternal presence in the nonexistent kept the darkness whispering sweet, painful nothings in my ear.

However, as I look at the Eternal Now, I know that the past is no more and the future doesn't exist. I find the necessity to plant my feet firmly in the now and divorce myself from my constant companion. Depression and despair have transformed into beautiful butterflies of hope and laughter. Forgiveness, mercy, and compassion walk with me in the Eternal Now because I can walk with them. Forgiveness, mercy, and compassion blossom and bloom as I feed them daily.

So, what has changed? I suppose the only truthful and honest answer I can give is that I have changed. My desires have changed. What I know I can control has changed; well, not changed, but I realize the things of which I'm capable. And my once loving companion, the darkness, is seen in his true light as a scab that I allowed to grow and fester. Now, I am using salve of the here and now and the bandages of compassion, mercy, forgiveness, hope, laughter and love to heal me. The darkness is scarring, and every once in a while he seeks to make me his lover again. I refuse him and I say, "Dwelling in the present moment, I realize this is a wonderful moment. Present moment. Happy moment," and I continue on with a smile on my face and a feeling of peace in my heart. Namaste.

Lighthouses into Safe Harbor

I take a deep breath to calm my nerves and open my mind because as I think about life and its purpose, I lose my mind. I find myself shifting focus from the things that I see as important and the new realities of what sometimes seems a hate driven world. I find it hard to take the next step, to give love and affection to someone hurting or to see beyond myself.

It seems that this world is careening out of control. If you watch the news, our country continues its bipolar mentality of Democrat versus Republican, Conservative versus Liberal, etc. Our politicians bandy words with each other, often muckraking their opponents to get the people to see that their way is the correct way. The news reports on war, death, destruction, famine, murder, malice, and every other pain inducing story they can get their hands on to deliver to the masses. However, what is the truth and what is politically driven to sway the vote or the majority belief? There is so much War, Pestilence, Famine, and Death being dealt out that you'd think the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were riding on our world to bring the final fall of man revealed in Revelations. You can't turn on the news without the depressing onslaught.

Then, you take a breath and the world continues to spin. You take a step and see a young man open the door for his mother or an elderly couple that he allows to go first. You feel depressed about the news of the day or you feel like you aren't worth the star dust that created you and a friend or co-worker notices your suffering; they hold you in their arms or make you laugh. You cry and wish the world would end today and your loving parents somehow know; they call you to check on you and tell you how much they love you.

You see darkness in the world, but in every step you take or every breath you breathe, you notice that in spite of the darkness, light and love are still shining bright. You notice that in the eyes of the youth, you see the hope of a new generation. In the cry of a newborn, the death and destruction can be wiped away with the hope of a new life. In the thrilling laugh of your niece, nephew, daughter, son, or grandchild, the looming darkness lifts with the happiness that that laugh infuses in your day.

Much like the Spring is the infusion of new life and the promise of beauty that washes away the bleakness of Winter, the beauty that we seek in the light, the love, the joy, and the hope of life, we can help to clean the muddied eyes and we can lighten the darkness like a lighthouse in the harbor. Our lighthouses (i.e. friends, family, lovers, husbands, wives, children and all the others that fill our lives with joy and love) stand at safe harbor to give us love, make us laugh, let us cry, hold us through the darkness and bless us with their light. They remind us why we keep trying. They keep us breathing. They help us to continue believing. They bring the darkness into their light and they welcome us home.

I love all of my lighthouses in safe harbor. To all of you I plead, keep bringing me out of the dark. And keep welcoming me home. 

Standing Out Within the Background

"To exist is to stand out, away from the background...You aren't thinking or really existing unless you're willing to risk even your own sanity in the judgement of your existence" ( Herbert, Frank. Children of Dune. 226-27). Have you ever wanted to stand out as someone more than the Average Joe or the Plain Jane? Have you wanted to be noticed as something more than the unnoticeable background? I have. Everyday, I look in the mirror and pray for something more than a part in the background.

It wasn't until thinking about what constitutes the background, than I came to realize that the background is seen from perspective and is the focus of the viewer. For example, as you look at the hillside or the mountain, the background is sky or the colors on the mountain. However, when your focus shifts to the trees that give color to the mountain, the trees become the focus and the massive mountain becomes the background. Who would have thought that the imposing mountain would become the background?

So, what is the background we are seeking to stand apart from to be noticed? We are all completely different, but amazing in our own ways, so how do you stand out or out-shine all the amazing and beautiful people and things that surround us? And by standing out, does that truly give you the ability to claim that you exist simply because you stand out? wouldn't the true test of existence be to not stand out alone, but to help others stand out and by doing so, stand out together? I think testing yourself and questioning things is important, but in standing out, who are we truly trying to stand out from and whose focus are we seeking to gain? God's? Our family's? The hot guy or girl down the street?

I want to be noticed but at what expense? I am risking my own sanity or my ego in thinking about the importance of the beauty in everything and everyone and seeking to see beyond myself and help others to stand out. My ego keeps pulling me back and screaming for its own five or more minutes of fame, but I continually keep rebutting with, "why?"

Perhaps, for some people, they need to stand out from the background. They have the glamour, beauty, and color to stand out and be noticed. However, for the Average Joes and the Plain Janes, the way we stand out is giving color, space, shape, and life to the background. Our way of existing is not standing apart from the background but adding to it. Maybe, by not standing out, we stand out in our own ways. We become the beauty of the background and bring the others the background from which to stand out. We have purpose. We exist. And we enliven and brighten a world with diversity, difference, and beauty. We stand out within the background in our own unique ways.

Each New Moment: Knowing the Need for Now

I was riding the bike at the gym a few days ago, which is usually a time I let all thoughts die away. However, as I road listening to pop and dance music so that I maintained the pace, a fragment of thought whispered to me above the music. I heard "tomorrow" and "today." I don't have schizophrenia; I don't hear voices. I promise. However, when I heard "prospect," "tomorrow," and again "today," I turned off my music to listen with an open mind. This time I heard, "At the prospect of tomorrow, I see the need for today." What would that mean? Why was I being whispered this phrase?

I have been thinking on it for a few days now and still don't know where it came from, but I know where my desire to hear it came from. In my current condition, a.k.a my preoccupation in the present moment, one of my friends, whom if he knew I was writing about him would freak out because of his need for the close confines of his personal "closet" and his affinity for his alias, has expressed his concern for my need for the present moment and my continual residence within the solace of the moment. My friend said that I needed to keep the future in mind because if I don't, problems, unforeseen, would sneak up on me.

While this may be true and may be a necessity for him, the future is too dark and shadowy to remain in my troubled mind. When I think on the future, I can't help but stress out at the prospect of dead-end jobs and the inability to pay my student loans. Also, the prospects of future wars and civil disturbances leave me in an agitated state. Fear takes hold and darkens the day. The future holds within it unnecessary stresses and worries that don't exist yet. They are shadows beyond the next moment that I can't seem to touch or meet. As soon as I meet the future, it becomes the past and so on into infinity.

As I struggle to maintain fragmentary moments of peace and sanity, I find that dwelling on the past leaves me bitter because of perceived failures. As I look to the future, I am struck with unmet pleasures or pains. What I've created in the past and the nonexistent future are continually and unnecessarily focused on. However, I understand my friends concern for my focus solely in the present. Understanding that concern is why I was given that moment of inspiration. That whisper came to me because the creation of each new moment allows for the betterment of each new moment.

If we become aware of what we do now and how it effects the next moment and the next after that, eternally, we must strive for an eternal betterment of the present moment. For example, a smile now can carry a smile to someone else's now and so on, but it also effects your personal present moment. Our joy in turn effects the joy of others' nows and continues the joy of your eternal moments. Thus, "at the prospect of tomorrow, I see the need for today" and the must see the need for now.

Now

Soaring high
above the plains of sorrow
my soul rises to greet
another day
     another blessed moment
I am jarred toward reality
and welcome the light
shed on me in the
    bright, sumptuous morning
of the moment.
Each moment
cleanses my soul
awakens my heart
and lightens my mind.
The past is not
but a figment,
an imaginary groan
it is vapor in the wind.
As the future is
safely hidden in
the dreams of something
better.
But, too, is
    but whispers and moans.
All that is
is now.
A coalescing of energies
a meeting of souls
and we touch each moment
with new eyes
and we are aware.
We are.
We exist in the now,
breathing and releasing.
We exist.
We are.

Self-Discovery

I am.
   Therefore you tremble
I have seen beyond the fences,
Beyond the highest hills and mountains,
Beyond the furthest reaches of your universe,
To see myself
    And my many faces.

I am
    Therefore you quake.
I was hidden in the darkness
In the darkest pits and traps
In the deepest abyss.
See me
    In living color.

I am,
     Therefore you weep.
I am flesh and bone.
Desire, passion, and feeling
I lead and follow; trust and hate
And I wake to see myself,
     in dreams

I am
    Therefore I exist,
To go beyond that is foolish
To risk self-destruction is childish
I see myself for who I am
    And I like me.

My One

It is silly for me to pen,
To suggest to fate
That there is one
Who could compliment me.
One who could stir my soul into being.
One who could calm my angry sea
And simply, purely be.
Awoken from his own despair
Lively in his very movements.
His eyes would lighten with my coming
His heartbeat would quicken
And I would be the only one around,
Though we are surrounded
He and I together. One.

With him, forever seem perfect
With him, paradise and earth co-exist
Without each other, we are not.
But together, we grow stronger.
For he strengthens me, and I, him

God be praised, when I have my One
He completes me
Like a missing piece to a puzzle
The gaps in me be complete
      and whole through him
And together, we simply will be.
He is breath to my lungs,
     Life to my soul.
He is mine and I am his. Forever.
Forever One.