A Pocketful of Ideas #1
Take what works, leave the rest!
Today, I am writing with a stream-of-conscious list of ideas and perspectives that poured out of me at the coffee shop the other day. I had intended to write nine, but the friction between my brain and the page was low and so I ended up with 27. Oops.
Enjoy!
Like it or not, you are a spiritual being. So think of yourself as a spiritual being (i.e. a being with spiritual needs, spiritual desires, and spiritual capacity).
Focus on good, positive things (even, and perhaps especially, when times are tough). People at funerals really need a laugh.
Money is good, but it is not an end. Learn to stay within the lane of fulfilling needs more than desires. Resist the narrative of, “You are incomplete without X” that advertisers have been imposing on you since the day you were born.
Some people prefer misery to happiness simply because it is familiar. You cannot change this in someone else. However, you can change it in yourself.
Current Thing™ needs you more than you need it. If everyone stopped reading the New York Times overnight, the world would keep on spinning without missing a single beat. We should all be talking more with people instead of about things. Current Thing™ culture is just an excuse for people to not develop personalities.
If you are not using a tool intentionally, it will be using you (according to the intentions inherent in its own design).
Everyone and everything has a true nature.
Comparison is the thief of joy because resentment blocks gratitude.
Aesthetics, far from being superficial and meaningless, tell you quite a lot about someone or something. It is completely valid to reject a cultural movement or social group for aesthetic reasons alone.
False authorities assert themselves. True authorities simply rule and defend their territory.
In the grand scheme of things, nobody will ever care about your life more than you do. If you are waiting for someone to save you, save yourself (or have the humility to turn to a higher power, like God or The Universe). If you are waiting for someone to tell you what to do, take the responsibility of being your own navigator. Other people’s designs and desires for you will—inherently—never have the same capacity for being in alignment with your true self as your own.
Beginners make beginner mistakes. You can avoid many easy mistakes in any hobby or activity just by doing a little research. A few years ago I injured my shoulder in a highly preventable way by doing push-ups with bad form. It’s worth it to take the time to learn how to do things right and deferring to humanity’s collective wisdom and (earned) expertise. (Life works the same way too.)
You can never avoid bad luck entirely, but you can minimize it. Driving recklessly creates narrower margins for you, every other driver on the road, and all the chaotic randomness of the universe.
Life is chaotic (good). Life is ordered (good). This is a divine and beautiful truth.
People who are frequently unlucky tend to go around thinking that bad things just happen to them all the time. People who are lucky tend to go around giving freely and generously while being open to exploring and receiving unexpected good things in their life. Both of these orientations are a choice.
Inclusivity is incredibly overrated. Shut the door on people who are evil, bad, mean, selfish. Bad things spread like cancer. Healthiness is fundamentally based on exclusion.
Your standards, spiritually speaking, should be at least 10x higher than you think. We live in a default culture of significant spiritual and moral decline, and there are ten million screaming voices telling you to compromise, compromise, compromise… sell yourself out because everyone else is! Consider that this is an elaborate and self-interested cultural illusion, necessary for the self-preservation of a hollow secular default lifestyle of shallow hedonistic gratification.
There’s only so many geniuses and visionaries in any generation. Turning to history opens that up and gives you access to orders of magnitude more truth-beauty-good-love-wisdom. Reject this and you only punish yourself.
The truth endures.
A lie never endures.
Men and women are asymmetric equals, that is to say, not equal at all in any way that makes sense for that word other than spiritually, before the eyes of God.
Never let unhappy people tell you how to live. They clearly don’t know how to!!!
You are a spiritually sovereign individual. A spiritual sovereign. Never forget that.
Happiness/joyfulness is an energetically activated emotional state (e.g. an ‘up’ state rather than a baseline). You cannot reside in happiness forever. So make a revereant, grateful neutrality your baseline state, which can easily slide into happiness and joy when appropriate.
Every day has a unique, one-of-one sunrise and sunset. This is a perfect opportunity for worship and gratitude.
Every month has a cycle of waning and waxing moon. These, too, are opportunities for worship and gratitude.
Know what makes your heart sing, your spirit soar, and allow the universe (God) to lovingly nourish you.