Trying to do good. Born and raised and living in NYC.
Doc: “If you feel the bumps, you know you can smooth them out.”
This means, most of the time, it is better to feel the bumps, than to numb them. Feeling provides you information, direction, insight, experience…”the fruit of Life“.
I am honored, grateful, and more than excited to be invited to participate at a live event at the NYU Bookstore on July 21, 2016, from 6pm – 7:30pm. The event is focused on self-publishing, and I am one of a few authors who will be talking about the experience.
I am going to use the opportunity to talk about some things I find very important for writing: voice; writing as art/passion; inspiration/creativity.
I will also briefly talk about my book Spark The Flame, and will be very excited to talk to anyone there, sign books, etc.
Thank you 
“Though we travel the world to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Last year in April I walked the labyrinth at the basement of Marble Collegiate Church.
This is what I wrote during that walk:
Go forward in sacredness
You do not go forward
without the sacredness /
unless you invite the sacredness
How sacred and special
this Life is
Every part is just as
valuable as every other part
Before you know it,
you’re there.
It’s the journey that is sacred
There is no piece that is more valuable than any other
It is all sacred space
This is a sacred walk.
Life, is a sacred walk.
Stand still, until you
feel, acknowledge,
Breath the sacredness
with every breath:
If the breath is not sacred,
stand still until it is,
until you can walk with
sacred breath again.
The path will always have
difficulty, that is the
nature of the path.
This is so important. So important.
To build and have an ongoing compassionate relationship with yourself.
You know you are trying hard. And if you’re not trying very hard, and this is bothering you, then start, love. Try harder to do what you need to do, and be what you need to be.
When you are trying, either from the beginning, or further on a certain road, you need to be ok with who you are, and where you are. Your challenges, or positive traits, may help describe how we live our lives, but we are not the culmination of everything we do. We are deeper. This is to say, you are more than what you think and see, and dont beat yourself down for what you observe. Change it, with an understanding of our humanity.
If I could kiss every moment,
with full blown lips,
I would tell it “Thank you for being here,”
to let it know that its
presence is appreciated.
You know, I can do this.
Feel appreciation. Don’t look just to think it. Feel it;
without words.
Literally.
Find the bubble of fun and appreciation,
Of where you are right now.
Where you are in life. How your life is.
Your space. It’s like a bubble of comfort, humor, adventure, relief, ease, flow.
Sometimes we are given distractions on purpose, so that we look elsewhere while our gift is brought right into our hands
“The only intelligent response to the ongoing gift of life is gratitude. For all that has been, a knight says, ‘Thank you.‘” For all that is to come, a knight says, “Yes!”
–Ethan Hawke, Rules for a Knight
“Meditation practice is not about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we already are.”
-Pema Chodron
“Tell me, what is it you
plan to do
with your one wild
and precious life?”
-Mary Oliver
“Remember that you are this universe, and that this universe is you.
Remember that all is in motion, is growing, is you.”
-Joy Harjo
I cannot wait for others to accept me. I must accept myself.
That is a beauty of this world: Things keep going. Things keep growing.
No matter what has occurred, Life will reach out, growing again.
Today is publishing day for Spark the Flame ebook! The printed version will likely be out in early 2016.
This ebook is free for everyone, forever. I hope it is useful to many people around the world for generations. Please share it with anyone and enjoy.
“The mightiest oak in the forest is just a little nut that held its ground.”
The official publishing of Spark the Flame, the book, is coming soon. Should be available in print, and for free download on this website, before this Christmas. Maybe much sooner
“In the diary you find proof that in situations which today would seem unbearable, you lived, looked around and wrote down observations, that this right hand moved then as it does today, when we may be wiser because we are able to look back upon our former condition, and for that very reason have got to admit the courage of our earlier striving in which we persisted even in sheer ignorance.” -Kafka
How sacred and special this Life is. It is all sacred space.
This is a sacred walk.
Stand still, until you feel, acknowledge, Breathe the sacredness with every breath
The cleaner your motives, the safer you are.
Another way to say it is:
To clear up your dangers, clean up your motives.
Act with good intention towards Life and its inhabitants, and Life will reciprocate towards you.
When you realize you don’t have control of the situation…
Trust
Trust in Life
Just play your part
YOU ARE UNIQUE
Sow seeds abundantly
This is an old draft of the first part of Spark The Flame. It looks different than the way the first part looks today. Enjoy
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This is Your Life
There is no other
You are a unique individual, and there is beauty in the unique. When people or things stand out, it is because of their difference. They stand out when they refuse to be like the others, when they allow themselves to shine.
Growth
Growth is a law by which you can choose to participate or not. Apparently this law is connected with happiness and satisfaction, for if you are not growing you are dying, and you will gain the corresponding feelings.
People need to grow, it is a need that not everyone realizes. If you are not bettering yourself in something…learning something, building something you care about, working towards a purpose important to you – if you are not growing in some way, you will experience the consequences thru your feelings. Your feelings will reflect to you the stagnation that has become your life. These feelings come about in part to spur you into some form of forward movement. If you are not growing, you are dying.
Potential
Your ability to do things, to accomplish, comes from nowhere else but you. If you look to others for your power, you will never find it. If you allow others to exert power over you, they will readily do so.
There is no limit, no cap on your potential. Limitations exist only when you believe in them. “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, either way you’re right.” – Henry Ford
When you accept limitations placed on you by someone else, or by society, you are doing so voluntarily. Those limitations are completely false and fictitious…until you believe them.
No one can stop you. The world is yours. Only you can stop yourself, with a mindset full of false limitations. Failure does not occur unless you give up.
Human potential is unlimited, without boundaries, without borders. There is no end until you say so. The race is over when you stop running. Otherwise, there is only persistence, progress, and growth.
It’s up to you, it’s always up to you. You can accept all kinds of false limitations placed upon you by others, and you can even conjure them unto yourself. However, this results in nothing more than parlor tricks, because these limitations are not truly there – the illusion is created with smoke and mirrors, and dissipates as you move to conquer it. Suddenly, all that is left is a clear path to your ambitions and well beyond. Take it. Follow your heart and passion and realize you are in command of your life, no one else.
Every storm eventually ends. Every poison has an antithesis. Every problem has a solution.
You are unlimited by nature, and so is your potential.
Choice
Choice is all around you, every moment of life is comprised of choice. Even when there seems to be no choice, choice is all you have. Whether they are “good,” “bad,” or unacknowledged, choices and options will be your constant companion for all your days. The more you open up to the possibilities around you, the more choices you will begin to “see.” Whether you see them or not, they are there.
You are never closed in, you are never left without options. That is the opposite of life. Without choice there wouldn’t be life.
Only you can decide what your options are. Who is to say what is an option for you and what is not? Don’t let anyone dictate what your choices are. You will always have more options than you, or anybody else, can ever realize.
This is Your Life
This is Your Life. Take it. If you don’t exercise control over your life then someone else will. What gives them right to have control over the life that belongs to you? Find and select a purpose and run with it. Nothing is out of your league, nothing is unobtainable. Decide what you want, and make it so.
Power
The height of laziness is when you refuse to take responsibility over what happens to you. When you do not take responsibility you transform yourself into a victim. As long as something else made your life the way it is, then something else is in control. If you believe you are where you are because of other forces, you internalize the role of the victim. The victim, who holds no power. The victim, who does not wield control over his or her own circumstances. The victim, who cannot do anything about their situation because they are at the mercy of other people, culture, society. The role of the victim leaves you powerless, a broken vessel tossed by the chaos of a hurricane.
When you choose to be a victim, you relinquish your power. When you accept power, you cannot be a victim, because power means that you are in control. You are in control, and your world is your responsibility. You can be the captain of your ship, steering with purpose, direction, and control; or you can be the broken vessel, no captain, no leadership, no control, crashing about the rugged water – the victim who holds no sway over the circumstances of his or her life, but rather is at the behest of external forces.
As long as you are a victim you do not have power. Do you see that they cannot coexist? Being a victim means “I am not in control of what happens to me.” Power means “I am in control of what happens to me.” The choice is yours to make. The more power you want, the more responsibility you must accept for what happens to you. Those who wield the most inner power are never “victims,” they accept full responsibility for what they experience – good, bad or ugly.
|——————————————————————————————————————-|
Victim Power
“Others are responsible for “I am responsible for what happens to me” what happens to me”
Choose.
Change
Things are meant to change. People are meant to change. Growth is change, so is death. When something outlives its usefulness and purpose, it must go. Empires that lasted hundreds of years have eventually fallen. Languages, customs, and artifacts have disappeared into history so that new ones may arise. Change is a part of life, and humans are agents of that change. Over hundreds of thousands of years we have affected and changed the outcomes of countless species of plants, animals, and earthly terrain. Dinosaurs roamed the planet for millions of years. Millions! And now those dinosaurs are gone.
Things change, people change. You cannot prevent yourself from affecting and changing the world. Just by living, you affect the entire planet.
Your power is the power of growth and change. You embody the agent of change. If you direct it onto the path of your ambition, change would occur with every single step. And when your path converges with others heading towards the same ambition, with the same direction of change, the results are amplified exponentially. Things cannot remain the same so long as you are discontent. Change is your right, your nature, your duty.
Journey
Any way you cut it, you are on a journey. And you are the only one who can decide what this journey will entail. This is similar to the journey of an RPG video game, except the video game exists in a world of limitation. You and I do not. Our world is without limitation, without boundary, and is awaiting your commands. You have the choices. You have the power to create change. You are living an entire lifetime of experiences exclusive to you. You are the captain, you are in control. Now you decide…what’s next?
Three years sober from alcohol.
Only by the Grace of the Divine.
Help me continue to be free from alcohol. I am trying to be a good person for this world, for my Life.
Thank you
Love is key, and you are the keyhole
The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.
-Carl Rogers
Things are fine for you when you feel fine for you. They may come out of nowhere, and shock you, but if you hold the “this is fine”, “it is going to be ok” feeling constant, things reorder themselves to be fine for you.
If your perspective is at a general high/up/optimistic constant, Life will appear magical, because things are reordered in ways that appear crazy, to meet you on your perspective. Throughout the low times, your high perspective continues to carry you through, until Life comes seemingly out of nowhere again to meet your high perspective with a beautiful gracious blessed set of events.
Keep your perspective high, your optimism, and you invite the perception and experience of a charmed Life.