Tuesday 17 March 2015

The Path of Excess Leads To the Tower of Wisdom - Blog Version

This blog explains some of the reasons and history behind the video of the same name, I released yesterday on YouTube. I was looking at a video released by a great friend known as ConfusedGirlLA or as I would prefer to call her, by the real awesomeness of her name, Giovanna Silvestre (yes your name almost is as epic as mine).

It was a video I did not come to expect from her. It was titled Facing Your Demons, the best way out is always through. She had replaced her usual loving confident persona with a shattered emotional, honest but wounded one. It made me reflect on the simple premise, even the best of us are never immune to the vagaries of negative emotions and feelings.

I felt at the time, poor dear, wish I could comfort her. But that feeling of detachment you have when you view something online - you remove the true sort of family concern, and replace it with the distant oh that person matters, I hope they are okay. Then something unusual happened, or perhaps not. I believe the universe works some patterns out of reasoning, I was to myself endure a day - or later that night - a period of emotional turmoil. I had to look deep within myself. I did constantly think of Giovanna during my small brief nightmare, and told her I planned to write about this. I kept thinking how can I possibly learn any lessons from this awful class we attend in life, and teach or reflect to other students, how to navigate it better?

The answer to that question, sadly is... when you view my video below I believe - keep in mind the U2 song I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For.

I think a great lesson is, we are all students in a class called life. We need to sit and observe and try and worry less about asking too many deep questions. We want to seek the truths and feel inferior we have not mastered certain criteria. We have the lessons being taught in front of us, and we learn from each and every one. We gain something from each new learning curve, despite going home crying or feeling like the day bullied us into submission. We get back up the next morning, smile at our parents and go back to school, pushing away the fear of the day before. We want to run, we want to hide, but we know this is the stuff we are forced to do. If we do not do it, we will never pass. And I ask what exactly is the defining of passing the school of life???

I think to pass, we just simply need to leave the school, with a smile. We need to look back at the good times, and try to smell the roses along the way. We can try and push aside the time we got pushed into the rose bushes, and got pricked. We can feel gratitude for the times we made our friends lives better during class - when our friend was down we picked them up. We can reflect that we fought against the ideals of the bullies with love rather than hate. We beat them too. 

We passed. We passed. We already have a certificate to be proud of by living our dreams.

After graduating this High School, I will See you all in College or University someday perhaps?

The video below is the one I made yesterday. And a link to a site to view the song that inspired the flow of creativity to actualize the content. - A wonderful clip recorded in the city of dreams where beautiful people with beautiful hearts live, but feel broken or empty. Also the link to Running To Stand Still the lyrics from the official U2 website.



http://www.vevo.com/watch/u2/Where-The-Streets-Have-No-Name/GB1808700200


http://www.u2.com/discography/lyrics/lyric/song/111/

Monday 9 March 2015

The Male Prurient Desire - Means To an End?

I would love to share some thoughts on a subject I hope some of you might find fascinating. I have many female friends, I hope this can give you valuable insight into what goes on in the mind of a man. The male prurient desire - a means to an end? Why men visualise sexual desire and embrace anger, the reasons they act out on it in stark contrast to females is always baffling to most of us. Some are dismissive to the notion that men have a stronger sexual desire than females. But look back at history, a small reflection on the birth of Pornography, the slant of Prostitution towards gratification for one sex (male) must indicate that yes, men must approach it from a different angle. Nymphomania might be the female comparison and a most widely misunderstood pattern of behaviour. In men, it's known as Satyriasis.

For men satyriasis is directed by the ego, drawn from insecurity; not anything physical. You might be surprised to learn it can encompass, or hold within many negative patterns. It sustains the childlike tendency to seek attention and sources a feeling of greatness from conquest. Men who largely seek constant sexual encounters and or embrace anger/violence, are driven by subconscious soft-wired mind and body neuro patterns. Patterns are formed and when someone gains pleasure it can become a self-perpetuated instinct. Repeated constantly for the original source reward. We seek rewards or turn to Porn and violence or anger for many various reasons, like an addiction we think we find pleasure/satisfaction from it. We might find it fills a void, we find it dulls the pain or dilutes a feeling of loneliness. It gives us a sense of dominance over weakness. We think or assume we get reward from these emotions, gained from verbal and non-verbal self-talk. Talk can be sourced from the five senses...

Tactile (Touch) Visual (Sight) Hearing (Auditory) ) Smell (Olfactory) Taste (Gustatory).

Our subconscious interpretation of ourselves is drawn from years of formed patterns. Some of these are powerfully created during childhood and growing up. We are shaped and formed as adults, by the events and behaviours we are moulded into. For some people, both male and female - the fear of intimacy creates a strong inclination to seek relationships and pornography online. We are disengaged by the real need to connect, but we gain some sense of enjoyment from thinking or assuming we are happy. I myself am in No position to dictate or guide anyone else on anything, so I will relate my own story instead as a reflection on my growth and knowledge gained.

My childhood was a time of upheaval and many constant changes and challenges. Everyone has a passage in life that has obstacles and barriers. The path is always bound to be blocked at any given moment. How we move around that obstacle and proceed forward defines us, how we stumble or delay, or get stuck by that blockage is what keeps us in a place I was formally comfortable in. A sanctuary I would refuse to leave; mostly out of ignorance or fear.

My Mother taught me as a boy to respect others. I was encouraged to not be racist or judgemental of others. That failed to stop my mind and heart from applying it. Not in the racial sense but the constant judging of all based on actions, appearance, pretty much all attributes. I have been accepting of most choices people make, from homosexuality to drug use. My childhood and teenage experiences allowed me to paint a portrait I kept hanging on a wall for years to follow. Luckily not many people ever visited that gallery to view it's ugly disfigurement.

That portrait has been recently dismantled.

I will relate my reliance on pornography and anger during my lost years. This was indicative of the male I was ... incapable of sustaining a decent relationship with myself and others, not from porn, but from the lack of emotional intelligence to seek and understand how to gain it. How to sustain it is simply impossible if you harbour such profound weakness. I was your typical male, driven by the caveman or primitive sexual desire of wanting sex with those allusive female cave-women. Please excuse my awful generalization, I try to paint with words sometimes. Through isolation and being child-like in maturity, I always thought I needed a visual stimuli for my sexual stimulation, I must add, being single only enhanced this need in my justification. I was alone for a long time. You begin to think only one pattern leads to a quick fix. I will discuss this as an addiction. I will include a video by Teal Swan on why I refer to this in retrospection as a drug.

Things changed. With growth comes insight. I formed a powerful relationship a while ago that changed the dynamics within myself, in the midst of other rapid changes. I wanted to truly look deep within myself, and discover the reasons for failure in past relationships. How could I become a better person? More importantly become a better man?

I think a true relationship goes deeper than a physical act. The part in the Teal video where she describes two pieces of meat rubbing together made me chuckle. In part because it is true. You can engage in sex as something solitary or learn to adopt a more unifying approach. Lack of arousal in men and females is normal. The stereotypical porn visualisation of a man with constant libido, and the basis of what most of it projects in terms of everything, leaves a bitter after-taste in minds that do not even know what is considered to be normal and natural. The ideas and patterns some men form in large part to a lack of real-life wisdom, is inflicted detrimentally onto many females. You will no doubt know of the man who thinks he wants to be a movie star in the bedroom. Most of you are not willing to embrace being the lead actor (formally Actress in older times) in that movie are you? Some roles you might enjoy, but little plot twists and the final scene can rob you of your cinematic experience. Most porn is devoid of all emotions/feeling/romance and driven purely as physical visualisation stimuli.

I believe most men need to get in touch more with the desire for wholeness and inner balance. Not to focus on the macho ideals and be so drawn into the lures of ego and physical image. To let go of the primitive instincts reinforced for years by the majority of other males. Some men believe to act in accordance with one set belief and behaviour, is how to be a real man desirable and attractive to most women. This can be far from reality. The song Boy's Don't Cry by The Cure comes to mind, listen to that song. The meaning is obvious, but the way in which we practice the act of being a male is not always beneficial. It can be a poor projection to others...

I think of much conflict and death, caused in large part by ego, vanity, anger leading to violence through lack of understanding oneself. We like to blame someone for this, and point the finger, some men even have the gall to blame females, that they are too difficult or complex to understand. Some men who inflict violence on females, rather than recognise their own fault, they instead blame the victim. She asked for it. She wanted it. She deserved it, She had it coming. They also do this in justifying violence to other men. He asked for it. He needed a good shaking up. He was an idiot that deserved it. I punched him and ended up in court, but man that sucker was lucky I did not kill him. I will get my friends to pay him some respect. Nobody will undermine my manhood, no man can allow me to feel weak. No woman will make me feel weak. I would rather smash her apart then feel worthless. I would rather kill than feel inferior. I hate the stench of defeat. I will always strive for conquest. Dominance. Strength. Power. I relate this point not from my history, I have never found violence at all desirable or beneficial, the alluring aspect I fail to understand. I thought sex was to be sought and chased at one stage, as most of the worlds inhabitants believe. Not violence or violent sex that makes one person feel violated or uncomfortable, stealing from them whilst giving gratification to the other.

In return, the cycle turns back. The motor keeps grinding, stalling and failing. The engine runs on fuel from a poor source. The car body analogy again, it's nice to look at perhaps, but inside the mechanics, or guts of it - the mind of the car, is a wreck. The car might be fun for a ride now and then, but any long term travel is not desired by all whom have sat in the interior. The exterior was appealing, the force was inviting, the strength of it perhaps was admirable. We probably made a good investment in it, hoping that the motor was a good long-term prospect. That motor will carry my future and get me to the path I desire, and carry my children; dreams and hopes along with it. Anything in life that lacks character, loses respect. The car begins to choke with bad exhaust fumes, the motor becomes unreliable it breaks down. The car needs too much maintenance and service.

The damn thing was a Porsche at the start, now it sadly resembles a rusty junk yard piece of scrap metal. It serves no useful purpose. It once drove me, now it drives me away. It hummed, but it crashed. It broke apart. I am attempting to reflect this as the symptoms of all relationships - the emotional engine, the fuel that binds it, the motor that can stall or deteriorate with age and use. The car that was fun but now needs replacing. The elements that attracted us to enjoy it and encouraged us to travel a journey with it, are now fast vanishing and being replaced by faults and issues.

In sexual terms, performance anxiety and lack of arousal can come from inevitable failures in the bedroom, from both female and male aspects. The need is to accept life is not a Hollywood script, and not everything goes as planned. Some take the seriousness of expectation to heart, one partner might want sex, the other may not feel like it. One might want certain results, one may not be receptive to gratitude in acquiring this result. One may think the other has lost interest. One may think the other has too much interest. One may not like the intricacy of the partners fantasy or methods. One may feel neglected sexually, as if they do not receive the fair share of the pie. They want to consume an amount worthy, but the other has already filled the digestive system with the gastronomical delights. One may want dessert or an entrĂ©. The dish may not taste as great for one as it did for the other. The same dish may be constantly cooked and served. The taste becomes bland and monotony abounds. Monotony can lead to disinterest. Sometimes the taste of monotony leads to the once loved flavour; becoming eventually unpalatable. 

This leads to relationship tension, breakdown, misunderstanding, conflict - turmoil of emotions. You fill the pot with every single bad ingredient you can possibly think of, allow it to stew for a long period of time... you end up the food sticks to the bottom, the water has drained, the food it starts to burn. The smoke becomes fire. The house burns down in terms of unfolding events. You lose something you cherish, something you claimed ownership over - you feel you have been robbed. A part of your delicacy has been taken away by someone else. They ate it, spat it out, or even vomited it over you, in front of everyone you know. This is called resentment. It comes from encouraging the desire we own everything in life. We own the right to how others act and react to us. We should be loved. We hate it when we are not. We own feelings and the right to be happy. We get frustrated our ownership is at risk of being taken away. We have invested in it. We spent time and money on buying all the things that encompass the whole property. We lose the property and we stake a claim on emotional insurance. We want to gain the value back. 

We feel pain. We feel sadness. We start to manifest negative emotions that rival the fury of nature. It has beauty and we love nature, we loved what we owned. The potential to suddenly create total destruction from an event we think is not reasonable, or an act that we did not deserve. Why did this happen to me? I do my best, I try my hardest, but life or a God I conceptualise - why reward me with pain?

These are negative patterns we love to foster and keep, I will use the analogy as children. We think we own them, and want to keep them. They are taken away and we are mad as hell. We get angry someone can abuse our children, or our patterns, and inflict damage on them. Patterns are strange things, we love to hold onto them, we constantly do. We love them and want the very best for them. Sometimes these children want to leave home, if you think about it, at the end of the day, we are never truly entitled to ownership. Anger, pain hurt misery are great examples of things we should never own for any length of time. Let alone keep as an investment. Hoping it pays a bonus one-day... because it will not pay anything of value if you always retain it. It robs you, it steals from you. It destroys you. You may try to nurture it and raise it in a good way but it rebels against you. Children are to be gifted and raised for the right purpose, if you feel ownership of the right that this child must grow up and act accordingly to what You want, and does not act in full accordance to this agreement written in blood, you feel cheated. 

Anything we claim we own, and we lose or we think is stolen, we resent it. We hold onto the idea our resentment is justified. It was the thief that took it, they should pay the ultimate justice. That thief can be another person, or a memory, or an event. It can be an extended emotion. It can decay us inside like coca-cola reacts with teeth. We pay for it with health as well as mind. Coca-Cola is a huge brand but it has power. Some people know the bad effects of something, others love to condone anything out of the basis of fear ...to stand against something is harder than to simply acknowledge it, and we wander like lemmings off the edge of the cliff called life. Blindly following the same mistakes of the person ahead of us. We had a chance to stop, but we felt the change in direction would be more risky or challenging than staying on the path.

Dr. Wayne W. Dyer discusses an important principle that There are NO JUSTIFIED RESENTMENTS in life. Full stop. Application to every resentment you can imagine. No exceptions. This also applies to drinking coca-cola once upon a time ;-P

Patterns above can be re-programmed, at any age. The science known as Neuroplasticity has proven beyond doubt the mind and behaviours can be altered. Your life can be changed from set patterns to new possibilities. You might not agree, and say you are trapped within the confines of circumstance, lifestyle, career, relationship, family or heritage... or the other billion reasons known as fears. 

Fear is something that prevents most of us from considering life can be different. Fear might tell you and confirm in your mind that I am preaching utter bull$hit, and you are happy as a pig in $hit with your current sex life and pornography use. or you are perfectly entitled to smash heads in every drunken drug fuelled weekend. You are justified to feel whatever you feel, you use it in the manner you currently live... whether it's right or wrong, who am I to cast my opinion at a stranger? Porn and sex might be used in a healthy way somehow for your personal circumstance. All I can reflect is what I have learned applies to me. I would like to offer a perspective to others that many might not usually hear. Violence is unacceptable in all forms.... but many disagree and the world whispers for peace and solidarity amongst a select minority. Love always has more energy over hate. You might come to realise that this is true in a new time or change. 

You learn in life, that to dismiss the opinions of others, when you feel it contradicts your own experiences or values... becomes a safety valve. You might want to force some pressure through mine to show how you feel disapproval. I do not really care. I embrace the opinions of all others, I make my choices through the teachers and lessons I wish to learn from. I feel no need to restrict the attitudes or enforce behaviours onto others. I do not feel the desire for people to share the same values and ideals that I now embrace. I do not expect to change or expect any reward from anything I do, if I receive a gift of hatred, I accept it...but I fail to keep it. I embrace negative challenges these days, life is not a pure flow of constant happiness. darkness is always willing to drown us, however we can choose to drown or swim in life. 

I was struggling to stay afloat for too many years, tossed around the intense swirling waters of my own emotions. I created a whirlpool of my own ocean, almost calm for brief moments, but thrown against storms constantly. This sea was polluted by toxic thoughts of which most people suffer, worrying anxiety, doubts fear and a lack of motivation. Lack of self-esteem and confidence. The lack of strength in mind and body to feel worthy that I could accomplish anything great, or that mattered. A feeling that to transverse life is to try and sail as I expected the course would map out. The journey was set upon a destination I did not want to arrive at. I for a very long time accepted that no matter how hard you can dream, dreams are illusions. Dreams are visions for others to attain. Success and happiness are prevented by circumstance and history. The things that happened yesterday will either prevent the sun shining tomorrow, or cast a shadow forever on any light that manages to filter through. History repeats. Life is sort of a box to be viewed from within, held in the inner realm by the confines. To feel safe in a sense by the comfort of knowing this box felt like the only option. Unable to view anything because of obscurity. Unable to see because my eyes and vision had been clouded by personal glasses I built and created for myself. 

The vision was blurred, the beautiful in life was out of focus. I could sometimes see it but not truly sense it. I could not feel it. I did not believe in it. I did not believe in the one person that is the critical leader you must turn to - yourself. You must turn toward yourself in order to see the reflection. Then when you start to open your eyes, and delve inward in a more positive manner, the mirror becomes reflected to others in the same way. If you keep that mirror dirty, perhaps through being unaware it can be cleansed, life remains stagnant. Walk through the mud to reach the higher ground, or just stay stuck in it.... this was my life. I was covered and assumed I was trapped.

I can tell you... that is not the limitations of which this universe operates on. Try to think outside the square.

Here is a painting I did when I was 15 during High School, I feel it embraces the feeling of the subject matter visually:

lastly after this epic rant I will finally relent with -

If I have a goal of this essay that started out as a thought process, I would like to entertain the possibility it stirred some thoughts within you...the reader. Did it strike a chord at times, or strike a match? If it burns, it can replenish. If it humbles, it gives light. If it resonates, I applaud you. lastly, if you read it all the way to this conclusion #Gratitude. and Namaste. 
Love, light and laughter. #Heart smiles. 

Here is the Teal Swan video and as you know, I love my music with passion - a Joy Division song most applicable to this blog in title and substance.



Friday 6 March 2015

The Heart and Mind Seed All Motivation and Success Growth

I would like to personally share some thoughts on a subject close to my heart. The heart, physically and spiritually is driven by motivation in many aspects. You must have some sort of desire to accomplish something regardless of what you do, or you would not be breathing. I can express from my own experience, we are all equal we all breathe; we are driven to do things in life on a level that rebounds back to this concept. I will include two powerful YouTube videos of great resource to emphasise my succinct points.

I am reading and sourcing many different books at the moment. I will mention the following - Number one was the book Sally Pearson - Believe. An inspirational story of aiming high. I will get back to this book later it is important to the entire blog. 

Search Inside Yourself - Chade-Meng Tan - Increase productivity, creativity and happiness. This book is one of the best I have ever enjoyed reading. The references to Zen and mindfulness Meditation, the inner mind in a business and personal development angle from a Google engineer. He has met the President and pretty much every successful; highly influential person on the earth. 

Survival To Success by Allan Mason - How to play the game of life and win. This book has themes just like the above, using mind and personal development; spiritual and meditation resources to reach goals.

EntreLeadership by Dave Ramsey - 20 years of practical business wisdom from the trenches. 
Seven Years with Banksy - Robert Clarke.
You Can Heal Your Heart by Louise L. Hay and David Kessler.
Psyche's Yearning by Dr. Gillian Ross.
You'll See It When You Believe It by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
Manifest Your Destiny by Wayne W. Dyer. The nine spiritual principles for getting everything you want. 

A few others are also thrown into the mix, including audio, I will listen to highly successful speakers talk from various recordings at certain times. I love to listen to Wayne W. Dyer audio late at night, and gain wisdom when out walking with earphones in. Sometimes whilst making breakfast I listen and absorb motivational audio and self growth. I like to view my mind as a cauldron and throw all kinds of knowledge into the brew and develop a taste or something that will create my own recipe for life. I feel that using only one ingredient when cooking makes for a rather dull, bland and tasteless dish.

The book by Dave Ramsey on EntreLeadership really struck me a few days ago with one simple snippet of wisdom. Making mistakes is the critical tool needed in order to thrive and grow. You need to learn from them in order to develop any skills in life. Dave points out, learning from the mistakes of other's is much less painful. This resonated powerfully with my own experience, and no doubt with all of us. I myself from personal history know how I can relate to bad decisions or unwise choices from an early age. He mentions how Henry Ford once said, "Those who never make mistakes work for those of us who do."

I personally learn and draw much from a friend of mine. Danielle McDonald. She has built her career on helping and advising others how to succeed in all facets of life. My move to Twitter as a new social media platform a few months ago was prompted by our mate-ship and it leads me to the next subject. When you have great leaders you can learn from, who have walked the walk and talked the talk, and share to others what they sourced growth from; you are much wiser.

Sally Pearson, the champion Australian Olympian athlete. I was in a book store and decided to buy her book. The main reason was that I had learned about her in a Motivational and How To Succeed course recently. The teacher was relating a story of how you must believe in something in order to reach it. What you wish for, what you work for, what you desire you will reap. He told us a story along the lines of this - at an event, the media was interviewing two athletes. One was unnamed. The other was Sally. The first was asked how it felt to be at the games, and what her personal goal was. She replied she was most pleased to be here and her goal was to make the final. Sally entered the zone. I say THE ZONE, You can instinctively tell this woman is not there to play candy crush saga. She does not play for the media and dance around like it's 1999. (The Musician - Prince reference gentle sarcasm). She stated she had worked hard to get here and her goal was Gold. 
The first made the final. Goal reached. Sally made her ultimate goal. She will be remembered for the duration of history as a champion... the other athlete perhaps did not have that true motivational mindset at the time.

I believe what you do needs to drive passion in you. You need to want it so badly. Like the motivational people famously say As bad as you want to Breathe. Also, you must love what you do. If you do not enjoy something you will rarely sustain it for a long period of time. You need to wake up on a winter's morning, like I did all through the toughest most defining part of my year of a huge goal... and rather than think, I do not quite feel like doing it. Force it. I got myself to that gym and rarely miss a workout or strength session, only by sickness or recently deeper career focus. Like Arnold said in a video I watched recently and the great Bob Proctor touches on this strongly too... you can ask someone what their goals are, and you can gain a good understanding of the level of commitment they reflect. If they beam the right source of light you know they are destined. If they project what I love to call the Kind of Sorta Try attitude - I kind of sorta want it. I want to kind of sorta try and put the effort in. I might go 90 percent, but in some regards I will slacken off the other ten percent at times I need it most. I meet people like this in my fitness pursuit. They are willing and wanting to change or to set a high goal, but they will never go that extra mile. They get weary. They fall back, and in some cases cannot perform at the front of the pack. I have always found if you want something badly in life Go ALL OUT to get it. I love how Arnold Schwarzenegger used his initial gym based mindset in order to apply the same dedication to his future pursuit of Acting, and to make it as Governor of California. This truly reflects a drive that many do not have to succeed at everything you put your mind to. I might add that Arnold was using Meditation and Visualisation mind awareness tools in the 1970s and 1980s ... never assume anything from looking at someone. You can work your body, but you can work your mind even harder. Some people tend to forget that. 

The need to work the mind hard is the most important aspect to motivation and success. You need to get in that ZONE. This brings me back to Sally Pearson to finish the blog. Please watch this video, this is the Gold winning event at the London Olympic games in 2012. Observe a few things I personally picked up on. She is seated at first in the beginning. She is almost like this robot. She is not there to act, she is there to Perform. Look at the intensity in her demeanour. She has the WILL, She has the Desire. The Focus. The Belief. 
I believe she says to herself as you can see in the video Fast Start. Strong Start
She also used Keep It Together. 
Her heart was already racing and it certainly didn't help, the Olympic games organisers for unknown reasons decided to echo mega-loud heartbeats through loudspeakers in the stadium - right up until the starter called 'Set'.

History was made, through pure dedication to aiming high and believing in oneself.
I could not embed this YouTube Olympic video due to restrictions, so here is the link

http://youtu.be/qFqL-lAud0k

Here is one of the greatest thinkers and minds of all time - Bob Proctor: