Love is a complicated emotion we can all agree on that. It is expressed in many different ways, a person who cannot stop singing, writing, or painting, the person who gives there all to another or overwhelmingly enjoys bringing people together through event planning. It could be said that these people “Love” what they do actually it most likely would be said. This type of love is in most circumstances positive, as well as healthy, as long as its not hindering any type of normal human emotion or promoting negative emotions. What about the other type of love? the one that leaves you sick, hurt, or uncertain. Watching the person you care for most just scraping by with someone else... How does one express these feelings? How do they cope? How do they heal? Its a mountain trail no matter how many times travelled the road is never smooth. its such a high no matter how many times you jump your stomach still drops...  a journey through a diamond cave with only a candle light to reflect the shimmers, a moonlit lake with no clear path to the ocean, a blind journey, its life. “Love is...”

- Zaafir 

All is happiness. All is love. We are all in nature, happiness and joy. Sometimes we find ourselves disconnected from that which we truly are, but in the absence of resistance and negativity, like air no longer being forced underwater, we raise right back to the surface. We move right back into alignment, harmoniously flowing with life’s stream of events and situations. The hardest part of our life and the biggest obstacle which prevents success is the inner conflicts we have with ourselves and negative belief systems. Beliefs are us. They are the biggest factor in what determines what we do, what we achieve, who we are, and what our future hold. Consciously sifting through and choosing my context is far greater than any goal because it will determine what goals I’ll set. My collection of beliefs is the lens through which I view reality. For the sake of simplicity I’m using Steve Pavlina’s approach to removing and installing beliefs. They are like programs running on a computer. I am not the beliefs themselves but instead that which is aware of them (as well as my collective mind, body, surroundings, etc…). In truth I am nothing. I am pure energy pure awareness pure consciousness dougie-ing in the intricacies of the infinitely creative mind. Over the course of this month I am dedicating 24 hours each day to altering my context to become more congruent with my long term goals and intentions.  Through the use of affirmations, neuro linguistic programming techniques, hypnosis, affirmations, meditation, meditation, and prolonged meditation (this stuff is impactful), I will deliberately shift my beliefs to more empowering, new age, pleasure-increasing, pain-reducing, accurate, flexible, ethical, all-inclusive ones. Why? Too often I find myself preaching but not practicing. Too often I find myself feeding into negative thought patterns. Too often I find myself hearing but not attentive. Too often I find myself thinking but sloppy in thinking. Too often I find myself desiring but not moving. Too often I find myself overly vigilant and not trusting. Too often I find myself displaying confidence but shaking internally. Too often I find myself focused on sexual gain through rendezvous with attractive women instead of focusing on the humanity of the interaction. Too often I find myself living for what’s impermanent. Not good at all. I had to be totally honest with myself. When I finally understood how past conditioning shaped my identity, I ignorantly withdrew to denying responsibility for creating change. I blamed and complained for dwelling in shame, I aimed to cause my family pain, carried away? I’m carried away, I’m carrying yay, I’ll spare you a play…… but I eventually realized how I was going about reinforcing the same negativity I so strongly wanted to eradicate. I then quit resisting the nagging fact that this finger pointing behavior does not in any way coincide with my newly adopted (but not fully integrated) spiritual beliefs.  While no longer moved to see others suffer for my shortcomings and instead focusing my energy towards creating happiness, I kept finding myself lacking the persistence required to maintain the new vibe. After reading countless articles on personal development, conscious living, and spirituality believing that things are happening and in time I will feel the power, it is NOW that I’ve quit faking progress, it is NOW that I’ve come to accept full responsibility for setting things in motion, it is NOW that I’ve become fed up with laziness and complacency, it is NOW that I am powerfully moved by my chosen purpose in life. I guess things were happening behind the scenes. 30 days of isolation. 30 days of intense focus. 30 days of deliberate action. 30 days of inspired living. And it is my strong expectation that I will come out on June 1st a clear minded life force, ready to wholeheartedly attack my goals with an unwavering knowing that success will crown my efforts. The 30 day turn-around will not by any means be easy, but the choice was mines, to have an awakening and continue to sleepwalk in spite of the knowledge I had attained because change is “too difficult and unsettling”, or to get my hands dirty and live up to my fullest potential. Yeah the brain dislikes new. I think it’s a survival mechanism? One will always be drawn to the comfort of familiarities. But like saying goes… “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore”.  

Carl Jean

When you step up and learn to see yourself as the driver of your life instead of the passive victim of it, then it becomes a lot easier to take on big challenges and to endure the hardships they sometimes require. You learn to associate more pleasure to the character development you gain than the minor discomforts you experience. You become accustomed to spending more time outside your comfort zone. Hard work is something you look forward to because you know that it will lead to tremendous growth. And you eventually develop the maturity and responsibility to understand that certain goals will never just flow into your life; they’ll only happen if you act as the driving force to bring them to fruition. Hard work makes the difference. It’s what separates the children from the mature adults. You can keep living as a child and desperately hoping that life will always be easy, but then you’ll be stuck in a child-like world, working on other people’s goals instead of your own, waiting for opportunities to come to you instead of creating your own, and doing work that in the grand scheme of this world just isn’t important. But when you become driven by a purpose greater than yourself, you embrace hard work out of necessity. That child gets replaced by a mature adult who assumes responsibility for getting the job done, knowing that without total commitment and lots of hard work, it’s never going to happen.

-StevePavlina.com