this moment is all there is

we were born with wings, why crawl through life?

We all live within ourselves.  All of our interactions with people, places, and things are shaped by our innermost beliefs ~ our internal programming held deep down in our subconsciousness.  We don’t experience reality, we know the Cosmos only after it’s been filtered through our own preconceptions.  This is both a good and a bad thing.  On the downside, perhaps we can never truly understand how another person understands reality.  Yet if we look at this whole subconscious filter in a good light, it means that we can fundamentally change our entire universe by changing our internal filters.

We can give true meaning to others, (especially the other sex), we can understand different beliefs, we can accept, value, and give meaning to all people, places, creatures, situations, things, and moments in time.

The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.  ~  Carl Jung

Perhaps this is what is known as being mindful; paying the fullest attention to the present moment, and doing it intentionally and non-judgementally.  Nobody, and certainly no real male, can naturally be mindful nor naturally spiritual.  Men think in straight lines and are entirely goal-oriented.  The above-average man might set aside, say, 30 minutes a day to develop the skills to be mindful, spiritual, empathetic, accepting, and understanding.  The rest of the day he will be just as competitive and goal-oriented as his peers.  Trying to be mindful and spiritual is not the path to mindfulness and spirituality.

Spirituality is a brave search for the truth about existence, fearlessly peering into the mysterious nature of Life.  ~  Elizabeth Lesser.

For anyone, a man especially, to be mindful, empathetic, and spiritual, you have to learn to live in mindfulness, empathy, and spirituality.  That’s not a ‘how to be spiritual,’ it’s a ‘how to live in spirituality’. You don’t learn this stuff in 30 minutes a day, you learn this stuff by living a spiritual, emotional, mindful, accepting, understanding life every minute of the day, seven days a week, every week of the year.

The cynical, especially the average cynical, goal-oriented, male who thinks in straight lines is going to ask; ‘So WTF is in it for me?’  If you are in emotional pain, if you are drinking too much, taking drugs of any kind, gambling, are depressed, suicidal, suffering from a personality disorder, suffering from abuse such as Gaslighting, then living a spiritual and mindful life will not only help you to cope, it will help you to recover.

And, being a spiritual, emotive, mindful, accepting, and understanding person will naturally attract other good people to you.  Women especially like strong men with these qualities: and trust me, only a truly strong man can have these qualities.

Some say that spirituality and mindfulness is for Buddhist monks.  And that all this emotional stuff gets in the way of getting ahead in life.  All I know is that if you want to be truly happy in life, then maybe develop some spiritual and emotional strategies to become grounded and take steps to move forward.

~

jack collier

jackcollier7@talktalk.net

perhaps Marmaduke is meditating