Stewards of Gifts Bestowed Upon Us

To take care of and nurture those gifts passed on to us... To find creative ways to turn something into a gift that keeps giving... To utilize gifts in a manner that helps bring out the best in ourselves and in others...

Aspirational Loneliness

Aspirational Loneliness- The feeling that results when we perceive ourselves to be far away from our aspired idealized self or identity. A feeling that reflects the desire to close the perceived gap between perceived outer reality and aspired inner reality.

Identity Building as Medicine?

There exists the idea that within each of us exists a kind of idealized image which we aspire towards. We get feedback from those around us regarding the direction we are headed, if we are getting closer to that goal. The idea of Self-Esteem is thought to be related to how closely reflected reality comes to the inner self-concept we aspire towards. The closer we get to that ideal, the better we tend to feel about ourselves.

So what if we were to highlight all the instances that are in line with the inner aspiration, reflecting back those times that reflect getting closer to the inner goals? Can it serve as medicine for those who suffer because they so badly want to get closer to the inner ideal they seek? Each instance can serve as a reference point, building and strengthening belief that we are indeed inching closer to the elixir of our inner aspirations.... helping to alleviate the perceived aspirational-inner-loneliness that happens when we feel separated from our ideal Self, uniting the outer with the inner.

Strongly Held Beliefs and Assumptions: Power, Privilege, and Status

Over time I start to realize some of my strongly held beliefs and assumptions. Today I came across a "should" belief... The belief that those with power, privilege, and status should do their best to take care of others with less of those things. I find it interesting how Strongly I felt about this belief.

Personal Status and Social Status

There seems to exists a Personal Status that is governed by rules according to our internal programming. Whether from predisposition or birth, or from developmental environmental factors, we seem to arrive at internal programming that determines personal self-satisfaction, or personal integrity. Like a plant or tree we realize our boundaries, and to grow we must grow within and along those boundaries. Gains made within those boundaries give rise to Personal Status: The things that make us personally proud of ourselves.

We spend much time trying to find groups whose status markers align with our own more intrinsic personal status markers of Self-Esteem. We feel harmony when the groups we associate ourselves with align with Personal Status Goals: We feel a sense of belonging through common shared goals or interests. If the groups status markers, the things they value most, do not align with our own status markers, we feel a sense of not belonging and not feeling valued, as our status within the group diminishes. As social beings who need and want to feel valued, we feel threatened as we are pushed along the edges of the herd.

Our relationships with ourselves, our internal programming, as well as with others as social beings, governs that we must feel valued. The feeling of being valued, or having social status, in a group context it conveys an underlying feeling of safety, believing we will have the favor and support of others. Feeling self-value, or having personal status, ensures a feeling of stability within, living in accordance to our inner-programming, within the boundaries we have established as individual organisms. We live in a reality that features both the Internal and the External. To be "well-adjusted" is to find some semblance of harmony and balance between the two. Personal Integrity and values and Group Integrity and values may or may not align, and that is the reality we must live with in this thing we call human life.

Rooted In the Earth, Reaching for the Heavens

Mindsets and actions seem to change only within the root of our Essential and most Fundamental Mindsets. We change most within the boundaries of our strongest tendencies.

Falling Into A Storyline

Often times, like what happens in dreams, we fall into a storyline without knowing it. We are immersed into the narrative so deeply that we follow along, continuing along the path wherever it tends to lead. Sometimes we are even lucent enough to observe what is happening, yet we are still at the mercy of the storyline, pulled in to play a role.

The Most Fundamental Mindsets

The most fundamental mindsets are those that involve maintenance.

The first one being maintenance of our own life and those we associate being connected to ourselves. All living beings have it in their mind to keep their own life going. It could be through their own immediate life, family, friends, or even something more abstract as legacy, status, or social capital.

The next most fundamental mindset is maintenance of mindset itself. The narratives that we grow into or learn about ourselves and the world around us, and our beliefs of how we fit into the larger picture of it all. We strongly believe in our roles, our identities, and will defend it to the point of a "willingness to give up one's own life" for the sake of defending those narratives. We are able and willing to take other lives, as well as dying ourselves in order to keep the mindsets we have somehow adopted alive. We can delude ourselves into believing we are "sacrificing", when in fact we are still attempting to maintain and defend something very abstract through that act of "sacrifice."

The Thought, The Word, The Gesture

As human beings, our brains are wired such that thoughts, words, and gestures can all influence each other, each with its own transformative ability within the dance with each other... to shift, to create, to destroy... to uplift, to suppress powerful energies that reside within us.