Thoughts from a lonely notebook...(Process)

                   

Journal entry May 12, 2011

"The hope of something new. The feeling of change. The changing of interest, the craving to do, to be, and be used.
     Where do these feelings come from? Is it the inner call of what we were made to do crying out?
Unsatisfied with daily living that brings no purpose to the inner call. Feelings of incompleteness, but understanding there is something growing inside that is awaiting to burst out into the world.
Understanding that the term of a pregnancy is for a reason. Sure after the first few months, Mom, Dad, and family are all ready to meet the expectant child. But if you were to rush the process based upon the selfish wants and uncontrolled longing to see the child. You would soon find a deformed underdeveloped baby. The Process is for a REASON. How can we expect any different outside of the womb? Our life starts as a process and it will continue until our final day. But for our lives to be fulfilled with the purpose we were created for, we must grow each and everyday and be able to endure the process because in the process is where we are made. Awaiting the day to burst out to show the world."

Speak Up or Shut Up...

        Here I am. Been Silent for more days than I want to admit because in admitting the fact that I haven't posted in almost a month, shows my lack of commitment and slothfulness to follow through with my goal. I believe I can do it, I can make it. I read that 90 percent of all New Years resolutions fade into the realm of nonexistence by valentines day and seeing that yesterday was Valentines day, I believe it is time to reignite the flame of the resolution and continue my journey of opening my cranium and allowing my thoughts to roam free like buffaloes out on the range of curiosity. So I speak up or I will shut up (and since I paid for a whole year of christopherscranium.com I will use this resource) 

      Speaking up about the lack of speaking up. About the lack of having a voice. About the ridiculousness of not saying anything. I have opinions, I have beliefs, I have a mind that is not controlled by the mainstream thinking of the people around me. At times I agree with a thought process and other times I disagree, but I find myself at times staying silent in my disagreeing in order to not offend or upset a peer or a friend. I keep my thoughts to myself (sometimes) or simply have an agreeable face, you know the face that you smile and nod your head up in down ,but inside you are shaking your head NO and SCREAMING at the top of your lungs in disagreement!!! (yeah that face) 

    At sometime and some place we have all performed this action. We agree to win friendship, to fit into clicks, to gain a contact that we might use as source of networking power later in life, we agree so we won't rock the boat of the status quo, and also that way we can remain in the grand favor of peers. Does this help us in any way? When by remaining silent we are declaring a civil war within ourselves, where the conflicting sides of our Psyche battle back and forth trying to decide whether to conform or transform. Why do we allow this? Do we conform to the loudness of other people's opinions simply because they have them and they're LOUD? One thing that has always boggled my mind (and it doesn't take much to boggle my mind, sometimes I find my self in amazement of the invention of zippers, wow...................) is that we as a society can gripe and complain about how loud some people are and the opinion that they are constantly bombarding us with, but our solution is to sit around and talk about the voices that are LOUD, but we remain silent.We remain silent. Let that sink in. We remain quiet, we don't speak up to state our opinion or belief, and I don't believe in voicing opinion simply for opinion sake, but we as a society are being led astray by the booming voices that want us to believe like they believe. ("they" is a general term relating to opinions of right, left, liberals, conservatives, democrats, republicans, Hollywood and every other voice that has influence in our society, etc.) 

Why do we allow certain folks and movements to encourage our opinions, our beliefs, our reason, and our thinking? 

Conforming to thoughts that go against who we are and what we stand for is like allowing someone to come and take residence in your mind and pay no rent for their habitation. It is said "If we don't stand for something, we shall fall for anything" and how true is this, we must be willing to stand. We all have a voice and we all have the indiviuality of our own minds that God created in all of us, we must stand for what we believe in and be a voice to go against the grain, not for rebellion sake.But for the fact that if we don't " Speak Up" and stand for what we believe and what we as individuals  know to be right , then we should just "Shut Up" and allow the mainstream society to shape our thoughts and beliefs. I choose to stand and SPEAK. Will you stand or fall? Speak or remain Silent? 

Lose the Mask.

I'm Back, I took the weekend off from my desired goal of writing every day of 2012. I don't think it was a planned break, I believe I just slacked off from making the conscious and disciplined choice to sit down and let my thoughts flow out onto a blank screen. So I am working diligently on my self discipline and self control. Something that I struggle with daily. WOW!! I Got that off my chest, I have heard it said that you can't face your problem until you have admitted and accepted that you have a problem. So I admit I have problem, no more masks. BOOM I said it... (What is this a transparent confession post like a twelve years old teenage girl's diary?) It seems masks are what we wear as a society, we mask our true feelings, problems, situations, circumstances, difficulties, we mask our true opinions, beliefs, who we are, our identity, and everything else that we don't want others to see for fear of rejection. Why do we do this? Why do we hide? Why do we condemn others for what they believe or the opinions that they hold true to, but we are to afraid to search the unknown to see what we truly believe? I don't care for this, there has been times that I have held my peace or kept my mouth shut because of fear of being pushed from the crowd based on what I believe or think and I have walked away from encounters scolding myself for falling prey to the simple mind. I don't get it. Truly I become baffled by people and the things that they allow in there own lives, but turn and condemn others for the same thing. Judging others by their actions, but judging ourselves by our intentions in doing the action.

Why? I question this because it is wrong(I know you might be saying Duh captain obvious, thanks for pointing it out.)
Seriously my ire and anger rises up in me because one of the main places that this non exotic antler-less hypocritical deer is spotted grazing is in the church(please notice I said the church and not religion, seems to be some controversy between these two terms.)
OH NO I JUST TOOK IT THERE BAMM,BOOM,BANG, YEAH!!!  (i'm so silly.)
But for real we see this all through the church, people masking who they really are in order to fit in with the culture of the church and by doing this we become isolationist and segregate many people just due to things that really don't line up with the bible. It is like in school when you really want to fit in with the cool crowd and you change something about you to fit in only to forsake others for the sake of popularity. I know this thought is very scramble and like a frag grenade it is all over the place, but I guess it is because I don't understand how we can compare ourselves to Christ, but where the mask of the pharisees. Christ in His word condemn this action by calling these people vipers and hypocrites and also saying that by there religious tradition they have shut up the kingdom of Heaven, but still we set ourselves apart from others and I believe that we are called to be holy and separate from this present world, but I also believe that we would see more people come looking for Jesus if we took our masks off and in a transparent revealing showed the world that we are need Jesus too. Not falsity that most have it together and if you follow this simple list of man man rules/religion you can have it all together also (all for the low low price of $16.99)

NO we must represent Christ and even outside the church to be true to who we really are. Realizing that we all have hang ups and failures, we all have mistakes and things in our lives that we are daily working to improve in our lives. Showing everyone around us that we are not better than one another because I'm just the same as you, made out of mud and awaiting the day that I will return to my prior form and hopefully while I'm here I can take off my masks and be real. I pray that this will happen in us and among us, especially in the Church that Christ died for, that we can show the world His love and his plan for us all. Lets lose the masks.

Don't push the red button.

  January 12, 2012 post.  
           The air plane was flying high in the sky at a approximately 30,000ft. Everyone on the lonely aircraft, which had taken off in treacherous weather conditions warnings, were sitting calmly in their seats enjoy the smooth gliding of the aircraft through the clear eastern sky. The pilot had just turned off the seat belt sign, some passengers began to stand and move about the cabin, when suddenly the plane shook hard being hit abruptly by the storm that was the warning prior to take off. Passengers were thrown to and fro as the team of pilots tried there best to steady the plan without losing control.....One passenger sitting near the exit door frightened for his life and crying as if someone had stolen his favorite piece of candy, when he suddenly noticed a red button upon the door beside him. Below the button a tag read "PRESS THIS BUTTON TO SAVE YOUR LIFE" as he sat pondering the tag and and questioning the inner conscious on whether he should push the button, when a flight attendant came by noticing his fascination in the button and the tag, quickly scolded him for even having the hint of possibly following through with the instructions of the tag.....The passenger quite confused both by the button and the quick scolding of the flight attendant and very scared by the near eminent destruction of the soon coming crash of the plane. Quickly with out thinking pushed down the read button and escaped the iceberg that came out of nowhere. Then with a flash and an empty feeling in the stomach awoke in a hot sweat in his bed and realize he had been dreaming.........

  I know what your're thinking (well I have made that mistake before assuming ones thoughts....never works out in my favor.) Well let me rephrase my statement I THINK I know what you're thinking. You possibly might be saying what a cheesy story and what did I eat that would make my mind come up with such a crazy unrealistic story about a button that saves lives and who cares?
Well you might be saying who really cares...and you may be right who cares?
We watch movies, read books, listen to audio, and have toyed about with the antic of the red button. We see it in space ships and cars the red button normally represents danger, self destruction, or a life saving aid in some James Bond movie that quickly diverts the death of the near perfect "double O agent". In some cases it is the emergency button that warns others of a fire, tornado, hurricane or an attack of mutant ninja squirrels( In my mind that is probably most likely not the way the world will end, but do me a favor don't tell the squirrels.) It is most always in cased under layers of glass with special codes to be entered in order to press the glorious and mysterious button in a downward motion that might save or destroy. The button represents those things that we don't do. Those areas that we don't approach or only talk about behind closed doors. The attitudes that we don't let be know or ideas that we keep in the recesses of our minds due to what people might say about them. The red button is weird, it is out of the norm, society has been trained not to push the button, and not to do anything to rambunctious that would make one an outcast to the mediocre mentality. But what if? What if we pushed the lines of norm, scurried out of the single filed lines leading to average and pushed the button that might cause doom, but might also push you and I into things that we have never imagined. So let us rethink the button and let us rethink our mentality. Let us not criticize what others may have the intestinal fortitude to do, to discover, to be, and to say.  Like my mother always used to say in trying to trick me into eating vegetables as a young child "Don't knock it until you try it."

squared life. squared mind.

                                     

A square and object that has four sides all equal within itself. From corner to corner from side to side and top to bottom is all the same. The the shape of the square is what some has labeled the box, a box that holds different items of the users choice. A box can only hold so many things dependent upon the size of the box.Whether it be a large square box or it be a small square box, it is still a box and still a square, just the amount of storing space changes. 

The old cliche "get out of the box" or "they really think outside the box" has been around for many moons and it has defined us as people. First off who decided that it had to be a box that we stuck our thinking inside to use for a another day (sorry getting ahead of myself in my ranting, must control my thoughts....deep breathe 1..2...3..4....) OK I'm back. We have used the box to speak of someone being over creative or someone that pushes the limits of the norm. We have describe men and women who have done something "out of the box" as having some special kind of power to unleash themselves from the thought pattern of the simple. Some use it as a compliment and yet others use it as a stick to poke and beat others with like a pinata at a six years old birthday.
 The mentality that we are stuck in a "box" and the four walls of the "box" is the limitations to our lives and thought patterns. The four sides being walls like a concentration camp that imprisons society as a whole to believe that there is only so far one can travel before you will collide with the wall and then all of the mind numb slaves to mediocrity will gracefully inform and beat you back into the norm.....Why is this? Why have we allowed the square to be the bubble, like the Truman Show(mindless movie reference), that locks our thinking, our creativity, and our will to live inside. Is it because we are scared of one an-others thoughts? Is it because we are so insecure to the opinion of what might be thought of us? Is it because we don't truly know who we are as individuals that we must put mandates on each other to keep one another from discovering themselves? Why is this? I wonder who invented the proverbial "box" that hangs over our heads like an anvil of doom waiting for someone to come and cut the cord that holds it up and crush us like a cockroach on a hot summer sidewalk.
If we allow our lives to be squared by society then the four walls of our thinking will never bust free from this "prison that really has no bars"(respectfully quoted from my father), but truly is the caged cell for many, we will never truly discover who we are and who God created us to be. We should of learned from the conditioning of our kindergarten days that a square block cannot go into a round hole and round ball cannot be shoved in a triangle slot. There must be an enlightenment and a illumination of our minds to realize that as individuals we cannot be forced in a box and more importantly we must realize that the box is there to limit our thinking and we must do like so many department stores,shipping companies, and tired movers. Empty the boxes, cut them down, and discard them in the dumpster of shallow minds because there is more room outside than in.

Number 4: Cave diving.

Number 4:
Fourth post of the day. When attempting to construct many different post my mind has gotten to a point of wanting to shut down and seems to me like there is nothing else I could possibly say today. It is like I have discovered my brink or the edge of creativity. I know what you are thinking. Or possibly I do ( because some could be thinking about a multitude of things and we won't approach that.) But some who have my mind, so really just me, are thinking really after four post about nothing you have reach your end, you have discovered the cliff of your mind that if leaped from one would fall into the abyss of nothing. And when put like that I feel rather ignorant in every area of life (well not every area just the ones that are worth reading about)
I have been seeking and searching wondering and pondering. Out in my canoe of thought like Lewis &Clarke out discovering the western part of the United States, only I'm on a voyage to discover the west part of my brain and the thoughts that might be lingering like nomadic paintings on the walls of abandon caves. I know very poetic right? Probably not.

It writing these few posts I started out with the thought what would someone want to read. What could I write and scribble down that someone (a passerby er) would find an interest and would be drawn to stay around and read the rest of my post or even type their email address in the subscription and follow me? What could I do to gain the interest of the masses? What could I say to excite a generation that has so many things vying for their attention? Then I remembered a book that I read at the beginning of last year called The Purple Cow, authored by Seth Godin. The premise of the book is to be different, to not allow the opinions of others to shape what you or I might offer. To put yourself out to the masses in a way that would make others stop and take notice of you, such as seeing a purple cow out in a field (we would all stop and question reality.) As the thought of this book rushed into my mind like waves upon an unsuspecting seagull, I thought really what I should write is what interest me and be different in the way that many blog writers write for the interest of the people (which I guess if you want people to read your blog it is a pretty good idea, i really wish i would of thought of that.....) But I desire to write not just for me but to entertain others, to inspire, to create, to push, to poke fun and the norms that we hold so dear, to open up my mind to the realms that have yet to be explored and to just be open to the fact that not everything or everyone has to be the same. So that will be what I shall do, I shall write about the things that I find interesting, about things that I see as things that are causing our society to lose focus, about things that make me laugh and hopefully through the quirkiness of my mind someone might find laughter and a since of joy knowing that life isn't as serious as we make it out to be.

"When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free."            ~Charles Evans Hughes~

#3 The way I see it.

The Way I see it.
I see that the world we live in is created by God.
I see that the opportunities in life are the direct result of God's hand in our lives.
I see that I can do nothing upon my own accord with out the direction of God in my life.
I see and believe that everyone should have the right to the pursuit of life and liberty.
I see and believe that life is a canvas that needs to be painted day by day.
I see and believe that the government is not the source of our living and we should not wait for Washington to fix our own lack of responsibility for living.
I see and believe that we live in a country that is truly "Under God' and that is the one true God.

The way I see it is the way I see it and no one can take that from me. Regardless of race, religion, creed, culture, and everything else that separates us as people. We all have are own minds and the right to choose what we decide and deem to be appropriate for our lives. It is this freedom that makes us rich, not in monetary value, but riches that are truly priceless and can not be sold for gain. I believe in freedom and I believe that the way I see it is best. (sometimes, unless approached by Jeremy McDaniel who is much smarter than I am.// No sarcasms, you should meet the guy.)