let go of control, child. you never had it anyway

Hi,

 

This is what I imagine God is telling me about my b*****s in the sea that are trying to torture me mentally. I need to combat those thoughts back with God. My brain goes crazy trying to argue with those bitches; there is no need to. I need to silence them with the word of God.

 

• Me: a family friend’s suicide. A 17 year old boy… He suffered so much. Why did you let him go this way. Why did you make it successful. If you were planing to take him anyway, why did’t you make it a natural death. It was sad to see how much he suffered from bullying, judgement, physical abuse, and loneliness, and then to see the same abusive people judge him even in his passing like they’re better than him somehow. Like they’re superior to him because he couldn’t handle life and they are. Why is it the the meek is always conspired against and a lot of time the meek end up losing those battles, at least from an earthly perspective. He was so full of light, how could he go out in this dark way… Where were you? What was he thinking in his last moment? How could he reach this point of hopelessness and brokenness? I know that sometimes, hardships are supposed to teach us something, make us grow, maybe you were trying to teach his family something and the people around him, but why would it be at his own expense. I love you, God. Don’t be mad at me. I just wish I understood. How am I supposed to answer those bitches when they come at me like that. I don’t get it, Lord…

God: Lay it down, child

• Me: My break up with my boyfriend. I don’t necessarily love him and want him but the act of “breaking up” seems foreign to me and unnatural. How could my best friend become a stranger to me. I feel guilty for letting him go, knowing how short life is. He wants to leave too. I can’t make sense of it…

God: Let it go, Child

 

• A boy who never gave the time of the day. I have this sort of crush/ infatuation with him for TEN years and I have to say I calmed down since. I mean I don’t write his name on the sand or anything (anymore). But, I hate how I still think about him. Sometimes, he actually invades my dreams and the strange thing I always wake up SO happy. I pray that I rise above it. Though, somehow I still think he will fall for me. I think it is inevitable. & I hate that thought too. I prayed SO much about him, and I think the Lord won’t let those prayers/ promisses go in vain, even if my prayer now is to rise above it.

God: Rise above it, child (and MAYBE, I will surprise you)

 

• When I see unfathomable injustices in the world, that makes me feel that the world is so dark, and life is unbearable and I think, God, please intervene, where are you? When I feel so helpless and all I can do is cry out to Him. When the pain becomes my pain and I pray and I tell God I love you and I trust and I am hurt by the darkness of the world and I feel the pain that poor creatures and innocent people are feeling, but tell me how I can let go. Tell how I can look at this without carrying it all on my shoulder. I can I not react to this. What is your way to reacting to this. I don’t know how to explain it. But Jesus did have Godly anger towards the peoples’ behavior in His Father’s house. So maybe I am rightful in my pain… But, I don’t think cause my pain is great, it extends to the pain of millions creatures I have never saw. I know I am doing this wrong…

God:

• Me: When people say that God is okay with eating animals and that he created them to be exploited by humans. That animals don’t have souls and they don’t to heaven. This paints God as being racist, and cruel. I know he is NOT. God isn’t compassionate. God is COMPASSION itself. If I am a mere human, who is full of sin and ignorance can have this compassion towards animals’ suffering, then how could God couldn’t. My minute compassion is a reflection of His compassion. And His compassion is unimaginably, and infinitely bigger than mine. Also, God is their creator, so that makes Him care about animals 3786386829748499 than I ever could. Also, He is the one who knows everything, sees everything, and feel everything, so their pain is 64845688675500 more real to Him than me.

God: for this one, I feel like I have to defend God and I tell Him I got it. I think about God’s character. I think about his goodness, kindness, and all the awesomeness that He is. And I think about how people are ignorant and that I shouldn’t blame God for what they wrongly say about Him, even they were priests, and even if I can’t find the exact piece of scripture to back me up.

 

• Me: My life, my future. Where is going. People around me have accomplished more. Did I waste my life. Did I waste the best part of my life. What was I doing those past 5 years. Look at other people, they’re actually taking real serious steps in their future like getting a degree, getting married, having a baby and I am write here writing a blog post and thinking about organizing my files. And the crazy thing is, I actually don’t want to get a degree, get married, or have babies, but I find my thoughts still taunting me with other people mile stones that I have no desire of achieving. Am I doing the right thing. God, you gave the power to change the world, and I can’t even get out of bed. I am sorry God for being so dumb and lazy. I know you gave a lot of potential and it isn’t your fault that I am using it. I can’t even pray to you. This is all on me. But, you know make me better, cause you control everything.  And just chatter, chatter, chatter…. It never ends.

God: Let go of control, child. You never had it anyway.

What I learned today

Minute: 12:30; https://www.npr.org/player/embed/455644050/455749893

 

Minute: 22:40; https://www.npr.org/player/embed/464743261/464757243

 

catharsis: 

Discharge of pent-up emotions so as to result in the alleviation ofsymptoms or the permanent relief of the condition.

know thyself 2

 

“1. Here is a funny story: a friend of mine who teaches at a university used to complain saying that he was sick of seeing half of his students sleeping during his classes! Poor things were always bored to death. It may have something to do with the fact that he was teaching ” Constitutional Law” , but still, indeed a good teacher should be someone who can make any subject interesting. So he finally decided to do something about it and arranged a meeting with a famous Austrian Professor, specialised in Pedagogy, to ask her for an advice.

The first thing the woman said was: – Are you also bored when you teach? He said: – Oh yes, absolutely!!! It is a simple point but we all can learn something from this: A bored person is boring and an ” interested” person is interesting!

2. Most of us have no connection to our inner selves. The best way to make that connection is to be CURIOUS about ourselves. Just to wonder why we do what we do and why we think what we think. It can be really fun to look at yourself this way: with compassion and curiosity.

3. The closer you get to yourself, the closer you get to others. And we only need two things for this: To find the right TOOLS to look inside. To find the right WORDS to describe what we see.

TOOLS: – The best tool I know is Alain de Botton’s philosophical meditation. They have a video about it on this (Youtube- The School of Life) channel. Don’t miss it! You could then print the questions below the video and go through them at least once a week. They are extremely helpful. One tragic thing about almost all of us, is that we really don’t know how to think. It is so difficult to think ” clearly” about yourself. What we call “thinking” is often just ” brooding”. And we have all sorts of mechanisms to delude ourselves too. So it is great to have a clear question in front of you, to which you must find an answer without changing the subject! If we learn to ” talk to ourselves” in these very interesting and productive ways, we can hopefully do the same with other people too! – Another great tool is Mindfulness Meditation. You could search for this on Itunes and start today: UCLA Hammer Meditation. ( I have watched a lesson on Mindfulness from Yale University on youtube. The teacher there recommended these guided meditation podcasts. They are extremely helpful! ) And the best books I have read on meditation are: Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill, by Matthieu Ricard Mindfulness: An Eight Week Plan For Finding Peace in a Frantic World, by Mark Williams.

WORDS: – Wittgenstein says: ” All I know is what I have words for”. In order to have more words at hand to describe how we feel, we need to read a lot of good books, poems, watch good movies, listen to beautiful songs, and listen to the people around us very well. After all, our stories may be very different, but we all suffer more less because of the same things.

4. Three excellent podcasts on how to listen and communicate well are: Listening generously, Rachel Naomi Yemen with Krista Tippett On Being with Krista Tippet, Kwami Anthony Appiah BBC A Point of View, Alain de Botton on The Art of Conversation.

5. A writer from Turkey, Ahmet Altan, says that the most interesting things people could say, are the things they don’t dare to say and rather keep for themselves. What a pity really! But he also adds that children don’t have that kind of fear. And that’s why when you talk to a child you can always hear something interesting!

6. It is so true that those who had travelled the most or met famous folks etc. , aren’t necessarily the most interesting people. Once I had a coffee with a musician I knew, a few days after he came back from his South America tour. So I asked him how it all went. I thought it must have been a life changing experience! But all he could say was: – Oh, yeah, it was cool. Cool! It was so cool you know…. He had gone through an extraordinary experience but he didn’t really ” experience” anything! He was the exact opposite of the painter in this beautiful lesson, who knew how to make something so valuable out of an ordinary ( at first sight ) experience!! That’s why this quote by Rilke is so important: ” …For believe me, the more one is, the richer is all that one experiences“. So our goal should be to become wiser, more sensitive and more profound , so that everything we experience can also become more meaningful. And if we feel the need to share all these, we won’t be boring. At least to some people!”

 

• Copied from a comment on Youtube by Lua Veli.

know thyself

“The gift of being interesting is neither exclusive nor reliant on exceptional talent. It requires only direction, honesty, and focus. The person we call interesting is in essence someone alive to what we all deeply want from social intercourse, which is an uncensored glimpse of what the brief waking dream called life looks like through the eyes of another person. And reassurance we are not entirely alone with all that feels most bewildering, peculiar, and intense within us.”

 

7 Ways to Maximize Misery

Fabulous Friday: Spring State of Mind

Dear Wonderful Reader,

I know it’s not Friday…

With only 5 days left until Spring (March 20th), I feel the rush to liberate myself from those heavy Winter coats, long Winter boots, and  start Spring Cleaning my closet, my house, but most importantly, my mind. Winter may have brought me some challenges, and some tests, but it’s time to rid myself of all that stress and heavy-sighing and indulge in a Spring State of Mind.

This post will feature the latest Spring 2014 looks from the runway, not for imitation purposes, but to spark your imagination and fire your soul for Spring. Now, it’s important to note that a Spring State of Mind requires more than just shifting or updating your closet; after all, it is a state of mind. So think of this Spring as a new start where  flowers blossom and  grass gets greener and spring yourself forward.

Spring Cleaning Your Mind

1. Sit down in a quiet, clean area and start free writing (writing mindlessly) about your life and where you are in life. Do that for 10 minutes. Then, read it again.

2. On a blank sheet of paper, create a table with four columns and labels them as follows:

• a. Things I’m grateful for:
• b. Things I need to improve:
• c. Things I need to let go of: this one is could be challenging but a good rule to follow is: If something is weighting you down mentally, emotionally, or physically and making you unhappy, then you’re better off without it.
• d. Things I want to achieve:

Work on this table for as long as you need.

3. Look over each column with a realistic eye, and believing heart, and just be honest with yourself. We are our own worst judge, so remind yourself at every second to be positive and gentle towards yourself.

• a. Things I’m grateful for: Thank God. Don’t take any things for granted, cause you may wake up one day and not find it. And don’t forget to celebrate your little accomplishements.
• b. Things I need to improve: Think of realistic steps that you could take to improve them. If your stuck then get some books on the subject or research it on the internet.
• c. Things I need to let go of: take sometime with this one and try to envision your life without those burdens and how happy, and light you’ll feel. Then, convince yourself that it’s time you choose to be happy, and unstoppable (even in the littlest of way). You owe that to yourself!
• d. Things I want to achieve: I don’t care what your dream is, I know that you can do it, because that’s what God promised to his children. But, remember that YOU play a big role in achieving your dream. You have to believe that it will come true and that all those people or unfortunate circumstances that discourage you are only there to test your faith or strength, they are merely objects, and God is the sole decision maker, so be friends with him! Remember, baby steps are totally ok and encouraged; CONSISTENCY IS the real KEY! Einstein said, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” So I want you to fully embrace your Spring State of Mind and slap doubt in the face every time he knocks on your door and tell him, “You’re not welcome here”, and kick him out.

4. Make a clean, visually appealing version of this table and omit the, Things I need to let go of column. Frame it or tape it next to your closet. Every day wakeup expectantly, ready to rock (or tackle!) the day, and pick an outfit that makes you feel GOOD and fabulous (doesn’t have to be expensive!). Then,  glance over at the table and keep your eyes and focus on the prize!!!

At Last, here are the aforementioned pictures:

Enjoy…

Dolce & Gabbana Dolce & Gabbana AltuzarraBurberry ProrsumDiane von FurstenbergMichael KorsMichael KorsVersaceAlberta FerrettiJason Wu

P.S. Please excuse the lengthy-ness of this post; it was supposed to be solely about  Spring fashion, but then this happened! Stay fabulous!