Growth

As we progress through life we learn new things, some things we can impart in others, some are things that half to be learned only through self realization.

Today, my first full day of being 25, I have several hard decisions to make. What friends to I keep, what friends to let go. Do I let people drive wedges between me and other friends? How much should I fight for friendships that are long passing? What do I consider back stabbing and what do I just chalk up to human nature?Do I really want to try at love, or just relax knowing that I am a complete person all on my own? Do I continue the coarse of who I am, or do I allow myself reinvention? Why am I the way I am? Am I really okay with that, or do I think that other people's influence in my life has created reactions that I do not really find desirable?Too long has my life been controlled by learned actions that belong to my parents, family, and friends. Too long have I judged the world and been caught up in desire. Too long has my motivation for action been based on self and what is in my self serving interests. I have to give up the idea that I somehow can control the desires of others, or make them like me. My mind is a continual gong blaring what needs and desires I have. It is in constant want, constantly speaking a need for this and that. No one that has ever seen me would say that I look like I have true material need, but yet the money I make is never enough to get me to the state of pleasure that my mind so knowingly tells me will bring satisfaction. After all what is it worth if an action does not satisfy? If please doesn't bring fulfillment, was it really pleasure? Or a brief lie, cheating us out of satisfaction.We all desire to have companionship, for love, and for balance. Those that are strong, want someone weak, those who are weak want someone strong to take care of them. Why is it that we look for someone to love and balance us, when if we haven't learned to love and balance ourselves, we will only hurt anyone we try to love and balance.And there is a deep fact that we cannot ever truly teach someone else, unless they are moved through life to a point of understanding. We have to have love in and of ourselves, and be balanced as a single person, or we will never be able to balance with someone else. Peace and harmony are two states of being that can only be brought forth by not doing. No desire can thrust you into peace, nor harmony. They can only be achieved through meditation and relaxation. My whole life morality has been a regiment, a coarse of action that I should do in order to be a "good" person. I am beginning to understand morality as something completely different though. What I had previously though was a major downfall, as anytime my desire for pleasure became greater than my dedication to the regiment, I would be in the pitfall of breaking my morals, bringing shame and despair into my life and spiraling into deeper levels of compromise as the desire to not feel so hurt and bad because of my loss of the grip on the regime has caused these compromises.Morality is thus not really a virtue or regiment, but a state of mind and identity. If I identify myself as being a moral person then I will not do something immoral, not because I have chosen not to do it, but because it's not in my nature. Let me use an example:You are walking down the road and you see a car with the back seat filled with presents. No one is around. Do you walk on by or do you smash the window out and take these gifts which will likely be very pleasurable? There are three answers. The first being that you just walk on by and think how lovely it would be to give or receive so many nice things: in this situation your identity is a good moral person. The second being that you smash the window and gleefully go about your day with your new found loot: in this situation you would be identified as a thief. The third option is that you walk by and think how thrilling it might be to snatch away those gifts, you might even look around to see if there really is anyone around, you most likely will keep walking but have the scenario run through your head of taking those presents. Why is it that number 3 didn't take them? The regiment is working. Their desire for thrills hasn't overpowered the virtue of morality. What happens when that person is down on luck and desperate for cash, or food and shelter? disaster.You can change the previous scenario to fit any situation, the answers and results are the same. Frightenly I was among and am still working my way out of category 3. Category 3 is so scary because of the lack on knowing how the person will respond. Category 2 might be deviants, but they are consistent so their actions are predictable.I believe that most Americans fit the category 3 position. And the trend is more and more to a cat 3. It is a problem with loss of identity. All young men in Sparta were warriors, soldiers, defenders of the state. Even against insurmountable odds, being outnumbers beyond number, it was known that they would all fight and die for the state, that was their identity. Our military does it's best to install that same identity into our troops today, for that very reason. Yes, boot-camps are for brainwashing for that very point, to install in them the identity of being warriors, that are not willing to, but just are going to do their duty and lay down their lives without question for the victories of the state.This is where I fell through the cracks in the Marines. I did not take to the identity the way I should have. Something inside me was fractured from long before. Somewhere deep in the foundations of my mind I was completely broken. Several tasks I couldn't accomplish, not because of anything physical, but because of a mental weakness. The full identity did not come to me like it should have. Admittedly the Marines did not make me into a man like they promise. I like a growing many was still a boy, with a job and plenty of money to spend on a economy of diminishing returns. After a period of just over a year after coming out of the military I realized my actions were wrong and that I needed a higher power. I devoted my life back to my religion, and with greater zeal and passion than ever before. I dedicated myself to knowing everything there was to know. I polished my debate skills, and learned to craft scriptures to destroy and harm those that weren't as dedicated as I was to my religion. I became very involved with a small home gathering of young people just like me, dedicated to making themselves as holy as possible to be good enough for God. I was with them for just over a year when I heard about how almost every tradition I had was wrong and came out of paganism. That Jesus had a Hebrew name of Yeshua and that the festivals and the feast days of the old testament were alive and for me today. I left the body I was with, and joined this group of Christians that embraced a "Jewish" way of celebrating. I thought I had it all. I was sooo puffed up with pride, after all I knew so much more than anyone else. I studied away and learned everything I could from anyone who had anything to teach. I trusted like never before and stood by and defended the man who was leading the group, even in the face of loosing most of my friends, who were saying this man wasn't who he said he was.3 weeks after they were banished from the church, a woman with three sons started coming to the church. I had been elevated to position of staff pastor and I could tell she was attracted to me. I started working with her sons and encouraging them. Helped them work through some struggles and they confided in me. By the end of the first month of them being there the senior pastor pulled me into his office to talk about some new gadget he had gotten and wanted my help with. What was really happening was he was playing match maker, and after I aired all my reservations about dating a woman 10 years older than I, with three boys that were 14, 12, and 10. He convinced me that with a wife that was a nurse I could continue my education and she could support me till I was able to take those financial reins. 2 days later I sat down on the couch of my senior pastor's front room and professed my un-dying love for a woman I had barely met, but that I was assured of would be good for me.This wasn't out of my soul. I did not have an un-dying passion for her, or was I really interested in her, other than the fact that she wanted me, and I wanted to be wanted. Somehow a deceived logic had been applied by that pastor that this made sense and would be good for me. It was that same old regiment, I told myself this was the right thing to do. It wasn't my identity, but a self (and outside influenced) virtue bestowed upon me, for the purpose of control. Am I saying I was duped? If so I let it happen, and I am ultimately totally to blame.I will stop the story because this was not meant to be some kind of autobiography or confession, but mealy to illustrate what can happen because we don't have our identity where it should but instead have this regimented set of laws that we choose to obey.So how do you stop without forcing yourself to stop? How do you let go and just let yourself be? How do you become an observer of your own mind and it's vial desire?