Category: Self
Keep Knocking Open Your Broken Heart
So the pain you feel drives you completely insane, and makes you feel like a small demon is inside the chambers of your heart screaming and scratching at the soft walls with its overgrown black finger nails. What now you ask? Your experience tainted the whole concept of love as a strong cynicism waxes over your once bright mind. Your heart is black. Maybe a rebound might help. Ah yes, if you fuck someone else just like them, then you will be healed. Or perhaps numbed. Oh shit, nothing can seem to stop the feelings.
On the hero’s journey of love, what we sometimes forget is that we would encounter loves darkest challenge. The Universe says, “if you want something really incredible, its not going to be easy, most of the long-term relationships you see are people that settle, and that’s why they last so long and seem so easy. You chose a different path, you’ve got to face the enemy. I will give you enemies that you think are your closest allies. Narcissists offering negative connotation to the title of Prince or Princess. You will have to face them, perhaps many of them, in order to receive the treasure which you truly desire. This is the path of the champion”
Face the pain of the ex. The way it feels that they fuck other people, or became completely enamoured with someone else and jumped ship. The way it feels that they betrayed you, destroyed you, made you truly sick. Get angry, get dark, let fury burn your soul alive, let the pain break you apart. Go right into that feeling of the soft flesh of your heart searing, and the insanity of your mind. No matter how long it takes. On the other side is an even deeper more genuine love than you have ever experienced. All the shitty feelings they brought up, when you go through them, you are welcomed to the integration of their opposite, and the beautiful reflection in your reality when you break through it. The god and goddess you have been waiting for is on the other side of your broken heart.
When I was a young boy, I went to a fancy restaurant with my parents. There was an older man that my family did not know, having dinner with his wife. She was very beautiful, and he was a very sociable person in a way that had a characteristic charm. For some reason our family sat at the table with him. His very presence was a celebration, and I supposed we were naturally drawn to his infectious passion for life. He was fucking cool! He talked to me, and told me something that stood out in my mind, and something I will never forget. He said, “I love my job, and I love my wife. To get my job I kept knocking on the door. They said no, over and over, but I kept knocking. Eventually they said yes. And that’s how I got my wife as well. Just keep knocking, over and over, eventually you get it”.
Keep knocking on the door of love, keep getting your heart broken further and further. Go through that pain, deeper and deeper. Eventually you will knock on the right door, and not the one you find out wasn’t right later on.
-Cody
Releasing Resistance to Success
Sometimes the word “success” makes me cringe, and I think of a carrot dangling from a string on a stick right in front of our face. Do we ever reach it? Do we become slaves to society by constantly striving for success and a greater image? What if we stopped reaching for something else and learned to accept where we already are? I think that its a wonderful thing, but what growth happens when peace and contentment take precedence as our view of achievement in the future becomes apathetic? Acceptance is very important, but if you want more, why sabotage yourself from the success of achieving great things? Perhaps even the word greatness holds a bitter taste when we feel we might be trying to fill the void of ourselves with something fleeting, or it seems to come from pride and arrogance. I believe though, its okay to want more whether its fleeting or not, and that as important as it is to accept ourselves exactly for where we are, its just as important to allow ourselves our desires to succeed and have the type of life that we want, and our own idea of greatness without having to be greater than others. We don’t have to accept where we are if we truly don’t want to.
When we are disappointed, we are taught to lower our expectations, and perhaps to hope less, and that way it wont hurt as bad when things don’t go our way. We are also taught that wanting things to go our way is childish, so we should be mature and go with the flow and appreciate what we have. God has a bigger plan they say, and sometimes yes, there is a destiny out there for us that we are unaware of, and its good to go with the flow and appreciate what is already here and the beautiful miracles that come into our life that can only come about by the grace and magic of the universe. The thing is though, if you are a visionary, and if you are blazing a new and magnificently glorious trail, it doesn’t always work for you to simply relax into the flow. Sometimes you need to go against the grain. And with this you will encounter one of the most difficult paths. You are going to meet countless disappointments and failures, and it is going to burn. Its going to knock you the fuck down. You might even give up, and enter a state of complete despair and hopelessness as your broken heart reopens and reminds you of all the shit that has gone wrong and hurt you in your life. This is okay, pain is okay, and you might even say it is inevitable when you no longer want to settle for mediocrity. Feel it.
Let the darkness of disappointment completely consume you. Let it bring you to your knees into the pit of despair, and in that place, bring your fire, your heart, and let it fucking explode. Let inspiration light your spirit alive and scream through each and every heartbreak and let down you experience as you reach for something even better than that which you think you have lost or never gained. This is what brings us to a breakthrough into the reality beyond anything that we have dreamed of. Its okay to enjoy where we are, but its also okay to continually move towards grass that is truly is greener, and settle into that growth. If you want Idyllic, you can work for it, and enjoy that work when it comes from inspiration. The universe will back you up, but may seem to be against you for some time until you get the ball rolling. The bigger the dream, the more momentum you will need. It may take a long time, and many let downs. As the work continues on and on, and you relax while efforting, you will then see that you can enjoy and appreciate each and every manifestation as it comes and goes, and some of the truly delightful manifestations may stay for what seems an eternity and grow with you, as you finally arrive to a reality that feels like home.
-Cody
Who Can Replace You?
Who can replace you? your beauty? The giant hole you left in my heart? who will replace it? Its not quite the same when I fill it with myself. I’m amazed that I have learnt how to do that, that I can fill my own cup, its a gift that I had no choice but to find, but who is going to fill it the way you did? Who is going to make me feel like I’m with the most beautiful girl in the world. The way I saw you, the way you were.
They better be pretty amazing. They better be exceptional. They better be perfect. I hope they are even better than perfect, and a million times better and more beautiful and unique than you, otherwise, I would be mad at you forever. I would hate you forever. I would be alone forever. How can I replace you?
Once we have found love and lost it, or have simply longed for it, we are challenged to live without it. Within the void, the separation, and the pain, we find something. We learn to fill our own cup. We find the eternal wellspring of source within our selves. It is one of the greatest gifts. Its the magical item the hero retrieves from the dark dungeon. Its amazing. Its as if the seal on the source of infinite creation was pricked with a pin, and its contents unabatedly spew forth from the centre of our inner depth. Then, we can be empty, because we know how to fill ourselves, we can empty ourselves. We can create the space for another to fill us, and we can express and pour the essence from our inexhaustible source into the other. Then, two cups can pour into each other and fill each other interdependently. And as the cups continue to expand to contain the overflowing spring, they grow so large as to combine in inter-being. It is actualized and realized over time, that they were always combined, it had only come to be known.
-Cody
The Shadow of Infidelity and Worthlesness
In relationships, it seems that for a lot of people, after the butterflies wear off, the relationship sucks. Commitment begins to feel like an obligation, and instead of being honest, getting real, and telling their partner how they really feel, they have the option of taking a seemingly easier route -thus the term cheating- and achieve instant gratification for either all the emptiness they feel in the relationship, or out of spite. Then, they can choose to hide it if they don’t want to lose their partner, which can then further a lack of intimacy. Not everyone cheats when the relationship sucks, and in very rare cases for some people the relationship is going smoothly with the rose tint, yet people still cheat because of a heavily driven promiscuous nature. Some long term relationships can recover from infidelity when they can get real and heal with each other, and that’s cool too, but sometimes for the victim, cheating crosses the line enough for them to leave. They have hung in there because they would do anything for that person, but when they get cheated on, it helps them move away from an unhealthy one sided relationship… they are spending the currency of pain to buy out a long drawn misery. Its a blessing in disguise to help them to heal hidden parts of themselves, and move on to a better relationship.
Most relationships suck because most of the world has not learn’t how to deal with their shit. Most of the world is projecting their unconscious shit on each other. Basically, we are all shitting on each other. The beauty is though, this is the very thing that helps us heal for the relationships and things that we actually want. We can even alchemize our current relationships, but only we will know when the time is right to move on. Whatever arises in us from infidelity, whether its worthlessness, rage, insecurity, and jealousy, if we let it come up fully from the shadows, and increase in awareness and heal it, only then do we no longer need to keep experiencing demonic heat seeking sociopaths searching out our triggers. This doesn’t mean you are immune from ever getting hurt again, but when we can let love into those dark parts of ourselves, we bring in people who harmonize with that healing, and when certain feelings like worthlessness are healed and integrated with worth, the lesson of cheating or betrayal isn’t as relevant to that aspect of yourself, and therefore less needed. Who can push the button if there isn’t a button to push? In some ways, infidelity is just the icing on the cake of the shadow trauma within ourselves and with others. It takes time and persistence to heal. Sometimes the same thing can happen repetitively for us to become more and more aware, and sometimes we might want to take more time alone in between relationships when we ask ourselves, “why do I keep attracting the same type of person?”. We can heal, and we can breakthrough to letting in relationships that fulfil our needs and wants. We can love again even after we have been fucked over or triggered countless times.
You see, one of the most beautiful things to witness, is someone who continues on in the face of opposition, and breaks through it:
He gets beaten down, over and over again, is out for the count, gives up, and then gets back in, even with the possibility of the same shit happening again. Some people might perceive it as stupidity, but in this case he is well aware of what he is doing, and each time he makes an attempt he comes from a place of greater insight and wisdom. He becomes courageous. He wants something worth while, and he has learn’t that it is okay for him to desire amazing things, and go for them as they meet him half way. He stopped struggling to go faster than he was meant to, as he realized many of the things that are worthwhile take more time than those that gratify us if only for a short while. He now gains balance in a gentle persistence and finds a way through. It was totally worth it, and ultimately he realized, that he was worth it. He developed a truer confidence from the depth of his low points. He didn’t ignore how the circumstances and challenges revealed how he felt inside, in fact they were the very things that propelled him to his goal. He had the heart to face himself and his challenges, and he found a way to break down the doors to let the fulfilment he desired pour into the pit of his worthlessness. He found a way to get what he wanted, and what he wanted found a way to get to him. It just took time, patience, and perseverance. Although at times it seemed like he gave up on himself, and the universe gave up on him, in the bigger picture, he never really did, nor did the universe.
-Cody
Resistance to Happiness and Love
In love we can feel ourselves floating off into the distant stars, soaring, expanding, and sparkling with luster. Our child like imaginations are kindled as we fly above the clouds, gaining an immunity from anything that sucks. Our hearts glow, melt, and radiate as our blood carries magical chemicals that flood and flush our entire system from our head to toes. We reach the highest planes, yet can we allow that love to enter the deepest and darkest parts of ourselves? If we do, It then becomes a love with substance. This type of love can endure the tough times, instead of jumping from one high to another, only skipping across the dark waters.
If we begin to become familiar with ourselves on a deeper level, we might have opened the inner catacombs of darkness and have begun releasing the powers that have bound our unconscious behaviors since the beginning of our incarnations. We begin to see and feel everything we have ever hidden from ourselves, and as we go deeper and deeper, we find the pit to be bottomless. Though, we may have spent so much time doing shadow work, and releasing our resistance to darkness, that we have built a resistance to light as well. We become so comfortable in the dark, like a vampire that only comes out at night, that we don’t want to leave the coffin. We might even come to hate the word light, love, happiness, and that’s okay too, but we might be resisting their beauty, and the fullness of experience.
When our hearts break, the chambers of self are deepening and expanding. The pain that we experience is the demolition and tearing apart of the walls that have held up against our infinite depth. As we give this process time and protection, we can begin to remove the bandages from the operation. No one can tell you how much time to take, but eventually we can begin to let in the floodgates of light to fill every crevice that we have expanded through our experience. The further we have allowed ourselves to crumble apart, the more love we can let in.
The most common type of happiness you might hear about is the kind without substance. It floats above a dark pit, and wishes not to descend. But a happiness with substance is the kind that can be integrated into that pit. As we tear down those walls and resistances to happiness and love one by one, we let the integration take place and allow the people, situations, and feelings of meaning and substance to enter into the depth of ourselves.
-Cody
Insecurity aint so Bad
We may feel a sense of unease within ourselves and around others. We may no longer have a sense of satisfaction in possessing strengths over others, and although we may be aware of how rare and unique we are, we might question if we are good enough when standing up to the crowd. At any moment, any or everything could be completely stripped away from under our feet, and what we are left with is a raw and naked human, with a ripe flesh of vulnerability exposed to the cold open air.
Outside sources of affection, praise, and possessions are only transient by nature. Yet still, because of this we should not avoid forming bonds of attachment, getting close and feeling comfortable with another, or enjoy things that build us up, it is totally healthy and human. The true enjoyment of an attachment is risking the possibility of feeling the full pain of your separation from it. A monk who cuts himself off from the beautiful gifts of outward living walks with only one foot on the road of enlightenment.
Within relationships, it is important to feel secure and certain, yet if there is no change or growth the passion may die. On the other hand if you have no sense of security at all with someone then its probably not headed in a happy direction. With a healthy relationship, it is a good sign that you can feel safe being unsafe and with all of your uncertainties, you can relax and feel certain with that person. We must be willing to risk the burn of separation and expose our insecurity in order to form intimate bonds with those that are worthy to share ourselves with. If we stay on guard and protect ourselves, we may never really get to know the infinite depth of ourselves and another.
Getting uncomfortable within ourselves and in the world is how we grow and experience newer and greater heights. With experience we can allow a sense of peace to integrate into that feeling of uneasiness as we grow into new spaces and dimensions. Its like the comedian who gets nervous and bombs on stage countless times before he can make people laugh. The fear hasn’t gone away, he has just learn’t to allow his self to shine through it. One of the greatest senses of security we will ever feel, is the willingness to feel completely insecure.
-Cody
Meditation is a Bunch of Bullshit
These days I let my mind and emotions run wild and free, but I remember a time in my life when I used to meditate constantly. I would sit on some sort of rug, and go deep. I would use ancient techniques and control my mind and body. I read books about meditation and spirituality, and they inspired me to meditate more, and be more spiritual. Not a lot of things bothered me, and I was high and mighty upon my throne of being a spiritual person.
It was pretty amazing though, because every once in a while, I would break through to those illuminated states sought after by many, yet rarely achieved. This happened to me in two short moments after much practice of meditation. The first time, I was so relaxed that I expanded outside of my body, and I felt like everything, literally every single thing was okay. It was as if I was far larger than my problems, and every single problem I ever had didn’t feel like a problem! It was one of the most peaceful feelings that I have ever felt to the point of tears running down my face. The second time I was meditating in a room of monks, and I happened to find a point of focus in my mind so finite that when I focused on it with such concentration, I broke through to another side. On the other side it felt like there were thousands of senses sensing thousands of things all at once. It felt like angels singing heavenly music and beaming golden light right at me. It was too intense, I couldn’t handle it, I quickly came right back to my body as my heart was beating like wild. I thought, “woah! I finally reached enlightenment!”, and after that experience I was faced with a terrible dilemma. I wanted to be there, and I didn’t want to be here. Besides having an interest in the expansiveness of consciousness and how cool it is, the real reason I wanted to reach enlightenment was because I wasn’t happy with where I was.
No matter how hard I meditated after that experience I couldn’t get back there. Life felt empty and pointless compared to that heavenly place. After about six years of meditation, it was no longer enjoyable, it became a chore. for some time, what I saw as life became torture. I had to find meaning, in my meaningless existence. I had to face the pain of emptiness, and however else I felt about my life. I even found that becoming a person who kept busy, and became fulfilled with passions and sports contributed to a happy life, yet were not an ultimate answer. Without those things, I was still empty, just like fleeting love.
I found though, that when I allowed my mind and emotions to run wild, I have never felt so full. I don’t feel empty anymore. To get angry, sad, depressed, anxious, feel fearful, without trying to get rid of it, and to feel love, excitement, creativity, and peace naturally without forcing them or pretending to create them with the bullshit façade of positive thinking, that is when I started to feel full. That is when I felt meaning that doesn’t fade, and a more honest and integrated type of enlightenment that has no end.
-Cody
The Shamanic Journey
It is common for a shaman to go through the fires of a trial or initiation with which he is to learn to heal himself before he can begin his healing work with others. This initiation could be equated to going through a life crises, or anything that sends him into the dark depths of his soul. Although the crises can be circumstantial, it can reveal what was already there within. The Shaman learns his way through the darkness so that he can help guide others along in their own healing. He can be assisted with the use of plant medicines which can help him to become more aware of his self and whatever issues he may have buried deep down inside him. They are not a quick fix, are not always pleasant, and are quite different from suppressive effects of what I consider “drugs”. The three most common plant medicines you might hear about in the shamanic world are Ayahuasca, Peyote, and Iboga.
The Doctor and most of the world have a bag of labels and pills ready slap on anyone going through a “tough” time. Some people do have some pretty intense mental illnesses’s which should be handled by specialized professionals, but that is a very small percentage. Most of the world has a hidden crises within them. Some are ticking time bombs. They have buried something down so far that they can be triggered to snap and do something to act out on that energy like hurt other people, or even shoot them with guns and kill them. Others suffer in a silence and develop a cushion of addictions to numb their feelings. One of the most profound medicines you will ever find is that in a moment of difficulty, you do not reach for a bottle or pill. The temptation to escape the issue is strong, but hiding it is the very thing which will draw the shaman away from the completion of his healings. When he is ready he will experience each release to its full intensity.
I myself have eaten peyote in the sweatlodge and tipi meetings countless times over the past year, but I have found for myself lately that the plant medicines aren’t as necessary, and that in time and with increasing awareness they become less needed. Its kind of like moving on to an even greater source of medicine which is hidden within the self. It just takes some time, and a lot of courage. It takes bravery to allow the fires of transformation to burn you alive. Sometimes that’s exactly what it feels like when you go through healing. As much as you want to run away from the feelings you simply allow it to be there and observe it. Nothing to fix. You allow the issue to arise and open up into your awareness. Without putting a time limit on how long it will take, it begins lose its momentum, it loses its pull as it opens up into your space of awareness. You integrate the lesson, and you grow. You become fully alive, and experience the fullness of your being. You experience both joy and sadness, but you find the greatest value in the source of your awareness that experiences those feelings to their fullest, your self. Many of us are going through a shamanic initiation.
-Cody
Exposing the Artist
Alone in his basement, the artist develops his technique. He learns to express his deepest thoughts and feelings upon a canvas which he has archived, kept secret, and locked away in a stronghold for which a key has been suppressed into its dungeon by his fear.
The fear is the feeling of exposure. The feeling of a spotlight shining brightly upon the naked truth of the artist. He is a full spectrum human, and not everything in his experience is a summer meadow draped in the glorious warmth of the sun. He is real and has become aware of a treacherous field of blood drenched thorns dimly lit by the moon. He has come to learn the depth of his self in all directions through his experience in his life and he is afraid of what others will think of the dark side.
He knows that when he is witness to honesty, he can feel its beauty, its realism, whether its light or dark. It hits him with the most genuine effect, and he doesn’t want to accept anything else into his existence either than that pure authenticity. He feels uncomfortable in the presence of a mask, and he has learned the difference between the expression of truth, and the unconscious complaints or the praise of a plastic happiness. He now looks behind the surface he was once allured by.
He exposes him self, as he has found a deeper acceptance for who he really is. Without reckless abandon, and with self-respect, he feels ready to allow people to think how they want to of him , even if its rejection, judgement, or criticism, because he knows that is necessary in order to allow those that truly connect with him into his life. He is encouraged and utterly motivated by those people. Even if a thousand eyes cant understand him, that one person who can see his truth makes it all worth it, and in time, others begin to step out of the shadows and see each other for their true value and worth.
-Cody
Getting Real with Galidor 