Today’s Words:
dog tag
gravitas
replete
trafalgar
peregrinate
sequel
hooflike

No gravitas here, I am a Joy Ninja! Yup, I got a new blog. Think of it as a sequel to Tao of Prosperity. When you’ve got your money situation managed, what do you want to do? Change the world! I will peregrinate through the various ideas I find revolutionary and beautiful.

Shine, shine, shine. It’s important that we all shine in our individual ways. Comparisons are over. What is important is not that we be better than the person next to us, but that we find what is uniquely ours to share. The only thing we are going to be uniquely excellent at is being fully ourselves. We must be replete with our own magnificence. One of my teachers once said something like, “Your magnificence is so obvious to you that you are unaware of it”. The Buddha said, “If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change”. Dan Millman wrote “There are no ordinary moments”.

Habituation is the problem: spiritual awareness is about un-habituating ourselves to that which seems obvious but really isn’t. For instance: we are alive. So what? Dude! That fact is so incredible! When another human being stands in front of you, how much can you see their tremendous soul, their beating heart, their incredible mind? Even when they are driving you crazy, can you see the beauty in it?

Well, this is not to say that I can, or that I am somehow graduated from this problem. It’s just to point it out.

I want to tap lightly on the brains of hardworking geeks everywhere and shine a light of dewy awareness into their circuits. I want to bring joy into the spotlight, and encourage a direct connection with it.

I am so happy! I feel at one with my purpose in life. I feel urgent and calm all at once - full of faith that it will all unfold, and excitement to be part of the unfolding. I am imagining dog tags that say “enjoy JOY”. I am sloughing off any remaining tiredness, pessimism, cynicism, and bitterness and embracing the future. It’s awesome.

I am reminding myself daily that I don’t have to know what I am to do next, or how it should all unfold, I just need to walk forward and show up for the ride. I just need to do my best and learn as best I can and be as real as I can.

I worry that my intense glee for life will get in the way of my message. That people will mistake it for some kind of savant-denial-of-reality-Pollyanna thing. Sometimes I just want to roll around on the floor and giggle with the sheer enormous beauty of the world. That doesn’t mean I don’t get all the pain. It means I don’t want to live there. I’ve found a way to live without self-torture, without self-mutilation, and it does last. It is real. So maybe I am a little high.

My secret message is to stop hating yourself. It’s pretty simple. Loving yourself, no matter what, and being your own best friend, the bestest friend you could ever imagine for yourself, the one you wanted your parents to be, or your lover - you do that for yourself, and you get happy. Because you have your own back. You know you will not blame yourself even when you make mistakes. You know you will let yourself feel OK even when things go wrong. You know you will no longer punish yourself for anything, because you are your own friend and you know you are innocent. You know you will find the best way you know how to be and you know you are good. And you really believe it, because you’ve made friends with yourself. It’s not something you are lying to yourself about–it’s something that’s finally true. You’re OK with you. That’s why I’m happy. Because I’m OK with myself. It’s not something anyone can give you. But it’s something you can do. And it’s awesome.

And then I want to say but first, you’ve got to be someone you can really trust. You’ve got to know how to go for what you want, and keep promises to yourself. You’ve got to say yes to your heart, because when you don’t, you break your own heart. And you’ll never trust yourself if you do that. Loving yourself starts with being someone you trust, inside yourself. You can love someone you don’t trust, but you can’t really be close to them. And you want to be close to yourself. You want to whole. You want to be undivided.

See this joyrant, do I publish it other than here? I’m still figuring that out. What is my voice? There is power in the rant. But I worry about its reception. But does it matter? Blogs are experimental. Risks, you’ve got to take risks. Fuck it I will.