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The Art of Value without Attachment

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Spirituality seems to have a stigma attached to it that has undoubtedly turned many people in today’s modern world off from exploring it in more depth.

Even for those who have embraced some sort of spiritual practice in their life, they may find themselves unable to reconcile their modern day life, filled with the latest phones, and laptops, and clothes and the need for money with this certain “image” one thinks of when they think of someone who is ‘spiritual.’

IMG 3495The stigma I am speaking of is the concept of being completely un-attached – not relying on material objects, personal belongings, and relationships as the source of our identity.

When we think of some of the spiritual teachers that shape what we think of as spirituality today, such as Jesus or Buddha, we see seekers who have given up all personal belongings, left their homes and their families, and survived on meek rations all in hopes of seeking and or spreading the ‘truth’.

So of course, in our modern world where it is pretty much imperative that one needs some sort of money flow coming to them in order to survive, one may turn away from delving too deep into any spiritual practice for fear of having to do the same, meaning, give up all of their belongings and be ok without, their, gasp, phone.

It’s almost as if one thinks to themselves, “yes that spirituality stuff seems interesting and there is definitely something to it, but I’m not going to, like, sell all of my stuff and move to a cave in India somewhere and meditate for the rest of my life or anything.”

The good news I am here to share with you however is… drumroll please… no one is asking you to!

It’s about time we re-visit the age old teaching of not being “attached” to anything and explore how we can extract the purpose of this teaching while also marrying it with the fact that in today’s world, stuff is kind of required, money is kind of needed, not to mention we enjoy our clothes and our families and going to the theater and shopping and posting on instagram… so why do we have to stop?

What value does the material world hold for the spiritual seeker?

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Pics by Nikki Sapp

Narcissism versus Self-Love: 3 Practical Tips to Develop a Healthy Ego

“You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere.” ~ Unknown

Buddhism, Greek mythology or Hinduism all point to loving ourselves, not in the purview of Narcissism but in healthy ways.

There is a difference between feeling good about ourselves all the time, even at the expense of others (which is narcissistic) and feeling we are valuable (which is healthy self-love).

When we know we are valuable, we have a solid sense of self and are secure inside; we do not seek external validation. Our interactions are not based on who can be our narcissistic supply.

We move through life with a wide open heart, sharing our love and compassion with everyone. Finding this sweet spot of healthy self-love is difficult.

We mostly oscillate between narcissism on one extreme and pseudo humility on the other. The quality of love that we feel for ourselves is a direct reflection of what our “sense of self” is.

practical tips to develop a healthy ego

When we are born, we have no sense of self. We can’t tell ourselves as being different from our mother. Our sense of self is totally enmeshed with our primary caregivers.

As we grow up, we gradually realize that we are a separate individual, and we start developing a sense of self or “ego”.

If we have received consistent love during childhood, we grow up with a healthy ego, strong internal sense of self, ability to solve problems and relate with others in a healthy way and an overall sense of well-being and security.

If we’ve received inconsistent love or face excessive humiliation or trauma during childhood, we grow up with an unhealthy ego.

Our unhealthy ego is basically our inner child that didn’t get love and affection, and therefore it shows up in dysfunctional ways to cope up with the hurt and protect itself from further pain.

Unhealthy ego shows up in the following ways:

  • Feeling inadequate or not good enough.
  • Getting defensive, passive-aggressive, and reactive or gets triggered easily.
  • Fear of facing challenges head-on and finding ways to escape it.
  • Taking what others say or do personally.
  • Having high expectations of self and others, and chasing perfection.
  • Using escape mechanisms like blame, criticism or denial to deal with difficult situations or people.
  • Having a sense of grandiose or entitlement.
  • Seeking external validation
  • Inability to show compassion or empathy.

If you resonate with some or all points on this list, I want you to embrace your inner child or wounded ego with love and compassion, acknowledge that it is hurting and showing up in dysfunctional ways and that there is some amount of genuine healing required before you can begin to practice healthy self-love.

Here are three practical tips to develop a healthy ego

1) Re-Parent the inner child

Your inner child looks for love and validation that it didn’t get. It longs to be cared for by someone who has its genuine well-being at heart, and that’s you.

Embrace it, soothe its pain, celebrate the little victories; motivate it, discipline it with love and compassion, and show it the unconditional love and acceptance that it never received.

Re-parent the inner child. It will learn to develop a solid internal sense of self and help you to move from dysfunctional ways to healthy ways of loving yourself.

2) Seek Therapy

self love

If you didn’t receive love and affection as a child, you grow up feeling a constant void that you always seek to fill, with no time left to focus on your dreams, goals or life, because you’re preoccupied with thoughts of how incomplete you are.

Therapy helps you to heal the early experiences and fearful subconscious patterns that created the unhealthy sense of self. It will give you a safe and nonjudgmental space to discover your strengths and embrace your shadow side. You gradually learn to embrace yourself in totality.

3) Self-discipline and healthy boundaries

Unhealthy ego makes you operate in extremes:

– You overwork chasing perfection or procrastinate endlessly (due to a feeling of not being good enough).

– Clinging too much or remaining too detached in relationships (due to fear of abandonment).

– Inability to delay gratification (due to lack of trust in future). Or being too harsh with oneself and foregoing all fun (due to the feeling of not deserving enough).

“Everything in moderation, including moderation.” ~ Oscar Wilde

Since now you are aware of the unhealthy patterns, you need to choose self-discipline to find a balance.

Create healthy boundaries in work and relationships. Learn to discern when to put yourselves first and when to extend yourself to others. Schedule work and fun, my time and relationship time, and avoid the tendency to operate in extremes.

However, self-love is not a one-time activity of healing our inner child or taking up therapy. It is a lifelong journey of self-discovery.

The Space Between Self-Esteem and Self Compassion: Kristin Neff at TEDxCentennialParkWomen

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Narcissism vs Self Love

6 Signs You May be a Spiritual Gangster

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“Fate whispers to the warrior, ‘you can’t withstand the storm.’ The warrior whispers back, ‘I am the storm.’ ” ~ Robert Sullivan

You’ve probably seen or heard this term popping up a lot lately. From t-shirts, to celebrities claiming to be one, to your favorite spiritual & personal development authors mentioning it – it seems like the term ‘spiritual gangster’ has truly taken on a life of its own these past few years.

It has been reported, that at least a third (if not more) of the planet is experiencing some sort of awakening and/or ascension symptoms, which means more, and more people are taking the time to ask themselves some deeper questions regarding their existence.

A wave of higher consciousness is coming over the planet which automatically begets those experiencing it to ponder things such as, their purpose on earth, and why their life is the way it is.

In order to find answers to these questions, many will undoubtedly be led straight into the realms of spirituality, which is perfect, because that’s exactly what the universe wants.

The quote, “when the student is ready, the teacher appears,” by Lao Tzu says it all.

The universe sits and waits for the seeker to begin its quest, so that he/she may be open to receiving the answers they yearn for.

The modern spiritual seeker is a far cry (in most cases) from what one would have thought of as ‘spiritual’ 40, 50, or 100 years ago. Certainly, in those pastime periods, what one thought of as spiritual would have been immediately correlated with religion and being religious. Prim, proper, and holy may have been how we would describe a spiritual seeker from our grandparent’s generation.

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As we have evolved in consciousness, and our culture has become immersed in technology, innovative ways of doing things and of thinking, so has our perspective of God/the universe/energy.

The universe has created 7 billion perspectives of itself. The modern man plus an influx of higher consciousness descending upon our earth plane equals a new age of spirituality, a new way of seeing “god” or experiencing oneself as a spiritual seeker.

Hence, the “spiritual gangster,” the modern man’s version of the guru, the shaman, the holy-roller, or the peaceful warrior. The spiritual gangster takes the term gangster to a whole new level of maturity and consciousness.

So how do you know if you are one? Keep reading to find out!

Here are 6 signs you are a spiritual gangster: 

“I’m just a spiritual gangster doing a life sentence in a human body.” ~ Unknown

1) Your dope-ness is in direct correlation to your kindness

Remember when it was considered cool to be mean? You may have at one time existed on this level of consciousness when you were younger, or if not you at least saw it manifested out in the world of pop-culture.

Fights between rival rappers, rival pop-stars, or even just groups of friends who thought it was funny or cute to bully people or put other people down are some of the results of this line of thinking.

The spiritual gangster knows that this is all an act. The more one needs to put others down as a means of making themselves look better only reveals the level of self-esteem in that person. People that feel good and have healthy self-esteem know that making other people look bad only makes them look bad, not the other person.

2) Love is the only weapon with power

Real gangsters use guns, fighting, negative words or knives to fight. Spiritual gangsters use love. Energetically, love is actually the most powerful weapon in the world. It is what heals all emotional blocks, unravels all limiting beliefs, and therefore what aligns a person with their innate wholeness and perfection.

For this reason, a spiritual gangster loves themselves, therefore they love others. There is no reason to fight with anyone for the spiritual gangster because they know that hate does not drive out hate, only love is able to do that.

3) Your hustle is humble

Gangsters like to talk about their successes, the reasons they are better than others or show who they “are” to others by the cars they drive, the money they flash, or brag about their sexual conquests. It’s almost as if everyone knowing about their success is just as important to them as actually being successful.

Whereas, the spiritual gangster knows success and the pursuit of happiness is an intimate experience with one’s own heart. It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks, nor do they need accolades and appreciation for their accomplishments.

4) Your squad is all-inclusive

The term gangster became popular in connection with street gangs – those that claimed a certain street or area of town, who congregated with others of that same street to rival against other gangs from other areas. They were divisive and segregated, that was kind of their whole point, us vs. them.

The spiritual gangster knows this is ego-mentality, and does not seek to compare and contrast with others, but rather connect and expand their squad. To the spiritual gangster, the whole world is invited to join their tribe. In their eyes, we are all one, and what we do to others we also do to our own selves, so why put walls and stipulations around unconditional acceptance?

5) Your strength is measured in vulnerability

The spiritual gangster knows that defense mechanisms such as attacking another, insulting them, or gossiping about them only shows how powerless someone is. This is why spiritual gangsters would never use any of these things as evidence of their strength.

In fact, it is quite the opposite. True strength can only be realized when one has dared to become completely honest with themselves. When one has faced the depths of judgment, insecurity, fear, and unworthiness that they have held on the inside, we can say they have dared to become completely vulnerable.

The end result of a soul who has dared to face their deepest vulnerability and has loved themselves anyway, is a person who is not only healed, but is powerful, courageous and inclined to help others do the same.

6) Your motivation is service

While most of the world is out for themselves, trying to see how they can enforce their own agenda on reality in order to get what they want, a spiritual gangster is motivated by service to others.

When one begins to reside in the truth of unconditional love, worthiness, and compassion, it is only natural that they want to help others.

The spiritual gangster sees the divine in others, even those who have yet to see it in themselves and for that reason, they are called to help others in whatever form that may manifest.

Spiritual gangsters will never try to convince anyone to believe what they believe, but rather come to embody their message in such a way that others want to be involved in whatever they are doing.

For a spiritual gangster, just being themselves, embodying forgiveness, love and kindness wherever they may go becomes their biggest contribution to an awakening humanity.

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Spiritual Gangster
Spiritual gangster namaste – By: Nikki Sapp

4 Things That Will Always Be Greater Than Money

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“Some people are so poor, all they have is money.” ~ Patrick Meagher

The best things in life aren’t things. Some people have plenty of money, but they don’t have the simple things in life that make life enjoyable.

If all you have is money and no love, no friendship, no adventure, and no purpose, then you are dirt poor. Without these, it can be argued that you are only half-alive. Without these, a life well-lived will elude you, no matter how much money you have in the bank.

One could argue that all you would have to do is buy friendship, or love, or adventure, or purpose. But you would still be lacking one crucial ingredient to making these equations work well: authenticity.
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Without authenticity, friendship isn’t friendship at all; it’s mere acquaintance. Similarly, without authenticity, love isn’t love at all; it’s merely lust or a passing fling. Without authenticity, adventure isn’t adventure; it’s mere tourism. Without authenticity, purpose isn’t meaningful at all; it’s merely a vacuous stopgap.

One cannot purchase authenticity. One can only act authentically. Authenticity is fuel for a meaningful life. Having money might help, sure. But money is only ever a tool. It’s your responsibility to use that tool wisely. Here are four things that will always be greater than money…

Friendship > Money

“He who cannot howl, will not find his pack.” ~ Charles Simic

Find like-minded people. Seek out true interdependent friendships that trump the independent ownerships (disguised as friendships) that we all grew up with.

You don’t need money for this. Call an old friend. Go to a bookstore and wax philosophic over a cup of Joe. Or go to a bar and wax misanthropic over some beers. Meet new people. Go to your local Farmer’s Market and mingle. Go to the beach with your old friends and meet new friends.

We’re social creatures above all. We need each other almost as much as we need oxygen, water, and food. Frame your life with wholesome living. Surround yourself with compatible people. But also don’t be afraid to stretch your comfort zone cross-culturally and embrace those who think differently than you. Don’t be afraid to dance with the unorthodox. You may discover that the orthodoxy inside you has grown uncouth through the passage of time.

Above all, surround yourself with healthy-minded, reasonable, and loving people. Be healthy-minded, reasonable, and loving for them. Then hope, but do not expect, others to do the same. Courageously open your mind. Learn what they have to teach. Teach them what you have learned. Practice forgiveness.

Love > Money

“Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won’t adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words “make” and “stay” become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.” ~ Tom Robbins

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Whether it’s a romantic love that takes your breath away or simply being Love, in love with the interconnectedness of all things, love cannot be bought and paid for. You can spend money on those you love, you can splurge on a trip and fall in love with a far-away paradise, but true love is priceless. True love burns despite how much money you have in the bank.

Almost everyone will agree that we’re never richer than when we’re in love. We’re never wealthier or more well-to-do than when we are flush with the affluence of deep love. It’s a richness that the riches of money and gold simply cannot touch.

That’s not to say that we do not live in a world that revolves around money. It’s not to say that money doesn’t make things easier. But perhaps it is because money makes things easier, and because the perception of wealth can skew people’s perception of reality, that money may get in the way of love.

As such, love should always be perceived as being greater than money lest we miss out on something priceless.

Adventure > Money

“I prefer a short life with width to a narrow life with length.” ~ Avicenna

Life is too short to waste it grinding away at a job you hate or a in a lifestyle that depletes your soul. Don’t be an inglorious cog in the unsustainable clockwork of our times. Instead, find wholesome work with wholesome people that has the potential to fulfill you and make your heart sing.

As Maya Mendoza said, “No amount of security is worth the suffering of a mediocre life chained to a routine that has killed your dreams.”

So, stop hitting snooze on the alarm clock of your life. Wake up to higher consciousness. Quit your thankless job and find work that feeds your soul even if it doesn’t pad your wallet. Be a strategic risk-taker and sacrifice a little comfort, security, and familiarity. Embrace a little discomfort, insecurity, and other-worldliness.

Adventure is only a stone’s throw away. The nearest mountain, desert, or beach is right now transmitting a call to adventure. The call of the wild is howling at the edge of your comfort zone.

You have only to earn the ears with which to hear it. You earn it by being authentic with your need for adventure. You gain an adventurous spirit by practicing leaps of courage.

Purpose > Money

“There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen.” ~ Rumi

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One powerful way to hear the “voice that doesn’t use words” is through solitude and meditation. The wisdom gained from such sacred knowledge is priceless. It has the potential to lead to a deeper purpose that we didn’t even know was there. Money simply cannot buy this kind of experience.

Another way is being mindful of what we are deeply curious about. If, as Stephen Kotler said, “passion exists at the intersection of three or more things you’re really curious about,” then it stands to reason that whatever that curious intersection may be is your purpose.

Just ask yourself: where do the things that I’m curious about intersect? And then make that your purpose. Be proactive. Build your life around it. Spend your money on it. Make it your Immortality Project.

Once you’ve found your purpose despite money, you can begin using money as a healthy tool toward leveraging more purpose into your life. Making money becomes a reason to bolster more friendship, love, adventure and purpose by spending it on experiences rather than on material things.

But it’s all too easy in our culture to put the cart of money before the horse of purpose. And so we tend to flounder. And so we tend to lose out on friendship, love, adventure and, ultimately, on purpose. Then we wonder why we feel empty inside even though we have so many things, things, things.

So as not to flounder, so as not to miss out on these things that will always be greater than money, we should remember that money is simply a tool that we use to reinforce the things that money cannot buy. This way we’ll never have to worry about becoming someone who is so poor, all we have is money.

Pink Floyd - Money (Official Music Video)

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Money by Pink Floyd Art

Self-rewilding: Unleash Your Inner Wildness

“In wildness is the preservation of the world.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

Wildness is freedom. There’s no better definition. When you’re in touch with your wildness, you are in touch with the freest aspect of yourself. It tends to be counter-culture.

It tends to be nonconformist and rebellious. And rightly so. For wildness must defend itself against being controlled, domesticated, and tamed. It must defend its own freedom, or all is lost.

a rewild1Luckily, as a human being, you have the option of being both wild and tame, both crazy and sensible, both fierce and gentle. You contain multitudes. And the wild within you only seeks to keep these multitudes as optional.

Problems arise from excess. Excessive culture. Excessive domestication. Excessive control. Excessive tidiness. Excessive pacification. When anything becomes excessive it smothers wildness. It smothers freedom.

Self-rewilding is a defense against excess. It’s a deep eco-centric breath. It inhales healthy, natural order, and exhales unhealthy, unnatural disorder. It purges the beast of superfluousness.

And, have no doubt, beneath all our fancy clothes and titillating technologies, we are all beasts. Deep down, we are pissing, shitting, f*cking, hungry, naked-apes, spiritually floundering through the Greatest Mystery our souls can’t fathom.

Self-rewilding just puts the Great Mystery into a healthy perspective. It grounds us, even as our imaginations are free to fly. It leverages the health of universal law against the ill-health of anything vainly seeking to trump it through hyper-real, cultural excess. It gives our souls license (as if it needed it) to be free.

Ultimately, self-rewilding is a return to living a courage-based lifestyle in accordance with nature, as opposed to a fear-based lifestyle at odds with it. In conservation biology the term “rewilding” is the rehabilitation process of captive animals. In the case of self-rewilding, the captive animal being rehabilitated just so happens to be human ––you.

Rewild your mind

“I was barely able to contain the feeling that life cheats us of essential freedom, and for a few days I had broken out.” ~ Hayden Shaughnessy

a rewild2Get away from the zoo-mentality, the menagerie of madness. Let your mind out of its steel cage. Decide not to suffer unnecessarily.

Self-rewilding begins with the mind. You must decide to rewild yourself. You must decide to get off your overly-domesticated ass and get out there into the deep, beautiful, dangerous, wild places of the world.

It’s a courage-based mindset, a freedom-based disposition, a health-based approach. It’s a spark in the open and free imagination that ignites the fire in the belly. Your courage is the spark.

You decide to be courageous. You resolve to take a leap of courage into the unknown. You elect to adopt freedom as your failsafe. You determine through healthy reasoning the massive benefit of stretching your easy, domesticated comfort zone into a challenging, wild adventure. You make your mind up to be a force of nature first, a person second.

Rewild your body:

“For thousands hacking at the branches there is one striking the root.” ~Henry David Thoreau

a rewild3You are a multifaceted animal. All humans are. You contain millions of years of evolution inside you. Other animals can only instinctually feel this. You, on the other hand, can embody it.

As a symbolic creature, you can subsume other animals through archetypes. Through existential animism. You can dare to don wolf-masks, whale-masks, crow-masks.

Of course, there are human limitations, but so what? Such masks invigorate the mind, body, and soul. You don’t even need a mask, really. You need only imagine your wolf-form, your shark-form, your eagle-form.

You embody it and then enact it in a wild setting. You are free to be whatever you want to be in a rewilded state. Be unconventional. Be eccentric. Be as crazy-beautiful-bizarre as your delicious imagination can dream up, and then dance into it without shame.

But wolf-like, graceful movement is only one aspect of rewilding the body. There are deep physical activities to be relished: jumping, climbing, dancing, martial arts, making love. There are streams and rocks to jump over. There are cliff faces to climb. There is soul-smashing music to dance to. There are other humans to make heart-shattering love with.

Rewilding the body is more than just exercise. It’s a physical tour-de-force in the deep wild. It’s a physical challenge against the elements. It’s getting the body into peak physical condition au naturel, despite civilization, and in spite of the song and dance of the killjoy gymnasium.

Rewild your soul

“No amount of security is worth the suffering of a mediocre life chained to a routine that has killed your dreams.” ~ Maya Mendoza

Crucify that routine that has killed your dreams. Nail it to a cross and fill your wine cup with its blood. Play more. Dare more. Trust more. Love more.

a rewild4Rewilding your soul is reanimating meaning and purpose into your life. It’s sacrificing comfort and security for challenging adventure.

It’s sharpening the soul like a sword that shaves away pettiness and triviality and pierces the heart. It wakes up the sleeping spirit. It jostles the lazy life-force. It animates the ant-like attitude. It tempts the temper into tempestuousness and vigor.

…Surrounded by the clanking steel juggernaut of the city, with its ear-piercing ambulances and shrieking car alarms, with its overreaching hyper-violent police and soul-sucking order, with its oil-drenched gutters and offal-putrescence decaying in overflowing dumpsters; the human animal feels like it has no recourse. So, it escapes to the “safety” of its too-comfortable, excessively clean, overly-tidy, severely domesticated household.

It curls into a ball on its bed and sleeps against the madness that surrounds it. Hungry for more of “it knows not what.” Just hungry for something other than the all-consuming, smothering, suffocating, polluting, Goliath that is The City.

Well f*ck all that! Burn that mattress. Defenestrate your La-Z-Boy chair, along with your 666-channel television set. Get out of town! Get away from the things of excess culture and hyper-real society.

There’s nothing stopping you, but you. There’s an entire world out there to explore. There are wild places calling out to your heart. It’s a call to adventure. It’s a hero’s journey. If you only had the ears to hear it. If you only had the heart to encourage it. If you only had the soul to feel it.

Life is too short not to taste the delicious nectar of the wild, not to feel your deepest darkest wildness howling inside you. I implore you: discover the ears, the heart, and the soul to overcome yourself. Do it through the art of self-rewilding.

Image source:

Agresja by Magdalena Russocka
Free human (Native American)
Mothmeister photography