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Seven Steps toward Sublime Impeccability

Gary Z McGee
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7
Seven Steps toward Sublime Impeccability

“Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt” ~ Immanuel Kant

Here’s the thing: enlightenment is an illusion, but the path toward enlightenment is exceptionally real. It seems like a contradiction, but it’s not. The essence of the sublime is letting go of our attachment to the goal and allowing the journey to be the thing.

transform-roadblocks-into-stepping-stonesThere are roadblocks and tripwires and briar patches galore, but even they are an essential aspect of the journey. In fact, the most fulfilling moments in the journey are when we gain the capacity to transform roadblocks into stepping stones, tripwires into jump ropes, and briar patches into crowns of thorn.

Here are seven hang-ups in particular to let go of in order to attain a state of sublime impeccability.

1. Let go of Fear

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” ~ Plato

The ability to recognize fear is an essential aspect of our survival, but when the ego becomes attached to fear it can become an obstruction to survival. Fear becomes our puppeteer, and we become its floundering puppets.

This type of fear is almost always preconditioned. Letting go of it is tantamount to letting go of our first layer of skin, a difficult task indeed. Gain the courage of the Snake, who regularly sheds its skin.

Make it a part of your meditation practice. Like the Kundalini snake rising up through the 7 chakras, you too can gain this essential power. In fact, it would behoove you to imagine each of these steps as a snake shedding its skin.

This way the “letting go” is a sacred process, a beautiful unfolding, an honoring of the previous skin and what it taught us, and a celebration of the new skin and the new adventures to be had. But first, let go of fear. Alchemically transform it into courage. Re-baptize yourself into a Courage of the First Order. Meditate on the root chakra.

2. Let go of Guilt

one_eyeland_sublimity_by_mohammad reza_domiri ganji_87112“The religious perception of reality is about guilt, sin and blame, and that’s the trap. That’s the chains that hold every citizen. The spiritual perception of reality is about responsibility. We’re all responsible. We’re not guilty, we’re responsible. And it’s trying to make our way through these two perceptions of reality that seems to be the biggest problem we’re confronted with as human beings on the planet right now.” ~ John Trudell

Letting go of guilt is as simple as forgiving ourselves. The problem is: forgiving ourselves is exceptionally difficult. Cultural and familial pressures abound. Grief too is almost always preconditioned. Letting go of guilt is allowing ourselves the power to recondition the precondition. Transform the blueprint. Rework the woodwork.

Let it all come tumbling down, forgive yourself, and then build it all back up, your way. The art of the sublime can never be discovered their way, or my way, it can only be discovered your way. Boundaries are illusions, especially those dictated by culture.

Stretch your boundaries the way Neo bends spoons in The Matrix, by realizing, “There is no spoon (boundary).” Like Rumi said, “Why do you stay in prison when the door is wide open?” Meditate on the sacral chakra.

3. Let go of Shame

“There can be no transformation in the world outside unless there is transformation from within. It is our responsibility to bring about a radical transformation within ourselves.” ~ Krishnamurti

Let go of humiliation. Embrace your insecurities and doubts. Let go of letdowns and disappointments. Use them as steppingstones. Dance them into something worth tripping over. Dance with the fire. If it burns you, then rise up like a phoenix. Life is too short to live it second-guessing your authenticity.

You’re flawed. You’re imperfect. You will fail. So what? There’s no avoiding it. The question is, how well will you fail. How much will you learn from your failure? Sublime impeccability requires making a sacred dance out of “rolling with the punches.”

Take each punch like a fistful of truth. Use it to become the best version of yourself possible, and then lead by example. Meditate on the navel chakra.

4. Let go of Grief

“The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is.” ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

Let go of heartache. Release all sadness and loss. Let the pain flow away. Love has a pain center. Letting go of grief is letting go of our ego’s attachment to love which is embracing the pain center. Learning how to love is learning how to let go of the ego’s attachment to love. This is the secret of attaining happiness in a cruel world. There is sublimity in such seemingly contradictory practices.

The love-pain dynamic is a sacred dance of catch-and-release. When your heart breaks; relish in the break. Allow it to settle into a million little pieces. Be with it there in sacred silence, in divine awareness. Then let it go.

Breathe new life into the shattered pieces of your heart and then begin the slow process of mending it back together again. The sacred wound left behind will be your greatest teacher. Meditate on the heart chakra.

5. Let go of Lies

“The mental suffering you create is always some form of non-acceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment. The intensity of the suffering depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment.” ~ Eckhart Tolle

Let go of untruths and falsehoods. Let go of propaganda. Let go of self-deception. Honesty is paramount, self-honesty is indispensable. It is essential that you be impeccable with your word. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Clearly communicate your intent. Make your outspoken truth to power uplifting and wise, but don’t be afraid to practice a little trickster-goddery from time to time.

Remember that words are tools we use to raise and lower the vibration of things. Be responsible with your power. Embrace your own cognitive dissonance, learn from it. Practice counter-weltanschauung-dynamics.

Everybody knows something you don’t. Try your best to learn from them. We are all teachers, just as we are all students. Life is what we teach, and life is what we learn. This is the essence of sublime impeccability. Meditate on the throat chakra.

6. Let go of Illusion

“From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.” ~ James Joyce

Let go of all false destinies. Recognize your ego’s attempt to separate things. The illusion of separation is the greatest illusion of all. But, and here’s the rub, the illusion of separation is what makes everything beautiful and meaningful. Open your third eye and see the interconnectedness of all things, but appreciate the beauty in the differentiated unity.

Like Alan Watts said, “Nature is always differentiated unity, not unified differences.” It is essential that you understand this, and move past the illusion, in order to actualize the Self in accordance with greater cosmic frequencies. See yourself as a spiritually interconnected being. Sharpen your intuition like a blacksmith sharpens a sword.

Hone your sense of identity, but always self-interrogate it. The ability to self-reflect is essential for impeccability. Don’t be afraid to be powerful. Just be responsible with your power.

Like Marianne Williamson said, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”

Meditate on the third eye chakra.

7. Let go of Earthly Attachment

Sublime Impeccability“Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.” ~ Alan Watts

Let go of definitions. Let go of hunger. Let go of happiness. Let go of love. Let go of letting go. The art of letting go is realizing that everything is everything and even letting go is itself an illusion.

Remember: you are not letting go of love itself, only your ego’s attachment to love. Love is always there, and always will be. You are not letting go of happiness itself, you are letting go of your ego’s attachment to happiness. Happiness is always there, and always will be. The same goes for all things.

You are not letting go of your goal to attain enlightenment, you’re letting go of your ego’s attachment to enlightenment by killing any and all Buddhas you may discover along the path. The path is paramount. The path is an illusion. The journey is the thing, and is probably also an illusion.

So what! Roll with it. Have fun with it. Have a good sense of humor about it. Let go of definitions, but don’t forget to have fun with them either. Boundaries are made to be stretched, but they are also made to have fun with.

Play is an essential practice of sublime impeccability. Sublime play is sacred play. Work hard at being sublime and impeccable, but always remember to play harder. Meditate on the crown chakra.

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Love Yourself Away from Addiction

Nikki Sapp
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7
Love Yourself Away from Addiction

 “No matter how hard you try, you cannot get rid of darkness because it does not exist. It is nothing more than the absence of light. In order to affect the darkness you must do something with light because the light is the only thing that exists” ~ Teal Swan

The word “addict” or “addiction” carries with it such a stigma, that it can be scary for most people to come to terms with. Most are unwilling to take on this label because it would signify that they had become out of control, which is something that most would not like to admit.

And even when a person has taken the first step of acknowledging that they have a problem, they often judge themselves very harshly because of it. This judgment of themselves brings about a whole slew of feelings from guilt, to anger to shame. Unconscious feelings that happen on a consecutive basis can often turn into beliefs.

Addiction-and-fearIf a person believes they are bad, unworthy, or should be ashamed of themselves, they will actually start to act out these attributes, which will perpetuate the addiction cycle. As a society we have been conditioned to fear, hate, fight, and even deny an addiction because of the stigma it carries. But what if we have been going about it the wrong way?

What if the key to coming out of the darkness of addiction is to shine the light on the very parts of ourselves we have become conditioned to hide?

When we shine light on these parts and practice unconditional love of all these perceived negative aspects, we come to a very important crossroads in breaking the addiction cycle…surrender and acceptance. It is only when we have accepted ourselves as we are and loved the addiction and ourselves that we can break free from it.

“Fear is the memory of pain. Addiction is the memory of pleasure. Freedom is beyond both.” ~ Deepak Chopra

The object of an addiction can come in many different forms. The more obvious being drugs, alcohol, smoking, sex and gambling but also television, food, relationships, and even negative emotions. Narconon.org defines addiction as, “a condition that consists of a repeated, compulsive need for and use of a habit forming substance despite the adverse social or mental or physical consequences.”

At one time or another it is safe to say that most people have repeatedly done something over and over even though they knew it was detrimental to their health or well-being, which means to some degree, almost everyone has been addicted to something. Like most shadow parts of ourselves, addiction has its roots in fear.

Fear of “I fear that I am not enough on my own, so if I have this thing outside of myself, then I will feel complete”, or “I fear that I will have a bad feeling if I don’t numb myself with the object of my addiction, so in order to not feel anything, I will use my ‘drug’ “.

Louise Hay, author of Heal Your Body, says the probable root cause of addiction is running from the self, fear, and not knowing how to love the self.

i-am-not-what-i-have-doneSo it is quite literally, not knowing how to show love to our own self. When this happens, a person will look to food, drugs, shopping, etc… in order to nurture themselves. The key thing to realize here is that unconditional love (which means even loving the part of ourselves that fears not being enough) for ourselves will replace the need to look outside of ourselves to make us feel more complete.

Shaming ourselves into change, hating ourselves into change or punishing ourselves into change will never give us long lasting results, whereas loving ourselves into change will. We can literally love ourselves enough to DESIRE the change, which will help us move closer to our ultimate goal.

“We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them” ~ Albert Einstein

In order to transcend the addiction cycle, we must rise to a level of consciousness above the one that had us stuck in it. If we stay focused and attached to the same emotions that brought the addiction on in the first place, we won’t be able to rise above them.

These things don’t happen overnight. If a person has been addicted to something for years it may take longer to undo the thinking patterns and habits that have been formed.
love-yourself-first Depending how severe the addiction is, this may also require outside help of a medical professional or counselor or treatment program.

There are also alternative methods which can help a person get to a higher level of consciousness that no longer feels attached to the addiction and makes it drop away naturally. Some of these methods include, meditation, energy work, the oneness blessing, working with a spiritual counselor and yoga.

Whichever route a person chooses to take, the most imperative thing is that they get to the root cause of the addiction & find out what part of themselves they are not loving completely and unconditionally.

Once a person can surrender to whatever that is, love that part of themselves, and continue being honest with themselves every step of the way they will be on the road to recovery.

The recovery process will take time, and many people won’t be 100% successful in their first go, but as long as they begin to utilize the tools of self-love, and the advice of their teachers, mentors or counselors they will find that they are able to re-wire their thought patterns to a path of success.

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Addiction

4 Ways to Disturb the Comfortable and Comfort the Disturbed

Gary Z McGee
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12
4 Ways to Disturb the Comfortable and Comfort the Disturbed

In a world of rat races and overly-competitive one-upmanship, we need creative, rebellious, and courageous individuals who have the capacity to catalyze the world with their art. The comfortable are too comfortable.

They need to be taken down a notch. The disturbed struggle more than they need to. They need to be uplifted and encouraged. Creative individuals have this power. They not only inspire, they inspire awe through daily acts of courage and love.

Like Ernst Fischer said, “In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable and help to change it.”

art-effect

Here then are four ways to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed.

1. Instigate Artistically

“They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are THE ADVERTISERS and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like whenever they like with total impunity. F#$! THAT. Any advert in a public space that gives you no chance whether you see it or not is yours.

It’s yours to take, rearrange and reuse. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing. You especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have rearranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.” ~ Banksy

Learn how to trump their false artillery with your genuine art. Be the piano player in the middle of a riot. Be the crazy hippie placing flowers into the gun barrels of sycophantic lawmen. Celebrate art, not violence.

Free yourself to be creatively mischievous. Use your art as a tool to leverage wonder and awe against the stagnant ugliness of the State. A person using a gun is a symbol of failure. Guns are for the weak and the fearful. Violence is for the immature.

True courage isn’t threatening someone with violence, it’s creatively counting coup on your enemy through satiric jest. True courage is standing on your feet with creative joy and love in your heart, holding a pen, a camera, or a paint-can, with a cheeky smile on your face while the tanks of madmen threaten to roll over you.

Instigate! Cause a ruckus in all courtrooms. Poke holes in every so-called law book. Plant tiny seeds of chaos in any and all stagnant realms of so-called order. Prove to us that the pen is mightier than the sword. The next generation will thank you.

2. Be boisterous with your sincerity

“Tradition is the illusion of permanence.” ~ Woody Allen

Don’t be serious. Be sincere. Seriousness is too uppity and snobbish. Sincerity is genuine and authentic. If you ever find yourself being overly serious about things, especially yourself, take yourself down a notch by sincere self-interrogation.

4601445515 ee70a53c50Question your roots. Question your worldview. Question everything, and especially question authority. Be unruly with your sincerity by questioning rules, and breaking the ones that insult your soul.

Get rowdy with your authentic expression, especially in stagnant environments that don’t cultivate self-expression. Doing so shocks the system –both individually and socially.

It tonalizes an otherwise atonal culture, forcing it to think outside the box. Don’t be afraid of being wrong about something. Sometimes you have to figure out what’s wrong before you can figure out what’s right. Don’t be afraid to appear hypocritical.

Hypocrisy is an inherent aspect of the human condition anyway. You might as well own it, roll with it, use it to open minds and close outdated systems. Use it to shake things up. Just be sincere.

And remember to have a good sense of humor. You’ll need it against the stone-casting Confederacy of Dunces.

3. Be Tricky with your empathy

“Love does not imply pacifism.” ~ Derrick Jensen

Be compassionate, but be stern. Be caring, but practice hard love. Be thoughtful of others, but know when to put your foot down. Don’t be afraid to be someone’s wakeup call. They may not like it at first, but they will thank you for it later.

And if they don’t, oh well. At least you tried to do the right thing. Think Jesus flipping over tables and flogging greedy bankers in righteous anger.

Like Gloria Steinem said, “The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off.”

Sympathize with the lot of others, but don’t forget to stir some pots, ruffle some feathers, and kneecap some high-horses. Love your neighbor, but take him down a notch if he’s a close-minded extremist douchebag who takes himself too seriously.

We should not be expected to remain calm and happy in the face of ecocide, rape, misogyny, slavery, and greed. Rather we should be compelled toward righteous anger. But we should also be obliged to help victims become warriors.

santiago_caruso_114. Be amoral with your justice

“Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.” ~ Michelangelo

The people are afraid. As such, the human condition is in a state of emergency. The walking dead, the sheeple, the cogs in the clockwork, are flailing about upon the immoral waters of the current unsustainable system. We need people who are not afraid. We need people who are not zombies. We need people who have shed their sheep-clothing.

We need people who have un-cogged themselves from the preconditioned clockwork. We need people who have come alive. But in order for this awakening to occur, there must be an inner tipping point, a flipped switch, or a state of emotional Eureka that reveals to us how our old ways of doing things are parochial and outdated.

Like James Russell Lowell said, “Time makes ancient good uncouth.”

As such, in order to moralize an otherwise immoral system we need amoral agency. We need people who are willing to be amoral agents within overly-moral or overly-immoral systems.

This requires a particular flavor of courage that may be unpopular, but is excruciatingly necessary for things to evolve in a healthy way. Amoral agency flips the tables on the ethical dynamic.

It reveals how the middle ground is the only healthy foundation. It discloses the golden mean. It unleashes the golden ratio. The Amoral Agent (courage) is the desirable middle between the two extremes of morality (cowardice) and immorality (recklessness).

Comfort the disturbed through amoral compassion. Disturb the comfortable through amoral interrogation. Cowardice is a Goliath. Recklessness is a Goliath also. David is the amoral agent with a slingshot who has the potential to topple giants.

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When ‘Thinking Positive’ Doesn’t Seem to be Working

Nikki Sapp
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14
When ‘Thinking Positive’ Doesn’t Seem to be Working

“Life is not about being perfect, it’s about being real.” ~ Unknown

Emotions are an inevitable part of the human experience. They can have us on top of the world or in the depths of despair, but if nothing else, they remind us that we are alive. Usually, “good” emotions are welcomed with open arms into our life experience, while perceived “bad” emotions are avoided at all costs.

People use anything from drugs & alcohol to denial to avoidance to blame, all just to protect themselves from having to feel anything.

embrace your emotions and feelings

Very often we are given the advice to just, “think positive”, “be happy” or “stay optimistic” when we are experiencing hard to deal with emotions.

While this advice may sound wonderful in theory, (because, let’s be honest, who wouldn’t want to just be happy and upbeat ALL the time?) it may not always be the healthiest option. In order to successfully move through a tough emotion, the emotion itself must be not only acknowledged but actually FELT.

How ironic. The one thing that people try to duck, dive and avoid at all costs (feeling the emotion) is the one thing that will set them free and resolve it. Denying the emotion is happening will keep it bubbling just under the surface, while observing it without judgement and feeling it to completion will actually make it subside.

It sounds simple, “just FEEL the emotion and it will go away,” but it can be a little bit trickier than it sounds and it’s also important to look at the role of our emotions and how “bad” ones can actually help us to grow as a person.

“Is suffering really necessary? Yes and no. If you had not suffered as you have there would be no depth to you as a human being, no humility, no compassion. Suffering cracks open the shell of the ego and then comes a point where it has served its purpose. Suffering is necessary until you realize it is unnecessary.” ~ Eckhart Tolle

Many have people have spent decades not feeling anything, it is literally how they run their lives, so when a negative emotion pops up they immediately jump to their preferred line of defense (avoidance, blame, addiction etc…). When a person spends all of their time not feeling anything, they run the risk of overcompensating by excessive doing.

They jump from job to job, from one relationship to another, new hobby to new hobby, all to avoid the reality of ‘what is’, which is that there is an emotion that never got dealt with just under the surface. Over time they become human doings instead of human beings which means they are never quite comfortable to just be.

This causes them to become so disconnected with themselves that they stop knowing how they truly feel about things and instead focus on how they think they should feel and act, which prevents them from being honest with themselves. The most important thing to remember here is that emotions should not be avoided, nor should they be wallowed in.

Emotions, when used properly can be wonderful guideposts for our lives. Even though it’s not healthy to see our emotions as the 100% absolute truth of a situation, we can use them as indicators as to when it’s time to move on from an unhealthy relationship, or a going nowhere job, or they might even signify a deeper rooted issue that is begging to be dealt with.

As long as we don’t start identifying with the emotions themselves as our sense of self to the point that we are addicted and attached to them for our ego’s survival, we can use our emotions in a healthy manner.

There are many methods to help us process emotions and move through them more quickly, which include: Meditation, yoga, hypnotherapy, counseling, energy work (chakra balancing/clearing, reiki, etc…), the tapping method, and so many more.

“The ego says, ‘I shouldn’t have to suffer’ and that thought makes you suffer so much more. It is a distortion of the truth, which is always paradoxical. The truth is that you need to say ‘yes’ to suffering before you can transcend it” ~ Eckhart Tolle

Feelings and emotions are a part of the human experience, and when used properly can become wonderful tools for us. To only focus on being positive and feeling good is to deny part of our life’s journey, which will consequently inhibit us from being able to feel true joy.

The happiest and most peaceful of people are the ones who have made it through their tough times, by actually going through their suffering instead of denying it was happening in the first place.

Once a person has gone through the rough patches & dealt with emotions to completion, they are able to come out happier and wiser. They literally come to the light at the end of their tunnel.

The fear of feeling emotions starts to go away with practice. Soon, feeling an emotion, instead of avoiding it, becomes an automatic response. When we move through feelings more quickly we will always have continual growth which allows for true happiness, joy and inner peace.

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Feeling down

Humans of Manufactured Purpose

Raghav Bubna
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Humans of Manufactured Purpose

Until we are born we don’t have any perception of existence riddling within us, we are lovingly thrust into birth by the biological frivolity of corporeal matter and witness the first moments in our life of purest expression.

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As children we interact through experience and expression free of thought and any form of applied psychological conditioning. Our reactions are spontaneous responses to any action in our presence and not plagued with any latent feelings of carving or aversion we deal with, as we journey to what we are led to believe is growth.

“A child can teach an adult three things: to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires.” ~ Paulo Coelho

We are indoctrinated with popular acceptances of notion and limitation forged, veiled within the guise of self-improvement and education. Names are a peculiar sort of baggage that weigh us down with a socially manufactured purpose.

This is not present with us at our time of inception into this collective dream, yet forged of inheritance. It obscures us from our truest purpose of self-awareness and causes us to evolve within the confines of a system we designed.
Our higher agenda is for existence as beings of pure love and expression, as life is a celebration of individual existence and consciousness to have common experiences and relations through communication and all our other senses.

We-are-a-way-for-the-cosmos

Although remarkable, our system of life today holds a glimpse of artificial selection in human evolution, which has molded our minds to accept that which we cannot understand. Our purpose and identity should be found not bequeathed through the loins of karma.

Schools are a mechanism for deliverance of man’s initial encouragement to the proselytization of popular beliefs into the minds of all the institutionalized populace. Where crucial formative years are spent processing information fed for the sole purpose of regurgitation and rote knowledge, like a donkey led by a carrot at the end of its rider’s stick.

We grow competing within our selves for grades to get to good colleges, to land good jobs, to further the evolution of this labyrinth, our induction into our fabrication of selective evolution through competition, furthering the outreach of man over nature to man over mankind. As we evolve competing within our own kind, our machinery evolve to our desired needs to meet their desired ends and over time this has well outweighed our harmony with nature.

If something were born within another it would not exist outside of it without the space surrounding the one in which it was born. If two entities were to evolve in the absence of each other then none would exist within this situation without the other.

We are currently being driven through our reflection in the material world for our vain and shallow propensities. These reflections are a result of how our perception views ourselves. How the fabricated concept of the individual through its name and derived purpose eclipse our purest reflections. Our lives need to be molded around our aural and spiritual vibrations and progression needs to move from person to consciousness.
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Our perception is a build up of perspectives from the countless mediums of knowledge available to our race. While these are all excruciatingly vital for our preservation and evolution, it is also a limitation to the boundaries of experiential knowledge. All mediums of information are a form of communication and are therefore influenced by the consciousness of the interpreter. Their perception acts as a translator for the esoteric channelization during their experience of the relevant piece of knowledge.

All works of expression when viewed as a doorway to the actual experience that led to the cognition of the manifested tangibility beckons for personal involvement. A craving for experience, a thirst for pure self-witnessed knowledge.

It’s interesting to view these doorways as equivalents of parallel dimensional portals as once we embark on the voyage of experience we forever revolutionize our perceptions’ progression and the possibilities are equivocally vast.

Experiences may often be ambiguously different as many times as the number of people who embark on a certain experience, which enkindles the spark of potential for expression within each human being.

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