The God Question Part 2

MUST READ PART 1 FIRST

          Now that we got all that out of the way, back to the original question. Why do we refer to God as “He?” It very well could be because Elohiym is masculine. That would make a lot of sense. But if that’s the case, then why don’t we call the Holy Spirit “she” since the Hebrew word that is always translated “Spirit” in reference to God is Ruha? Ruha is a feminine plural noun.

          Let’s just say, hypothetically, that the feminine and masculine tenses were just something the ancient civilizations made up and it got passed down and they don’t mean anything; now if we believe that God the Father and God the Holy Spirit (whether they are the same entity or separate makes no difference right now) are invisible spiritual entities that created the universe and all that exists, would it not be a reasonable assumption to make that with only a consciousness and no physical body that God could not have a gender? I think so.
          And if Adam and Eve were both created in God’s image and likeness, and God does not have a physical image, would it not also be a reasonable assumption to make that “image” is speaking of a figurative image rather than a literal image? In which case, God would represent both male AND female. So why DO we refer to God as “He?”
          Maybe it got lost in translation. Literally. For all extensive purposes, women had no rights until the late 1800’s when the Women’s Rights Movement took off. Before then, the translators of the scriptures (which were all biased political men) could translate them however they wanted, and they did. By the time common people could gain access to the earliest scriptures available, the masses were already used to referring to the Godhead as “He.” Maybe it just stuck.
          OR… maybe God really is physical male beings as Elohiym describes. No, not THE God, Source of Existence God, but the God or Gods described in the Bible. Maybe what the ancients were experiencing as Gods, angels, and demons were actual physical beings that “came down from the heavens?”
          Maybe these beings were thought of as Elohiym because they were powerful and strong and could perform seemingly miraculous things. Maybe the ancients called them Elohiym because they hadn’t seen any being like them before, and out of their amazement, they deemed them gods.

The God Question Part 1

DISCLAIMER: This is not information for the weak minded or religion dependent person. I do not wish to destroy anyone's hope or faith. I only wish to educate and challenge the mind. If you don't wish to have your current religious beliefs challenged, DO NOT READ. Consider yourself warned.

          Who is God? Or maybe the question is WHAT is God? Most would answer that question without ever stopping to give it any thought at all.
          Most would say that God is the Creator of the universe, but they would not stop there.  Depending on what religion they are, or if they are any religion at all, they would go on to include the characteristics of God. Most religious people would describe the characteristics of God based on what the Bible or other religious book has to say about God. Some would base them on what they have experienced throughout their life. Still others would describe God’s characteristic based on what we know about science. ALL of these sources are right AND wrong. Problem is we just don’t know which parts are right and which parts are wrong.
          I think it is arrogance, to some degree, to  be able to answer the question “What is God?” without pausing first  to think about your answer. To jump right out there with such certainty about the nature of God, when we are but tiny, time/space beings in this vast timeless, and, in some places, spaceless expanse we call the universe, seems to me to be extremely inflated.
          Let’s just take a step back for a few minutes and ask ourselves some questions. If God is the God of the Bible, which is what a huge percentage of Americans believe, then why do we refer to God as “He?” Well in order to figure out why, we need to see what the Bible says about God. Ha! That would take forever, right? …Since the whole flippin book is about God! Well, why don’t we just look at a few places then.

Then I Guess I'm A Quack

           When you go against the flow on most things, people are going to criticize. They are going to label you a “quack.”  They can’t help themselves. It’s something I have gotten used to. I think the thing I have gotten the most criticism on is the way I raise my kids, which is pretty funny considering you can just look at the evidence and see that obviously I’m doing something right. By no means are my kids perfect and I have my fair share of screw ups, but my kids are very well behaved, healthy, happy kids. That doesn’t just happen on accident.
            Sean and I have worked really hard to keep the kids both mentally and physically healthy. I know we are told by mainstream doctors and the media that our health is mainly determined by our genetics, and I am sure that is true in some cases, but the fact is, your health is determined primarily by what you put in and on your body.
           When my daughter was a born, we started bathing her with Johnson’s baby wash, and applying Johnson’s baby lotion to her whole body directly after her bath. We noticed when she was only a few months old that her skin was getting very dry and flaky. At first we wrote it off as genetics because I have always had dry sensitive skin and thought maybe she just took after me, but it got worse and worse and I started questioning whether it was something she was having an allergic reaction to.
           Around this time, my mother happened to be doing a lot of research on chemicals in products. She gave me a list of chemicals to look out for. I checked the Johnson’s products and sure enough, they contained some of the harmful ingredients that were on the list. These are baby products. I mean, they advertise them as being “gentle on baby” and “tear free” for crying out loud!
            I got on Google and started looking up each of these chemicals and seeing what they were exactly and how they affected your health. I was astonished. Turns out that a few of the most harmful ones are in almost every shampoo, conditioner, shaving cream, bubble bath, powder, moisturizer,  toothpaste, and deodorant on the shelf and have side effects that range from dry itchy skin all the way to cancer.  Here is a list of most of those hazardous ingredients:

• Diethanolamine (DEA), found in shampoos, body washes, bubble bath, and shaving cream.
• Triethanolamine (TEA) , found in moisturizers, cosmetics, deodorant, toothpaste, body oils, and washes.
• Sodium Lauryl Sulphate (SLS) , found in shampoo, bubble bath, shaving foam, and cleansers.
• Sodium Laureth Sulphate (SLES) , found in shampoo, bubble bath, shaving foam, and cleansers.
• Propylene Glycol, found in the anti freeze for your car radiator, hand sanitizers, moisturizers, shaving creams, deodorants, and baby products.
• Sodium Fluoride, found in toothpaste.
• Alcohol, found in mouthwash, toners, and baby products.
• Talc, found in baby powder, make-up, and foot preparations.
• PABA, found in sunscreens.
• PEG, found in cosmetics, make-up, and shaving cream.
• Artificial flavors, found in toothpaste and mouthwash.
• Artificial colors, found in make-up, toothpaste, and shampoos.
• Benzalkonium Chloride and Benzethonium Chloride, synthetic germicides belonging to the large group of germicides known as “Quats, found in numerous household disinfectants, sanitizers including hand sanitizers and personal care products - long term use may affect immune system, cause asthma and should be especially avoided if you have COPD, or any other form of pulmonary disease.
• Ether, found in nail treatments, shampoo, and conditioner.
• Coal Tars, found in shampoo, conditioner, hair dyes, soap, skin care and cosmetics.
• Aluminum, found in antiperspirants.
• Acetone, found in nail polish remover.
• Formaldehyde, found in antiperspirants, nail treatments, and perfumes.
• Fluorocarbons, found in hair spray.
• Dioxins, found in shampoo.
• Petrolatum or Mineral Oil, found in baby products, washes, and moisturizers.
• Sodium Hydroxide, found in soaps and detergents, is a caustic poison, corrosive to skin.
• Triclosan, found in anti bacterial soaps, hand sanitizers and even toothpaste. It use is so widespread that it is being linked to lowering the immune system and is now being detected in breast milk. (Overuse of hand sanitizers with Triclosan is not good for your children)

Meditation over Medication

              It was approximately three and a half years ago when I started meditating. I stumbled upon a website for a life acceleration course and self help program (I will tell you the program later) by clicking a link on a website about the law of attraction, which is actually really funny because I know now that I attracted that right into my life. It was something I desperately needed, and I was doing a lot of searching then (I mean, more than I’m normally searching) because that was only a short time after my husband and I basically washed our hands of Christianity and all religion.               
             I was on the fast track to figuring out what was real since what was left of my faith in almost everything I had believed and lived by my whole life had pretty much been obliterated.  I was doing so much digging and studying and researching at that time that I couldn’t really tell you what order I learned the information in exactly. It’s somewhat of a blur because the transition from Christian to… well… I guess nothing, really… was so quick. You would think it would take a long time to undo 20 years of extreme church indoctrination, but we’re only talking about a matter of two years before my whole conscience had broken free from my past beliefs. There was just way too much information and evidence for me to ignore or even question anymore, so once I was at the point where I knew I could never go back, I started trying to build a new foundation to live on. I wanted to know what the point of life was. I sat down and asked God, whatever God was, “What now?”

           Part of me was very fearful, and yet somehow I knew everything was going to be ok. My faith in God never faltered. In fact, when everything else was ripped out from under me, it forced me to draw closer to God, but in a totally different way than I was used to. I used to think drawing close to God meant reading and studying my Bible, bowing my head and speaking a formal prayer, being involved at church, witnessing to people, being an example of Jesus in my daily life… in other words, PERFORMING THE ACTS. Once I had none of that left, all I had were my thoughts and prayers. I didn’t even know exactly who or what God was anymore. I just knew I didn’t believe the creator of the universe was the God that most of the Bible portrays.
                For some reason I found myself speaking audibly into the air saying, “I don’t know what you are, but I know you can hear me, and I know that you have a reason for all this.” I spent a lot of time just sitting and thinking in almost a prayer state of mind, keeping my heart open to anything that God might want to reveal to me. It felt very much like what I used to do as a kid when I would stare catatonic at the wall in deep thought. At times I would get a random idea that would lead me to go research something, and that would bring me to the knowledge of something new. At other times I would just feel this overwhelming feeling inside my gut that would lead me to believe something. Either way, I was being drawn in a certain direction without any outside influence at all.
                I was first introduced to this idea of the law of attraction (although they don’t exactly call it that in the film) in a documentary film called What The Bleep Do We Know? My mother heard about it and bought it, then suggested I watch it. She said it would give me some things to think about, and boy, did it! I was so intrigued by quantum physics and this theory of being able to directly affect your physical surroundings that I continued to dig… and dig… and dig. I was on the computer every day searching for any information I could find on quantum physics.  I watched tons of YouTube videos and lectures from scientists and physicists, and stumbled upon (by no accident) a video about the makers of the film The Secret.  A couple of weeks later, in conversation about what I’ve been learning, a friend brought up that she had this film called The Secret. My ears immediately perked up. She said someone gave it to her and she had never watched it, but that I could borrow it if I wanted because she thought it had something to do with what I was talking about. I jumped at the opportunity.
                After I watched it, I felt like someone dropped a huge bag of DUH on me. It immediately made a ton of sense.  I spent the next few days and nights sitting in contemplation about all of it. I started recalling things from my past and realizing that it was true. Everything about my life was what I had willed to happen to me merely by believing it. The house I was living in, the car I was driving, the man I had married, the jobs I had up to that point, the shape of my relationships, etc. were all exactly how I had continually been imagining them to be. Even when things would get bad or really tough for our life, it would always turn out fine, and usually better, in the end. Then I recalled the one thing I never doubted as a Christian… I never doubted that God would take care of me. I always believed with every ounce of me that no matter how bad something looked, that God would bless me in the end, and sure enough, that’s exactly how it always turned out. Things that had the appearance of something crappy ALWAYS turned out to be stepping stones to something way better for me, and gradually I learned how to ride those waves of misfortune instead of letting them knock me down.
                So then began the researching on the law of attraction and how much evidence there was to support it. I found bookoos of common people who believed this and their testimonies to how it has played out in their lives. At that point I was so excited and curious that I just started clicking away at any relevant links I saw.
                This is where the website for the life accelerator course comes into the story. (You thought I would never get to the point, didn’t you?) Well, I clicked on the link for the website and just started reading. It didn’t seem at first to be that closely related to the law of attraction. It just seemed to be explaining how to rewire your brain through meditation techniques to be more successful and happy. It spoke of overcoming mental obstacles, and that stood out to me for personal reasons.
               You see, during this time, I was going through a severe mental battle for a couple of different reason that you should probably know to get the full point of the story.
               First of all, I was trying to get past some mental hang-ups I had in regard to my husband and sex. When we got married, I had something that is called an septate hymen, and in my case, it prevented us from having intercourse. My OBGyn said that my case was pretty uncommon, but she thought that with practice and a little pain, it would eventually be ripped and we could go about our way.
               Well after six months of still not being able to consummate the marriage, we decided for me to have the surgery to remove my hymen completely. I was grateful for that, but there was still a huge problem… during the six month time that we were trying to have intercourse, I was constantly forced to endure excruciating pain. Every time we would have sex, I would end up in tears. It got to the point where it felt like being raped over and over and over again. Try to imagine feeling like you’re being raped repeatedly by the man you’re in love with and saved yourself for. Yea, it screwed me up in the head real good. We would fight about it all the time because he would want to have sex, and I got to the point where I didn’t want to even try because I knew how it would end. I didn’t want to feel the pain.
          Eventually my mind was so messed up that my body wouldn’t even respond to him anymore. Even when I was feeling horny (which was often), as soon as he would start touching me… NOTHING. My body would completely shut down, dry up, and turn OFF.  It was obviously a subconscious thing going on.
                As if that wasn’t enough, during this time, we were having typical marital problems that we fought about constantly. And every woman knows that when you have been hurt or offended by your guy, the last thing you want is to get hot and heavy with him. Being turned off between your ears = being turned off between the legs. 
                So even though the physical problem was solved with surgery, that did not fix the mental problems that resulted from the physical problem, not to mention the fact that we continued fighting about other serious issues. I constantly felt hurt about something, and usually when you’re hurt, you turn on that defense mechanism called anger. And, believe me, I was angry A LOT.
                Now I don’t want anyone thinking we were never happy, because we absolutely had our wonderful, fun, happy moments. We were very much in love. That’s the ONLY reason we stayed together and fought through all the crap that we went through. Most people who endured the stuff we did would have thrown in the towel, but we hung in there because even though we were miserable half the time, we would have been in even more misery apart from each other.
                I would like to add that about a month after my surgery our daughter was conceived by accident, so we didn’t even have time to develop any kind of normal sex life. And I’m also sure the extreme hormone changes I was experiencing didn’t help the situation we were already in.
                We eventually worked through our marital problems in regard to my in-laws, our finances, and his just needing to grow up and be more responsible, but those mental hang-ups about sex were still hanging on. Things got better, for sure, but my body just wasn’t responding the way it was supposed to. I wasn’t turned off to sex; that wasn’t the problem. I still thought about sex all the time and got plenty horny by the thought of sex. The problem was my husband, Sean. It’s not like I wasn’t attracted to him.  I mean, he’s my husband and I’m in love with him. I even thought he was hot. But as soon as he started touching me sexually, my body would just naturally tense up and turn off. It was an involuntary reaction caused by the subconscious trauma that occurred from six months of brutality to my vagina... from HIM! I tried all kinds of lotions and erotic creams and nothing worked because the problem wasn’t my body; it was my MIND. And my mind was in serious turmoil, not just from the sexual issues, but from my anger management problems as well.
               If you know anything about the way the brain functions, you will understand how your brain can literally become addicted to an emotion. It’s what we call a chemical imbalance. If you don’t know exactly how it works, this clip will help explain:

                                 

               I was desperate to fix the problem. WE were desperate to fix the problem. Poor Sean was so sexually frustrated and terrified of my outbursts of rage, and I didn’t blame him. I tried every way I knew how to change myself, but I just couldn’t consciously overcome.

              We were at our wits end when I discovered the life acceleration course, so it was extremely appealing to me. I joined the website and started receiving emails with information about the course. I learned that it was going to cost me around $1200 for a ticket to take a weekend course, and the only place I could attend the lecture was a good five hour drive from my home. That just wouldn’t do for a full time mother of a toddler and a new born baby, so I decided that I was just going to settle for the information that I was continuing to get in my emails.

                In one of the emails I received a meditation exercise that was supposedly going to help me gain control over my mind. I downloaded the audio file one evening and immediately listened to it. I followed the instructions but fell asleep before the end of the exercise. I continued to go through the exercise, and it wasn’t until the fourth time I did it that I was able to stay awake for the duration of the recording. After that, I got better and better at it. I started meditating 2 to 3 times a day, and it helped calm me immensely. The phrases used during the exercise began to really sink in and I found that I was much more laid back and less prone to anger.
                I was so impressed by how much it was helping me that I decided to purchase the home audio course for half the price of the weekend course. I began it immediately when I received it in the mail. I learned that the whole course is based on the law of attraction. The point of the meditation exercises is to manifest what you want more quickly because you are literally tapping into direct source energy. Sounds new age, I know, but there really is something to this.
                When you meditate, you literally change your vibration. Your brain waves slow down and your mind becomes more receptive and impressionable. When you are at your center of relaxation and your brain waves have slowed, it’s like being hypnotized except you are conscious of what is happening. You can suggest anything to yourself and when you come out of meditation your subconscious mind will retain that information as a “belief.” The more you suggest these things to yourself in meditation, the more you will believe them.

               
                So for me, I needed to believe I was happy and peaceful. I needed to believe that my husband’s touch turned me on. I needed to stop being addicted to rage and victimization. I learned in the life accelerator program that during the times when I wasn't meditating, the best way to consciously help myself was to do those thigns that made me the happiest, and when I started feeling myself getting angry about something, to literally intercept the negative emotions with positive ones. I was supposed to stop whatever I was doing, and go do something that would make me happy again. For example, if I was having a disagreement with Sean about something and I started getting pissed off,  I was to shut up, excuse myself from the conversation, and go pull up one of my favorite funny YouTube videos that was sure to make me crack up laughing. Or if I was doing something that was frustrating me and I was losing my cool, I was to stop, walk away from whatever it was and go put on a song that was sure to take me back to a pleasant memory. This was not always easy and sometimes I failed at it. It took major will power to just do it when it was necessary, but it got easier and easier with time. I am still working on myself in this manner every day but it has been about two years since I had an outburst of rage or felt depressed. Never were any drugs necessary for my imbalance. It was fully corrected through meditation and will power alone.
                As far as the sexual obstacle, I overcame that as well without the use of drugs. I was able to completely break my mind’s hang-ups by intercepting those negative memories and emotions of feeling pain and discomfort with, uh… fun and sexy emotions, I guess you could say. I will leave it at that for now. The details of that are for a whole new story that will come at a later time.
                My life is so different now. Better. WAY better. Not just because meditation has helped me achieve my dreams and manifest the physical things I want in my life through the law of attraction (because it has), but more importantly  meditation has helped me achieve something even greater that money can’t buy, and that’s happiness, peace of mind, and an amazing relationship and sex life with my husband.
                So, I don’t care what kind of emotional shape you are in. It can be turned around without drugs. You may not be able to fix it consciously, but it CAN be fixed subconsciously through meditation. You just have to learn how to do it and exert the will power to see it through. If you want change badly enough, you will have it, but you must realize that YOU are in control of your life. No one can do it for you. 
                Here is the link to the life accelerator course that I mentioned:  http://www.silvamethod.com 

We're all fools

            We actually know very little about life. Science, even history, has proven this.  Our text books are constantly being rewritten. Just when we think we know something, we make new discoveries and everything changes. The majority of our “facts” out there are merely socially acceptable theories and interpretations that have some evidence to support them but can’t really be proven. Even the small every day things that we are so sure of can totally be made unstable just by asking a few simple questions.
          Take, for example, the “fact” that the sky is blue… How do you know the sky is blue? Isn’t blue just a name that was given to that particular hue? What if another person doesn’t see the same hue as you do but they have been taught that the hue they are seeing is “blue” and so you both think you are seeing the same color, but you are not? What about colorblind people? How do you know that they aren’t the ones who are actually seeing the hue correctly?
           Or how about the “fact” that heat burns and cold freezes? Are we not conditioned from infancy to believe that this thing over here is “cold” and that thing over there is “hot” and it hurts if you touch it? If a man can be hypnotized to believe fire is ice and ice is fire (and he can), and, as a result, a match flame will not burn him, but an ice cube touched to his arm raises a blister, then does that not tell us that what is real to the body is what the brain BELIEVES about it? You see? The facts become unreliable theories. Just because the vast majority of people believe something, does not make it concrete.
           As it is, there are things that people experience every day, all over the globe that are unexplainable, supernatural, if you will. Religious folk blame it on God or Satan or angels and demons. Superstitious people blame it on ghosts. There is no way of knowing for sure what the cause of weird activity is. All we know is that it does happen to all different kinds of people. We can’t deny that these are things that people are actually experiencing. But that is what complicates it. Just because someone experiences something does not mean that another person in the same room would experience it the same way, or even at all, for that matter, and who are we to believe? The person whose view is most like mainstream beliefs or the person whose view contradicts mainstream beliefs?
           We have mental institutions for people that are crazy but what do we consider to be “crazy” in the first place? Crazy/ insane/ mad - (adj.) Senseless, unpredictable, impractical, non-conforming. Well, in that case, they better lock me up!
           The truth is, there are some people that are dangerous in their “insanity” and need to be locked up to protect others, but I would be willing to bet that at least 3 out of 10 people I know would consider ME to be crazy if they knew everything about me and everything I have experienced. Then again, there are religious people who would claim I am under demonic influence because their beliefs have no explanation for it. I can assure you, I am not.  I just might be crazy by definition, but I’m no idiot (this is up for debate). I know the ways of our society and know that if you want to live a fairly normal peaceful life, you can’t draw too much attention to yourself. Some mental disorders such as multiple personality disorders, borderline personality disorder, phobias, some anxiety disorders, etc  are made by an outside influence or traumatic event, but there are some, such as schizophrenia, sleep terror disorder, bi-polar disorder, etc that are nothing more than the brain working differently than what is considered normal. They are indeed unpredictable and can’t be explained, but what if the people with these “disorders” are experiencing something outside of our realm and reality that is just very misunderstood? We may consider them to be abnormal in the brain, but what if their brains are picking up on something that the rest of the population is missing? What if an autistic child develops senses outside our normal known senses because their brain doesn’t allow them to communicate rationally? Many disorders can be explained through brain chemistry (which still cannot be truly understood), but many are still a mystery. You can’t rule out the possibility that we have taken the non-conforming people of our world and labeled them as nuts simply because they are a minority.
           The point is we don’t know anything for SURE. Even if you show me something and say, “See, there it is! You saw it with your own eyes! That proves to you its real!” it is still only what I am experiencing. And even though you may be having the exact same experience, that does not mean that it is real because someone else may come along and experience it differently. We all experience and interpret things based on our preconceived ideas about life and the universe. We see with our eyes, but our eyes cannot see without the brain telling it what to see. So is it possible that our eyes are taking in a whole lot more than what we are actually experiencing because they have no judgment and limitation like the brain does? If the mind is what is really “seeing” what’s around us, then it would not be able to experience anything past its frame of reference. If we are taught and conditioned that the world is a certain way and brought up in those ways so that we believe it with every ounce of our being, then our experiences would be shaped by those deep rooted beliefs. So literally everything is open to interpretation.
            However, being a person who believes that all of creation is in perfect balance, and we are to be searching and aiming for balance within ourselves, I would have to say that you can take this idea of interpretation way too far. It is quite possible (anything is possible) that we are living in a matrix and nothing we are experiencing is real at all, but if that were true, then why go on living? Why do or believe ANYTHING? To learn and research and gain knowledge would only be in vain! …And, well, I just don’t believe that. I CAN’T believe that.
            We obviously have to settle on some facts and truths to keep society in order. So it’s okay to go along (to a degree) with what history and science, and yes, even experience, teaches us along the way. That knowledge, coupled with an open mind that reminds you that what you “know” may be incorrect, I believe, is what keeps you in balance.  Retain information, and then keep digging. Keep searching. Keep questioning because you may stumble on another fact that destabilizes the information you already know. After all, there was a time when everyone “knew” the Earth was flat. Clearly it is not.
           We are learning new things every day. It’s like pieces to a puzzle that we collect over time and are constantly trying to put them all together. There are still pieces missing, but one day, maybe we will have all the pieces, or at least enough pieces to get a pretty good view of reality.
           There was a time a few years ago, when this knowledge of ignorance (talk about an oxymoron) terrified me. I thought I HAD to know these truths, but now I have accepted that it is out of my hands. Whether I like it or not, I do not have all the pieces. Now, after gaining enough knowledge of the universe, quantum physics, history, mythology, religion, spirituality and the human mind to know that there are more gaps than there are not, it truly intrigues me. For it is not the things I know for sure that keeps me on the edge of my seat in excitement , wanting to live life to the fullest extent, but the mysteries.

Greetings!

     I am new to blogging, but certaily not to writing. I have been writing my thoughts for a very long time now, and I am known to never write just a little. It always seems there is so much on my mind that I find once I start writing, the thoughts just flow freely and I have to actually force myself to stop. You may have noticed this in my first post. I have diarrhea of the mind is what I say. Sometimes I find it difficult to fall asleep at night because of this. I have found a drug free mental decelerator  though... meditation. It helps to slow me down a bit, put my mind at peace, and sort through my thoughts easier. Things become much clearer to me when I meditate.
     The things I think about and meditate on are usually really deep and sometimes unusual and funny in nature. I give life a lot of thought. I really do. Even as a kid, it wasn't unusual for my parents to find me sitting in my room staring at the wall in a catatonic state. I was just zoned out and thinking. And they could come back and hour later and there I would still be, sitting in the same spot staring at the wall. Sounds weird, but being this way has saved me from making a lot of mistakes in my life. I think most people could save themselves a lot of heartache if they would just learn to think before they act.
      So that is why I'm here. I have had several people recommend that I blog about the things I think about. Apparently I have pretty good food for thought and a special way with words. I don't ever claim to know everything or have the correct answers even, but I have been through a whole lot so far in my life and experienced many different things. I have been on both sides of the fence. I have studied enough, researched enough,  lived and paid attention enough to the details of what's going on around me that I feel I know a few things. That is all. Some of my ideas will not work for or even apply to everyone, but they do work for me and my life, and I'm confident that my ways of thinking and doing things can for sure work for many others. But you have to be willing to put down your preconceived ideas about everything and think outside the box for a minute. Before you shoot down something I have said, or just believe it, for that matter, research it for yourself. Know why you believe what you believe and do what you do. I always encourage this. It's the only way you will gain wisdom.
      So get ready to cry a little, laugh a little, be mind boggled and even get a little pissed off... that's okay. You will be challenged and even shocked at times, as I can be rather blunt and open about things. Feel free to comment and ask questions. I am always open to respectful, intelligent conversation. Ok then... let's go!
     

Finding the Balance

      I was looking through pictures recently and found one of myself from high school.  I just stared at it for awhile.  I looked deeply into those young eyes and pulled up memories of myself as a teenager. I could have recalled any memory of myself, but my mind settled on the times when I was just sitting alone in my room or at school, talking to God or just daydreaming. I believe actions speak louder than words, and what you do actually makes who you are, but even more than your actions, I believe what really makes you is what you think about. And not just an occasional thought, but what you think about habitually. What you find yourself coming back to time after time. Before you can put things into action, you must first have the thought of it.  That is why I believe your THOUGHTS are what really define you.  And this is why I suppose I recalled the times I was doing nothing other than thinking to myself. I wanted to remember who I really was back then. I wanted to remember my beliefs and convictions and desires from adolescence.
       I can tell you that the person that most of my peers knew back then, was not fully who I was. What people saw was still definitely me… I mean, I wasn’t pretending… but it wasn’t ALL of me. There was much of me that I didn’t allow people to see because I didn’t think it was right. Meaning, I was literally ashamed of it. When you are raised in the church the way I was, you are taught that certain thoughts are just sinful, so you keep them secret. I shared these thoughts with God, but never anyone else. I had a true heart for God and I was brainwashed to believe that to make God happy and be a good Christian, I had to put those thoughts out of mind. However, no matter how hard I tried… and believe me, I really tried… I just couldn’t. So what I did was battle with myself day after day in my thoughts. And as a means of making sure I didn’t ever act on these thoughts, I overcompensated and acted the complete opposite because I was so afraid of messing up. But the fact is, those thoughts were always filling my head. Those thoughts were me, no matter how much I hated it.
       And now for what all you gossip mongers that know me personally have been waiting for... I will tell you what those secret thoughts were.
       First and foremost, doubts about my religion. I think I doubted every aspect about my religion at least once as a kid, except for one thing… I never EVER doubted that God would always provide for me and bless my life. I don’t know why I never doubted that about God, but I just didn’t. Pretty much everything else I questioned because as much as I had been conditioned from birth to believe it, most of it just didn’t make a whole lot of logical sense to me. But you’re taught from the pulpit that it’s about faith, not facts, and if you doubt and question, then you have no faith in God (which I think is ironic because I had, and still have, more real faith in my pinkie finger than most of my pastors have had in their lifetime). But faith in God isn’t what I was lacking. It was faith in my religion, faith in my pastors, and faith in a book. There were even a few things that I was taught that just blatantly went against my conscience, not to mention the fact that the majority of the people I grew up going to church with, I also went to school with or knew outside of church, and learned they were total hypocrites. But in spite of all that, I didn’t start actually asking questions until I was an adult and had gained more knowledge. In the meantime, I was very passionate about Christianity. I was very forward with it too. Everyone knew what I believed because I talked about it constantly. I was always reading and studying my Bible at school, witnessing to people, and even taught some of the lessons and devotions in the Christian club at school. Like I said, I over compensated.