Be patient. Be perseverant. Be pliant in your placement of power, and precise in your pursuit of peace.
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It is illegal to smoke in this establishment.
- No passing zone.
- Men at work.
- No shoes, no shirt, no service.
- Speeding fines doubled in work zone.
- Slow, children at play.
- Yield to merging traffic.
- Stop.
- Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.
- Must construct additional Pylons.
- The way is shut, it was made by those who are dead, and the dead keep it.
- Please print name.
- Sign here.
How do we function?
So bear in mind, that what you find when you bare your mind, is a bare mind.
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Think for a moment about all the rules and guidelines we follow on a daily basis. Our lives are filled with these rules. Morning to night, birth to death, with each spoken word and inhaled breath, we live within the confines of instruction and dictation, sometimes embracing disaster, sometimes elation. Now, I am not expounding upon this to paint the world as a prison (though you may draw your own conclusions.) I’m writing to color the grass a different hue, somewhere between red and blue. So bear in mind, that what you find when you bare your mind, is a bare mind.
You see, this life we lead, full of want and need, is a lengthy lesson to teach us to become what we were always meant to be. Each one of us has the potential to reach the highest heights we are capable of. We all have the right to soar and we all have the capacity to do so.
For everything has a reason, and everything has a place, and everything has a time.
Lesson 1: Patience is not your only virtue
To be virtuous is to live in a way that shows everyone you are worth something wonderful. You live with the highest regard for the happiness of others. Your respect is incontestable. Your loyalty, unquestionable. And, your depth of character, unfathomable. You live with the most profound ethical and moral standings imaginable. The importance of this is not in just being this way, but existing this way.
Worried? Be patient because you’re probably not there yet. Even at the end of the day… most of us are still on our way.
You’ll be so weak from giving it all you’ve got, that you won’t think there is any more to give
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Life, as you know, is a struggle: A long, unending, ceaseless, sometimes monotonous, always difficult, occasional so bad it makes you want to gouge your eyes out, struggle. Some days you can’t get out of bed. Some days you don’t have a bed. You will try your hardest only to be slapped in the face; so you will try harder and meet the same end, or you will try less and fall short. You’ll be so weak from giving it all you’ve got, that you won’t think there is any more to give. The world will collapse around you. All dark corners once hidden making themselves apparent like assassins disguised as friends. You will get angry and throw yourself at the problem. You will get tired, and then you will get tired of being tired, and you will walk away.
But be patient. Be perseverant. Be pliant in your placement of power, and precise in your pursuit of peace.
To be patient is to understand that you are not waiting for life…
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Patience, you see, is not an emotion, or a state of being, it is a way of living. To be patient is to understand that you are not waiting for life, but life is waiting for you. It’s giving you time to catch up, or to slow down; to breathe, to break, to burn the candle from both ends when need be, and buy a new one when that one’s out. It’s giving you the time you require to reach your goals and find the momentary happiness necessary to tighten your grip and keep you on the rope climbing your way to the top.
You are not the weak person you perceive standing before you in the mirror. You have all the grace your soul has collected through a thousand lifetimes. You are each star and each star’s maker. Your prowess in life is as stupendous as a supernova…
Stand up straight. Take a deep breath. In through your nose and out through your mouth. Live like each lesson ever learned has loomed over your lonely mind since your life began. For it has. You learn what life gives you; through growing, and teaching, and friends, and family, and hope, and love, and faith, and religion, and parties, and sports, and accidents, and births, and deaths — you witness this world and through your beautiful glowing eyes you transcend the madness and the chaos and you decipher a beautiful truth for yourself. Something only you can know…
Lesson two: Follow lesson 1, and don’t ever stop. But also, remember this…
Life is yours. It is all the darkness you’ve ever known come at you at once— because that darkness doesn’t stand a chance against your might; against your potential; against your unerring power. Something stirs beneath your skin, something wild and loud and full of energy, something yearning and loving and all-seeing.
We are the sum of our endeavors, not our triumphs. We are the calculated risk of a thousand natural deaths never happened. We live, existing in this moment, not knowing what the future will bring—there is more potential energy in you than in any stellar body that has ever existed. Infinite possibilities; the capacity to do anything and be anything and go anywhere.
We are the sum of our experiences entwined. We learn only what we allow ourselves to and deny all suppositions, because our assumptions breed the doubt to which we so desperately cling in order to remain safe.
We wait until after the fact and apologize because we didn’t want to be careful or kind or courteous beforehand.
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We claim impunity because of our ignorance, yet we only remain so out of fear. Fear to know. Fear to be aware that our mistakes and our actions could in fact lead to our downfall. That each step could be the last. We toil in our own afflictions, condemning ourselves and stifling our inner strength because of our half-assed decisions, because of our actions or inactions. We wait until after the fact and apologize because we didn’t want to be careful or kind or courteous beforehand. We aren’t bred or born to be vicious and selfish, we are brought up that way. Each virulent and poisonous thought a corruption of our truest strength.
Understand that all things happen. That we are not all perfect creatures. That in life there are flaws as much as there are perfections and each and every facet must be taken into account. Understand that the ultimate act is forgiveness; for others, and for yourself. Understand that you are one; one of many. One of many, lost and searching, sometime never found but always struggling to be seen or heard. Understand that you are a symbol for everyone else. Live like you are that symbol. When the morning light can’t lift your spirits, and you lie prostrate and weak on the floor, nothing in your mind seeming to be enough to get you up. Remember that YOU put yourself there. YOU are to blame and only YOU can fix it. So why wait?
Be patient. Understand that you and you alone have the power to become greater than anything you could have imagined. Be patient enough to understand that things take time. And never forget to persevere.
Lesson C is for Compassion: SEE ALSO — A MIRROR
Everything you need to know you already possess. The knowledge that you are in control. The power to defeat your demons, be it by your own two hands or with the help of those willing to give it. Not all roads are as easy as others; not all those that walk those roads are as strong as you. For they have not gazed upon themselves in the mirror as you have. They have not seen the splendor of a million stars being born at once. They have not seen the potential that furiously stares back at them through open lids.
Do not fear the parade of doubt that plagues your mind.
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Compassion will save us all. Never question an act of kindness given with the best intentions. No one ever went broke from giving. Follow your heart. Chase the ever running colors. Do not fear the parade of doubt that plagues your mind. Sometimes in getting lost, our courage we find. Like all lies left behind. In truth, we are only as gracious as we please. Even as we grow weary from time and disease. Like a captain of the seas; we waft and wave and wander without sight, but in the heart of our hearts is the way through the night. We are the lucky ones, born from billions of stars exploded. We live in perfection, until all of time eroded. And beyond what we seek, beyond truth from above, is the key to all answers, for life, and for love.
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