Honestly, time is going by SO slowly right now. I just want to peace up outta this bitch! I have a ton of work I could be doing, but it's 4:30 on a damn Friday afternoon.

Tomorrow night...

2 birthday celebrations
+ one friend in town from VEGAS
+ bar crawl
--------------------
TROUBLE.

Look for me on Page One of Sunday's newspaper, ladies and gentlemen.

In a previous post, I shared a few helpful quotes from a book I was reading called A New Earth. Oprah had been doing an on-line class about the book (I only watched one and a half episodes), but it seemed to have been working for people so I decided to give it a go.

I ended up reading it twice. You see, I do agree with a lot of the points made but I disagree with the fact that they are clearly trying to relate these teaching with a bunch of different religions. Now, I don't know if the author chose to do this, so that religious people would feel more comfortable knowing that their savior would approve of this book, or maybe he was doing it to prove that most religions are based on similar principles. (gasp! haha)

I am not religious, I am a spiritual person. I think religion is the leading cause of death in this world and I could go into details about this shit, but I don't want to turn this blog into a preaching blog.

I had someone leave me a comment about my previous post on this book and I couldn't comment back because I wanted to read more into it. It looks like yes, Mr. Author is providing Buddhist beliefs in his book but he is giving them credit for it, as well as other religions.

On with the point...

The path of being Present.

What I got from this book is that we all live our lives in the past and future and we are never in the present moment. Constantly thinking and planning and analyzing. Our minds are never at rest. We mind everything. We should just stop minding and we should start BEING.

If we were to BE in the present moment, then we relinquish this ego we all hold onto. This ego that we have put labels on and who we think makes us who we are. We are HUMANS BEING. Not human beings.

To many people right now, I may sound crazy but I honestly KNOW this book has had an impact on my life. It is hard to grasp because we live in this world that is one big ego and we can't escape it. But it is important to see the ego, understand it and not be a slave to it. Which we all are.

Here are some quotes from the book that I had highlighted to make me remember why it is important to keep our minds and spirits in check:

Being right places you in a position or situation of imagined moral superiority in relation to the person or situation being judged. It is a sense of superiority that the ego craves and through which it enhances itself.
Would you rather be right then at peace?

Whenever you feel superior or inferior to anyone, that is the ego in you.

Thought can at best point to the truth, but never IS the truth. That's why Buddhist say, "The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon."

All religions are equally false and equally true, depending on how you use them. You can use them in the service of ego or you can use them in service of the Truth.

Love and do what you will.

Once you realize and accept that all structures (forms) are unstable, even the seemingly solid ones, peace arises within you. This is because the recognition of impermanence of all forms awakens you to the dimensions of the formless within yourself, that which is beyond death.

Defining yourself through thought is limiting yourself.

Be aware that what you think creates the emotions you feel. See the link between your thinking and your emotions, be the awareness behind them.

To love is to recognize yourself in another.

You become most powerful in whatever you do if the action is performed for its own sake rather then as a means to protect, enhance, or conform to your role identity.

Give up defining yourself - to yourself and others. You won't die, you will come to life. And don't be concerned with how others define you. When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so that is their problem. Whenever you interact with people, don't be there primarily as a function or a role, but as a field of conscious Presence.

Why does the ego play roles? That thought is: I am not enough.

To become free of the ego: All you need to do is be aware of your thoughts and emotions as they happen. This is not really a doing but an alert seeing.

Emotion is the body's response to a thought.

In Zen they say: "Don't seek the truth. Just cease to cherish opinions."

The voice in the head has a life of its own. Most people are at mercy of the voice; they are possessed by thought, by the mind. And since the mind is conditioned by the past, you are then forced to reenact the past again and again. The Eastern term for this is Karma.

Nothing ever happened in the past that can prevent you form being present now; and if the past cannot prevent you form being present now, what power does it have?

This too, will pass.

Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself

================================================================

I don't know if any of this will help you. Maybe you don't want help. But I have seen myself and others in a new light. I recommend reading this book with an open mind and see what happens.


I will forever be present.

xo

I has my new computer :) Got it last night, had some trouble getting it to start because one of my sticks of RAM was DOA... but everything else works great. I was getting over 100 FPS in WoW XDD

But I installed Windows Service Pack 3 before I installed IE7 and there appears to be a bug where Windows is like "Oh heeeelllll no!" So now I'm uninstalled SP3 and hoping I can install IE7 and stuff after :/ Sigh.

(Yep, Windows SP3 was the source of my problems! Once I uninstalled it, everything else installed just fine)

Newport News, VA

alright, after we stayed at the hotel we went back down to the vcu area. we stayed under the bridge until one night lyrchs friend cheddar called to say he was coming to get us and take us back to newport news. it was around 5/6 am. i left val and mothballs there. i didnt have time to tell them what was going on. i kinda wish i stayed to see vals face in the morning though cause she got her ass handed to her by pebbles.
anyway we met up with cheddar and heather and they drove us to newport. we got lost and it ended up taking like 6 hours to get back there. we eventually got there and pretty much passed out.
all we really did in newport news was make money and get drunk. then we eventually went back to richmond. and it sucks that i left my cds there cause now i have nothing to listen to. :(

Back to Richmond, VA

when we got back to richmond we went back to the bridge. we were sitting there drinking and the cops rolled up and ran our names and asked us if we knew what happend under the bridge. apparently cowboy got beat up really bad and was in ICU. we heard rob did it. but we found out it wasnt rob who did it, it was some skinhead guy. we eventually found everyone in richmond and i took lyrch back to their squat cause of the shit that was goin down under the bridge. we ended up getting kicked out of that by the cops. but at least i found out i wasnt pregnant.
we found a new squat and everyone stayed there. i got in a fight with lyrch one morning and left to go make money and calm down. i went back later on and he was gone. i didnt find out where he was till i was way to drunk to walk there. the next day he came to look for me and i was looking for him. me, val and mothballs found them and stayed in the bushes in cary town. we hungout with courtney, who is fucking AWESOME. and then we ended up staying at a hotel. i tried to get val to pay for it since i bought the last one we stayed in. but she wouldnt fuckin do it which is a bunch of fucking bullshit. we ended up going 50/50.
then we left and ended up under another bridge and got drunk and the cops rolled up. val was fucking shitfaced. she almost got us arrested. we left her with rob, kevin and jenna. honestly it was more of she wondered off with people she didnt know. so we left and headed to jacksonville, fl. then we caught the bus to st. augustine.

thats all i feel like typing up about my adventure so far. expect more now that im around a computer.

-button

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Incubus
"Warning"

Bat your eyes girl.
Be otherworldly.
Count your blessings.
Seduce a stranger.
What's so wrong with being happy?
Kudos to those who see through sickness...yeah

Over and over and over and over...........

She woke in the morning.
She knew that her life had passed her by
She called out a warning.
Don't ever let life pass you by.

I suggest we
Learn to love ourselves,
Before its made illegal
When will we learn, When will we change
Just in time to see it all come down

Those left standing will make millions
Writing books on ways it should have been

She woke in the morning.
She knew that her life had passed her by
She called out a warning.
Don't ever let life pass you by.

Floating in this cosmic Jacuzzi
We are like frogs oblivious
To the water starting to boil,
Now I flinch and we all float face down

She woke in the morning.
She knew that her life had passed her by
She called out a warning.
Don't ever let life pass you by.
Pass you by.

xo

The Miyavi concert was surprisingly amazing. Admittedly, I went into it with a little bit of a bad attitude, just because I wasn't all too familiar with Miyavi's music...and plus, the crowd was a little intense for me. In general, I'm not a concert-goer. That shit stresses me out to the umpteenth degree. Social anxiety, I guess. But...Matt's friend Kris is a cool dude and we were in great company in that regard. Oh yeah, and the music was great, too. ;) I'm officially rockin' the Miyavi icon now.

I overdid it with the alcohol just a little bit. Okay...a lotta bit. Although I didn't drink any more than I normally would, unusually strong drinks courtesy of some bad ass bartenders coupled with the fact that I hadn't eaten any dinner...well, I'm sure you get the picture. I completely misjudged my tolerance on an empty stomach, and as a result, I'm pretty sure I can never show my face around Downtown Disney again.

Okay, that's not entirely true. I figure if dancing my ass off was the "worst" of my drunken behavior...no harm, no foul.

It was a good Wednesday night.

stephie's recital was on saturday. here is a lovely video!



and mine is this sunday.. yikes!!!!!

On my way to work!
Life is generally picking up-I cant wait until I start with Cirque, playing PA should be a lot of fun for the summer. Part of me wishes I had picked up a job in programming, but I am more interested in just enjoying life in the summers right now, then preparing myself for real life.

My fourth VISA should be arriving in the mail soon [Yay!] which will be specifically for gasoline that will be covered by work and my daddy. So pumped for the end of summer~

Took a weird photo before work [I LOVE doing the barista thing, its SO fun to learn and I am definitely buying an espresso machine in September!] , for some reason my home computer super-pixed it~





Hope everyone is enjoying summer!

jay and i have had sex 3 times in the past 2 days.. it's been awesome. i hope it stays like this. i want to get back to how it used to be!