One Lucky Soul: OLS Reflections 37

The more healthy sexuality is repressed, the more people develop feelings of guilt and shame about it. As a natural consequence, this can often lead them to sexual perversion among other neurotic compulsions.

Your evil twin is still your twin. You may sometimes battle but you also like to snuggle. The one and only way is to learn how to work together rather than against each other. Because wherever you go, there you are.

  As humans with a language made up of symbols, we tend to put labels on everything we perceive and experience. Unbeknownst to us, this tends to confuse the observation or experience itself — our reality — with our thoughts and emotions about them. The brain then creates its own scenarios which eventually come to convince us that this is it.

The act of snapping out of The Zone is not only beneficial when artists are faced with a creative block, but during normal times as well. And every creative mind would concur. Think of those creative juices as what you produce when you orgasm. You are required to take breaks to be able to produce more, and stepping away is how you recharge. The reason I use this analogy is because I have noticed over the years that whenever I’m immersed into a heavy topic I don’t think of sex as much as I normally do.

When we are born into this life, we usually keep doing what the elders have taught us. We mimic what their own elders have taught them. We become replicas of the parent generation, which is more or less a replica of their own parents’ generation. Some way or another, we take on parts of their identities and we persist into them until they become ours — forgetting our own individuality in the process.

The remarkable thing in this process is that it quite subtle, as it happens unconsciously. You don’t actually sit down to think why you have become so much like your father or mother. It just happens gradually over the years without you, or them, realizing it. You wake up one day finding yourself already there. This is the scary part.

If you want to know how much a dream means to you, consider what you’re willing to give up in order to reach it. But one thing is certain, you must believe in it more than you care about the opinions of others.

The occasional eye contact between band members is as essential as the nod between security personnel. It reassures them that all is going smooth and that they are all doing great. For the musicians, beside helping that no one really goes out of tune, there is also this certain dreamy-gaze moment of sharing the ecstatic high with them. This has a tremendous energetic effect on the players as well as on the music.

True awareness lies in the power of pure observation. It is our ability to observe without the corresponding thoughts and emotions; no analysis, judgment, evaluation, or obsession are needed. Our thoughts are programmed to create interpretations of the outside world in the same way sensations create emotions. Imaginary ‘events’ then invade the mind. They create problems that were never there and drain our energy, which is followed by worrying and overthinking about the imaginary scenarios. It could truly lead to a miserable loop of a life... or madness.  

This whole process, however, can be observed through pure awareness. When you go higher than the non-sense our thoughts and emotions usually create, you end up by not taking part in it; in the same way an eagle rises above the storm. A reason how the fuscous storms life occasionally throws at us teach us how to fly. For in each cloud there is a silver lining.