Balls Of Fire

What happens when you’re in a hatred environment? What happens when you’re threatened? How’s your reality changed by this? What is your first reaction in case of aggression?

The standard answer when you’re threatened is to respond in kind. To fight back. To protect yourself. Responding to hate by hate, to threat by threat, that’s what we’ve been taught to do for centuries. It’s like you’re receiving a hot ball and in order to avoid getting hurt, you’re passing back the ball, possibly with even more heat on it. That’s the standard answer.

The “smarter” answer (as opposed to standard) is to observe the ball thrown at you and do nothing. Yes, you will get burned if you touch it, that’s right. So, why touching it in the first place? Why letting it reach you? Instead of accepting it, switch your focus from the reaction state, to the witnessing state: just observe it, see where it goes, don’t interact. You’ll have the breakthrough of your life.

Because the ball doesn’t really get to you, if you don’t allow it. That’s amazing! I know it sounds pretty strange and voo-doo-ish, but it really works like this. Once you start to just observe the things, to witness with detachment, you will see them in a very different way. Even more, by observing things instead of accepting them into your reality, you reach some kind of power over them. You will be able to allow or disallow them to reach you.

This is something really difficult to perceive and even more difficult to accept. I confess it took me a lot to even understand that. Reading about this really helps, that’s true, and I read a lot about how witnessing, observing your reality, without interaction, can actually change it. But you have to do it, not to read about it, in the first place. And it’s the direct experience of this attitude which reveals this incredible mechanics. (By all means, do not consider I’m a master on this technique, I just know enough to write a blog post about it. All I know is it works.)

Observing versus Giving Attention

There’s a huge difference between observing something and giving attention to something. Since we’re going to use those terms a lot in this post, let’s make a quick round up.

Observing means witnessing something, without any involvement. Giving attention to something means acting on that thing somehow: reacting emotionally to it, rationalizing it, comparing it with past experiences, doing something about it, anything.

Observation is stillness. Attention is focused movement.

Observing is non-action, attention is always seconded by action.

Gravity and Reality

Now let’s get back to our balls of fire.

You can’t receive something you don’t want. Every time you’re receiving something is because you accepted it. Being it a present, a relationship, your job, money, health… Or anger, illness, scarcity… You let it into your life. If you step back and look at the world from an observer place you’ll have this image very close to the planets and satellites: all the stuff that surrounds you is kept together by your own personal gravity. And the gravity which keeps your world together is your attention. The stuff around you, what you call your reality is orbiting around only because you accepted it and focused on it. You make your world living by giving it your attention.

Now if you’re not giving any attention whatsoever to some stuff, you’ll actually observe it floating away. There’s no more gravity to keep it close to you. Just think at something you didn’t think for a long time and you’ll have this feeling of distance. That thing seems so far away. Yes, that thing really is far away, because you didn’t offer it your undivided attention. The moment your focus shifted towards it, the thing started to get close to you.

Without your attention, things are just floating around. You create your environment by attracting stuff into your life the same way planets are keeping things on their surface with gravity.

So, now you realize that the ball of fire doesn’t have any direction of all. It is just a meteorite wandering through space.The author of a threat doesn’t direct the ball at you. Yes, he may use your name, he may use his mental projection of what he thinks is you, but it cannot make the ball land on your planet. Unless you give him permission to do this. The ball doesn’t really have any direction, it floats around, like any other thing which doesn’t receive your attention. It’s you who’re giving it mass and shape, by shifting your focus towards it.

What Goes Up Must Go Down

Now, what really happens when you’re not accepting hate at all? When you’re just observing the balls of fire and not allowing them into your reality? They drop. Most of the time. Most of the hate you receive or you get exposed to is circumstantial. It’s a result of chaotic situations, confusions or misunderstandings. This type of hate will just drop off. It’s like interplanetary meteorites lost in space. Consequences of small accidents, debris of violent but short and blind interactions.

But when the hate or threat is calibrated, ignoring it creates a surprising consequence: the ball goes back to the sender. When a ball of fire is calibrated it gets an extra weight. It’s not incidental anymore. It’s like a volcano erupting from a planet with so much power, that the ball of fire actually lifts off from the atmosphere and is thrown away in space. It’s something way bigger than a meteorite. It’s not floating around like a light, circumstantial ball. And it’s exactly this weight which makes the ball finding its way back to the sender. The ball is attracted by gravity. If it doesn’t find a suitable place to land (meaning: you’re not giving it the benefit of having a physical mass by your attention, you’re just witnessing it) the ball will look for the closest planet. And of course, that’s the sender.

In real life, this is a somehow hidden process. Not always the threat one sends come back to him in its exact form. Most of the time, the hater goes through a painful process without any visible connection to his initial threat. It may be an accident, an illness, some bad incident or any other kind of difficulties. The sender doesn’t really knows what hit him. In his reality system, he got rid of the ball, or so he thinks. He eliminated something from his system, and the only form he’s expecting that thing came back to him is your version of a ball of fire. If you don’t throw nothing back, he’ll assume his threat finished its cycle. Only it didn’t.

I saw this process from both ends. I was both the hater and the hated. And it worked on both situations. While I was hating somebody, and that person either ignored me, either didn’t really pay any attention to me, I found myself in violent circumstances. Accidents, violent incidents that I didn’t deserve to be part of. Or so I thought.

And when I was hated and let the hate pass me by, the perpetrator faced the same situations: accidents, illness or pressuring surroundings. At the first sight there wasn’t any logical, rational connection between the ball of fire and the violent incident. Only at the first sight.

Love and Hate

An ignored ball of fire will always land of the sender. It may be in a different form, the energy of that meteorite has been somehow modified by circumstances, but it will always come back to the sender. If no one wants it, it will come to the source.

But if you really want something, if you put all your attention and love in that specific thing, it will finally be attracted. Your attention made that thing slowly come to you. Love is acting in the same way.

In fact, love and hate are the same force, only with different polarity.

Hate is what loves sees in a twisted mirror. Hate has the same power and it will change your life at the same level love will. Except hate is destructive and love is fulfilling. They both use the same energy. One is building, the other one destroys. They are both powerful gravitational fields around you. And they attract their kind.

Why Is This So Difficult?

If things are really as simple as described, then why is it so difficult to manage a violent situation? Why hate is still there? Why people are getting hurt every day?

Because pain is real. Being hurt is real. You can’t always avoid a ball of fire thrown at you. Hitting one every once in a while is part of the game. Accept it or not, believe it or not, you do have parts in yourself which are attracting balls of fire. Most of them are placed under the surface, in what we call “the unconscious mind”. This is why you’re not always aware of the cause. But just because you’re not aware at the moment, that doesn’t mean you didn’t attracted it.

This is why is important to observe yourself instead of act upon those balls of fire. In time, you’ll start to see some patterns. You’ll start to identify similar situations. You start to find continents on your planet which are attracting balls of fire. And the only way to avoid other balls of fire is to start working on those continents. Because this is all you have.

Your reality is the only thing you have control on. You can’t control other people’s realities. All you can do is to work your attraction fields. Understand why are you attracting those balls of fire and how you can manage them. You have total control of your planet. You are the one who built that ecosystem, and you can still modify it whenever you want.

Maybe you won’t be able to solve it instantly. It may take years. But if you accept that you do attract some balls of fire into your life, you’ll be at least aware of that. You’ll understand that pain may be unavoidable, but suffering is optional.

At some point, those balls of fire you used to receive day and night, burning your forests and drying your oceans will stop landing on your planet.

All you’ll see will be some trails on the sky. Maybe somebody just thrown a huge ball of fire at you. But since your focus is somewhere else, all you’ll see will be a trail on the sky.

77 Reasons To Love Your Life

Too often we find more reasons to hate our life than to love it. And you know what? Life hates us back. Here are 77 reasons to love your life. Pick one or add your own in the comments.

1. love your life for everything you already have
2. love your life for what you are yet to receive
3. love your life for all your certainties
4. love your life for the friends you have
5. love your life for the wonderful journeys you had
6. love your life for the friends you will get
7. love your life for all the bad advice you didn’t follow
8. love your life for your beautiful memories
9. love your life for the ones you love
10. love your life for the ones you forgot, as they are still to enrich your life
11. love your life for the work you do, as this is your gift to the others
12. love your life for the jokes you still wait to hear
13. love your life for the beautiful travels you are still to make
14. love your life for everything you are not sure about, as it will still challenge your being
15. love your life for all the beautiful sunrises you remember
16. love your life for all the fantastic sunsets you still recall
17. love your life for tomorrow’s sunrise
18. love your life for yesterday sunset
19. love your life for the gifts you are yet to receive
20. love your life for the health you have
21. love your life for all the beauty you can spot around you
22. love your life for the ugliness around you, as it serves you to contrast the beauty you are ignoring
23. love your life for the riddles you haven’t yet solved
24. love your life for all your unanswered questions
25. love your life for all your victories
26. love your live for all the good advice you followed
27. love your life for all your lost battles, as they are your precious lessons
28. love your life for your enemies, as they are there to give birth to you forgiveness
29. love your life for all the small things in your life
30. love your life for all the ambitious goals you’ve set
31. love your life for all the answers you got so far
32. love your life for the smiles you get every day
33. love your life for the smiles you give every day
34. love your life for your energetic mornings
35. love your life for your romantic evenings
36. love your life for the life rediscovered through the eyes of your children
37. love your life for the smell of the rain
38. love your life for the gifts you still have to make
39. love your life for all the games you haven’t yet played
40. love your life for the next first snow
41. love your life for all the great ideas you had today
42. love your life for all the great ideas you will have tomorrow
43. love your life for tomorrow’s surprises
44. love your life for today’s gifts
45. love your life for all your fulfilled dreams
46. love your life for yesterday’s memories, they are there to enlight you
47. love your life for all the nice words you haven’t yet said to your loved ones
48. love your life for all the nice words you heard from your loved ones
49. love your life for all the nice people you haven’t yet met
50. love your life for all your mistakes, so you can have plenty of time to make up for them
51. love your life for all the adventures you haven’t yet had
52. love your life for all the books you haven’t yet read
53. love your life for all the books you haven’t yet written
54. love your life for all the unborn challenges you still have to face
55. love your life for all the stories you haven’t yet heard, written or imagined
56. love your life for the person who’s looking at you from the mirror every morning
57. love your life for the nurturing family you already have
58. love your life for all you have to share with others
59. love your life for all you’ve lost in your journey, as it will only make room for something even bigger
60. love your life for the feeling of your heart overflowing with love
61. love your life for all your unfulfilled dreams as you will have plenty of time to make them true
62. love your life for all the opportunities that are waiting for you just around the corner
63. love your life for the personal freedom you conquered
64. love your life for everything you created so far
65. love your life for the beauty of every spring
66. love your life for the energy of every summer
67. love your life for the emotions of every fall
68. love your life for the cold beauty of every winter
69. love your life for all the beauty inside you, waiting yet to be discovered
70. love your life for all the fantastic colors that are shaping your world every day
71. love your life for all the wonderful music you’ve heard so far
72. love your life for all the people you have met so far, they are your precious universe
73. love your life for wind that caresses your face every day
74. love your life for the all the unexpected changes of your plans
75. love your life for all the fights you avoided
76. love your life for all the crossroads you meet every day, they are there to offer you the best path you can chose
77. love your life for every single second, as this is all you have, only this infinite second

Feel free to take this list and put it in your blog (with a link back to the original) and then add your own reasons. Feel free to tag your blogger friends and turn this into a meme. I only wrote 77 reasons for now but there are millions out there. Let’s share them

The Guardians

Don’t stay up late in the evening! Don’t start a fight with your boss! Don’t buy that expensive car! Don’t walk on fire! These are all powerful affirmations which share a strong point: they’re all interdictions. These are sentences performed by a bunch of interesting guys inside us which we are too often ignoring: our guardians. In today’s post I’ll share some of my thoughts about how I deal with inner interdictions.

Meet The Forbidders

It’s amazing how much we define our environment by interdictions and limitations. If you take the time to assess for one day how many interdictions you are obeying you’ll be surprised. I know I was.  There are so many unconscious NO’s we’re performing every minute. Don’t climb on the walls of your house! Don’t wear a sock on your hand! For god sake, don’t scream out of nowhere, with no reason at all, or you’re neighbors will be horrified!

The Forbidders are a very big and functional team inside ourselves. They’re very organized and experienced, and they almost never forget anything. They know what they have to do and do it with amazing precision. The Forbidders are responsible for keeping us safe as well as for keeping us bored. They’re responsible for our physical integrity (don’t jump off off that building, please) as well as for our cowardice (don’t try something new today, it’s risky).

The Forbidders are on a deep love / hate relationship with our true self. They are loved for maintaining a functional status-quo of our being by keeping us out of potential dangers. They are hated for maintaining a dull status-quo of our being by forbidding us to take risks and evolve. The Forbidders are brilliantly playing a double role: they’re as much protectors as they are limiters. (more…)

Managing Abundance

So, you want more. Good for you. You want more time, more money, more stuff, more satisfaction, more life. Great! You strive for abundance which, by the way, happens to be our natural state as human beings. But are you prepared for that? Are you really ready to enjoy what you wish?

I’m not talking from a philosophical, law-of-attraction-ish standpoint. I’m talking from a very practical, day to day approach for managing your future abundance. If you consciously chose abundance and if you achieve it honestly, then you have to be able to actually manage it.

During my life I had several abundance thresholds. When I left home and came in my country’s main town to study, I had virtually nothing. I worked during my studies and I successfully managed to financially sustain myself during that time, and I did it more than decent. During next years I passed over several abundance milestones: from going out of the student’s hostel to rent my own apartment, later to buy my own apartment, and even later to move into my own house. Which, by the way, I discovered I had to clean a lot.

Each time I reached those milestones I faced several challenges. Each time I had to cope with a bigger flow of stuff coming into my life. But it wasn’t only stuff, it was more than that. I realized that abundance can walk into your life by taking one of the following three shapes. There is another one, the 4th shape, but I reserved a special chapter to it, at the end of this post.

1. You can have more stuff: 2 cars instead of one, a house instead of an apartment, more gadgets, more clothes, more things – you know the drill…
2. You can have more action: going to the gym, socializing in a different way, making appearance to new events, doing something completely new – everything that your new status requires from you to do in order to keep it up and running
3. You can be involved in new relationships: new friends, new social positions for you, a pool guy, a maid, a chauffeur, or just new persons that needs your constant attention

Don’t laugh. Or if you laugh just keep reading because this is about you and the abundance you are eager to achieve. It will include all this stuff. It will change your life. It will challenge you at a very deep level. It’s ok to laugh, as long as you’ll be prepared.

Failing to realistically manage your abundance can have unpleasant consequences. You can find yourself overwhelmed and lose track of your possessions, or you can fail in managing your new level of relationships and let your wealth slip through your fingers. Or you can be fooled into a “don’t deserve this because I don’t don’t know how to handle it” pattern, which is even worse than the first situation.

So here comes the practical advice: (more…)

Personal Mission Statement

I’m writing this post under quite a pressure. This is coming from my personal life, where apparently we reached a point when things must be changed. It was never a totally transparent personal life, there were always some closed windows, and I never wanted to look through those windows. I totally believed that those windows were closed for good. I assumed that everything was exactly as shown, no hidden windows, but apparently I was wrong. Whatever must come out of this, it should be for the better. It’s a crossroad I must solve.

I won’t go into further details about that. I don’t think that my personal life is worthy enough for public exposure, and even if I would, I won’t make it public out of shyness. Or decency, call it what you want.

What I would do though, it’s to continue my chosen path in regard with this blog. I established a schedule and I intend to keep it as much as I can, even under stressful events. Maybe some of you will think that this is strange, and I should focus on solving those problems first, and then work on this blog again. While I totally agree with the fact that I should solve those problems, I don’t think that I should focus only on that and let other parts of the mechanism to fall apart.

I think that we’re made of different commitments and that every commitment, being personal, social or business, must be fulfilled. If there is unbalance in one category, keeping the other categories working is a must in order to keep the machine working. Otherwise the machine will stop for good, and everything will be lost. It’s hard to do it, don’t get me wrong, the pressure I have right now is really hard to describe and I don’t wish for anybody to go through this. Anyway, to make a long story short, I might post smaller articles and not keep up with the intended pace, but I’ll do whatever it takes to keep my commitments.

It’s funny how the synchronicity in our life can manifest. Today I scheduled a blog post about “Personal Mission Statement”. I wrote earlier about the necessity of a personal mission statement, and today I’ll outline mine. (more…)