by Liz B | Jan 3, 2024 | Reflections, Writing
I stopped writing for a while… for many reasons really. One reason I’ll admit is when ChatGPT became readily available, I felt that my writing would lose value, or there was less to write about anymore that would have any impact. I felt deflated.
Now as some time has passed, I feel the opposite. Instead I feel that our personal voices matter more than ever, in a world that is increasingly becoming full of automation and scripts (programs, AI, etc). We need more real connection, and technology can help that but it can also hinder it, as most of us have seen ourselves.
In addition to that, I’ve realized the value of writing for myself. For taking the time to get more in touch with my own thoughts, to articulate them, and expand on them. It’s an activity that stimulates the prefrontal cortex part of our brains as well, and so helps keep you mentally sharp.
Lastly, I make many discoveries as I traverse through this journey we’re all on, and I’d like to document them to some degree to look back on later. And hopefully, my words can continue to help others as well.
I used to primarily post my thoughts on Instagram, but I began to grow tired of social media, and recognized that as something that was also subtly draining my energy at times.
2023 was a really hard year for me, and I’ve had to really pare things down as my energy was getting spread far too thin through multiple jobs and people in my life. I had to really be strict about putting boundaries around certain things. Even too many notifications on my phone would start to overwhelm me — in fact even seeing the notification badge of the number of unread messages on any given app I use started to contribute to my stress.
I had to learn to prioritize myself and my time in many ways; to listen to myself in silence again. I’ve found that without doing that, and losing myself in work or whatever else, my life energy actually weakens. Getting through the days becomes more difficult, and I am doing just the minimum to get by. Whereas really tuning everything external out and going within enhances my life energy and I’m able to actually be energized for other things in return.
Lately, I feel I’ve become more human than ever, in the sense that my ego is less in control. I’m more practical and focused on just living as well as I can while I’m here.
Going forward, I’d like this website to be more of a personal reflection of me and my life, more than just purely a display of information that I’m interested in and pursuing. Right now the layout of the site gives more of an informational feel than it does a personal feel, so I’ll be fine-tuning the layout and continuing on with more content that is personal to me that I also feel will be beneficial to others.
Here’s to another year around the sun…(hopefully) another year of more lessons, experiences, and memories.
by Liz B | Feb 26, 2022 | Reflections, Self-Improvement, Spirituality, Writing
Some of us are called to walk very unique and lonely paths in life that test us in every way possible. Sometimes these paths are rarely understood or talked about, and so often you must walk them alone.
These experiences can take you places you never imagined to be real. Something that makes you intuitively realize… this is not ordinary. This is not a typical part of this world we live in here. This is a touch of something higher.
But yet… they resonate with you. There’s something familiar about them. Like you’re just remembering something you long had forgotten.
And they will then often bring up the most intense triggers, attachments, fear, pain, you name it…it is a battlefield of the ego and the soul, and I’ve been on this field (consciously) for over half my life.
They shake the ground you walk on so radically that you cannot be the same person afterwards.
While it happens you are so fully captivated by it, only to be thrown back to the wolves afterwards. But now you have a new spark inside you, a seed has been planted…this marks the beginning of a new journey… to at least understand what the hell you just saw.
This journey can beat you repeatedly down to the ground while you’re flailing about like a fish until finally you realize you have no control over it and all you can do is surrender.
We sometimes face the deepest depths of hell and end up dying to ourselves, only so we can truly be reborn to a new reality and deeper understanding of our real selves.
This is the ultimate destruction of who you thought you were, required to make room for the new.
by Liz B | Jan 3, 2022 | Reflections, Self-Improvement, Spirituality, Thoughts and Reflection
Maybe I wasn’t meant to be a mother, wife, or hell even a partner. I realized I’d be happy, after all, just continuing to explore all my hobbies and live and die by my ideas and personal discoveries.
My first love in life told me I had an artist’s mind, we were maybe only about 15 or 16 when he said that. But I never forgot it. And he’s right. My imagination is actually extraordinarily entertaining and I never run out of ideas or things to do.
One thing I know for sure though is I’m pretty good at following my heart and I’ve been blessed to have a lot of unique experiences that people can easily look at me as crazy for, really shocked to find out that I did it all drug free lol but anyhow what I wanted to really say here is that if you have a different path in life than most, it really CAN be scary to follow it. It can be easier to just sweep that shit under the rug and ignore some of your deepest feelings. I’ve done it, and it surprised me that I did it. I’ve never been that type. I don’t suppress my emotions. I vent things, I address them, I’ve never run away from my emotions. Until…the fear or uncertainty associated with them was simply too much. I thought I could just ignore it til it resolved itself….until it didn’t. Sometimes it becomes easier to live a “practical” “normal” life. Everyone else around you seems to be doing it. And you have all those reinforcers around you all the time. People and their gatherings, their cozy families, their secure jobs. All seeking the same thing. But what if you have a different calling?
In all my past spiritual experiences, things people often never heard of were happening to me. I followed them because all I felt then was fascination. But once fear became involved or obstacles I didn’t have clarity on? Well that’s easy, I’ll just cover that up for now with my day-to-day goals and activities. But something kept nagging at me. Year after year after year. Nagging at me not to ignore it. Til I was like god, fine – what do you want? And realized something had to change. I had to try to conquer my fears and what other people were telling me was best.
I had common fears of ending up alone or wanting kids but then it being too late. Another fear was that I’d end up suffering alone in old age, lonely, in pain, with no resources to help me. I honestly have no idea where that fear came from (or any of these really), except maybe that that’s more or less what happened with my dad, and I saw his suffering, and naturally, it affected me greatly.
Of course, you want to live in a practical and smart way, but the cost of doing things out of fear or because “you’re supposed to” comes at the cost of living your truth and potentially paving a very unique path that will light the way for others. For me, this would be an extra big mistake because the intuition I have that calls me is so strong. I don’t know exactly what it means, but the callings always feel significant. And despite my fears, I can’t ignore them. You have to drop all expectations and be open and ready for anything. So — here’s to living your truth and facing your fears. Happy 2022!
by Liz B | Dec 31, 2021 | Reflections, Relationships
In relationships, most of us at some point eventually, (and often unfortunately through the course of pain), learn to put ourselves first. This is a massive lesson that often takes multiple heartbreaks and life experiences. To finally not seek completion of ourselves or our lives in some way through another or shy away from facing what’s deep within us.
We may have never even felt as though we were doing that (I didn’t), until we look back and see how we compromised in places that maybe we shouldn’t have. Many of us have built our lives around a long-term relationship and our identity becomes so intertwined with it that it’s anxiety-inducing to think about living a life alone again, and facing things maybe we didn’t have to face before.
On top of this, our lives are full of projections. Even when we might know this intellectually, we rarely see when it’s coming into play in the moment. We’re constantly projecting our ideas of things onto another person or situation. This can make it so that we barely see the actual entire character of the other person. And that’s what’s dangerous about becoming so intertwined with another, without also having the strength to stand up for yourself when you’re not being seen or treated correctly.
The dynamics of relationships can also cause distortion issues. During arguments or a breakup, acting out of pain can make you seem desperate or even clingy. It can make you ignorant or vengeful, depending on if you’re willing or able to face and address your pain or not. It can make you vulnerable, and like you’re putting the other person above you, respecting them more than yourself in those moments, which in turn can make them want to respect you less.
Just remember in any case, conflict is normal and we all have faults we must work through, but a baseline of general respect should never be missing.
“I’m all I need…not another soul can set me free…no more sneaking around to find myself. no more ignoring signs to blind myself to the truth…focusing too much on adulthood and forgetting my youth. the reasons i am me. You should never have to cheat…with yourself.” —artikulate/cory russo
by Liz B | Dec 11, 2021 | Consciousness, Reflections, Spirituality, Wisdom
“The King” by Martin Robson
I often envision a king figure that is a wise masculine and has mastered balance in all areas. A being that is intimately acquainted with the depths of darkness and suffering, only to rise above it with only more strength and perspective. He is a visionary, and being near him you sense that within him is the collective perspective of so many stories and lives, almost as though he’s lived all of them at one point himself, and maybe he has. His awareness and understanding lives in all; whether it be the homeless man on the street that has lost hope of seeing his family again, the criminal that was made by an abusive upbringing, the brainwashed religious extremist that knows evil as good, the rich person who has never known what it meant to struggle, the musician who plays music on the street and lives a frugal, humble life filled with doing what they love most. He sees all as part of life’s collective beating heart, despite the absolute darkness that can and does exist. No story or possibility of our lives on this planet is left out of his vision, and you can see it in his eyes. His perspective has become much more massive than his own individuality.
He has emotional mastery — expressing his emotions fully and without self-judgment, and then letting them go without attachment. He has incredible physical strength and is capable of what we could consider negative emotions such as anger, but only uses it for the highest good.
He is a true individual in the purest sense, courageous and perceptive enough to have followed his own intuition while not getting dragged down by common values, yet his identity is not at all limited to a shallow, self-serving, hedonistic sense of self.
He has achieved balance and full integration of light and dark, relentless strength and tender gentleness, lightheartedness and seriousness. His purpose is now to be a role model for beings to simply show them what is possible for those willing to listen; those daring to uncover and follow what’s deep within themselves — a journey that never ends, a world within a world.
Thanks to the artist for this beautiful piece and for inspiring these thoughts in me!
Visit artist’s profile at: https://www.instagram.com/martinrobsonart/
by Liz B | Jul 23, 2021 | Reflections
I’ve been thinking about morality a lot recently in seeing how much that people’s characters can be led astray through greed, attachment to validation and other ego-grooming activities, etc. without realizing it’s happening, and what the consequences are for those actions.
None of these are new concepts to most of us because we often hear about this from our involvement or learning of religions or even just in how we were raised.
I personally never paid attention to religion, despite being raised and baptized Mormon. It never had any lasting effect on what I believed, no matter how much my Grandma tried to tell me that the Mormon church was the true church (haha).
But, I have a very strong sense of morality, and I am consistently witnessing people who maybe have an idea of what morality is for them but when it comes down to certain actions or life situations, they have no real strong “center” within them that keeps them from actually doing certain things or forming addictions to things.
This got me thinking about where my strong sense of morality comes from and how it was developed. I realized that the unwavering morality I have is linked to a deep understanding of cause and effect.
This is where it gets tricky, because to have a deep understanding of true cause and effect (not over-conceptualized cause and effect based on what we think is good or bad), we have to be very in tune with our own thoughts and actions and see how those interact with our external world on very subtle levels.
Like everything else, it once again is linked with understanding of the self. The more you reflect and think and allow yourself to get in touch with your self beyond your conditioning and other external influences, the more you’ll have your own mind and your sense of self and ideologies will be less of a product of what’s around you.
This deep understanding of the self will then lead to values that are based on understanding what creates real contentment: integrity and staying true to yourself, understanding what does and doesn’t TRULY fulfill you, understanding that holding on to negativity towards another only affects YOU, and so on.
So if we don’t ever explore ourselves beyond the surface, we won’t unearth that “center” within us.
If you aren’t in touch with the deepest part of you, then it’s that much easier to sell your character for whatever surface level values you might have.
That being said, I don’t believe putting the label of “good” and “bad” on things is helpful whatsoever, or even relevant.
It’s more helpful to think of it in a train of processes, without the emotion, exactly as it is. For example: Making up lies about someone to further one’s own gain not only is a bad reflection of character and can backfire, but actually lessens the amount the person will end up trusting themselves and their own feelings, which can end up having detrimental effects in many ways.
This is much more useful than just attaching a value judgment such as “good” or “bad” to any specific action.
What people are often missing when they do something that has a negative effect, is how it affects their feelings about their own selves, because they might shelf that or push it away.
Anyway, this is a deep topic that I need to explore further in another post. The levels of cause and effect in themselves can be so difficult to articulate. But today was a start 🙂
