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 | Jan 30, 2023 | Attachment, Love, Thoughts and Reflection, Writing
A few years back I met not the perfect person, but the perfect love.
When he left months later because it was the right thing to do at the time, I thought I wouldn’t struggle so much but I had no idea what I was in for. I’ve been heartbroken before, I’ve met what I considered soulmates before, but this was different. It felt like a part of my soul was ripped from me and I was left out here in what felt like an isolated desert, alone and incomplete.
It felt like life showed up and said “oh here’s a piece of your soul” then stripped it away suddenly, like some kind of sick joke.
But…through all that darkness I slowly became more stable, stronger, wiser, and more self-aware. However the most amazing thing is that what has remained is that love I felt, despite all of my mental noise and emotions throughout these years. Despite all my attachment to what I thought it needed to be. Despite my doubt.
Honestly, I’m more amazed by the nature of the love itself than I am with anything else. It’s pristine: like a diamond, only having gotten more refined under pressure. It’s always there in the background, radiating light even while my mind can bring on darkness and shield it momentarily from my view.
This is Love. Absolutely radiant, everlasting, unconditional, and it brings me joy all by itself! When expressed fully, it can heal one’s deep seated wounds in an instant, and absolutely nothing at all has been required to keep it replenished.
Because I was so used to the feeling of “love” being altered by my own perceptions from moment to moment, I was surprised when this didn’t behave the same way, especially after years.
If I hadn’t been so busy with my attachments, I could have just sat back and immersed myself in the beauty that is really is. But that is life, and we’re here to learn.
by Liz B | Feb 26, 2022 | Thoughts and Reflection, Writing
You can touch true divinity while on earth. The often difficult part is the longing for what you experienced after it fades into a memory, and you’re left to re-integrate with your current reality.
An awakening soul will in the beginning of the journey come to a fork in the road, a choice between two worlds. They can’t imagine continuing the way they have, it no longer fits them. But they are afraid of what lies ahead. It requires a great deal of faith in themselves and they will have little to no social or societal validation. They aren’t sure they are ready for the journey. But, continuing on their old path will at some point mean denial of what they experienced and ultimately of their own truth deep within.
They will bear deep challenges but in the end they will be gaining the courage to always be living their highest truth — a sight not often seen in the world. With this comes capability of knowing higher worlds and principles such as divine love, deep humility, and much greater insight into the self.
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 27, 2020 | Love, Writing
Let’s talk about love. For me, this quote by Krishnamurti (philosopher) picks out one of the most true aspects I see in relationships. I’ve thought a lot about love, and what it is. Because for me I always truly believed real love was possible, but I felt that for love to be real, it didn’t make sense that it would just start to go away after you break up with someone. That would mean the love you felt was based on something temporary. Like some kind of conditions or desires they were fulfilling for you. And could we truly call that love?
Being “in love” on the other hand is a bit different because those feelings do fade at some point. Which does not mean they are not meaningful, but shows that you feel something for another that eventually will lose its “newness.” The fact of the matter is that I rarely see true love in relationships, and I believe it reflects the general awareness state of ourselves as humans in this period of time.
Truly loving someone means that it doesn’t come from a place where you only love them if they fit into some mental model you have either of who they are or what they’re doing (or not doing). You’re able to truly let go of those things and appreciate them, exactly as they are!
Truly loving someone does not mean that you need to be bound to them in any way. You need the right timing and compatibility to be committed to someone in a partnership. But you can truly love someone whether those things are in place or not.
It’s also okay if we aren’t sure if we have truly loved yet. I don’t think every relationship necessarily will contain real love.
Sometimes you have to be in a place where you are ready to actively love in that way. This happens naturally when you have come to a place where your ego doesn’t have such a firm hold on you. Where your inner world has expanded beyond yourself to a certain degree to make room for a true appreciation and compassion for others. This takes time. You learn through experience to see how often our ideas of who someone is can taint this as well, so you learn to slowly let go of those to really be able to SEE someone for what they are.I also believe that love is the most fundamental thing between two people even if the relationship doesn’t last.
Too many humans are operating in the world with themselves as the center — so the filter for their entire experience of life (not just relationships) is very much solely about fulfilling their needs, though this is invisible to them at the time. We are used to operating from within ourselves because that’s all we’ve known. But once you get to a certain point in self-realization and awareness, an inner shift will start to happen that will expand your life’s filter to be truly more inclusive of others. This is really a prerequisite to being able to come from a place where we’re not always evaluating something’s value to us based on our mental models but truly appreciating it as it is.
It is normal during our growth phases in life that we NEED to focus on ourselves. But I feel too many stay stuck in that for many reasons. It all comes from within. We must come to know and understand ourselves to begin to make that inner shift.
I’ll tell you many people are very surprised and often confused when I explain that I have been in relationships with people whom even if I’m not with them now, still truly love and care for them just the same. If the love is true and based on the right things, why shouldn’t you?
Two people truly caring for each other and supporting each other on their life journeys regardless of the status between them is a beautiful thing that should always be treasured, because it doesn’t happen often enough.
by Liz B | Jan 23, 2020 | Writing
I love night time walks in the woods…especially on a quiet, foggy night in a place where I feel safe. The smell of wood burning reminds me of late night campfires with friends. The sound of light rain is falling on the ground and I hear running water in the distance. It stills me internally and total clarity begins to take over my mental state. I fully embrace the respite away from cars and people. Faint memories begin to come up of the eleven consecutive years I spent going to a music festival spending all night wandering fields and playing music until the break of dawn. Or buying a whole gallon of ice cream and sharing them with friends I’d see only once per year on the campgrounds as we walked in the rain. Sometimes we’d brave more intense thunderstorms as we packed in a van and sang songs together or hid in one of the nearby buildings after salvaging as much as we could of our campsites.
It’s these moments where you learn reconnect to a deeper part of yourself — you become more grounded by re-establishing a close sense of community with no true need to go anywhere, do anything, impress anyone, etc. Just wandering freely and playing for days…every day brought a new adventure that we would make for ourselves, and at night we’d all fall asleep in our tents satisfied.
After a while you even lose your sense of time as you reconnect with nature and become the silence within that we so often lack, even if for a moment.
