Invisible Strings (trailer 2015) from Never Know Productions on Vimeo.

Educate the Heart

Dalai Lama Centre // Educate the Heart from Giant Ant on Vimeo.

Carpe Diem!

(...) My mother always taught us that if people don't agree with you, the important thing is to listen to them. But if you've listened to them carefully and you still think that you're right, then you must have the courage of your convictions. (...) From my perspective, I absolutely believe in a greater spiritual power, far greater than I am, from which I have derived strength in moments of sadness or fear. That's what I believe, and it was very, very strong in the forest."

_
Jane Goodall

Jane Goodall on Spirit and Science from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

Take the leap and do it...

Today I'm writing about Courage. Courage to follow a dream, courage to make a decision, courage to say something important, courage to face our fears.

Osho, a meditation teacher, tells us that "In the beginning there is no big difference between the coward and the courageous person. Both have fear. The difference is, the coward listens to his fears and follows them. The courageous person puts them aside and goes ahead."

We are all, all! afraid of failing, afraid of getting hurt, afraid of getting lost. We are all afraid of something. But when we listen to that fear and decide not to do what we're being called to do, we're not choosing life. 

When we choose comfort, the usual, the well known, the predictable, the same old same, we're just passing by on life, or we might even be loosing opportunities to find happiness, love, a "fuck-yeah" future.

Lets not get Fear get in the way of our dreams. Things work out, they really do, but you do have to have Faith in them! Put you Heart in it... put your Heart in it.

"There is nothing wrong with hardships and obstacles, but everything wrong with not trying."
_
Werner Herzog, Filmmaker

Life is about taking the leap, making the jump, climbing all the way to the top and back. Is about following your dreams, not someone else's.

If you only do what you've been told to do, what do you actually know about living? Who's Life are you embracing if you're not making your own choices, if you're just playing it safe.

Everyone needs to feel they have a sense of purpose. Everyone needs to feel they matter. We all need others love and appreciation. To be alone, completely alone, in a non-existent state, is one of the saddest experiences we can endure, and if it prevails for too long, it can lead to depression and death.

So we need to feel accomplished, to exist, especially in the eyes of those who matter the most. 

But how can we feel that if we're not being honest with ourselves?! We can't... you might have lots of things that others desire, but if you lack honesty about your dreams, you will never feel that you've got it, you'll never feel that you did it, you'll never feel that you are a worthy person.

Be bluntly honest with yourself, find out where your souls wishes to be, to do, and have the guts to make it happen. Make it happen, give your energy, sweat, time, mind and body.

"Dreams are lovely. But they are just dreams — fleeting, ephemeral, pretty. But dreams do not come true just because you dream them — it’s hard work that makes things happen. It’s hard work that creates change. So… ditch the dream and be a doer, not a dreamer.

Maybe you know exactly what it is you dream of being, or maybe you’re paralyzed because you have no idea what your passion is. The truth is, it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to know. You just have to keep moving forward. You just have to keep doing something, seizing the next opportunity, staying open to trying something new. It doesn’t have to fit your vision of the perfect job or the perfect life. Perfect is boring and dreams are not real. Just do."
_

Shonda Rhimes

You are, will be and have been.

- ... Please Sir, could you help me?
- Help you with what...?
- ...
- Yes...?
- Can't you see?
- No, I can see but I'm not seeing anything that you might need help with.
- Oh, I thought it was all over my face, especially in my eyes. I thought you could see it on my breath...
- ... hum, wait just a second and I'll be back in a minute!

Another one that left me alone. Feelings and things out of the normal frighten most people. How many people are called crazy because they can sense a bit more than what is just palpable. Most of my Life I thought it was OK, but I'm getting tired. My soul is tired. If we live only to get hungry and eat, only to go to work and get money, only to have relationships and "dis-have" them and then one day, for the same no-reason we're born, Life ends... then why bother?

Yes there have been many joyful moments, memories that I keep and smile about, and there is still much that can be done, shared, created and loved, but when we're tired, nothing seems to have that much importance.

Why do we feel? Why do we search for deeper meanings? Why do we need more touch, more listening, more caring, more seeing beyond our sight? ... Why do we have whys? ...

- Excuse me Madam, could you help me...?
- Oh, of course, what do you need!
- ... you, I think I need you.
- Sorry? ...
- ... I need you to see me.
- But I can see you... are you alright?!
- I don't know. I feel disconnected from you, from this street, from this wallet and the cards that seem to prove I exist. I don't feel I exist. I feel disconnected.
- Oh... You exist. We're having a conversation. I exist. Here, hold my hand. Feel how it's cold. I get cold hands too easily. But I've knitted a pair of gloves! Where are they...? Ah, here they are! They keep me warm. And I've knitted a pair for each of my children. I can make a pair for you too, would you like that?
- ... ah, no need.
- So what do you need?
- To be seen...?
- But I see you.
- To be... I need to be.
- ... To be or not, that was the big question... Poor Hamlet, he did not have it easy at all, but Art rescued him, didn't it? He didn't know if he wanted to live or hand his life to God, but the unknown made him keep searching. He kept searching for the answer to that question. What is not to be? Can we not be? We're always something, even if just a little speckle of dust in the Universe... I think we always are, will be and have been. You can't choose not to be, it's not in your hands. You are. Here's you, here's me, here's that person and the other. All being. That's why we're also called beings. From the smallest bug to the old gone dinosaurs, we're beings. So be my sweetheart. Be. To make everyone else life's easier, be good. Choose to be good. Choose Life ...

"Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin can openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life . . . But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life: I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin? (...)
People think it's all about misery and desperation and death and all that shit, which is not to be ignored. But what they forget is the pleasure of it. Otherwise we wouldn't do it. After all, we're not fucking stupid. At least, we're not that fucking stupid. Take the best orgasm you ever had, multiply it by a thousand and you're still nowhere near it."
_
Trainspotting

- So my dear, choose to be, for the pleasure of it.

Saying Thank You to my mentors and heroes

This is what growing up means, being able to look back on Life and appreciate our good deeds as well as our wrong doings, and see how much we’ve learned from them.

Everybody knows no one is perfect, but we all have some very special people in our life. What makes them special it’s not that they are divine and unflawed, but they taught and helped us being better. They gave us their time and attention. Those are the mentors and heroes in our life.

We don’t often realize the teachings and growth we’re getting from them until, when walking by ourselves, we notice we’re thinking differently, maybe more calmly, loving, joyful, smarter, faster…?

Nothing happens just by pure chance. There is a path, a path that leads us to where/who we are today. The hard part to accept about it is that this path is rarely smooth or sweet.

Remember the famous mantra: no pain, no gain. Well, that’s exactly it.

Our wake-up calls are usually pretty hard to deal with and accept, but they do bring us growth, they do open our minds and spirit to new levels of existence. Greater and more fulfilling levels of living.

Our heroes and mentors went through it before they could teach us. One day, we will also be mentors to someone.

To grow is a challenge, and to live our life we actually need to be heroes. No one can walk our way,  love, dance or play in our place.

In our childhood we slowly challenge those around us to get out of psychological dependency and become self-responsible, but it’s scary. No one will pay the price of our choices. But it’s that journey, out from home, overcoming challenges, listening to ourselves, figuring out what we really want in life and then going out and make the best to get it, that builds up who we become.

And no one, not even Chuck Norris, can save the day by themselves. We need people. Loneliness kills as Mother Teresa said it so well, “One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody. (…) Loneliness is the worst kind of poverty”. So we create relationships, we share and we learn a lot from them. Sometimes we hurt the person that is teaching us (we don’t know any better at that time). Think about it, we all start as a selfish and needy baby, but by living and making mistakes, we do learn to be better. That’s why it’s really important to remember the mentors and heroes in our Life. They shaped us and gave the nurturing attention and Love that makes us who we are today.

To them, my deepest thank you
and my deepest sorry when I stepped away and did not say thank you.

When did I stop thinking? I don't mean, having one, two, three or four thoughts in a row. I mean, going inside our deviant mind, going in so deep that you loose track of where you began, where you've been and when there's an end to it, because the phone rang or it just happened that you looked accidentally at the time, you have to breathe in deeply to come back to the "living".

When was the last time you went inside your mind and watch it unveil and reveal the immense world it sustains?

Maybe we even do it often, but why do we come back empty handed? There's so much to collect and bring to life, or maybe some of the thoughts could actually be thrown away...

It requires some effort to dig in and pay attention.
I want to pay attention...
Well, breathe in, breathe out and get lost...

"(...) When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - ... religion. Then I go out and paint the stars."
_
Vincent Van Gogh

on The feeling of being at home in the Universe...

Sometimes in Life we just don't belong anywhere. We have friends/family ties, but how much are we in them? We might make an effort, out of Love, to be connected, to be a part of, but despite our long wish for belonging, we don't see ourselves belonging anywhere.

... what a pity it is that people tend to consider those that become distance or lost as bad seeds. If only they knew how painful it is not to fit in.

We´re all making an effort. All.

But what goes on in our minds is for most a big mystery. Interesting or not, this continuous search for understanding life's purpose is usually what drives us into accepting Life's or society's challenges or walk away from them.

We become people in order to understand the soul, as this soul seems always so much larger than Life. But, for those whos Life has become unpurposeful, there can be a strengthening perspective that does change everything, and in this I believe:

"I found Him in the shining of the stars,
I mark’d Him in the flowering of His fields.
but in His ways with men I find Him not….
Why is all around us here
As if some lesser god had made the world
but had not force to shape it as he would…?
_
Tennyson

"Many religions have attempted to make statues of their gods very large, and the idea, I suppose, is to make us feel small. But if that’s their purpose, they can keep their paltry icons. We need only look up if we wish to feel small."
_
Carl  Sagan

... There lives more faith in honest doubt. So don't hide your doubts from yourself, embrace them, but do take care that they do not control your satisfaction/happiness in Life. Aim to be happy. Think positive even if you don't "deserve" it. Regret only makes sense when is surpassable and a better version of you becomes possible.

Sadness of the Heart

The worst kind of sadness, I dare to say, is sadness of the Heart. We have this moral obligation to be happy, but as Albert Camus so well described "(...) there is no love of life without despair of life".

Life is a continuous challenge, lesson upon lesson... how easy it would be if it were easier... but we're not simple beings, and as Rottenberg smartly puts it, we have “the unaddressed business of filling our souls”.

That is why our Heart, for the sake of everyone, not just ourselves, needs to feel happy.

When we feed and support our own happiness, we are nourishing our ability to love and Love is our ultimate goal, the answer, da thing.

Because Love is learned, "What??!!", yes, Love is a learned dynamic interaction, when people around us, especially the ones that are there during our growth, Love each other, they're doing a great job teaching/educating us.

"If our parents didn’t love and understand each other, how are we to know what love looks like? … The most precious inheritance that parents can give their children is their own happiness. Our parents may be able to leave us money, houses, and land, but they may not be happy people. If we have happy parents, we have received the richest inheritance of all."
_
Thich Nhat Hanh

Love allows us to accept others as they are and then they have a chance to transform. But to Love, we must first understand ourselves, we must first look for ourselves. Nhat Hanh again puts it with simplicity and honesty what it is that search:

"Sometimes we feel empty; we feel a vacuum, a great lack of something. We don’t know the cause; it’s very vague, but that feeling of being empty inside is very strong. We expect and hope for something much better so we’ll feel less alone, less empty. The desire to understand ourselves and to understand life is a deep thirst. There’s also the deep thirst to be loved and to love. We are ready to love and be loved. It’s very natural. But because we feel empty, we try to find an object of our love. Sometimes we haven’t had the time to understand ourselves, yet we’ve already found the object of our love. When we realize that all our hopes and expectations of course can’t be fulfilled by that person, we continue to feel empty. You want to find something, but you don’t know what to search for. In everyone there’s a continuous desire and expectation; deep inside, you still expect something better to happen. That is why you check your email many times a day! (...) You can’t offer happiness until you have it for yourself. So build a home inside by accepting yourself and learning to love and heal yourself. Learn how to practice mindfulness in such a way that you can create moments of happiness and joy for your own nourishment. Then you have something to offer the other person"

We don't exist just by ourselves. nothing in the natural world does, so the worst kind of sadness is indeed the one of the Heart, because it means solitude, frustration, lostness from everything. We need to feel connected, we need to feel we belong, that we're understood. Life is in a way a form of affirmation, we come to this world screaming as loud as we can! so we need to be seen and recognized. Now, I ask, how will we feel if we're unemployed, unloved, with no home, with no place in the world? Find your way, if you have found your way, help another. That is Love.