photo credit: Eustaquio Santimano

I think often of Adam and Eve. I consider myself a Christian, though not in the traditional sense of the word. Don’t believe in the scriptures literally, and believe that the concept of sin isn’t a paternalistic damnation, but a caution from our Creator of certain actions whose consequences are the murder of our own souls.

A mainstay of my belief and religious philosophy is that I believe that anything not prescribed as the word of God is left to interpretation, and may be out of the context of the time period it is written (outside the first five books of the Bible, which the Bible code makes it hard to believe are not of some significance). I also believe that it’s possible but not probable that man mis-translated words given to him divinely, for a purpose only our Creator would know.

Hell. Maybe He/She/Cylon enjoys double entendres.

So when I read the story of Eve and examine the way women are referenced in the Bible, it’s hard for me to believe that a divine being, intelligent enough to create us, a living machine whose day to day functions are independent of itself, would create womankind to be inherently flawed and evil.

The very word “evil” is a reference to Eve. And I think that we received her whole story out of context, at best, incompletely.

It is well known that the story of Adam and Eve was modeled after the Egyptian story of creation. (I like to believe that all the various religions are an attempt to tell the exact same story, rather than the idea that Egyptian, Greeks, Romans, Christians, Israelites, Moslems are all worshiping different Gods. Same Spirit, different contextual interpretations – makes more sense to me.)

Lesser known is the story of Atum, the first God in Egyption mythology. He is the one becoming in the Kepera passage my poem is based on.

So in the Bible, he’s the first man. In the Book of the Dead, he’s the first god. In the Bible he is created by a divine presence, our Creator. In the Book of the Dead he is self created via becoming self aware.

Another interesting idea I found gave me a possible alternate interpretation of the Fall of Eden. Atum usually appeared as a man, but sometimes showed up as a serpent.

Eve was cleaved to man, and tempted by the serpent.

What if one of the foundational ideas that paints women in the Bible, and hence in Christian culture as lesser creations is simply incomplete?

What if Eve is being tempted by Adam/Atum in his serpent form?

I like things to make sense. And it would reconcile the idea that somehow, Eve, a derivative of Adam is a more flawed, lesser incarnation. Because it doesn’t make sense that Adam would be this nearly perfect creation, and the 2.0 model would be worse than the initial.

Eve’s not a copy – she’s the fully formed successor model, sprung full from the seedling.

Anyway. I’m thinking of playing out this idea in the dreams of the main character in my novel.

By THOSE Relatives, I mean the ones you want to share a finger or two with.

photo credit: BigPilou

Here are your options:

1- A few tokes of weed just before hand. Limit to two or three if you have problems with lah. For medicinal purposes, of course, for those with prescriptions only. #allegedly

2- have just enough of a light liquor to be bordering on tipsy.

3- Meet them in a noisy place where they can’t talk to you.

4- If they’re not the type to talk during a show meet them for a movie or play, then leave or arrange to be accosted by friends afterward.

5- If they’re cousin-types who are single: Set them up on a blind date with someone you’re not that close to, then leave early to give them some time “to be alone”.

6- Fuck em. Give them a phone call and be on your way.

7- Leave town right after Christmas, by train, somewhere close, and visit some people you Really like. Call it a New Year’s trip and don’t come back until the second.

8- Hide in your house.

So it all boils down to avoid, distract, or deflect – sometimes a combination of the two. Merry Christmas. You’re welcome.

photo credit: zhouxuan12345678

sometimes i think about suicide
because my pain is so real that it’s alive
crawling under my skin
my entire life feels like one big sin

that i can never repent for.

sometimes i’m very close to suicide
handful of pain pills always by my bedside
i try and hide it most of the time
but most days just walking makes me want to
lay my head on the wall
and just cry

but i’m one of the lucky few
with loyal friends and family who know what to do
to pull me away from the precipe

before my hate of pain
turns to apathy
before i turn into someone
i can’t see
before i’m beyond the reach of
any
therapy.

i own my issues
and try not to spread my sorrow
but for some reason knowing
someone looks forward to my tomorrow
makes me postphone my gloom
just long enough for me
to want to live.
for me.

you can’t ever be someone else’s reason to die
losing them is not your fault that’s such a lie
but sometimes.

you can inspire someone to live.

*i’m in no way suicidal NOW. But I was when I wrote this.

And I wrote it because some people in my life didn’t seem to understand that suicide is the ultimte manifestation of a very painful mental disease. It’s not an act of punishment or spite.

And since even a doctor doesn’t set his own broken leg, the way to help isn’t through blame or shame. They want to end pain, not teach someone a lesson. If you’re reaching out to someone at the end of their rope, think about what that rope is. Ease their pain and get them professional help. If you know someone who is suicidal, try these resources:

National Suicide Prevention Hotline:
1-800-SUICIDE (1-800-784-2433)
Deaf Hotline: 1-800-799-4TTY (1-800-799-4889)

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline:
1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255)

In the UK, you can contact The Samaritans (UK), at 0845 790 9090.

Weird day so far. I overslept, which I rarely do. I was having a dream that I’d been dating celebrities, and had just came back from some event, heartbroken over Terrence Howard, only to fall in like with a visiting guest Djimon Hounsou.

He was totally feeling me and made it known. Great dream.

I woke up feeling like love is just around the corner, with someone with long-term intentions, whose feelings I won’t have to guess at or wait an eternity to hear about. Funny as I’m interested in a light skinned man who is a Cancer – every one I’ve ever dated is worth waiting for BUT they seem to take forever to tell you how they feel. Long friendship then courtship process. Then there’s a mysterious dark skinned man who is really into me, but he’s SO hot I can’t be around him because my clothes try to jump off my body.

A Scorpio, of course.

Anyway, later I’m walking back to the house – only half a mile today because I’m incredibly sore in my left leg, which is weird, because the one with the problem is the right.

And I decide to listen to my financial success subliminal instead of regular music. It’s not on ten minutes when I find a dollar on the sidewalk. Weird stuff like that always happens when it’s on. I’ve decided that represents the goal amount I want to generate in my next joint venture, that it’s going to just show up unexpectedly, and when it does, seem like not a lot of money to me.

Let the church say amen.

Today, I wanted to record two things.

One is the feeling of absolute exhilaration I’ve been feeling on and off since Saturday. In my heart I can feel with vivid clarity that something special is about to take place, something beautiful and magical, and something that is going to change my life for the better, something that will enhance the lives of those around me.

Secondly, is that I had a checkpoint this past Friday. I may have explained what a checkpoint is, but if I haven’t, here you go: it’s a combination deja vu and extremely powerful feeling of positive premonition and destiny. Within a week or so or having them, some manifestation far beyond any abundance I could possibly have imagined comes along and blesses me as hard as it can.

I call them checkpoints because of the feeling I have when they happen. It’s as if God is saying, “You’re in the best possible place in the best possible path of any of the available ones for you to have chosen from.”

And I went through a little rough patch there for a week or so after bringing a great many positive things to me. So Thank God.

As always, this is an incredibly self-centered post. The site is called “Tinu Stuff” people. Get used to it, LOL!

Seriously though, the reason I have a special site that acts as the public side of my personal journal is for three reasons.

First, I like to keep written records, both on and offline, of how I feel, what I think and how I came to certain conclusions, etc., to help with my own evolution. I’m always attempting to make myself into the best me. This helps.

Second, pure entertainment value. It amazes me how many people just enjoy seeing what is in someone else’s mind and heart.

Third, I’m hoping that some small part of this blog will be a help, inspiration or warning to someone. Even if it’s one person. I know that there have been several times where reading someone else’s thoughts on a situation they were in helped me immensely.

Today I’m thinking about what would make my relationships in the future more successful. And I’ve come up with several things.

First, in the beginning, I have to start keeping all thoughts about the situation to myself unless someone should expressly ask. I’ve become conscious of the fact that I vacillate between complete radio silence and bursts of emotion, and that it’s potentially quite unnerving. It’s usually because when I meet people, I watch and circle them for weeks or months before actually engaging. Then, in the few circumstances where I feel I’ve met someone I can connect with, I’m so happy about it that my filter turns completely off.

The problem is that while some people welcome this wholeheartedly and with relief that they can now do the same, other people don’t find it as cool. On top of that, I often do it in writing. And if you’ve been here or to any other site of mine before, you can see that I can sit down and write a 1000 word stream-of-consciousness brain dump in less than an hour, and read one in less than 3 minutes.

I easily forget that not everyone is a speed reader or particularly fond of reading long prose. Ah, well. In business, I learned to write for people who scan. Not so much in my personal life — if anything I’m more verbose.

Secondly, I really have to think about what I truly want in a relationship versus what I think I’m supposed to have.

Yes, I want to fall in love. But I don’t want, need or expect love to be all-consuming. I want to have a life outside my primary partnership and I want my partner to do the same. That’s how we can keep things fresh – space and lots of it. I believe true love is about freedom.

Yes, I want to get married. But I don’t want to have a traditional marriage. Not to say I wouldn’t adore being a house wife. I’m down for all of it expect cleaning, so I’d probably keep my business open part-time to guarantee we’d have household help. I’m not damaging my health for anyone, ever again.

What I mean by non-traditional is that I’m not a traditionalist in most respects, as far as relationships are concerned. I’m from a culture where a man and a woman go to a party together and everyone dances with everyone else’s spouse. I thought this was normal until I went to college and faced issues of possessiveness and jealousy whenever I was what I felt was a little flirty.

That’s really the shallow end of the pool though. I believe men can be tender and still masculine, gentlemen and still respect equality. I also don’t believe that you can or should possess another person, outside the romantic sense of the word. I believe we are brought together to love each other as we are, not “fix” each other. I believe in freedom, on both sides of the fence… while I want to be part of a couple that does things together, I don’t believe we have to, or should want to, spend all our free time together.

I’m a creative person, and when I get into my creative space, I need to be alone. That can last for hours sometimes and I need to be with someone who is okay with that, or better yet, just not around certain times of days or days of the week so I can habituate myself into summoning as much of my inspiration as I can in that alone time.

That’s not to say I want to end up with someone I don’t see. Not at all. Just that I’m the type of person who could be with a basketball player who was on the road for weeks at a time, as long as the quality of the time we have together is superior and prioritized.

Actually, judging by past relationships, I think I would thrive on it. And I also see how not having those options sometimes made me feel smothered. I was once deeply in love with someone who wanted to be with me every day, all day, no matter what. I appreciated his devotion, but was frustrated with the fact that we didn’t ever DO anything once we were together. So we had all of the time but none of the spark. No intellectual stimulation, no conversation, no exploration or travel.

Yeah, there was the sex, but since I was better at it than he was, that kinda sucked after a while – not horribly.

But have you ever had your favorite dish, prepared the exact same way for three weeks in a row, at every meal. Trust me by the time you get to week three you want to punch newborn kittens in the face.

I also feel that freedom is important here. Over the years, I’ve found that I’m not so much a jealous or possessive woman at all, it’s just the way I react when I feel the relationship is insecure. Once the declarations of love come into play and are reinforced with some regularity, and my position as his lady is secure, I get very laid back as far as feeling secure in the relationship.

In fact, I’ve come to realize that I’m actually not the jealous type at all when I’m feeling balanced. I was just unbalanced so often, in so many of the wrong relationships that I thought it was the norm.

This is important because I want to be married to someone who is ambitious or has some kind of purpose to their life with respect to adding to the world, not just living in it and taking from it. Nine times out of ten, that means you’ll be looking at a creative type, or a social type, both of which have to deal with either fans or making social connections.

And if you’re constantly asking “Who the hell is Christine!?” and waving business cards in the man’s face? Probably not a good match. When I realize that this is what I wanted, and how the way I related was incongruent, I fixed it fast.

Now, granted, in my last major relationship, I fixed it TOO much, because who seriously goes for marrying a guy with 6 kids by four mothers, who lives in proximity to two of them, and can barely support themselves? And on top of that wanted to keep me a secret until we were at least 2 kids deep?

Yeah, I’m talking about Droplet. Let’s not even get into THAT.

I’d prefer it be an artist – it’s been a lifelong dream to find a way to marry a poet or a painter – or better yet be one – and still live a comfortable life.

I want – need – to be with someone who wants to travel. Who enjoys it. Because one of my favorite things in the wide world is to hotel hop for a couple of weeks and live off room service. In about five years, I’ll probably try to figure out how to turn that into a career.

There was a time when I used to make up reasons to travel, just because I had the money. Other days I would say I was traveling, and go to a hotel in my home city instead. I adored having a good reason to hotel hop in Vegas.

And I don’t need someone else to be there. I can have a perfectly fantastic time on my own, not to mention that since I can work from anywhere with a high speed connection, I never need miss work because I thought it’d be a nice day to island-hop. If I get bored, I just go out and meet people. Folks just like to chat with me for some reason. I’m told I have one of those faces.

There are physical and personality characteristics too.

Yep. I have a list and I’m ain’t settling. There are certain things I’ll give up to get other things, but some stuff is mandatory.

I’ll post that whole list later.

The point of all this is, I’m starting to see how deep my issue of choosing the wrong men goes.

Whenever I chose someone physically unavailable, who couldn’t be near me, it’s because I wanted to be in love without the responsibility of doing anything about it.

When I would chose someone who was emotional unavailable, it had a lot to do with how much I valued myself and my belief that I was worthy of love. And it was often because I wasn’t ready for the level of commitment – and I never will be because I want to be in love and married BUT I don’t want to be in the standard relationship….

I need a man who is away sometimes, whether that means marrying an entrepreneur who doesn’t work out of the home as I do, or being with some salesman who travels the world for his job and takes me with him.

Now, choosing someone technically unavailable must be sub-conscious. I’m so ready to find a person to be with and stop dating and starting over. I want to build a future with one person, in a relationship we define together, rather than one we find ourselves prisoners to because “that’s what people do.”

For a while, I even talked myself out of finding a man who was a friend to me first, simply because none of us hurts our true friends the way we do lovers. That friendship is the bedrock that I believe takes you through the hard times. When you know that other person is your captain or first mate, that it’s the two of you teamed up against the world, it adds so much to life.

And no, those aren’t all the things I’ve decided I want. Matter of fact, tomorrow or Tuesday I’ll put up the list – so if you find him you can tell him I’m looking.

Hm. Actually I might not be at the moment. I have one guy I’m looking really seriously at, and another waiting in the wings behind him (if he acts right), just in case.

Which I deserve a wrist slap for, I know but it’s not like I’m doing this on purpose.

Besides, it’s too early for me to tell with this person. The instant he says he’s mine, all other bets are off. So I’ll put it up for entertainment value, ‘kay?

In the last post we talked about how 17 seconds of unfocused, non-contradicting thought it equal to about a workday, and that about 2 hours worth would amount to about a year, working every day of the week. (If you could somehow work 24 hours a day, it would be more like 6 hours.)

It’s not a theory I can prove, nor do I know where to find evidence. All I know is that thinking things out first works really well for me. A friend in my Mastermind group also told me this works on a larger scale, in his experience, as in actually Doing a project, not just the planning stages.

Let’s do an experiment of our own to see if we can improve our lives with this theory.

That would mean we have to find out the meaning of “focused, un-contradicting thought“.

Let’s break it down.

Focused thought is when you keep your mind on one thing only.

Think of a goal you want to accomplish in the next week, or better yet, an item from your to-do list that’s not to-done.

For this exercise, accept whatever comes. Get a stop watch or alarm, and set it to go for 17 seconds. When we’re done, scroll down to the next part of the exercise.

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All done? What was your experience?. Before I taint you with the idea of what normally happens, take a minute to write yours down, if it helps, do the 17 seconds again, but write everything you think. (I didn’t tell you to do that before because about 60% of folks get mixed up trying to do both).

This will work SO much better for you if you don’t peek, I promise. It’s not an assessment of whether you’re good or bad at something, You just want to see where you are so you can realistically gauge how hard or easy this task will be for you.

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Finished? That was fast.

Most people can think of one thing for 17 seconds with no problem.

Where we run into issues is in keeping ourselves in creative language.

That’s the non-contradicting part. Think of the manifestation process as a three-part deal. The first part is discovering what you want, goal setting, planning, life management, whatever you want to call it.

The second part, which the film the Secret is largely, but not completely, focused on is the right type of thinking, that’s where the whole asking, then believing, then receiving part comes in. And this is also part of what Dr. Robert Anthony is talking about. Your mental focus is the seed of the tree that is your life. Bad seed, bad life.

Sidebar: Now if you planted bad seeds in life unwittingly, is it your “fault” that you get a bad tree. No. But you’re responsible for recognizing and changing it, now that you know that what you have is not what you want.

Review your experience with the 17 seconds of thought, get your notes if you had them.

Did you have all positive thoughts about your goal? Most people don’t. Even experts at positive thought, law of attraction, manifestation or personal development find that their thoughts are riddled with worry.

Mine went like this (I purposely didn’t go through the steps I normally would, such as worry in reverse, so I could give you the experience closer to how most people will have it.)

I have to write that sales letter for the group mentoring traffic generation thing.

God, I should have done that last week. I’m so lazy.

Well, no, I’m not lazy, I’ve just been busy. And I hate the name. Plus I put it off so I could do it from a place of “I want to help people get more clients and customers” not “I want to make money to pay debts, pay for health costs, find a great place to live here and go to Africa for a month or a year”.

Maybe I shouldn’t even do it. I can only handle 25 people at a time. I could make that membership site into an audio site instead. No, that’s stupid. Maybe it’s not.

Aaaaaaand time. Took longer to type than it did to think. So what happened there?

1. First I said I was going to do something.
2. Then I berated myself for having not done it.
3. Then I rationalized why it wasn’t done.
4. Then I rationalized again.
5. Then I thought about not doing it.
6. Then I went off on some other tangent that had nothing to do with the original purpose of the thought.

That is not focused thought.

We all think we’re being focused in our thoughts, but we’re really not.

Thought, unchecked, unpracticed, is a messy, sticky, jumbled mess.

What makes it unfocused?

Well, first, I didn’t stay on the topic. Second, when I did stay on the topic, I thought about things I didn’t want, rather than on what I wanted.

Can I go back in time and change events to make it so that I remembered to do the sales letter last week? Probably, according to Einstein’s theory of relativity. But I don’t know how.

So there’s no useful reason for me to beat myself up for not having the task done yet. It’s not as if making myself feel bad prevents me from procrastinating in the future.

Now we know what unfocused thought it. What is non-contradicting thought?

It’s when all the thoughts you’re having about something are in harmony. Instead of thinking, “Maybe I should do that. No, I shouldn’t. Well, maybe i could IF” – we want to pick one thing, and believe it’s possible and attainable, then act and think accordingly.

My entire thought train should have been about doing the sales letter.

- what to say
- how to make it come across the way I actually feel, rather than as a used car salesman
- folding in the fact that I can only serve a certain amount of people at a time as a reason why they need to sign up the first time they see the page.
- how to get it done quickly and effectively
- how much it will cost

Those are the things that would have been on my mind, under normal circumstances.

Next time, we will talk about how a person with a disciplined, productive mind would sound, and how to become that person. Until then, try this experiment.

Whenever you think of something you have to do or a goal you want to reach, keep your thoughts about it positive for 17 seconds. If you fail, start over. Keep the language creative.

You’ll find that if you concentrate, you can keep a thought from finishing a cycle of negativity, by just letting it float by, or changing the direction mid-thought.

Let me know how you did on the exercise below.

Dr. Robert Anthony says, in the How to Be Rich series says 17 seconds of focused, non-contradicting thought is equivalent to 10 hours of physical work. So if keeping a positive thought in your head about what you want to attain, is about the amount of work as a work day, then 7 times that would be like a week of work with no break, or about 2 minutes of thought (119 seconds).

And four times that would be like a month of work (476 seconds) which works out to a bit less than 8 minutes. There are 12 calendar months in a year, but let’s go by 365 divided by 28 and see how much thought could equal a year of work.

13 months times 8 minutes.

104 minutes, or an hour and 44 minutes. If I could spend an hour and 44 continuous minutes doing focused, non-contradictive thought, it would be a year’s worth of work?

Seems hard to believe, and I don’t know if that is accurate, or where he came up with the proof. What I do know is that

1- People constantly ask me how I can be so productive, especially when it seems like I spend all my time helping them.

2- In the same way very wise people think carefully before they speak, I strive to think carefully before I act. Meaning I try to work out as much in my head before my pen ever hits paper.

That goes for writing poetry, writing a sales page, creating a traffic plan for a site, putting together a blog post. When I do that, I make fewer mistakes during the process, and since it already exists in my head, I get work done faster. I wait as long as I possibly can to bring something from my mind into reality. Of course, some things can only be worked out once they are in physical form, and I allow for that too.

But of all my best-selling products, ALL of them were 80% written in my head before I typed, spoke, or videoed a single word.

How is that helpful? It’s helpful with not wasting time un-creating.

Think about it. If you try to go somewhere you have just a “general” idea of without directions, you’ll probably get a little lost at some point.

“Oh, no, wait, this is the 1100 block. I wanted 903 West Haven Avenue.”

And that’s fun, to get a bit lost when trying to find a place you haven’t been to before. As a bonus you can learn your way around an area better.

It’s not so much fun in life.

It took me a year of wrong turns to figure out how to rank well in Google, and another six months to figure out how to show people to DO what I was, instead of doing it for them. I have never promoted this page, except for pinging and a few blog comments, and in Yahoo it’s number one for Tinu, out of 1.7 million pages.

Not a competitive listing but it’s crazy that I know how to do this so well that I literally rank by accident.

To get really personal with it, how long has it taken most of us to find the right person in our lives. Most of us just happen to fall in love, we don’t actually plan to find someone we feel is compatible, and make a conscious choice that the person we want must have these specific qualities we want. Nor do we make the changes we need to make to be suitable for that person.

No, we kinda meet at work, and they do this thing that gets on my nerves, but I’ll live with it because I love them. And later that thing they’re living with leads to a divorce.

Would half of marriages end that way if we really picked correctly to start with? How many times have I subconsciously selected unavailable men?

And yet, even 17 seconds of focused, non-contradicting thought is so hard to accomplish. It sounds easy, but let me tell you what “focused, non-contradicting” means.

We’ll talk about that in the next post.

Because I had this idea in my head that love ends. For the longest time, I built my business as a distraction from heartache. Somehow it became my built-in barrier to falling in love. And of course it doesn’t have to be, because I can technically work anywhere.

Then one day, my heart broken particularly harshly, with someone I was passionately close to, whose growth as an artist I groomed, went to visit a lover I didn’t know about on our company money, and fell in love with her.

On a weekend when I was really sick, immobile in bed sick. And yeah, then he stole a bunch of my stuff from the place we were staying in together. While I helplessly watched.

Clllllllllassy. I sure can pick ‘em, right?

But that’s the thing. I can pick ‘em.

This guy wasn’t all bad, in fact, he wasn’t bad most of the relationship – it was almost like he curdled, like spoiled milk. And this is why, even though I yearn to love, I’m also AFRAID to love. It’s not the heartache and pain that’s possible when you risk it all.

It’s that I never want it to end in flat-out Betrayal again. Because of some of the things that happened during my youth, I have a huge problem with someone betraying me. I don’t mind so much losing a man to someone else. I do mind when someone can’t wait to break up with me before they go off and sleep with that someone else.

And all of that amounts to why I’m afraid to love – I’m not afraid of the possible pain in general, which I always assumed. I’m afraid of the possibility of Betrayal.

Isn’t that crazy?

It’s crazy in the most beautiful way though. I understand myself so much better now. I know why I prefer to be friends with a guy first – I believe if you’re good enough friends with a person, they won’t hurt you the same way someone who only knows you as a lover will.

It’s why I have, on and off, chosen unavailable men. Not just to enjoy the yearning, not just because it meant I could be in love but not have to DO anything about it.

But because I was afraid to be able to do something about it and then be stabbed in the back.

Now that I realize this about myself, consciously, I can accept it, and so quickly it’s shocking to me, overcome it. I’m absolutely feeling fully ready to love someone who can be with me, here, right now.

I’m absolutely ready to risk the fact that it may start out lovely and then not work out. I can even risk that I could be betrayed. I wouldn’t like it. But first of all, what are the odds that it would happen again to who I am today, versus who I was then? I wasn’t as honest with myself then as I am now, and I certainly didn’t push myself to live as fully.

Even more importantly, I’m ready to accept that it might start out perfectly lovely, and stay that way. I’m willing to accept that it’s likely, even probable, that while we’ll have our ups and downs like any couple, we’ll be happy in love too.

I’m accepting of this to the point that I believe that my belief is drawing this person ever closer to me. Not my belief alone of course, I’m big on action when the time is appropriate –in fact I told a friend of mine what the perfect man looks like to me, and had him start working on finding this gentleman out.

As of right now, today, I’m making the space for this love that will come into my life to breathe and flourish. I’m open and accepting of whatever direction it may come from, however, I’m also watching that I’m not settling for less than what I want out of the desire to get this love moving towards marriage.

I believe in this love and that it’s already coming towards me, as I move forward to embrace it.

What do YOU believe?

What do you accept into your life today?

Right here, now today, I know it. I’m gonna tell you in a minute. Let me tell you the back story first.

I stumbled upon how I could make $24,000 in about two days. I thought it was the secret to making $2500 in about two days when I ventured to do it — I really wasn’t expecting to be so successful. This wasn’t something I discovered alone. When I partnered up with a certain friend of mine, our combined energy created this.

And if that wasn’t enough, the following weekend, we created it again. This was about two years ago.

Now, you’d think that since I figured out this secret, all I have to do is

1- Do it again, and,

2- Do it every week.

But I’ve been afraid.

You see, shortly after this monumentous thing happened to me, when I figured out how to make a lot of money in a short amount of time, it was all taken from me. To put it simply, there was a middle man collecting the money. To add insult to injury, other money this middle man was holding for me, I didn’t get either.

And this middle man decided I couldn’t have my money. Until recently, I didn’t get any of it. Even now, I only get a little taste here and a little taste here. The details of why, and what I eventually decided to do about this to fight back don’t matter here today. The fact is that I figured out how to never have that problem again.

Which begs the question why?

Why in the name of all good things don’t I just do the same thing that I did again? What’s the big deal already?

I’ll tell you why.

It’s because I’m afraid. Specifically, I’m afraid of that feeling, that awful feeling that comes from having something you worked hard and honestly for ripped from you.

That honesty part is very important. Because the lure of easy money, of getting money the wrong way but also getting hurt in the process is very real and present.

I’ve been offered the opportunity to do things very shady to things that are technically legal, but morally wrong. Literally millions of dollars had been offered to me to take the easy way out, but I’ve always declined on ethical grounds.

I wanted to make money the right way, and waiting to do just that really made me feel smart when I finally made money the way you’re supposed to, through hard work and the value exchange.

And having it taken away made me feel like the world just has it in for small business owners online. I got into my head that “they say” we’re only allowed to make so much money before we’re smacked back down into our “place.” Coming to my realization helps me see how this just isn’t true.

The feeling of realizing that someone’s not just taking everything your whole life had been building towards, but also eliminating the positive cash flow your business had finally attained ate me alive, to the point that I fell physically ill, the complications of which I am still recovering from.

And the feeling was so much more devastating in contrast to the feeling, only 24 hours prior, of having generated so much wealth in so little time, based on the fact that I partnered up with someone who complimented me perfectly as a short-term business partner.

Now, having realized that consciously (instead of subconsciously, where I’m sure it lurked for years). I am filled with a sense of bliss. A sense of complete power over my own destiny. I can’t describe it to you. I only know this.

My pledge is: I am going to take a risk that big again. I’m going to do an even bigger project, with even more exposure, and even more partners. And I will succeed.

The reason I know it is that my failure wasn’t a true failure, it was a learning experience. No matter how it shakes up in any other view, I did make that money. No one can ever take that away from me. Because I know now that even if I were to fail,

1- I know how to survive it, and
2- I know how to keep my business from going bankrupt because of it.

Of course, this time, if the middle man doesn’t give me my hard-earned cash, I’ll just have all my customers ask for a refund, immediately, instead of trying to run a world class project on a shoestring budget.

There’s something else I was afraid of, too, that I’m taking the pledge not to be afraid of anymore, starting today. I’ll write about that soon.

What are YOU afraid of?

And what are you gonna DO about it??

My signature color is turquoise. A bluish turquoise like the circle in the upper left corner of the clip above. Almost a teal color. I had three outfits that featured that color once. Just as well that I don’t have them anymore because none of them would fit the smaller me.

But still.

Maybe I’ll tell that sad story another day. The point of the story today is that this turquoise reflects in color how my spirit feels when centered. And lately, I’ve been anything but. I’ve felt rocked out of my most familiar places.

For a while I was in a dark blue mode. A lot of pain. Couldn’t move well. Hard to type. Forced myself to stay in motion through the pain because I knew that letting myself become stiff would be worse. And I know it’s partly the grief playing out in my body.

But it’s also so much more than that. Part of the blue is a yearning for love, yet also an aversion to love. I’ve come to understand that I value my independence to the point that I have been sabotaging any of my own attempts to be loved.

Don’t get me wrong – allowing myself to even fully feel romantic love for anyone recently was a big step. For years, I’ve been cutting myself off from the emotion so much that I almost married someone I wasn’t in love with.

I’ve been proposed to four times, married very briefly (and in secret) once, and had several meaningful, deep relationships that lasted more than a few years. I think I was getting used to the idea that this was all I’d be getting in my lifetime. Maybe even given up on the idea of marriage and kids that I so hope for someday very soon.

On the other hand, I also look at my life, and think, I can (and do) go anywhere, at any time, and do whatever it is that I want. And until recently I’ve been thinking of marriage as a trap, mostly subconsciously, but I was still thinking it.

And I think that’s why my friend’s death hit me so hard that I still can’t say his name out loud.

I had to talk about him, in front of people close to him recently. Since I often appear outwardly to be so in control of my emotions, I was mortified to completely break down, and not even be able to get out the story I wanted to tell.

Afterwards I could only fold myself into my bed, sobbing. I wouldn’t answer the phone or the door until a close friend called. And thankfully he didn’t press the fact that I didn’t want to talk. I don’t deny that I need to – but I also don’t know that blubbering nonsensically into the phone will help.

Slowly, I’ve been dealing with this bundle of emotions myself and that’s why I haven’t been around much. The pain that temporarily resides in my body has been magnified due to the stress of this, and some financial issues that have been wearing on me.

But as the money issue has begun to work itself out, and I’ve started to sort through my emotional turmoil, the colors have lightened a bit.

Right now, on the color scale, I would say that I’ve gone from a dark blue the day of my friend’s passing, to an indigo a few days ago. Today I’d say I’m a bright violet. Not completely free of turmoil or scarring, but healing.

And I have some hope, not a lot, but enough to live on, that one day I’ll get back to the turquoise color.

The death was definitely rough on me, but of course it’s not the only issue. I have to kick-start my old business after a very public retirement, without actually un-retiring and raising the expectation that I’ll be working at my formal level. I just want to free myself from certain lingering obligations, and then permanently change the way I generate an income.

This, of course, has to be settled before mid-February, when I have to figure out where I’ll be living after my relatives in Maryland move to West Africa. So yeah, I’ll have to move. Again. Yay.

Nothing gets your health back on track like a potential cross-country move. Yippee.

Then I have to deal with this health care issue. Turns out there’s a small business loophole I can climb through. But it needs funding.

And the launch I was planning on getting about a year’s income from in January is now taking place in February. Which means I need to totally change my plan for January, so that by the end of that month, I’ll have the cash for moving and to take care of my health.

Blah. I think I’ll go under the covers again…

This could not have come at a better time. I’ll be quiet a little longer. But I’m definitely on the way back.
[via]

” my people built this motherfucka and i know my way around.”
Don King

nigger,nigga *

sometimes i prick myself with the knife
sometimes i know who can hurt me and
sometimes i show him
where to find what kills me inside
where to find the blade of betrayal and,
where to shove it to cause me the greatest pain.
how to twist it
and when the blood will come out
for his maximum enjoyment
i dont know why.

i use the word carelessly
with my friends
as in
nigga please
and nigga fuck you
and nigga this
and, nigga that.
and sometimes i am ashamed of what
my mouth shares with the world

and sometimes i say
nigga, fuck you.

i say what i want when i want
to express what i want to express
this is America
motherfucka
my niggas
as they were being called niggas
built this
niggarific shit
and i know where my niggas is at.

sometimes i prick myself with the knife
sometimes i know who can hurt me and
sometimes i show him
where to find what kills me inside
where to find the blade of betrayal and,
where to shove it to cause me the greatest pain.
how to twist it
and i tell him when the blood will come out
for his maximum enjoyment.
i dont know why.

i use the word carefully
to define the desperate failings
of my people
when i see them on Jerry Springer
or in line to buy
whatever sells to
hopelessness
as in
nigger why
and damn nigger
you making us All
look bad.

and sometimes i am ashamed that
i feel this way about people who look like me
and sometimes i say
niggers,
if the enemy comes dressed up like you
that’s twice the reason to be scared.

sometimes i prick myself with the knife
sometimes i know who can hurt me and
sometimes i show him
where to find what kills me inside
where to find the blade of betrayal, and,
where to shove it to cause me the greatest pain.
how to twist it
and tell him when the blood will come out
for his maximum enjoyment.
i dont know why.

i am used by this word
with particular care
to wound me where i bleed best
when my heart aches
i cannot understand

why i attach such pain to a word
why i additionally let all know of my hurt
why i expose the site of my destruction

why i
repeatedly
predictably
state when and where my anguish lies
so he can strike again
so he does strike me again and again
and again and again and again

because i so eloquently articulated the site of my historical agony.
so i am the instrument of my own emotional destruction.

sometimes i prick myself with the knife
sometimes i know who can hurt me and
sometimes i show them
where to find what kills me inside
where to find the blade of betrayal, and,
where to shove it to cause me the greatest pain.
how to twist it
and tell them when the blood will come out
for his maximum enjoyment.
i dont know why.

i dont know why i still bleed from this old wound.
and
i dont know why i cry.

* People ask me how I feel about the N word. Well. There you go.

If You Ever Have to Apologize to Me, Flowers are Good Bribery

Whether or not I have any type of chance with Flame beyond friendship, I knew one thing for sure. I needed to say I was sorry.

You may remember me saying that I cut Flame out of my life once. Not my greatest hour. We do crazy things when we’re in pain. I was in both physical and emotional pain. No excuse, just the reasons.

Last night I was thinking about our friendship from his perspective, and how quickly I disappeared, how completely. In that moment, I felt compelled to make amends.

I stopped what I was doing, reached out, and apologized. He accepted it in his typical gracious fashion. And I don’t know if I can explain this clearly – but I didn’t apologize to receive relief from his forgiveness.

I apologized to set things right. And in return, I was set free. Not from his forgiveness – in his conduct with me it was clear that he had already forgiven me, probably as soon as I did it, as is his style.

The freedom came from the gesture itself.

This started me thinking about how many people in my life have done things that I felt were wrong, and apologized, vs people who I resumed relationships with, in the absence of any admittance that they were wrong, or regret over hurting me.

Sometimes, even when the thing you did was really hurtful, or wrong, or just out of character, the fact that you apologize for what you did will more than cancel out the mistake for the other party.

And it’s amazing how much peace it can bring you. As side effects go, that one’s hard to beat.

Have a great day.

It is said of the Universal God Ra:

“Speak Universal Master”, he says after having become.

“it is I, the becoming of Kepera, when I became the becoming of those who became after my becoming, for numerous are the desires coming out of my mouth, when the Earth had not yet been formed, when the sons of the Earth who were not yet made: the snakes, out of whose dwelling I came, Out of this NUN* where I was among the dispirited, no place was found for me where I could stand up.

“I found in my heart that which hould be useful to me and in the void that would serve me as a foundatation, when I was alone, when I had not begotten Shut (space) when I had not yet spat out Tefnut (water), when no other divinity that would have been made with me had yet become. Therefore, I conceived myself in my own heart and the becoming of my numberous becomings of my becomings in the becomings of the children and in the becomings of their children.”

* NUN is understood to be a thinking nothingness/void or self-aware pre-spirit without form, where No Thing exists but It.

I contemplate this as a possible answer to questions like: If God is All, How Was God Created? Is God the God of Himself/Itself/Herself/Themselves?

Or, as we are individuated pieces of God, has God individuated non-mortal pieces of God’s own Spirit to rule over other individuations of her/his/its non-mortal Spirit?

It also gives me food for thought in terms of manifesting joy or success into one’s life. If we’re individuations of the same spirit, as is set forth in Conversations with God, then isn’t it possible that we have this power of creation somewhere within us, and must only learn to tap into it?

Because, if we think of ourselves in that same embryotic state of Godhood, and then become self-aware, in that self-awareness, are we not then capable of the same types of creation? Only, with a time delay implemented for our own safety?

I believe learning to create is one of the central purposes of mortality. It’s as if we’re on a test stage in this plane that we call reality, like the practice section of a video game. All the same rules of nature apply as when we’re in full game play mode, however, we can only cause a limited amount of destruction, and a limited amount of pain.

Until we over come all these things, including space, including the time delay of fulfillment. Then we have the power to create or destroy our world.

A friend and I wrote about this concept of Kepera in terms of people we were in love with at the time, which I’ll post next.

Wikipedia – Kepera also spelled Khepera means to come into being in Egyptian.

… it’s so necessary. I have two great loves in my life that I regret not declaring sooner. Despite the heartache I’ve been through with each of the guys I’ve been entwined with, I don’t regret having loved them. Tragic love stories are better than never having loved, as I read somewhere on Tumblr today.

My first great love that went undeclared too long was in high school. I was part of a clique led by this ultra-fine Puerto Rican guy named Ricky. He was very fine and had a fraternal twin brother who was near identical to him. Unlike his twin though, he was the sweetest, kindest, nicest person you would ever want to meet.

For over a year I thought he was perfect, and kept biding my time. Then one day he looked into my eyes, gave me one of the best hugs ever, and gave me his jacket that I jokingly asked him for every day. Then he just walked away.

He called me on the phone later that night to tell me he had to go back to Puerto Rico and didn’t know when or if he was coming back. And I told him I loved him.

He said he loved me too, after a brief pause.

I said, “No. Ricky, I really, really love you. I love you, love you” (Why did we talk like that in school? What’s wrong with saying, I’m IN love with you? Of course, we never really leave high school anyway, so, ha, whatever, right?)

He said, “Me too.”

So after I was done dying inside, and crying on the phone with him, we said a very tearful goodbye.

And I vowed never to let love pass me by again, unannounced. It’s one thing to wait for good timing. It’s another to run out of time entirely.

I had another wonderful love in college. His name was Reggie. We had a very strange interaction. He saw other women. I saw other men. We never officially were a couple. But when we saw each other, when we were together, the rest of the world stopped. Ceased to exist.

For some reason, I just didn’t care what happened when he was around other girls as long as none of them were his girlfriend. And I openly discussed dates with him. It was crazy.

And yet, we’d lay in bed together and stare into each others eyes. Or sit around and laugh ourselves silly for no reason. Or have these deep conversations.

I never knew why we didn’t have some kind of formal arrangement. And I didn’t really want one, which puzzled me too. I liked the freedom, and I knew for sure his heart was mine. I could just feel it.

Then one night, I had many of my questions answered, in the last way I was expecting. In retrospect, I should have known. Maybe I did, but didn’t want to, and avoided thinking about it. Who knows.

Reggie used to show up to my apartment drunk, and sad. And he would never tell me why. I’d hold his head in my lap and caress his face until he fell asleep. Then we’d lay entwined all night.

He also had told me once that if I ever had an emergency to let me know because his father had given him an American Express platinum card and he was allowed to buy anything he wanted, as long as it wasn’t a car. I asked him why his father was so generous and why he didn’t buy things for himself. Or why if his father had it like that, why he worked.

He never answered.

This one day that he came to my campus apartment, I remember he had on this hat, tilted to the side. Not a beret, but it was similar in shape. In the mid-90s a lot of the guys from New York wore them. When Mos Def’s Black on Both Sides was out, I saw him in a hat like that more than once.

Anyway. he had on that hat, and he was standing in the doorway, looking at the ground when I opened the door. He looked at me.

And I looked at him.

And something in his eyes… fell. He dropped his books on the floor and I crossed the room into his arms. He wasn’t sobbing, but I could feel his tears on my neck.

I asked him what was wrong when we were laying on my bed later, after he was calmer. And he told me he was dying of a rare blood disease, and was going home the next morning. And probably wouldn’t see any of his friends again.

And hadn’t told anyone except me.

So now I understood. The drunk, sad nights. Why we never even discussed becoming a couple, and just enjoyed the moments. The AmEx card from his father. He was enjoying his last days on earth and had known they’d be his last for a while.

We cried together. Then we … did other stuff … together. Such beautiful things were said that I feel like they’d be somehow tainted if I recorded them somewhere.

In order to say goodbye, we had to pretend we’d see each other the next day. I still remember him walking away. I didn’t take my eyes off him until I couldn’t see him anymore.

I’ve lost other loves and lovers to death, but none like that. He was special to me in a way no one else was, and is probably the person who both knew and understood me the most. He taught me, more than anyone else, that life and love is so fleeting and precious, and you have to enjoy it when it’s there, in whatever form it exists.

That’s part of why I’m taking such pleasure in being in love right now, with this person I can’t expose my feelings to, yet. And yes, i’ve come to decide it’s a “when” and not a “what if” with Flame. it’s worth the risk. I’m going to enjoy it on my own for a week or a month more. But then I’m going to ease into a revelation of my feelings at medium speed of seduction. I’ve changed my mind for several reasons.

Mainly it’s because I’ve been remembering how much time has been lost in past relationships over the first meander into love. I’m remembering love undeclared, love lost, love that wasn’t fully explored and could have been.

It would be worth the chance of heartbreak if he was ready to go for it. And if he wasn’t, well, let’s just say I’ve been developing quite the fan base to console me in the meantime.

All predicated on the huge IF that Flame feels remotely about me that I feel about him.

Or I might just be rationalizing the whole thing – which is why I’m not acting on it, say, tomorrow.