Antique Morality

Antique Morality -

The point is hardly befuddled and often misunderstood. What is now a rusty tractor was once a trusty tool that brought food on the table. So now it sits and boring the landscape with its old creaky presence breaking the scenery with its rusty nuts and bolts, rotten out tires and less than elegant symbol.

This tractor is breaking the antique morality lines of the old versus the new and how I interpreted this situation is based on my own inferences and experiences that what once young is now old as I seem to be saying, the younger generation have looser morals than the older ones had when they were young.

Today we are old and stuffy, old-fashioned and not in tune with the spry and wit of today’s children or youth. We are the older generation today but once we were young. We had our turn to make life exciting, we turned up the heat and danced with our own music to our own favorite songs.

My ultimate point is I suppose that everything that is young will turn old and everything that was worth having turns into junk one day. It is worth seeing this change around me.

It makes me feel like it was once important that we existed and made a difference in someone’s life but this is nothing to get worked up over or about – getting old is the price we all pay when we talk about the antiques and morality.

Breaking my Mortality

Breaking my Mortality

 

Dying is ultimately the definitive result of the natural cause and effect related to birth. While dying is the ultimate experience for oneself it is also the ultimate experience for others who suffer the loss. There are natural and unnatural stages to one’s death and they are sometimes sudden or long drawn out processes that makes it hard to break in the heart for such an eventuality.

I am not worried about the grieving process – my life will be over and I shall be dead. However, I am concerned about those I leave behind as I break my mortality and find the end of my life cycle a moment of grim pleasure. Thinking of dying has had a profound influence on my thinking while alive. I think it haunts me more than I admit to but regardless, I am ready to deal with it the best I know how.

There is no denial of me dying. I confronted this matter since I was thirty six years old when I thought I was a dead man because of my lifestyle and my choices. It was then when I realized that I was susceptible to this fear of dying because either I was unprepared to die or I was unable to deal with it. Today, it has become a total new experience – I am ready to deal with it; the fact is my impending death is not only happening but inevitable.

This experience is not new and unreal in any manner. It is possible and not impossible that the time is coming sooner than later. Simply said, I fear a painful prolonged death more than death itself. I pray I fall asleep and never wake up. Under the best circumstances, facing one’s own mortality is very difficult and breaking it up in pieces is in fact, impossible for it will happen.

We all have a death sentence. The task of dying has been mandated the moment you were born so there is no time for denial and premature mourning. Worrying about my death is next to impossible yet, it doesn’t matter as much as it did before. I would rather die in peace than in chaos. I fear the fire but not the cold. I don’t want to be morbid about it but at the same time, I can’t dwell on my fate – death is coming whether I like it or not.

There is no coping strategy here – death is inopportune and knocks on the door any moment you are still alive. There is no anger here for I have learned of my fate much sooner in life than I care to admit. I am thankful of the happiness I enjoyed, the blessings received and the life I lived. My accomplishments are real and my mind has committed its own thoughts that I feel more sanguine about dying than ever before.

I have witnessed the deaths of my mother and father – I am ambivalent about my future as well as the time of my death but I am certain it is coming. There is no rage, no sorrow or even regrets that would cause me to have second-thoughts about me dying. I want to gently say good night and turn out the light.

 

Dealing with Tele-pressure and FOMO

Dealing with Tele-pressure & FOMO

As a correctional officer or employee, your typical duty day is long enough as it is especially if you are volunteering for overtime or working on special projects. Today’s technology has extended the work day even more so than before, as the organization you work for expects more with less and that puts a big burden on your mind and body. 

One can only imagine the fatigue you feel when you walk through the front door of your home and your cell phone rings or an email catches your eye, and either asks you come back to work or come in early the next day. Drained of energy as you may be, you need to respond to matters brought to your attention. More importantly, the boss expects an immediate response whether you are available or not. 

It is almost impossible to disconnect your relationship from work at home. Technology has attached your mind forever as a lifeline or as long as you carry a Smartphone that delivers your calls and emails 24/7 creating a phenomenon called Tele-pressure (stress). A study conducted by the American Psychological Association found that more than 50% of us check work email before and after work hours, throughout the weekend, and even when we’re sick. Even worse, 44% of us check work email while on vacation.

Mobile phones are rarely turned off. Even while on the charger, it is on. Sometimes, we take the time to silence the ringtone but phone’s power is on.  You and your phone are collaborators in you life – it’s either going to be a positive relationship or a bad one. One of the most obvious signs you are suffering from Tele-pressure is the phenomenon called FOMO. 

Better known as the “Fear Of Missing Out” syndrome, FOMO is a relatively new term associated with today’s high-tech millennial generation which includes those born after 1980 but has grabbed those before this time as well.  These people fear that they’ll miss out of something important, fun and interesting.  FOMO is a powerful force and it correlates to people’s tendency to avoid loss of information in their lives. You can almost call it an addiction as there are many people who rely on their phones too much and too often. 

This constant connection cannot be a good thing if not balanced between your off duty time and your on-duty commitment. Tele-pressure ensures that you are never able to relax and truly disengage from work. This prolonged state of stress is terrible for your health. Besides increasing your risk of heart disease, depression, and obesity, stress decreases your cognitive performance.

In order to deal with the Tele-pressure whether personal or professional, we need to establish clear lines or boundaries between those dynamics that motivate or guide us daily. If we don’t do that, we are subject to fall victim to poor health, extreme stress and anxiety and deprived relationships. 

Whenever you are faced with a busy schedule that intrudes on your life in all directions, you need to prioritize your needs or values and put them in some kind of order so you remain healthy, happy and balanced.

Easier said than done, it is important you take the time to do this is you are to sustain a long and happy relationship and career – those two works hand in hand and need a sound balance in order to get along with each other. Learning how to say no to the boss may not be an option - however, setting you priorities can help you achieve a measurable value to allow a balance between work and play. Set your values in order; don’t give them away without first evaluating what is important and where it is on your continuum of life and the pursuit of happiness. 

Shape your character to fit your values and allot your time spent for those things to be reasonable and necessary in order to remain fit and mentally alert. Taking short cuts can only hurt you in time as stress and other ailing symptoms take time to show up or be detected and often that is a case of being in dire straights and in need of treatment or rest. 

Based on my own evaluation of my service record, I prioritized my life in the following order – physical health, family, mental health wellness, as well as my ethics, contacts, activities. Certainly, there are more activities in your life than those mentioned above and you can add them to the list as you see fit or proper. The key here is to sustain the long hard traveled road and career as well as taking care of yourself and family.

You cannot let bad things sneak up on you, and the way you do that is by keeping a consistent routine. Think about what you need to do to keep yourself active and healthy (taking brisk walks during lunch, skip working weekends, taking your vacations as scheduled making it more remote than ever, etc.), make a plan, and stick to it no matter what. 

If you don’t, you’re allowing your work to overstep its bounds. When your mind is at ease, you naturally feel good, and make it easier to deal with the things around you. What is more important is that your energy is regulated to the point where you are able to respond effectively and within a reasonable amount of time.

Bad Leaders

Link to my corrections.com article Bad Leaders

Living in the world - not on it -

Living in this World

“Most people are on the world, not in it — have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them — undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate.” ― John Muir Reading what I get out of what naturalist John Muir wrote, I sense we have all been “on the world not in it.”

Living on the world would cause us to be void of those incredible human traits that make us unique and caring about each other. Living like someone whose mere existence on this world would resemble an empty form of humanity, filled with the lack of empathy, guilt, remorse, shame or compassion. In other words, this kind of person is a parasite in nature’s own definition. Certainly, living a life like that is and can be deceitful, immorally dreary and likely such a persona would reflect someone who is unhappy or unfulfilled in his or her personal life. Unconsciously or consciously, one might refer to someone with those types of traits as a sociopath and complete the list of lacking substance or morals making them void of a conscience as well as some well hidden criminal traits.

Otherwise known as pretenders, they are great at faking caring for others and use their ‘moral outrage’ as a tool to play victim in various situations. They use the world around them as a tool or scam to give off false impressions and pretending to be a caring or thoughtful person. Sadly, there is little reality in their lives as they focus on doing and saying things mere for the show of it and not sincere at all. Living in the world would include character traits or personalities of all those things a sociopath possesses. There would be empathy, sorrow, shame or guilt and this would motivate them to become better and more empathetic rather than a scammer or ‘player’ in most cases.

Basically, sociopaths are the chameleons of our society and prey on others to co-exist amongst us so they can profit from us, rather than share or care for others. They are the kind of people who have no conscience and should not be trusted. After all, they would only pretend or act as if nothing had happened if challenged when something went wrong and find an opportunity to play a mind game in some manner or another. They are good at reversing the guilt factor as they themselves do not feel any guilt.

Living in the world requires you care and fear about others. Your mind focuses on what others think and how you act or treat them as well as how they treat you without any per-determined conditions or arrangements. A sociopath, on the other hand, manipulates these types of conditions or engagement to further impact their ability to ‘con’ others further than they already have. Their limit of fear is almost zero and their ability to scheme or work against others is higher than the average person. Living within the world would require a compulsion to tell the truth, avoid deception and manipulating others.

Sharing and caring requires positive behaviors that includes no cheating and having a strong moral fidelity to stand by others rather than cheat or sin you way around them. While a sociopath takes others for granted and refuse to take responsibility for their own actions, a person living within the world or society, learns to give rather than take or steal, to love and not fake or hate, and to praise and help rather than threaten, ruin someone’s reputation or smear a name.

Living in the world means you have to think of others and creating an agenda that is beneficial to many rather than only yourself.

It means to be considerate and going the extra length to please someone rather than taking advantage of someone you have targeted especially in their time of need or grief.

Living with the world and not on the world means thinking of others rather than self and giving a damn about their feelings more so than your own. You would experience guilt, pain, regret and other feelings that a sociopaths lacks. Therefore the circumstances are such where you can sincerely say you are sorry when someone loses someone dear to them and mean it rather than simply saying you are sorry for your own loss or opportunity of the event.

Thus the major difference is in the actions of self and how they affect those around you as you determine how the hurt has affected others rather than your own life. Being part of a social circle or family brings true feelings of regret and other emotions without any emotional discounts, where the fake regret of a situation around him or her affected their own lives or damage to themselves.

Finally, living within a social circle may bring stability, togetherness, companionship or loving someone and having personal relationships that include elements of trust and keeping promises. Your focus is on being reliable and dependable rather than betraying or failing the others again and again.

Whenever one lives on the world, one can ill afford to remain in one place too long before exposed and therefore moving around and wandering all over the world is required to find new victims and play their games over and over as such a pattern is likely to exist if you live on the world and not in it.

Demonic Painless Sleepless Nights

Demonic Filled Sleepless Nights

Every person has a master. Every master controls the heart and soul of those vulnerable to disillusioned thoughts and sleepless nights. One could say this is a direct cause of sleep deprivation. Waking up in the middle of the night, I often gasp for air as I believed to be bleeding to death as if attacked by a demonic alien inside my own domain where I never felt safe enough to fight off the feelings of destiny and death on my own.

A choking sensation around my neck, I can feel the abnormal cardiac rhythms beating louder and causing my flesh to turn red as blood pulses heavily, rising to higher pressures preparing me for torture by the devil of vengeance and immorality. Even in my sleep I am vulnerable to his wicked ways as my mind strays into a deep sleep but yet I feel awake. 

My heart can foretell the dangers, my soul collapses with painless sensations as it embraces the darkness around me. For one minute, I am a soulless warrior, looking for the light. My dream has taken me down a path of demonic proportions and my rage comes to a boil as my wrath lashes out to against any resistance of those remaining souls of lost warriors who try to save me in vain.

There are no terminations of my sleepless nightmares. It is a constant pulsating ghastly experience I cannot control. My mind is now in the hands of the devil as he rules the shadows. 

The heathen-like hate burns inside my head; for all practical purposes, I feel like I am dead. Bleeding all over, the blood spills on my hands, pillow and the walls. It is as if Satan himself has called me. 

Somewhere inside my mind there gathers an abnormal mass of festered evil; the kind that bring those with souls to their knees and ask for mercy. For a moment, I see the devil smile as he is pleased with the manner he controlled my mind and will. Metaphorically, the devil drinks my blood as I feel trapped inside this darkness. For a moment, the lightheaded sensation carries me away to another world as I am consumed with sinful thoughts and mystification. 

Standing there, in the darkened underworld, I hear the soulless warriors laughing. Skimming my mind to the last rational thought I gathered, I realize my head is spinning too fast to make any sense out of this confusion. I know my head is hard-wired for logic but my thoughts are wired on the high side and blurring the lines I  could only see if I was mentally awake. 

This sleepless night seems to last forever – my painless nights appear to sooth my soul enough to allow me to walk on the wild side a little bit longer. Inside my head, I wonder how long I can endure this bitter feeling and walk alongside the devil and live a full life knowing I  am a disciple of the devil. 

Credit my heart and faith for fighting this dreadful feeling. The tremors inside me shake my head into a spin that clear the clouds and gives me a clearer vision of who I am and where I am standing. Even while fighting the wickedness, I struggle to maintain a nexus to a reality that this is all but a dream and that I am really sleeping. 

My life is normal, yet the painless sleepless nights bring into a paranormal world where days are nights and nights are days. Even in my sleep, I find the extra time to see how everyone around me dies. Without a doubt, I give a damn about those dying but I feel helpless to do anything about the victims around me. Afraid to act out with kindness because the devil is standing there right beside me, smiling and laughing as thunderous as he can be. 

Naked to the underworld, exposed to the crippled souls around me, I feel the urge to stand up and walk away but my feet are frozen and my head is rolling into a spin that kisses the floor as I fall to a blood dampened marble tile underneath my body. In my ear, I hear unborn and unnamed diseases spread out around me and carried away by the wind. At the same time, the wind whispers in my ear, it’s all a dream. I think I am delusional. 

Somewhere in the distance, I hear the rolling thunder; the roof disappears to expose the sky and stars of the heavens. This makes me wonder if I am really awake or asleep as the surreal death around me is hard to justify if this is indeed real and tainted glory. Soon, I will see the light and the sleepless painless nights will be over. Somewhere deep, my faith restores my trust in the goodness in life and the darkness fades slowly. 

Out of time, my mind and soul will reluctantly be returned to me by the devil, making me wonder if death is really hard to justify even when you try to preserve the ones you love. With the light, the rats, the cockroaches and vampire bats disappear. The night is over. I pinch myself to see if I am real as the sweat rolls off my wet pale flesh and the dried up blood under my fingernails makes me wonder, if the perceived demise of man was real or if it was just vision.

Blood Moon

Blood Moon

There are many reasons to dispel the omens or signs that are preached to us in a civilized and modern society. Over the centuries, many stories have been told that makes us realize that there is some truth to the fact that for everything there is a reason under the stars of heaven. Certainly, looking for signs has been one way to become aware of these catastrophes or disasters, so it is told. Another method is the constant writings, reporting and other venues out there telling us the end of days is upon us.

Looking at some of these so-called signs, the coming of the ‘blood moon’ on September 27th 2015, is the latest of these ‘bad omens’ as it quickly approaches and signals the end of summer and the beginning of Fall. World-wide, people are preparing for the apocalypse, the end of the world or end of days as it has been commonly called by many.

One has to only believe what they have heard to recognize there are many signs in our lives. Signs are like bookmarks or visual messages that may denote good or evil happenings in our lifetime. Some take these signs to an extreme and call them the means to be enlightened by the things or event to come in the future. They pay so much attention these signs; they rearrange their personal and professional lives to accommodate their personal beliefs.

Paying attention to these signs has created chaotic type of panic among the populations of the world. Some are stocking up ammunition, food and water for the apocalypse while others are building structures out of concrete, reinforced with steel beams to keep out the evil or destruction that comes with such a calamity or disaster. The fear is real and the thoughts are spreading that the bad omen of the ‘blood moon’ will bring nothing but ruin, famine, natural disasters and death.

Thus the genesis of our civilized world is now coming to an end according to those who believe this to be so written and said in a biblical manner. They spout their words with panic and anxiety that they are looking at the heavens for signs or messages from our creator, God, and prepare for the dooms day scenario.

Basically speaking, a blood moon is considered to be a bad omen for the world. Combining the fact that 2014 and 2015 has four (4) signs coming from the heavens it is told to be part of a tetrad (foursome) message because of the world’s four (4) total lunar eclipses occurring in an unbroken sequence which in this case includes a blood moon. Ironically, this blood moon also occurs within the holy days and that is supposed to make the omen even stronger and believable.

Whether I believe in this or not, it doesn’t matter. Life begins with birth and ends with death. A circle of life we accept as we grow older. This fear of death is unwarranted and hardly worth any special considerations if you accept the fact that this is indeed a part of a natural chain of events, a cause and effect of life itself. Of course, my compassion is for our children who know nothing of what is said around them and if true, fall to be the true victims of this phenomenon.

Whether or not this is the true version of man’s ‘perfect storm’ condition is yet to be determined. We can speculate that the tetrad of 2014 /2015 is indeed the final and defined sign that the world is ending. Neither a believer nor non-believer, I can see this happening as another sign we have come a society of disbelievers and fear-mongering habits that prey on the weak to exploit the fears in their minds and somehow profit from their anxieties.

From the Womb to the Tomb - a true story about an Arizona prison cover up

Safe Link to the book and information background

Going with the Flow

Some say that rolling with the flow is weak and should never become a trend for if you let it go, it will likely be your end. For me it’s easy, forgetting the stress is easy and letting it flow is how I deal with the thoughts inside my head.

First I was eighteen and it was all in my head that I would die before I reached thirty and inside my head I would be dead. Then, with a miracle in life, I kept on rolling with the flow, fighting change as little as I could, I endured the war, the divorce and the addictions in my life that almost took my life.

My life was like a two story house, and living in a bad neighborhood with nightmares with many stories to tell and share with others around me. Somehow, I found the energy, the strength, the perseverance to keep going on and go far away from the roots of my troubles and moved before I changed my mind to leave Ohio.

I learned to keep on rollin with the flow as I headed for New Mexico where I would straighten up and be just fine. Leaving rock and roll behind and finding country, I took to the open spaces and mountains as well as the dry and dusty deserts.

Still, all these years, the thoughts of darkness were still inside my head and reaching for a new age of forty before I am dead. Raising a new family, leaving the others behind was a bad decision but a decision none the less, as I had to deal with karma and leaving the raising hell I did in Ohio behind.

Fearing being called a dead beat dad, I tried to keep up with my kids as best as I could as they grew up, I also grew apart and rolling with the flow was just another way to break my heart.

I was a bum, I needed to find a better way for me to live and find the sun instead of the darkness that had followed me daily. I also left a lot of crazy friends behind and some will die before their time but one thing was for sure, they lived on the edge and loved every moment of it.

Living in the southwest sunshine, I prayed God forgives me for my sins; my stupidity and my selfish behaviors. Instead of living out there going with the flow I am now working hard and living a new life in the sun, rather than the darkness like before.

As God forgives my sins, I hope the law allows me to make a break for it as I stopped short of being a criminal myself with the things I had done before. As going with the flow, is not always the best way to go and if you do, you better be ready to die young and leave the good life behind.

You have to learn quickly, you can’t take it with you when you die, it’s gone when you are done and dead. Inside my head I keep saying I ain’t getting younger, but rather older and better as I learned to take the punches and rollin with the flow hoping to never grow old.

So rollin with the flow can be done and can add to your life if you take it easy rather than to the limit like before when going with the flow meant crazy times and reckless minds with everything on the line. Fighting the feeling to go crazy, is the way to go; if you want to live longer, learn how to go with the flow.

Remember 9 /11 - Forever

Dealing with Stress through meditation -

Dealing with Stress through meditation

The Tree - a metaphor of life

The tree – a metaphor

The idea of using a tree as a metaphor for our human race can be done with some special adaptations and considerations for our social systems and cultures as they are set today. Even the traditional uses and custom of our tree species allows us to compare them on a very large scale rather than just selecting one or two species. They are all, basic in design and functionality. They are all, resemblances of our life.

A tree’s roots run deep as do our social systems globally and genetically. We all belong to the same species and we are all related like a family of trees but for reasons best explained as a natural process, we all look different but function basically the same. With the exception of being a gender free species, the tree resembles our heritage in many similar ways.

As a social system, we are a deep rooted society with rules and morals. Like the tree, there are traditional patterns of behaviors common to the human race that includes families and how those families live and adapt with their individual surroundings. Like a human, the tree ages and weathers away with the erosion of life. However, before it vanishes off the face of the earth, it transforms life much like our own body does and should be considered an example of the metaphor of man.

There are three primary parts of a tree: the roots, giving the tree the means to anchor itself  firmly to the ground using water and nutrients to grow; the trunk, branches and leaves that comprise its body; and the fruit, which is harvested and enjoyed by us or animals and also contains the seeds through which the tree reproduces itself.

Like the tree, the human race also has these same components: roots, a body and fruit. In comparing the human aspect of these components, it represents our psychological, chronological and spiritual being. Perhaps the tree is more simplistic to identify than humans, making them the primary inhabitants of our world, yet we still share components with Mother Nature, our creator and our existence.

The roots of the tree usually run deep but that is not always the case. Buried underground and invisible to the human eye, they represent the subconscious layers of the human mind: our brain and nervous systems. One has to imagine the brain functions as an invisible matter because to us, it is the most important part that allows us to function and behave the way we do.

Here we develop the abilities to determine or develop our individual growth, composition, breadth and depths of our human traits. Our roots, like the roots of a tree, are the foundations for our manifestations. This is a critical part of our existence and should never be taken for granted. The roots manifestations is commonly compared to our body, our limbs or branches, leaves, trunk or other bodily designed or physical composition of our tree – it symbolizes who we are, what we look like and how we do things consciously and adaptively.

One can see the importance of this component as it is exposed and vulnerable to the weather and other elements around us. How the tree lives and survives is based on the individual fruit of the tree. If the tree survives time and space, the fruit allows it to harvest and consumed by others thus it represents the impact we have on the lives of others around us as well as the ability to plant a seed for birth, growth and bearing more fruit.

How well the fruit develops is based on the nutrients and minerals provided by the earth. The tree can survive many things but is subject to wear and tear by Mother Nature and the growth of other trees as some rely on the sun, the air, water and space to grow maturely and fully with the designed purpose.

On a chronological perspective, the roots do age and the manifestations of those roots are impacted by time. The growth of the tree is manufactured by its ability to survive to an old age. During such time changes, it grows from infancy to an elder evidenced state of condition that has endured critical endeavors and risks. A one point, the tree becomes self-sufficient as a full grown adult tree and looks fully nurtured and solid in shape and its self-standing condition.

The tree’s trunk, branches and limbs endure nature and perseverance on a physical level while man endures it on a physical and spiritual stage. Although, in reality, a tree has to be healthy in spirit and growth in order to produce fruit and seeds thus we might be more alike than we originally thought we were. Since seeds are influences of the ability to spread out and to bear the birth of others, it could be spiritual and represent the power of planting our seeds in their souls.

Our belief in the essential spirituality and meaning of life is the foundation of our entire "tree." From its roots stems the trunk of our understanding, from which branch out our feelings, motivations and deeds.

Looking at the weathered tree trunk that once stood strong and tall amongst the other trees, we have to realize how we are integrated into our environment and how our environment determines our life. One can only hope the tree of life is like the human race and endure the elements of love, hate, racism and biases with the fruits of labor that seeds men to become better and stronger than they were before this erosion began.