Happy 2013, folks! Wait – January is already more than halfway over?? Okay, I’ve been on an extended blogging break since just before Christmas, but it’s been fairly restful. I’ve never been a big new year’s guy anyway, so we might as well wait a bit and let the dust settle. And now we’re back. And I still can’t believe I’m a blogger. I used to take bloggers’ milk money all the time. It was my religion.
So we made it through the Great Mayan Apocalypse of 2012, which never was an end anyway – just the end of a cycle and the beginning of the next one. Each year is like that anyway. So is each month, each day, each hour, etc. Some people make big deals out of reviewing the past year and making goals for the upcoming one. I’ve never been into that too much, but there’s certainly nothing wrong with it. In fact, it can be incredibly useful. Like everything we do at A Clean Mind, we just want to have a relaxed attitude as we do it. It’s all about our attitude, how we see things. My life has always flown by pretty quickly, anyway, moving around from place to place and doing different things. In fact, the last several years in Pensacola has been the most settled I’ve been since before I left home for college as an eighteen-year-old. That was back in 1991. So I’ve never felt too stagnant or dissatisfied. If you do, though, then it might be a good idea to shake things up with a little review of the past and some ideas for the future. And any review of the past has to be judgment-free, of course. Own it and move on.
So let’s try it out for fun. How was 2012? Well, A Clean Mind was started in 2012, so we got the ball rolling – as a recovering perfectionist, that’s always big for me. The purpose is pretty much to help people learn to live more at peace. You could call it mindfulness with a fresh voice that likes to cuss. I’ve always enjoyed sharing the client stories, too, whenever it’s a story that I think will help others. And the client is always cool with it, of course.
So what direction are we headed in? In a word, “deeper.” I’ve mentioned once or twice that I’ll probably have another blog called A Deep Mind at some point. I’ve had the url’s, Facebook, and Twitter handles locked up for a while, so there’s no rush. And no, I don’t tweet yet – I haven’t found where that fits in to my flow at the moment (I’m letting the game come to me, as the sports cliché goes). All of this techno stuff makes me a bit sick sometimes, so I’m taking it slow. Facebook was pretty huge for this guy, in fact. Baby steps. So I have no firm plan for A Deep Mind.
A Clean Mind will probably stay pretty close to what it is now, though. It’ll become more populated with each post, so it’ll cover more and more bases. I’ll continue to organize it better, too. I’ve added the archives and a search bar, which is good. I want it to be a totally user friendly resource that covers tons of issues. I might also go through and tag the posts at some point to make it more sortable in that way.
And what is the difference between A Clean Mind and A Deep Mind, anyway? I’m so glad you asked… A Clean Mind is for any human. It’s totally general – it’s about feeling and thinking. It’s about letting go. We really can learn to not be controlled by emotion so much. It’s about mental hygiene (and you thought that “dental” was the only kind of hygiene). We really can turn down the voice in the head, as well as question whether or not what it says is even true to begin with. It’s about not trying to control what we totally can’t control anyway. It’s about busting our patterns without a shred of judgment. It’s just a pattern!
All of these things are very powerful, and they can help a person live with more peace pretty much immediately, if they’re ready. You have to actually do it, though. All it takes is willingness and practice. So that’s all great. The truth, though, is that I didn’t become a therapist and start writing just to spread the word on all that. Life changed for me many years ago in such a way that can be hard to describe. It got deeper. Maybe what happened was that spirit revealed itself to me. And I know that the word “spirit” is pretty vague, but that happens when we’re dealing with words in the first place, really. In A Course In Miracles, it says, “Let us not forget, however, that words are but symbols of symbols. They are thus twice removed from reality.” I love that. There’s reality, then there’s our thoughts about reality (once removed), and then we try to express our thoughts with words (twice removed). This is always good to keep in mind. Back to the story…
Many years ago, I was a logical guy with a math degree who was convinced that what you see is what you get and that’s that. And regarding death, when we die we turn to dust and that’s that. No meaning at all. I realized these were beliefs and not knowns, though. I told people, “I’ll tell you what’s up after I die, and in the meantime I’m just going to live.” Then spirit got my attention with so many synchronicities that as a logical person, I was forced to admit that some freaky things were going on, and that the chances were infinitesimal. That means basically zero probability. So if I were going to be true to my logical roots, then I had to exchange this meaningless world I had believed in for one in which spirit is in charge, there are no such thing as coincidences, magic happens, and there’s WAY more than meets the eye.
This was still a belief and not a known, but it was now Explanation #1 For What’s Going On. If anything else came along with more evidence, it would then become the new Explanation #1 For What’s Going On. That’s being logical – there’s no need to be attached to anything except whatever seems to have the most evidence. It’s not personal. And to this day, this “spiritual” world remains my Explanation #1 For What’s Going On, and it’s not even close.
I have a lot to say on this subject, and I’ve been making a list of ideas for a while now as they pop in my head. I don’t think it’s appropriate, though, to write about that stuff here. I also don’t want to scare people off of this blog because it’s too much about the deeper stuff. This blog is designed to be a very general resource to help the majority of people, so I want them to be able to use it and not think, “This guy is a total freak, so I can’t listen to him.” There will still be some seeds planted here and there, though, and that’s already been done to some extent.
So there’s the map. I’ve been letting spirit guide the whole thing all along anyway, so I’ll continue to do that as best I can. I love doing this, and I love my readers. We’re all in this together, anyway. So with that I wish you all the best for 2013 and beyond. And don’t be afraid to grow if you feel it’s time to grow. Why? Because if you feel it’s time to grow and you don’t initiate it, then life will usually initiate it for you. And when life initiates it for you, it tends to be more painful. So a big Happy New Year to you and yours. And as always, let me know if I can help!