There’s nothing that gives me the heebie-frikken-jeebies more than the thought of ‘just getting by’.

‘Just getting by’ – A numb way of life in which just enough is done to maintain a fragile reality of perceived limitation and ‘get by’, in which a person tells their dreams to stop dreaming and convinces themselves that they are fine with settling for boring mediocrity whilst secretly wishing that their life was more magic but too afraid to become a magician, accompanied by a belief that life is limited and that they cannot be rich or smart or free or happy or brilliant, and characterised by a greasy sheen of dullness in the eyes and a slight dragging of the feet.

It’s a way of life that many people have convinced themselves is perfectly acceptable.

And it is. ‘Just getting by’ is completely fine.

There’s nothing wrong with living a life that doesn’t read like the synopsis of a James Bond flick, lacking the perfume and purr of Aston Martinis and curvy creatures of love, no cartoon fireworks lighting up another adventure-soaked day in the life of a dream hero.

It’s fine. It’s fine to live a boring ‘normal’ life and go to dull work every day and ‘just get by’ as long as you choose that life because it’s what you want and not just because deep down you don’t think you can do any better and are hiding from your dreams for fear that you can’t wrangle them.

But if even the slightest part of you feels a tingly urge to live more and unleash!,
if you sense an urge to tickle life and make it scream in sweat-soaked ecstasy,
if you want to make your life better and more interesting and richer and more yum,
well then, pilgrim, buckle down and listen up…

Sneaky Little Bastards

Limiting beliefs are sneaky little bastards.

They lick their oily fur flat and tuck in their tails so that they can squeeze into shiny neon pixie costumes, sparkly glitter makeup and fairydust perfume hiding their noxious nature, and they fly and flitter their sneakily disguised asses around your shoulder like the fairies in Peter Pan, appearing very tame and well-intentioned and fairy-godmother-like, whispering sugarfrosted lies in your hoodwinked ear about how you can’t be brilliant and how the world is out to get you and there’s nothing you can do about it but settle for what you can get and play it safe and try to get by.

Meanwhile, back on Reality Ranch, the air was obliviously perky and crisp…

Limiting beliefs are just illusions that we’ve manufactured and collected from society’s nervous ramblings, the media and those around us who tell us that we can’t be great as a way of justifying their own bleh lives.

Beliefs such as ‘I’m not clever or handsome or sexy or fortunate or good enough to be great, I don’t have this or that special quality so I can’t make money and be happy and awesome.’

Icky beliefs that tinge the way you process reality such as ‘I suck and I have to fight and get angry and resist and close myself off and be tense and judge other people and myself – because I suck, remember – and I have to protect myself from the big bad world that’s out to get me!’

Resistance. Procrastination. Taming your dreams. Settling for what you can get. Trapped in insecurities. Talking to yourself like you’re a peasant. Fighting life. Accepting yuck. Ack!

Limiting beliefs are the walls that dam the flow of life. Pardon the punks.

They suck the oozingly delicious flavour out of life and throw you the bones to gnash your teeth on.

They’re the sand and dirt that gets stuck in the SillyPutty of your life,
they’re society’s greasy smudged fingerprints on the window of your consciousness,
they’re the filters through which you live and decide what’s possible,
and they’re the reason you’re not limitless, free, happy, at peace, and giddily successful.

So let’s rip off their disguises and get ready to kick some limiting belief ass.

Real Reasons About Fake Feelings

The first thing to know about limiting beliefs is that they’re disguised to make you think that they’re a normal part of reality. We’ll get to killing them in a second, but let’s bleed ‘em out a lil first.

You don’t procrastinate because you really think that you need to do a million little random tasks and make a cup of tea and browse the internet instead of writing or studying or getting work done, you procrastinate because you don’t think that you can do the work well or handle your success.

You don’t really believe the excuses you feed yourself about why you can’t go and talk to an attractive girl, you don’t really think that ‘she’s busy or might have a boyfriend’ are valid excuses to not talk to her, you’re actually shit scared that she might reject you or that she’d find out that you’re an insecure loser.

You don’t decide to sit around and watch T.V. and blob out because you’re ‘tired and need to relax’, you do it because deep down, you’re worried that you won’t be able to get up and make yourself successful and you’re scared you might fail so it’s easier to distract yourself and blur out.

These real reasons – the real reasons that you don’t live better and aren’t wildly successful – beneath the excuses and distractions, these are your limiting beliefs.

Limiting beliefs make you think that you’re not good enough and there isn’t enough and it’s not possible – and they breed internal conflict and make you numb and resist life because beneath the limiting beliefs, you know that you could do better.

Successful people don’t have these limiting beliefs. They either didn’t collect them growing up or proved to themselves that it is possible for them to be brilliant and showed themselves that the limiting beliefs aren’t real.

The reason why most people can’t write well, in my opinion, is that they’re too insecure about their ideas to be real and express their creativity and so they wind up reverting to robot speak and repackaged content. Similar thing applies to doing other things well too.

So the solution? Kill your limiting beliefs.

How to Kill Your Limiting Beliefs

Limiting beliefs are boundaries on your reality, they limit what you perceive as possible so killing them means destroying these boundaries.

You have to prove to yourself that the limiting beliefs that wall in your reality aren’t real.

Prove to yourself that it IS possible to be brilliant, it IS possible to do well in your studies and work, it IS possible to speak to a sexy girl and make her your girlfriend, it IS possible to be rich and brilliant and the BEST.

Some of you might know my background but a quick version is that I used to fail school, I was fat, useless, no girlfriend, no friends and no money. I really thought that I was stupid and couldn’t excel at school and sport and be successful. I thought that people who did well were different to me. “It’s not me to be smart, they have something that I don’t.” I was under pressure from my mom to get better grades at school so I started working. I started getting slightly better grades and that fuelled me to work harder. Soon I was getting As and I realised that I didn’t even need to work, it was KNOWING that I could do well that was making me dominate academically. I graduated with straight As when a year prior I was almost failing. Then I figured, “well, before, I thought I couldn’t do well at school, maybe there are other things that I thought I couldn’t do but actually I can like get a girlfriend and make money and be successful.”

You have to show yourself that your limiting beliefs are empty and pointless.

That’s the only way to kill limiting beliefs.

And yeah, it is really obvious. Obviously if you don’t think that you can do something then you should show yourself that you can do it and then you’re sorted. Yeah, but most of the problem is not being aware of the limiting beliefs to begin with.

When you catch your limiting beliefs kicking in, take action that’s gonna show you how stupid they are and that it’s possible for you to be brilliant.

It’s usually a ‘baby steps’ thing but doesn’t have to be. Work harder that you ever have just to prove to yourself that you can be more successful and get better grades or get more clients or a better response. Slug through the limiting belief’s seductive commentary about how you should just do nothing and ‘get by’ and get up and talk to that sexy girl or make a start on your project.

It’s a process where you slightly push past the boundary of what you deem possible. Then a little more. And a little more. Until you realise that the world of possibility is infinite and the walls that previously kept you in were illusions.

You start out and you have to take action and do things but once you’ve made a little progress and pushed past your initial perceptions of limitation, you start to become a person who naturally makes things happen because you love that feeling of expanding your reality and living life.

Magic begins to rush back into your life and a sparkle is reignited in your previously glazed eyes. No more ‘just getting by’. No more numb yuck bleh.

Kill your limiting beliefs and drag them bleeding through the streets.

That’s how you show yourself that life can be amazing and stop limiting yourself.
That’s how you cultivate a feeling that ‘it’s impossible for me to not do well at this.’
That’s how you become brilliant.

Unleash Reality
Alex

P.S. What would happen if a zen monk turned cartoonist read my mind

Of all the ways to describe reality and life, SillyPutty is my favourite. By far.

Now just in case that first sentence didn’t splat gooey memories across your face, and just in case you’re confused by the term “SillyPutty” and haven’t cheerfully ripped apart one of the 300 million small plastic eggs that have contained the mythical substance since its invention in the 1940s, I’m ‘a fly a quick whirl at describing what can only be respectfully described as putty that has gone thoroughly silly.

Putty is a soft dough-like squidgy smoosh that you can squeeze into different shapes and stretch and break apart into smaller bits. Think play-doh or Blu-Tack or bread dough.

That’s ordinary putty. But SillyPutty has a different drip of swagger altogether.

SillyPutty is what angel snot would be like if angels cried during romantic comedies.

SillyPutty is what snow would be like if it put on luminous lipstick laced with LSD and stopped believing its own publicity about each snowflake being unique.

SillyPutty is what bread dough would be like if it jumped into a vat of bubbling fairytales at the centre of a séance held by enlightened circus clowns.

SillyPutty is soft and gooey and smooth and mushy and you can press and pull it into any shape that you’re brave enough to imagine. You can break it into pieces and then smoosh it back together. It comes in many different colours. It smells of the pheromones of plastic kittens. It bounces if you drop it gently but splats and breaks if you throw it with a lot of force. If you press it onto a drawing or a newspaper, the image is imprinted on the surface of the SillyPutty and no matter what shape you form it into, over time it loses its shape and melts back into a blob. It’s a great stress-ball and was taken to the moon on Apollo 8 in 1968 where it was used to secure tools to stop them from swimming off on deep space adventures. It’s also flammable. And straight-up silly.

SillyPutty also metaphorically mimics your moment-to-moment experience of life.

Here’s how…

Massaging Your Reality

Everything that you experience shapes the way that you interact with life.

Your experiences – thoughts, feelings, actions, reactions, interactions, … – all shape how you feel as they happen. Your experiences also pinch and pull apart or smooth and make whole your overall reality from that point onwards, their effects lasting and shaping your reality long after the actual experience is over.

Different experiences, and more importantly the way in which you deal with and react to them, shape your reality in different ways.

When you get into a confrontation or a destructive mood, you heat up and pinch and pull apart your reality, making it sticky and fragmented and not fun to play with.

Similarly, when you notice the perfect yumness of reality beneath the experiences and melt into the oozingly juicy greatness of life, seeing the playful nature of everything that happens and handle situations constructively, laughing at the drama-soaked colours of life, you smooth and centre and massage your reality into a central mass of smooth playful gooey goodness.

No matter what happens, you can choose how to deal with it and how it shapes your life.

Like SillyPutty.

When you heat up SillyPutty, it becomes sticky and difficult to play with. When you pull it apart and let it get stuck to things in the environment, it becomes difficult to smoosh into the shape you want it to be and gets annoyingly stuck to everything around it.

The SillyPutty nature of your overall experience of life means that you shape your moment-to-moment reality (and consequently the way you feel, limitation or lack thereof you perceive and your overall feeling of yumness towards life.)

Your reality and your experience of life is being shaped in real-time and determines the way you feel and the way you approach things in the future. Momentum and Flow.

Being constructive makes your SillyPutty reality smooth and centred and at ease and you feel good. Being destructive makes it go all over the place and get sticky and yuck.

You shape your reality by the way that you live your life.

Wild Words About Silly Things

The wild thing about SillyPutty is that it isn’t a solid nor a liquid. It’s both.

SillyPutty displays what is termed “non-Newtonian flow” which means that it acts as an elastic solid in the short-term but as a viscous liquid in the long-term. That’s why you can make shapes out of SillyPutty but if you leave it and come back a few hours later, the SillyPutty castle you built earlier is now a blob of slishy goo.

How to factor this into SillyPutty as a metaphor for one’s moment-to-moment reality, if at all, is the same as deciding whether to wake up or carry on dreaming, or deciding whether to decide, depending on which side of the bed you sleep on.

Way I see it is that no matter how you shape your life – good or bad – and no matter what happens, you are always flowing towards wherever it is that life is flowing towards and ultimately, you can play with and shape your reality as much as you like, and playing with your reality is part of the fun, but in the end it doesn’t matter because life will flow to where it’s flowing anyway. Or so a naked Zen monk once said while watching butterflies breakdance in the wind on the outskirts of a secret village somewhere in the jungles of South-East India.

There’s a reason it’s not called SeriousPutty.

The only thing that doesn’t smoosh into the SillyPutty worldview is that SillyPutty is quantifiably limited – here is the SillyPutty (I have a handful), and there is the table – there is a start and end to it. Life – consciousness – YUM – doesn’t have a start and an end, it’s infinite. Infinite SillyPutty, imagine THAT!!

And SillyPutty can be (gulp!) destroyed.
The undiluted essence of life and who you are is indestructible.

But you can still shape your reality.

You shape it whether you like it or not.

How you shape it is up to you…

UnleashReality
Alex

It is a well known and observable fact that screaming and flailing your arms like an energetic savage banshee whilst running is not an effective way to run.

It wastes energy. It breaks momentum. And it makes you dizzy. Makes people around you dizzy too. And frightened.

Not that anybody runs for travel anymore – we’ve tamed big metallic beasts who drool fumes and howl through fanged radios for transportation – but it doesn’t take too much imagination to see how screaming and throwing your arms wildly isn’t going to make you win the 100 meter sprint final in the Olympics. Usain Bolt your windows, the banshee is warming up.

Swinging your arms frenetically and yodelling as though you are being swarmed by a battalion of radioactive bats whilst running makes you tired and stops you from being able to run your best.

You dilute your energy and end up kinda running and kinda fighting the air.

Sure, if you just feel like running and screaming and getting dizzy then that’s fine, and even encouraged on full moons and other auspicious occasions, but if your intention is to run from here to there then arm-flailing and banshee behaviour is going get in the way of glory.

And this is all really obvious.

Nobody runs like a banshee,
that would be obscene,
but that’s how most people go through life.

Metaphysically on the Run

Okay, so most people don’t literally go through life running like persecuted banshees on the defensive.

Most people don’t run at all. At best, they speed-walk to catch the deli for a pastry before it closes.

So what’s with the weird arm-flailing running banshee analogy?!
I’m about to tell ya. And it applies to you so listen up, banshee brain.

Most people do not live in ease.
They fight reality and limit their success and experience of life in the process.

Something happens that makes them anxious or angry or resist life or want approval or control or attachment or aversion or any of these things that nerdy psychologists and cross-legged Zen masters ponder.

A feeling or thought or emotion enters their reality and they think that they need to fight it to protect their precious ego / story / identity.

It feels real, like it’s a threat to their lives, so they start violently swinging their arms and screaming to defend themselves, figuratively, of course, and running for fear that if they stop moving then their identity and whole world will melt.

(Maybe ‘fighting’ is too tangy a word. ‘Specially since the fighting is internal. You experience a feeling and you oppose it. Maybe ‘oppose’ or ‘resist’ are better terms. Or maybe they just sit better because people don’t like to think of themselves as the ‘fighting’ type. Ha!)

Taking the contents of consciousness seriously – taking life and things that happen too seriously – puts you metaphysically on the run from yourself.

And all that fighting not only creates more tension and magnifies the feelings that arise but, just like our little banshee, it stops you from being productive and getting things done because you end up fighting instead of living.

Unwrapping the Packaging of Thoughts, Feelings and Emotions

So opposing and fighting the contents of consciousness makes the struggle and tension feel more real.

Not to say that anxiety and resistance and those things aren’t real. They are.

But you don’t have to take them seriously,
and they don’t have to define who you are.

People argue and get freaked out and disturbed by the stupidest and most trivial things.

Even if you’re a nocturnal basement-dwelling Warcraft lord who rubs peanut butter all over yourself while listening to Elton John in the shadows – a bona fide sociopath – you’ve likely still had the experience of seeing somebody get freaked out about something that you know to be clearly pointless. Like rush-hour traffic or waiting in line for thirty seconds longer than usual for their BigMac.

You don’t have to take them seriously either.

Picture walking through a dark room and seeing a figure holding a big scary knife of machete proportions. Your breath jumps ship and the particles of your being run to your neurochemical fridge and grab a can of fizzy adrenaline. You turn on the light and find that the attacker is just the shadow of a tree and your heart catches its breath. You turn off the light and now the shadow no longer scares you.

The shadow is still there – the feelings that dance through your consciousness are still there – but you don’t have to take them seriously and work yourself up over them.

That’s the essence of living a life of ease – nothing gets to you anymore.

You don’t mind what happens anymore.
Not like Tupac. Not reckless numbness. It’s not that you don’t care.

But now you live in ease.
No more internal struggle.

So What Then? Infinite Syrup? And What About that Savage Banshee?

Life still goes on. Feelings and thoughts and emotions still arise, but you no longer look to them for who you are.

The banshee within dissolves because you realise that there is nothing to fight.

You allow life to flow.

You stop distorting your experience of life with layers of protective judgements and you let life flow.

You stop flailing your arms and tiring yourself out.

You stop screaming and suddenly you can hear the sound of the universe breathing.

You stop running and you’re free to stop and smell the adjectives.

Of course, you can always still carry on running and working to get places in life, but now you’re free to actually experience it and feel the wind against your face instead of living a distorted banshee version that’s filtered through a defensively closed mind.

Realising the triviality of the whole thing lets you let go of pointless effort and fighting and just Be. Just live. In Ease.

This is expanding your consciousness. You realise that nothing that ever happens or has happened to you – including thoughts and feelings and emotions – could ever hurt or change or take away from or add to the thick syrupy infinite perfection that is the essence of who you are.

How to do this – how you go about realising that the contents of consciousness are just empty appearances on the infinite syrup of your being – well, that’s not only a good question, it’s THE question.

And right now I don’t really have an answer.

Ease. Oneness. Immersion in life. Realisation. Flow. God. Syrup.

The question that, in essence, all spiritual traditions and practises seek to answer.

I could just bombard you with sugar-coated rhetoric and big words. That’s what most people do.

But I don’t know how to answer it.

I have had experiences of it. Some days taste like licking the universe’s face. Others taste like licking its bum. Ups and downs. But I do know that awareness of and being open to the possibility that you don’t need anything to be you and that the essence of who you are is changeless allows you to let go of wanting to believe the yuck. It makes it less real. And you realise how stupid it is to take life too seriously. Woomkajam!! Ease naturally flows into your life.

Consciously feeling what it feels like when the anxiety and anger and yuck comes up and being aware of it when it does and feeling the space around it will give you glimpses of how seriously you ordinarily take life and how playful life really is.

Be aware of the yuck tendencies and consciously inquire within as to whether the anxiety and resistance and yuck is who you are or just an appearance in the infinite perfection of your true nature.

The glimpses will come when you consciously pour your awareness into the yuck.

It lets you see how beautiful and yum it is to live a life of ease.

It lets you realise that you don’t need to be a savage banshee.

Let me know how it goes.

Unleash Reality
Alex

P.S. I’m putting together a monthly movie night at the treehouse that is my home in Cape Town. It’s called “The Reel Love” and it’s going to be magic. Popcorn and Secret Lemonade will be served. First one is on Sunday 31 January. Email / Facebook me for info.

P.S. 2. Syrupy magic happening here soon so make sure you’re subscribe free+quick

Your life is soaked in the colours of your consciousness.

Every experience you’ve ever had – including the one you’re having right now – ricochets through the expanses of your perception where it is shaped and moulded to fit snugly into your personal version of reality.

We create our individualised experiences of the world.

The way you think, feel, live; moods, anxieties, limitations; presence, potential, freedom; immersion in life; EVERYTHING – every little quirk and quark that makes up the creature reading these words – it’s all dependent on the size and quality of your consciousness…

Uh. Huh?

Okay. Prolly lost you at the end of the first sentence.
So let’s take a quick detour past the entirety of awareness: your consciousness.

Woo-Woo Window

Consciousness is one of those woo-woo (every)things that’s kinda difficult to define.

It’s like a window.

You look out through the window of consciousness at the world.

If you have a small window then when you look out, you’ll have a small awareness; when you contemplate something, you’ll have a small understanding and as you go about your life, you’ll have a small wakefulness and depth of experience.

You shrink and stain and tint the glass of the window with your elaborate stories about how important your problems are and judgements and anxiety and fear and separation and yuck – all of which cause your experience of life to become dark and blurred and distorted and small.

As the window of your consciousness gets smaller and less clear, you compensate for the lack of real life shining in by believing the stories that you make up about how special you are and how real your closed-in world of limitation behind the window is and other such bleh anti-parables.

But while you play cabin fever make-believe behind your little smudged window and forget what Reality really is – infinite potential and love and perfection and buzz and yum – life continues to gloriously shine on behind your little window.

So here’s the thing: forget polishing and expanding your window of consciousness to let more light in, and instead smash the window, climb out and dive into the warmth of reality to soak in the infinite potential and buzzing bliss that is the true nature of existence.

So,
Woo-woo as that little analogy sounded,
exploding the bounds of your consciousness not only dissolves your problems and stories and muck, but also improves your life in ways better than you could imagine.

Here’s how…

The Beyond Within

Expanding your consciousness is like playing a role in a movie that is set in a dark dungeon and believing that the movie is real life and not knowing that it’s just a movie …only to walk off the set and open the door of the movie studio to a sea of flowers, hot babes and the most delicious fresh air you’ve ever tasted.

The mind is a funny thing.

When your consciousness is limited and includes only your mind, the stories you create and punctuate with a director’s commentary of judgements and what ifs and anxieties and limitations – it all feels real.

But when you expand your consciousness to take in the resonating depth of life beyond the fast-food version that your mind manufactures, you realise the triviality of your stories and mind muck.

Your awareness dilates and you realise how unimportant negativity is and how silly it is to take life too seriously.

Not to say that life becomes trivial or frivolous. The opposite happens.
Your experience of life becomes richer and deeper and more real.

And you still use your mind to uh, think and stuff. But it stops using you. (The whole “I am not the mind” spiel has been rattled on about by many a bare-footed, cave-dwelling yogi, but basically you can be aware of your mind so therefore you cannot be your mind but rather you are the awareness that is aware of the mind. Don’t understand? That’s the point. Read on.)

You live in Reality instead of your watered-down interpretation of it.

When your consciousness expands, your perception of negativity and your yuck drama widens and you see how meaningless and empty it all is. Stress evaporates.

Without the limitations you place on yourself, life opens up and becomes enjoyable. You see people as friends instead of enemies and see challenges instead of impossibilities.

There is clarity in everything that you do and life glows with unlimited possibility and aliveness.

When you expand your consciousness, you melt into reality and flow with life instead of against it.

You realise that you don’t need to do or get anything in order to be you.

Ease instead of struggle.
Vivid clarity instead of smudged blur.

You become more you because you stop editing out your inner wahoo awesomeness and unleash. You love the things you love more. You become more expressive and open and you feel a deep and wide happiness.

Full of ease and openness and yum.
You get more done and you feel better.
You live more.

Expand My Consciousness Eh? *scratches head* …How?

Many lifetimes have been spent sitting cross-legged in caves pondering this question but it’s not as difficult as it seems.

That’s probably why people find it tricky: most methods of expanding your consciousness are simple and don’t involve dark swirling clouds being shooed apart by an old bearded white guy to make way for angels to float down and shake your hand and pose for the T.V. cameras with you like you won the lottery while Elvis sings an electro remix of kumbaya in the background.

There are countless approaches to expanding your consciousness and becoming more aware and in reality. Most of them are similar to one another and basically involve deepening your awareness and melting into reality. Best way I can put it.

So here are a few techniques to try…

Rotation of Awareness

One ‘method’ of expanding your consciousness is by rotating your awareness to watch yourself and your mind from a different perspective in order to realise that:
a) you are not your mind since you’re watching it, you cannot BE it.
b) the perspective that you think you are – the one between your eyes – isn’t who you are but rather, you are every perspective and no perspective simultaneously.

Practically, when a thought comes up, notice it and then become aware of the part of you that is aware of the thought. Another approach is to imagine watching yourself from a different part of the room.

Become Present

Another way to expand your consciousness is to become what Eckhart Tolle (affectionately known as ‘Ecky’) calls ‘Present’. He didn’t come up with the idea but wrote a surprisingly life-changing book about it called “The Power of Now”. Chchcheck it out.

The essence of becoming present is to melt into Right Now. Listen to the sounds in the room and the silences on which the sounds blip into being. Notice the space that surrounds and interpenetrates all objects around you.

Welcome the sensations surrounding everything that you feel in this moment and relish what you are experiencing. Become aware of your breathing. Melt into right now.

Feel the aliveness that pulses through your being. Close your eyes and focus your attention to your hand. You can feel your hand even with your eyes closed. Now allow that sensation of feeling your body from within with your eyes closed to expand to include your entire body, feeling each part ignite like a flamethrower as you pour your awareness into it. The weird thing is that you can feel that same aliveness when you touch other objects or just sense the space around you.

Sedona Method

Another method that I’ve had indescribable success with is known as ‘releasing’ or ‘The Sedona Method’ which involves ‘letting go’ of feelings and negative emotions as they come up. When you’re feeling angsty and like you’re about to erupt, feel the sensation and then ask yourself, “can I let this go?”. There’s a lot more to it than that, including a laugh worthy of the front page of YouTube, but this is getting way too long and google is your friend and I’ll be rapping about it soon so check back.

Melt Into Reality

Consciousness isn’t just some catchy concept that you can read about on some guy’s blog that doesn’t get updated enough and boom, everything clicks into place and you can add ‘ I know what consciousness is’ to the list of things that makes you cool.

Duddn’t work like that ‘cos consciousness isn’t an understanding kinda thing.

It’s the essence of your entire experience of life.

Melt into reality and expand your consciousness and you’ll feel an almost supernatural sense of aliveness.

I know this sentence will sound like the basis for a future insanity plea but I swear to God, I’m looking out my window and it’s almost like I can feel the space between here and the wall on the other side of the street.

And more than anything, there’s space.
You know that no matter what, everything’s gonna be okay.

And if this article wasn’t already borderline thesis, I’d elaborate about how expanding your consciousness brings up a sense of connectedness with life. Unity nahmean?! UNITY. One love.

And there’s freedom from negativity and yuck stories and bleh.
And infinite potential.
And there’s clarity.
And there’s ease.

You get more done and you feel better.
And you live more.

Melt into reality.

Unleash Reality
Alex

P.S. Would LOVE a quick stumble if you have a sec

Every year,
in the middle of the African desert, just outside of Timbuktu,
there’s a festival.

Thousands of people journey to experience a musical explosion of culture and magic.

I haven’t been to the festival. Not yet.
But I did see one of the bands that had performed;

And something happened that completely changed the way that I relate to reality, success and life…

Dancing Like A Persecuted Gypsy

Tucked in a tiny hidden treehouse-ish building in downtown Cape Town, a room ignited to a heightened level of existence; sparked by five nomadic tribesmen wearing the most outrageously glorious and elaborate outfits alive, their faces lit with makeup and sweat, and excitement for what was about to happen.

Warm Undiluted Magic – the musky kind.

The music sounds like tribal-trip-hop meets the motions of a desert camel doing a two-step to the sounds of triumphant desert sands, and instantaneously dissolves and transports you to a land of tents and bonfires and quests and dancing like a gypsy under the moonlight.

Mind-numbing Eargasm.

I got up and danced with about twenty others in the audience of a hundred plus while the rest of the room remained rigidly seated behind us.

A woman, seated in the audience, snarled angrily as we danced to and with the nomadic musicians, “you’re ruining the show stop making a fool of yourself and sit down!”

It wasn’t the symphony, formal and up it’s own aaa. No. It was raw feel-good feeling music, the kind you get up and unleash to, but rather than engage her, I sat down.

But she carried on. Hissing and rudely accosting the twenty-or-so people who danced in the front of the room.

She got heated. And more rude. And it escalated.

And it’s not that she was completely unjustified; it was a show and she couldn’t see since they were dancing in front of her – even though it was an informal, hearty gathering that has its roots in desert dances and unleashed jubilant celebration.

Maybe it was the raw simple beauty of the experience and the hypnotic trance-like bliss it inspired;
Or maybe it was something she said contrasting with the atmosphere;

But something clicked.

An insight that has completely changed the way I relate to reality, success and life…

You Bluddy Hypocrite

The woman,
and the rudeness,
and the confrontation,

…it felt so… pointless. And trivial. And destructive. And yuck.

The woman was getting really worked up, visibly angry and on edge – a sharp contrast to the care-free rhythms that danced in the dance of the dancers and in the expressions and souls of the musicians and others in the audience who let go and dissolved into the experience of the night.

It was so clear: visibly angry, she was causing herself to feel yuck and bleh and sour instead of enjoying one of the most beautiful experiences and atmospheres I’ve ever felt.

Like she had climbed into a cave of anger and waited at its entrance, half tucked in for defensive protection and half leaning out, looking for someone to throw a cup of bubbling acid at.

But more than anything, it was like she was completely numb to the amazingness of the experience, to the aliveness that was pulsing through the room.

Seemed like she was living on a completely different planet, buzzing at a different frequency, just wanting to bring people down and enforce her position to make herself feel special and better than everyone else.

And more than that, she didn’t seem alive.
She seemed troubled. And tense and trapped and closed and… sad.

The first thing that flashed into my mind as I observed how unhappy she seemed and how destructive she was being was how I didn’t want to be anything like her and how she was being a fire breathing dragon savage beast of doom and should just leave and die.

Then Boom! A flash of numbing insight…

You Are Not The Enemy

My face dropped. Well. I couldn’t see it drop. Duh. But I’m pretty damn sure it dropped.

I was instantly overcome with a striking insight that stripped away the complexity of countless self help books and hours spent contemplating personal development and spirituality and becoming awesome and unleashed.

I was no different than she was.

Getting caught up in wanting to attack her about being such a savage bitch and judging and feeling angst towards her, I was being just like she was, getting worked up and angry and living in the idea of limitation, like I need to protect myself and live with a cut-throat, a “there is not enough so I’m taking hers and keeping mine” attitude.

And the buzz went away. The magical warm feeling of bliss that the atmosphere had instilled evaporated the second I started mentally attacking her.

It was one of those moments, nahmean?
One of those moments where you smile at the funny ways in which you think and behave.

Not just at the way I was reacting. Nope.
I realised that I get engaged in this kind of thing ALL THE TIME.

Destructive judgemental selfish hostile yuck thoughts.

Not only at other people. But at myself too.

Bringing myself down just like I wanted to bring other people down. Living like I need to beat everybody else and take as much as I can and protect what I have, limitation mindset, violent and destructive, coming from a place where there isn’t enough so I’ll selfishly take what I can by screwing everyone over.

Selfish, destructive, separation-based bleh thinking.

And not only did it make me feel bad.
Like that woman’s attitude and anger was making her feel bad.

But that one destructive thought determined the whole way that I viewed and interacted with reality.

Allovasudden everything – the way you think, feel, live – is all tinted in destructiveness.

It smacked my overall state to the floor.
Like turning down the volume on life to a lower level of existence.

Living in a destructive mode, you’re limiting and greatly diminishing your experience of life.

Not only does it feel yuck and limits your experience of the awesomeness that is real life right now, but it also means that everything you do is tainted in limitation and scarcity because that’s your whole world when you’re living in that destructive space.

You procrastinate because you feel there isn’t enough. You don’t do what will make your life great because you don’t feel that you deserve it or that it’s possible. You believe you have a whole bunch of problems and look for evidence to prove it to yourself. And then live in scarcity and suffering as though it’s real.

And it sucks.

Becoming Superhuman

But knowing that, just knowing it – changes everything.

In that split second as somebody does something that would ordinarily make you mutate into a destructive demonic savage, where you morph into angry “me versus them” mode, and begin to engage all that limited bleh, you can choose.

Although you can’t control other people, you can decide to not engage it, to not allow yourself to be drawn into a destructive level of existence.

And that was it, the starkly simple realisation that changed everything.

There are two ways to live: Destructively or Constructively.

You can either live in a way that limits and stops and fights and opposes life.
Or you can live constructively, living in the flow that moves life toward positive abundance.

No matter what happens, you can always choose to be constructive or destructive.

Live in the flow, or try to control and force the flow by seeing life as you versus everything instead of you and everything, moving together towards wherever the universe is moving.

You can feel it.
You can feel it – that meh feeling of tension that overcomes you when you’re being destructive and limiting the flow of life.

It kinda feels like it might help you. The control feels good. Feels safe. So we do it.
But it actually blocks the flow of life and leads you to limitation and problems.

Being destructive is like standing in a river, trying to push the flow. All that happens is you block the flow and create resistance to the inevitable perfection towards which life is ALWAYS moving.

Constructive living is completely different.

And it’s the piece that separates the successful from the unsuccessful, the happy from the troubled, the free from the trapped, the limited from the limitless.

Being constructive is always allowing life to flow towards inevitable positivity and bliss.

Choosing to love what is being experienced right now, choosing to be open and released in your whole existence, allowing ease – that is what being constructive is.

And that is what leads to success, abundance, happiness, peace, joy, life.

A magical superhuman level of existence.

Be Constructive.
Become superhuman.

Unleash Reality
Alex

And by the way; big things soon. Free, quick & makes you cool: you should subscribe.

Most people don’t live in reality.

They live in their own self-created version of reality.
…an edited, diluted interpretation of real life that isn’t actually real.

It’s a really subtle thing.

They seem similar. But they’re completely different.

Dancing Stories

Problems. Thoughts. What ifs. Worries. Wants. Emotions. Feelings. Beliefs.

They come.
And they go.

But they’re not real.

They’re just stories that we create about real life to make ourselves feel special and to make ourselves the star in our story. Not the hero, the star.

And just like commentary, they only exist about what has happened in the past.

Stories that dance in and out of awareness. Each thought another elaborate step that grabs our attention as we get caught in the hypnotic show of it all – believing that it’s real.

But it’s just a show. A story. A dance.
It all looks great and holds our attention damn well, but it’s just a story.

Only existing when we think about them.
Never when we allow ourselves to simply be and live right now,
Only existing in memories and projections.
Existing everywhere but real life, everywhere but right now.

Betcha never had a problem right now unless you were thinking about it.

There are no problems right now.

All problems, thoughts, what ifs, worries, wants, emotions, feelings, beliefs… – all those things are a commentary about the past and what has happened or projections into the future based on the past.

None of it is what is happening right now.

…and it feels real. Sure. It feels very real sometimes. Scarily real even.

But only because we get caught up in the story.
We believe that it is real and that it’s us. But it’s not.

The actual content of reality and the situations we face – real reality without the subtitles and elaborate plots and stories we create about it – real reality is never a problem.

It’s not a problem that you’re a fat useless wimp who rubs peanut butter all over yourself in your trailer while fantasizing about re-runs of Desperate Housewives.

It’s not a problem that you don’t have as much money as you’d like or the lifestyle or car or body or mind or relationship or or or…

That’s not the problem.
The problem is how you feel about it.

And Real Life

So what then?
What does it mean?

None of that is what’s important.

Because it’s not real.
It’s not real life.

…and when you’re reacting to all those stories that dance in your awareness – when you engage the ‘problems’ and thoughts and… – when you engage them, your focus makes them seem real.

But in doing so, in engaging all those stories that dance into your awareness,
You ignore what is deeper than that.

You ignore what is always here and now and perfect and complete and problem-free and bliss-exploding-yum-undiluted-infinite-wow… you ignore real life.

The problems and thoughts and feelings – they all come and go, dancing in and out of awareness.

But real life.
The awareness on which the thoughts and feelings and problems all appear and dance
…it never changes.

It doesn’t need to.
It’s already perfect.

That awareness, the awareness that allows for all experiencing – that is real life.
And it doesn’t need any fixing or changing or effort or anything.

And it’s there.
Right now.
All around you.
Consciousness and awareness itself.
The backdrop on which all experiencing happens.
It’s real life.

Realise that the contents of consciousness are all just experience.
What you are is that which allows for the experience. The experiencer.

That still calm perfect unlimited potential – the experiencer – that’s you; not the stories.

All it takes is being conscious of consciousness itself.
Become aware of the awareness on and in which the stories and thoughts dance.

That awareness never changes.
It’s real life.
Right now.
It’s perfect as it is.
Always.
And you are it.

Unleash Reality
Alex

Updates from Alex: Yeah, yeah… I know I promised an article ages back but been waaay busy. This article is kinda a mashup of some ideas I’ve had and spoken about in the past that have really rounded out and become clear over the past while… so after my last article, I decided to take a technology vacation – two weeks without any blogging, twitter or hennything. Then boom, outta nowhere, I was back at university and I had a new girlfriend so ample distractions but back in the glorious swing so chchcheck back… big things and fresh goodies happening soon

In….
…
…and…
…
out…

Yum. Another deliciously smooth sip of air.

Breathing – feels good duddn’t it?

‘specially now that you’re aware of it.

Wake Up from Your Walking Daze and Elaborate Drama

Maybe my imagination is a lil overactive, or maybe I just watch too many movies. Both methinks.

But you ever seen a movie scene with somebody passed out and then they get a vapour waved under their nose and boom – they’re instantly awake and alert.

…or ever laid down to rest before doing something, only to fade into dreamland and then snap yourself back awake?

Well that vapour is right under your nose – so to speak – all the time.

And the ability to snap yourself out of dreamland is there too.

But I’m not talking’ ‘bout the dreamland with rainbows, harems, monsters and adventures.

Nope.

The more subtle dreamland – the one that most people call their lives.

Most people aren’t really alive. They’re not in reality. They’re somewhere else.

It’s like they’re in an elaborate movie. And they’re the star. Not the hero, the star.

Caught up in crazy dramas, all sorts of problems and wildly elaborate plots.

And it feels really real. Like a dream does when you’re dreaming. Walking dream.
But it’s not reality.

It’s a fictional narrative. A movie. Based on a true-story. But only kinda.

..and you can wake up from it – you can wake up from the elaborate drama of ‘what ifs’, struggle, problems and frustration.

And you can wake up to full raw unleashed perfect immersion in life. Real Reality.

Problem-free. No struggle. No frustration.

The situations are still here. But the problems are gone. The elaborate plots are gone.

Pure, non-fictional, undiluted existence.

All it takes is one breath.

The one you’re taking right now.

One Breath at a Time is Acceptable

Sit up straight. Mouth closed. Just be. Be still. Slow it all down.

Finish the breath you’re on. Exhale fully.

Then breathe in. Slow. Long. Smooth. Unforced.

As you begin;

Notice the tingle at the tip of your nose as your breath spreads to the back of your throat.

Become aware of the texture, the taste, the temperature, the colour, the buzz.

Feel the breath dance into your diaphragm as breathes life into the depths of your being.

Blurring the light around you and imagining breathing it in may help, visualising it illuminating it’s path to the core of your chest, the light seeping and spreading into the rest of your being, warming your heart as you continue to breathe.

Focus your awareness on your chest expanding, the energy being kicked up by the first conscious breath you’ve had in way too long.

Feel the aliveness within your chest as the breath tickles your soul.

The movement. The lack of movement. The energy. The space.

Then see if you can sense that same aliveness in your hands, your arms, the top of your head, your lips, your neck, your eyelids…

Feel your being smile.

Notice where the breath is coming from, the infinite expanse all around you.
Notice where the breath is flowing into, the infinite expanse within.

Then blur the two distinctions.

As you exhale you can visualise all the struggle and stuckness and problems and conflict within dissolving, unwrapping, being released and breathed out.

Rinse. Wash. Repeat.

Melt into reality as the breath melts and permeates your being.

Feel the heightened aliveness.

Remix Your Perspective

Once you get a sense of that beyond within, that aliveness pulsing through your body, the tingly warmth of your being, …see if you can fully concentrate on it. Expand it. Zoom in.

Now notice that part of you which is noticing the aliveness. Awareness aware of itself.

Breathing happens. It’s not something you do so much as something you’re aware of and witness.

Much like you are aware of yourself being aware.

Feel your perception dilate and dissolve as you become infinitely more aware of this moment.

The aliveness. You. Life. Awareness. Everything that is going on right now.

Feel yourself blur into the moment. Feel the infinite expanse within. Feel everything slow down and dissolve into this. Life. This. Feel yourself blur into the moment – this moment.

Aware of the aliveness that you are. Melt into reality. Notice the loud depth of this moment. The details. The lack of details. The distinctness. The lack of separation. Feel it all vividly blur together.

Just watching. And breathing.

Problems, frustration, struggle, stuckness – all gets eclipsed and dissolves when you become aware of the aliveness that you really are. Right now, there are no problems. The problems are stories about what’s happening right now. Movies you project in your mind that you mistake for reality. Becoming aware of the aliveness that you are, becoming aware of real reality – is like realising that you’re in the movie theatre and not in the actual movie. And sure, you can carry on watching the movie; it it’s entertaining… but real life is way more fun.

And each breath is an opportunity to wake up from that dream.

No two breaths are the same. Each perfect and fresh and new.

Like each moment.

A new start.
A choice.

The situations may still be there but how you choose to live them is up to you. Dreamland. Movies played in our head. Fictional narratives. Elaborate plots… it’s all entertaining. And familiar. And an easy way to hide from reality. An easy excuse. An easy isolation in an effort to protect our stories that we’ve invested so much in.

Each moment.
A choice.

Choose to be caught up in the elaborate fiction, the stories, the problems, the diluted existence.

…or choose to live. Right now. Unleashed. In reality. Immersed in life.

A choice you make with each new breath.

You’re about to make that choice. Not long until you breathe in again.

Which choice are you going to make?

Unleash Reality
Alex

P.S. Be a hero and take a sec to give this article a quick stumble

They are.

…and they’re just feelings. That you create.

Most of the time not consciously, but you do create them.

Ever been feeling really down and yuck? Where all you can think of is a million reasons why you suck, and allovvasudden something happens like hearing that you made some money or getting a phonecall from an old friend or attractive creature of the opposite sex.

And boom. Like magic.

You’re glowing.

Walking on Sunshine.

So here are some quick tricks that you can use anytime to feel great instantly…

Trick 1: Clap Clap Yes!!

Clapping is loads of fun. Really.

So whatcha do is you get up and take a step back. You need a little space around you since the more exaggerated and ridiculous this is, the better.

Clap twice. Hard. And Loud.

Then hop forwards on both feet, clench both hands and swing ‘em into the air as you land on the ground in front of you, both arms in champion position, fists clenched sky-high, shout a hearty “Yehssss!!!”

Tingly awesomeness surging through your body?

Trick 2: How Can I Make This Fun?

It’s easy to get into that boring, dull mindset where you just go about your day in the same sterile way as usual…

So here’s a way to switch it up that’ll make you super excited and feel great.

One question. One question that you can ask yourself in ANY situation.

“How can I make this fun?”

About to walk up the stairs? Try dancing up the stairs.

Paying for groceries at the end of a long day? Joke around with the cashier about how she’s asking you if you want a bag and being all robotic. Ask her if she’s a robot. Ask her if she’s ever asked somebody if they want a bag and when the customer says yes, if she’s said, “well no. you can’t have one. You’re gonna have to carry all your groceries and drop ‘em along the way. Hahahaha”

See a cute girl that you want to talk to. “How can I make this fun?”

Infinite possibility. Remix the situation to make it fun. “How can I make this fun? …for me” Not to get approval or attention but to make life fun for you.

“How can I make this fun?”

Trick 3: Eargasm, Melt into the Music

Headphones recommended.

Turn on some of your favourite music. Or get something new. Something you can dance to. Like Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”. (wow. Did I just recommend that?!) …or, my new favourite, dub-step.

Standing in a big room, it’s easier if nobody is near by or likely to walk in, turn on the music and boost the volume.

Listen for a while. Just standing there. For at least a minute.

Listen to the music but also to the slices of silence between every sound.

Melt into the music.

If any thoughts come in, just notice them and then go back to the music. Feel it.

Then slowly bob your head. Then swing your shoulders back and forth to the beat. Then add some foot shuffling…

Then UNLEASH. Dance like it’s ’76. Dance like nobody is lookin’.

Bust out your old James Brown sexy face. Do some seductive silliness. Remember the hip thrust dance? Now’s the time to show the room who is bowss.

Completely flow with the music. Melt into it. Jump up and down… and BUST-A-MOVE.

Trick 4: You’re My Wonderwall!!!

This one is kinda like an inside joke with all my friends.

Came up with this when my good friend Glen was here in Cape Town and didn’t have a radio in his car so we used to sing…

Wonderwall.

By Oasis.

…and now whenever we’re all jamming together or in the middle of the street at night or… well, anywhere… we sing Wonderwall!

But it’s like an audible caricature. If such a thing exists.

We make it fun.

Sing your heart out. The worse you sing, the better.

Make up words and unleash your soul. It’s a lot easier if you do it with friends – awwwsome way to up the energy and make everyone feel great.

Other choice favourites are “I Shot the Sherriff” and a song we made up called “Game Loving”.

Raw unleashed expression.

You are my wonderwaaaaall!!

Trick 5: HaHaHa Humorous Hyperventilation

This one is kinda difficult to explain. But it’s one of the funniest things alive evar.

Deep breath. Sit up straight.

…then, pushing all the air out your lungs, with your mouth open, breath out as you make a “HAAH!” sound.

Do it again. And again. And again. Making it faster and faster.

There is no way to not be laughing at the end of this. HaHa. Guaranteed.

Wrapping Up: Emotional Sleight of Hand

This isn’t about feeling good all the time.

That’s not realistic and not possible.

…but you can feel content. At peace. One with life.

These are just little tricks to snap you out of learned misery and dullness or just outta a bad mood.

Tricks to remind you how amazing life really is.

…and, more importantly, if a couple of little quirky tricks can make you feel good just like that, what does that say about feeling “bad”?

Feeling good. Feeling bad. They’re just feelings. They come. And they go.

You create them. They’re not a big deal and they’re not you.

Beneath them. Beneath these “serious” feelings, that’s what you are. Beneath the good and bad is peace.

The beyond within.
The amazingness of life.
It’s within you all the time.

Unleash Reality
Alex

P.S.My good friend Glen, co-conspirator in the Wonderwall Glory, has just released an e-book on how to live the cowboy-style life of freedom and abundance by lording the internet.

Take a quick sec to checkout my review: “How to Become an Internet Superstar”

P.S. Part II: If you have any other tricks or cool little ways that make you feel great, please share them in the comments below and share the awesomenss…

I don’t want everybody to like me.

Huh?

I don’t …because there’s no way to be real and have everybody like you.

When you’re true to yourself and do what you want, some people are bound to get pissed off.

Comes down to the good ‘ol maxim, “if you try to please everybody, you please nobody”.

Why?

Sure, some people will get jealous and others will have their own latent issues – didn’t get enough hugs as a kid or whatever – but the real reason is more subtle.

Way more subtle.

And it’s not them. It’s you.

Why Trying to Please People Sucks

See, the issue isn’t the ‘please everybody’ part.

The real issue comes right before that. The ‘try’ part.

When you’re trying to please other people. When you’re trying to make people like you. When you’re reacting to others… you’re not staying true to yourself.

You’re not being real.

And people can feel that. And it gives them the frikken heebie-jeebies.

When do you try to make people like you? When you want something from them.

And trying to make people like you doesn’t just mean supplicating – ya know, buying them stuff, trying to impress and doing what they want.

Nope.

Trying to make people like you goes deeper than that.

Every time you don’t do what you want. Every time you don’t do what you feel. Every time you censor that inner awesome… you’re living for others instead of yourself.

Sure, you might get some validation but deep down, way deep down, beyond all your bullshit excuses and rationalisations, deeper than the need for approval and control and all that stuff, deep deep deep down, you know that you’re not being real and you’re not being true to yourself.

Hate Me or Love Me

So… what to do… oh what to do?

Be Real.

Stay true to yourself and do what you want.

You’ve heard the whole approval spiel. You know that nobody can complete you. You’re complete already. You’ve read the Eckhart Tolle doctrines, you’re on a mental first-name basis with the personal development gurus and you understand the whole thing…

But… and it’s a big but, you can’t try to be real. You can’t try to be true to yourself. That’s just more living for others.

Being real is effortless.

Live for you – for that raw delicious fuzzy feeling of total immersion in life that you get whenever you completely live for you, diving into the stream of life.

Delve deeper, beyond the litany of filters and self-suppressions and be real.

When it comes time to do something, don’t ask yourself “what should I do”, rather ask “what do I want to do?”

And do what you want.
Effortlessly.
Say what you want.
Be what you want.
Express yourself fully.
Listen to your inner being.
Stay true to yourself.

Be Real.

Sure, some people won’t like it. And others will.

Some people will hate on you. Others will love you. And that’s fine.

Thing is: there’s no reason to want everybody to like you. Do what you want and let whatever happens happen. Some people will love you. Others will hate you. That’s fine.

Real interactions, real connections instead of trying to please everybody.

…and you won’t have that background sense of regret. The regret of not living.

Because every time you don’t do what you want, every time you censor your inner being, a part of you dims inside.

Every time you doubt yourself and don’t do what your heart so desperately urges you to do, you become more numb. Desensitised. Robotic. Lifeless. That magical twinkle in your eye dims and you settle.

You settle for mediocrity and passivity, a diluted existence instead of raw delicious immersion in life.

Caveat-a-licious

A quick clarification to avoid mass obnoxiousness…

Doing what you want doesn’t mean being a *insert rude expletive of choice*.

…because being mean, being obnoxious, being rude, being selfish – all those nasty things that might be confused with “doing what you want” – are just convenient misinterpretations.

Doing what you want in order to get approval isn’t really doing what you want. It’s buying into other people’s story. Same thing goes for trying to control other people. For trying to be superior.

“I don’t want everyone to like me” is vastly different to “I want everyone to not like me”.

Indifference and contentedness is vastly different to living in reaction, living for others.

This is about staying true to yourself.

Listen to your core instead of the voice in your head that sometimes tells you to wrong others and be a badass – your core that is deeper than that – it’s the space that hears that little voice and knows that it’s just an elaborate fiction.

It’s easy to see the “do what you want” as a selfish attitude but when you really do what you want, when you live from your deepest inner being, you’re tapping into and accessing the source of all compassion. When you are true to yourself and connect to your deepest being, you see the humanity in everybody and experience life itself, and express and share that with all around you.

Being Real is connecting to and expressing your deep desire to live.

Unsuppressed. Undiluted. Pure yum bliss life. Expressed through true right action, true self expression.

Why Be Real: Do What You Want, Feel Great and Live More

The most obvious benefit of being real and true to yourself is that you get to do what you want.

That in itself is one of the greatest feelings evar.

But there are other supercool benefits too.

People are magnetically drawn to those who are true to themselves – to those who have a voice – their own voice. People like Tim Ferriss, Jonathan Mead, Tim Brownson, Lisis Blackston, Chris Guillebeau, Glen Allsopp, Seth Godin and the infamous Tucker Max.

People see that you’re not trying to make them like you and they see you unleashed, living for you… and they want to be a part of that.

Sure, trying to please everybody might get you a big audience, but being real and truly expressing who you are, doing what you want and staying true to yourself will make people who you really relate to stick around.

The right audience is way more valuable than a big audience.

More than anything though: when you stay true to yourself and be real, you feel great.

And you live more.

No more censoring who you are.
No more reaction and approval seeking.
No more self doubt or anxiety.
No more yuck fake communication.
No more living for others.

…just pure undiluted genuine authentically unapologetic real raw expression.

Do what you want and Be Real.

Stay true to yourself.
Always.

Unleash Reality
Alex

‘Balance’.

Ah. The familiar ring of jargon. You know… vague words associated with a specific topic.

‘Balance’ is one of the ‘personal development’ scene’s juiciest and most misunderstood terms.

It pops up everywhere from snappy philosophical artsy movies to good ‘ol Steve Pavlina to the latest issue of Men’s Health. It’s vague enough to inspire curiosity and has enough of an Eastern connotation to be hip and trendy.

But what the funk does it mean?

Off-Centred Ideas

First thing that comes to mind upon thinking of balance, for me at least, is a tight-rope walker.

…the kind that you get at the circus. An acrobat, who walks across a taunt, tightly stretched rope or wire suspended high above the ground… and in their hands is a long pole that they use to stay balanced, and alive.

Balance.

The confusion comes in because it seems like balance is a state of rest that you get to by carefully balancing the weight on either side or by holding the pole in the right way.

But here’s the problem: balance, in the personal-development sense, isn’t a steady or fixed thing.

People think that they can adjust aspects of their lives until they finally achieve perfect balance, a perfect fixed state of rest, steady and stable and perfect.

Thing is…

Life is way too crazy for that.

As soon as you manage to achieve “balance”, things change, as they tend to do, and allovasudden your balance gets thrown off by the flow of life.

…and if you’re lucky, you just mis-step and regain your footing, the crowd might gasp or maybe they won’t, and you set across to the other end of the tight-rope, as the committed acrobat you are. If you’re unlucky, you fall.

Harmony in Ideas: What is Balance?

Balance isn’t a steady state thing.

It isn’t a fixed thing at all; not a state of rest

Balance in life is a state of flow.

Things are always changing so the pursuit of balance as a fixed state of rest where everything is ‘perfect’ and stable just isn’t possible.

On a small scale, the body follows a circadian rhythm, a daily flow between left and right brain dominance. Ever tried to do something logical and mathematical only to find yourself drawing smiley faces on the page and doodling? Probably because the creative part of your brain was more active at that time of the day.

On a larger scale, well, I’m sure you know all about it. Things are always changing. And the more you try to pursue this illusionary idea of balance as an obtainable fixed state, the more you’ll find yourself frustrated and resisting the flow of life.

‘Harmony’ seems like a better term.

The notion of balance in and of itself – the idea of being in sync with life – is great. That’s the essence of balance in the Buddhist sense of the word. Total acceptance of what is. Yielding to the flow of life. Allowing yourself to flow with the river of life instead of resisting the flow; or the more common alternative, swimming upstream.

Instead of focusing on finding balance, focus on where you’re at right now and be there.

Instead of pursuing a mind-made notion of a state of balance where everything is perfect and you can ignore the changing nature of life, rather become aware of life and change with it, constantly sinking and moving with it, harmonising.

The balancing point is constantly shifting so shift with it, become it.

Continuous Balance and Harmony

Look within and notice where you’re at in all aspects of your life. Feel what you need instead of working on a mental construct of this idea of balance, this steady state of unachievable “perfection”. Listen to the body rather than trying to maintain a textbook diet. Go within and feel what your body needs, what you should be doing rather than trying to follow some vague idea of balance.

And things will change. So you change with them.

The balance you’re looking for is available every moment if you simply look within to where you are at right now… because right now is different to ten minutes from now.

Look within and tap into the harmony of life, yielding and moving with whatever happens, as it happens.

Shifting and regaining balance from moment to moment as life happens and flows.

Balance isn’t a fixed thing, it’s a state of flow.

Either you struggle to stay balanced on the continuously moving tight-rope of life, or you move with the tight-rope, with the flow of life. Yielding and adapting, living from moment to moment, tapping into the flow and harmony of life.

Struggle or harmony.

Endless pursuit or moment-to-moment real-time balance bliss.

You decide.

Unleash Reality
Alex