My "boxes"

Good evening everyone, I hope you're having a good day. :)

As I travel along my path, this path called life, there are many times when I stop and contemplate what's going on around me. It may have something to do with the way I perceive things, the way my mind groups things into "boxes". I observe, I analyze, and I usually bundle a long step by step process into one big lump sum and then catalogue it in my memory that way, seeing all the steps turned into one large object, rather than many small ones. This works in all aspects of what I observe, whether it be the life cycle of a tree, the repair of a car engine, or even something more complicated; like what has been foremost on my mind as of late, and that is the nuances of human interaction, or rather, how we as humans live our lives, how they unfold.

We have a way to grow, to learn, to change, and even metamorphasize into something else, that differs from all the other creatures on this planet. You take the tree example. Or let's say something more complex, like a butterfly. Never do you hear about a butterfly changing its life cycle, it's born, it grows, it becomes an adult, reproduces, and then dies. That's it. That's the way it works in the animal kingdom. Birds do the bird thing, dogs do the dog thing, etc, etc. On occasion, they are forced to attempt to adapt to different living conditions. In many cases, they are uncapable of adapting, and do not survive. Entire species are lost from this planet because of this inability to adapt, to grow, to change with the environment.

And maybe that's the difference, we humans do so much more than just "survive". We strive to better ourselves, to be more than what we were yesterday. We have a real purpose to our existence. We come here ready to learn, I mean just look at how we arrive, we're completely helpless, and would surely die without the intervention of our parents. We learn from the minute we get here, but we start each new lifetime with a clean slate so to speak. I guess it works better to start that way. I've mentioned in earlier posts how I feel we are spiritual beings having a human experience, so I won't go into that particular topic here, but I will say that now that I think about it, having a clean slate every time we start DOES seem like a prudent way to do things.

There is no doubt in my mind that our lives happen as they do by design. Take your life, and condense it into a box, and see how the step by step process of living becomes a calculated series of events to change you from what you started out as, to what you will ultimately be when this life is done. It's surprisingly simple.

You start out with an idea. First, you determine what it is you wish to learn. For this example I'll use my own life. I decided that this life would be about conquering fears and controlling emotions. So, I started out by giving myself a birthday that would make me one of the most emotional and emotionally driven people out there. I mean I "feel" everything, all things create some sort of emotional response. I believe the ideas that astrology brings us, that our time and place of birth directly affects the person we become, and so it makes sense that I was born when I was. I was born in July, a Cancer, with the moon in Scorpio at that moment, and the time of day I was born my rising sign was Pisces. If I wanted to make myself emotional to the maximum amount, I'd say that was the best way to go. See, it makes sense to me that if we are in fact energy or spiritual life forms, and, if we ARE directly affected by the forces that exist in this vast universe, then to begin a life of emotional education one would need to ensure that the emotions were in fact THERE at the outset. If I had been born in the month of December for instance, then it would not be the same life at all, as a fiery Sagittarius handles emotions in a completely different way than does a water sign like a Cancer.

But I digress. I chose to learn certain lessons in this life, and then I set out to create the life that would ultimately bring about the situations and circumstances to accomplish that learning. I gave myself a childhood that would make me "feel" the emotions of loneliness, despair, fear, and detachment, as well as a very skewed sense of what "love" is, so that as time passed in this life, I could learn to control them, to process them, and to become more than what I was. From beginning to end, my life can be seen as an exercise in processing and controlling emotions. I am more than I was, I am a more complete person, I am more whole. But there is still more yet to be learned, more to experience, which is also something I believe some lives are all about. Sometimes it's just about having the experience, and not so much learning anything from it. Well, besides learning what that experience is like I suppose.

Anyway to get back to my main point, I feel. I say that a lot, but it's because I do. I FEEL everything. Every single day has it's own feeling. I wake up "feeling", some days even feeling different emotions than my current situation should invoke. It's very odd. Now don't get me wrong, I am more than capable of THINKING as well, but by and large, if someone were to describe me, it would be using words that convey emotions rather than logic. It's an interesting twist that I was born with an above average IQ. In fact, I am a VERY good thinker, the logic is there, in abundance, but most often in my life, my emotions have overridden that logic and caused some very "bad" choices to be made, which set the tone for how my life has unfolded.

But guess what? It was supposed to happen exactly like that. Having only emotion would be, well, problematic, because then there would be only feeling, but no logic to be able to process those feelings. Furthermore, if some of those choices had not been made, then the path my life has taken would have been much different, and the lessons I've learned so far may not have been learned. Every person I've come in contact with, every experience, everything, for a purpose. Nothing happens by accident.

Take your life, and look at how it's unfolded, and trust me, you'll see a common theme. Maybe you're here to experience the loss of everyone you held dear as a child, so you can learn to cope with being alone. Maybe you started out with a lot of material wealth, and took it for granted, and then at some point you lost it, and you now are learning to appreciate not having much at all. Maybe you started out with no spiritual training or exposure to religion, and now you are learning to find those things in yourself. Whatever the life, I guarantee there is something you can find as the major lesson to be learned.

Every life is precious because this is what we are here to do. We should not be so selfish however, to assume that ours is the only special one. Everyone may not even belong to the same pantheon of belief, maybe you are Jewish, or Christian, or Hindu, or Buddhist. Doesn't matter. Your life, what you are here for, serves some kind of purpose. You and me, all of us, are spirits inhabiting these physical bodies. Whether you believe this is your only trip around the cosmos, or you believe you've had hundreds of lives, this one you're living right now is special, because it's unique. It will never happen again. No one has ever been who you are, right now, and no one ever will be again. I feel a tremendous sense of both pride and humility knowing that. Proud to be here, doing what I was meant to do, and humbled by the fact that this is the only time I will get to live this particular life. It makes living this life so much more important to me than it once was. I want to learn the lessons I'm here to learn, I want to know that I accomplished what I came here to do, and that I did it to the best of my ability.

So do yourself a favor. Love life, do more, learn more. Remember that everyone in your life is there to help you learn or experience, and that they too are learning and experiencing things from you. So do a good job of it. Take what you feel, and what you think, and put it in a mental box, keep it with as you go through each day, so that when you look back on it at the end, you can say you did the best you could with the life you had. In other words, take your experiences seriously, look back on what has happened so far in your life with a sense of reverence, because no matter how "good" or "bad" the situations appeared, they made you who you are today, and that, my friends, is a truly special thing. Take what happens today and add it to the box, link it with what happened yesterday, or last week, or 10 years ago, and be happy knowing that you learned something. You grew, you changed, you are more than you once were.

Because that's what it means to live.