I recently posted on social media:
I wonder how much life transformative wisdom have I missed throughout life because I was so focused on judging the messenger as “less than”?
I would speculate a whole lot.
A friend asked if I would be willing to elaborate.
I should advise everyone to be careful when asking me to “elaborate” on any topic, particularly if it’s a topic I enjoy speaking about.
I’ve been on stage speaking at events where they have literally shut the lights off and on a few times to grab my attention because I have gone thirty minutes past whenever I was supposed to stop speaking.
Like, “Ok, Larry, we only had this place until nine. That’s the bride and the groom for the wedding reception that’s supposed to be going in here now, just standing there in the doorway, listening to you prattle on about how life ultimately has no meaning.
You were originally just supposed to be making an announcement about the upcoming fishing tournament, which you have amazingly still somehow failed to mention…”
So I elaborated:
Absolutely.
Essentially, what I have discovered when I examined my rigid internal belief system (my personal “religion”) with integrity, I found that most of the things I held firmly as “truth” inside my thinking were more of a “preference for this to be the truth.”
The more I investigated, the more I let go of my rigid beliefs in a search for “the truth.”
That meant most of the things I held as “the truth’ were actually just opinions.
Visually speaking, how I did this internally was I made a mental image of a chain, or cable.
To me, that cable represents “the truth.”
One end of the cable is attached to my “Higher Power.”
I know what end is attached to my Higher Power because as I pull myself in that direction (towards “the truth”), more peace and more true joy came into my life.
I basically, pulled myself out of insanity by doing this (or did I? Moo-ha-ha…).
To pull myself forward, towards the truth, I have to let go of what I THINK is the truth, or preferred to be the truth.
That is the only way to move forward, towards “the truth.” I can’t move forward if I’m still hanging onto something.
I was told by a wise person that what I described is what Hindu’s referred to as “the golden chain.”
He then said “Larry, you have to eventually let go of the chain.”
That befuddled me because I felt I was having great success, but I eventually did that.
Stop searching, and just “be.”
More peace…
“Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?”
I chose happiness, and never looked back.
Examining my internal belief systems was like studying quantum physics; the more I learned and investigated, the less I understood (I actually found more questions than answers, which is not bad…) Larger and larger questions arose in examining my belief system until I got to where Socrates was when they asked him, “How is it you’re the wisest person?”
He allegedly answered “Because I am the one who knows I don’t know anything.”
I dig that. I don’t know shit…
The more I investigate my internal thinking processes for errors, the more I let go.
The more I open my mind to the “truth” of others,”(instead of automatically categorizing them as “wrong”) the more wisdom I gained access to.
Now, the only thing I kind of know for sure is, I’m right here right now.
Unless I’m currently dreaming…
Shit.
And now, I feel like elaborating more…
A wise person once told me that the more opinions, preferences, and desires that I let go of, the more true peace and joy I would experience in life.
I tried it and I have found that the more I let go, I am able to enjoy “this present moment” more abundantly.
I started to notice more things I would previously have overlooked (because they didn’t fit into my previously rigid model of opinions and preferences).
The curiosity of life and desire to try new things returned to me.
I was able to return to that “child-like” mental state (exploration/curiosity) by shedding many of my rigid opinions, preferences, and desires.
I still have many preferences, though.
Spotify recently sent me my 2024 usage “wrap-up” the other day.
Per them, out of all the “Spotify users” worldwide, I am allegedly in their top 9% of users.
So right there, there’s an obvious “preference.”
Whether I’m driving, writing, or just sitting around, whatever I am doing, I prefer music to be playing. That’s why I am one of their top users.
They also stated that out of all the music and songs I listened to last year, apparently, I listened to Megadeth’s “A Tout Le Monde” over two hundred times.
I guess I was obsessed with that song for a bit.
I had just discovered that the song even existed, and as it turns out, it’s now my favorite Megadeth song.
So, there’s an opinion.
I have the opinion that “A Tout Le Monde” is a great tune.
According to Spotify, the bands I listen to most often are:
AC/DC
Van Halen
and then, coming in at number three, Masako.
That’s right, Masako.
After that, my musical preferences for 2024 get even broader. There’s some hip hop, country, jazz, and all kinds of stuff pop up in my playlists.
The point being, obviously, I now enjoy chilling out and listening to some Masako so much that it’s on par with me jamming out to Van Halen.
I still have opinions, preferences, and desires, but I no longer hold onto them tightly.
I used to hold onto my rigid preferences so tightly that I wasn’t even open to experiencing anything else.
In my old way of being, I only listened to hard rock. The heavier, the better.
I only listened to Heavy Metal bands like MotorHead and SlipKnot.
I also used to have a job that often typically involved some potential degree of violence, so those bads served a purpose. They got me mentally prepared to go to work and kick some doors down, which is basically what I got paid to do.
That’s all I would listen to, and I thought those who didn’t also prefer my opinions and preferences were just wrong.
I didn’t judge other people for being wrong. Worse. Parts of me took pity on them for not knowing “Van Halen was the greatest rock band that ever walked on the face of the earth,” for example.
“How do you not know who Randy Rhodes was? Ozzy? Pfft. I feel sorry for you, your life experience must suck…”
I was a jerk with my opinions, whether they be on political issues, religious issues, or social issues, all the way down to personal musical tastes.
I was very judgmental.
If you didn’t share my opinions and preferences, I took note of the differences and mentally judged them as sub-par.
I am not terminally unique in any of this.
All humans like to be right, valid, and justified.
No one likes to be wrong, so we all like to defend our opinions.
Once I learned the value of opening my mind up, I quickly discovered Masako and a lot of other music that I would have previously overlooked and ignored.
“Oh, what’s that band I hear in the background? That’s freaking awesome. Who is that? Amy Winehouse, you say. Huh. I never even considered listening to any of her music before. Does she have a lot of good songs?”
Suddenly I’m off on an adventure discovering new-to-me Amy Winehouse music.
By letting go of my rigid preferences and opinions, I discovered entirely different genres that closely match up with the energy I prefer to exist in (peace), which is what I find a lot of in Masako’s music.
The same concept applies to every aspect of life now.
Unless it somehow violates my personal “moral code,” I am usually open to trying new experiences I would have never considered ten years ago (when my life didn’t work).
Being open led to finding treasure.
I even meditate now. I found the value in meditation by being open to new things.
Learning Warrior Meditation® is one of the greatest treasures I have found in life, and others had to convince me to even try it.
At the time, I thought meditation was only something that people in cults or Eastern religions did, so I was resistant.
I referred to those people as “pagans” in my thought processes at the time, so I was not open to learning it.
So anyway, there I was, arguing with someone over petty religious opinions and preferences while being at the suicidal-ideation detox facility because my life experience (that I constructed on my own built of my opinions/preferences/desires) didn’t work…
Right?
Sometimes, the most obvious things are the most difficult to notice because they’ve been right there in front of my face for so long.
So I tried the meditation and, walla, I noticed that I started enjoying my life experience much more, very quickly. Mentally, I was more at peace.
I’ve meditated every day since attending Save A Warrior back in September of 2018.
Well, every day except one.
I remember that day. It was a hectic day. I had to get up and out the door early for some reason and didn’t bother to meditate before doing so.
That day sucked. I noticed that I was unusually moody, grumpy, and quick to be irritated.
I don’t like to be moody, grumpy, and quick to be irritated, so I vowed I would never miss another day again. For me, I refuse to start the day until I’ve mediated first. That’s how important it is to me.
When I did some other work on myself, I examined my internal mental thinking patterns for possible errors, and I started letting go of my opinions, preferences, and desires more and more.
Becoming flexible with opinions, preferences, and desires.
I learned to be flexible with opinions, preferences, and desires. When I have rigid opinions and preferences, it’s like I’m putting something in the blank of the statement, “When ___ changes, then I will be happy.”
By having a rigid preference, I am putting something in that blank space. I’m mentally making the decision that I cannot already be happy internally because I am attaching my internal happiness to something outside of myself. If I decide not to be happy, then I’m not going to be because I am the “boss of me.”
Happiness is an internal state of being, a state that’s experienced within the mind, thus it is generated internally.
By having a rigid opinion, I can’t be “happy” until that changes out there or it switches to whatever, and then I will be “happy.”
That’s what rigid opinions will get ya. Far less happiness.
It’s not a good trade; I only risk losing something I already have, which is the possibility of deciding to be happy.
When I have this state of being, I get nothing in return for that trade of my internal happiness because whatever I receive or put inside the blank will never be fully satisfying.
Nothing out there in the world ever is.
As soon as I get it, whatever it is, now I want the thing behind that thing, because that’s how having this thought concept goes.
Never fully satisfied, thus never truly happy.
I heard it explained that my opinions, preferences, and desires should be like a palm tree, which bends when hurricane winds come.
If I am rigid, the tree will snap.
If I am flexible, I will bend and withstand the storm.
I researched my own life experience all the way back to my childhood and gained an understanding of why I had those particular opinions, preferences, and desires. They weren’t incorrect, by the way.
None of them. I felt that if a person of normal sensibilities had experienced life the exact same way I did, being raised the way I was raised,I would most likely have arrived at the same conclusions to develop those very same opinions.
But many of those opinions no longer served me or were otherwise inaccurate with the gaining of new information. They no longer applied.
I learned the value in being flexible with my opinions and preferences.
Many of them I just let go of completely.
More peace and joy came into my life when I did so, and more often.
I examined my extremely rigid political and religious beliefs with the same integrity.
For me, at the time, that took some guts.
Many of my friends held the same rigid opinions about various social issues as I did, and we all knew it because politics was routinely discussed in the office. I felt a little internal social pressure. I felt that if my political views changed in anyway, I probably risked losing some of those relationships.
Then I thought, “If someone would abandon another over political opinions, is that a friend worth having?”
I decided they weren’t.
I examined my political opinions and became open to hearing the other side of issues (instead of being closed-minded before they even speak), and many of my opinions changed on a variety of social issues.
I still have the same friends, my fears were unfounded.
Now I just tell people I don’t like to talk about politics. Most honor that request. If someone doesn’t respect that request and continues to discuss politics, I usually just walk away and engage with someone who doesn’t wish to discuss politics.
Politics is not a topic I like to discuss with many. If I do discuss politics, it’s usually only with a very close friend and typically to gain an understanding of an issue. Maybe their opinion is different than mine and I want to know why that is. Not to be right, but to understand.
Maybe they know something I don’t know, and if I knew what they knew, my opinion would change.
The possibility definitely exists that inside my thinking, many of my opinions, preferences, and desires in life were just flat-out wrong.
My way of seeing life, my way of doing things, the decisions I’ve made, all culminated into me eventually being in a suicidal-ideation detox facility called Save A Warrior.
And I needed to be there!
They saved my life.
I had run out of reasons to be alive, and they gave me some new ones.
I examined why I formed and cultivated my rigid religious beliefs and opinions to be the way they were.
I was very hesitant to do this because, in my religious beliefs, I was taught that anyone who didn’t share these exact same beliefs would eventually end up burning in hell, separated from God for all of eternity. The mere idea of examining other religions for truth and wisdom (and honoring the truth and wisdom one found by doing so) would get one shunned and a straight ticket to hell, labeled a “heretic” or something.
So, I was hesitant to do so.
But once I got past all that and did it anyway, yes, I let go of many of my previously tightly held religious beliefs.
Oh, I absolutely have the same “God,” the God of my youth, I just have much better relationship with this “Higher Power.”
I sometimes describe religion as a filter one chooses to place between oneself and God. That’s just how I have it now.
Of the ones that I’ve studied, I like them all, or parts of them. They all point towards a Higher Power.
Each of them has undeniable wisdom, so I ‘ve taken parts of this one, added it to parts of that one, etc.
I approach each one with complete openess, as if asking, “How is it that you see God?” Instead of approaching it as if they are wrong (as in my old way of being), I now approach as if everyone is telling me the truth, and has my best interests in mind.
Then, I try to see God through their “religious perspective,” and when I do, my own view of my Higher Power improves.
To me, it kind of feels like we are all looking at the same higher power; we just have different names and different perspectives based on our culture and upbringing.
I once traveled with a guy who said his Higher Power was “the mushroom.” I thought that sounded insane at first until I opened my mind to his understanding of God and tried to understand his perspective.
“Hallucinate good intent and pretend he’s telling you the truth.”
Sure, I guess I can use the word “hallucinate” when talking about mushrooms…
He explained that, in his understanding, there is really only one (1) mushroom on the planet.
At first, I disagreed.
“But, I had multiple mushrooms on my pizza yesterday.”
He explained that mushrooms are a fungus that encapsulates the entire planet, and each individual mushroom that we see is just one individual part that manifested itself but is still attached to that one fungus. When I understood that, I felt my relationship with my Higher Power improved.
Because of that, I now think all humans are spiritually connected.
I now view humans the way he views mushrooms.
There is a perspective available in which there is one human being, which we are all a part of. We are each individual manifestations of the larger organism, that organism being “Human Being.”
When I view my fellow humans in that perspective, boy, I want you all to succeed. I want us all to succeed. The success of the human race depends upon all of us succeeding individually.
Once I opened my mind to other religious and spiritual concepts, traditions, views of God, and actually understood why they had them (instead of immediately judging them as “wrong”), I adopted those into my own view of life, God, and the universe.
I had to because they caused my relationship with my Higher Power to flourish.
More peace and joy flowed into my life.
Once again, I have since discussed my personal spiritual thoughts with members of all religious faiths and have never had a negative experience in any way.
No one has shunned me, or nailed me to a cross.
I mean, not yet anyway…
My rigid grip on my religious opinions was complicating my direct relationship with God, as it turns out. I had to let go of a lot of those, and immediately experienced what I felt was a deeper relationship.
As far as “what I am,” now, religiously speaking, I would just say, yes. I am probably that.
I’m partly this, partly that.
All the best parts, I can assure you.
The parts that don’t exactly make sense to me, well, I have an idea that I’ll eventually get back to those parts and investigate them further when I have more time, and there is nothing more pressing to do.
I once asked a friend about his religious beliefs.
I asked “So what religion are you? Are you a…” and as soon as I heard the words coming out of my mouth, I was repulsed by them.
They sounded so intrusive, disrespectful, and just plain filthy.
I immediately apologized for asking the question, and he immediately accepted my apology.
That told me he didn’t like the question either.
We both recognized that neither of us liked that question, so we just quickly moved on and discussed far more important topics regarding life.
So, to wrap this elaboration up, the more I let go of my opinions, preferences, and desires, the more I actually enjoyed my life.
But I still have some.
Obviously, I like “A Tout Le Monde,” by Megadeth.
