Living for today

I am currently reading the book "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle. I highly recommend reading this book for anyone struggling to find a center within themselves and balance their energy out. As stated with the title, this book encompasses the idea of living in the present. It tries to open your mind to finding a way to center yourself in the present day rather than stay stuck living in the past or hoping for the future. Living each day fully connected with yourself and your present moment allows you to fully enjoy each moment you experience for the day.

If you try to absorb all of your experiences you can feel the energy you put out into the world begin to work more effectively in creating a center within your mind. 

This would apply to really tasting your food. Focus on what the taste sensations are on your tongue. This food is what is sustaining your life, so to connect and feel what is being put in your body makes a more satisfying experience. 

When you focus on living for the now you can connect with people on a much more satisfying level. Really take the time to listen to someone, engage in their energy, and take them in as who they are. Your energy will feed off of one another and everyone around you will feel more appreciated, this will reflect back to you with the positive feelings that are given back to you from your friends, family and lovers. 

In this book they talk about a few of the negative emotions that correlate to living in the past, or hoping for the future but forgetting to actually live your life for the present day. Doing so only puts your happiness on hold, why not take that and let it start today, regardless of situations. Situations don't determine your ability to have a positive or negative outlook towards life, you are the only one in control of how you react to life. 

Living in the past: 

If one lives in the past they will be stuck with a hopeless set of problems that can never be taken back, because it has already happened. The past is concluded with absolutely no way to take it back. These would include guilt, regret, resentment, grievance, sadness, bitterness. These begin to envelope themselves into your character and determine how you feel day to day. 

Living for the future. Now this is something that I definitely do, and the most profound thing I realized today came from my ways of living for the future. From the book itself he points out that if one lives in the future you will live with feelings such as unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry. All of these are created by living the present moment with a bad case of the "what ifs." Living for the future to bring you happiness or worrying that it will take away your happiness, means you are living and experiencing potential pain for no reason. If you live in constant fear that your partner may some day leave you, or become unfaithful to you, then everytime you go there in your head, you actually bring that reality to life, not in an actual way, but your physically feel the emotions play out as if the action were taking place in the current moment. That is adding unnecessary  pain to your mindset. You are punishing your mind for something that may or may not ever actually happen. 

This is what I realized that I am most guilty of while living for the future and not staying in the present moment. This doesn't even necessarily have anything to do with happiness, but rather it gave me a means to build excuses for myself in the present. Lets say for instance going to the gym. My boyfriend and I are trying to make it a routine goal to wake up and go to the gym. This is a very difficult task for me, and while I have been 30% successful at achieving this goal, I do keep giving my future self the responsibility of fulfilling my goal in the future. If I sleep in and miss this day, I can make up for it tomorrow, tomorrow can easily become a week, which become two weeks, which can easily lead to your goal drying up and you saying oh well I tried. Another example is I keep saying as soon as I get this area of my life, I will make sure I read all of my books, or I will focus on creating my artwork more, or I will write more in my blog, etc. When I continue to put the stipulations of once "this" then "that" I keep making excuses for myself to not complete every goal I have set for myself in my current life. Why do I have to have my car clean before I can make sure I focus on reading for 30 minutes at night before bed. This only creates a life lived full of making excuses for your lack of drive, and making yourself feel justified with those excuses. 

Obviously if you decide you would like to read this book, I don't say believe everything you read as it should be a new bible to your way of life. Read it and open your mind to creating a potential life by growing yourself as a person with new ideas to try to find a completeness to living life to its fullest potential. 

Lets talk about SEX

As I have gone through life, I have fit right into that new tradition of not waiting till marriage to sleep with my boyfriend...Please forgive me oh sacred peoples of the universe....

This being said, there is some benefit to sticking with this tradition. Although I don't recommend using this newly found tradition too soon, that leads to a whole other mess in itself. Here I will talk about my personal
opinions on sex.

* Sex too soon (I'm talking like first date kind of sex)

* Sex before marriage

* Sex after marriage

First things first. I feel that sex is an extremely important component to a relationship. I mean, seriously sexual chemistry is what makes a really good friendship stay as really good friends, or become lovers. Obviously if there is not a mutual sexual attraction towards one another, then there is no room for a relationship. I find our current society to be extremely uncomfortable about the topic of sexual intimacy. If a girl is into sex, she is a dirty whore. If a guy is into sex, he is a stud, but would never admit it to anyone in a place of respect and authority (like lets say one's parents). All of this is really beside the point, what I am saying, is that we are uptight babies when someone talks about sex. To me I see that as just a bunch of close minded BS. But hey that is just me. I find sex to be a very fascinating topic, and further more, sex sells right? If it didn't have such a strong influence on people, then why would they still be using this as a marketing platform? They wouldn't. It is very healthy for you to explore and connect with your body, personally, and to explore your sexuality with your partner.

You can really tell a WHOLE lot about a person's inner character through the act of sex. There is a huge dynamic of things that people are now into these days. This is not really where my topic of discussion has any relevance so I won't go there. However, in a basic way, let's just say very basic, you can tell you selfish a man (or woman, but generally a man) is through the way they make love to you.

Being a woman, I have been subjected to my fair share of extremely selfish A-holes through a direct result of having poor taste in men. I will be focusing primarily on a woman's perspective, because lets face it, I have no idea how to write on the other end of the spectrum, as I am not a man. Some men have incredibly selfish sex. They have sex for themselves, and they do not engage in their partners needs, and leave it as they just have a hard time, sucks to be them. This kind of sex is very robotic. As far as I have seen, they also tend to put themselves first in life situations as well. They don't empathize with their partners needs, or have any desire to fulfill them if they did. They are taken care of, and that is all that matters. So ladies, one must ask, do you really want to jail yourself to a selfish lover? 

The issue of having sex too early, is a topic that can generally be talked about with most of the people in my generation. We have become a society that is instant gratification based. This can generally lead to having sex too soon. Now this isn't always a bad thing. However, when you have sex with a person, as a woman, you release oxytocin. This chemical that is released forms a mental attachment towards the said person you just had sex with. This is dangerous mostly because this alone can mentally jail you to a complete jerk. You had sex with them too soon, now you are attached to them, and you can't even put your finger on it as to why you are so attached. They don't call, they don't text back, they don't take you on dates, and yet for some reason you still just long for affection from them. This is purely a trick of the brain, and the reason why sex too early in a relationship can be dangerous. Lets say said jerk off finally starts to answer calls and regularly come around. You now could be misplacing your physical lusting for love. You really feel like there is love, but in reality all you have is sex. You don't have similar interests, you don't have great conversations, you basically just have sex. This is the thing you have to really look at and make sure you are not misplacing your feelings of lust for the love of your life, because honestly what a waste of life that could end up becoming! 

Now I am not telling anyone to wait and have sex after marriage, because I guess there is that whole saying of practice what you preach... I feel like having sex can further help define your relationship with your partner. Like I said earlier, you need that chemistry in order to have a healthy romantic relationship. I don't think that expressing yourself sexually before marriage causes harm. It can lead to extremely beautiful relationship strengthening. If you begin to take the mechanical sex act that many people tend to get into the routine, and think of this as a dance of your inner souls, things can start to get very personally deep with your partner. If you flow with the energy of both of your minds, and you really focus on the connection, then people's relationships can become very enlightened. It is like a whole energy field that cycles through one's mind, and bodies. 

Generally speaking, this connection will not be felt by the lusting couple that had sex too early. This type of sex is not typically possible for people who have not established a mental bond and connection. So it is important to still not mistake this for that lusting feeling one may have from becoming attached to a partner through the physical means of sex. When they talk about the fact you must be able to have a conversation with your partner in order to have a strong long lasting relationship, that is true. You could not experience this type of sex, if you or your partner is not mentally connected with the other. This type of sex requires that connection first, and it also requires that you have not landed yourself with one of those selfish jerk lovers I talked about previously. 

Now to the sex after marriage part of this topic. Just like I am not a man, I cannot speak for the whole waiting till marriage. Personally to me, that sounds like a terrible idea. I don't want any surprises in my sex life after I have legally bound myself to my partner til death do us part!