The fact of the matter.

People from the moment they are born are taught to believe that a good life is just theirs for the taking.

It is not.

Neither is it true that someone else may take away from your life by impeding your pursuit of happiness. Less provincial thinking lies in knowing that you need to learn HOW to live. This does not mean growing up and learning how to clothe, clean, and feed yourself. It means learning how to lead a happy, relaxed, free life. Learning that no matter what happens to be happy. You see people suffer no matter the circumstances, if you get what you want, if you don't get what you want and even if you get exactly what you want the happiness is temporary. You will try and hold onto it forever, but change is a part of life. Suffering as defined by the Marine Corps is "unhappiness arisen from the difference between the way things are and the way we believe them to be." How many people do this? Complaining about life, a life that will occur how it wishes no matter how much you resist. Am I asking you to go out and control everything? To control your own life? Fortunately you may not control your life. The only minor fraction of control that belongs to you is your body and your mind. machines falter, people gain courage, and animals bite.

This is learning how to live. Learning how to control your body and mind. One usually helps the other, to begin to master the mind you  need to realize the mass and complete negativity of your thoughts. If you have extra cash  write it all down, it's a startling realization almost on par with cleaning out your old computer keyboard. It is disgusting, frightening, and puzzling. Disgust toward how much you are not experiencing and how much you are critically analyzing life, rather than living it. Frightening than by being ignorant on how to cut through these thoughts and puzzling on how you got to the point of thinking thinking thinking.

After this startling find go on to the first piece of action you may take to bettering your life. Meditation. Oh yes, the cliche view of a fat Buddha sitting under a tree may come to mind, or a warrior standing one legged on a post (Fuck yeah Mr Miagi!!!) is not meditation either. Have you ever tied a knot in a way that has taken hours to untie? A friend tying your shoe once and pulling as hard as they may? Wouldn't it be easier to slash right through that knot? This is the essence of meditation, to take your stubborn thoughts and slashing through them like useless knots. You don't have to sit cross legged. You may sit or lay (DON'T RECOMMEND LAYING YOU MAY FALL ASLEEP) simply taking in everything you experience. The weight of gravity on your body, the feel of clothes on you, the temperature of the air, every noise, movement you make. It is a sitting act of concentrating awareness to this moment, and stopping the thought process. When you master sitting meditation you may take an active role in living. Meditate what you do, pay attention to every action from the "mundane" actions of putting on clothing, to enjoying eating, to taste the food and not slough it down. Even the simple act of breathing can be refined, ridding yourself of stress will make everything you do simple and easy. It's an alchemical process of evaporating stress. It's rather simple, but for someone rooted in habit the action of changing yourself must be much harder.

Life is a journey. Why suffer it?

(PT1)