Gabriel Mohr

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The Alucard Effect: What’s Great About Hellsing Ultimate

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Quick Fact

-Alucard is a great character to study, especially when we want to obtain confidence, fearlessness, transformation, a positive sense of eternity, how to consciously embrace our dark side, and more!

Intro

Hellsing Ultimate, the show that shows us the darkest side of human imagination in the most ingenious fashion. It’s not a blood-and-gore flick meant to keep you fixated on sickness but an actual work of art that subtly explains the reasoning behind war and why leaders create it and thrive in it!

Enter Alucard, the main character of the series, a total and complete monster that… Roots for both sides? And goes out of his way to kill for the good guys? Yep and yep! He isn’t the average “killer of the series” that we’ve come across so many times before, he’s much more aware of his situation to be insulted as such! Calling him a “mindless killer” would not only be inaccurate but distasteful once his true nature is revealed, and I argue that his character contains many qualities which we can observe and benefit from! 

Fair warning! This post will contain spoilers of the show, I highly encourage you to watch it before reading the rest of this post.

About The Show

Hellsing Ultimate takes place in England sometime in the late 1990s (depending on which timeline you follow) where supernatural beings are the norm and dark, misty nights are revered by all (apparently). Sir Integra, directly funded by the Queen, is in charge of keeping these abominable threats from taking the lives of millions. However, Integra is only human while these creatures are immortal and impossible to kill, so how is she supposed to keep these monsters at bay?

With a monster, of course!

Her father died and made her heir to the throne. His brother, who was standing next to him when he uttered the words on his deathbed, set himself to kill Integra since he was “supposed” to be the successor. Really he just wanted the money and power.

He chases Integra to the basement where there lies a creature that appears to be dead, in a straight jacket. He shoots her in the shoulder and some of her blood lands next to its feet, and to everyone’s surprise, the creature begins lapping it up and using it as food to gain energy. He then proceeds to protect Integra and kill her assailants while taking many pistol shots to the face in the process, thereby sparking the master/slave relationship between Integra and Alucard and a way for her to fulfill her newly found responsibility.

As the show progresses and the threats become more intense we see Alucard give away some of his character. Mind you, he’s not developing, he’s giving it away – a welcome breath of fresh air in an era of “he started out like crap and now he’s completely on top of everything” which grows old and stagnant after a while.

And what he gives away is so solid and so applicable that I couldn’t help but share it with you today! So buckle up and prepare for some of the most cinematic genius the world’s ever seen!

He’s Not Afraid To Kill. And He Does. A Lot.

This is the most in-your-face quality about Alucard that turns many people away – his kill count. I won’t spoil it for you but he’s definitely racked up a couple of lifetime sentences between his gun, his brute strength, and his superpowers, not to mention the fear he instills in people upon his arrival.

Granted, it’s his job to kill supernatural threats, but there’s a big difference between killing because it’s your job and killing for sport. Alucard admits he kills for fun, and that’s early on in the series – he has no bones about it! 

Something we can take away from this mindset is that going through the desire to harm, in our minds, while suspending judgment is actually a healthy thing to do! Maybe we shouldn’t act it out, but we do have a collective “okayness” with killing and death because of our primal past, something which shouldn’t be denied and should be accepted in stride!

He Has No Fear

None whatsoever. This is his greatest quality, in my opinion, his fear of death is completely and utterly not there.

Most of us alive today are afraid of fear, evil, and suffering. We avoid it like the plague and any mention of it brings a certain sickness to our stomachs – not Alucard. He simply goes and does what he wants to do, often smiling and laughing in the process. It’s quite remarkable really, considering the dark things he’s tasked with doing. 

This is a huge takeaway for us – having no fear in our system is the equivalent of being enlightened, that is, we feel “light” because there is the absence of “heaviness” (fear). Just because we don’t fear something like killing or death doesn’t necessarily mean we should do it, it’s simply an alternative to being bogged down by suffering.

He Is Fear

This may seem like a contradiction to what I just wrote, but it makes sense in a certain way. If someone like Alucard decides to completely accept fear and turn it into seriousness he will be filled to the brim with fear and be fearless at the same time. He is completely okay with feeling fear (even if it’s only the fear of his enemies) and therefore transcends it by “becoming” it, by being himself in its presence, by acting through it.

How we can apply this in our everyday lives is by accepting the things we cannot change – for example, there will always be death. If we accept death then we accept the fear of death, and if we accept the fear of death we can transcend it.

His Confidence Is Off The Charts

This guy… Has no bounds to his confidence. None at all.

Later on in the series, he’s stranded on a warcraft carrier because he crashed his aircraft into it and killed an enemy of war. He floats on the remains of his ship to England where he’s met with WWIII, two different armies attacking the same city. He leaps off of his ship and lands in the middle of both armies, smiling a devilish smile as the two warlords approach him and grimace, inches from his face.

He’s unstoppable, so why wouldn’t he?

Many of us today are not confident for one reason or another. Part of it has to do with propaganda, part of it has to do with detrimental beliefs, and part of it has to do with lack of proper experience. Choosing to have the kind of confidence that Alucard possesses, the confidence of someone who is truly unstoppable, is a serious advantage in life and a fantastic way to experience wellbeing.

He Fully Embraces His Desire To Be a Monster

He doesn’t hide it one bit! At the end of the series, his arch-rival is about to turn himself into a monster to defeat Alucard. Alucard says (paraphrasing), “Do not turn yourself into a monster who could not bear the weight of humanity, as I have. Only a human can defeat a monster like me.”

This goes hand-in-hand with what I’ve written above – does he care what other people think? Not really! Does he care that other people consider it wrong to kill, maim, and murder? Nope! He has no gripes with being a monster, and this is something we can sort of apply in our lives as well; we embrace our desire to become the thing we wish to become, even if it happens to be a monster. The opposite is suppressing our desires, and this brings undesirable results – it’s far better to know what we truly desire so that we can think it through rationally.

He’s Been Through The Deepest Metamorphosis From Fear to Self/Selflessness

Near the end of the series, he speaks to Walter since Walter considers Alucard his “monster to defeat.” He explains that, by facing him, Walter is going through “the metamorphosis that we all went through (speaking about himself, the main warlord, and his arch-rival),” a metamorphosis that began with extreme suffering, lead to extreme fear, lead to extreme anger, and finally ended with the end result – a fearless monster. This metamorphosis isn’t just science fiction – it’s a process that can happen in real life as well.

When someone goes through, for example, extreme poverty, they probably live in a lot of fear. Sometimes this fear can turn into anger since anger is supposed to be primal energy that keeps the fear from becoming reality. Anger, then, leads people to do shady things such as joining gangs, robbing people, homicide, etc etc. They become fearless monsters, and yet they’re completely consumed by their fear and anger.

The takeaway from this is subtler than I like it to be – instead if going through the process of fear → anger → monster in the physical world, we should go through the process only in our minds. Some of us have so much momentum going in this direction that positivity is a no-go, so going through the metamorphosis in our minds (without letting it manifest in the physical world) is the next best thing. Plus, it looks cooler this way.

He Has (Almost) No Mental Boundaries (No Societal Boundaries/Pressures)

He has a few boundaries – he doesn’t use his full power unless he consciously drops his limits and he has to obey Sir Integra. Other than that he’s boundless, and having a boundless mind is the equivalent of having a completely free and fearless life.

Strangely Enough, Despite All Of This, He’s Fully Conscious

“But Gabriel, a killer can’t possibly be fully conscious and awake! That’s just not right!”

…Except he knows about and consciously acknowledges the 3rd eye.

In the middle of the series, his apprentice is tasked with holding down the fort against an army of Nazi vampires with an army of hired hands. Everything goes great until the leader of the army starts attacking them – and she’s 100 feet tall, immune to their weapons, and wielding a giant scythe! They don’t stand a chance, not one, molecule of a chance!

His apprentice begins to telepathically communicate with Alucard while he’s on the ship… First of all, they’re telepathically communicating while he’s on the ship!

She begins to give him the rundown of the situation and he tells her, “you have a 3rd eye. You should use it! It’s just an illusion!” She opens her 3rd eye, sees that the actual woman is 6′ instead of 100′, and shoots her while inside the mansion. The 100-foot behemoth begins to topple, and the “damage” she created was “reversed” instantly.

This is the most stunning and direct instance proving that his 3rd eye is blasted open but the entire show gives it away too – his interaction with the other characters really brings his own character to light, one that is completely aware and completely conscious of the entire situation at all times. It really makes me wonder, “how awake can we really be until we truly answer the question, ‘why not kill?'”

The Alucard Effect

Combining all of these characteristics produces The Alucard Effect – IE, someone who’s confident, fearless, monstrous, able and willing to act, and strangely wise all at the same time. 

I am of the opinion that doing some introspection while watching Hellsing Ultimate is an amazing way to be even more mentally healthy than we already are. For example, asking ourselves questions such as “why is this show so intriguing, exactly? Which characteristics do I want to expand on in my life? How can I be more awake? Do I desire to be a monster and/or do monstrous things?” may hurt or be uncomfortable at first. But, choosing to give yourself the qualities you desire is the first step to achieve/expand on your mental health! I recommend you watch the show, the entirety is an amazing work of art!

Conclusion

Thank you for reading! This is a different kind of post, but I had a lot of fun writing it. Let me know if you want to see more like this! I’ll see you in the next article 🙂

Self-Improvement and Realization – Why One Works and the Other Doesn’t

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Quick Facts

-Self-improvement is where we improve our skills, and self-realization is realizing who we already are.

-Self-realization is what happens when we look into our inner world and realize ourselves!

-SR is often greater than self-improvement since self-improvement ultimately leads to the opportunity to realize ourselves.

-Identifying with ‘the improver’ almost always makes it more difficult to improve ourselves to the furthest extent we’re capable of!

-When we realize who we truly are, we almost always see how beautiful we truly are…

Intro

We see the call for self-improvement everywhere – schools, colleges, gyms, workplaces, training programs, various kinds of sports, and of course the infamous “self-improvement” communities that are scattered around if you look hard enough.

The game of self-improvement has become the game to play when I speak for American society, and if you show no interest in the game then finding people you can befriend will be difficult since everybody is busy “improving” themselves in one way or another.

It’s also come to my attention that some of my writings come dangerously close to saying something to the extent of, “You should improve yourself in order to feel better.” This is not the intention of my writings; my writings exist to help you find the silence in your life, whether that means a silent mind, a change of environment, wisdom to help you handle your chatty friends and family, etc. 

Today I’d like to make a case against self-improvement and for self-realization, since I have observed “realized” people and “self-improvement” people and have come to the conclusion that realized people generally have better lives than self-improvement people (please note that the word “better” implies that self-improvement must take place in order for an individual to become realized. This is not the case and I simply use it for lack of terminology).

I’ll articulate the two main problems with self-improvement and then I’ll explain what I mean when I say that somebody should “realize” themselves. Grab your popcorn because this one’s going to be fun!

The Improver

The idea of improving yourself is simple; you start out at point A and you want to get to point B. However, since you don’t have the presence of mind, physical fitness, or confidence to do such a thing you need to improve yourself in order to do so, and this can be done through schooling, studying through other means, working out, having somebody train you, going to yoga class, or even meditation.

Of course, the end result of this improvement is a feeling of competence, confidence, and worthiness in the society in which you live (which you can have right now if you choose to, but more on that below). However, there’s one small problem with this; if you’re improving yourself then who is improving the improver? And of course who is improving the improver of the improver?

This gets pretty trippy if you’re the one improving yourself because eventually, you have to ask, “Which part of me is improving and which part of me is the improver? And which part of me is responsible for improving the improver, and which part of me is responsible for improving the improver of the improver?!” 

We can already see that self-improvement cannot work because every improver needs improving, and who is going to improve the final improver? We can argue that a circle of people can manage to improve each-other as a group, and while that is possible there is still one more problem…

Pain

To “improve yourself” you must go through the “struggle” or the “tunnel” or whatever one might call it so that he or she can be more steady and secure in the future. This means going through a lot of pain (physically, psychologically, or both) in order to train your body, go to school, work those long hours, or whatever it is you do. 

This is a tragic model of life because it simply doesn’t work like this. Pain leads to more pain and pleasure leads to more pleasure. If you’re experiencing pain as a result of trying to improve yourself then it’s more than likely that you’ll end up in a place of responsibility that produces more of the feeling you want to feel! In other words, you want to feel the pain that you feel when you go through “self-improvement” then who’s to say that you don’t want it to go away when you’ve “fully improved,” if you even get to that point?

It should be noted that learning/doing something because you’re interested in it is not the same as learning/doing something because you think you “have to;” if you work out, study, etc because it’s interesting to you then more power to you. I am mainly speaking about those who do something because “it’s good for them;” this mindset points to an unspoken assumption that can be summed up in a sentence such as “I am no good as I am and I need to be better.” 

The Realization

This assumption, “I am no good as I am and I need to be better” is simply a thought, a feeling of shame, or both. When the self-improver realizes this he or she becomes liberated from the cycle and their emotional pain turns into a feeling of relief as if they had just dropped their backpack after a twenty-mile hike.

I make the case for self-realization because it is the actual antidote to self-improvement! If someone really thought it through they would realize that they never had to improve because they’ve always known what they’ve wanted to do all along, and it probably didn’t have anything to do with what they were doing to “improve” themselves at all.

How Do I Realize Myself?

It’s important to consciously shift your mindset from the “improver” to the “realizer” because otherwise, the heading above will sound like another tactic for self-improvement. However, realizing your self is simple; pay attention to your thoughts, your feelings, and your environment around you. Pay attention to the one who pays attention to your thoughts, and then pay attention to that one. This is meditation at its core; it is not a tool but a state of understanding yourself and the world around you.

Doing this is frighteningly simple, and when you realize that you can start manifesting your own feelings into your life (competence, confidence, worthiness, connection, love, bliss, you name it!) then people will start to heal simply by standing in your presence on their own path towards realizing the same thing. It’s truly wonderful.

The Urgency

I urgently encourage you to shift your mindset from the “improver” to the “realizer” as quickly as possible. We (Americans, at least) are in a society that is so greatly focused on self-improvement that they’re hurting themselves and everybody/everything else around them.

Instead of this, it’s very important to seek self-realization and to develop an understanding of the world inside of them and the world around them while consciously deciding to do away with self-improvement.

This is a vital change that must happen soon if we’re going to thrive as a species, and it starts with you, the reader. Or readers. It’s possible that more than one person is reading this post on the same computer. I don’t know :).

Conclusion

Thank you so much for reading my article! I greatly appreciate you being here, and I’ll see you in the next one :).

Truth As Reality – Why You Should Tell The Truth

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Quick Facts

-The word ‘truth’ can point to a concept (“she’s telling the truth,”), a felt emotional state that we can live in, or both!

-It’s possible to be innocent and not know the truth, but to know the truth and ignore it is a whole ‘nother ball game.

Intro

Today I’ll be writing about my discoveries about truth, and why it’s one way we can live a (mentally) healthy life. I’ll be writing about the extent I went to to get this information, and how we can think about truth from a different (and I argue better) perspective. Enjoy the read!

The Incident

Some of us instinctively suspect that telling the truth is better than lying. People who lie often have terrible lives in one way or another, but I wanted to know why that is; I wanted to know why there is such a tremendous penalty for lying and such a rewarding experience for telling the truth. I’ve put a lot of research into this post, and what I mean by that is I let myself spend some time in county jail to observe the people who were there.

No, I didn’t ask the guards if I could stay in a cell for the night; I let myself get caught and charged with possession of psilocybin mushrooms and marijuana, which landed me in prison the “legitimate” way. I was only there for 5 days, which seems like a shame, but here’s what happened. I was put in the same cell as a “war vet” (that’s what he called himself, but I’m not sure if that’s the truth).

He showed me scars on his head from a bullet wound, scarring on his chest from open-heart surgery, and what was supposedly a bullet in his knee. His first two scars held true – there was a scar behind his ear that was definitely from a bullet zinging past his head, and there was a scar on his chest that was definitely from open-heart surgery. However, his behavior over the five days was interesting – it was as if he had to prove something to me and that he couldn’t take no for an answer.

He kept telling me about the war and how gruesome it was; he kept telling me about his PTSD, how many prisons he had been to, that he was homeless by choice, that he had a part-time job, and the only reason he was there was because of a drinking problem… In other words, he wouldn’t speak unless he was building himself up. He listened to what I had to say with one ear open and the other closed. That meant helping him solve his problems was out of the question; I simply listened while he spoke and provided emotional healing whenever I could. The others in the jail were more corrupt but only two are notable, and since I never learned their names we can call them Bobby and Randy.

Both of these guys were on their way to state prison, and one of them had been sentenced to 14 months in the county jail alone, which was slightly unusual. They were allowed to spend a lot of time in the main room since they were sentenced to prison. Because of this, Bobby was able to walk around the main room – and did so, constantly. He (seemingly without a care in the world) walked along the outside of our cell doors as if he were the guard making sure we didn’t escape. The reason I say this is because I made sure to stare at him whenever he would pass my cell door, and if he met my eyes I could see the frightened child he was trying to hide.

Randy never did this, but there was something strange about him as well; he was trying (and failing miserably) to play the fool by laughing it off. He disregarded everyone as foolish as well, and often his laughter had a tinge of sadness thrown in there for anyone who was listening closely. Now, these two were best buds, and for good reason – they had never met outside of the prison, but somehow it seemed like they knew each other as childhood friends. They talked for hours and hours about prisons, deep Mexico, where they’ve been, and what they’ve done…

The chatter only ceased when they were in their individual cells or eating their meals. They managed to piss the rest of us off quite successfully.

These guys had something to prove; Bobby had to prove that he was the man by patrolling our cells and Randy had to prove that he wasn’t a complete fool by telling us about his experience and his knowledge. When they met each other in jail they saw each other as “friends” because they were very sad at the core of their being.

This happened on a subconscious level, of course – if they had been conscious of their efforts to cover up their sadness they probably wouldn’t have committed the crimes that got them locked up in the first place.

Having Something To Prove vs. Telling The Truth

Outside of jail, I’ve seen many people share the information they know to cover something we aren’t supposed to see. It’s often unknown to the individual that they’re doing this, and if you ask them what they’re hiding and why they’ll look at you suspiciously as if you were the monster. Enter: Being knowingly ignorant vs. being innocently ignorant.

Being truly ignorant means having absolutely no idea as to the truth of the situation while being knowingly ignorant means ignoring something that you don’t want to face.

All of us are innocently ignorant of many aspects of existence but only some of us are intentionally hiding (probably also ignoring) something. If we hide something (doesn’t matter what it is) we’re concerned about our own safety, but perhaps it’s best to figure out what you’re hiding if you don’t already know and ask yourself, “Why am I hiding this exactly? What do I gain from this?”Otherwise, it starts to build up.

You’ll start to become afraid of other people exposing your secret and you’ll feel the ever-growing need to prove yourself so that the thing can stay hidden. This, then, begins to build and build and build until you find yourself in prison, wondering why society has to be so messed up while probably boiling up in a cauldron of resentment.

The Truth

Once someone thinks it all the way through something interesting happens; they often decide that lying can only bring about unnecessary suffering, so they start telling the truth. Usually, it stings at first, and their friends and family look at them as if they were from another planet – however, somehow this pain feels better than the pain they felt before; this kind of pain is justifiable since they are telling the truth. And, of course, the initial sting slowly transforms into a kind of confidence and self-worth that people can’t help but admire and appreciate.

But why, exactly? Why does covering something up land you in prison and why does telling the truth garner respect? It is simply because lying and truth-telling are both words that point to actual variations of the felt reality. When you lie you are cultivating and living in the felt experience that people tend to label, “Shady, suspicious, sketchy,” etc. When you tell the truth, however, you are cultivating and living in the felt experience labeled as, “Honorable, respectful, reliable,” etc etc.

This is the fact that most of us don’t know; some of us think we should get what we want, however, we don’t. One thing to know, however, is that the means of obtaining what you want will determine the emotional reality you cultivate while you’re reaching for your goal. We’ve all held on to a lie and had it eat us up on the inside and we’ve all told somebody the truth and felt amazing while we did so.

Conclusion

If one were to ask themselves, “What am I hiding and why” and answer themselves honestly and truthfully, something good will begin to happen. If you consciously decide to live in truth all of the time you will begin to see the beauty in life and you will begin to succeed in every way imaginable. Perhaps you already have; if that’s the case then you know what I mean 🙂

Confidence and Anxiety are Polar Opposites, and Why It’s Important to Balance the Two

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Quick Fact

-Just like light and day, confidence and anxiety are total opposites on the emotional scale!

Intro

I’m making a bold claim by saying that confidence and anxiety are polar opposites, just like black and white, masculine and feminine, light and dark. However, we’ll look at the definition of these two words and we’ll see what I mean!

The Definitions

Confidence is described as, “a feeling or consciousness of one’s powers or of reliance on one’s circumstances,” or as “faith or belief that one will act in a right, proper, or effective way.”

Already, we can see an upside and a downside to confidence. It’s important to be aware of the power and ability you actually possess since it helps give you a sense of self (aka ego), which is a very healthy feeling if it stays at this level.

The real trouble comes from taking the second definition too far; overestimating our own abilities or potential leads to too much ego, which is really where it gets its negative connotation from. If we have too much ungrounded faith or belief in ourselves, especially if we’re trying something new, or if we’re out of our element in any given situation, then we come off as brash, arrogant, egotistical, unapproachable… You know the type.

The definition of anxiety is “Apprehensive uneasiness or nervousness usually over an impending or anticipated ill,” or the medical definition, “an abnormal and overwhelming sense of apprehension and fear often marked by physical signs (such as tension, sweating, and increased pulse rate), by doubt concerning the reality and nature of the threat, and by self-doubt about one’s capacity to cope with it.”

In other words, there are situations involving certain things, thoughts, or people that we aren’t confident enough to move through; sometimes we don’t believe in our own abilities and that produces a feeling that we call ‘anxiety.’

‘Grounded’/’Ungrounded’ Anxiety and ‘Grounded’/ ‘Ungrounded’ Confidence

Sometimes, however, we feel anxious because we really don’t possess the knowledge, skillset, or capability to work through a situation properly. If someone decides to learn construction as a trade then they won’t feel so great if they switch their career and become a chef simply because they don’t possess the skillset to work in such an industry and make money. (He might have learned to cook beforehand of course but let’s say he didn’t for the sake of time.)

This kind of anxiety isn’t something that goes away from him just because he reads a blog article; it slowly transforms into confidence as he learns the skillsets needed to be able to work and thrive in a kitchen.

It’s important to know whether your confidence and anxiety are grounded in reality or not. If you’re like me and you feel a pang of anxiety because you’re about to go to work, then the anxiety isn’t very grounded in reality because I’ve been doing the same kind of work for a year and a half now, and I’ve been through enough to know I’ll make it through the day. If, though, I’m hanging off the edge of a cliff about to die and an avalanche starts to shoot down towards my face… Well, that’s a shot of adrenaline I’ll actually need to find a hidey-hole somewhere!

I mention this because I see a lot of people (especially young men) who are very, very anxious for no apparent reason whatsoever. Sure, most of the time I don’t know anything about their personal life, but what I do know is that they’re in a safe place at that moment with thoughts and/or feelings bothering them about either past or foreseen future situations. I call that ‘ungrounded anxiety’ simply because they aren’t confident in their actual capabilities to make the situation happen as they want it to.

If you are capable of doing something and/or making it turn out the way you want (whatever “it” might be) then there’s no reason to feel anxious about that particular circumstance. If you’re feeling anxious about something and you really don’t have the skillset to overcome it then I call that “grounded anxiety.”

Instead of running away from it (by medicating yourself or otherwise), it’s best to find the skill set you need to build and build it up enough to take care of the situation properly. Slowly, over time, grounded anxiety turns into grounded confidence whether we’re conscious of it or not.

“Grounded confidence” is confidence based on actual ability. If someone is confident in their ability to build a house because they’ve been building houses for 40 years then they have grounded confidence when it comes to building houses.

“Ungrounded confidence” is when someone creates confidence with their mind, out of nowhere!

For example, if someone tells you they can build a house but don’t have any actual experience building a house then it’s very possible that they’re operating from a place of ungrounded confidence. These kinds of people can seem egotistical, arrogant, etc, even though this isn’t a fundamentally unhealthy aspect of life – ungrounded confidence can be an amazing thing to manifest!

What About Medical Disorders?

If someone is diagnosed with something like GAD (General Anxiety Disorder) chances are it can be linked back to a traumatic event(s) that happened early on in that person’s life. I should mention I’m not a licensed professional and that if you feel anxious all of the time you should try more conventional methods of helping yourself (like seeing a therapist/psychiatrist) before reading the rest of this post.

If you have been medically diagnosed with any kind of anxiety then it’s important to know that you are the one who’s producing it. You may be thinking, “That’s not very fair, I was born with a chemical imbalance in my brain that has to be regulated with medication” or something along those lines, but you are the one who is keeping your reality the way it is, even if you’re using your subconscious mind to do it.

This kind of thinking might be confusing to most so I’ll explain further; I am merely pointing out that the part of you that circulates your blood, grows your bones, pumps your heart and digests your food isn’t something that is beyond your control, it is exactly what you are doing at this moment!

This means that if you have a genuine medical disorder that cannot be transcended by introspective questioning and intuitive back-tracking, it is still a part of you and it is keeping the medical disorder the way it is. This means that it is your responsibility to help yourself in the best way that you can, although this is certainly easier said than done.

To end this relatively short post, I’ll say that grounded anxiety and grounded confidence are both healthy when experienced in their due amounts; we do enjoy learning new things and perspectives after all! However ungrounded anxiety should be identified as such and changed into its grounded version, or disidentified with and healed/changed into another feeling.

Why? Because if we find out where our ungrounded anxieties lie then we can realize that we don’t need to worry about them, which will provide more energy to build the skillsets to turn grounded anxiety into grounded or ungrounded confidence!

Also, if we are lacking in confidence we can produce it with our mind and have it that way!

Conclusion

Thank you for reading! I’m truly grateful for your presence, and I’ll see you in the next article!

What If We Used Social Media… The Right Way?

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Quick Fact

-We can use social media to be entertained, enhance our lives, or both!

Intro

In this post, I’m going to outline the positives and negatives of social media. I’m also going to encourage you to use social media for good instead of letting it undeservingly consume your life. Enjoy the article!

Social Media

I go outside into Austin, TX and I see people on their phones. All day. Every day. Without exception.

Not to bash Austin or anything… It’s the same everywhere. Dallas, Fort Worth, LA, San Jose, New York, Little Rock, Idaho Falls…

People like to be on their phones checking their latest social media updates, watching the game, texting their friends and family, and making sure it isn’t going to rain tomorrow. All of these things are great, but is there a better way to spend time on social media? That’s a question I asked myself two years ago… Here’s what I found.

The Decision 

When I was younger I spent a lot of time playing video games, listening to music, and watching YouTube videos. Granted, it was a very different time and place for me, but nonetheless, I loved listening to Nightcore remakes (or the Drunken Peasants Podcast), watching Minecraft playthroughs, and playing games like Mario Kart, RuneScape, and PUBG.

I thought I was the outcast in this part of life since not very many people were like me in my stretch of the neighborhood.

But when I started to travel I looked around and saw it for myself; California, Utah, Wyoming, Texas, Florida, it didn’t matter where I was, people really liked to play their video games, scroll through social media, and watch their YouTube videos, just like I did when I was younger and still living with my parents.

After a while, it almost seemed like my hometown was one of the rare exceptions in the entire US. Almost everyone everywhere else had picked up some kind of gadget and fully integrated it into their life.

With this realization in mind, I started to get a little ballsy. Every chance I got I would look over at somebody’s computer screen, or look over their shoulder to see what they were doing on their phone/tablet, and I would always see the same thing (with few exceptions); Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, Gmail.

Sometimes they weren’t even paying attention to what they were looking at. These people were just “going through the motions” and I could see why social media isn’t looked upon with much favor by our elders.

I started to wonder, ” What if I cut out everything I felt to be toxic and only use social media in a constructive way? What if I got out of the mindless drone I see other people in and try to make my life better using social media?” Until I asked that question I had always assumed that screens and social media were nothing but bad and that I shouldn’t do it at all, and I decided I was going to prove my ungrounded assumption wrong by using social media as a tool instead of the other way around.

A Double-Edged Sword

I soon began to realize that social media is America’s main medium for obtaining intellectual enlightenment.

It sounds silly as I sit here and write it out, but back then I was very grateful to study Jungian psychology, astrology, alchemy, to read all kinds of books written by brilliant and amazing people, to watch many kinds of lectures, workshops ran by notable philosophers, intellectuals, spiritual leaders, to study the different kinds of law and where they’re applied, to listen to all kinds of lost and hidden texts that were fairly enlightening but that no-one was talking about… The list goes on and on.

It’s been roughly two years since I decided to use social media for my own betterment and I’ve gone from being a hot mess to being a completely content human being who’s writing this post – I couldn’t ask for more if I tried!

And so I’ve realized that social media is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, advertisers are targeting us with useless information that seems to stick with the general public (McDonald’s commercials, energy drink commercials, social media commercials, etc). On the other hand, there’s a treasure trove of information on the other side of the advertisers that has the potential to contribute to your intellectual enlightenment with Jung’s books transformed into audiobooks on YouTube being some of my personal favorite findings.

I say it’s very important to make the conscious decision to use social media for our own benefit. If we decide what we’re seeing before we see it then we can be prepared for our challenges, whatever they happen to be. How you may ask? Simple – pay attention to what you’re looking at and ask yourself, “Do I want to look at this, or do I want to look at something else?”

If you feel toxicity when you look at a certain Facebook post, scroll past it. If you feel enlightened, you know you’re on the right path; in this case, it’s all about self-referencing and sticking with what (or who) you think or feel like you should stick with!