Friday, March 30, 2012

Food for me = LOVE

Feeding someone is such a spiritual practice for me, that I could make it religious.

For one, I cannot cook for someone I don't love.
Yes children it's true. If you have eaten the fruits of my culinary love labor, I love you. Not loved, not used to love... Love.
I care for you more than just enjoying your company. I care for your well being. So much so, that my body wants to nourish your body while it's in my presence. So I will go to the stove and make something delicious. And I will give it to you as a symbol of my love for you, and we shall eat from the same pot, and drink from the same juice bottle communion style.

This is a fact. I know you're thinking, damn that's deep. But I really sincerely honest to God can't cook for people I don't love. Something always happens. Too much salt, too much water, no flavor, something burns... nothing works I tell you. And even the people that know me will tell you how long it took them to taste my food. One time a guy had to go and buy special ingredients because he was dying to eat African Food, but I was never cooking when he came around.

Of course there are people who are fed by me who I don't love, indeed, people I barely know, but they just happened to come in the company of someone I do love. So they are fed on behalf of my love for that somebody else.

Why did I write this? Whats the point?
I want to express to people that loving is more than just telling people you love them. I personally take physical care of people I love. For instance, if you're my man or if you're someone I wish was my man, granted you're getting physically adored around me. I'm cooking for you, I'm massaging you, I'm bathing you, I'm fantasizing about washing your feet. I know. It sounds crazy, but it's true. I like making your body, where the amazing spirit that makes me feel amazing resides, feel better. I almost NEVER actually say it, I don't see the point. I literally act under the assumption that your spirit will recognize what my spirit is doing. I live under the order of Love;the Verb. Not Love;the Noun. If I'm loving you, I just show it. I prefer not to mouthly communicate things that needn't words. It means more to me for you to intuitively know that I love you. I'm weird like that.

It's not hard for me to love people, and it's not hard for people to love me
(at least I'd like to think so).
But if you were ever fed by me, then you can definitely consider it a privilege now. Not everybody is fed by me. Let me rephrase, not Anybody is fed by me.

BTW This is not only romantic love I'm talking about. I'm talking about friends, family, and lovers. If I fed you, I did it because I love you and I will forever care for you. It's much more wonderful to be my proton than my electron.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Gandhi’s Top 10 Fundamentals for Changing the World

“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”

“The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problem.”

“If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.”

Mahatma Gandhi needs no long introduction. Everyone knows about the man who lead the Indian people to independence from British rule in 1947.

So let’s just move on to some of my favourite tips from Mahatma Gandhi.

1. Change yourself.

“You must be the change you want to see in the world.”

“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world – that is the myth of the atomic age – as in being able to remake ourselves.”

If you change yourself you will change your world. If you change how you think then you will change how you feel and what actions you take. And so the world around you will change. Not only because you are now viewing your environment through new lenses of thoughts and emotions but also because the change within can allow you to take action in ways you wouldn’t have – or maybe even have thought about – while stuck in your old thought patterns.

And the problem with changing your outer world without changing yourself is that you will still be you when you reach that change you have strived for. You will still have your flaws, anger, negativity, self-sabotaging tendencies etc. intact.

And so in this new situation you will still not find what you hoped for since your mind is still seeping with that negative stuff. And if you get more without having some insight into and distance from your ego it may grow more powerful. Since your ego loves to divide things, to find enemies and to create separation it may start to try to create even more problems and conflicts in your life and world.

2. You are in control.

“Nobody can hurt me without my permission.”

What you feel and how you react to something is always up to you. There may be a “normal” or a common way to react to different things. But that’s mostly just all it is.

You can choose your own thoughts, reactions and emotions to pretty much everything. You don’t have to freak out, overreact of even react in a negative way. Perhaps not every time or instantly. Sometimes a knee-jerk reaction just goes off. Or an old thought habit kicks in.

And as you realize that no-one outside of yourself can actually control how you feel you can start to incorporate this thinking into your daily life and develop it as a thought habit. A habit that you can grow stronger and stronger over time. Doing this makes life a whole lot easier and more pleasurable.

3. Forgive and let it go.

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”

“An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”

Fighting evil with evil won’t help anyone. And as said in the previous tip, you always choose how to react to something. When you can incorporate such a thought habit more and more into your life then you can react in a way that is more useful to you and others.

You realize that forgiving and letting go of the past will do you and the people in your world a great service. And spending your time in some negative memory won’t help you after you have learned the lessons you can learn from that experience. You’ll probably just cause yourself more suffering and paralyze yourself from taking action in this present moment.

If you don’t forgive then you let the past and another person to control how you feel. By forgiving you release yourself from those bonds. And then you can focus totally on, for instance, the next point.

4. Without action you aren’t going anywhere.

“An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.”

Without taking action very little will be done. However, taking action can be hard and difficult. There can be much inner resistance.

And so you may resort to preaching, as Gandhi says. Or reading and studying endlessly. And feeling like you are moving forward. But getting little or no practical results in real life.

So, to really get where you want to go and to really understand yourself and your world you need to practice. Books can mostly just bring you knowledge. You have to take action and translate that knowledge into results and understanding.

You can check out a few effective tips to overcome this problem in How to Take More Action: 9 Powerful Tips. Or you can move on to the next point for more on the best tip for taking more action that I have found so far.

5. Take care of this moment.

“I do not want to foresee the future. I am concerned with taking care of the present. God has given me no control over the moment following.”

The best way that I have found to overcome the inner resistance that often stops us from taking action is to stay in the present as much as possible and to be accepting.

Why? Well, when you are in the present moment you don’t worry about the next moment that you can’t control anyway. And the resistance to action that comes from you imagining negative future consequences – or reflecting on past failures – of your actions loses its power. And so it becomes easier to both take action and to keep your focus on this moment and perform better.

Have a look at 8 Ways to Return to the Present Moment for tips on how quickly step into the now. And remember that reconnecting with and staying in the now is a mental habit – a sort of muscle – that you grow. Over time it becomes more powerful and makes it easier to slip into the present moment.

6. Everyone is human.

“I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.”

“It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.”

When you start to make myths out of people – even though they may have produced extraordinary results – you run the risk of becoming disconnected from them. You can start to feel like you could never achieve similar things that they did because they are so very different. So it’s important to keep in mind that everyone is just a human being no matter who they are.

And I think it’s important to remember that we are all human and prone to make mistakes. Holding people to unreasonable standards will only create more unnecessary conflicts in your world and negativity within you.

It’s also important to remember this to avoid falling into the pretty useless habit of beating yourself up over mistakes that you have made. And instead be able to see with clarity where you went wrong and what you can learn from your mistake. And then try again.

7. Persist.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Be persistent. In time the opposition around you will fade and fall away. And your inner resistance and self-sabotaging tendencies that want to hold you back and keep you like you have always been will grow weaker.

Find what you really like to do. Then you’ll find the inner motivation to keep going, going and going. You can also find a lot of useful tips on how keep your motivation up in How to Get Out of a Motivational Slump and 25 Simple Ways to Motivate Yourself.

One reason Gandhi was so successful with his method of non-violence was because he and his followers were so persistent. They just didn’t give up.

Success or victory will seldom come as quickly as you would have liked it to. I think one of the reasons people don’t get what they want is simply because they give up too soon. The time they think an achievement will require isn’t the same amount of time it usually takes to achieve that goal. This faulty belief partly comes from the world we live in. A world full of magic pill solutions where advertising continually promises us that we can lose a lot of weight or earn a ton of money in just 30 days. You can read more about this in One Big Mistake a Whole Lot of People Make.

Finally, one useful tip to keep your persistence going is to listen to Gandhi’s third quote in this article and keep a sense of humor. It can lighten things up at the toughest of times.

8. See the good in people and help them.

“I look only to the good qualities of men. Not being faultless myself, I won’t presume to probe into the faults of others.”

“Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.”

“I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.”

There is pretty much always something good in people. And things that may not be so good. But you can choose what things to focus on. And if you want improvement then focusing on the good in people is a useful choice. It also makes life easier for you as your world and relationships become more pleasant and positive.

And when you see the good in people it becomes easier to motivate yourself to be of service to them. By being of service to other people, by giving them value you not only make their lives better. Over time you tend to get what you give. And the people you help may feel more inclined to help other people. And so you, together, create an upward spiral of positive change that grows and becomes stronger.

By strengthening your social skills you can become a more influential person and make this upward spiral even stronger. A few articles that may provide you with useful advice in that department are Do You Make These 10 Mistakes in a Conversation? and Dale Carnegie’s Top 10 Tips for Improving Your Social Skills. Or you can just move on to the next tip.

9. Be congruent, be authentic, be your true self.

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”

“Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.”

I think that one of the best tips for improving your social skills is to behave in a congruent manner and communicate in an authentic way. People seem to really like authentic communication. And there is much inner enjoyment to be found when your thoughts, words and actions are aligned. You feel powerful and good about yourself.

When words and thoughts are aligned then that shows through in your communication. Because now you have your voice tonality and body language – some say they are over 90 percent of communication – in alignment with your words.

With these channels in alignment people tend to really listen to what you’re saying. You are communicating without incongruency, mixed messages or perhaps a sort of phoniness.

Also, if your actions aren’t in alignment with what you’re communicating then you start to hurt your own belief in what you can do. And other people’s belief in you too.

10. Continue to grow and evolve.

”Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.”

You can pretty much always improve your skills, habits or re-evaluate your evaluations. You can gain deeper understanding of yourself and the world.

Sure, you may look inconsistent or like you don’t know what you are doing from time to time. You may have trouble to act congruently or to communicate authentically. But if you don’t then you will, as Gandhi says, drive yourself into a false position. A place where you try to uphold or cling to your old views to appear consistent while you realise within that something is wrong. It’s not a fun place to be. To choose to grow and evolve is a happier and more useful path to take.

by Henrik Edberg

Friday, March 9, 2012

Letter to my Spice

Dearest Spice,

Where do I start this letter, how do I say the things I wish I could say every day but never have the opportunity to say them….

It’s been 11 years since we met and became friends, to be quite honest I never thought that we would ever be friends. I used to look at you and wonder why would this girl stare at me soo much and ease drop on my conversations… I even bullied you and scared. Made you think I was the devil incarnate. But the universe has a sick sense of humour, we became friends…. How funny is that when you look at how time played a great part in building our friendship to where we have brought it?

We are as thick as thieves and have stood by each other through thick and thin. So today I want to say these things and appreciate you my dear friend for standing by my through 11 years of highs and lows.

· I want to thank you for being a good mom to my Darling Angel. If it wasn’t for you, she would not be here spreading the joy that she brings us all. Thank you for teaching her how to love and to appreciate the good and the bad of this world. I see a reflection of our mother in you and trust you me even if your doubt yourself, you are the best gift that God gave her.

· I admire your strength and resilience to get through every situation thrown your way. Not many ladies our age can carry themselves with the grace that you do. I am proud of the achievements you have made in your career, and I can only say that it will get better day by day.

· Thank you for holding my hand through difficult times and for being the shoulder I can cry and lean on. Thank you for tolerating my irrational behaviour from time to time and for letting me make my mistakes and correcting me with love and without judgement.

· You are the best gift that I could ask for in a friend. You are beautiful intelligent and strong.

· I really appreciate the good laughs we share.

My besty, my spice thank you for being you because there is nobody youer than you!!

I love you God bless you.

Always and forever,

Your Spice.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

I speak for Kenya

I am not a big follower of politics anywhere in the world, the only thing about politics that ever excited me was when a dear member of my family was in politics and oooooh yes when Obama became President. That really held my interest for a few twenty minutes!! Growing up in Kenya and seeing how politics has evolved from the "mlolongo" (queuing) system to casting ballots, I would love to say that our leaders have brought us thus far....but if I did I would be lying. As a firm believer in a greater power above our President, I believe that God has blessed Kenya to the point that it has gotten to.

Kenya the land of my ancestors has been through a lot over the past few years....If you do not agree well you my dear country man are entitled to your opinion. I look at the things that are happening as we go forth towards the next general election and I question so many things in this land of mine that I call home. From stories of Mungiki meeting in state house to, our public institutions being run employees from a certain tribe set, to our politicians calling each other names on national television and thinking we enjoy their sick sense of humour.

I thank God for the right to speak out loud and voice our dismay as Kenyans. I am young, I have been favoured enough to travel and see some parts of the progressive world. I do not say that there is no corruption but as we steal from our land to fill our pockets with fleeting wealth and become richer, why are we forgetting the people who do not have as much as we have? Just recently I heard a story of a man who was murdered in Koch, for trying to bring progress in that slum area. This story broke my heart and it made me think greatly about what is being done to stop killings and robberies in the slum areas so that people living there can "survive" another day?

Mr Politician, a few years ago you asked for our votes, promised us better roads, work, education and better healthcare, can we see that?? Yes if you are middle class, but what about those in the slums where crime is on the rise? I have decided that this year my vote shall be cast only for the person I am sure not only talks the talk, but walks the walk. I would like to see change, I don’t want to go into a pub and listen to Kikuyus going against Kambas or the Luos against another tribe. I would like to see a Kenya where we base our talk on politics on the positive achievements that our politicians have achieved before we can go back to a polling station.

We hear the youth are our future leaders, its time for the youth to rise up....

Mr Politician, Please go, you asked me for my vote, Now all I see, crime is on the rise, You can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk? Every time you talk, but can you walk the walk?

It's time, it's time to rise I stand for the 30 million walking these roads you never fix,
I am sick and tired of hearing these lies, games and tricks, Instead of looking up to these fake ones for hope, Remember Kenyan is bigger than tribes, we are all one people let us grow in strength together.