Is My 'No' an Authentic 'No' ?

I went to the Church of Scientology on my birthday, and every time I go there, I always learn something. Scientology has so much depth to it, and the people that work for Scientology always seem to give full attention to you, and provide a means of helping you help yourself.

On April 18th, I learned about the words 'inflow' and 'outflow'. 'Outflow' is when a person is talking to someone else, therefore, communicating to that person. 'Inflow' is the person on the receiving-end, therefore, from this perspective, a 'conversation' would be the process of alternating out-flowing and in-flowing.

But this can be applied in other ways. I went up there because I was chosen to be on staff. My answer was 'no'. But see, here is the lovely part about what I like about Scientology.

Saying the word 'no', sometimes, we are not able to see what it is prompting us to say 'no', and what I learned is that sometimes, with saying 'no', we might be cutting ourselves off from a 'blessing' / 'opportunity' / 'potential'.

Therefore, I wrote down random unfinished cycles (activities and responsibilities) in my own life that are, in theory, keeping me from being on staff, and one of those things is money. So I didn't stop there. I, then, wrote a plan on what I'm going to do, or need to do to in order to amass the money I need in order to join staff, and provide a potential date of the time of when I will be able to have the sufficient amount of money.

I then wrote down all of my unfinished courses that I have yet to complete at the Church of Scientology, and provided a potential date of when each of those courses will be finished. The point here is that, sometimes, the reason that we say 'no' is because we have not given ourselves enough out-flow, which means that we have not put ourselves out there enough to be able to receive any more in-flow / blessings / results because of being stuck in a state of idleness.

Therefore, saying 'no' can be a result of existing in a state of idleness' for a long period of time.

To me, it's not about whether I will become a staff member of the Church of Scientology or not, but it is about making sure, for myself, that my 'no' is an authentic 'no', and not a result of having positioned myself in a state of idleness.

Expecting Relationships to Be a Certain Way

Redefining relationships is something that have been an interesting process for me. I never really intended to redefine relationships. Now when I mean relationships, I'm talking about the "romantic" type of relationships. I never intended on redefining relationships, but it is something that I have enjoyed over the past years. My mind, it works like some kind of battery. In my mind, for example, I might see someone and automatically have this scene playing out in my mind, and will see them as being "the one." So I can truly say that the base "programming" is there which is: I see a person.... I create a scene in my mind about them.... I then have feelings about them.... and I then try to fulfill those feelings using my experience of "desire" to communicate with them in a way that I can "win" them over. And then voila! We're in a relationship! I meeeaaannn.... if you look at it from this perspective, it is quite limiting. It's like trying to catch a fish using bait. So it's not like I'm really communicating with someone else authentically. I am using my "programming"..... or should I say my "instinct" to attract others.

For me, redefining relationships mean that I am no longer tied to these "instincts", or in other words, these patterns of behavior that I have gotten so used to. It, rather, means that I am simply using the time that I have with another to communicate, and express myself without any hidden agendas. That is when I can authentically share myself, and allow the relationship to grow into something radically distinctive than from what my expectations are used to -- regardless of what kind of relationship it is and what it develops into. So this is basically how I am redefining relationships at the moment. So that is all that I have for now. Thank you for reading!

Putting My Narrative out There

On Saturday, August 13th, I had a chance to sit down and communicate with an individual. There were a lot of things that I noticed. One thing that I noticed was that I did not once grab my phone during our conversation and browse through Facebook posts! One thing that was bought to my attention is how I tend to say "we" a lot when answering questions that are being directed to me and predominantly about me. The word "we" was articulated more than the word " I ". I've done this on social platforms before when I posted content in the past, such as status messages. A lot of the content that I expressed would be directed to the general public rather than towards or about me personally.

One day, I changed my mind, and informed myself that I'm going to "lessen the volume" on saying "we" a lot to, rather, saying things or posting content that is about myself. You know.... I found this very difficult to sit down, and think of content that I can post to social media that is about myself because of being so used to posting arbitrary content that is directed to the general public about the general public. This, right here, taught me one thing about myself.... is that I was, from a certain perspective, disconnected from myself in relation to my personal narrative.... Of course, I have had experiences in my life, but a lot of my focus throughout my life has been on the world, and how to get the world to see something, or to recognize something rather than sharing my personal narrative, and the content within my own narrative that I can offer to the world.

So therefore, posting content about myself allows me to shift my focus back to myself, and this is where intimacy is developed. Intimacy is not just these romantic feelings that emerge when interacting with someone. Yes, that is a form of intimacy, but there are other forms of intimacy, and another form of intimacy is being able to see into me, and project that insight to the outside world. So that is where I am right now -- learning how to see into me so intimately that it becomes a natural outward expression.

And to me, that is what it means to give back to the world in an authentic way. Because yes, I can give back to the world a bunch of knowledge about something arbitrary, and there is nothing wrong with sharing knowledge, but man, I think there is so much more depth in reading or watching content when you got the chance to live the story that's being shared.