Thursday, June 24, 2010

To Be More Conscious

   To be more conscious is a pretty deep term, encapsulating philosophy and psychology. What are the actual benefits of becoming more conscious?  Why would anyone care to do this?  And what the heck does it even mean to raise your consciousness anyway?

    While raising your consciousness can certainly enhance your spiritual development, this isn’t really a spiritual issue at its core.  It’s really about hardcore mental development.

    What does it mean to become more conscious?  I have found that it is defined as the progressive realization of conscious mastery over your mind.  This includes all of the following:
  • making careful, intelligent, and deliberate decisions
  • maintaining a positive emotional state regardless of circumstances
  • developing empowering beliefs while purging disempowering ones
  • understanding your own thought processes, emotions, and behaviors
  • staying focused on what’s most important while tuning out distractions
  • building an accurate and effective model of reality
    All of these are skills that we develop across a wide spectrum.  Traditional education teaches us basic skills and basic knowledge, but it does little to show us how to develop our conscious minds.  We aren’t taught how to intelligently make the biggest decisions of our lives, how to cultivate a burning desire for what we want, how to know if our beliefs are inaccurate and need to be changed, how to concentrate, etc.  But over the course of your lifetime, these skills will prove far more significant than anything you learned in school.

     People whose conscious minds remain underdeveloped often suffer from cluttered and unfocused thinking.  Needless worries, trivial distractions, inaccurate observations, false beliefs, and negative emotions run rampant through their thoughts, and most of the time they aren’t even aware of it.  It’s like being stuck in a mental fog.  When you talk to such people, you can sense they aren’t fully there.  The lights are on, but no one’s home.  Ask them an important question like, “What overall purpose have you chosen for your life?” and you’ll likely get a blank stare in response.  Because they don’t really have control of their minds, they live reactively instead of proactively.  Such people are virtually powerless.  They essentially do what they’re told and try to stay out of trouble, mistakenly assuming this condition is the best they can expect of themselves.

    In contrast highly conscious people own their minds.  Their thinking is clear and focused, and they select and direct their thoughts deliberately.  They retain conscious control over their emotions, and they don’t easily succumb to distractions.  When you talk to such people, you can detect depth and clarity.  Ask them, “What’s the purpose of your life?” and you’ll likely get an intelligent and thoughtful response.  These people live proactively and are emotionally resilient, rising above their circumstances instead of being victimized by them.  They possess an inner strength that is undeniable.  They exhibit both courage and compassion, and they know that this level of being is how humans were truly meant to live.

    The difference between these two groups is that the first group has settled for the default mental operating system installed by their upbringing and social conditioning.  Call it Human OS 1.0.  They accepted whatever programming they initially received.  The second group, however, challenges themselves to continuously improve upon that initial programming, embarking on a lifelong quest to design a more intelligent mental operating system.  And they succeed.  So while group one is stuck with a shabby and outdated mental OS, group two continues to upgrade its version, enjoying compounding benefits year after year.  It doesn’t matter whether they’re currently using Human OS 1.1 or Human OS 7.0 — it’s the process of frequent upgrading that matters most, not the particular version number being used.

    For more reading on this topic follow these links.
10 Steps for Creating a More Conscious Life
10 Ways to Become More Conscious

Friday, June 18, 2010

BitterSweet Desire

    Member of animemusicvideos.org Tsusksin, has created one awesome AMV. The mood of the video was right up my alley, it is good old goth. The song goes amazingly well to the anime. Tsuskin's  editing skills and artistic eye really come out in this video. Made in 2007.


A few words from the creator, Tsuskin "Overall I have no clue how much time I spent working on this, because I kept putting it off, and sometimes I'd go a couple months without even touching it, but here it is, lol. I had the idea after listening to the song and I wanted to make a video for it. After looking through my anime collection I thought to myself "hey this would go really well with Petite Cossette", and after giving it some thought and watching it once through I realized just how perfect they were for each other.

This video is about the relationship Eiri and Cossette have. Cossette hates him because his soul belonged to the man that killed her 250 years ago and she believes he is the same man. His was the soul of a talented painter who adored Cossette's beauty, and he believed that she was perfect and loved painting pictures of her. But one day he realizes that she would not remain this way forever and so he kills her. When Eiri finds her soul in a valuable glass, her death is reenacted and he is left with the guilt of killing her. He becomes obsessed with her and she becomes his one true love, to the point where he no longer cares about anything else in his life and would go through any amount of pain to help her. Cossette also loved the man that killed her and takes out her anger towards him on Eiri, because nobody would want to be killed by the one they love. You could say their relationship is rather "bittersweet".

I think this fits well with the lyrics "I didn't want to hurt you but your pretty when you cry". Because as much as he loved her, he knew that her beauty would eventually change as she got older, and so he killed her while she was still beautiful.

And "if you knew how much I loved you, you would run away" goes with how she wants to leave him once she realizes he will live a painful and unhappy life unless he forgets about her"

Monday, June 14, 2010

Bleed the Sky

     Artist: Reveille- Bleed The Sky
Anime:
  • Akira
  • Armitage III: Polymatrix
  • Blood: The Last Vampire
  • Ghost in the Shell
  • Hellsing
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion (End of Evangelion)
  • Ninja Scroll (Movie)
  • Rurouni Kenshin / Samurai X - 1st OVA (Tsuiokuhen, Trust & Betrayal)
  • Spriggan
  • Street Fighter II:The Animated Movie
  • Trigun
  • Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust

Editor: Tsukin --> AnimeMusicVideos.org

    I like this video, and it is a turn in the opposite direction attitude wise. The last AMV posts have been cherry and bright, and this one is dark and violent, but there is a quote that goes as so, " life is like a picture it takes the negative to develop.". Guess that's pretty accurate, although vague.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

I Love The World

    Life is one hell of an amazing thing, the creators of this AMV would agree with me. This song is awesome, the AMV made me smile, and would like to pass that on.




    Life is Beautiful - a great video that does a pretty good job of displaying emotion. The creator of this AMV has recently started a new website. Premonition Studios On it she has allot of AMV and tutorials for proprietary tools such as, adobe after-affects. Unlike this site, where you'll find tutorials for open-source software (free).

Unchained

    Nothing like an awesome to MMV (manga music video) to mix things up. Superb editing on this video, never having a still image and run...