Aligning Your Intentions With the Universe

Today I've been thinking about the events in my life and the lessons that accompanied them, and how they make up the curriculum of my current lifetime.

A week or so ago I had a status on facebook that was something like: "When you are in the right, and your intentions are pure, the universe will generally work in your favor. Maybe not right away, but in the end, you will end up on top." That's pretty much what it said.

And I've found this to be pretty much true. The times in my life where I have found it not to be true, I firmly believe things have yet to fully play themselves out. Actually, right now, I believe full well that the universe owes me, and I will be receiving my "payment" in due time. I don't mean that the world owes me in a monetary way. And in some ways, maybe I owe the universe. At any rate, things are set to change.

But back to the facebook status I mentioned. Now I'm not a mean person, but I have the tendency to joke around in kind of a rude way and I can be mean-spirited without really meaning to. I've noticed that in these situations, things don't go in my favor.

Also, there is an exception to this rule. When you are fully equipped to stick up for yourself and help yourself but you don't, then things won't go in your favor necessarily because it is up to you to get yourself out of that situation. Also, things might not go in your favor if going through a tough time is part of a learning experience for you.

So, you have a life curriculum. As part of their curriculum, some people need to learn to stick up for themselves and respect themselves. This was a part of mine. I believe I have made good progress with this in particular.

If you want things to go in your favor, you need to align your intentions with the will of the universe. Well how the heck do you do that? You need to use your own moral compass to look at life situations objectively and see which side would be favored by the universe. This is difficult and no human is probably fully capable of doing this. But you have to deeply consider the situation and both side's intentions and actions. And just because someone had good intentions, doesn't mean they are in the right necessarily, because they may have thought what they were doing was right, but they didn't fully grasp the situation. The universe shall judge accordingly.

The universe does not seek to punish. Just to teach. Through discipline, people learn.

These are the kind of things I think about as I ride around on the city bus system.

The Messiah Delusion and Narcissism: They Don't Go Hand in Hand

So, it has recently come to my attention that some people associate believing you are the second coming of Christ with narcissism. I don't know what it's like for other people, but I know for me it wasn't about narcissism. Yes, I believed I was someone extremely important and yes, I believed I was on a divine mission. Big deal. What's wrong with believing you are on a divine mission? What I'm trying to say is I believed these things, but I didn't believe I was infallible or sinless.

I realized when this came to my attention that this would be good topic for an article I submit to magazines, not a blog. So I started writing that. Then, I realized I could both write a blog about it and an article, as long as the two things were different. So that's what I'm doing!

One of the things that made it possible for me to believe that I was Jesus/God but I wasn't perfect because one of the ideas behind my delusions was that God isn't infallible after all. The whole thing about God being infallible was a lie.

The moment when I was figuring out my delusions and I figured out the thing about Jesus, it really scared me. No, I did not want to be Jesus. But I talk about this in my book. For awhile I was in denial about it, telling myself I wasn't really Jesus, I was just the one who happened to fall at the center of this whole thing.

It's not that there is no narcissistic element at all to it, because when you go around believing you are the messiah for an extended period of time you start to feel pretty special. And the thing that made it believable is that for as long as I can remember, especially when I was really young, I had a sense of being someone exceptional. It's not a feeling I had control over. That's just how I felt. So that's what made the Jesus thing believable.

One of the many conflicts in my book is me trying to figure out why someone not all that great such as myself would be the second coming of Christ.  It was confusing. Then there's also the knowledge that once my messiah-ship (that's probably not a word) is made public, I will never be able to live up to peoples' expectations of how the second coming of Christ is supposed to act. It's a great responsibility, being the second coming of Christ. I didn't tell my parents that I thought I was the messiah because I knew that made me sound crazy, but I would always say to them, "if you knew what it really was, you would wish it was just a mental illness." Because I knew that living a life as the second coming of Christ would be much harder than any mental illness, probably. It could be exciting, it could be thrilling, but it would also be terrible at the same time. Grand but terrible. I couldn't even really imagine what it would be like. I wondered if all this doctor crap even compared to the shit I would experience as the second coming of Christ.

There was never any desire to be worshipped. The thought of people worshipping me scared me and made me feel really uncomfortable.

When my delusions were disproven, I got the idea I could write a book about it. That was a great thing, because I could be famous and not be the second coming of Christ!

So I guess what I'm trying to say is, believing you are Jesus feels kind of cool, but at the same time it's pretty freaking scary.

A Spiritual Worldview

So I tend to identify with the New Age movement. At the same time, I think a lot of aspects of it are hokey. For example, the belief that when the Europeans first came to America, the Native Americans couldn't see the ships. But I've already discussed this topic, in an entry I posted not too long ago. What I'm trying to say is, I get the impression that a lot of New Age people are ignorant about science, or the actual implications of science, so their "science" is a joke.

So the reason I am writing this entry is to discuss my worldview.

According to my worldview, the physical world was set into motion by a spiritual force. You can call this force God. You and I may or may not have been present at creation. I tend to think we were.

We were a part of The Source, and then we incarnated on Earth to be separate from The Source. When you are united with The Source, you feel love. Because The Source is love.

We come to Earth to grow in spirit. I'm not exactly sure what the purpose of growing in spirit is. There are some things I don't know. You create a life plan before you incarnate, choose your personality traits, and the family you want to be born into.

Along the way, you have spirits which help you. They may or may not make their presence known to you. Mine have made their presence known to me. I used to look down on people who didn't believe in spirits because they had never had certain experiences happen to them so they were ignorant, but now I don't care because I realize I was once like them. It just annoys me when people who are ignorant act like I am somehow deranged for believing in these things.

The degree to which your life is planned depends on what you decide before you were born. With me personally, there was part of my life that was very structured, in that it was planned out. Right now I've gotten to a point where I am supposed to publish this book but ultimately it depends on me and my actions. If I screw up it may not happen. However, I highly doubt that I'm going to screw this up.

Part of you is aware of your life plan and the major events that are going to happen to you. There are moments of foreshadowing, when something happens that bears a resemblance to something that is about to happen and it feels odd.

You've lived past lives. Some souls are older and more mature than other souls. Not all souls mature at the same rate. More mature souls typically deal with more complex issues. However, younger souls may choose a plan to help them mature faster by dealing with more complex issues earlier on. When I learn about peoples' lives I get a sense of how old/mature of a soul they are. I don't know if my feelings about this are correct, but it is a belief that I have, however unsupported it may be.

I believe that prayer can help, but ultimately if you pray for something to happen that's not meant to happen it's not going to happen.

I believe in God but I don't think that He is all-powerful. There are certain scientific rules that are in place. He can use supernatural forces that will overcome these rules on a small scale, but on a larger scale He can't re-program the universe without starting over. So, for example, He can't wave his magic wand and make it so that global warming is no longer a problem, because of the way the Earth is set up.

I don't believe God is all-knowing either. The reason is because we have free will, and God may have a basic idea of what we will likely do with our free will but ultimately the decision is up to us.

It is ideal that you love all other souls unconditionally. But as I've stated in previous posts, this is extremely difficult when people do things that are hard to forgive. We are all connected but separate on Earth, but by loving one another we become closer and more united, and unity with other souls is the single most rewarding thing you can have. Don't judge others for their actions, even if some action seems completely backward you assume that you are ignorant. However, there are people who are not good people, but don't jump to the conclusion that someone is not a good person too quickly. As for myself, I've known bad people but there is only one person I know who I think is truly evil. But for the most part, you need to be accepting of all different types of people.

Things are always more complicated than you think. Always. It is okay and unavoidable to simplify things in your own mind in order to understand them, but keep in mind that things are always more complicated than you think.

If you notice, some of these things have similarities to Christian beliefs, but they are different. This concludes my discussion on my worldview, for now.

When Small Actions Hit Nerves

I find myself torn apart with regret. But lately I've realized something: in a way, these things make me wiser. Because I can see common threads between my mistakes and the mistakes of other people, and I can forgive them for them much more easily.

For example, I know what it's like to beat yourself up over something: repeatedly, endlessly. Then, you feel that someone else is looking down upon you for the exact thing you beat yourself up over. It's the most maddening thing. I give myself enough shit because of this. I don't need it from other people. As a result, I don't hold things against people that I know they themselves deeply regret.

Another thing is, I know what it's like to have a lapse in judgment. People got mad at me for something I didn't even realize was wrong. It baffled me. Was it really that big of a deal? Apparently it was. As a result, I understand that other peoples' lapses in judgment don't necessarily mean they are bad people.

At the same time, as I'm thinking about this, I feel the hypocrisy in what I am saying. I know that hatred is always wrong, but at the same time I constantly struggle with feeling something akin to hatred toward a particular person. What it is is, I have reason to believe this person knew about my delusional issues, and as a result they removed me as a friend on facebook. For people who know about me and my issues, it's not the obvious person. I forgive the obvious person.

Actually, it might not be because of the delusions themselves, but rather some of the stuff I said when my judgment was severely off due to whatever the hell it was that was going on with my brain. At any rate, it's something related to my delusional issues. I feel very positive that it is, despite the fact that really I am ignorant because I don't really know exactly why they removed me. So I make assumptions. I assume it's something that would piss me off. And I get severely pissed off.

As a result, this person has become a symbol in my mind, the target of a great deal of the anger I feel about what has happened to me. The thing is, I can explain myself and my actions every step of the way. I know what it looks like and I know why it's not what it looks like. It's not that I don't think other people have better things to do than sit around and talk shit about me. Because really, I do. It's not that I just randomly make up stories about other people and convince myself that they are true. My own brain executed all this in an extremely elegant fashion and it deceived me. I had evidence, but it was based on the way certain things fit together, and I didn't think this kind of thing would happen just randomly. Ever since I moved off to college, I knew something extraordinary was going to happen during that year. There was a point where I became delusional on a subconscious level before it became conscious. I can remember thinking certain things at certain points that later were part of my delusions. I didn't realize I was thinking these things till later, but looking back I see how these thoughts affected my actions. And when I finally did become delusional, it became clear to me that this was an exercise in trusting myself, in believing in my experiences without having external proof.

I could say more but I don't want to get too far into my issues. I remember all the anguish and pain. This is a hot button issue with me. There is so much emotion attached to this issue, and by judging me without knowing a damn thing about it you really hit a nerve.

But maybe that's not even the reason. I've said stuff while I was delusional that I deeply regret saying. It was because my judgment was severely off. I don't understand why you would think I was thinking clearly. Wouldn't it be obvious that I wasn't? This is also a hot button issue, because it is something I don't forgive myself for. When you give yourself enough shit over something, you don't need it from other people.

So maybe I am ignorant. Maybe that's not the reason you removed me as a friend. But based on the evidence, it looks to me like that's the reason. When I first noticed that we were no longer friends, I wasn't pissed off. For a long time I just felt absolutely worthless. Then I realized that I wasn't worthless and I was angry at you for making me feel this way.

So this is why I hate you. For this I am deeply sorry. I'm not proud of the fact that I hate you, because being a hateful son of a bitch is nothing to be proud of. And in a way, the fact that I feel anything at all is a compliment. Because I don't hate people whom I've never respected, and I once respected you. But you really hit a nerve.

Striking Gold Without Picking Your Nose

So my mom tells me I should write fiction. She tells me my blog is just so great, and that when I was taken to the hospital for the first time, the guy who interviewed me about what I believed told her that I should be a fiction writer, because he was impressed by what I told him, despite the fact that it wasn't true.

I didn't know that the guy said this, my mom just told me this yesterday. But it made me very glad that other people appreciated the greatness of my delusions, and it was funny to think he said this even though at that time I hadn't even figured everything out yet so there were massive holes in the story.

The thing is, the time when I became delusional was the time I struck gold. I came up with an awesome story, although it is not without plot holes, I don't think any of them are massive enough that they couldn't be smoothed over and the story couldn't be made into a movie. But I was in quite a bit of a different state when I came up with this, I was the most fucked up on life at that point and I wasn't even on anything (unusual). I kind of think it wasn't even me who came up with this story, I was just somehow tapping into a higher source. All the loose ends tie together in the end, like they do in any good story. That's what fiction is about: coming up with a bunch of events that follow a pattern and create a bunch of loose ends that tie together in the end, in a way that leaves you with a feeling of victory and has some sort of lesson about life. My delusions have all that.

Most of the time, I'm not that great at writing fiction. Coming up with stories isn't my creative strength. My creative strength comes out when I program computer games, and I come up with ways to model real life phenomena amongst a colony of virtual bugs. It's freaking awesome. But when it comes to fictional stories, I'm not good at coming up with stuff that's original and not stupid.

So two years ago I was writing a fictional story based on my delusions, like how it could have been if my delusions were true. I decided it made the story stronger if the main character (who wasn't me) told stupid lies all the time. Don't ask. So I would have him say something strange, and I was cracking myself up with the stuff I came up with. Then afterwards, every time, the person whom he was talking to would say, "interesting." Every time. It was a little thing I had going.

But I got frustrated. I had a lot of dialogue, but in every scene it was people talking about their majors (because it took place in college). Sure college students talk about their majors, but they talk about other things too. What do I have them talk about? I don't know! Guys by themselves. What do guys by themselves talk about when there aren't any girls around? How am I supposed to know? Yet I am somehow supposed to make the dialogue sound realistic and true to life. In order to be any good at this, I would have to spend a great deal of time observing people and their dialogue in the real world.

As I'm sitting here thinking, I'm remembering a time when I was a freshman in high school and I wrote a story about a teenage girl going on a camping trip with her family that people liked. The thing that people liked about it was the voice of the girl, not the plot, the plot kind of sucked. For people who don't know voice in writing refers to when something is told from a certain person's perspective, the sense of personality of the person you get based on the way they talk and the stuff they say.

So anyway, maybe I should focus on middle grade fiction for girls.

Writer's Conference

So I went to the writer's conference starting last Friday and ending yesterday. I have to say that this was  one of the most confidence-boosting experiences I've ever had. I'm left with the feeling that I put myself on the line, did something nerve-wracking and succeeded. I may not have a book deal just yet but I'm a step closer.

A week prior to last Saturday, I went to the pre-conference pitch workshop. I realized when I got there that I was going to have to do my pitch in front of the entire group. This scared the shit out of me. Luckily, I had prepared my pitch prior to this. The lady who ran the workshop talked about an adline for your book, which is like a one-line advertisement book you'd have on the front cover. I thought of one and then used the rest of the pitch I had practiced. I waited until the end to do mine, I was the second to last person to go. Sitting there waiting, I felt a deep respect for the other people there. It was the same way I feel in theater class, where I feel that the people around me are talented and I don't necessarily want to be seen as better than them, just as an equal. So I did my pitch, and I didn't know what other people thought. The lady who ran the workshop didn't really give me any advice on the pitch, just to change the title of my book. I didn't know what other people thought.

Well, at the actual conference I had at least three people from the workshop come up to me and tell me I had a good pitch. One guy gave me his card and told me he wanted to read my book, which is convenient because one of the literary agents I talked to told me to get feedback from other writers.

So I started on Friday by signing up for more pitches, so I had a total of 8, and then I went to the place where we could practice on people and get feedback. The first guy I practiced on really liked my pitch. He liked the pitch, he liked the book title, he just told me to get into it more when I was giving the pitch. I attended a workshop, had lunch, then went back for another practice pitch. This time I got a lady who didn't really get it. She got confused. Then I came back for another pitch, and that guy liked it. So the majority of people seemed to like it.

I was really nervous while I was waiting to go into my first real pitch with an agent. We were supposed to arrive 15 minutes prior to when we are scheduled to wait in the waiting area. I sat there, sucked on an Altoid to freshen my breath and listened to the sound of airplanes about to take off (the conference was at the Sheraton at the airport). There was something about the sound of airplanes taking off that gave it this building tension feeling, like you were about to do something very important. The time came, and I walked into the room, nervous as fuck but I tried to let my acting skills take over and act like I was just thrilled to be meeting with this literary agent.

She knew I was nervous. She expressed concern that this was the type of book that I would later just want to keep in my drawer and not get published. I know that's not the case. She did ask for the first 20 pages or 2 chapters. This raised my spirits. While I don't think this lady is going to end up being my literary agent, this improved my confidence that it wasn't as difficult as I thought to get agents to request materials and that there was no real need to be nervous. So for the rest of the conference, I approached each pitch with a little bit of nervousness but mostly like it was no big deal. This is why it was such a confidence boosting thing, because I knew what I was doing was something tough. Yet, it wasn't that hard, because I knew that I could go in there, smile and shake the agent's hand, act excited about my project and give a speech that did sound canned and practiced but that they didn't really care, and then confidently and articulately answer any questions the agents might have about the book.

So, every single agent expressed some sort of different concern about my book. No one was concerned about the same thing. I got two requests for the first twenty to thirty pages, one said I could send him the first few chapters but he suggested I revised first, one said I should find another memoir about delusions, read it, and tell her why mine was different/better, one requested a book proposal, and one requested my full manuscript. There were only two that didn't ask for anything at all.

One thing I wish that I had done was more networking and talking to people. Especially at the beginning, I spent time just sitting at the cafe and sipping on coffee. If I went to another conference, I would take business cards and give them out. But I did talk to people so I didn't do too bad. It made things easier that it was a writers conference because there was a built in subject of conversation to talk about, which was whatever project you were pitching, or if you're talking to a presenter what books they had written in the past and advise on trying to get published.

So, anyway, I recommend writer's conferences to all serious writers.