1. The need to believe your reality

Wherever you are and whatever you are doing, think about your feet on the floor, the sounds in the room, the sounds outside, sitting here reading this page… everything you can perceive right now is a thought.

Is this at first hard to accept? Run with it for a moment…

The need to believe your reality may be restricting your reality, and when our minds are full there is little room for anything else.

From the moment we are born we take in a colossal amount of experience. The outside world is reality and we assume that what we experience is real because, well, of course it’s real. By the time we reach middle age we are chock full of ideas, beliefs and perceptions. Not only about ourselves, but the whole world around us.

The good news is that if you are upholding a false reality in thought, it can be let go of. While this is somewhat easy with our conscious thoughts, it is far less obvious embedded within the countless observations we have collated over the course of our lifetime.

Belief, by it’s very nature, is an after-affect of perception, not a precursor. 

What would your life be like if you did not care what other people thought of you? If you were completely independent of people’s opinions, good or bad, and would go about your day without so much as a single self-conscious decision. It would be wonderful freedom, of course. You would feel free to do what you wanted, and have a clarity of mind that comes with not being constantly preoccupied with thinking about the judgment of those around you.

Looking at our current state of affairs, it would seem that the culture we humans have created for ourselves is driven by “what other people think,” the tension between the desire for approval and the fear of disapproval. Businesses, families, friendships, sports, politics; everything is, if not completely driven by this tension, at the very least heavily influenced by it. And this we can see very clearly when looking for it, how much our motivation for doing things arises in the concern for what the world thinks. It is a feeling that your very existence relies on other people’s judgment of you; that you exist only as a mental image in other people’s minds. Which is mostly unconscious, of course, because when we drag it up to the surface and into the light we can see clearly just how insane it really is.

By Amy Goodrich

As we enter the colder season of the year, chances are many of us will get a cold or the flu. Luckily there are many inexpensive herbs that can help prevent or soothe the symptoms. They raise immunity and soothe any discomfort caused by one of the highly contagious influenza viruses out there.

Here are 7 powerful and inexpensive natural flu remedies to start building up your defenses to avoid repeated illness during these colder months.

Thyme

Thyme works as an excellent expectorant to clear out your sinuses and lungs when a common cold or the flu hits.

“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creative.” ~ Charles Mingus

Simplicity is the elixir that distills the truth. Complicated, complex matters can almost always be broken down to a level that allows child and layman alike a crack at decoding them even further. There is nothing noble about hiding behind a smoke-screen of academese or posturing for those not in the know. Such is the mark of an immature person, no matter how intelligent they may appear to some. The wise man, instead, never fails to simplify, and it is this that makes him truly intelligent. Here, then, are 15 simple sentences with the power to change your life. {WP}

1. Never compare your weaknesses to other people’s strengths...