"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And you are the one who'll decide where to go!" (Dr. Seuss)

The one thing I am sure of is the chaos and noise life brings to one's sense of peace.
As if God is testing me. Testing all of us.
It often feels like He is checking to make sure you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. Making sure you are complying with the rules laid out by your contract with Him.
A sense of separation from God comes through this Divine examination.
Whether we pass or fail, we believe any consequence to be karma or reaping what we sow. So we cheat. Scripture becomes a cheat sheet.
We dissect it, hoping for a passing grade.
We selectively literalize, comprising context and relation.
Pick and choose.
One fish. Two fish. Red fish. Blue fish.
We forget about relativity and perspective not realizing that if you hold even one line of scripture as divine assistance, then either the rest are, and I mean every one, or you concede none are. Sacred intervention does not guarantee that passing grade.
Scripture is a study guide not a tool for excellence in some elysian class.
When you skip the answers all you are left with is questions.
When you have no questions there is no need for education.
In spite of a failing grade we use what we believe to be Divine insight as a tool to separate, discriminate, victimize and sanitize. We take our truth from class to class believing our cheat sheet contains the answers to every examination.
There is no need to study because we already know it all.
Eventually, we form our own school and teach our own truth.
This reaction reflects on our understanding of God but those who cannot find the answers are condemned to repeat the test.
We have to redo until we get it right. No mistakes.
We run from test to test using the same responses over and over.
When we don't understand we start tripping.
We forget some things can only be known.
We don't understand that sometimes our faith can only grow when we can't see.
There are the places we believe we will find Him; in pages and down on our knees.
We look with expectation but the sun refuses to shine because sometimes He comes in the clouds. Clouds block our ability to see clearly.
So many questions with little promise of answers.
It is all just a guessing game.
We never learn anything without a mistake.
All I’ve really ever found were more questions.
All I’ve come to be sure of is less than I started out with.
We all feel blessed somehow when the world treats us fairly and our lives move in sync with the ideas we have about righteousness and salvation but in hard times our faith turns to fear. This does nothing to calm the uneasiness I feel leaving my eternal soul with an entity I don’t particularly like.
I make it a point to question God. It is our nature to question.
I even question whether I can survive God.
We all have the same questions and someone who hasn’t questioned does not know.
Even if you fall sometimes you will have the strength to rise.
We don't know our own strength.
Each person is unique,so to is the quality of their strength.
Strength is not measured through adversity, but rather how you react to adversity. Strength is much more than physical power, rather it is also internal and defined by reaction over action. Physical strength does not make one strong.
Having life does not mean you are living in the moments.
Looking at me now you might not know it but I've had my moments, days in the sun. Moments, I was second to none. Moments, when I knew I did what I thought I couldn't do. I’ve started living in my moments. This moment contains all moments.
Sometimes I get tired of these moments and different moments can’t get here fast enough. I should be paying attention to those moments.
To move within the moments; sing and play and chance.
Walk don't run. Fly if when you have the chance. Breathe to live, don't live to breathe and feel the rhythm of romance. Laugh until it hurts. Sing like no one’s listening. When the music starts to play don't turn and walk away, dance.
These moments make us feel alive and that's what faith can do.
To trust in something beyond ourselves is to have faith.
The word itself is derived from the Latin fīdere, meaning to trust.
Faith is an instinct which does not rest on material evidence. Faith is not constant. It ebbs and flows with experience and exposure to other ideas and precepts. All faith is different. It may be a derivative of a prescribed belief system but it is primarily a personal philosophy, with foundations influenced by individual interpretations.
Intellectually speaking, faith is spiritualized imagination. It is an ideology practised to secure a foundation which maintains a sense of reality that is improvable and without surety. We only hope to find it through an internal dialogue.
What you put into your faith it will manifest. What we believe God to be, He will become. Imagine all the innocents of history that may have been spared if the Christian God did not possess traits of hostility, warmongering and Electivism; when you are God’s Chosen People, everyone else is irrelevant.
We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence. We need the safety of our unquestioned beliefs but those who know do not say and those who say do not know. One cannot be told.
Compassion has no ideology. Silence holds no secrets.
God is not an elevated human being.
This is an epiphany.
Let go of your conditioning. Be washed clean not brain washed.
Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Know what it takes to move on and don't give into lies. If all you want to do is trade your life for something new keep on rolling to the ocean. Keep on rolling to the sea. Keep on rolling until the love you need
washes over the fear of death.
We live at the mercy of all this death and this fear, constantly trying to find answers in the hope that some peace may find us. All this living to die only to live again. As with faith, it’s a guessing game. We never really do find out until we die.
I cannot help but wish somehow the rules were different and this unknown was not necessary for all of us to learn and grow and search.
Why doesn’t God just cut out the middle man?
For those who have returned from a Near Death Experience (NDE), the answer is in the evidence. There was an experience so there is something to experience. Since there was a return, the person is here now, and very much alive, that experience must have been filtered through their humanity. Passed through what one can identify and comprehend. Anyone who has ever returned from such an experience always returned alive.
No one has ever woken up dead.
Eschatology, the branch of theology that is concerned with final things like death, is a web of philosophy, history and insanity. Ideology can be unclear.
In science, Law of Conservation of Energy states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but can change its form. The total quantity of matter and energy available in the universe is a fixed amount and never any more or less.
No one who has ever died woke up alive and yet we live.
We look for proof but only on our terms.
Most times proof is right in front of our faces.
If energy cannot die then you’re never really gone because your memory remains.
Although we will die, we will live once again.

"If you'd never been born, then you might be an Isn't!
An Isn't has no fun at all. No, he disn't." (Dr. Seuss)

We are things.
All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence of causes and conditions. Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else.
Some things just are.
We wish we had handled things differently in order to escape those things that are, in the end, just things. We don’t like the way things are and we wish that things were better. There are things we wish we had not known and things we cannot live without.
Sometimes we just have to let things go.
There are some things, no things and every things.
Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things. Funny now the big things seem so small.
All these things make each one of us the things that we are.
All things are with us, with us until the end of things.
Memory is one of those things.
True and false things. Unknown things.
All things are one thing.
Simple things.
I do not feel the same things.
There is something odd within me for I am no more the person I was.
Is this madness or intent?
Some quicksilver switch of the finer sensibilities?
It builds within.
Like some slowly rising flood of anxiety and panic and anger it takes you over, directing, forcing until you are no longer in control. Me is me no more.
There is a beast beneath the surface, lurking for a way to get out. Then, in that quicksilver moment it finds fruition. It leads against will, wandering into the unknown.
Nothing means anything and anything is now nothing.
We become rabid and reckless and doomed.
We are so lost that we don't recognize when we aren't.
Who we are becomes a matter of who we aren't.
How do you take away from a man his madness without also taking away his identity?
It’s the devil you know.
Tomorrow will be better than before.
Yesterday's gone.
Tomorrow becomes now.
Tomorrow, today is yesterday and tomorrow is today.
Tomorrow is a tool, a primary force in our will to carry on. It is the promise of a new beginning. It is essential in hope. It is unspoiled by mistake and regret. Tomorrow is a chance. We can make our tomorrows when there is nothing we can do about our yesterdays. Gone today, here tomorrow.
Tomorrow can be a trap. Like an empty jar, holding nothing but the chance things might be better. Always in between the now and the not yet.
Always wishing for wings but forgetting to fly.
Without tomorrow we have no possibilities.
It is here that tomorrow serves it purpose. It gives us a reason to continue, a method to this madness. It is outside of our condition and offers hope for something better on another day. Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.
Each day has enough trouble of its own
Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.
Tomorrow nurtures fear and courage does not always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "I will try again tomorrow."
Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.
When you least expect it love will come to you.
Sweet love comes to our lives.
Two worlds collide and we find our best friend.
You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams. True love, like the Spirit, is a godsend and the combination of both within any person is a sanction that God is with you. Something wanted or needed that comes or happens unexpectedly is not chance, it is providence.
Hindsight allows us to view, view with clarity rather than emotion.
I am confident that God is with me. I could not be more sure of anything.
He has brought me through, filled me with His presence and he has given me a life filled with love. Life is black or white.
You can’t have it both ways or everything turns to grey. You have to make a decision, which master to serve. We have free will because the freedom to decide is ours.
We have to balance in the monochrome.
Surviving God leaves little room for moderation.
It is a slippery slope that leads to confusion. It’s human nature.
It is important for us to understand not only why we did something but the lesson we may have missed had our course been different. We are defined by our experiences. We are shaped by them. Would we be the person we are now if we had travelled a different path? Is it worth trading your identity in the hopes of a better life?
Don't we all fall short?
If God loves me so much then why do I need to be born again? I thought He didn't make mistakes? The rebirth experience can work but they forget to tell you what dies in the transformation. Still, I'd rather be a bore than abominable.
Rebirth needs a little time sometimes.
Being born again refers to a spiritual transformation or regeneration but we think we can change our way in. We are all just guessing our way through life, hoping the choices we make and the way ahead are cohesive. Anything that requires a formula for resolution with God is archaic. Mandates placed upon me are sent by man, not Him.
I was lost when He found me and broken beyond compare. I wasn't looking for something more than what I had yesterday. He came along and sang a song over me.
I can only embrace that which I have experienced.
It is through experience and observation that we can determine if God is with us. From the experience of realizing God did not come because He didn’t want me, I relive, in my mind, all the factors which reanimate the agony all over again.
Through the year I recognize events and dates that have significance.
They taunt me. The constant bellows of memory and angst and destruction find me once again as some date draws near.
We must bury the past to get past, but it is always with us.
Encore! Encore!
This matters little in the greater scheme of things; it does little having dealt with these issues long ago. They transport us to that time and that place.
They chase us like a shadow and haunt us like a ghost; to hate you some and to love you some but to miss you most. This all leaves a hallow place.
There is no stone to mark the missing part so we try to keep them alive. We forget, the things which give us the most pleasure cause the most pain. That which brings the greatest joy will bring the darkest sorrow. Like some sick joke.
If life is a joke then I don't get it.
I don't find amusement in anything I have experienced and any pleasure I have gained is overshadowed by the dank misery which follows each punch line.
I am heckling from a distance and challenging the moon.
Every life has its challenges. For many of us life is the challenge. Sometimes things can get so bad that we turn to forms of escapism, hoping for a moments rest from the constant hammering of the misery. The way through is to become numb.
Giving in is a way out. Every trip and you slip just a little farther into the rabbit hole.
You don’t stop because you don’t want to stop.
All thoughts are in another head, going round and round and round. There is no pain all is receding. You are only coming through in waves.
What better way to end your trip then a preview of the one to come.
Death is in the eye of the needle when there is no other choice to get through.
Despite my scars, I have learned to turn that need for abandon into country walks and sweet surrender. I walk in quiet solitude among the forest and the stream. I seek grace in every step I take. I turn to look inside myself and try and understand.
I cannot put my finger on it now. No longer who I am.
The silence carries me away. The opiates of life get me high. The Spirit is my drug.
A different comfortably numb.
Dr. Seuss smart from Dr. Seuss dumb.

"In my world,
Everyone's a pony and they all eat rainbows
And poop butterflies."
(Dr. Seuss)

I'm letting go.
I'm tired of stitching up my dreams with a thread of hope.
I'm still a believer of twin hearts and timeless love and all I ever wanted was the feeling I had. Why does the feeling never go or stay?
Another morning, feels like yesterday.
We do not wish it so but we find it just the same. We are triggered.
For some it is a song, and for others it is a location. It might be a phrase or a picture or the smell of a flower or the day, but regardless, they bring much pain. As if someone has taken a river of nails and propelled each one into the skull.
Then we sit and watch the pendulum sway.
Sometimes we get so done with feeling that the damage is revealed.
No pill can cure you. Things only get worse and then are gone. Time seems to put such things in the proper place, so one may carry on with the chore of living. The walls we build and all the resolve are methods for survival. We need them with us so we find a place that is all theirs and always will be. They have a reservation in our earth bound being. They become part of us despite the million things we never said and didn’t even try. After all, our words are cheap and sometimes cruel.
You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile. This life is about a beginning and an end, the middle is the shit we carry with us. Life is a pile of shit most times. A pile that continues to grow and increase in mass. One thing after another builds upon itself as we stand before a mountain of excrement too high to flush.
This wonderful, individual, corruptible, senseless, smelly mortal coil will never be enough to keep us in this life but it will take us to the next. There is uniqueness in who we are, to both the universe and the gods we discover within it. Each one of us is beautiful, no matter what some may say. There are no ordinary people.
Only dead fish swim with the stream.
Who we are cannot be taken away from us.
Our experiences, the truths we have come to know, our inner self, these cannot be destroyed. They make up our anatomy.
The wad of crap we must conquer is the mountain we must climb. After all, it is through our trials and tribulations that we are shaped by something greater, into something better.
Our suffering produces perseverance and that perseverance produces character and character produces hope; the Lord said "Let there be shit" and there came piles of it.
Shit happens so we make God responsible for our hardships in life.
As if we need Him to make it worse, when it couldn't get any worse.
So where does all this shit comes from? Is the dark matter which makes up the bulk of our universe really just invisible shit?
Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference.
Anything beyond the limits and grasp of the human mind is either illusion or futility. The futility of the hopes and aspirations that most men pursue throughout their lives will make no man wise unless he can apply that knowledge.
We want to see changes but we don't know how to start.
If there's one thing I know, the blues sent to meet me won't defeat me. It won't be long till happiness steps up to greet me. Apparently, that’s all he wrote.
Apparently, you can't write anything anymore.
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is a significant matter.
Censorship is power. When you control words you control people.
Language impacts learning and the nature of censorship misses the context. Only through context can we fully comprehend a point. If we strive to comprehend we communicate.
Censorship limits dialogue. Dialogue promotes understanding.
To limit access limits awareness. We should educate not insulate.
When we restrict education it becomes a tool of dominance. What we say and what we read eventually turns into what we think. All approved by the powers that be.
Like with any good diatribe if you give enough matches to people everything will burn.
After any good burning all that remains are ashes.
Ashes choke and block the sun.
For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.
Sometimes we simply remember. An eulogy played over and over on some mental VCR.
We should not let our hearts be troubled.
We know that He was with us and will come again.
There is room in heaven.
Once you enter the tunnel, all is lost.
Suicidal thoughts and plans are frequently associated with a rigid and narrow pattern of cognitive activity that is comparable to tunnel vision. Those who commit suicide seek the end of the conscious experience. This cessation of consciousness represents a literal halting of the endless misery which preoccupies those who journey this path. There is a desire to die, but there is a wish to find another way. Internal and external elements wage war until one side or the other takes hold. The way we cope with our lives forms patterns which we mimic when in states of extreme emotion. We fight or we surrender.
Suicide can become the only way out.
It offers oblivion.
The act itself seems better than all other options. Even the dark is friendlier than no light.
This intolerable psychological pain and the sense of complete defeat becomes more significant than all other emotions. Suicide offers closure to that which appears insoluble.
It becomes a choice.
Get busy living or get busy dying.
Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.
We generate our own environment. We get exactly what we deserve.
How can we resent a life we've created ourselves?
Who's to blame, who's to credit but us?
Who can change it, anytime we wish, but us?
People spend too much time finding other people to blame, too much energy finding excuses for not being what they are capable of being, and not enough energy putting themselves on the line, growing out of the past, and getting on with their lives.
A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else. When you blame others, you give up your power to change. We do not have to question or challenge, for we did nothing wrong. We don't have to see our self when we are pointing to everybody else in the room.
It's easy to deflect responsibility when there is someone else to blame.
We blame people, we deflect on situation and we even accuse God.
Better them than me.
To err is human, to blame is sublime. It is easier to believe it was someone else.
We avoid so we don't have to deal. We even blame it on the rain.
You only see what your eyes want to see. How can life be what you want it to be if you're frozen? There's no point in placing the blame. Don't swim in stagnant water.
The quality of your life is your own. You are responsible.
You paint the picture. You picked the tune.
It may take two to tango, but in life you dance alone.

"Today you are You, that is truer than true.
There is no one alive who is Youer than You."
(Happy Birthday to You, Dr. Seuss)

You cannot teach a man anything.
You can only help him discover it in himself.
Hindsight is to understand the nature of an event after it has happened.
Hindsight is a time machine but the second time around will be more painful than the first. We claim hindsight is 20/20 but it's more like 50/50.
Hindsight is of little value in the decision making process.
It distorts our memory of events that occurred at the time of the decision so that the actual consequence seems to have been a foregone conclusion.
It becomes difficult to learn from our mistakes. We get locked into a cycle of repeating the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.
This is the definition of insanity.
The past is often as distorted by hindsight as it is clarified by insight. A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience. This feeling of understanding allows one to glimpse the inner nature of things intuitively.
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.
The essential is invisible to the eye.
Know yourself.
Don't accept your pet's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.
Look ahead. Know in advance. Use foresight to foresee.
Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window. If a man has no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand or, at least, a big tree.
This oversight is an unintentional omission resulting from failure to notice.
We look where we leap and we see where we go but we land as we will.
If you're drowning you don't pause, you just scream.
We are bemused and crazed creatures, strangers to our true selves, to one another, and to the spiritual and material world - mad, even, from an ideal standpoint we can glimpse but not adopt. We shut our eyes in order to see.
We need the hindsight to know where we've been. The foresight to know where we are going and the insight to know when we have gone too far.
This state of elementary or undifferentiated consciousness we label awareness.
Those with the greatest awareness have the greatest nightmares.
What if there’s a bigger picture? What if you're missing out?
What if there’s a greater purpose you could be living right now?
Step outside your own little world.
Be aware and moderate. Find stability and balance.
Discover a state of psychological normality.
No longer be euphoric, that high degree of happiness, or dystymic, that high degree of depression, but rather be euthymic. Euthymia is the absence of these extremes. It is a normal mood in which the range of emotions is neither depressed nor highly elevated.
Long term it allows for a state of being in which the soul is freed from all desire and unified with all its parts. We become complete.
Long term behaviour modification is key in achieving a lasting sense of euthymia.
One must let go and no longer be a slave to impulse.
Control yourself.
Those who throw moderation to the wind do not realize that the greatest pleasures bring the greatest pains. Happiness resides not in earthly things, not in gold, happiness dwells in the soul. To find balance and stability and an easier way will mean nothing without a greater purpose. You don't wanna miss what matters. Try reaching out.
This is the greater purpose you should be living right now.
It is hard to focus on a greater purpose with a bloody nose. When everything one knows is about mere survival often surviving is not even enough.
Abuse is the improper usage or treatment for a bad purpose, often to unfairly or improperly gain benefit, physical or verbal maltreatment, injury, sexual assault, violation, rape, unjust practices; wrongful practice or custom; offense; crime, or otherwise verbal aggression. It involves the dehumanization of the victim and in turn the objectification the victim. It keeps woman in chains.
Forms of abuse can be used to pathologize the victim.
Ambient abuse is considered the worst kind of abuse. Also called Gas lighting, it can go unnoticed by the victim until it is too late. It is an underlying maltreatment.
It fosters fear. Sometimes fear won't let you leave.
We all deal with fear differently. We all cope differently. We all have reasons.
Whether it is guilt or shame that cripples us or lack of money that restricts us, these could be reasons. Things practical and financial might be reasons. If we have children or pets and fear for them, this is reason.
Whether we fear reprisal from man or God, here is a reason.
Some things are apples while some things are oranges but it is all just rotten fruit.
All things happen by virtue of necessity.
Necessity leaves you wide awake in dreamland.

"I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind. Some come from ahead and some come from behind. But I've bought a big bat. I'm all ready you see. Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!" (Dr. Seuss)

Most of our lives we spend afraid.
Afraid of pain, afraid of death and afraid of God.
Sometimes we just fear each other. Most times we should.
Fear will end when you look beyond. Look beyond what you read. Look beyond what others do and say. Notice what you already know.
If you don't know how will you ever believe?
We do believe. We want to shine.
Whether we believe in something or in nothing, we still believe.
We choose to believe. We should choose to believe in the best about God but we choose to believe in the worst about God. We do not trust Him.
Why should we? Does He trust us? Does He think we cannot see?
We are designed for the subjective journey.
Whoever said that time goes by slowly was sleeping when they snored it.
It just goes by so fast. A flash.
These years it seems are only a moment. One blink in time.
Some say that time has been a godsend but it seems to me somehow they don't see the full picture. There is always purpose in everything. Good in everything is there, if you look for it. We try to understand but we are limited by our position in the scheme of things. We are merely one voice in all this chorus.
The experiences we have are ours alone.
We all float through our own time. Here today, lost tomorrows.
What a shame to let even one moment go by.
Perhaps the most important lesson one may come to know is not to blink.
Today was good. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one.

"Thank goodness for all of the things you are not! Thank goodness you're not something someone forgot and left all alone in some punkerish place like a rusty tin coat hanger hanging in space." (Dr. Seuss)









Sources


http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/61105.Dr_Seuss




Photo


http://tamsonweston.com/blog/page/2/