Hippie Dippy Bologna

Hippie Dippy Bologna

“Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.”
—Erich Fromm

Hippie Dippy Bologna

Up until now I have attempted to remain as factual and scientific as possible. If nothing else, I wish to share these mechanisms so that everyone can contemplate them on their own. In relaying the information this way, I hope to have avoided many of the objections our voices would throw at us. Our culture and our existing currents are quite opposed to the nature of the streams I wish to share. As such, I had to be careful not to jump straight into the nonsense that will set our scoff bells ringing.

The truth is, we need to talk more about love—not a romantic love, but the warm and fuzzy happiness of peace and safety kind of love. The kind of love that makes us uneasy. The kind that makes our manliness want to barf. The more off-putting it is, the more likely we are to be ensnared with moods of cynicism, disdain, hatred, or the like. So, if this topic is repelling, then let’s take a deep breath and understand the importance. Do we really want to align with the opposite?

As touched on briefly before, currents of danger instigate fear while currents of safety instigate love. They are diametrically opposed. We cannot reside in one while at the same time expecting to behave in line with the other. A person riding the current of anger does not serve peace and a person riding the wave of love does not scream at the world. One can speak of love all day long, but unless they ride the current, they will live in danger of thwarting their own lives. Imagine a forced apology from one child to another. Does it do anything? Not at all. It’s not about the words—it’s about the sentiment. A resentful apology is not an apology any more than a gift out of obligation is loving.

Meditating on the concept of love and residing in its current as we feel it and long for it is the greatest single act we can perform to help align our voices to the moods that will best serve us. It sounds like a lot of hippy dippy bologna to quote Lord Business from The Lego Movie, but this is truly the key. The moods and their voices from which we obtain confidence and wisdom, and from which we build our performative beliefs, lie squarely in the direction of love. If we make love our one true goal, then the moods will create themselves and align our voices over time.

Now, when I say love, I do not mean performative love. As I stated, a gift of obligation is not love. Love gives, but giving is not love. Love apologizes, but apologies are not love. We can work the soup kitchens all day long or suffer our entire lives serving the poor and needy, but this does not equate to love in and of itself. Love is an operating emotional force. It drives our actions, but actions can be done entirely devoid of love. Such actions will not orient our minds but our minds being oriented will guide us into loving actions. This distinction is paramount to the process. Love is a current, a flow, a mood, that will provide us with confidence, self-love, respect for humankind, and a desire to do good. If you feel guilted into an action or else you think you are unloving, then that is itself a negative stream. Nope it and let love itself be the guide. If you’re not enthused about something but you are riding love, then the activity is probably not for you. We are not coerced into actions as if they themselves make us loving.

By flowing in love streams such as patience and kindness, we necessarily avoid flowing in the negative streams which ruin our confidence. We radiate the behaviors and beliefs that draw people close and attract the very things we crave: belonging, joy, peace, and even productive employment in a culture still requiring it. These are entirely natural responses based upon emotional contagion, experimenter expectancy, and Pygmalion effects. There is nothing woo or mystical needed to believe or explain it.

Choosing love can be quite the challenge, however. To succeed more regularly, it is best to contemplate daily, hourly, or even perpetually how love feels and how to reside in such a flow. By recognizing it and knowing it in depth, we can see all the adjacent streams we ought to strive for and keep us safe from our own destructive tendencies.

I had long overlooked the feeling and flow aspect of love. I had understood it from a logical standpoint that we should treat others with respect and care. We should help those in need. We should try to understand, guide, and support others. I was still miserable despite it all. I had a head knowledge of what love produced but I could not fathom how love felt. I attempted to share the importance of love to no avail as I became irritated, lonely, and depressed. All my head knowledge couldn’t save me from the hell I was creating for myself. I had to learn how to feel love—the very emotion I learned to despise as sour grapes.

For me, the feeling of love was nonsense. It was fake. It was a dirty little idea that people threw around uselessly lying to one another while hiding from reality. It’s no wonder I was in so much pain. I thought I knew what love was despite never experiencing it. I thought true love was in the actions. Love is a verb, as they say. I had understood love as thinking about someone, going out of your way to help someone, waking up in the morning for coffee and crosswords, or other selfless activities. And so, if I wasn’t getting the actions I expected, I did not feel loved. Even if I did get what I expected, I still did not feel loved—I felt baseline.

Only until I finally had my heart opened to truly feel love for the first time could I finally learn to love—and no, it did not come from a church service. Up until that time, I had a few redeeming moods which eventually led me to find it. I had a hunger and thirst for truth. I sought it everywhere. I listened intently. I closed off no direction to the logical prowess of my mind. I had many of my internal voices aligned toward the pursuit of truth while many others remained aligned with self-centered indignation and pain at the cold and unfair world. By having half my mind in search of truth and half in defense and fear, I created a form of polarizing emotions.

In one moment, I’d be as happy as one can be who had not experienced love. I was searching, researching, writing, studying, and I was full of energy to do the kinds of things I wished to do—I had activity flow. The next moment I would be broken, depressed, lethargic, angry, and irrational. Love, as it were, saved me from all of that. Experiencing it was only the first step, but it led to many profound discoveries both within and without. Learning to abide in it has brought me a form of joy that I never thought I could experience. This book is itself a labor of that love.

One might wonder where I managed to experience love that so changed my life. And one might wonder how I find myself aligning with it so as to flow effortlessly along with it. I must preface yet again that everyone is unique. One cannot take my experience and duplicate it expecting the same results. That said, I will share that the musician Enya played a significant part in my experience.

Despite my predilection for metal music, Enya had such a unique sound. Her song “Only Time” was the first to engage my fancy. Something about it perhaps triggered an old memory or fondness which I paid attention to. I had to notice it and pursue it. Eventually, I learned to feel her music rather than listen to it with my ears, and that feeling began my journey of flowing with love.

Even still, my one experience did not flip me around 180 degrees. I had to continue thinking about it, seeking it, understanding it, and internalizing it. I made a playlist on Spotify and I began listening to it regularly to remind myself of the feeling. The soundtrack of my mind became quite persistently that of Enya. As I went through my day, I could hear her songs and feel them. At a moment’s notice I could relax to the sound and take pleasure in so many little things. I could hear the songs as the sun beat on my face through the window. I could hear them as the soundtrack behind my kids playing with the dog and I could just bask in it.

It’s a little sappy, I know, but this exercise opened my eyes to a world I had never experienced: true joy and peace. While this one method does not solve everything, I have found myself being far more patient, kind, joyful, loving, appreciative, and grateful. It became a thousand times more joy than what I had before. I also became more performative at work. As a result, I found more opportunities, more success, and more energy. My persistent pursuit of truth led me to love and love led to my sanity.

Do not be fooled to think that I became perfect. I did not. At home especially, I continued to struggle with teenager attitudes. But it helped. I kept pressing into my growth to regulate my own emotions. My experiences led me and my voices down certain paths of learning unique to me. What clicked for me may not click for others who do not have similar backgrounds and who have different voices. The trick is for each of us to listen to our own voices and guide our own path. As long as that path is honest and in pursuit of the currents which bring life rather than destruction, we cannot go wrong—at least, not for long.

The seeking of our growth is the most important part. Understanding our pitfalls and needs is extraordinarily unique to each of us. No one can truly know our own mental state or pursue corrective action but ourselves. What we need in any moment is constantly changing and we have to be diligent to listen and understand. We have to learn to hear what our voices are telling us and discern what is useful versus what is not. This takes time to learn and often leads to, or even requires, new ways of thinking.

From this point in the book, things will get far more philosophical. The purpose of this is tied directly to the challenges of hearing and selecting positive mood streams in a world such as this. Even if we fully understand the workings of belief guiding our experience or how positive emotions guide our beliefs, it is much easier said than done. One must ask how in the ever-loving hell we are supposed to choose to feel love when the world is full of injustice, war, rape, murder, and all manner of evil. When we are overlooked for a promotion, our spouse cheats on us, we’re fired from a job, or someone steals our car, how are we supposed to drum up love as a response? This is precisely the work to be done. It is for us to figure out. How, indeed.

Generally, a shift in mindset is needed. Or to put it another way, our voices need realignment. For everything that breaks us and floats us down negative streams of emotion, we have a mindset that is misaligned with the moods we want. Learning our unique paths to misalignment and our unique ways back into alignment is where the work is and no one can do it for us. It is the proverbial leading a horse to water, but we can’t make it drink. If we do not wish to see and realign our ways of thinking, we will simply suffer the consequences of riding the negative currents.

Most negative streams come directly from attachment. At a very young age, we can see a child crying over not getting the color item they wanted. They were attached to the color. They wanted that color. They could not have what they so desperately wanted, and so it affects their stability. There is nothing wrong with the preference, but it is the attachment to it of which the child fails to let go. The same goes for each of us in our adult lives.

We might be tempted to believe that our attachments are different—they don’t equate to petty color choices. We weren’t merely attached to our job, it was our livelihood! We should be attached to our spouse and they definitely should not have run off with the mailman! This is precisely where the difficulty in our mindset arises and why it is so challenging to avoid the negative streams. For most people, the thought of trying to downplay these events is insane. Anger feels justified—especially at anyone shrugging it off. And sure, we can justify anger all we want, but will it benefit us? Absolutely not. Lest we forget, we can feel the feelings of loss, but we must find our path to compassion and love for that loss. Or not—we can always choose to wallow in our moods and degrade our reality. In the end, we each get to choose, and our choices will shape our experience.

Conclusion