Up and out

Symptoms of Inner Peace
by Saskia Davis

Be on the lookout for symptoms of inner peace. The hearts of a great many have already been expose to inner peace and it is possible that people everywhere could come down with it in epidemic proportions. This could pose a serious threat to what has, up to now, been a fairly stable condition of conflict in the world.

Some signs and symptoms of inner peace:

* A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than on fears based on past experiences.

* An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.

* A loss of interest in judging other people.

* A loss of interest in judging self.

* A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.

* A loss of interest in conflict.

* A loss of the ability to worry. (This is a very serious symptom.)

* Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation.

* Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature.

* Frequent attacks of smiling.

* An increasing tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen.

* An increased susceptibility to the love extended by others as well as the uncontrollable urge to extend it.

WARNING:

If you have some or all of the above symptoms, please be advised that your condition of inner peace may be so far advanced as to not be curable. If you are exposed to anyone exhibiting any of these symptoms, remain exposed only at your own risk.

My academic pursuits in college include double majoring in political science and philosophy, along with minors in leadership and management. My academic fields tie together with my interest in creating positive social change. My long-term life goal is to create as much positive change in the world as I can, and social movements are one area I feel passionate about and through which I can make a significant impact on the world.

Within the field of political science, I'm most interested in studying social movements. Though I am only taking my first formal social movements class this semester, I learned much about past and present movements in high school and on my own time. I view social movements as integral to creating a better world for all. I believe that furthering these issues not only benefits the group most affected by the injustice, but also the entire world, since world with less injustice is a better world for everyone to live in.

Within my major of philosophy, I most enjoy and benefit from the critical thinking required in my courses. I feel the general exercise of critical thinking and learning how to structure a sound argument are very useful tools for creating positive social change. I've found that being able to think critically has helped me become more effective in creating positive social change on campus and to understand social justice issues on a deeper level.

I am using my minor in (business) management to further my understanding of management. I plan to use what I learn through my management minor to help manage groups of people working to further a social cause, whether it is within a non-profit organization, the government, or even a for-profit business.

Lastly, my leadership minor is coursework that literally ties all my other coursework together. I know that continuously working to improve my leadership abilities will allow me to be more effective and to create more positive social change throughout my lifetime (in addition to increasing my own quality of life).

After college, I would like initially to work through two non-profit organizations consecutively, such as Teach for America or the Peace Corps, where in one I’d work overseas and for the other organization I’d work within a part of the United States that I currently know little about. Ideally, I would like to work within these organizations as a teacher, since I really enjoy working with kids and promoting learning in general.

After my work within these organizations, I plan to become a high school social studies teacher or go on to graduate school, with the intent of using that degree to become a college professor in my chosen field.

No matter what I end up doing, I know I will make sure that my work is something I am passionate about and that it is benefitting the common good.

Tony D’Amato Speech (from the movie Any Given Sunday):

"I don’t know what to say, really. Three minutes to the biggest battle of our professional lives. All comes down to today, and either, we heal as a team, or we're gonna crumble. Inch by inch, play by play. Until we're finished. We're in hell right now, gentlemen. Believe me. And, we can stay here, get the shit kicked out of us, or we can fight our way back into the light. We can climb outta hell... one inch at a time. Now I can't do it for ya, I'm too old. I look around, I see these young faces and I think, I mean, I've made every wrong choice a middle-aged man can make. I, uh, I've pissed away all my money, believe it or not. I chased off anyone who's ever loved me. And lately, I can't even stand the face I see in the mirror. You know, when you get old, in life, things get taken from you. I mean, that's... that's... that's a part of life. But, you only learn that when you start losin' stuff. You find out life's this game of inches, so is football. Because in either game - life or football - the margin for error is so small. I mean, one half a step too late or too early and you don't quite make it. One half second too slow, too fast and you don't quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They're in every break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team we fight for that inch. On this team we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when add up all those inches, that's gonna make the fucking difference between winning and losing! Between living and dying! I'll tell you this, in any fight it's the guy whose willing to die whose gonna win that inch. And I know, if I'm gonna have any life anymore it's because I'm still willing to fight and die for that inch, because that's what living is, the six inches in front of your face. Now I can't make you do it. You've got to look at the guy next to you, look into his eyes. Now I think ya going to see a guy who will go that inch with you. Your gonna see a guy who will sacrifice himself for this team, because he knows when it comes down to it your gonna do the same for him. That's a team, gentlemen, and either, we heal, now, as a team, or we will die as individuals."

Background: This is a paper I wrote for my Phil "Social Justice & Community Service" class, just a short paper about our thoughts about the class material and where we can write about how it relates to essentially anything (i.e. a pretty sweet assignment!)  Enjoy!  :)


So thus far in class, in learning about how the small farms and towns have been disappearing, how the Ojibwa culture was and is jeopardized, how the current treatment of animals seems grossly inhumane, all under the umbrella of the gaps we see between the world we currently live in and the world we would ideally want to live in. Within my courses for my political science major and in simply learning about both the history of politics and its current state, I’ve learned of countless gaps between the world I’d ideally want to live in and the world that currently exists. I don’t even feel I need to list any examples because by now I’d imagine you have at least 20 things you could come up with in less than ten seconds regarding flaws you see in politics. More generally, as I’ve gotten older, and specifically in the past two years since coming to college, my understanding of the world has dramatically increased and along with that have come countless “Are you serious?!” moments where I learned of another ridiculous thing going on in the world.

However, despite all the gaps I’ve learned about between my ideal world and the world as it is today, I have never been more optimistic about the capabilities of the human race to turn things around. Along with learning about all the gaps since coming to college I’ve also learned of countless ridiculously cool things going on in the world that give me hope and energy and excitement about the present and the future. A large part of the reason I have hope in the world and the ability for people to change is the large amount of positive change I’ve experienced in my own life.

I think I’ve briefly mentioned I had a significant shift in my life around the start of my college career, but I’ll just briefly explain it. I grew up in a very traditional Catholic family and had little knowledge of the world outside my suburban, white, middle-class neighborhood. In school I always did really well academically but felt a significant lack on the social side of things. I was picked on a fair bit and, with me being shy and awkward, having low self-confidence, and being taught the Golden Rule, I never stood up for myself. In the end, I came to college never having a really solid friendship or one that I felt I could always count on.
However, my senior year of high school I had a huge shift in the way I looked at life. One day I just “randomly” realized how I was continuously beating myself up and destroying myself from the inside, choosing to let others influence how I thought about myself, and also realizing that I had the power to change things around and to choose to have an amazing life and to feel really good about myself…that the things going on outside of my own mind and body had no power in how I felt about myself…that I was the only one to decide that.

(To make an already shortened story shorter…)Simply put, my life is amazing now and I feel amazing. I focus solely on being the best me, not giving a damn what other people think of me or how I’m perceived by people (if you didn’t already notice :), but just focusing on doing what feels right to me. And the (sort of) ironic thing is that the more I focus on myself and learning about who I am, what life wants from me, what I know in my soul I was meant to do…the stronger my relationships with family and friends become, the more I end up volunteering or helping someone else out, and (generally) the more I feel like I’m being a truly good person and leading a good life.

So then to bring this back to the bigger picture, the one and only thing I see standing in the way of the world we currently live in and our idealistic world is getting every human being to truly get in touch with themselves, to be who they truly are in their essence, and to truly feel connected and apart of our ever more interconnected world; that’s it.

I believe that if everyone truly understood themselves and how their self-interest plays apart of their everyday life that we would be living in that idealistic world that we have all dreamed of…

And I’m not the only one. Echart Tolle, the author of “The Power of Now” (which sold over 2 million copies) believes it; Gandhi believed it; Martin Luther King, Jr. believed it; Jesus believed it; thousands of people at the social network site Gaia.com believe it…the list could go on.

And at the same time, I see the destruction of the world coming ever closer and closer with global warming being more than a fact, but a threat to all of human existence, even during yours and mine lifetimes. It would not surprise me one bit if us humans destroyed ourselves by not addressing global warming…and it would not surprise me one bit if us humans banded together across the globe, realized the imminent threat global warming poses, and not only overcome the issue of global warming but (at, relatively, the same time) banded together, addressed the issues of starvation, overpopulation, materialism, war, etc. and created the world we all want to live in.

It all depends on whether human beings as a whole wake up in time to stop the self-destruction of our planet or do not and experience the extinction of the human race…

…I really hope the alarm goes off soon.

For Ten Years From Now, For Fifty Years From Now
I'll be saying that this was the time where I found myself;
That this was the time,
That time of change;

That this was the time where my life (and all life) came together
As One;
That this was the time where everything rearranged.

That this was the time where life became simple
And joyful,
With peace and bliss all around,

Where I chose to let the past stay behind
And the future out ahead,
Where only in the hear, the now, am I found.

That this was the time
Where to no one place, person, or idea
Were I fore'r bound
(Without my own choosing)

Where the life I found within
Is the life I will n'er again live without,
That this is the life I've found (anew)
With Ne'r the chance of losing.


For ten years from now,
For fifty years from now,

For all of time until (and even after) my body's fusing,

I will remember
That this was the time,
(That this was the time)
Where I began consciously choosing.

Story time!...

So, I was reading the question of the day today, and after I read "What was the last thing in your life that 'clicked'?"  my first thought was, "A lot of things."  But I didn't have anything specific and I didn't really want to write the expanded version of my "a lot of things" thought, so I checked a few new e-mails and went to eat lunch at a cafeteria.

Some more background:  I'm an RA in a residence hall at my college, the U of Minnesota, and I saw a resident/friend of mine eating alone and so I joined him for lunch. 

We got to talking and he mentioned that he was struggling in a physics class and wished he could understand it better and admitted that he's struggling with learning how to go about studying for a college class/test.

Well, one of the e-mails that I had read right before lunch was letting me know about tutoring services in our residence halls.  And in just giving the e-mail a once over, I noted to myself that it was strange that there were so many tutors who only did math and physics tutoring and not much for other classes...

So when my friend was talking about him struggling in a physics class, a bell went off in my head about the (free) tutoring services, and so I told him about it and the hours and how he was grateful for the information and my help...

Then again, I knew I should give thanks to the powers that be for setting up that opportunity for him and for me to help him.

My search for enlightenment and consciousness has by far been the most life-altering experience of my life

.  There's been such a stark contrast in the quality of my life before I started seeking and how my life is today.  I'm 20 years old now, and for my first 18 years my life was almost completely driven by fear.  I couldn't define myself without using words that other people used to describe me and I was very unaware of who I was and what my relation to the world was.

But now, now I have a very clear understanding of who I am, what my strengths and weaknesses are, etc.

It feels amazing!  Each day I'm more and more conscious, and each day gets and feels better and better.  It's just been an amazing experience, and I am very thankful to God for giving me the gift of this experience.

That's also why I want to help others experience the process of enlightenment and understand consciousness.  I've struggled a bit initally, but it's hard for me to explain what a vast change has occured in my life with just words or actions and to convince friends that their lives will improve more than they can imagine through this process.

I'm certainly not giving up, but I'm just working on how I approach the whole process and what strategy to use.  Staying conscious myself and in-tune with myself has helped and led to some breakthroughs, and doing what feels right is helping as well.