East

In the United States & places of the West, people are often, if not always, living from an outside-in perspective.

They experience life never within themselves, but always outside of themselves – reacting to environments & people rather than experiencing life. Most have literally become a product of their dead political environments, & not a part of the true living nature that is within us & all around us, at all times.

I have studied & practiced methods & techniques from both the East & the West, & I enjoy learning about all of them. I do prefer living life from the inside-out though – I prefer living empowered within myself – & not being a reactive machine conformist to nothing – to a dead society.

I choose life & non-conformity every time.

This doesn’t make me better than anyone – it just is me making a choice to choose what I believe & how I perceive life – rather than taking someone else’s word for it – rather than being manipulated by the criminal oppressors of this world…

Here’s Alan Watts with a short relative paragraph to this topic:

“Just try and see something from another point of view for a change. I’m not saying that we should do what the Hindus do, but just look at it in from another point of view. And they would smile at us and say, ‘You really think it’s as real as all that?’

‘Have you never experienced what’s on the inside of this game?’

See the trouble with you Westerners is you never experience first. You never got down to the root of reality. You don’t know that state of consciousness. And so you’re frantically trying to patch everything up, and pin it all together – Screw the universe up so that it’s fixed…

You can never do it. All you’ll be doing is wildly rushing around and creating trouble.”
-Alan Watts

My question to you is, are you experiencing life?

Or merely existing?

Do you live as a reaction?

Or do you live alive & active?

Meditations are a great way to begin going within and trying the inside-out perspective — to at least try it for even a short time and see if it’s for you or not for you. It’s perfect either way!

Begin your meditations here:

In the far East they have something called The Chinese Bamboo Tree.

The Chinese Bamboo Tree takes five years to grow.

They have to water and fertilize the ground where it is every day,
and it doesn’t break through the ground until the fifth year.

But once it breaks through the ground,
within 5 weeks it grows 90 feet tall.

Now the question is does it grow 90 feet tall in 5 weeks or 5 years?

The answer is obvious.
It grows 90 feet tall in five years.

Because at any time if had that person stopped watering, and nurturing, and fertilizing that tree, that bamboo tree would have died in the ground.

And I can see people coming out talking to a guy out there watering and fertilizing the ground that’s not showing anything,

“Hey, whatcha doing? You’ve been out here a long time, man. And the conversation in the neighborhood is…You growin a Chinese Bamboo Tree, is that right??”

“Yea that’s right”

“Well even Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder can see ain’t nothing showin.”

You know that’s how people are gonna do you:

“So how long have you been working on this? How long have you been working on your dream? And you have nothing to show? This is all you got to show???”

People gonna do that to you.

And some people ladies and gentleman, they stop.

Because they don’t see instant results.

It doesn’t happen quickly.

They stop, oh no, no, no, no…

You’ve got to keep on watering your dreams

And when it begins to happen, they stop laughing.

They say “Look, whoa, look here, it’s, look up, hey man you know I knew you could do it, look, you got a job here?”

See during those hard times you didn’t know how you’re gonna make payroll, during those times when you failed and things didn’t work out, they were nowhere to be found.

You know what I discovered, when you’re working at your dream, somebody said “the harder the battle, the sweeter the victory.”

Oh it’s sweet to ya. It’s good to ya, why?

See when it’s hard and there’s a struggle, see what you become in the process is more important than the dream.

That’s far more important.

The kind of person you become, the character that you build, the courage that you develop, the faith that you’re manifesting.

Oh it’s something that you get up in the morning, you look yourself in the mirror, you’re a different kind of person, you walk with a different kind of spirit.

People know that you know what life is. That you have embraced life.
You knew it was hard, but you did it hard.

From The Outside In To The Inside Out

“The Chinese Bamboo Tree” Parable By Les Brown