AndrewBrunelle.com

Taking the road less traveled.  Going against the grain.  Not subscribing to social conditioning.  If someone does it, I’m most likely not to do it.  I don’t do it to be different, I just find most of the things people do to be stupid and uninspired.  People who go out and buy a high-definition TV because they think it will make their life that much better.  The people who go out and buy an iPod so they can listen to every song they’ve ever heard, all avaliable on one piece of portable technology.  The people that do things to “fit in” rather than do them because they feel right.  I can’t be like one of those people, the people who pretend to like going to fancy restaurants with dishes they can’t pronounce and a utensil alignment they can’t quite figure out.  I’m not going to pretend to be one of these people.  I’m not.

I don’t just accept things the way they are, I wonder why they are the way they are.  I ask questions, I inquire.  I extrapalate, interpalate, beat arouind the bush, read the situation.  I like to see the reasoning behind some of the decisions people make.  I see people who look for a friend in food or furniture, or automobiles, when all those things give you is a credit card debt.  It’s not going to hold you at night, tell you everything’s going to be okay.  It’s just going to sit there, accumulating dust and deteriorating just as well as your physical body deteriorates.

I don’t subscribe to any formal religion, except maybe the concept of non-duality, which is a belief and not a formal religion.  I understand that the only time is the present moment and I cannot argue that fact.  But I don’t belong to any particular belief system, a categorized set of heirarchical beliefs with some distant authority figure at the helm.  If you believe in such a thing and have never questioned it, I ask you to do so consciously.  It is the only way you will grow spiritually.

I believe the soul is infinite, but I’m not making any predictions as to what happens once my body dies out.  I know I’ll still exist, it is intelligent to live that way, because even if I did cease to exist, I’m never going to know about it.  So, living like there is life after death is a more viable option.  I don’t think I’ll be punished in some fiery chamber where I get whipped and burned to death for all eternity.  But I don’t deny that Jesus Christ was an enlightened man.  What the religion his teachings were based on has turned into, I cannot support.

I don’t view life as a string of accomplishments, but rather a series of experiences.  Each moment is unique and precious.  Every second that passes is another second of existence.  Most people tend to think in terms of accomplishments, meaningful days.  I put no more weight on the day I met Jerry Seinfeld or the day I graduated from college than I do on the day I sat at home and read a book.  It’s all equal.  It all just is.

Morally, I believe that harming someone is the equivalent of harming yourself, so I strive not to do anything to harm people or animals, but nobody’s perfect.  If I eat an animal, I say a prayer to the animal’s soul.  It’s something I have to work through.  Harming living things is counterproductive anyway.  It doesn’t do anything for you and it harms something else.  I’m striving more and more to end suffering in my life.

I guess I just don’t buy into the normal range of activities.  It’s just the way it is.  I allow myself to question the validity of many accepted truths.  I judge by my own opinion, rather than a consensus.  If I don’t think a movie is good, I’m not going to say it was just to fit in to the popular group who says the movie was good.  What is the point of that?  Acceptance?  When you fully accept yourself, external acceptance is meaningless.  You are more yourself than you’ve ever been.

No matter how different you may be, the ability to accept yourself for you who are is invaluable.  To allow yourself to pursue unorthodox activities because you feel they are right is your right to be who you are.  Your thoughts are uniquely important to your character.  Don’t let your real self get tucked underneath the covers in a shrouded veil just to act the way you think others will accept.  It will be the beginning of the end of your real self.  If you allow yourself to truly be, you will experience joy.  Acceptance is the first key step.  Good luck.
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Steve Pavlina’s new podcast, entitled Faster Goal Achievement, was something I really needed to hear, as it was reinforcing the way I was thinking with respect to goal achievement.  I was thinking that if you want something to happen, like a goal of some sort, the only way it will ever manifest is if you make some part of it true right now.  Making your goal in the present will allow the result to come to you much faster.

Steve Pavlina gives a concrete example about how some people he knew that were rich used to carry what he thought was a large sum of money in their wallets, when they thought it was nothing because they had so much money.  So the first thing Steve did was go to the ATM machine and make it so he had $200 dollars in his wallet.  Eventually, he upped the amount of money, and got to the point where when he had $200 in his wallet, he needed a “refill.”  He was thinking the same way about his bank account, where if he has $10,000 in there now, he would think that was a lot, but as a millionaire, it’s a tragedy.  So, if you think the way the millionaires do, you’ll be opening yourself up for opportunities to become one.

I used a similar approach in steps to gain some sort of inner peace.  Sometimes I would be jarred by external events, possibly at my work or otherwise, and I would get stressed out.  I would visualize a time and place where I would always maintain that inner peace, but it always seemed so far off in the distance.  So I decided to make inner peace part of my life–now.  Whenever I felt stressed or angry, I would immediately take a couple of deep breaths and then usually burst out laughing at how trivial the situation was that was making me stressed.  I found the deep breathing extremely rewarding as well.  It was almost if I was high on oxygen.

Supposedly, for your intentions to manifest, you have to become a vibrational match for your intention, meaning you have to align yourself with the mindset and take the actions that will allow you to achieve whatever goal you have.  Becoming a millionaire is a solid goal for me, and even though I sometimes have negative thoughts towards money, I realize that it’s not the money that’s evil, but the purpose behind making the money, or the people who control the money, who are evil.  So, if you are going to use your money for good causes, for the highest good of all, being a millionaire is a wonderful thing.

So it’s not like I really have any excuse to not make this amount of money.  With this sum of money, I could help the world become a better place.  I would be able to devote all my time to my mission of opening people’s eyes and also making them laugh in the process.  I have to set my mind up for millions and they will come to me.  I am going to possibly build a website, an entire website, with all the different categories and whatnot, but I just need to build my technical skills to figure out how to do such a thing.  I’ve registered a domain name, and it has been dormant for four months now, mostly because I got intensely frustrated when I couldn’t upload the blogging software on there while following the instructions.

I will figure out what is going on, though.  I just have to work on a common theme for my website.  I have to have original ideas that change the way people think.  I need to inspire.  I have stories to tell.  I have beaten brain cancer.  If I can do that, making millions of dollars should be a piece of cake.

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