“Understanding the Power of Your Natural Habits: A Sure-Fire Method for Creating and Maintaining Empowering Change in Your Life”

I am assuming that you, like me, have had trouble motivating yourself consistently.
The problem has always been this: We want to change something.  We invest a good portion of our time to change it.  It changes – for a time…and then – it goes back to the way it was.  We give up on ever being able to change anything for the better; realizing that for all our good intentions, our subconscious mind rules us, and our bad habits are our masters and here to stay.

Well I say, “No more!”  I believe that there are places that our focus will do the most good.  These points can be thought of as places to put our effort, as in a lever, in order to have the best effect.  I’m going to speak on just one of these focal points:  Natural Habits.
– And I am going to show how something that I practice in my own life (taking a bath) –  can have great rewards, when done consistently (there’s that word again), and mindfully.  Natural Habits are those habits which you either like to do, or find yourself doing, anyway.  They are repetitive actions that we take daily.

Hopefully, at the end of this article, I will have shed light on a path to Self-Mastery, and whetted your appetite for more of this kind of thing, which I feel, I am almost uniquely suited to speak about. – Not completely, uniquely, for I am sure that others are traveling along a similar path; and yet (almost) uniquely, because it comes from my own particular, strengths, weaknesses, background, ways of thinking and perceiving the world, and challenges that I am currently facing.

I spend a lot of time in the bathtub (Natural Habit), especially at night and in the morning.  This used to freak my girlfriend out so much, that even smelling the water would cause her to go kinda crazy.  (She had a sense of smell like a blood hound.  It was un-nerving at times).  She felt that I was hiding myself away in my own man-cave.  Maybe I was? *Laughing good-naturedly* Anyway, it became something of a refuge for me – a place where I could be comfortable and alone in my thoughts.

Now that I have my own place, I am free to take baths whenever I want and for however long I wish.

Let’s focus on taking a bath in the morning.  I like to do this because, for one, it starts my day, relaxes then refreshes me, and allows me time to get in the right frame of mind – that of gratitude and a cheerful expectancy for the rest of it.  But there is another reason that I like to do this; and that is because it is a habit that I have which I can systematically build other habits around and into.

For example, I have wanted to practice reading from three books, every day.  This will add to my store of knowledge, something to think about as I go about my activities, and keeps me open to learning new things, and re-evaluating old, tired beliefs.  In short, it keeps my mind young.  However, I had an issue: when would I read these books?  When would I have the time?  How could I consistently be sure to do this?  These were hard questions for me to answer.  Mainly, because I was in the beginning stages of constructing a working structure for my life and there were bound to be mistakes.

Another thing that I wanted to bring into my life was that of drinking at least a glass of water or some fruit juice, before starting my day.  Sometimes I simply forgot to do that.  I would catch myself, brewing a few cups of coffee, snacking on Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, and diving into the Grass Hopper Pie ice cream way too often.  I wanted to be healthy, yet I was continually acting in ways that were harmful to my health.

Then, I started noticing that my electronic stuff would inevitably lose charge; and somewhere along the line, I would get stuck with two or three things that needed to be charged immediately, for me to continue to function or go on with what I wanted to do that day.  I would make a resolution, that from now, on, I would change my ways, and would charge my stuff before going out; but again – that never panned out.  I would do this for maybe, three days, and then, whoops! – I’d forget; and then the forgetting would become the pattern.

Maybe you already have a sense of where I’m going with all this.  After some experimentation, I began to see, that I could tie certain habits that I wanted to develop, into habits that I already had.  My friend let me know a little bit later, after this discovery, that there was a book that mentioned this very concept.  And the book was aptly titled, “Habits”.  It felt reassuring that I might be ‘on to something’.

Thus, in time, I figured out that these various habits I wanted to cultivate – reading three books a day, charging up my gadgets fully, and drinking a glass of water or juice…every day, could be structured around the time that I took my bath!

This is a sequence of events, which I found helpful in establishing these new habits:

First, I would bring in everything and stage it where it would be the most convenient to get to.  I plugged in the electronic equipment to the two wall outlets by the mirror.  They need a certain amount of time to charge, and I wanted to give the most time possible.  Next, I put my towel on the toilet seat, and then stacked three books on top of the towel.  Finally, I went into the kitchen and filled up a glass with water or juice.  Since I know that my elbow tends to jack out at times and knock things over, I resolved to mostly drink out of PLASTIC cups, so that I don’t keep breaking stuff!

So far, in the first few weeks of doing this, I have read numerous books, had many wonderful and enlightening thoughts, kept to drinking at least a glass of water or juice a day, and kept my stuff charged when I’m out and about.

So, how is this going to bring about powerful changes in our lives?  Good question.  If I’ve learned anything, it is this:  Steady movement in the right direction equals a life one can be proud of.  By taking care of something as simple as my electronics, I will not have to worry that my phone is about to go out on an important call; and it allows me the opportunity to receive a call from a friend from the distant past or a new job prospect.  It allows me to stay connected when I want to.  It also keeps me from becoming frustrated and feeling like I need to take care of something right away – when I have taken the peaceful time, before hand to prepare for it.

Drinking water, as small an act as that may sound to us, is a PHYSICAL AFFIRMATION, that when repeated, causes us to behave in ways that are similar to that one small act.  I believe that if one wishes to change one’s life, they must learn to align all parts of themselves. – Their thoughts, emotions, and actions.  This brings about the Universal forces in order to help guide us and lend power we would not otherwise have.

Reading three books, or two, or four, or one, keeps our mind in a state of learning and acceptance.  Something that I read the other day had a profound effect on the way that I had been traditionally thinking.  This information opened up my mind to how best to approach changing a system, which from my point of view, was not working.  I realized after reading a chapter or two of that book, that I had been trying to change various systems from the outside, and what I was experiencing as a result, was that the system was pushing back on me, because it sensed that I was an outside invader – and had ways of dealing with those kinds of threats.  Once I realized this, I began to wonder how I could work WITH the system, at first, so as not to cause alarm – to eventually change it.

These small changes, by themselves, may not do much to change our lives, but when you begin to add them up and they start to affect one another synergistically – then, you have the makings for change and transformation.  And yet, it all begins with a single step, doesn’t it?

I hope that this article has been helpful in some way to you reading this out there.
In my next article, I go over another concept of locating Key Stone Habits.  Key Stone Habits can be Natural Habits, but they don’t have to be.  One of the things about Key Stone habits, though, is that TIMING is very important.

I go into all that in my next article.

Well, tell me what you liked or didn’t.  Part of the way that I blog is designed to be kind of like a journal-of-progress, so that I can take real life examples – MY real-life examples, and show how they work, or how they DON’T.  In either case, I’ve read a ton of self-help material, which makes loud claims and promises, but when put to the test, in the end, is just some words and theory that someone came up with.  I want my writing to get away from all that, and move toward a more PRACTICAL, time-tested, mother-approved method.

By you adding comments and stories of your own, I’ll be better able to see what isn’t working and what could be improved upon.  Additionally, your comments or concerns will be viewed by others, who like you, want to improve their lives and reach their dreams.

To the best in all of us:

David Lee Madison, Jr.
~Nate – street name
~KnavetheMage on Twitter
~ZenNinja
~Nate Love
~Dreamweaver
WordPress – Synergy, KnavetheMage, suprememasterjedi
Copied from my WORD documents in Boulder, CO
Saturday, January 4, 2014 – 20:54

An Essay I wrote for a possible massage school grant. I was homeless at the time and was turned down because of that.

An Essay I wrote for a possible massage school grant.  I was homeless at the time and was turned down because of that.

 

Good morning, Jill! – I know that we spoke on the telephone twice, now, and I just want to say how much I appreciate this opportunity, and even though you’re a busy girl…you’re gonna transform this world by doing what you do.  Way to go!

Ok…on to the essay –

This essay is designed to answer the four requirements which I was instructed to follow over the phone. – It’s bare bones for those who need to get the information quickly.  Actually, it’s fairly long – so I’ve broken it down into the four elements, outline style, first.

1)  Why I need the Full Scholarship to the Berkana Institute of Massage Therapy

I’m homeless, living on the streets, in the cold, being chased by police for trying to sleep and my health was severely affected right after my mother passed about one year ago.
I don’t have the funds to pay for this scholarship and the money that I was going to use to pay back the loan that I took out for my previous massage school is in default.  I car broke down, and then started getting ticketed mercilessly no matter where I tried to move it to, in the city of Norristown, Pennsylvania.  In the process of trying to protect my car and get it fixed, I called a tow truck and had it put on a lot.  Living on the streets, I somehow lost the information for that tow-truck company and therefore, also lost the massage table and books which were locked away in the trunk of that car.  That car had been bought with a thousand dollar gift from my dad and his girlfriend.  I have still not been able to pay him back and I intend to, as well as all the other monetary gifts they have given me throughout my time on the streets.

I intend to pay back people who I borrowed money from, a few years back when I was asking for money on Pearl street.  I have their names, numbers, email addresses and the amounts that they donated, written down in the back of the journal which I’m currently typing into my lap-top – another gift from my father (the lap-top).

I want to be self-sufficient.  I have a lot of people counting on me to get my act together, and when I do, and ONLY when I do, will I be able to pursue all those other dreams of mine, which involve life-coaching, writing a few books, opening a balance-training center, learning Aikido and teaching it to people in the prisons and the jails.  And opening some kind of training center for kids – to combat the dumbing down of our ‘education’ system – of our children.  This is only the tip of the iceberg.  I have many more plans!

2) Why do I desire to do this?  What would motivate me to take the road of physical touch to achieve what I need?
Several reasons.  But at the top of that list is a visceral need to be in tune with other people.  A very close second is extreme compassion for those around me.  I don’t tend to see color.  I still see gender a bit as a separation, sometimes, but I strive to work on that.  I believe that I was born with the gift of being able to not judge people.  This allows people to be real with me and open up in ways that they simply can’t with most.  I have experienced so much pain and emotional trauma from numerous causes, over my life-time, thus far, that I can relate far better than most TO most.  This puts me in a great position to hold a space of healing for those whose time has come to do that.
I am super-sensitive to sounds; in fact, vibrations of any kind, I tend to pick up on – and I need a way to ground all that out…otherwise I would be a nervous wreck.  It’s even in my astrology; if you believe all that.  I do.  As the MONKEYs say….”I’m a believer!”.  I am highly aware of things in my body, and colors, and the way that people walk and what they say and what they really mean, and how much of that they want people to know that they mean.  I meditate like a person possessed, because I love it so much.  And nature brings back to the divine side of life, yet anchors it in deep respect for the mathematical precision of our precarious position.

3) Where will I do my 100 hours of free massage?
The homeless population.  I know it well, because I am a member of it – have been for about 10 years, now.  I know a lot more of the psychology behind being homeless, than – I dare say – some college professors would.  I live it.  I have thought endlessly on changing it.  I have tried to and been unsuccessful – both, for myself, and others.  This will be just one more way that I can do something to motivate, to inspire change.  Even if all I do is relax some muscles – having carried a back pack for years and having experienced all the strain, pain, and cramping that comes with that, myself – I’m happy to alleviate that for a short time in others.  But what I hope to do is find a way to sustain this healing process, so that it goes farther than just a feel-good massage, and has long-ranging benefits which span the physical, emotional, and mental balance of my clients and friends.

4) Commitment to the program and being an exemplary student.
I’ve done this before, while homeless, holding down a job, and battling with issues of low self-esteem.  I’ve come through the Marines, and on my own took correspondence courses in both leadership and finance.  I took three hundred dollars of my own, hard-earned money and went to a community college for psychology.  At the end of the semester, myself and one other student, out of a class of about 28 or so, were the only ones to be excused from taking the exam, because we were deemed to know the material so well.

When I was going through massage school, we took a class I liked very much called, “Psychology of the Body”.  At the end, the instructor came up to me, when I asked for feedback on how he thought I was doing, and he said, “You could have taught the class”

I’ve struggled through foster homes, being placed in Special Education classes for my unusual behavior as a child.  I’ve taken the Armed Services Battery Test and scored one point below the best possible score, when going into the Marines – a 98 out of a possible 99.  If you were to change that out for an SAT score, back then, anyway – people have said that I would have been within like 20-40 points of a perfect 1600.  I don’t say this, as much to brag, but as to point out that I AM intelligent, and I HAVE overcome many obstacles that even more intelligent or well-connected people than myself would have been hard-pressed to overcome.

I have a mentor.  I have a life-coach.  How many people do you know, even if they make those New-Year’s resolutions, actually keep them?  How many people do you know who have taken reading for improvement to the next level and have APPLIED what they have read.  And much more than all that…how much do you think someone desires something, when they take the time to search out a mentor and keep a relationship growing with them?

And last, but not least – I am a life-long learner.  What I mean by this, is that I undertake the responsibility of my own education, even when I can’t afford ‘proper’ education.  I have read extensively in the field of Self-Improvement, Leadership, Chakras, Spirituality, Body Language, Wealth, Success, Body-Mind, Yoga, Martial Arts, Writing, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Biographies of Successful people, the Bible, maintenance, construction, massage, Chi, History……..the list goes on and on.
I am no stranger to doing what it takes on a consistent basis, to move forward.

And that concludes my brief essay.  If you are feeling ‘froggy’, then you can read on to get a much more in-depth look at the answers to the questions you gave me.

Next I’ll go more into detail on my life story – how I got to where I am today, and where I plan to go from here on out.  Thanks so much for taking the time out of your schedule to review the application and this essay.

Why do I need this?

Who could need it more?  That’s the question I ask.  I’m currently sleeping outside in Boulder, on Church property, trying to avoid the cops who like to go out at night at disturb homeless people from their much needed sleep, and then give them a $100 ticket for “camping”.  I would go to a “warming center” – a place which is dry and warm, where you lay on the floor for the night – but it seems that it’s not cold enough to warrant a “warming center”.  Maybe their funds are low, but, wait, that’s strange because I distinctly remember them receiving even more funds this year – much more than last.  I would go to the Boulder Homeless Shelter, but I’ve been “consequenced” for an extreme 90 days (the rest of the season), because I asked to go to the bathroom (number two) after seven o’clock while standing outside their gates.  Two people told me no, and when I got upset – I had to go bad – they threatened to call the cops and told me that I was going to be “consequenced” for three to five days.  I raised my voice; didn’t swear; but I did mention that what they were doing was inhumane and I could understand that they had policies, but there was no written policy that said I couldn’t go to the bathroom after seven.  There was another place to go nearby – the local stripper business next door.  I didn’t want to pay exorbitant fees for drinks I couldn’t drink anyway, just so that I could go to the bathroom.  I wasn’t in the mood to see a show – I just needed to perform a human function – and since the people who were running the place are human beings, I just assumed that they would understand, having had a similar problem, probably a thousand times themselves.

I also need to get off the street for medical reasons.  Last year, I begged off work for an indeterminate amount of time when I discovered that my mother, in Illinois, had cancer and was in stage 4.  I was the only one willing to go help her.  I did.  In the process, Colorado got me one more time for failing to yield to an emergency standing vehicle – simply put – I didn’t move over from the far right lane to the left lane when passing a state cop who pulled over another guy for something else on I-70.  The cop wrote me a $100 or so ticket in pencil and when I got to my mother’s apartment; it was smudged.  I did my very best to pay that ticket, getting hung up with the whole phone tag red-tape, and finally decided that I needed to direct my attention to getting my mother her VA benefits.  This never happened because of more red-tape.  By the time I turned my attention back to the ticket – it was too late, I received a letter in the mail, informing me that my Colorado License had been suspended.  It has taken me ONE FULL YEAR to take care of this – all without any resources other than myself and a friend.  I did so, even when I had a job, by borrowing five dollars from a number of people for the $95 re-instatement fee, by promising to not only pay each back, but to pay them two dollars more.  I have since done so.  Shortly after I came back to Boulder, my mother passed on the night of my birthday.  I held all that in after a good cry in the parking lot, sinking to my knees.  It was all I could do to keep it together enough to call my father and let him know.  But because I continued to sleep in conditions that were harsh; where some diseases were easily spread by crowded conditions; sometimes back out in the cold; carrying around all this guilt and anger and remorse, over-layed by the thickest depression — Because of all this, the stress eventually won out over my immune system and dragged it down far enough to where I contracted MRSA Staph Infection.  Within about seven days, I was dropping my keys, walking very slowly and stumbling with a throbbing headache.  There was a sore on my left shin that was getting progressively worse.  At first, everyone thought that it was a spider bite.  Eventually, we found out different.  When I finally drummed up the courage to go to the hospital, I was dizzy and a red streak had threaded it’s way from the super-infected and inflated spot on my lower leg, all the way up to just near my groin.  This is very bad news.  This is mere hours from the infection getting to the heart – then it’s all over.  When I went to the hospital – I was told that I had about 24 hours to live.  Had I not come to the hospital, I would have died the next day about that same time.

My need is to get off the streets.  Once you are there, it is extremely difficult to get off.  There aren’t a lot of places to wash your body, especially your feet.  If you don’t do this within just two days, the skin on your feet begins to peel away and infections creep in.  If you have to carry several packs all day, for, both, the fear of having it stolen because you don’t have the money to afford storage, and because during your day you need access to some things; then your body begins to break down.

It protects itself by clenching up.  But over time, the muscles never have a chance to relax and extreme exhaustion results very easily from not having any energy reserves – they’re all tied up in holding your body armor in place so that you don’t get hurt.  The sad irony is that you get injured far worse despite the good intentions of this bodily safety mechanism.  Over an extended period of time, other problems arise:  Here are just a few…tingling in the feet or fingers or arms or legs from blood restrictions and nerve crimping on a daily basis.  If you’re not careful, then you’ll carry your heavy load, the same way all the time, and if it’s off balance just slightly along your spine, then your body tries to compensate by over-using some muscles and not fully using others.  Your whole musculature begins to weaken and break down.  You never have a chance to change your pace.  That slow-plodding pace keeps your heart from getting a chance to exercise the way it’s supposed to.  I don’t know about you, but if I had a bunch of packs on and I could never set them down, I wouldn’t be able to run, or skate, or bicycle, or dance, or do martial arts.  I could go on and on about the dietary restrictions due to not having the money to choose what is healthy; but I’ve beat a dead horse here.

My need is great.  I need stable housing.  I need a place to lock away for my own privacy and silence.  I need a place where I have no fear of being woken up and charged with a crime for trying to get my required amount of REM sleep.  I want to be disease free.  I want a place to shower, meditate, cook my food, clean my clothes, blend my healthy mix of vegetables so I can remain in good working condition so that I CAN work to support myself.

Next is my Desire…WHY do I want to do massage?  What motivates a guy like me?

Again, the answers are many-fold.  But let’s start with important times in my life:

About age 7, I’m trying to look into the eyes of my father’s mother – she’s sitting in a wheelchair, and she’s staring through me.  She was here moments ago.  “Why’s her hand all cramped and claw-looking like that”, I’m wondering to myself.  I’m scared of her for some reason.  We’re at a funeral, and she’s maybe in her forties or fifties.

My dad divorces my mom and leaves me with Nadine for the summer – his girlfriend.  He comes to pick me up and now he’s got a new wife.  He met her in a car accident.  Just a few years down the road, and we’re all yelling.  JoAnn – my step-mom is yelling at me to be quiet; I’m yelling at her that she’s not my REAL mom and she can’t tell me what to do.  Dad’s yelling at us both to please, just get along for once!  She’s had brain damage.  She’s had the front part of her brain removed.  I’m about nine, and she’s trying to mother me.  She’s doing a terrible job and it’s only going to get worse, because what happens next, is that she will begin to revert back to the emotional and logical state of a child.  Figure about five years old.

I’m in my twenties; just got out of the Marines.  My very over-weight step mom is trying to position herself to flop into our easy chair.  She misses and hits the floor of our apartment…hard.  She’s just had a stroke, and will have 3 more in the same region of her brain.  This will eventually kill her.
Within a few months, my dad is working on his Nursing degree, and he discovers that he has Multiple Sclerosis.  Only this time – it’s progressing much more rapidly than it ever did with my grandmother.  I’m about 27.

My dad moves in with his girlfriend.  He’s now bedridden, and this woman with diabetes and seasonal disseffective disorder is trying to take care of him.

I’ve been working for Aspen Media Market Research – calling people at their homes and businesses to get them to re-up on their magazine subscriptions.  I’ve saved up for a beater car.  I’m lying on the floor of a friend’s who’s letting me stay at her place.  She’s an addict, and this situation is rocky at best, but I need a place to stay so that I can keep this job.  I’m in the process of figuring out what my next step is when my Aunt Sherry calls me up.  Sherry – “You’re mom’s got cancer.  Just wanted to tell you.  You’re the only one who can really do anything for her, or will. – what are you gonna do? – Are you gonna go see her?  I remember when I took care of both your grandmother and your grandfather.  I’m glad I was there for them.  I’m not going to lie to you – it was one of the toughest times in my life, but I’m glad all the same.  We were able to talk about things we hadn’t discussed for so long, and I found out so much that has helped me.” -(My aunt is over-weight, and has degenerative neck disease, where the cartilage in between her vertebrae are dissolving).

I’ve driven up to go see my mom.  I find her in her apartment.  This white-haired, 4-foot, nine-inch lady answering the door suspiciously is MY mom?!  That night, she goes from bad to worse.  I can’t stop her from coughing.  I put her in all kinds of positions – trying to relieve her pain.  She’s moaning and every few minutes she pulls this pink, rectangular, bucket thing off the carpet and tries to spit into it.  She manages to just kind of get some drool to come out.  She’s freezing and there aren’t enough blankets.  I tell her I’ll turn up the thermostat.  “NO! – I can’t AFFORD that! – the bills, the bills….they’re raping me!  They don’t care.”  I tried to sleep, but in the morning, I awoke to my mother, naked and clawing at the carpet in our guest bedroom.  I looked into her eye, horrified to find that my mother was no longer there…no – there she was…and THERE.  But her eyes; they were like an animal’s – an animal in pain and scared.  She was scared of me.  She didn’t trust me.  I did my best to give her a bath.  I struggled to put on her jeans and a sweater.  I told her, “Mom – you’re sick.  I need to take you to a hospital.  It’ll be alright…they’ll know what to do.”
“NO!  No, no, nononononoooo!”, she pleaded.  I picked her up, opened the front door and walked down the hall, carrying her and knocked on her neighbor’s door.  I didn’t know what to do.  He jumped into action and called an ambulance.  I picked her up once more and began walking down about twenty or so steps.  She blacked-out in my arms before I got to the bottom.  The ambulance came and took her away.

What would motivate me to practice massage or energy medicine or any of the healing arts?  Compassion, and seeing a need.  Knowing that I was called to do this, and that I have gifts.  I’ve had gifts to soothe people even before I ever went to massage school back in Pennsylvania.  I took $300 out-of-pocket psychology course at the Pottstown Community College, and come time for the exam, my professor told me, “You don’t need to take the exam.  You’re exempt.”  When I took, “Psychology of the Body”, during my Swedish Massage Schooling, my African instructor approached me and said, “You have a real gift.  You could have taught that class.”

I feel called to something much bigger than myself.  I feel called to serve and to implement changes for the betterment of society.  I feel called to starting several businesses and utilizing that money to help the homeless get housing, and struggling students get grants and scholarships to those studies that so sing in their hearts.  I feel an overwhelming need to impact this world on a visceral level. 

And I can best do this by bringing myself through my challenges and into alignment and resourcefulness.  I have the will to succeed against seemingly insurmountable obstacles, and have done so numerous times before.  Each time I learn something, but now is no longer the time to be the sword which is being smelted and hammered and folded thousands of times over.  Now is the time for me to take all I’ve learned and apply it to become self-sufficient, so that I can release all of the gifts I’ve been given and share them with the world.  I ache to do this.

You ask me to tell you where I would commit 100 hours of selfless service, and at first I was torn between Cancer patients and those who have Multiple Sclerosis.  Last night as I lay huddled on the patio of the local church here in Boulder – as I lay there, curled almost in a fetal position, shivering from the cold – I dreamed.  I dreamed that I was a massage therapist once again, and that someone was lying on my table, wracked in pain.  I put my arms under them and cradled them, so that they could just lie against my chest; so they could give up all they had been holding in.  In moments I felt their rigidity give way and their body release.  It was as if every muscle in their body had given up the fight and every nerve had quieted it’s storm of communication.  As I looked down, I saw their eyes drift closed.  They were asleep in my arms.

I woke up, and soon the dream left my mind.  I was worried that someone had spotted me and ratted me out to the police and they would be by to either give me a ticket or take me to jail for illegally sleeping.  As these worries entered my mind, another part of my mind was trying to focus on who I would donate those 100 hours of service to.  Then it hit me – the answer had been staring me in the face the whole time:  I live in a community which badly needs not only physical touch and muscular manipulation, but love and understanding and compassion, as well.  These people are treated like second-class citizens and their spirits have been trampled and that flickering flame hope has been dangerously suppressed, near to the point of being snuffed out.  Why should they go day-to-day when the same old conditions conspire to keep them down, hungry, tired, lonely.  Who are they to even WANT a better life?  I say, that they are the very ones who need love the most.  Churches nowadays have become little businesses.  I went to church a while back to get closer to God, and all I got closer to was a longer record.  I never had a record before coming to Boulder; least not the criminal kind.  My dad had a bunch of 45’s, but even though I was a curious, ‘problem child’, I never found myself looking the wrong way through a bunch of bars.  I still haven’t – jails no longer look anything like the old days…and since being in Boulder, homeless, struggling to maintain a job with all the challenges that go along with this kind of a life, I’ve been in jail several times.  It all seems to be related to wanting to stick up for my and other citizen’s rights to sleep and not be harassed.  I’ve since learned to become quieter and wait for my time make a change.  But that time – in the judicial system – has not yet come for me.  I will have to be patient.  And while we are being patient, more people are dying from drinking and drugging their sorrows away and freezing to death and getting beat up by people who are hateful and enjoy the sport of it.  They are dying from malnutrition.  They are dying from not being able to support themselves through hard times.

But most of all – ALL THESE PEOPLE ARE DYING FROM A LACK OF LOVE.  Lack of love is the source of all our world’s problems.  I am convinced of this.  And so the solution seems simple enough – MORE LOVE.

I will devote my 100 hours to these people.  I may do chair massage or it may be some kind of full-blown table massage, but whatever it is…it will be for the benefit of those who are homeless – in need of the most love.

I think that that’s what JESUS would do.

In conclusion; and I know this has been a long essay – I cannot guarantee that I will be an excellent student.  Excellent by whose standards?  But I will do my best.  Apparently my best was good enough years ago when I made it through Marine Corps Boot Camp, and later while I was homeless, but holding down a serving job at the mall next to where I daily went to for massage training.  At the end, I was told that I had only gotten a B, but they were sure that had I not had all the challenges I had and could focus more, I would have gotten an A or A+.  One of those challenges was running from another town, where I was safer, with a backpack and a black, plastic garbage bag filled with my massage, school uniform.  In the pack were a bunch of books.  It was most of the way through summer but still incredibly hot, and I was running up the stairwell, well I blacked out and fell backwards, hitting my head against the wall on the second platform.  That’s how hard I worked.  That’s how much determination I had.  And I can recall one of our teachers commending me, because she had seen me riding my bike through a rain storm, while she was driving her car down the road.  I came in soaked to the skin.  If those things couldn’t stop me from getting my massage certification……

Then, why would anyone believe that anything less than that could stop me?

Thanks again for taking the time out of your busy schedule to read this.  I might not win – for sheer length of time it would take to read this email – and if that is the case, then I will take the news in stride and find some other way to live my dreams, give back to those who have helped me along the way, and serve those less fortunate – helping to inspire and lift them to heights they never knew were possible.

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David Lee Madison, Jr.

Nate – my street name , KnavetheMage on Twitter

~ZenNinja to others who saw me do my little ‘cat-walk’

Nate Love – my future pen name

and WordPressing it up on Synergy and Suprememasterjedi

Copied from my WORD documents in Boulder, CO

Monday, December 2, 2013 – 22:40

 

“May be offensive”: “The Power of Words and Sound”

So, I was looking up the word, “orifices”, for a the beginning chapter on a book that I’m writing. I went to dictionary.com because I that red, squiggly line kept showing up in Word, whenever I would try to type the word.

I flew up to the address bar and typed in my tried and true URL: dictionary.com. I checked the word and found that I had spelled it incorrectly, as “orfiices and orffices” – failing to include the ‘i’ after the ‘r’ and before the ‘f’, like this: “OR ‘I’ FIC ES”.

No big deal. Then I thought about another word I’ve been fascinated by: “Holes”; and I typed it in – but this time, I clicked the button for ‘THESAURUS’. Up came a whole list of synonyms.

One of these was, “Shaft”. Always being curious, I thought about the sexual or gender connotations to that word, and realized that the vulgar porn description of a man’s penis, “Shaft”, was now being used in a more feminine context, as in a mining shaft, or a hollowed out place in a mountain.

What’s curious about this, is that we can use one word, and by the way that we choose to use it…can convey a hole, or receptive noun; or we can can use it to mean a protuberance or an active verb. And there are combinations of the two. But isn’t it interesting that one word can have almost opposite meaning, by the way that it is situated in a sentence?

Ever since a child in grade school, I have held a fascination with words and their interplay.

The bible speaks of the WORD or LOGOS. The Sumerian’s language actually was designed so that the WORD or the sound of a word was that word. In essence, the vibration of a particular word, (especially its vowels), would create an energetic effect. If you put those words together in the right order, at the right varying pitch, and could get them to resonate at the right speed; then you could manipulate physical reality by a small degree or on a small scale. If you, then, took multiple people and did the same thing, but all together, as one – you could potentially magnify those effects a thousand-fold or more and would begin to see changes on a macro scale, or that of every-day life.

It is my belief that sound sits in the middle of the spiritual and material realms; and is the bridge by which one transforms into the other.

That is the power one can have when they pay attention to words.

David Lee Madison, Jr
DaveorNate ~ZenNinja ~Nate Love
Copied from Word at my apartment in Boulder, CO
Saturday, November 30, 2013 18:40