Tag: perception

Spirit · truth

Lovely Perception

AmandaLeave a comment

Can I be honest for a moment? I honestly see no real need for Valentine’s Day. I mean if you want to spend a day wasting more time, money and energy on those you love to prove you love them… Then go ahead and add pink and red hearts to your narrative. But, you see it’s all really a little much for me.

However, since we’re talking about love, I believe it’s important to mention something I’ve been going through lately.

You see I have this place inside of me that constantly feels like there’s no one there to take care of me. Since I’m unmarried, without a boyfriend and my dad’s dead… Well I constantly feel like no one has my back at all.

Now, I always feel protected by God and the supernatural… But when it comes to feeling like someone cares about my emotional needs and thoughts, well I just feel unsupported.

And I know I’m supposed to gain all of this from Father God, but lately I’ve been really angry with Him about life… So then it’s hard to think that He really cares.

However, the other night some things that could’ve been a complete failure equated to success. And… Well… Honestly, the success had everything to do with God having my back. He was in my corner in a moment when I needed Him the most by making sure everything was seemingly seamless.

So now I find myself in this place…. A place that’s forcing me to admit that I’ve misperceived God and His love for me.

And… Well, I don’t want to do that anymore. I need better perception. 🌱🌷 #cultivatelife

Confidence · Spirit

Preception Pending…

AmandaLeave a comment

enlight1Over the last day or so… I’ve found myself angry… Angry with God… With things He’s spoken to me before and how they contradict what he’s speaking today… So… For about a day… Well I pouted… I had an attitude… An attitude that was filled with ideas that said, “now you want me to do this? What if it’s a waste of my time? But you told me this before?…”

Basically the pieces weren’t adding up… And that’s when a friend helped me realize my preception of God was off… That my past thinking was filled with a slave mentality…

That I believed that I had to “do” so many things for God to “be” God in my life… For Him to help me out, qualify and love me too…

So… Yesterday when this truth over a preception was spoken into my life… Well I realized it’s my responsibility to just be… To just try with all that’s in me to be God’s daughter… And to come to a place where everything I am in life has to do with His love and grace in my life… And that it has nothing to do with me…

That my ideas of what I’ve done… My ideas over the work I’ve done… The places I’ve moved to in life… Even the goodness that I believe I’ve earned… Well none of that is true…

What is true?… Religion has taught me to believe that I have to keep doing and doing and doing to gain God… To gain His forgiveness, His love, His gifts, His righteousness and His goodness… But that’s entirely untrue…

Because… As I begin to peel back even more religion from my soul… Well I’m learning that I don’t have to do a thing… I accepted Jesus… And that was more than enough… Enough to gain His forgiveness, His love, His gifts, His righteousness and His goodness…

And I do believe this is a fresh, yet eternal truth in my life… And I do believe it will now continue to grow and be cultivated… As I just continue to live… To just live and be the daughter God created me to be…

truth

Land of Smoke and Mirrors…

AmandaLeave a comment

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Hollywood… LA… California…

It’s truly a land of smoke and mirrors…

And I’ve heard that for quite some time… I’ve heard that this place…. As amazing as it can be… Well it is soul-sucking… Soul-sucking because it sells lies… It says one thing but does another…

And in so many ways… Well I’m conditioned for smoke and mirrors… For lies more so… But not for the type of lies I find myself surrounded by…

Religion taught me how to be fake… False… So far from truth… Something that looks and sounds appealing… But something that was as much a lie as it was truth… A double-edged sword…. To “fit-in” you had to “stand-out” for God… And it was good… But it was also a deadly enemy…

And now I stand confronted with this other false way of life… And it hasn’t consumed me in the way that religion did… It’s really just teaching me how stupid and pointless it is to care so much about things and people who are lying to me and the rest of the population that listen….

And in this land of smoke and mirrors… Where I want to believe so badly… Well I continue to find myself at this place of knowing that I can’t believe because reality is too clear to me…

The reality that all of these things… These things and lives that I’ve been taught to care about and obsess over… Well they will fade away very quickly… And I’ll be left with nothing more than that…

And so I think this is where I am divided… Because I am on this quest to discover the woman I want to be… And within that quest I hate what I see… But I buy into the lies… Which frustrates and aggravates me… I constantly think I should be a better protector of my mind and thoughts…

And I know what I see in my work environment… And I honestly don’t think it impacts me the way the rest of this land does… But I’m still annoyed…

Because to be the type of woman I want to be… The type that gives life… Well I need to protect my mind so much more than I am right now…

Which in this weird way is sad because it means giving up these cheap thoughts… Cheap ways of thinking… Cheap lifestyles that are created through social media and displayed in my mind as reality…

And I guess I feel like I am on a hilltop… A hilltop filled with precious trees and plants… More than I can really imagine… The hill and the produce are mine… They are in my name… I climbed a mountain to have them… For them to belong to me… And to be used accordingly… But then I see a few fake, deeply flawed pieces of fruit lying on the ground around… And I continue to bend over and pick them up… I continue to become distracted by these obstacles that appear to be amazing because they are popular…

But… Then they aren’t amazing… Because they don’t actually give me life… They can’t enhance my life or help me change my world for the good…

But… If I would just put them down… If I would just simply walk away from them… Well then I would be reminded that I am surrounded with truth… With life… With good things… Things that are more precious than silver or gold… That I’ve inherited and grown… Seeds that I was given as a child and chose to cultivate to great heights… So much so that they now produce fruit… Fruit that I should take and eat and give and feel satisfied with the life that I am enjoying…

And… These fake, deeply flawed pieces… Well they are smoke and mirrors… That prevent me from just living…

Confidence · Spirit

Value Perceptions

AmandaLeave a comment

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I had a conversation two days ago that hasn’t left my mind…. My boss was telling me that someone broke into the neighbors house and ransacked it… obviously they were looking for “things”…

And then I said “well, that makes me nervous to walk to my car alone at night now.” and her response, “oh Amanda, they don’t want you. They want your stuff and you don’t have anything.”

Funny…. people wanting stuff… and the thought that because I don’t have anything of true monetary value…. well it means I don’t have anything….

It’s funny because our world is so skewed… we value what’s in our home over what’s in our heart….

And living in L.A. makes that truth more of a reality…. this city has misperceived the value of things so much….

And I think her statement to me is even more important since I’ve been working on valuing myself… it just sticks out… and it continues to remind me that it’s so important to value what ‘s in me and what’s in the people around… it reminds me not to truly value what sparkles and shines on the outside… but to focus on the inside…

Because at the end of the day… well it’s all just stuff… the stuff we accumulate here and now… for a time… until something better is created… or until we feel like what we have isn’t good enough anymore… or of course until “they” tell us we need more… something else to place on our finger or in our garage…

And in reality it’s so useless….

I had another thought that supported this conversation last night… one of the girls was listening to a song…. and the song said “I was raised by a television”… and that line stuck with me… because I began to think “it’s so true”…. a TV did raise me… or helped raise me…

And the reason I have a miscued perception is because of what I’ve been taught through what I’ve seen on TV…. because I was taught to value the tangible over the intangible…

And things like this really bother me… they bother me because I know I need to value me more… I need to place what’s inside of me over what I see… but it’s still a challenge at times… to care more about the intangible…

And then when I think about dad being gone… and how I miss him… his love, his kindness, his jokes… just his entire personality…. the things that were gone the moment he stopped breathing… well it helps me remember it really is just stuff…

Of course then it makes me want to tell my boss “you know… it’s a shame no one would want to steal me… because what’s on the inside of me is more valuable than what’s in that house”…

And I think what I’m trying to tell myself is I should value myself enough to think “what’s inside of me is worth stealing…. it’s worth taking… it’s that valuable… but then it’s also so valuable that only those who know true value are looking”…..

And I guess realizing that people that know true value attract and look for others with true value is good for me to think on…. Because it might just be my next step to becoming and staying focused on what’s truly important… And that’s ok with me…