God, living in the moment, etc...

This is something that has been on my mind recently. It's basically a rant, but I really feel that it has to be addressed.

I'm not the type of person who feels that I have to prove my belief in God by constantly repeating it out loud for attention. I rather live about God than talk about God, and every single thing I do in life (at least as a mature adult) is based on nonstop communication with the higher power. Whether things are going well or not in life is not the point; I rejoice being able to have the free will to mindfully live in the moment.

One of the hardest lessons I've had in life was to break out of putting God at a distance from so-called reality. I used to see the belief in God as a guilty pleasure that is to be enjoyed only when I'm not wrapped in "ungodly" vices. This caused an ambivalence in my faith; God was good as long as I was materialistically happy but nonexistent when things weren't satisfying my ego.

When I was younger, I had to face a whole lot of obstacles that used to make me embittered. And all this time I would hear from different folks about how God has blessed them with a good house, good clothes to show off in while in church, and etc. Rarely did I hear about how someone who still believed in themselves and persevered through any hardship that came their way. My mother was such a person; she would face enormous financial difficulties while trying to take care of a very opinionated teenage son. She would give her all into raising me by herself while working so hard with nothing to show for it except for frustration and a sore body. She was a very giving person; she would even donate whatever money she had to the the most selfish people around if those people whined hard enough. I used to really question this, and looking back I used to wonder for a minute how anyone could persevere when it seemed that every rock, boulder, brick, or whatever came rolling downhill at us as we tried to make our way uphill.

Now I see what's up. I realized that God didn't put human beings on Earth to snap their fingers and expect to have any desire fulfilled. Each and every one of us have unique experiences in our lives that causes us to travel down various paths. Those paths and the problems that may come along with each one along the way are meant to reward the traveler in the long run. A lot of people (especially my mother) are blessed simply because they refused to give up and continued to push on despite the odds.

As a teenager I used to face my own battles and used to expect God to automatically solve them without doing anything I was meant to do as a human be-ing. When I snapped my fingers and found myself still struggling, I would just give up easily. These situations happened so much that I would actually snap and would wish ill will on every single person living on Earth at the moment (including me.) I found that violent daydreams was an escape from a reality that I refused to see.

The actual breaking point for me is when I dropped out of college for a couple of years to work full-time to help my mother pay the bills (we were struggling at our hardest at this time, with ZERO support from relatives and so-called friends.) I originally decided to go to college because I felt that all I needed was a degree to validate my existence, and the money, a nice car, a hot woman, and a rep from having all of these things would come easily because of that degree. So I was already unhappy, but working fulltime as a mail clerk didn't help any (though it did offset a lot of financial difficulties and allowed me to buy my first keyboard - a Yamaha PSR-330.) I didn't know that this keyboard would really open myself up to the world, and for the first time in a while I felt a happiness that extended beyond the satisfaction of my ego.

Like I said earlier, every person has their own path in life that may cause them to take many detours, twists, turns, and etc. Because there are so many people in the world traveling at the same time, many of those paths cross. We meet people from various backgrounds with various dreams who influence us. Once I became involved in Jazz, I began to make powerful connections with many positive folks (even though I still to this day try to stay away from people who intentionally feeds me negative energy.)

Jazz (at least to me) is something that first and foremost is about being mindfully in the moment. The actual study of Jazz ended up spreading throughout all aspects of my life, and now I live and breathe 24/7/365 through good and bad situations. I'm a human be-ing first and a human do-er second, which means that I feel blessed to be able to maintain my overall health through everything and to be able to express myself and share my talents with the world. That's the "be-ing" part, and the "do-ing" part involves the politics involved with dealing with a mostly materialistic society (I always heard the saying that the music business is 10% talent and 90% B.S. - I mean business.)

P.S. -
I'll let the social chameleon-type friends in my life repeat God's name out loud just because they mistakenly believe that having their egos satisfied will guarantee overall happiness. As the old saying goes, God don't like ugly. Although I (and possibly others who truly care) are being shunned at the moment I'll still be around to catch you when you come crashing down from your euphoric state.