Tracking Brandy.G

My boyfriend and I will be moving to Minneapolis in a couple weeks. I cannot wait for that new adventure to start. I am in love with what little I  know of the city and I am in love with everything I know of the boy.

I’ve finally found a career path that I am interested in pursuing for the long hall. Have I said that before though? I don’t remember. It obviously was a lie.

I find my creeds extremely idealistic. They are hard to live out sometimes. I keep fighting though. Why not reach for the stars?

I wonder what is so enticing about drinking so regularly. This year has been consumed with too much consumption. And it rarely makes things better long enough to make the next day worth it. I used to never waste money on alcohol like I have recently. I hope to change this.

This summer is full of plans that I never planned, but am now happy to be planning. These are the best parts of life.

Looking back I have no regrets with how I have lived. My weird style choices, my travel choices, friend choices, party choices, learning choices. I’m glad that I did what I wanted during each year of my life and wasn’t trying to be someone I wasn’t. All my wrongs are continuing to make me feel right the more time I give myself.

I truly had a friend in my dog, Bear, and I sorely miss him. His passing was very hard for me.

Two dear high school friends of mine are getting married and I couldn’t be happier for either of them. I am looking forward to being a part of their special days.

I’m slowly starting to make my own large purchases and really plan for the future financially. This feels really good.

I have a niece now and she is quite amazing. What astonishing little humans, babies are.

I am going to miss my coworkers dearly, I have been really lucky to have met such wonderful and interesting people.

Although I am very ready and thrilled to be living alone with my love, I have had such a fabulous time living with all of my roommates. I am really glad I had the opportunity to live with such neat people, even though there were times when it was not always ideal.

Here is to more yoga, eating vegan, enjoying all aspects of Minneapolis, spending time with my friends as often as I can, traveling, and living a fun, adventure-filled life with my boyfriend. May my work be fulfilling, progressive, and interesting, my bank account always full (or above empty), and my discipline stronger than ever.

In some ways, writing makes me feel productive, even if it doesn’t help advance me in any of my daily goals. It’s only mental. I feel satisfied that I have said some of the things that have been on my mind or wrote about something that I thought might be interesting to write about. Plus, I like the sound of my fingers typing.

I’m drinking tea. Black Chai Tea. Just the right spice for this chilly Minnesota fall. Maybe I’d be drinking coffee if I had an Almond Joy flavored creamer. That isn’t a joke, they exist and they transform your coffee into heaven…unless you don’t like the flavor of coconut.

There are seven people living in the house that I live in. I always thought it would be really cool to live in a big communal home. And it is! We hang out a lot together in the dining room. Most the time it looks as if we are a bunch of computer nerds who are on some long gaming mission that consumes most of the day. But really we are sharing Youtube videos, music, or information. Let me not deceive you, I’m mostly on the receiving end. I don’t actively search out new videos…I just wait until other people waste their time filtering through all the bad ones until they get to the good ones that they want to share. And we also share everything else except our rooms and food (sometimes). There are “good mornings,” “good nights,” a few meals together, some trips to NY Gyro together, and lots of drinking together. It feels like a family. And so I’m checking it off of my list.

We recycle and have to put our trash in a designated green city trashbag, which cannot weight more than 25 lbs. Each roll of bags costs $20. There aren’t that many and they go fast; it is a stupid waste of plastic. However, we are good at recycling as a household. I take pride in that.

I miss my Lawrence friends, especially the girls. I’ve been needing some girl time. What an exceptional time “girl time” is too! Girls are on a whole different level than boys, and girls need to satisfy those conversations, adventures, stories, etc. that just cannot be done with a boy. I hung out with a group of really fun girls this past weekend and it was such a breath of fresh air! I almost forgot how wonderful girl gatherings could be! (You probably have to be a girl to understand this at all.)

So…things I’ve discovered in Minnesota that were totally new to me.

*People around here will put olives, pickles, or salt into their MGDs.

*It’s not a casserole, it’s a hot dish. Unless is it’s Green Bean Casserole.

*They are freezies not popsicles. Popsicles are only on sticks. (Maybe I’m the only one who missed out on this whole concept though).

*Minnesota State Fair is one of the biggest in the nation, everything comes fried and on a stick.

*People actually go out to the bars more in the winter time…because there is nothing else to do and it’s ultra depressing, so everyone must drink away their sorrows.

*The flags attached to every fire hydrant are for when the snow is piled so high, the snow plowing men can know where they are so that they don’t hit them.

….and well there is surely more I am forgetting, but that is what is noteworthy right now.

Off to make some vegan chili and start researching programs and possibilities for the next adventure in my life.

Tschuess!

P.S.
Traveling friends, read about the traveling curse. 

My grandmother got into Kabbalah quite a bit in her later years and my cousin past along one of the books she had read and marked up. The book offers a piece of wisdom for each of the 365 days of the year. Of those, there were probably about 40-50 pieces that I truly enjoyed and found worthy of passing along. Instead of quoting each of them and filling up my tumblr with scores of individual quotes…I’ll post them all together here. To save time, I will just tell you that the source of these quotes, although pulled from various religious scriptures and rabbis, is from the book Kabbalah 365 by Gershon Winkler.

Every human should tend very compassionately to the flesh of their body in order to be able to share with it all the dimensions of enlightenment and visions of which the soul is capable, for the body, too, is capable of such perception. Do not hide your eyes from having mercy upon your flesh, that is the flesh of your body. You must have much compassion for your body. See to it that you purify your body so that it can become conscious of all the enlightenment and visions that the soul perceives.

Darkness is but a garment of light. It is still light, but veiled;  the darker it is the more layers of the veil. Likewise , everything in life is one with its opposite, the extreme of each a veil for the other in varying degrees. If you are feeling anger, know that the anger veils its opposite. Your anger is an extremely thick veil for appeasement, so slowly try to remove the layers until you discover appeasement. If you are feeling hate, remember that hate is a thick layer that veils its opposite, love. But within that very hatred is the possibility of love. And so with everything, all is one. The oneness of all is individuated, but also related one to the other.

When you wake up from a bad dream, think positively, find a positive metaphor for the dream and interpret it for the better, because dreams follow their interpretation.

….You can exert your power and your presence in a forceful, intimidating way, or you can exert your power and your presence in a graceful way, a way in which your power does not intimidate yet comes across with equal forcefulness.

All plants, minerals, and animals, including the stars, moons, suns, and planets, are living, conscious beings replete with divine wisdom and soul.

Every human being is comprised of the qualities of every other being on the planet. We are not made solely in the “Image of God” but just as much in the image of all that surrounds us, stones, plants, animals, the galactic beings, as well as in the image of all the chaos and ultimate clarity that went into creating our universe.

Since you are comprised of all of creation. The animals in your environment mirror important qualities back at you. they are part of what can keep you in balance or throw you out of whack. …

You are here by default. Yet it would be a good idea to make a conscious commitment to being here, to being in life. The more conscious your commitment to being here the deeper your soul will manifest in your being. the less the life commitment, the less the soul becomes manifested in the body, and the more vulnerable the body then becomes to death - toward which illness is believed to be a momentum.

Good and evil are not opposite in conflict but opposites in dance, challenging one another constantly in a concerted dance of divine mystery. For there is no impurity that does not have a kernel of purity, and no evil that does not possess a seed with the potential for good.

The world you live in and the life you lead can be either Hell or Heaven. It’s totally up to you. In first-century Israel, during the violent and oppressive rule of Rome, the Israelites asked Rachumai: “Rabbi, where is Paradise?” He replied: “Here.”

You are not alien to this planet. You are her child. You belong here. Walk on the grass. It’s okay. Sit in the mud, it won’t hurt you. Accept the cold, the heat, the rain, and the wind. …

The earth is a living organism. She has feelings, and she reacts. She accepts us or rejects us, depending upon how we conduct ourselves upon her. Even the medicines that come from the earth are capable of healing only when the earth is at peace, not when there is conflict upon her.

You can learn a lot about yourself by communing with the animals. You can also learn a lot about animals through understanding yourself. Because each of you carries the understanding of the mystery of the other. As the ancient rabbis taught: “The souls of animals and humans are imprinted on each other.”

When your mind feels clogged, or when you feel stuck in your process, do something that will bring you joy, for joyfulness frees up the mind, as is written: “With gladness shall you go out” (Isaiah 55:12) —That through joy you are made free and can go out from whatever is keeping you stuck. And if you cannot find the means to gladden your heart, think about something positive about yourself and it will bring you joy.

… “The righteous person knows the soul of their animal.”

… “You must never whip a horse, you just have to know how to talk to them.”

So long as the petals of the rose are folded shut, she has no aroma and does not rise above the thorns. But when she opens her petals, she gives forth aroma and stands out above the thorns. Likewise, so long as our hearts are closed and we are not open to turning our lives around, our auras lack luster, and we fade into oblivion. But when we unlock our hearts and open ourselves up to turning our lives around, we sparkle, and we rise above the mediocre and transcend painfulness.

Every moment is a new beginning; every act your very first. Never regard your action as if it were the second or fourth or hundredth, but always as if it were the very first time you’ve ever done it.

Leadership has little to do with academic achievement and more to do with how conscientiously you direct your life. … “Every moment a sheepherder conscientiously applies his skill toward guiding his sheep, he becomes the more ripe for divine appointment as a spiritual leader.”

One can measure a person’s degree of cruelty toward people by measuring the degree of their cruelty toward animals.

The injunction that you ought not to hate others includes not creating cause for others to hate you.

It is preferable that meat be consumed only by the spiritually evolved. for it may be that the reincarnated soul of a fellow human is clothed in the soul of the animal we are eating, waiting to be graduated into human carnation, as is taught in the school of Rabbi Yitzchak Luria.

Nothing is more important than peace. Without peace and cooperation, nothing can exist. If one of the stones of a building decided it wanted to move to the top rather than remain in the middle or at the bottom, the entire structure would collapse. If the root of a tree chose to emerge atop the soil, the tree would die. If one of your hands decided not to cooperate with the other, we could not build anything, nor could we eat. If your legs tired of being apart all the time and chose to unite,m we would fall. All exists by cooperation by each valuing their respective contribution to life, and each honoring the preciousness of the other.

…When we put all of our energies into seeking we risk not finding, we risk rushing right past it. …

… Hell is the experience of the soul when it leaves the bod and in that moment becomes fully aware of what it had neglected to realize here on earth. …

You might think, “of what worth is my doing good works in the world? I have accomplished so little in the realm of the sacred, so what is the point of trying to do any more than what little I’ve done? I may as well throw all caution tot he wind.” But my friend, that is akin to discovering a hole in your pocket and that all of your money, except for one coin has fallen through and been lost. Would you then use this same logic and throw away the one remaining coin as well? On the contrary, what little you’ve done is perhaps the greatest thing you will ever have done.; it counts. And it should encourage you to continue to do more good works for every minute act of goodness is far greater than you can imagine.

Clowning around is not joke. It is actually an important component to achieving true wisdom. there is indeed no wisdom as clear and as deep as the wisdom that was achieved through jesting, for humor opens the heart and mind so that wisdom can be absorbed more wholly. therefore, the masters would always begin their teachings with jesting.

Don’t take the burdens of the world’s problems upon yourself. Don’t ignore them, either. As Rabbi Tar’fon (1st century) put it: “The work is not upon you to complete, but neither are you exempt from trying.”

Where your thought is, is precisely where you are - all of yourself is there.

What we do to the land we deem “personal property” affects the rest of the planet, which knows no geographical boundaries. What we do to our “private” land, in other words, is not exempt from any ecological consequences we might thereby wreak upon the rest of the planet. It is analogous to a ship full of people sailing on the high seas when on e of the passengers began to drill a w hole on the floor of his section of the boat. His fellow passengers admonished him: “Cosmic fool! What are you doing?” He replied: “What business is it of yours what I am doing? This is my section! I paid for this space on the boat!” They said: “Of course it is our business when what you are doing in your personal space is going to destroy us all!”

If the entire world was populated with fools, we would not recognize foolishness. If the entire world was populated with wise people, we would not recognize wisdom. Every opposite lends definition to the other, as is written: “This, too, opposite the other did God create”

If you seek straight answers to the meaning of life, you’re not ready to know it. In the second century they asked Rabbi Akiva: “Is everything preordained, or do we have free will?” He replied: “Everything is preordained, and the choice is yours.”

We have so much trouble with one God, can you imagine two?

If you make a mistake for the first time, do not be concerned about it. Rather concerned about it. if you repeat it a second time. If you do something right the first time, do not pride yourself about it. Rather be proud of yourself if you repeat it a second time.

We are only here for the weekend. Against the backdrop of billions of years of the existence of our universe, our time on this earth is an unfathomable infinitesimal fraction of fraction of a second. Yet, we each come into this world with the air of an expert, posing great questions of why does this happen, why that, where is God in times of crises, why do the innocent suffer, and so on. It is akin to someone visiting a foreign country for a few hours and griping about the cultural nuances that are alien to his mindset, because he is not learned in the ways of that land or its culture. Likewise it is with being in this life, in this world. Indeed, ask your questions. Complain as you wish. But remember, you just got here, and you are only here for the weekend. - Rabbi Yisro’el Me’ir Kagan in Mish’lei Chofetz Chayyim