There are two ways to burn a candle.

Americans are strange.  Despite our relative prosperity, we are one of the most emotionally depressed cultures on the planet.  It’s been said that one of the main causes for our mental state is that we try to cram more activities into a 24 hour day than what is actually healthy.  In response to this compulsion, we create a whole host of products and services that are supposed to save us time.  The idea is to then use the time we save to do more of what we love.  But, ask almost anyone with a smartphone how much more time they have and they will look at you like you are crazy.

Technology is awesome.  Don’t get me wrong.  But it isn’t going to save us one second if we don’t do something about the way we think first.  Many of us don’t want to admit it, but somewhere in the back of our minds we suspect that most of the Earth just may be an insane asylum or largely a prison planet.  I won’t get into it too deeply; I just suggest you ponder on how prisons and insane asylums are run.  Here are a few clues: Both institutions consist of managing people who are mostly living in their heads, locked away from others, and are either prescribed or self medicating to cope with life.  Uhhh!  Sound familiar.

“Well, Pedro, that’s easy for you to say, you don’t have blah, blah, blah.”  Excuse the assumption, but I’ve heard that so many times, I figured I’d get it out of the way.  Look, I accept that we just might be living on Planet Insano.  My take on it is, if you’re here, you have issues.  The question is, “what do we do about it?”  And I can tell you right now, the answer will not come in the form of the latest app.

My solution is Spiritual Technology.  I’m trying to shorten my postings so if you want a deeper explanation you’ll just have to hit me up on the phone, email, or the other links up here.  But I will throw out a couple of ideas of what I am talking about.  Basically every Spiritual tradition tries to teach you that the world you see is not what it appears to be.  Some even say it is the complete opposite if you are focusing on the material side.  I tend to agree.  I’ll use the candle picture above as an example.

In our country especially, we are notorious for burning ourselves out by over-committing, trying to take shortcuts that end up being more work in the end, etc.  We’re always causing and putting out fires and have learned to live with it.  In fact, we’re so caught up that most of us see being stressed out as almost a status symbol.  We don’t even realize it.  We run around like Chicken Little saying, “the sky is falling,” like it demonstrates a life of purpose.  We measure our heroes by how big of a burden they can carry and then wonder why most of us are about to snap.

Contrast that with the Spirit world and you realize that our heroes are measure by how easy they take things.  Just check out what my Man Jesus had to say in Matthew 11:29-30, “²⁹ Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰ For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”  And this was from a Man who was about to be crucified!  That’s the gospel of “taking it easy” if I ever heard it.  But to get anything out of those statements, you have to ask yourself what he knew that he could say such a thing with a straight face.

The answer is that He knew that what you see in this world isn’t always what you get.  When you’re rolling with the Spirit, losing your life in this “world” is really gaining it where it actually counts.  It’s the same way with that candle up above.  When your candle is burning for something you love, it actually extends the life of your proverbial candle instead of taking it away. 

Understanding this and incorporating it with the technology and free moments that we have in life can actually help us to achieve balance and extend our lives in every way that matters.  And hopefully if you give enough of yourself away to what you love, you will find that what it gives to you in return is immeasurable.  To see a good example of someone who lives that awareness, check out this blog http://bondy4brains.blogspot.com/.  This is the blog of a guy from New Zealand who ran a Triathlon 9 months after getting a tumor the size of a tennis ball removed from his brain.  Enough said!