With Love and Face Wash (A Blog About Maintaining Happiness)

Once you learn a lesson, your work is not over. I have found this pattern in my life: I will take the advice of a previous blog of mine: I’ll understand and enact a belief in my life, and thus, cure the problem, so that’s good..but then after that transaction takes place, a whole new issue seems to occur: after the problem ceases to exist, I’ll go back to the way I was living before as if my work was done. The problem here is that in doing so, I totally neglect to continue to enact the positive changes I’d made to make the problem go away.

Here’s a practical application: I have found in my life that if I lay down to sleep before I wash my face, with the intention of just resting and eventually getting up, that 9/10 times I do not, in fact, get up, but rather, sleep like a small babe through the night. Whenever this happens, I wake up from this grody occasion and vow to myself to never lie down before my face washing duties are completed. This usually lasts about a week or two until I get home late at night, decide I just need a small rest to complete the arduous duty of personal hygiene, and, again, fall asleep and make the same vow the next day. 

Now the sad part about this is that it’s not as if it’s a hard vow to keep. I learned my lesson from it, so what is so difficult about retaining that knowledge and using it to make a better life? Yes, a clean face makes a better life, it’s true. Of course, this goes beyond skincare--although, that is one of the more important places where this pattern rears its ugly head.

Shockingly, this negligence in regard to completely ignoring pertinent knowledge can wreak havoc in much more detrimental ways than a lack of exfoliation. The more serious example lies in the case of choosing to ignore spiritual knowledge one has gained. When this happens, the situation can get a little bit more disastrous.

For example: In my life, I can always tell when I am falling out of touch with my spirituality. I start to wonder why I am feeling directionless, detached, unhappy and unfulfilled, when I have the realization that I am feeling disconnected from others and my source (GOD-The Universe-Whatever you want to call it, it’s the same thing).

These moments of disconnect are the moments when I am least myself-when I am in no way the positive person I came to this earth to be.  When I find myself in these times I know exactly what I need to do to get reconnected- Meditate, pray, write, play music, spend time in nature, send others positive energy and love, go to church, watch How I Met Your Mother(JK sort of), etc. When I do these things, I almost instantly feel better.

When I start to engage in the aforementioned activities, I reach the high level of energy that I thrive on and start to feel awesome. In these moments I feel indescribably positive: I feel an extreme level of optimism, so much so that it almost feels like no negativity can touch me. This is where the clever ego gets involved—she storms in and rips away my sensibility.

On some subconscious level I start to really believe that nothing can touch me. I let my ego take over and believe that I, as a body, am invincible, when in actuality what was bringing forth this feeling of bliss was a conscious effort to increase my awareness and energy level. Yet, it every time I fall into one of these low energy valleys and climb the spiritual mountain, it’s like it’s a new discovery.* And somehow I always allow myself to slip back out of that wonderful place of enlightenment because I am naïve enough to think that happiness doesn’t take work. And so I let these great life-boosting patterns that I integrated into my daily routine slowly slip away. As I let them slip away, feeling like I don’t need them anymore, I slowly loose all of the amazing energy that I had produced in maintaining a spiritual regimen.

Just the same as when I added the spirituality into my life, it made me feel better, when I took it away, it made me feel worse. Rendering this cycle ridiculous and for lack of a better word, plain stupid.

Your spiritual self is NEVER done growing. To think that you learned your lesson just because you know the information is foolish. You must continue to engage in patterns that yield positive results. You must hold yourself to this standard. You must constantly be employing your knowledge and learning more deeply in order to increase your consciousness and happiness.

Now that doesn’t mean this knowledge is the same for everyone. I define spirituality as whatever way we human beings make sense of the world and become our best self.  I mean, how do we expect to maintain any semblance of happiness when we let the parts of our lives that make us happy fall away because we are too busy, too bored, or too egotistical to realize that maintaining bliss takes work?

I for one, am vowing here and now to put in the effort to remember what it is that makes me happy and take time each day to perform the actions and engage in the processes that bring forth my best self. Also, I promise to exfoliate more often and stop lying in bed before I wash my face. It’s truly unacceptable.

With love and face wash,

Lauren Lo


*I apologize for the hippie speak there, but I couldn’t resist! 

Loud Words Still Don't Compare to Quiet, Yet Meaningful, Actions.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words.

You may have noticed that I seem to enjoy uncovering where cliches fit into my life, and if you've noticed this, it's because it's true.

How long do we have to have someone say something to us and never truly mean it before we finally start to listen to that little voice in our head? You know, the one that has been telling that the promises they’ve been making all these years aren't true and that you should stop this endless cycle? Apparently for certain people, it takes many times.

A problem I’ve encountered in learning my lesson here has come in the form of forgiveness. I think I was forgiving in the wrong way. At a certain point if you continually stick your finger in a light bulb socket, forgive it, and stick it in again, it's not the socket's fault that it's shocking you, it's your own for never learning your lesson. The electrical socket is just doing what it knows how to do. Your show of mercy toward it doesn’t suddenly make its function different. If you are forgiving a person who has been a trap in your life for trapping you over and over again and try to befriend them once more, expecting them to be different, that’s your problem, not theirs. They, like the socket, are just doing what they know how to do.

To forgive and love someone in spite of how they may have treated you in the past is a beautiful thing. To forgive someone, love someone, and get involved with them again when they have not had a similar level of spiritual growth as you is a foolish move to make. Why are some people in our lives so hard to let go of? Sometimes I wonder if it’s really even them, or if it’s who we made them out to be. Either way, after you’ve found a certain pattern with a person to be true, to expect them to be a different person, just because you’re different is never their fault, but yours. Unless someone has shown you with their actions, repeatedly, that they are changed, their words aren’t worthy currency.

I think it also has something to do with security. It is nice to know exactly how something is going to work out. But this goes back to my blog about clutching your fate: attempting to control your own life might be safer, but it almost always inhibits growth and prevents you from the endless opportunities waiting for you if only you open up. This seems to come up quite a bit. Shockingly (sarcasm) it appears almost every negative habit we veer into as human beings inhibits us from being our best selves.

If there is someone in our lives constantly stealing our energy and inhibiting us from being our best selves because we’re constantly trying to figure them out...well, this, again, hurts us and constricts love. Real love isn’t based upon fear or mind games, it’s about trust, actions, and helping you find your way to truth. If anyone out there is in a situation or even half or a quarter of a situation with a  friend, significant other or family member who continually promises to change, does for a while, and then goes back to the way they always were, do me a favor, and learn your lesson the first time.

If that person is truly changed, they won’t have to tell you they’re changed. You’ll know and you’ll feel it in your heart. If you’re meant to be in each other’s lives it will reveal itself in time--it won’t feel forced, it will feel just right.

If you still want that person to be in your life, knowing that what drove you apart before is still a part of her/him, that’s fine--but don’t be angry or resentful toward that person when they’re acting exactly the way you expect them to. At that point, it’s on you. It’s up to you to either set them free and send them peace or be with them and learn how to not be angry when they act in a fashion similar to how they always have.

Through this process, remember not to blame the other person. They are on their own path too, and for whatever reason being this way is part of it. Don’t feel the need to try to change them--if they want to change, they will do so themselves only when they’re ready and willing. Do not judge them, it’s not your job. The only person you should worry about is yourself and how to love more purely with every breath you take. This person will learn in time if they want to. In the meantime love and support them and their growth from a far, but do not compromise your position of love by trying to maintain contact if contact makes you angry, jealous or frustrated.

If you’re afraid to make new tracks, that’s good-it means there’s something at stake. But be conscious that fear isn’t real. Fear is merely something we’ve made up to help us to hold ourselves back, and thus, protect ourselves from feeling hurt. In reality, fear is what wounds our soul more deeply than any leap of faith ever could. Deep down we all know that every time we trust that voice down inside our gut that tells us where and when to move, we are rewarded--even if it is far down the road. We may not understand the struggles that have been put in our lives at each specific moment, but when we can work to rethink them, not as struggles, but rather, as opportunities to expand our consciousness and travel into the realm of the infinite, then we are blessed.

Notice the pattern of a negative relationship, refrain from engaging in it repeatedly and send them on their way with love. Pray that someday they can find their peace and do the same for you. Refrain from anything that takes you away from this. From love. It’s the only thing that’s real.

<3

Lolo