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Codius Maximus

Cody’s Latest Posts

  • Choose our thoughts
    CHOOSE our thoughts. Decide what we think about. Proactively select them, for our experience of life reflects what we think about. Yet, how often do we choose? Or even know that we can? So often we lose ourselves in our thoughts. Immersed so deeply we didn’t even realized that they are thoughts – They’re not us. We’re not even having thoughts at that point; the thoughts are having us. Be aware of our thoughts. Don’t fight them. Don’t fear them. Or judge them. Just see them, watch them, and stay aware of them. Eventually, maybe we can even choose them.Continue reading “Choose our thoughts”
  • “Letting go” … of what? Freeing ourselves from the part of us that can feel hurt
    Emotional triggers can be our friend. They show us where we feel hurt and what we need to work on. What hurts or triggers you?  Answer this question, but don’t stop. Also ask yourself, what is within you that can feel hurt?  Just thinking about this question may start helping you gain more peace, as it has for me. The clinging mind Feeling ignored and, even worse, disrespected, is a trigger for me. Often, the mental chatter makes it worse.  After an unpleasant conversation has long ended, the mind just can’t let it go. “How dared they talk to meContinue reading ““Letting go” … of what? Freeing ourselves from the part of us that can feel hurt”
  • Manifesting…. YOU
    What would you like to manifest? For what reasons would you like to manifest, it? Many of us would manifest money, respect, love, children, and power. “Life would be better if only I had _____,” so our mind says. Sure, I would love them too! Nothing’s wrong with external phenomenon. “Other” people and things. Anything that’s not “me”. They can make us feel good, very good in fact, and sometimes even elated. But will they truly make us happy? For how long can we put off the search, the yearning, for something or someone “better”? How about if we justContinue reading “Manifesting…. YOU”
  • Who are the inner children
    Healer and author Terrence Real wrote about our inner “wounded child”, “adaptive child”, and “natural child”. Who are they? The wounded child and adaptive child for me are repetitive thought patterns and automatic reactions that stem from unreleased energy created by traumatic experiences. Frozen thoughts born from memories that no one asked for or wanted. They repeat because they’re frozen. To free ourselves, they need to be thawed. To heal, one must pay attention to the wounded and adaptive children – these frozen and stuck thought patterns. To see them, and to understand how they think when situations, i.e., “triggers”Continue reading “Who are the inner children”
  • The Most Important Connection
    Connection is the most important and fundamental need. The deepest desire. We want to love and be loved. To hold and be held. We seek connection with family, friends, with romantic partners. Without the right connection, something important seems missing. We feel incomplete. Many of us seek this connection our entire lives. Never satisfied. Never complete. I fear this fate from time to time, if I’m totally honest with you. Some of us may feel this way even if we’re loved and surrounded by love from family and friends. Was Jerry Maguire right? Until we connect with ourselves, can anyoneContinue reading “The Most Important Connection”
  • YOU can time travel and change the past.
    The past lives only in our minds. While we can’t physically move ourselves back in time to redo the past, we experience the past in our minds. But the mental experience, now, after the fact, is as real as we get to relive the past. The past can be a tough place to occupy. Full of regrets, anger, and hurt. That’s not the past I wish to experience in the present. The present is all we have. We don’t want to spend time in the present being upset about the past. We can change the past for the better. WhenContinue reading “YOU can time travel and change the past.”
  • Acceptance
    All my life, I’ve been told to “accept” this or that when I felt unhappy. I never really knew what it meant. I never “felt” what it’s like to accept. If something or someone really upset me, or worse, wronged me, what does acceptance even mean? How do I accept, and why should I? Years ago, I felt miserable at a prior job. The daily routine bored and tired me. I stressed daily, and struggled to sleep. Fridays brought a short reprieve, and Sundays returned the dread of the work week. Dwelling on my misery and being upset with theContinue reading “Acceptance”
  • Direct attention to your higher self.
    We are so much greater than our ego. What hurts our ego can never harm our soul. Our higher self. How my feelings can hurt so easily! All the while my soul remained calm, strong, unshaken. Life would be so much more enjoyable if I lived more from the calmness of myself than the fragility of my ego. So, I’ll focuse my attention more on my true self, the one with kindness, generosity, love, and compassion. More so than the part who’s afraid. Afraid of rejection and abandonment. Hurts others to ask for love, to protect myself. Always seeking loveContinue reading “Direct attention to your higher self.”
  • I feel better now…
    I recently came out of a funk. and this is what I learned… 🧵 First: It’s okay to feel bad from time to time. Of course I feel down now and then. You probably do too. It seems to happen to everyone! Therefore, I don’t need to feel bad for feeling bad. So why feel bad for feeling bad? Why torture ourselves? Just feeling bad without resisting may be enough. Be okay with the fact that I sometimes feel sad. Can you be okay with your sadness too? We’ve all been taught that feeling bad is bad. We are taughtContinue reading “I feel better now…”
  • All is borrowed
    Everything is transitory. Our life, youth, recognition, money & relationships.Nothing is owned by or owed to anyone. Everything & everyone is only loaned to us & need to be returned. Always. All we have, the only thing we ever have, is to do the best with the time we’re given. I treasure all the time I’ve known my loved ones, and I am grateful for them being in my life: past, present, and future. I now see that no time is guaranteed. To all my loved ones:  Just know that you’re very special in my life and I adore youContinue reading “All is borrowed”
  • Transformation
    Have you noticed? We live in the time of transformation. 2022 has been the year of transformation. This year, we witness an unjustifiable invasion abroad that will transform the global security framework for the next hundred years, partisan strife at home that threatens America itself, and a global war on truth and decency that dims the light of humanity. We must decide what world we want to live in, and who we want to be. Then, we can, and we must, create our desired life and world. Will we live in a free, safe, loving, truthful, just, and inclusive world?Continue reading “Transformation”
  • Why music?
    Who loves music? It seems everyone does. I know I do! I just attended a symphony concert. The first piece of music felt like the dreams of a summer afternoon. Fragmented. Ethereal. The second, watching the ocean from above refracting sunlight. And the third a meditation under a moonlit night and crashing waves. * (links below) All my cells still shake from the concert. The concert hall is my temple. Where I commune with the Universe. The sound! The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conjured what felt like a magnetic field with a golden halo. The field synchronized with me, enveloped me.Continue reading “Why music?”
  • We are One
    The invasion of Ukraine shocked me when it started. Surreal. Putin invading Ukraine in 2022 reminds me of Hitler and Stalin invading Poland in 1939. Not in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that nightmares in history books and black-and-white documentaries can haunt us again, and so quickly. And yet, the world may still emerge a better place. The free world has united against a dictator and empire that has invaded and brutalized its neighbors for centuries. The cycle of russia’s invasions and subjugation of other nations must be and will be stopped. Ukrainians have suffered unimaginably under occupationContinue reading “We are One”
  • Mother and Father
    I now think of “mother” as a state of being, not limited by a formal or biological connection. I have a mother. And I also have a Mother, the sum of my mother, aunts, grandmothers, and more. A powerful force in the universe, a loving and nurturing maternal energy. Some of those who grew up not feeling fully accepted and loved might have been surrounded by love, actually. Along with the mother, other loved ones nurtured, protected, accepted, and loved them as a collective maternal presence. More powerful and loving together than any individual mother can be. If we didn’tContinue reading “Mother and Father”
  • Release guilt
    Do you want to feel happier? Are you willing to do what it takes to be happier? If you are, then start releasing guilt. Let it go. Learn to release it. Here, the words guilt and feeling guilty aren’t legal or technical. They simply mean blaming yourself for something that has already happened, regardless of whether you’re actually responsible, or even whether you were there. The human condition We have so many ways of blaming ourselves and feelings badly. We blame ourselves for things we did or didn’t do, and for things we said or didn’t say. Some of usContinue reading “Release guilt”
  • Redirect your thoughts this way to feel better instantly …
    Although external circumstances and people can seem to cause our unhappiness, the truth is that it’s entirely our own thoughts that make us so. As mentioned in an earlier post, Nothing and no one can think the thoughts in our heads. We are the only person in the universe who can think our own thoughts. This is liberating. If our own thoughts create unhappiness, then our own thoughts likewise can create happiness. The thought that something is lacking in our lives makes us unhappy: the lack of money, recognition, status, relationships, and a thousand other things that other people seemContinue reading “Redirect your thoughts this way to feel better instantly …”
  • An antidote for resentment
    Resentment, the bitter feeling of being treated unfairly, of being wronged, can persist and ruin an entire month, year, or even a lifetime – – not of the alleged or actual wrongdoer but of the person resenting. So as the old adage goes: Resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. Even if they did, you’re still poisoned. It casts a dark cloud over how we see the world. Because one can ruminate on resentment incessantly, it can often dominate our inner world, rob us of precious moments, and distort our life experience. We can resentContinue reading “An antidote for resentment”
  • Be the creator of your life (YOU)
    “Identify with the actor, not the character.” – Srikumar Rao If life is a movie, would you rather be a character in it, or the actor? Character A character’s story is written. A character may be acted upon by forces outside his or her control. The character’s story ends when the movie ends, or if the character dies. The character cannot change his or her fate. The character is in a way completely passive, set in stone by how the actor plays it. Many characters in movies, other than the heroines and heroes, are at the mercy of their circumstances.Continue reading “Be the creator of your life (YOU)”
  • Bad news, but also really good news about managing depression…
    “Depression never seems to go away, no matter the life circumstances.” – a dear friend. This struck like a thunderbolt. Profound. If changing life circumstances don’t eliminate depression, could it be because life circumstances, in themselves, also don’t CAUSE depression? Could it be that life circumstances didn’t really make us depressed? (We’ll discuss in another post, the opposite idea, that life circumstances, in themselves, also don’t create happiness. True happiness comes from the inside.) Life circumstances aren’t the real culprit of our depression. The real cause is lodged deeply in our subconscious. It comes from the false ideas, beliefs, orContinue reading “Bad news, but also really good news about managing depression…”
  • We live in The Matrix, Part I
    The Matrix tells the story of humanity tricked into thinking that they live in a vast computer-generated virtual reality that is created by satient machines. The virtual world is set in late 20th century. The main character, a hacker named Neo, took the Red Pill in order to see the world as it truly is. The Matrix is a modern day cave allegory of Plato. We see the world, and ourselves, based on information that comes through our senses, not necessarily reality. The prisoners in Plato’s allegory thought the world contained only the shadows projected onto the wall that facedContinue reading “We live in The Matrix, Part I”
  • The emotional weight of other people’s opinions
    The emotional significance we give to other people’s opinions equals the weight that that we voluntarily put on our souls. We often need to know other people’s opinions. We need to know what our colleagues and bosses think, for example. “I’ll be my own boss!”, you say? Well, you’d still need to care about your customers’ opinions. So, it’d be pretty hard if not nearly impossible to navigate this game of life without knowing what others think. But there’s a difference between knowing, versus tying our emotional wellbeing to, what others think. How would you feel if someone said toContinue reading “The emotional weight of other people’s opinions”
  • Thanksgiving
    “The quality of our thoughts equals the quality of our lives.” – Papa I used to check the news and emails every morning when I open my eyes. Guess what? Stress immediately filled my mind. Cortisol pumped into the bloodstream. And that’s before getting out of bed! What thoughts fill your mind as you wake up each morning? Instead of filling our thoughts with the news, what if we woke up every morning filling our minds and hearts with gratitude? We can use our calendars to remind ourselves every day. At 7 am, get a reminder to thank the Universe.Continue reading “Thanksgiving”
  • The first step
    You decide! First, decide to be happy.  Ready?  And if you decide to be happy, then be willing to do what it takes to be happy, okay?  What’s happiness? Everyone thinks they want to be happy.  But what’s “happiness”? When I was 5, happiness meant holidays with cousins. Later on, happiness came from video games, first dates, passing the CPA exam, getting a new job, finding love, and making partner. None of them provided lasting happiness. Perhaps because they all came from the outside. Someday, happiness may also mean another long term romantic relationship, marriage, and children. Maybe they willContinue reading “The first step”