life is empty and meaningless

http://www.livejournal.com/users/hardcandyrox/49514.html life is empty and meaningless.

[25 Mar 2004|09:56pm]

[ mood | happy ] [ music | hoobastank-the reason. ] so my room floor cannot be seen due to the GIANT amount of clothes, trash, and plenty of other shit and i couldnt be happier. i now have one of the crappiest low paying job calipat has to offer and i couldnt be happier. nothing can really or has come close to phazing me in the past few days. i have grown more as a person in this last weekend than i have ever in my entire life before. i dont know where to start but it all became clear to me on sunday night in san diego while sitting in that big room in that extremley uncomfortable chair among 120 extrodarinary people...and then it became clear to me... my life is now empty and meaningless. it all started friday morning around 6:00 am. my cousin rosa drove me to foggy san diego and talked about this amazing breakthrough in my life that was, little did i know, about to happen. it all sounded really foriegn to me. she spoke about the course as though it was almost holy and the most important and moving thing that i could do for myself right now. i couldnt have been anymore cynical if i tried. but i was willing because ive seen this amazing change in her that i couldnt deny and i knew she loved me enough to not let me down or lie to me. that morning i met this pair of complelety perfect strangers. angela and jackie. my cousins friends of friends of friends. it was arranged that i stay with their family while i took the course, and i was devasted but excited at the same time. it was 8 am and everyone took their seats. i could feel the anticipation as a tall, skinny, all too boring looking white man took the stage. this was Barry. my landmark fourm speaker. during the first day which soon turned into a long, sleepy, tiring night he set down the rules for us and threw hundreds of new terms, rules, and concepts in our faces. there was something too calm about this guy too assured. "My sole purpose for this weekend is your breakthrough. it will happen. all you have to do is be coachable." i couldnt help but fall asleep. this is why i dont remember too much about the first night, except for being driven to some complete strangers house and feeling more alone and sad than ever before. like a "oh my god im in a place ive never been before with people i just met today and arent all that nice and theres no one coming to save me" type of alone. i made some phone calls home and was so happy to hear michelles voice. the next day, Saturday, started out slow. Barry explained we were going to get the forum in portions. "Yesterday you got five percent of your landmark experience, today youll get about 30 of it, then sunday is 60 percent, and finally tuesday night youll get the last and most critical 5 percent. The day consited mostly of questions. we listened to his stories of past forums and what previous participants shared about their pasts. and he did too. he talked about the first time taking the forum when he live back home in virginia in order to seek a new perspective after his divorce was final. he claimed his experience saved his mariage and moved him so much to leave his real estate job and take on becoming a speaker for landmark. he talked about his kids and fought back tears knowing that if it wasnt for his experience he woud have thrown them all away. i myself didnt really see any life changing moments happening soon. i simply wanted some motivation before i started school again. but i couldnt help but want what he had, "A life open to possibilites and deep, passionate, extrodinary, loving, meaningful relationships with our families and friends." We began with talking about our past and experiences growing up. we paired with the people next to us and talked about a significant experience in our lives that left us deeply impacted growing up. He claimed that everything and that has ever happend to us determined who we are today, not because thats just something that happens, but because we decided it. Barry explained the concept of "Stories", and how everyone had significant moments in their lives growing up that affected the way you thought about things, people, and yourself profoundly. only it wasnt the actual experience that altered your thininking and emotions, but it was they way you interpreted it thereofere creating a story about it. most people didnt buy it until, he started proving everyone wrong. and then i thought about my experience with jossue the previous week and how awful it left me feeling. i remember walking to a party with michelle and witnessing him with another girl being all over each other. i thought about it long and hard and then realized that not only did him being with another girl have nothing to do with me as a person but in reality had no good valid reason to keep me from living a happy life. i could simply know that this occurance was just something that happened. not something that was true to the story that i had wrote about it..."he did this to hurt me because he dosent care about me and wants me sad." then i realized how powerful that was. i now could now live in a world where you have a choice about how thing affect you, because in reality nothing really is its just the way you occurs to you. jossue occured to me as a guy who was out to hurt me, when in reality he wasnt or isnt, thats just the way he occured to me. when this conversation was over we were encouraged to call everyone on our break that we wrote stories about and make it "complete" with them. this was probably the hardest part of the course. but after phoning jossue and explaining how making it complete with him was something that i had to do for myself , and hearing him tell me everything was okay felt like a billion pounds had been lifted off of me. it was powerful to take that control back. now it was starting. sunday seemed to move by really quick for me. it now all seems like a blur to but i remember coming to a lot of conclusions about how id been making my dad, mom and brother "wrong" about a lot of things. i took in consideration that mabye if i made it complete with them i could move on and become somone new. something compleltey new to me. Barry explained that everything started with a conversation and how "enrolling"- (to touch, move and inspire someone) people would become easy. all you had to do was become purily authentic and present with them and in return it was only automatic that they be enrolled in the possibilities you could now create for yourself and your life around you. all it took was being genuine and they would respond. we also talked about intergrity-(saying what you do, and doing what you say) and how our world is slowly falling into a piece of crap because of the complete lack of it. so to put it simply i left the landmark forum complelty free from my past and am left with nothing. nothing is powerful. because once you have nothing you have the power and ability to do anything. and therefore once i thought about it, life is now empty and meaningless. meaningless in a way, that i now see having the power to give everything in my life new meaning instead of the meanings that i thought were just automatic. and once i realized this everything all the sudden became really quiet, because that little voice inside my head that was always influencing me with reasonable and automatic thoughts finally shut up. i could now create any possibilites i wanted for myself, and my life around me. because now i have gained so much. including being so compeltley present in every moment because i learned the past has already happend, and the future has come yet, the only time i have is right now. and with that comes having a really great passionate, exciting, new life. i cannot help but feel like im 3 years old again because i feel as though everythings new to me. my house looks different. driving is really intense. and everyone and everything i encounter i really see and experience now. i cannot wait till michelle does it soon. i cant help but want all of my friends and family to do it now because i love them all and want them to have this experience and get what i got out of it. i want to enroll everyone in my new possiblitiy im inveting for myself of being a loving, healthy, bold, and unreasonable person.