The Informality of Dating: Better or Worse?

We are all connected and not only by the source anymore. We live a fast paced lifestyle with our address/phone book always right at our finger tips. Like most people who use smartphones, I find pros and cons to being connected. Personally I love the ability to be able to call my best friends from university and talk to them almost any time of the day via skype or facetime but I do not prefer how much conversation is done through texting.  In regards to the dating scene I find a certain informality to it now. In the past one would have searched out your number or come up with a clever way to ask you for it, called you and talked to you in person. Then they would have set up a time and place for a date. This date involved getting to know one another, seeing if you were compatible. This “get to know you stage” is now almost obsolete due to the wide array of personal information on line. I can meet someone casually, google their name and then I go through that first date process and learn about them via their facebook, twitter or instagram. So is this better or worse?

Times are always changing so it is hard to make a judgement on the new age way of communication but I am the first to admit that I blur the lines between friends and dating prospects. Talking to people via text is safe. It allows me to get to know someone from a far with no commitment needed. But this non-committal conversation seems to be more a way to humour myself when I am bored or alone and does not seem to lead to any romantic endeavors. I believe if there were romantic feelings in the mix then texting conversation is limited and an effort is made for physical dates. To avoid getting hurt, I find a lot of people test the waters but never quite jump in. For example, I received a text one evening and all it said was a name of a pub. There was no phone call there wasn’t even a question mark. If you are interested in a person, call them, set up a date (I say that to myself as well!). If it doesn’t work out then that’s ok it wasn’t meant to be. The morphic energy field of this universe is in your favour if you allow yourself to be in the flow.    

The Recipe to Health and Healing-2 Parts Gratitude 1 Part Love

Currently I am reading “The Hidden Messages in Water” by Masaru Emoto. This is an incredible book that I highly recommend. Using high speed photography Emoto takes pictures of frozen water crystals after they have been exposed to words, pictures and music. Words like gratitude and love form beautiful water crystals and have the power to change the structure of water. Knowing that the human body is made up mostly of water I really start to understand how our words and thoughts influence our health both physically and mentally.

Gratitude and love have a certain vibrational frequency. Hate has the opposite vibrational frequency of gratitude. This means that the pain from the emotion “hate” can be cured through gratitude, as the opposite vibrational frequencies cancel out one another. I find this concept very fascinating and it has finally allowed me to make sense of one of my father’s favourite modalities of healing.

Growing up if I ever felt like I was getting the flu, or I had warts on my feet from the pool deck or I sprained my wrist, my dad would hook me up to the “zapper”. As a young child I found this both hilarious and slightly absurd but I trusted my dad and I went along with him. This “zapper” can be set to a number of different frequencies and can treat a wide variety of ailments.  Over the years he has had a few different machines but they all run under the same concept.

I am grateful to have grown up in a house that accepted “alternative” medicine and healing techniques. It has really allowed me to become the person I am now. Mom would be sitting with me reading the At Home Family Homeopathic Manual trying to figure out which remedy suited my constitution and symptoms while dad would have me hooked up to the “zapper” and wrapped in some sort of heat conducting foil.

During this injury of a trio of back herniations I am honing my power to self heal through positive thought. It is important I clear up any negative emotions and move forward to a path of healing through 2 parts gratitude and 1 part love.

The Enlightenment of Pain

Pain is a natural phenomenon, both predictable and unpredictable. When you put your hand over a flame you know you will feel pain and you also know this pain it will shortly go away. The concept of chronic pain is much more unpredictable. Chronic pain is pain that lasts longer than the expected duration of healing. I believe strongly that our thoughts create physical manifestations. I have learned this concept through Louise Hay. For example if you are not feeling supported in life perhaps you will be experiencing back pain. This is just one example of how influential our thoughts are. Therefore pain can be an avenue to enlightenment.  

I suffer from back pain and have been since I was young. It comes in episodes lasting a few days and the longest lasting 10 months. I have learned that this sort of pain is something I could be dealing with on and off for my whole life. Coming to this conclusion made me choose the following pattern: I feel good therefore I do everything I can, almost to the extreme. I am the first person to jump at the opportunity to go for a hike, a bike, a run, a swim and any other physical endeavor because if I am physically able then why wouldn’t I? I have been involed in all sorts of activities since I can remember but I believe this is a pattern that developed when I was 15. At this age I was unable to run and sometimes walk for a 10 month duration due to pain. As soon as I regained the ability to move pain free I never wanted to stop. Now at 24 years old, I feel like I am a car with a lot of mileage who needs a major tune up.

Looking back, volleyball was probably physically the wrong sport to choose to play with a sketchy back but it’s hard to deny such love for a game. I never regret any time I spent training for both indoor and beach volleyball. Along with having the privilege to play such a beautiful game I have met an amazing community of volleyball friends who I cherish deeply. I haven’t played beach volleyball for 2 seasons now hoping for my back to heal on its own. However, I am currently dealing with the worst back pain in my life.

It is amazing how many times I must be 'smacked' over the head with the same problem to truly learn a lesson. For me I will call this my third big episode and for those who know me if I have heard something three times then I really pay attention to it. I believe that is the universe doing its part to assure me I will make the right decision.

Over the years I have learned to take these 'thought to be negative' experiences and turn them in a positive light. For this I have become a better human being.  I feel that I have become more spiritually aware during these times and it brought on a lot of self development at a young age. Through dealing with pain I have really learned what the important things in life are to me. Perhaps this now gives people a slight insight on to why I am the way I am!

Chronic pain has the ability to take people to dark places. If somebody does not have a support system of trusted, loving people I think it would be hard to get through. During these episodes it has been my family and my mom who have really helped me through to the light. When I am in pain I catch myself being short or rude to this support system of mine when they are the people who deserve all of my love.

I am still figuring out what my take home message from this situation will be as I think it is still to come. Already I have learned that my identity does not depend on my physical capacity. Sports defined me for so many years and now I must redirect my main efforts to other things. I have learned that I need to slow down, breathe and enjoy where I am at the moment. So much of my last 2 years have been spent traveling abroad on my own. That served me at the time but now I must be grounded, enjoy this beautiful city and the amazing people who live here!