I caught a glimpse of a beautiful butterfly…

Our life is a string of memories, and our goal is to collect as many good ones as we can.

Each stolen moment is a blessing – each day, or minute, or month, all those moments when you are happy or you see the beauty of this world are the most precious things that happen to you.

The pain comes when we try to hold on to these moments but it was not meant to be that way… Sometimes we crave to turn back time and change a word we said or something we did, convinced that we can change things. But what we really need to know is that every single thing happens for a reason, at the exact moment when the Universe meant it to happen.

We desperately cling on past events and emotions and do not want to let go because we pictured it as our future. Every time we riot against the Universe, we face pain, grief and sadness. Some call it emotional immaturity; others sit down and write bestselling positive thinking and self-help books.

The truth is that it hurts, and sometimes it hurts a lot. No matter how smart you are, how emotionally mature, no matter how many books you have read and how positively you regard the world, when that black hurricane strikes and all your days are clad in black, day after day…it just hurts…a lot…

It hurts to lose a person you have loved – a child, a parent, a friend, a loved one. If you are suddenly deprived of them and life shows you how insignificant you are, and how nothing really depends on you, and takes away from you the thing that you loved the most… no religion, no person, no magic can ever help you. You need a miracle for that…and in most cases this miracle is called Time…it is only Time that can heal wounds effectively, but it is a slow process. Yet, once your heart has been ripped apart, nothing can ever close the ugly cut where it was split, and then comes the next gash, and the next, until you get numb.

If life does not break you, it kills you. Not by accident have some of the greatest minds of this world tried to take their own lives…because they realised how illusory everything is. Almost all geniuses lived as recluses and this is not coincidental…it is very difficult for a perfect mind – which by no means is to be understood as super intelligence; it rather is an excellent awareness of one’s position in the Universe – to establish a successful relationship with another earthly being. Among people they felt even less understood and gradually lost their appetite for life and life crushed them down because this is what it is meant to do.

Happiness is inversely proportional to intelligence. The craving to meet a person with whom you can communicate effectively on any level is almost unreal, but being perfectionists by nature, great minds did not allow for compromise. Or when they did make compromises, they felt lifeless…

Death always is a favoured alternative; a much coveted destination in a moment of collapse.

The Phoenix always rises from the ashes, reborn and ready to fly after its death. I really want to accept this as a symbol of change, because it is inevitable.

Whatever happens in our lives, one thing is sure – THAT WE WILL DIE.
WE WILL DIE REGARDLESS OF HOW WE LIVE, SOONER OR LATER WE WILL DIE.
WE WILL DIE NO MATTER WHAT.

We are unable to control most of the things that surround us, but we can choose how to feel about them…in those moments when death appears to be the best option – we have to look for help – any help… and think about the Phoenix – WE HAVE TO DIE FIRST IN ORDER TO BE REBORN.

We have no control; the Universe is a supreme power, which moves us around like pawns.

We do not even have the right to choose what piece we want to be on this chessboard.

The most important rules are:

1. To learn to accept reality for what it really is;

2. To stop worrying about things we cannot change;

3. To love although our heart has been broken;

4. To believe in the Phoenix – after grief and death there is always new life – that is why they call it a circle (the circle of life);

5. To accept ourselves just the way we are;

6. To do what we like – or at least in most cases;

7. To learn to ignore unproductive people, situations, work, energy…change is inevitable;

8. To open our eyes for the different colours of life …black is only one of them;

9. If for weeks on end we haven’t had a reason to smile for, then we need to change something – whatever it may be – from one’s hairstyle to one’s car, or job, or to replace our morning coffee with cappuccino – change is constructive;

10. To believe – in God, in ourselves on in miracles – faith is energy; faith gives power to our senses;

11. To go on…if we are tired of this world, then it is time to turn a new page, and if this is not enough, then a new chapter. If we have no idea how to start the first sentence of this new chapter – let us open the window, breathe in some air and say: I AM ALIVE, I AM STILL HERE…so…“

Most Eastern philosophies teach us to focus our minds on something for a few minutes at least once a day, because our thoughts are always either in the past, or in the future. How it was and how it should be. That is why it is a good idea to just stop for a few minutes and focus on the present moment. To realise that we are here and to enjoy the moment NOW. One of the Japanese teachings advises us to focus for a few minutes on our breathing – to feel the air coming in through our nostrils and the carbon dioxide going out of them. This is not accidental, as breathing is probably the most important things that happens to us every day.

We never think about it, but it is the one thing that keeps us in this world. Breathing is an act of love from the Universe. When you wake up after a disconsolate night, you open your eyes and realise you are still breathing, regardless of the fact that at present your soul and heart are almost dead.  Breathing is a reminder of the Universe that you are given a new day and a new opportunity to change. You are given the gift of another day in this world with this name and hope that the past will be the hard lesson and the bitter pill that the patient has to take.

The Universe has its own strange methods, totally incomprehensible. Religion, politics, which neither the Bible, nor the Qur’an may embody in the slightest.

The religion of your own life is up to you to choose – if you manage to disregard the common dogmas and decide to get outside your understandings, you will realise just how inconsequential everything is and you will stop worrying and start living.

Every day is a gift…The Universe is powerful, all-consuming and hard to conquer.

If you miss someone – they are out there in the Universe, somewhere in the visible or abstract Universe, but out there, lost. If you want to touch them, to speak to them, but you can’t, and you go on re-enacting your last moments together, and every touch, every kind gesture or look, you feel their fragrance, you feel how your skin and your body are still responsive even to the thought of them – it will hurt, it may hurt a lot. But this person is out there, in the grand labyrinth of the Universe. Right now you may be in different dimensions, in different orbits.

The Universe is a complex progression, in which there is neither time, nor space. If to us our earthly understanding of distance is pragmatic, to the Universe it is relative.

And as a small invisible part of it, we have to learn to live according to its physical laws. No matter in what visible or invisible / otherworldly place we are, we have to believe that we are all here and now, and if we miss someone and we want to bathe in the warmth of their eyes again, the Universe will find the necessary progression to bring you together. If this person/soul is outside our laws of sight it may take a bit longer, but to the Universe these earthly perceptions of time are inadequate. The Universe does not know earthly time – out there everything is one moment, one human moment, just as long as our earthly life…”

Excerpt from ”MAN’S ALIBI”

BY NADYA STAMATOVA