Adventure Monkey

I know and am thankful to the point of knowing words cannot do justice to how I feel about all the people I have behind me through all this change I have been going through. I am thankful for the family, friends and Adventure Monkey readers for all your support and thoughts! Thoughts are energy and whatever you put out does have an effect on the world. Remember that as you go through your week.

This quote hit the spot for me today and I wanted to share it and let you know that I can see the new buds and leaves in my life.

“Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.”                                             – Rumi

I hope you enjoyed your ride into work this morning as much as I did.

I know, I know, I’ve used this picture before, but I simply love it. The image shows two of my kids and Suzie the dog running to the mountaintop even though there is an ominous storm in the distance. I love the image. I love what it says even more.

Yeshua (Jesus) and others told us to have faith like children, minds open like children. Children are curious, creative and appreciate the wonders of the world around them. It doesn’t take much for a child to have faith in something. Their imaginations run wild. They are willing to take risks. They are willing to leap into new opportunities. They don’t think in terms of risk. They think in terms of opportunity, adventure and heroism. Fear does not yet control them.

Then we get older. Shit happens to us. We don’t trust as easily and we become cynical about life in general. We begin to trust our fears more than our curiosity, more than the tug of our dreams on our hearts. We begin to believe the lies about life. We no longer believe anything is possible. We become like the poor cynical man that lives in a dungeon. He complains because it’s dark and smelly down there. But he knows it. What I mean is the dungeon is comfortable and safe to him.  There are no surprises. Little does he know that he lives in the dungeon of a beautiful castle. If he would just take that risk and leave his comfortable surroundings he would find out that he lives in a freaking beautiful castle overlooking rolling hills and green pastures. But fear gets the best of him.

I am all about making this real. We can read an analogy and feel good about it, post it on Facebook to show how “enlightened” we are but not take that saying to heart. We read it, we liked it, we agreed with it, we may have even celebrated it and shared it, but we didn’t DO ANYTHING about it. Fear got the best of us.

I will admit. I do like to post things on the ‘ole Facebook myself. I would read something and be like, “Man that is awesome.” I knew somehow the saying was true for me. I posted it on Facebook in the hope that others would be moved by it too. But then maybe a few minutes, hours or days later, I wouldn’t be able to quote that saying that took my breathe away. I certainly wouldn’t put it into practice. Little by little this becomes a terrible thing to do. These sayings get to us because they pull on something inside of us. We know, not in our thinking mind, but in our hearts that the saying, proverb or quote had real meaning. But then we DO NOTHING with it besides read it and post it somewhere. After awhile doing nothing becomes the thing we do. And that is a terrible cycle of nothingness.

It’s time to act. And I finally did.

I have had a tug on my heart to leave my job. But it is an easy job. It pays extremely well and the benefits are out of this world. But I feel like I die a little bit every day there. There is a reason I feel this way. There is a reason you feel this way too. Our heart is more than a muscle that pumps blood. There is power, intuition and feeling in our hearts. There is a reason we feel a tug to do something different. It’s really not much of a mystery. It is simply because we are supposed to be doing something different.

But my mind was not ready to make a move. In fact if I listened to my logical mind I would stay in that job forever until retirement hoping that when I retired, I would then finally be able to stop waking up to that annoying alarm and start doing what I want to do with my life. But the only thing we are guaranteed of is today. The only thing that is absolutely real is this very moment. I have no guarantee that my health, at retirement, will allow me to do what I want to do. I can’t live for a future moment that may or may not ever get here. The future is an extension of this very moment. How I treat this moment in time will have an effect on my future. Future tripping and regretting the past do not allow us to enjoy the moment we have right now and in fact set up a negative environment for the future that will in fact be the now someday. My heart was pulling so hard for me to do something different, something I was called to do and I just couldn’t figure out how to do it. I guess the universe had to step in. Heart surgery, divorce and “losing it all” is what happened to me. I finally decided it was time to start living. I told my boss I was looking for something else. I needed to change my life.

Funny how things happen. Less than two weeks after that (maybe just a week later) I was in an interview for a job that seemed close to perfect for me. It seemed like a perfect next step. Wouldn’t you know, I got that job. Now I would have to decide if I believed all this mumbo-jumbo I have been talking about for so long. I would have to put my money where my mouth was. I believe that when we decide to believe something, whatever that something may be, we will then be tested. It is how the universe works. If we pass the test, that belief will become a conviction. We will truly believe it. I would have to decide if I believed what my heart was telling me. I would have to decide if the loss of those great benefits and a pay cut of $47,000 a year was what I was being called to do. I believed God, the universe would take care of me. That was being tested. The bills and the new salary didn’t match up. But I believed I was being called to leave and so I took that job. And now faith is really what I am leaning on. As the great Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” Well I can’t see the staircase but the next step is right in front of me. I am ready to climb because I know in my heart I am meant for things up there on that staircase. I will get there one step at a time. Maybe one pedal stroke at a time. You will too.

Feed Your Monkey!

Eric

I came to a realization sitting in my dark corporate cube with eight days left of employment. A natural phenomenon revealed it’s truth to me. It beautifully explained where I have been the last eight and a half years.

The Chrysalis

Although I thought I have been, I haven’t been in a dead end job these last eight and a half years. I have been in a chrysalis, a cozy, warm and spiritually safe chrysalis. (For those that didn’t pay attention in biology, a chrysalis is the pupa of a butterfly sometimes referred to as a cocoon) I didn’t know I was in a chrysalis. In other words, I didn’t realize I was supposed to rest from working so hard to figure out what I was supposed to be. For crying out loud, I took a job here for the sole purpose of paying off debt and taking a break from self employment (I had my own photography business). But as usual the voice in my head turned this blessing of a good paying job into hell, plain and simple. And little did I know, because the concept of rest is unacceptable in our “go hard or go home” culture, rest is part of spiritual growth. Rest is important. The voice of the divine can only be heard when we are silent, still. Not that I have regrets for being in a frenzied search for meaning the past eight years, it was part of my process and I have learned a lot.

The Process

We payed off our debt in three years and then the economy tanked and leaving became a crazy idea. I began to believe that this was what life is about – good money and benefits. I mistakenly thought life was a 45 mile commute to a job that sucked a bit of my soul away every day. I believed what the world told me. And that is that life is about money and benefits, responsibility and limitations, growing up and yes – being an adult. That is all bullshit. It doesn’t matter who you are or what your age, anything is possible. Remove the fears that exist in your mind and anything is possible.

I haven’t been happy for some time, but complaining about my circumstances didn’t make sense. Other graphic designers would kill to have this cushy corporate job. There are people that have to walk five miles in one direction to get a bucket of barely drinkable water in this world! What did I have to complain about!? I was comfortable and safe, protected from the financial woes of the world. Was I just being a stupid, spoiled American? Or maybe that feeling, that tug on my soul, that uneasiness, that feeling of discontentedness was there for a reason – to keep me moving into what I was to become if I would only act. And that brings me back to the analogy of the chrysalis.

The Hungry Caterpillar

When I was young, I was a caterpillar. I was hungry for knowledge and new things. I was a darn good caterpillar. I ate from the leaves way up in the tree because somehow I knew I wanted to fly. I was constantly trying to get to the farthest branch, the highest leaf, closest to the sun and I was glad to take others with me.

But lately I have been in a darker place, complaining about the cramped feeling, the lost dreams. I found myself in a place where I no longer knew what I wanted to be. Little did I know that was the perfect place because that is when I gave up and let the universe, God, have it’s way with me. I quit fighting. I became quiet and felt something grow within me. I knew something was up and I moved with the energy of that feeling.

The Lies

It seems that the bright days of sunshine and tasty green leaves touching the sky were behind me. The dreams of flying were dreams of a younger me. Now I had responsibilities, roles, things I needed to do now. I wanted to fly, but I was getting too old, my kids were too young, my mortgage wouldn’t pay itself. This dark place made me turn into myself. But there was something in me that kept whispering, “You are meant for more than this.” That whisper was getting softer and softer. Could I even still hear it? Does the fat, caterpillar resemble anything that could fly? No. But it keeps doing what it must because something inside tells it that it is meant for more.

I was no longer looking for the highest leaf, I just wanted security. Little did I know I needed to be in a “dead end” for a little while. Little did I know I needed to rest for some years in a chrysalis. I had no idea what was happening.  I had no idea about a lot of things. I didn’t realize how much I would transform as my focus changed from getting to the highest leaf, to getting into my heart and seeing what was there. Little did I know that I must be broken down completely in order to become a being that could fly.

The Mush

The caterpillar is broken down into mush by its own enzymes in the chrysalis as it completely loses its identity as a caterpillar and starts to become something else. Does it do this on its own power? No. Something more than the caterpillar is at work here. Once the caterpillar is dissolved by its own enzymes, special cells called imaginal cells that have laid dormant in the caterpillar’s body begin to grow and transform into a new shape with a completely different role to play in the world. The imaginal cells hold the blueprint for a butterfly and can only express themselves when the caterpillar loses itself in the mush of its own tissues. The blueprint for a butterfly was always there, hidden inside the caterpillar.

The Active Stillness

I finally became quiet. I have gone through the hardest time in my life this past year and I am still in it. I feel just like that caterpillar. My identity has been dissolved and something inside me that has always been there is taking over and transforming me into the being my imagination knew was there. I have quit fighting the process. I have began to shed my fears. It has been painful and I have lost much, but like Job I will receive my second chance in life. Of course if you take it, every sunrise is a new chance to start over. Every sunrise is a chance to be the person you know you should be.

Luckily something greater than me has been in charge this whole time. I thought I was wasting away but I was simply taken apart and put back together into something more amazing than that young, adventurous little caterpillar. I wasn’t paying attention and when the changes started happening they hurt. I didn’t know what was going on. It felt like death. And in a way it was. I was torn apart, made to look at what was really there – what I was made of. And once I accepted the greatness of what was in me, the greatness of the divinity, the energy that connects each of us to God and each other, I started to see change happening right in front of me.

Emerge

• to become manifest : become known
• to rise from or as if from an enveloping fluid : come out into view
• to rise from an obscure or inferior position or condition
• to come into being through evolution

The crust of this old chrysalis is weakening. What I thought was my world is falling away are things that I didn’t need. Waste is left on the crust of an old chrysalis as the butterfly emerges, too heavy for a being that flies. This cozy place can no longer contain me as I begin to feel cramped and I need to stretch my… Wait what are these? Could they be? Yes. They are wings and I can fly.

The blueprints for them have been within me, a part of me, forever, but I never saw them and began to doubt they were even there. But they were. They were locked in my imaginal cells, they were locked in my imagination. Don’t overlook your wildest dreams as mere fantasies, they could be a whisper of who you really are.

I thought the point of existence was comfort. I thought that cozy chrysalis I had been in for years was the point we are supposed to reach in life. I was so wrong. I, like you, had the DNA for wings hidden inside me. There was a reason for all this pain. I am breaking free. My wings are drying in the sun and soon I will leave this chrysalis behind forever. I am going to fly. And I am going to help others fly too.

Are you in a chrysalis? Will you spread your wings? It’s time. It is time for us to take flight!

[jwplayer mediaid="13720"]

Feed Your Monkey!
Eric

We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.

-Joseph Campbell

I have used this quote before but it rings loud and true in my life right now. My life is going through a whirlwind of change. I prayed for change, manifested it, begged the universe for it. I knew I needed change. My life was stale. I knew there was more out there somewhere, but I had no idea where. I felt like I was wasting away. I felt emotionally numb. I had no direction. My life had a few highs here and there – races, rides, events, etc, but the in-between, the everyday was dull. It was like being on a raft floating about on a still sea, so still its surface resembled reflective glass. I had no direction. I was just floating. It’s not like I couldn’t make a choice and start paddling somewhere, but I simply did not know which way to go. So I laid down, looked into the beautiful blue sky and asked whoever was out there to do something amazing with my life, not just for me but for the universe itself.

Well now I have left that glassy sea and continuing with the analogy, it’s as if that glassy surface that appeared still was actually roaring underneath me, pulling me in a direction so slowly it felt as if I wasn’t moving at all. I looked to the not so far distance and discovered that I was coming to the end of the world, or so it seemed. But It was not the end of the world it was a severe drop off. Some rivers drop smoothly, into slowly swirling riffles, but this one was nothing like that at all. It was of the magnitude of the Niagara Falls.

I am currently in the rapids of change my friends. Just about everything in my life is changing. A lot of it hurts and I feel deep sadness. A lot of it is exciting as I look to the future. But one thing is for sure. I may be wiping tears from my face but I am no longer numb.

These changes did not take the form I was expecting – not at all. I have to leave all expectations behind and embrace what the universe has in store for me. It’s going to be fantastic. I have short moments of clarity when the universe shows me that everything is not going to be OK, it is going to be amazing.

I haven’t been able to write about everything yet, but I will. It’s what I do. This blog which became as stagnant as the writer’s life will soon be full of adventure, change and inspiration. Things need to happen before it all comes out.

Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging.

-Joseph Campbell

Feed Your Monkey!
Eric

Authenticity and the word authentic has been finding its way into my life quite a bit these days. I have been reading about it, listening to lessons about it and it even came up at lunch without me bringing it up. I almost choked on my quinoa when it came out of my workmate’s mouth. Obviously I am supposed to do something about this word.

What does authentic mean? Looking it up I found authentic means:

• Of undisputed origin; genuine
• not false or copied; genuine; real
• from Greek authentikos ”original, genuine, principal,” from authentes ”one acting on one’s own authority,” from autos ”self”

Authentic has to do with being real and when it comes to a person being authentic it means that you are not false or copied but what you say is of undisputed origin. And what is that origin? It is YOU, before any of the world had influence over your thoughts. So being authentic has everything to do with returning to the person that you really are, the perfect being that needed nothing added to it, as everything needed was in you when you were made.

This has a lot of meaning for me, as being authentic has been fleeting in my life. I have been a people pleaser and would rather avoid most confrontations. But as I continue on this spiritual journey I am finding that it (the journey) is leading me back to who I really am – the original me.

I always thought I was in this life to become something, but I was already something. I didn’t need to believe the hype that we are never enough and we never have enough. I was the genuine article, acting on no one’s authority except my own as given to me by my maker. Trying to become something, I became a copy and the me of undisputed origin got stifled by levels and levels of expectations of who I was supposed to be.

Our egoic mind operates on fear and separation. It does it’s best to keep us away from pain and it needs to have a separate identity from everyone and everything. Both of these things are based on false ideas and lead to pain and loneliness.

When we return to who we are, we realize a number of things but let me point out two big ones here.

• We are not alone in this. We are connected to all other beings here and when we know this in our heart, it brings us peace and confidence that we are not going at this alone.
• We are not our ego (or the voice in our head) that bases its decision on fear and avoiding pain. Realizing that the fearful thoughts of “what if this or that happens?” are always worse than what actually happens REALLY REALIZING this gives us the courage to do something huge.

It gives us the courage to leap. It give us the courage to be authentic – true, genuine, the original article of YOU.

Ever keep something inside and say what you think the other(s) want(s) you to say?
Yes.

Ever not take that step into the unknown because of fear of something that hasn’t and probably won’t happen?
Yes.

But have you ever said what needed to be said or taken that step into the unknown? Have you ever returned to who you really are? Are you the genuine article of YOU?

Then you know how very good it feels to be authentic and real to yourself and those around you. It’s a practice. It’s not easy. It’s scary. But it is necessary if you want joy, peace and true love in your life. Get started now and let your adventure begin!

Be authentic. Be true. Let your yes be a resounding “hell yes!” and your no be a resounding “hell no!” And let your true colors paint this world a little more beautiful. That is true adventure.

Feed Your Monkey!
Eric

p.s. you can purchase the print above for a reminder HERE.

Marcus the Wrestler ©Eric Benjamin

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

– Theodore Roosevelt “Citizenship in a Republic,” Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

I have entered the ring. I didn’t even know it until I heard this quoted by Brené Brown. It resonated within me. A light bulb went on inside and suddenly I realized what it is I am doing on this site as of late. At the same time I saw a bit of the future of this thing that burst forth from my heart during a long ride on the bike almost four years ago – this amazing thing called Adventure Monkey.

I am not a fighter, like in the MMA sort of sense or any other macho sense like that. But the most courageous thing I have done to date is punch these keys looking for words to describe what I am going through and feeling. Having the balls to click the publish button – that took and still takes courage.

Courage

Brené Brown brought the original meaning of courageous to my attention when she wrote:

The root of the word courage is cor—the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage literally had a very different definition than it does today. Courage originally meant “To speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.” Over time, this definition has actually changed, and today, courage is synonymous with being heroic or performing brave deeds.

Is sharing our heart not courageous? In our culture a man doesn’t share what is on his heart because for some asinine reason we label that as weak. Showing or expressing feelings equals weakness it seems, unless the emotion a man shows is anger or agression. But I must disagree. Sharing what I am going through and feeling has been the most courageous thing I have done. It’s scary. I don’t feel that my life or limb is at risk but I am scared as to what you may think of me as I have begun to share my heart on this blog.

We are in a time in history that needs us to change. You either feel that or you don’t. The more I talk with people the more I see that it is not just me that is unhappy, discontented and itching for a change. I am not the only one that feels there is more to life that what we are currently doing. I am not the only one that feels they were meant for something in this world and THIS IS NOT IT.

Wake Up Call

My life, health and family has fallen apart. It is a divine storm. I am in the middle of it. But I know, I realize, that I needed something to wake me up. I needed to be forced out of my shell of fear to step into who and what I really am. It took a knock to the head to begin the journey back. It is a journey back to myself – the self I knew a long time ago before I added the levels and levels of untruths to create an identity of who I am or maybe who I began to think I was supposed to be.

Today I am better than I have been in a long time even though I may lose all I hold dear. It hurts. It hurts bad, but I accept reality and that I am in hands larger than my own. The universe, God, has my back.

Enlarging my Ability to Feel

I know things are changing in my life and I am excited to continue this adventure of my life. I am allowing myself to feel all feelings, the so called good and bad feelings. Why? Because something I have learned to be true is that you can’t numb certain feelings and not others. Numbing feelings makes you numb. Allowing myself to feel the “bad” feelings enables me to enlarge my ability to feel the full spectrum of emotions and develop my natural intuition. I say this because I am a stuffer. I stuff or repress the bad feelings because who wants to feel bad? No one. But the truth is as Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet:

“…there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

In other words feelings are just feelings, we assign good and bad labels to them, but they all need to be felt. For some damn reason we grow much from negative emotions, feelings and circumstances if we allow ourselves to feel them and not stuff or repress them. I am completely convinced my stuffing and the stress of not living my life affected my heart to the point of physically making it fail.

Adventure Monkey’s Future

So Adventure Monkey is about finding the adventure in life. It is about finding the hero inside of you and becoming that hero. It’s about changing the world by changing yourself. It’s about physical adventures on the bike but more than that, the emotional freedom that happens on those adventures.

It’s about me getting in the ring and sharing that with you for one reason. And that is to inspire you to get in the ring. Quit standing by on the sidelines and get into the ring, run onto the field and start playing the game. We have NO choice. We are all in the game of life together. We don’t have a choice not to show up because we decide one day we aren’t into this. Sitting on the sidelines is safe, but no one ever has or ever will experience glory unless they get off the couch and jump into the ring, experience failure, pain, hardship and finally success. The experiences of life can be a bitch, but not truly living, living with regrets is worse. Adventure Monkey is here to help get you in the game and support you while you are there. We will do that with writing, art and things like tours and workshops.

I experienced many emotions and pain during the Land Run 100. But when I crossed the finish line, I had become a better man because I put myself out there even though I was unsure of the outcome. I decided to get in the ring and fight.

“It comes down to a simple choice, get busy living or get busy dying.”
–Andy Dufresne from the Shawshank Redemption

Feed Your Monkey!
Eric