Freedom to Express Your True Self is not Necessary, it’s a MUST

For as long as I can remember, I think that I have isolated myself from society in one way or another. Back in my early school years — middle school — when I a little menace involved with the groups of “cool” kids that made fun of “fat kids” and picking on “nerds” and intentionally flunking classes and simply acting like someone who I wasn’t in order to fit a certain image. I remember going home as asking myself “wow, why am I acting like this just to be ‘cool’ and just to ‘fit in’ — I don’t believe in any of this, so why do I do it?”

I got caught up in living a double life of maintaining my popularity with the “cool kids” and “macho people” and all the while living a secret life of thinking about and doing things that were of real interest to me, such things like: science, nature, learning about ancient civilizations, learning about programming languages, physics, etc… things that I liked a lot, but was always scared to speak about them with my current “friends” at the time because I was scared of being labeled a nerd or kicked out of the cool gang. I didn’t want to lose the good grace of the society that I worked so hard to be ingratiated in. I didn’t want my polished position to be compromised in any way.

I fooled myself into believing that this was the right course to go down. That I would be okay and that what I was doing, holding back my true nature, was right. Society lead me to believe that this was right. I lead myself into that belief. But the reality of the matter was that I was, in fact, isolated. Because no matter how demonstratively popular and “cool” that I was when leading that life, I was nothing short of a genuine phony by not living the way that I wanted to live; sweeping my passions under the rug while people ventriloquize my every action and behavior — telling me how I should act, perform, and be like. Suppressing what I was really all about.

It wasn’t until, say, mid-college when I began to figure it all out. When I pulled down the curtain behind the almighty image of what I was supposed to be, where I was supposed to go, and how I was supposed to live my life. The greatest, most brilliant, trick that I’ve ever fallen victim to. Now, all of a sudden, I began chipping away at the illusion and started living a life the way that I want to live — not by the standards of others.

I bring all this up because I feel that many people, right now, are caught in situations of suppressing who they really are, in an attempt to perfectly fit a certain mold that society pressed. They don’t feel that they have an outlet and/or a community of people whom they can really relate to and speak to about what’s really going on inside. Maybe you’re thinking about things like spirituality, sex, quantum physics, religions, theories, philosophies, etc… but are simply too scared to discuss them with your so-called friends (trust me, they aren’t your friends if you are scared that they’ll reject you) because you feel that they are “too weird” or eccentric.

Well, I was fortunate enough to wake-up and say FUCK THAT! And come to the realization that I am free to be who I am — no matter what. And so are you. One of the reasons for starting the Mind Petals Organization, which grew out of mindpetals.com, was because I figured that there are people out there who intentionally become isolates — isolating themselves from the greater society because what they have to say, in their mind, is just too “out there” or radical, and have opted to either remain silent or only hold these sort of discussions with a select group of individuals (what I call TRUE friends) who are open-minded and accepting of novel ideas, no matter how “weird” they may appear to be.

I created Mind Petals Organization to bring together these small, yet immensely powerful, islands of people who speak about certain things amongst themselves and now bring them together into a community where there is freedom of thought. Freedom of expression. Freedom in art no matter what the medium may be. A place to throw your ideas into a pool of loving, open-minded, caring, and enlightening people who strive for positivity, never negativity. This is what utopia is. This is the paradise that I am growing.

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