The Global Conversation

Tag: College

  • There and Back Again

    Hello Global Conversation Community. It is wonderful to be back into writing. Through all the chaos of the transition into college, my body, mind, and spirit certainly have not been in all the same state of Oneness. But now, there is more harmony in my life. There is more peace, there is more wellness, and there is more wholeness. And I am grateful for every moment I have of it.

    But my story is not unique. It may be personal, but it’s incredibly far from original. Every second of every minute of every hour, people around the world are forgetting the path and finding it back again. In retrospect, it is impossible to lose the path, because every step of your journey is a part of it. But yet somehow we seem to lose our consciousness of that journey, and awareness of why we are on the journey at all. So, for me in the past month and for the rest of the world, I only ask, “Why do we lose the path?”

    In the past, I would have said that the reason why is because society has told us to run away from the truth, to hide under the covers, to bury our heads in the sand. Yet now, being on my own, I’ve realized there’s far more to it than that.

    It’s been easy to ‘pull the blame card on society’ all these years. We’ve been in a state where we have seemingly very little control over our lives. So when things are wrong, and we don’t like them, we point to our family, our friends, our state, country and government as the source of our problem. They said it wasn’t allowed, they said it was the wrong thing to do, they said that it would be a disappointment. With an accumulation of these thoughts, it has become a stigma of control loss.  And yet, once we finally do get into that state of freedom, we realize that the choice is completely ours. Society may tell attempt to tell us what to do, but at the end of the day, we know that are the ones making the final decision. On love, on life, on everything. It’s our internal choice.

    Whatever we have decided has manifested our reality. IF we have decided fear, then we have CREATED fear. If we have decided guilt, then we have CREATED guilt. This is nothing new, nothing that is groundbreaking. However, it’s about being aware of those decisions. For the majority of the planet, the answer to the “why” question above is the external societal distractions. But now, look for that answer to the “why” internally.

    At the very least, ask yourself daily:

    Why did I choose to manifest this in my life?

    IF you do this, you WILL learn A LOT about yourself. You will find things you don’t like. You will find things that you have attempted to hide or dissociate from. But being aware of these mental blocks, being conscious of these ego pitfalls, is what makes the difference. It’s what makes us remember the path that we are on. And knowing why, we can choose to bring back love, peace, and joy into those spots of chaos, confusion, and turmoil. And who doesn’t want that?

    So, in retrospect, always understand your reason, and always understand your choice. When we stop asking, we lose ourselves, and we stumble in the dark. To walk so blindly is to live the ‘society’ way, and what has that led to but more loss of self? But to ask why is to always look at our purpose, at our meaning, at our very reason for life itself. And that is what I’ve discovered, and that is why I’m back for good.

    (Lauren Rourk is a Feature Editor at The Global Conversation and attends Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN. She can be contacted at Lauren@TheGlobalConversation.com)

  • College: Within, Without, and Everywhere In between

    (Note: The message here does not only pertain to just the college atmosphere. It also can be applied to living in the city, or any other seemingly massive community. With such a universal message, knowing how to live within and without in any environment will just keep you even more leveled.)

    Campus life for a majority of college students is just about to get started. In this incredibly thrilling time of our lives, we are exposed to massive changes that occur straight before our eyes, some consciously and other quite subconsciously. However, it seems that one change that we fear the most is the adjustment to the rollercoaster that is campus life.

    Whether we are hitting the campus of 50,000 or the campus of 500, it becomes very easy to be only a single body in the mass. This often can lead to extreme isolation and social deprivation, despite the overwhelming system of support of others.  We may feel as though we are immersed into our resources, but sometimes we feel just as like we still haven’t found our niche or best placement.

    This can especially be seen in the works of Scott F. Fitzgerald in his illustrious novel, The Great Gatsby:

    “I wanted to get out and walk eastward toward the park through the soft twilight, but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild, strident argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair. Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets… I saw him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without.”

    Quite often, college will feel like the experience that Nick Carraway, the narrator of The Great Gatsby, in his wild and fascinating variations on life. BUT, F Scott Fitzgerald notes that despite Nick own personal story taking place in the middle of Manhattan, he was still “within and without” in his own story.

    So do we do about this ‘within and without’ business and make sure we have a real connection to whatever student body we wish to be a part of? Simply…

    Be involved.

    When most of us hear this phase, we are transported to a time when involvement simply meant signing up for a new club or trying out a new activity. If someone attempts to join a new organization without having any physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual connection, then they will continue to feel as though they are a part of the shell of the group, and always wonder if they should be somewhere else on campus.  

    However….

    The state of being, which in our case is involvement, is all truly about creating meaningful connections AND profound associations. When this is done, every interaction is appreciated and every gesture is a sign of gratitude. Instead of creating artificial bonds that seem to all but dissolve by the light, strive to make a few deeper ties into your own reality. By removing this synthetic zone of fixation on what we could be doing, we allow ourselves to become fully engrossed in what we are doing. Without worrying about trying to have ‘the best story on campus’ or the ‘most notorious reputation’ we allow ourselves to be involved in much other rewarding activities that don’t question our social status, but rather our spiritual elevation. With such rooting in the self and the soul into everything that is joined or experienced, life itself becomes an even more enjoyable process.

    And THAT is when college becomes the wonderful experience it is cut out to be. It is your choice, to be within and without, or to be completely involved with every part of your being in this fascinating new experience. Your call, your choice, your college dreams are ALWAYS your choice.

    (Lauren is a Feature Editor of The Global Conversation. She lives in Wood Dale, IL, and can be reached at Lauren@TheGlobalConversation.com)