How to Get Organizized
Taxi Driver and How the Mind Is Relentless
And the Power of Thought for Better or Worse.
Remember Taxi Driver?
Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese,
Which was one of those classic 70’s films
About a man’s descent into madness.
His obsession with the dirt and crime of the city,
And how that obsession drove him into a kind of suicidal vigilante fury.
At one point in the film, we see a poster that says,
“I need to get organizized.”
A popular poster from the 70’s that would hang in offices,
The joke being that the messed-up spelling was proof of the need for organization and the failed attempt to make it happen.
A goofy and dumb bit of irony, really.
But in a film about a man’s descent into madness,
It takes on a nightmarish weight.
The word becomes demonic in the weight of the atmosphere,
“I need to get organizized.”
As someone thinks within himself, so he is.
-Proverbs 23:7
The Bible talks about the power of thought
And the responsibility we have to shape our own lives with it.
“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
-2 Corinthians 10:5
We are instructed to hold every thought captive.
Travis Bickle (the Robert De Niro character in Taxi Driver)
Does the opposite of holding every thought captive
And focuses solely on the dark side of life.
“If you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.” – Nietzsche
This is a great quote and nails it exactly.
What we think about,
Where we put our focus, is what we become.
If we focus on the abyss,
The abyss becomes what we are.
Travis Bickle allowed darkness and crime to be an obsession
And probably even imagined himself to be a hero.
And in the film also was a kind of hero in a way as he did liberate a child lost in prostitution,
Killing her pimp and a John
Before turning the gun on himself and trying to blow his own head off with an empty chamber.
The terrifying scene of a gun clicking empty as he tried to exit into eternity.
The sign,
“I need to get organizized,”
Showing in a way how the devil operates.
Two truths and a lie.
The goofy sign becomes ominous
And symbolic of a fractured mind that allowed dark obsessions to take over.
And then follow the demonic instructions of demons within to yes,
Commit an act of unhinged heroism on one level,
But at the same time turn the gun on himself.
Click, click, click, click.
The abyss now trying to kill the abyss.
And the abyss is all around us.
We would be silly not to notice it,
And even do our part to fight it,
To speak truth to corrupt power,
To be brave and bold and courageous.
But not from a place mired in darkness and fear,
But rather from a place centered and rooted in the power of God and his infinite love.
From the strong foundation of faith,
Rather than the misguided and misspelled foundation of fear.
To be organized,
Rather than organizized (or completely insane).
‘Taxi Driver captured the zeitgeist of the times
Because we can all relate to the consequences of our mind’s obsession.
There was a time in my own life
Completely obsessed by YouTube videos of NPD
And my own battles with codependency,
Which made me vulnerable to the manipulation of others.
Where my own psychological damage or trauma
Turned me into a boundaryless people pleaser
Who finally broke all the way down.
Waking up to the reality of this strange dynamic in humanity filled me with a sense of betrayed rage and obsession.
I fed into the victim narrative that was indicative of YouTube videos on the subject around that time,
Which would largely have a focus of Narcs as all bad
And codependents as all good,
Or not necessarily all good but definitely the victims in the discussed scenarios.
I was staring constantly into the abyss,
And I was allowing anger to play into a kind of victim consciousness.
That led to me lashing out and acting in ways I deeply regret now.
I became a psychological Travis Bickle in a way.
It’s not that those dynamics don’t exist within humanity;
They clearly do.
It’s also not that codependents aren’t victimized in those scenarios and even to the point of being destroyed;
They often are.
It’s also not that when waking up to the reality that your own damaged psychological naivety
And some anger might be healthy to get you on the path of boundary creation and healing,
But all that can quickly turn into obsession,
And you can end up getting organizized rather than just organized.
Focusing on what others have done,
Allowing anger to be unhinged,
And removing the self-accountability and self-responsibility from the equation at all.
It’s a blueprint for total disaster,
Being walked hand in hand with the devil
By what you perceive to be a justifiable rage.
But rage is never justified,
And never righteous.
I forgive myself for that time and have said apologies to others.
And see it as an unfortunate and particularly bumpy road on the pathway to mental health.
Codependents when first waking up from lifetimes of people-pleasing
Are perhaps overwhelmed by a lifetime of repressed anger,
And are at the same time completely maladapted to benchmarks of basic psychology health,
Like boundaries.
Years later, having developed all that stuff
And gaining much strength and autonomy,
It’s easy and tempting to wish I was this strong upon first waking up,
But that was very far from the case.
I was a total mess.
And it took years for me to really have the strength of self-accountability in the scenario.
And now I see no one else at fault whatsoever.
People will treat you how you allow them to treat you,
And they will reflect back what you are internally.
If you are a victim,
You will be victimized.
To frame life any other way is counterproductive.
Even Jesus getting crucified
Never became a victim.
Being a victim is a choice based on perception,
And I say this with all due respect and myself having very nearly lost my life to that perception.
To be clear, I’m not saying that people don’t commit acts of evil upon one another,
And I’m also not saying that every bad thing that happens to people,
That they brought on themselves.
What I’m saying is that your perception of events is entirely your own responsibility,
And that to frame yourself as a victim
Is a dead-end path. That’s all.
Or a path that will lead to further self-victimization.
Or to put it another way,
Where you give your focus is where you give your power.
If you take on the identity of a victim, no matter how justified it may seem to be,
You give your power to another.
And when we take self-responsibility and hold ourselves accountable,
We give our power back to ourselves.
I understand (and think I expressed) that that realization and strength can’t be instant for most,
But it’s a good North Star to set,
And the epitome of health whenever you can arrive there.
2
“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
-2 Corinthians 10:5
How do we demolish arguments and pretensions
That set themselves up against the knowledge of God?
And how do we hold every thought captive?
Arguments, fear, and anger
Both externally and internally
Obliterate the knowledge of God
Or that egoless focus of presence
From which God’s love and vision can align or even become our own.
This is why the devil deals with drama and conflict.
The devil depends on noise
Where God prevails in silence.
Silence is difficult to come by these days,
And that’s all by design.
Egos creating egos,
Creating ego traps for other egos,
To get organizized by ego domination.
Or the devil’s play for the soul of man.
And this is where the rubber meets the road
For the power of total self-accountability and self-responsibility.
Giving others the power to make you angry
Doesn’t make you powerful.
What it makes you is their slave.
Men are tricked into thinking expressions of anger and rage make them a force to be reckoned with,
But nothing could be further from the truth,
And women more readily understand this.
This is why the power of the Ho’oponopono prayer/mantra is like a superpower
And balm for the hornet’s nest our minds become
When enraged regardless of whether that rage seems to be justified or not.
It makes no difference
Because like our reactions,
Our perceptions are totally within our field of influence,
Always and forever.
If we frame reality that whatever happens within our field of consciousness,
We are fully responsible for,
We remain empowered no matter what the external circumstances may be.
Jesus getting crucified was fully empowered.
He laid his life down voluntarily.
You will endlessly be provoked in life,
By life,
By the myriad of insane people within life,
On into eternity.
There’s no way around it.
Your choice is to walk around with a head like a hornet’s nest,
Or a heart, mind, and soul in a state of peace.
Those two realities are completely within your field of control, no matter the external circumstance.
And it can be measured on the scale of self-accountability versus victim consciousness.
If we frame reality in such a way as to see that whatever circumstance is arising in our life,
As something we manifested because in realms our human perception perhaps can’t grasp,
Our soul needs it in its evolution towards home or towards the father,
Then we can help ourselves arrive at a place of self-empowerment, no matter
whatever hornet’s nest gets stirred up in the mind.
We hold every thought captive,
We become present and shift our minds all the way inward into the domain of God’s presence.
And we forgive everything in real time with the power of Ho’oponopono.
We say to that situation,
“I love you,
I’m sorry,
Please forgive me,
Thank you.”
We don’t resist or condemn the so-called “bad things” that happen,
Or the bad things others do or say.
We instead thank them,
And apologize to them.
We love them,
And we ask for them to forgive us.
And by doing this, we are becoming completely self-accountable and self-responsible in every situation.
And as a result,
Completely self-empowered.
3
Psalm 46:10
He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.”
We can’t be still and know God
With a head like a hornet’s nest.
We can’t hold every thought captive,
Or demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God,
With a hornet’s nest for a head either.
We can’t engage in gossip and drama which anger brings life to and at the same time be in silence giving our attention to God
Or presence.
And then employing the power of our own imagination in conjunction with God
To create the life or external circumstances that we really long for.
We are either damned in a tailspin of conflict and drama
Or else empowered by peace and in accordance with God’s will for us to become a beacon of light fully realizing our own potential.
There really is no grey area.
It’s one or the other.
That is why we are told to seek first the Father and all else will be added on.
When we guide our minds through the power of forgiveness,
When we demolish all arguments (within or without) against the knowledge of God,
When we hold every thought captive,
And when we make this our daily focus and primary responsibility,
We build this practice like a muscle until it becomes our natural home.
Until we are born again into Christ consciousness,
Which is all of our birthright.
And to put it in a more pragmatic, less religious sounding way,
We either focus on a bunch of useless nonsense
Or we focus on the eternal, unchanging now.
But to do that, we have to recognize
How the Devil operates
And then establish practical and pragmatic approaches to dealing with his oncoming fragmentations.
We absolutely forgive everyone and everything. And we practice forgiveness all the damn time with Ho’oponopono or whatever prayer gets you there. Whenever the temptation of anger or judgment arises, you instantly know that that is internal poison no matter how much the ego begs you to see that you are “right.” You squash it before the hornets have a chance to get stirred up. This isn’t denial. You perceive exactly what is happening and you have strong boundaries where needed but never ever give your power to the devil no matter how he arrives.
With the peace you’ve established within, you simply be still and know God or presence. You make a practice of this to the point where all other pursuits are in this primary pursuit’s background. You naturally begin to be liberated from fear as faith builds and your external reality begins to transform which empowers this mode of being. It becomes easier and easier. It becomes home to the point where your old ways of thinking and feeling become a distant memory. It’s hard to remember even identifying yourself as your thoughts anymore. Thoughts become things you notice which are all held under a kind of automatic scrutiny that doesn’t resemble mental noise because it’s all happening in the background of presence which is your primary reality. It’s all happening in the backdrop of peace. In this frame, thoughts hold very little power and the thoughts that would in the past act as tormentors become laughable and easy to see through as the devil’s very weak attempt to usurp your soul, which from this practice becomes a gigantic and powerful light resonating on God’s frequency and so therefore impossible for the devil to reach. You literally can’t go back even if you wanted to. Not that you ever would. It would be like going from a warm ocean into a hornet’s nest.
From this place and practice which quickly becomes innate and second nature, so hardly a discipline at all. But rather a place you enjoy waking up to and place you bounce out of bed to get to. The ego and the imagination bend to your will rather than the other way around. This makes them very powerful tools indeed, rather than causes for your destruction and damnation. You discover that you can dream all of your dreams into existence. You can envision your full potential and fulfill the desires of your soul that align with God’s will. Life becomes an absolute celebration of this. This is all of our birthright and from the devil’s justifiable envy, what he endeavors tirelessly to rob from us. And unfortunately, he is usually successful.
To cross the Rubicon from victim consciousness to self-empowerment is only difficult at first.
It is a birthing process.
It is being born again.
Travis Bickle laid on the couch of a bloodbath,
Aiming an empty gun at his own head going click click click,
Imagining himself to be righteous.
That’s the human condition in the devil’s view.
God has other ideas.
Ultimately, He gave us the right to choose.
4
Do not copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.
-Romans 12:2
Whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things.
-Philippians 4:8
We guide our minds to these visions,
“Whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things.”
And,
“Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.”
How we change the way we think, though, is beyond the power of our thought,
But more from the strength of and muscle of awareness.
The way we think will transform itself when we sit in silence and presence which is like a hard-nosed discipline at first,
But which quickly becomes a party we hope never ends.
Through the power of forgiveness
And in the light of awareness,
We are healed from within.
We are indeed born again.’
