The White Paper

*I do not know what I’m about to say here. This is free-writing. No planning. This is what happens when I just “let go.*

There is nothing more powerful in life than a clean sheet of paper. It is one of the most potent embodiments of power and potential there is. If there is anything I learned while on 13, it’s what I’m about to share. You just have to align your mind with the same limitless potential as the paper–place them together on the same wavelength so that they’re able to communicate with one another. Think of 2 becoming 1. Initially, our mind looks “over” the paper when it should be looking “through” it.

The sense of wonder that comes from seeing what most are blind to is at once a pleasure to savor, but also one to hold a great deal of respect for, as you are in possession of true greatness. What other’s see as a blank or meaningless, I see the infinity. I see untapped energy. After all, it is a clean sheet. I don’t think about what is. I think about what can be, not by looking at it, but through it. Go all the way back to the beginning of everything that there is and think on this: For something to be created, it must first be blank.

Everything you have ever seen and ever known and all still that is left to be starts out as blank…

Being that there’s nothing on the paper, it’s waiting on your input. It is waiting on YOU–your instructions. Your direction. Ask yourself: What do you want this to be? What do you want it to represent? What do you want the paper to communicate to yourself and others? The possibilities are endless. Sure, you can ball it up and toss it in the trash like the proverbial game winning 3-pointer at the buzzer from your desk chair. If you make it, the crowd goes wild! But instead of tossing it in file 13, use its power. You can modify it in endless ways. Start by filling it in. Write some words on it.

What you have to realize is this simple idea leads to transformational power. When you write something down, this is how your words become flesh. Your thoughts become things the moment you write them down.

You could spark the latest and greatest revolution in everything from social justice to technology to pop culture. There may be a billion dollar business plan floating in formation just above your eyes that’s just waiting to be put on paper. It is not that you don’t have what it takes. It’s that you fail to even look, particularly, within.

You have to “program” the paper and make it do what you want it to do. Write some instructions. Plan and execute some orders. Brainstorm. Just by doing so you are programming your life–all of this from what was a basic plain sheet of paper moments ago. You are doing more than writing. This is not mere doodling. You were created and therefore you are meant to create. Think on that.

You are not some cog in a machine aimlessly existing for no reason. One of the best ways to see the wonders of your mind in front of you is to write down what you’re seeing. We see thousands of things throughout the course of a day. It is just that our mind does a seamless job of filtering out and separating what’s most important from what is trivial. Our ability to process everything around us is truly startling. What’s even more startling is we don’t even notice how exceptional that truly is.

We really do not believe in our own powers and the scales of leverage we can, and should, be exercising via our ideas. Most of us are not even aware of them. Your highest of highs is still ahead of you. It’s all too easy to give up on the future and be resigned to a fruitless fate. But you deserve better and you know this because you are of too high a mind. This is why you are here and how you found me. I see your importance and your value which is why I’ve written this and every other article on this site. Your development is worth investing in and anything I can write that will enhance you, I will do so. There are more than enough resources available to see that we all can live our idea of what constitutes a best life. The way I arrive at my best life is by helping you arrive at yours–and vice versa.

In a way, we become so self-centered in the certainty of our failures that we impede ourselves from being what we are truly meant to be. We don’t allow ourselves to be what our minds are capable of because we put up walls and ceilings when we should be knocking them down. This is the difference between looking “at” the paper and “through” it. How many times have you written something down that seemed so unreasonable to you that you immediately dismissed it and threw away the entire paper. You thought to yourself, “No Way! I can’t do this.” You know the adage: If you think you can, you can. If you think you can’t, you can’t. That idea you balled up and dismissed–when you threw it away, you shut out all possibility of it becoming flesh. Your thought didn’t die. You killed it when you threw it away.

In my experience, the uprising of hope that ebbs and flows in the ocean of my biorhythms is an asset I developed and rely upon daily. Over the years, it has progressed to the point where it overflows and finds itself running in channels not yet exposed to fear.

Open your taps. Print your paper. You’ll never be free unless you let go. As long as you put up walls and ceilings your power will never be able to flow freely. Partial flow is better than none, but still, it doesn’t come close to full unfettered circulation. You are only bound by the chains you place upon yourself. Glass half empty or half full? Who says it needs to be a single glass? Why not 10 or a 100? Your mind can be whatever you allow it to be so why not the same for your life?

When you look “through” the paper you are free to think positively. For this to commence you must step in and make it happen. It is not enough to say that you’re going to do it. Declare it. Design and start building that seed of the life you want to live and plant it inside of you so deep that nothing nor no one can reach down in side and yank it out of you. It is yours entirely to do what you deem to be done.

There are many times you will contradict yourself. You will waste power and lose focus. This happens to all of us. So, to combat that, I never stop printing out paper. When those contradictions and/or conflicts arise between what you desire and what you perceive to be your permanent reality occur, seize them, ball them up, and toss them in the recycle bin of your mind. Then, print some more paper. How ever many blank pages it takes. Devote all the necessary resources into the fruition of your dreams. Starve your fears. Starve your lack of confidence in yourself. Fear not. Go forward. Be like paper my friend.

The events of my childhood marked me for life. Day in and day out, hour after hour, I feed myself a steady diet of questions I cannot answer. Even if I find an answer, it does nothing to numb the impressions left upon the nerves endings of my thoughts. Remember those conflicts I was just talking about? The vast chasms between what you want and what you have must consistently be overcome. Only the mind can step in and make those changes, but you have to be the one to pull those levers.

Being the son of a preacher, who comes from a long line of preachers, it is natural for me to rely on my faith. But faith alone is not enough to take you from start to finish. My faith in faith has given me the belief in the power that I know I can make it through anything. Sometimes God will wait for you to step in and show your own self what you can do. God already knows what you can do! All too easily, we blame God instead of using and believing in what we’ve been blessed with. When you live your life with the throttle wide open and look back at how far you’ve come, that’s when you know you are giving it your all. For prayers to be answered, give it everything you’ve got. God will handle the details. All you have to do is proceed as if it’s impossible to fail.

Along the way, you have to learn to access to those resources of the mind that allow one to overcome those interminable trials–in particular, those of the mind that are of our own creation. Where many of us go wrong is we try to do it all on our own. In those instances (of which there will be many), you do not have all the tools to create your blueprint, freely seek out the aid of others. Earlier, I said that sheet of blank paper in front of you or inside your mind can be whatever you want it to be. The choice is yours.

If you are sick and tired of being sick and tired, then STOP being sick and tired.

There are many ways to reach out to others. The path that I have found most available to me is through books. If I could, I would read and absorb every single word from every book written because there is no better download for the mind outside of actual tangible living/breathing life experience.

Long after my 13 experience, the depression remained embedded within me. Much of that can be attributed to the fact that I don’t want to let all the pain go. The walking away of my Dad from the household during my pre-teenage years triggered the onset of countless emotional problems. Wanting to end your life is a very deep hole to dig oneself out from. To get myself out of that, I learned that I needed to re-program myself. I had to teach myself that there was something more for important for my life than to live and die in depression. These thoughts I was consumed by were a process that I put into place as a result of the trauma that was inflicted upon me. I created that process. When I came to terms with that, it was then, that I knew if I made it, I could end it. I engaged the “mindware” of my mind in a program of introspection that I have yet to shut down. This is a self-centered realm I’ve surrounded myself in. My condition in the practice has been relentless because that is what was required (at least early on). I’ve yet to shut it off for reasons which I’ve yet to explain but will in subsequent posts to come.

The night that began with a suicide attempt and ended with something truly transformational inspired my pillar of continuous self-improvement. To know more and to do more with the time I was extended is my goal. Guilt also plays a role because for far too long I’ve held myself back. I have not executed what I am fully capable of because I spent more time believing in my failures than my successes. Depression is a hard chain to break from because in some ways it’s comfortable. It’s predictable. What should be your biggest enemy can in some ways become a friend–as unexpected as that sounds. The truth really is stranger than fiction as that is but yet another example of that adage. I imagine myself on bended knee with my hammer and chisel breaking down every single link in that oppressive chain. This work takes place daily. Having been shown what is possible on 13, it is a fight I actually relish. Face your contradictions head on and combat those virulent forces with vigor because you’re worth it.

Coming to the realization that being sad detracted myself from all opportunity for rise, I stopped processing misery and turned to the bosom of possibility that comes with setting myself free. During my darkest of years as a teenager I would continually revisit this program. One backlash I have been forced to deal with is my lack of trust in anyone other than the only person I have direct control over–myself. Trust in others was so paramount to me it was naturally imbued in the fabric of my being. My susceptibility to trust was a natural consequence of the loving caring endearment engendered to me during my upbringing. As my foil to what had been my excessively trusting nature with others, I soon developed a searing skepticism and mistrust of people. I sealed myself up and shut others down. For years, I did not allow myself to become close to anybody. This started in middle school and continues to this day. I am not a damaged good but I am scarred.

As a youth, my internally based lamenting exemplified all the earmarks associated with depression. Uncomfortable truths and fierce contests of judgement with myriad opinions and counterpoints found themselves struggling valiantly in bitter conflict inside the stormy chambers of my thoughts, with all of them vying for validity. I was indifferent to those around me and any positive fortune regarding my prospects.

As a young man, the gloomy turmoil deposited daily inside my mind was spurred by the absence of my blueprint of life–my Dad.

With his departure, I reeled apoplectic with anguish, feeling what I can only describe as a generation of degeneration that had condensed itself from the span of a lifetime into a capsule the size night he walked away. I have never seen the need to get a tattoo. That night, I was branded with something the skin of my soul will never erase.

Being that we are endowed with gifts, our minds will intuitively search for ways to neutralize any form of trauma by seeking out a program to break the chains that bind us. Our minds are so much like computers, sometimes I think we’ve been born chipped. We just don’t realize it. Unlike a machine though, we never have to wait for an upgrade to come. We are never ever obsolete. Technology comes and goes. Our minds ascend taking us with them. A machine can only be updated when the necessary innovations in hardware and software exist. We hold the most powerful computer of them all. Just knowing it is there is the first step. When you combine human reasoning with technology, you end up with the last greatest undiscovered Universe: the human mind. One of the best examples of mindware is White Paper. Our mindware updates and the capacity for them is unlimited. Take that machine-based technology!

This was all meant to be. Over time, I formulated the belief that I am here to serve a purpose that is bigger than my pain. The sense of loss that made itself known to my psyche, that at times, still makes itself known, is just something to remind me that there is more work to be done and more improvements made. Whenever you are languishing, there is always someone else out there rising. If life is a series of good and bad plays, you need something to extend the frequency and duration of the good ones. This is where White Paper comes into play.

Living through and with trauma, I was forced to design a completely new way of governing my mind just as one would a township, state, or a country. I needed order. I needed the stability of laws. I needed to develop new processes. Without these ingredients, only perpetual disorder could result. After my life changed forever, I knew I needed my own governing principles so that I could develop an objective in life that overcame the author of my searing depression. Most of these ideas were thought through the summer before I entered high school. Post 13, I looked for ways to move on and change.

Upon walking the bridge which connects the eighth and ninth grade, I began to change how I represent things to myself. Even when you cannot change things, you can change what they mean. You can change your perception of them, which is just as potent as changing the “thing” itself. I came to see my failures in life as opportunity for motivation. My shortcomings made me take notice of opportunity. I started looking for ways to learn from my experiences. Drawing upon reams of paper, I saw that one of the greatest gifts developed under my hardship was a preternatural coolness under pressure. Win or lose, I needed to stay in control that the next plan of action could be planned and executed properly. Even when flushed with doubt, I began to see that there was no better way of developing the discipline required to succeed than to find oneself on the doorstep of spirit crushing defeat. I have knocked on many a door observant of the harrowing circumstances that have conspired against my rise. Yet, that will not impede me from receiving the answers necessary to develop and cultivate a spirit possessed by a confidence whose veracity is not to be questioned.

As a person you are a temple. Build on yourself. Cultivate your gifts. And spread them throughout the world.

Going back to the ages of, particularly 11-15, that was a wisdom bridge too broad for me to walk across. I would wake up every morning asking myself how I was going to get through my day. My searing depression did not end after being visited by the 13. If anything, it got worse via my now very difficult struggles with my appearance due to undesired weight gain. I could not help but be anything other than socially awkward. While I had acquaintances, I did not let anybody scale the walls I put up. I was a very lonely teen by choice. To exclaim how far gone I was, not once, throughout my entire time in school did I go to any dance, or party, or after school related event, except one: A homecoming football game with my older brother the one year we were in the same exact school. I, being in the 9th grade, and he, being in the 12th. From the sixth grade, to my senior year of high school, this would be one of my fondest memories of being in school. Having my brother in the same school, as I, was awesome. These are the years I remember being the hardest of my life. I was fatigued by the stress of survival. Do I wish I had done many of the things my contemporaries had? I don’t know honestly. I can’t miss what I never had.

In my high school years, I vacillated many times daily. I could go from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows in an instant. I never quite depressed myself back to the nadir of my suicide attempt in the eighth grade, but it was still harrowing. The processes developed and used to keep myself glued together were still being tweaked and practiced. At any given time, I could fall. Thinking about my dad while in a class lecture was never conducive for my development as a diligent student. During every class, tears spilled down my soul. Sometimes I don’t even know how I made it through all those days taking notes while sitting in those uncomfortable chairs, leaving my feet to twitch like a freshly sawed-off limb. (Everything I saw in my mind created an impact. That is why it is so important to constantly monitor your thoughts.)

I could be feeling any number of ways. Those lonely depressing days where all I had access to was sadness were some of the longest days of my life.

These days could draw themselves out like blood from the artery of lightning.

Faced with casket grey prospects, life would be as bleak as a sunless sky during a volcanic eruption. I could feel the plutonium laced rope demonically tightening its’ vice like grip of depression upon me with surgical precision. Every fiber and strand knew where to squeeze and how much force to apply to merit my demise. To cope, I turned my life into a pixelated blur of sorts, driven by and beholden to a tireless pursuit of change. The normal routine of keeping myself glued together long enough to make it to the next day became my focus. The delusive daydreams of my childhood were rudely dissolved by the stern sad realities of reality. And thereafter, banished to exist inside a demented mirage. Even if the pieces could be picked up and put back together, was it even worth doing so?

If there is any greatness to be grasped, it had to be formed here. Having to live with my sanity under siege I grappled with ways to fortify it. Why did my parents divorce? Why did I have to spend endless nights worrying about my mother? Why was my dad living across town with a new family? Why did I have to grow up as a boy without guidance from a man in my life? How can I be what I am supposed to be if I don’t have a male figure around to show me? These inquires and more would plague the highways of my mind throughout my life, making for endless mental congestion throughout all lanes of thinking traffic. The 405 in LA would quiver with astonishment. I literally spent years of my life in turmoil made even more traumatic from the back and forward battles between the good and the bad forces that make me up.

Out in public, White Paper has been my way of protecting my fragile identity. I created a room full of masks that I could put on for any occasion. This room comes with me wherever I go. I never want to think about what mask to put on. I just want them to be at the ready. All the way through school, I put on my mask every morning. Just as I was “visited” on the night of my suicide attempt, and kept that a secret, none of my friends or classmates knew what was truly on my mind, and how broken I was. I earned enough acting chops to garner an Academy Award, if one existed for my circumstances. My only outlet was my mother and brother. While other members of my family knew our plight, they weren’t directly involved in the day-to-day of it. As hurt as they were to see us going through these trying times, they were insulated from the nitty gritty muck and mire. My brother and I never talked openly about all that occurred because it was just too painful. I consider myself the more outwardly emotional brother. I come off tougher in some respects on the outside, but deep down, his armor is colder than mine. Compared to him, I have worn all this emotion on my proverbial sleeves. My brother, the more gregarious one in the presence of the crowd has done a much better job of donning a mask. Looking at this bright, well-spoken, well-mannered gentleman, you’d never suspect he’s been through what I’ve written. As much as I have been able to internalize these events, I believe he has been more successful than I. To this day, he does not know about my suicide attempt. Just as I don’t know if he’s ever contemplated the same scenario. I sure hope he hasn’t. Opening up to him and sharing our story together between the two of us is something that may never happen. If he was going through what I was going through, the last thing I wan to do is burden him by talking about it. We’re just not ready to do so. I wonder if we’ll ever be.

I consistently relied on prayer and meditation to slow me down just enough so that I could regain control. Spinning out is always a possibility. Throughout this dealing, I heard his voice and acknowledged his guidance. To this day, I inquire his will. Despite the emotional ambiguities I exhibit at times, it has always been an earnest desire for me to be enlightened by Providence in what can only be described as an albatross of obstacles. As irreverent as I know it to be, I still depend on God to make his pronouncements regarding my life known to me, realizing full well he’s not beholden to anyone, least of all I.

Everything I was and had always been had to be put away on a shelf to make way for my new plan. This new plan required new orders. New programming. I desired a new way of governing my mind given that I had all these questions and no answers to follow them up with. What I needed at the time was a way to develop a new set of tools that would enable me to program new sets of instructions inside the pathways of my thoughts. In those days, I remember my mind being loud all the time. I was accustomed to having negative visual imagery all around my thoughts. I was wrapped in blankets of negativity. Whether or not I had a great day was rendered irrelevant, because I did not allow myself to “see” the good or even the great. I was immersed in the negative, and if that’s all you see in your life, that’s how you will always feel. Anything going right in my life was minimized and nullified. It was all but snuffed out. Anything negative took on a rebirth of its own. The negativity made for countless offspring to take hold until I was powerless in my life. Whether I was in a noisy classroom, or comfortably ensconced in my bedroom, my mind was just as noisy. There was no peace. For a long time, I did not think I would ever experience that again. But I knew I couldn’t continue down this path. I had already attempted suicide, and even though I never intended to go through that again, still, everyone has their breaking point. I made a choice. I made a decision, I asked myself, “Why am I not in peace? What will it take for me to feel good again?” My brain was already formulating the answer, and it was relayed to me through plain white sheets of paper.

I thought, “Why not treat my mind like a clean sheet of paper?” What if that were possible. How would I feel if I could treat portions of my brain in this way? Just like the reset button on my video game systems. A way, where everything could be at the beginning again. A path, where I could give myself countless chances to do right and make right. I imagined an endless printing press inside my head, where no matter how many times I messed up, I could just print my way out of it. I began to think of all the things in this world that were born from a clean sheet of paper, from airplanes to house plans to countless other dreams. Why not do the same thing with my own head? I consistently kept drilling down, asking my mind more and more questions, believing that the answers would come. I was in class staring at notebook paper in my binder when these new ideas came about. I do not know it had been a few months since my “meeting” on the night of my attempted suicide. Treating my mind like a blank sheet of paper is ultimately how I made it through.

There was something else I relied on–something that gave me instant results. If you’ve walked this far, please walk a little bit further. If you are struggling with what I’m about to describe, by the conclusion of what I’ve said, you will be more than capable of believing you can overcome it. Permanently. This personal struggle is something that affects millions of people of all ages and backgrounds in our country alone. I did not have to wait, or think, or work to feel better. If was completely effortless, and the bliss always came when I wanted it to. I could find comfort in all conditions in fact. In turn, my object of relief led into a whole series of additional problems that would not be solved until I had enough.

To be continued…

–Daniel Cousin

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