Light the Fear

Love Touch Heal

We are a body made up of mind, matter and energy.

When receiving bodywork, the attitude of the client can greatly impact the efficacy of the treatment both in terms of changes in the tissue, as well as treating the whole client to a greater sense of happiness and purpose.

Love-touch-heal is a model for bodywork where the client focuses on the things about their own body that they appreciate, admire or have affection for.  

Even as we work together to treat and heal the areas of their body that are bearing the brunt of their muscoskeletal existence, they engage their mind in deliberate positive, affirming thoughts.

Every person uses their body differently, so every client is unique, but what is not unique is the ability for every client to re-connect with their body through "loving" thoughts as we together heal the chronically overused or emotionally impacted muscles and joints in their bodies, 

Intentional body work is an opportunity to take a session of touch and connect it with each client's personal goals in their relationship with themselves.  Often unspoken, and yet very real, this "first" relationship with our own body is an important component in effective bodywork.

Beyond sore backs, locked shoulders and bent hips, love-touch-heal seaks to bring a positive, fun intention  between client and their body to every bodywork session. Whether discussed or internal, the process is effective to get the most out of one or more bodywork sessions.

Building off wherever each client is to wherever they want to go, when the mind equals "love," the matter can be touched, to heal the energy of anything that has happened to anyone.

Holding space with clients, is having a loving, non-sexual intention for the greatest good in their bodies as we help them relax, recover and return to a better feeling experience in their body.

By encouraging clients to focus on being "loving" to themselves, they supply the love, we supply the touch, and the healing happens naturally from that combination.

Happy Body + Buoyant Mind = Healthy Energy

Protect Your Well

You are a collection of systems and functions, varied and powerful human body, and yet beyond your anatomy you are also an energy system of motivation and emotion, a passenger and the pilot.

Being a bodyworker, a massage therapist, a physical therapist, an assistant for the eldery or special needs. A parent, a sibling, a friend or a lover, we're all fueled from a well of energy available for those relationships and needs in our life. 

Everyone draws from their well to face their day, to navigate their life. And each of us does it in dialogue with the "other" of your anatomy: your mind.

A mind is a powerful thing. The shaper and filter of reality, your mind is the manager of your well. Don't poison your well. Don't take more than you need.  Don't sell it or give it to another, for any reason. Don't give up on your well.

Share willingly and understand that, like groundwater in an ecostystem must be shared by many wells, your consciousness is shared by the world you encouter daily among the people you live with and think about. It's a fact of physics that we are energy beings emitting and processing the signals around us.

As such, the health and well being of each "well" is a vital collective interest we all share.

In fact, it is the strongest, and most common interest we share because it is, by definition, the one thing no one else can do for you, or for the world.  The MOST important contribution you can make to your life, and to the lives of those you touch and care for, is to take care of that think you call "me." 

Give to yourself daily.  Have a program of self-care. Be proactive and protect your wellspring, your root to our society, your contribution to our future, and it will nourish you all your days.

If  you touch or physically care for others, whether in your family, community and/or job, a program of Self Care will bring a depth and an enjoyment to your life that is nearly necessary to fuel the energetic demsands of doing that work.

Spend time with your well, so you can be proud of your well.  Seek it out, and develop it as you like. But do develop it.  Use a program of Self Care program to make it happen.  It doesn't matter what you do, only that you do something.

The care of something so precious is best not left to chance.

Protect your well. Grow your mind.  Find your ???

The Ministry of Touch

    Humans are social creatures.  We are born helpless, dependent on those that made us to care for us, to teach us, and to hopefully snuggle and love us.  We are taught a lot about touch by the people who made us and helped raise us.

    Yet for many of us, an early life of difficulty did not provide enough loving touch, and that lack of positive, safe, encouraging contact in a human's early life, can drastically shape both their experience of touch, but far more importantly, their belief system around the appropriateness and frequency of touch.

    So many of us have been touched so little, or perhaps so much in non-safe or violent ways that in reaction we have this impression that touch is not important, or that touch triggers uncomfortable issues in us, so we'd rather not.  We don't often touch others, and we seldom let them touch us.

    We feel that to touch is too personal, and we limit our honest loving affection for only one or a very few people directly related to us.  Otherwise, we feel that we invade someone's "personal space" when we touch them in any sustained way, and/or they invade ours, cross a boundary that makes us feel uncomfortable, anxious or worse.

    Yet touch is a basic need of every human.  It is a vital ingredient of who we are.  It unlocks us.  It makes us real.  It fosters our greater social and spiritual communities as well as our core families.

    And most importantly (and affirming), touch feels good.  It lifts you up, nearly no matter what. When we are open to touch, we can not help but receive good things, even if they are only feelings.  Feelings are actually quite important too.

    To touch is a ministry.  A wish of goodwill, as if seeing the other person from God's eyes, compassionate and accepting.  Sharing the here and now, and giving of your time and attention for another's well being by rubbing them someway that feels good to them.

    To touch is to a share energy. In the acceptance of what we feel under our hands, and with the intention to recognize and empower the human before us, we give their body our nurturing and therapeutic "blessing" in whatever way that feels right for each of us.

    To touch is to respect boundaries. As trust is shared and good communication expresses honest needs, our touch with others can take on an empowering, life-transforming quality whether that is for a loved one in your life, a friend/relative or a client/co-creator.

    To touch is to speak truth. In the space we make together, there is more power than the sum of the parts. Touch is a language for creation of health, of well-being and of goal facilitation.  In touch together we discover more about ourselves and the possibilities inherent when we share our positive intentions and reflections together.

    To touch is to dream.   We feel ever-watched and analyzed constantly by a "mind," and yet we live in our bodies, which usually represent well the values and habits of our mind.  For every mind dreams of its spirit, and every body-spirit-mind being expresses those dreams in a dynamic series of life choices and experiences. 

    To touch is to choose to be of love.  To be touched through the unfolding of this in another, is to reach for the best in your own experience and to give of your touch right now in this moment, is to unconditionally facilitate the greatest good in the person you are touching.

    Touch is important. It enriches both people's lives, and it costs nothing.  It's revolutionary for healthcare and conflict resolution, and sadly not as robust or prevalent in most busy people's lives as it could be.

    Recognizing your own social web, your most prevalent relationships in your family, tribe and community, ask yourself, who can I touch?  Who do I want to touch me?  Can we make a trade?

    Touch is NOT a currency.  Yet it can be used that way, so the Ministry of Touch is a simple way to express that we do not own, nor claim to own the touch we share.  We share it, so it's never just ours and is always someone else's too.  It never acts like a currency, which one person can own over the other person, and when the respect of its shared nature is kept, it's power to create solutions is unmatched.

    Touch is always shared.  For we are social creatures, and our tradition of ministry is long and proud. It has raised us from the caves, to the farms, to the cities and now to our post-modern urban global culture thing we all are creating.  Ministry is the social calling to help aid the betterment of your fellow man, and I can think of no other facet in our lives that could help us more than touch.

    For to touch is to love. To stand up and say, we each are beautiful,  we all belong and you are needed here, today.  Wherever we are, we're still growing social creatures.  Bringing touch more often and more meaningfully back into your life, it has the promise of making you at least feel good in the present, but also offers the possibility of transformative healing and change.

    

    Humans are social creatures, but we do not remain helpless.  And reaching out with good intentions, we build what we believe.  Believing in more touch in your life, what will you share?

Does Your Tribe Keep Fire?

We each live in a Tribe of One that feels like at least two.  We are one person, with one head,  one mouth and one torso. But we have two eyes, two ears, two arms and two legs.

And on the inside, don't you have the feeling of being in relationship with something we call "The Self?" Thus, isn't your experience of you Self feel like at least two distinct entities? or maybe more?

To me, the Self is a Tribe of personalities and memories, intentions and grudges alike, conscious resonations and the unconscioius vibrations as well, mixing as they beam away from us with each conscious moment, radiating in dimensions both limited by distance and not so much.  

The tribe gets us through our life. The tribe cradles and codles us, indulges us, both good and bad. It is our closest confident, and our harshest critic, as well as every perspective we take in between.

So how do you govern this tribe?

I don't think there is a "wrong" answer to this question, and in some ways, the mystery of your Self Model and how, how often and in what ways you engage with your Self dictate and influence all the rest of your life.  All of your relationships, even the short ones, but especially the long-term ones.

When you fall in love with someone and create a home with them, you merge your tribes in some ways.  Of course you are both still only one person feeling like at least two, but if we put this relationship above the one we have with our Self, we endanger them both. 

You are the only one who can govern your tribe.

No one, not even the most loving spouse, can do it. They can help you explore and improve your understanding of the memories and personalities in control of your daily life, but you, and you alone are the only one who can help you engage your Self in more positve and nurturing ways.

So do you?

For many of us, we find it hard to establish a nurturing relationship with our Self because we are beset by the emotional experiences of our past.  Only by spotting and removing negatively-reinforced patterns of emotional managment we were trained in by our family of origin, can we "break with the past" to fully establish our own future.

This nurturing of the innate Self is a natural characteristic of babies and young childern, but for nearly all of us, the world rapidly changes that by training us in the example of the adults around us. Over time, this is where our Tribe comes from as we react, process and interpret the world around us.

Yet before man knew how to create fire from scratch, a tribe had to keep a flame constantly alive, even if just a few embers. Fire kept them safer and warmer, better fed and supported for whatever each day would throw at them. Fire was power.

Likewise, the Tribe of at One that feels like two needs fire.  To tend it is to empower a place of acceptance, of hope, of confidence and dreams untold. A place of giving yourself the benefit of the doubt, a place where your Self can stay warm, even when you feel down or depressed.

Fire warms you. Fire feeds you, and fire burns through the dark nights to light our way to a new day. Even and especially when you we don't know where we are going or how you'll get there. With fire, you know you'll make it.

So keep your embers glowing, at least a few, and your relationship with your Self can grow more postive and more nurturning each day. The longer you can keep the fire alive, the prouder you will feel and surprisingly the more powerful the fire actually becomes.

Tend it without criticism, and laugh and love around it.  Have fun and share it with others, but keep it safe from winds of doubt and rains of hate or fear.

Keep your fire alive, and it will do the same for you.

You Think, You Know

You think you know your shizz, but wait until you meet Alan and Nancy. 

Having been a teacher, a coach, an attorney and in general a big fan of introspection and self actualization, I was sure I was gonna ace my Ethics and Communications class. I had plenty of direct experience with the gains available both personally and professionally from knowing thyself and knowing how to communicate effectively with others.

And yet, this class kicked my ass. Not because there were too many hard or difficult concepts, nor were the tests outrageous or containing unexpected challenges. Likewise, the class exercises, while pushing us to test and understand our own boundaries, didn’t over push.

No, the real reason this course taught me, and my classmates, so much was because both professors paid personal attention to the individual cognitive and developmental needs of their diverse students. Then skillfully wove the separate threads bringing us all to massage school into one very real, very meaningful fabric of class.

Every time a strength would let me sidestep or easily handle the lesson’s exercise, my teacher customized it to put me square back squirming with my own communication challenges. Every time a blind spot would leave one of us exposed, our mentor took care to give hints or help so that our investment in learning stayed constant.

And thus, we constantly learned.

Don’t get me wrong, I had no idea this was going on at the time, but as my preconceived notions fell one by one over the ten weeks, I realized something special was happening.

Not only was I learning how to manifest my own personal code of ethics, goals and focused intentions, but I also learned how to own, lovingly discuss and defend those when necessary.

I’ve been trained by a lot of talented folks for a lot of things, but I must say, I’ve never had such a personal revolution instigated by just one course.

Alan and Nancy riding like Paul Revere through their student’s colonies, dreams of being bodywork professionals resolving into a revolutionary reality, expertly facilitated, yet fully self-designed.

You think, you know. It sounds simple.

But therein lies the rub.

Right Where I Belong

Three months have passed, and my first quarter of massage school is in the history books. Good intentions to blog often about my adventure quickly gave way to the reality of an intense and challenging curriculum.

With only three classes (Anatomy & Physiology, Massage Fundamentals and Ethics & Communications), I thought I’d breeze through with plenty of other time, but instead, I was challenged and engaged in ways I haven’t been for years.

From a trip through human anatomy, learning every bone and it’s landmarks for hooking muscles, to every muscle and where it is, what it’s called and how it feels on different people, different bodies, I was engaged in complex and varied subject matter coupled with interpersonal interactions that would push the boundaries of even the most friendly and outgoing of personalities.

And pushed my boundaries were. Sometimes uncomfortably, sometimes with more ease, but always resulting in a greater experience of my hidden whole. Thank you OSM.

In that intense fire, kind of like high school and law school, I found some amazing friendships forged with stellar classmates who inspire me when I’m down and encourage me to fight for this world by their very presence.  Coupled with the staff and teachers I’ve met already proficient in this love-based industry, I feel blessed and grateful to be here, now, with them.

I enter my second quarter with more seasoned expectations, a renewed admiration for the power of studying early and often, and a passion back in my daily life that is as rewarding as it is scary. Hold on world, I’m studying, integrating and redesigning my BioSense Suit for upgraded love-touch functions. I’ll be with you (in full) shortly.

I still don’t know where this course change is going to take me, a process truly difficult for an ex-control freak to take, and I do worry about starting out in a new and often misunderstood industry.

But my heart glows when I do this, and as a good friend reminded me today, I’m actually right where I belong.

Perhaps I can get my hands to glow next! :-)

 

 

 

The Power of Touch

As independent sentient beings, we like to think we are all that and a bag of chips.  One human is the basic unit of intelligent life, and most of our mental and physical health systems are based on this assumption.

But what if that's not true?  What if between humans, communicated through touch and other forms of human communication, their is a higher unit of life?

Aren't we denying the power of touch? Aren't we isolating ourselves, and creating a culture of fear around touch with the next generation?

What if we need touch?  What if the power of touch is much like the spark of life? Igniting and combining us into something more than the sum of our observable parts?

We recognize marriages, hopefully of any stripe or gender combination, as unions between two people who sometimes also create or adopt children to create a family, the next level of social organism we often see empowered and supported.

Yet beyond "the family," what kind of social organism's are left in modern America?  The church or community may exist, but not in the same contexts or number of lives as before.

By letting the word "family" also come to mean one person, alone and isolated, untouched and untouching, haven't we denied something very basic in our nature?

We need to touch, to know our power. We need to be touched, to know the power of other.

And in between, I think we are lurching towards something spectacularly more.

The Power of Words

The power of words is profound. They can lift people up, a kind word, a rousing sermon, an admonishment to the better part that resides piecemeal within each of us.

But they can also knock people down, a harsh word, a label or stereotype, a personal attack exposing the lesser parts that also constitute each of our basic propensities.

We live amongst word's energy, empowered to make the choice of which we use, and yet we often fail to see that choice in real-time, or to take responsibility for that choice.  

And yet, you own your words. Or they own you.

As a writer I love words, and I honor their power as much as I can.  As a survivor, I know their power to hurt on both sides.

For whether we like it or not, the emotional trail of our words is beyond us once they are created.  The context of one expression, still plays upon an unforseen reader within their own personal context of consumption.

If we disrespect the power of words, or become lost in the moment, their power can overtake us. Grudges or discrimination, and games about who is right. Speaking in code, and riling our masses.

If we respect the power, however, the result can be quite different. For words allegedly denote a specific, limited meaning, and yet the reality is far different isn't it?

Don't words also connote intent? Isn't the true power of words, the energy their creator puts behind them, whether consciously or unconsciously?

We argue over specific words, and yet within each breast their is the reality of our intentions, pouring out of us, motivating the words, and giving them both their real context of creation and their resonant power.  

That power we can't avoid.

So the next time you're in a rush to say or write something, consider whether those words truly represent the intentions of your heart, which is ultimately your true source of power.

Use your conscious heart to respect others, and the words will power themselves.

My Hands And Me

A new adventure begins for me today, and I’m really excited. It was hard to get here, but I already know on Day One that it is going to be worth it.

For a long time I’ve known that my heart’s true desire lay in helping people and animals feel more comfort, more compassion and more ability to engage their natural healing abilities.

And yet I was never brave enough to make it my central focus, to find like-minded people and to learn from the elders, masters and other seekers on similar paths.

All that changed at my first day of massage school.

A few years ago, I had a high-paying, successful professional career in another field, and for years I muddled through my life, unhappy and angry at myself for not allowing myself to be happy. I had it all, after all. Everyone told me so.

Yet the heart wants what the heart knows, and my heart had always known something more than that world of corporations, capitalism and cronyism.

My heart knew this model was unsustainable for the length of my projected lifetime, and yet all around me, tons of smart people ignored or denied this fact, engaged the beast, played the game and tried to maximize their slice of the pie…..I can’t deny, it was warm within that herd, the promise of excessive compensation around the bend, fattening most of us into willing sheep.

But my heart wanted pie for everyone, and anyone who’s known me for even an evening can tell you, I’m not a good sheep. So I gave up that career, and began seeking another.

I can make no promises of where I will end up, but the journey is well joined. A young man who never would have considered body work as his life’s calling has matured into a man open to following where this power will take me.

Thanks to all my friends and family for their support……and who needs a good rub?

8-)

The Beginning of the End?

Ecosystems are fragile things, and collectively we can be callous and irresponsible, mutually reinforcing each other to sustain our collective denial. Denial of our role in exacerbating ecosystem collapse, and denial of our real power to intervene and prevent it.

Yet there is no denying it. All we need do is look around at the struggling systems of our planet to understand that the ticking time bomb is growing closer.  Or has it already exploded, and we will only notice if personally hit by some shrapnel?

What will be the popular wake-up call? What will be the experience that sways popular opinion to abandon this false equality between knowing the Earth cannot sustain our actions  and wanting desperately to deny (or profit from that denial) that we are not the cause, nor the only solution?

Could it be millions of fish and thousands of birds dying at once all over the globe? Or are they regularly occurring events only now associated by the growth of a global media?

Does it really matter?

What does your heart say?

You Don't Give Birth Because the Baby is Beautiful

You give birth because you are pregnant.

One of my best friends said that to me today, and it made us both laugh. But it's true.

Whether you are bearing a child, an idea or a piece of art, it gestates within you. Yet for those offspring that are not visceral, the uncertain gestation period troubles their mothers, who are often pregnant with many such spawn.

For example, I've been pregnant with this damn novel for over a decade now, and sadly, I don't get to give birth all at once like with a human baby.  No, this baby trickles out over days, weeks, months and even years.  

This is no way to bring life into being, and I know it.  

But I realize now, I've only been wanting my cute and adorable kids.  I've only wanted my smart and sexy children.  But my first novel? Well, she's still only half borne out, and who knows if others will love her as much as I do?

In the meantime, I keep helping others deliver their babies, or I conceive and birth other children of my own, somehow around her remains.  Either way, I leave this baby unattended for large swaths of time, only to come back and get the rest of her out of me.  

"She could be beautiful," I remind myself.

"Or ugly," my devil's advocate opines.

I run, and I scream.  I gnash my teeth, and I blame others, or the failing world.

"I'm done! Who cares?"

"It doesn't matter anyway...."

In fact, it doesn't matter, but what doesn't matter is it doesn't matter if the baby isn't beautiful.  It doesn't matter if no one likes her, and she lives a short life.  I cannot leave her half-birth undone lest I drag the miscarriage of her dream forward to darken every other conception I'm blessed with.  

Besides, if I don't give her the life she so deserves, what kind of parent am I? For clearly now, I am full-term with this novel. 

You don't give birth because the baby is beautiful, you give birth because you are pregnant.

What's My Identity?

Is it true that "you are what you do?" And if so, who am I?

I write, therefore I am a writer. I dream big dreams, so I am a dreamer. But no one is paying me for either, so I can't stop there (yet).

I think a lot these days, so am I a thought? a thinking machine?  

Yes. Clearly one of my outputs is thought, but it's not the thoughts alone that matter.  They can, even deeply, create impact within one life, but they must be organized and expressed to be shared. To become fungible and multiply their impact.

Or do they?

What about the energy I emit simply by being? by thinking?  What if I consciously focus it?

Like a sun, we each beam a personal solar wind into our immediate environment and into the energy networks interconnected with us.  It is both real and recordable, e.g. aura photography or electro-magnetic sensing, as well as consciously and unconsciously emitted whether we are awake or asleep. 

But what happens to the energy you emit if you harness the knowledge of these facts about your own being and its relation to the universe around you to strengthen your beliefs and activate focused visualizations of free will for specific purposes?

We're only now beginning to understand the mechanism of deliberate creation, and yet anyone lucky or disciplined enough to launch and sustain such a causal loop will tell you the most important things are showing up and not bad mouthing your own dreams. 

You must spend your time in meditation, or otherwise focusing your resonance towards a specific purpose, and you must let your vision live so strongly that your intention and your expectation merge.  

We all use these laws of nature every day to accomplish our personal lives. It's how the universe works. Yet how often do we spend time focused on our collective well-being? 

What if your identity was the value of your intentions to the ecosystem?  What if that's part of the next natural evolution of those laws of nature?

Humans are over three-quarters made up of water, and water is one of the unique elements on our planet, storing and transmitting not only physical information about where it has been, but also responding to, and perhaps storing the memory of its energetic history too.  Water is the medium for expression, retention and application of both personal and ecosystem memory,  as well as the means for all life to exist.  

Wouldn't it make elegant design sense then, that water will play a pivotal role in our ecosystem's next big evolution?

Maybe I'm a water baby.  

A believer in believing.

For belief's sake.

The Matter & Energy of Thought

As a Blended Being of energy and matter, our thoughts manifest in both biological and electrical representations, coursing through our beings and saturating us in their soup.  

The soup may change, day to day, depending on our health and circumstances, and yet it is always the most influential factor in our daily experience of love or fear.

But which has more power?  the biology of thought, i.e. the chemical and electrical recordation of it in our brain bodies? or the energy of thought, i.e. the signatures and fields helping to focus and maintain our current emotional attitude and temperament?

If thoughts are responsible for our daily experience, moment by moment, then as such, they are the most powerful thing in the entire universe.  Thoughts dictate our lives. Perhaps literally.

So if the mind operates as the glue layer between the physical self (our body) and the energy self (our sense of self), then it holds the power to self-correct both the physical self (chemical or electrical problems with the brain body) and the energy self (attitude or temperament problems with the *model* of self).

The chemical emotions and body conditions we experience are a result of our growth up to this point in our life, while the energy, attitude and vibrational conditions we experience are based on our flow up to this point in our journey.

So a chemical or electrical treatment can definitely change your growth and flow, and yet after the circuits or molecular processing are passed by the body, it is the changes in thought patterns, beliefs and values that have the most lasting impact on actual behavior. 

The energy of thought is therefore the most influential. Intention rules.

Anyone, anywhere, under any condition can access this power, and with one thought, be changed forever. Both in body (matter), and in mind (energy).

Me, My Model and I**

I perused Stephen Hawking's recent book and first publication in a decade on the origins of the universe and the likelihood of a coherent theory of everything emerging from modern physics.  

It's a fascinating read for anyone interested in quantum physics and the relationship of mind to matter.

Yes, Dr. Hawking thinks there is an appropriate theory of everything, and he throws his weight behind M-Theory. But he also notes that our own mind's provide a limited mechanism for testing and understanding these theories because, by definition, we must always test the universe using our brains which operate, by definition, by making a model of the stimulus we perceive. 

He says, "there is no model-independent test of reality," and this model-dependent realism has some startling conclusions, including that the laws of nature by which local space is made stable may also be the cause of global instability at the universal level.

"Bodies such as stars or black wholes cannot just appear out of nothing. But a whole universe can." (p. 180)

Hawking is saying that universe creation is an energy neutral function, i.e. the negative energy of gravity balances the energy needed to create a big bang and the resulting matter and motion of the space-time universe contains once created.

To me, and to Hawking I think, this means that universes are common and somehow co-exist, overlap or more importantly, somehow fuse to create the reality that we experience.  

But how?

What about thought?  In my own theories here, I posit structures such as morphic fields and personal and collective thought "atmospheres," but in M-theory terms, I guess my "thought atmosphere" is actually an information-storage and retrieval "pocket" within the membrane.

The Egg Model of the Universe conforms to M-theory's basic principle that everything can be described as a two dimensional "membrane" vibrating in eleven dimensional space.

The two dimensions of the membrane are Energy and Matter, while the eleven dimensions of experiential space are relatable to Flow, Grow and the intersection points between each dimension of the Membrane (each plane in the Egg model) and it's collective counterpart on each side of the vibration.

Thus, an integrated model of the mentally-created universe begins to emerge, and it's an exciting time to be studying and writing about it.  

What do you think?

**"I" may actually be a focused resonance hologram created from the bounded set of infinitely varied universes co-existing in overlapping frequencies, and whose intersection friction (and reflection) is the source of super-gravity (and everything else) in our observable universe.

 

 

Daylight Rising

By the end of 1999, I knew I was a great attorney, but I also knew I hated it. So I quit.

I had lost a good friend to the excesses of that lifestyle and seen myself safely through it all, but only barely.  Working with lawyers was shitty, and they were shitty and the economics of the world were shitty and the game is rigged. 

And I don’t mean slightly rigged, or inadvertently unfair, but I mean totally and completely willfully rigged by the monied class to benefit them at everyone else's expense.  I guess that’s now truly obvious after Wall Street’s blatant raping of the Fed in the last few years, but in the late 90’s a lot of people were chasing greed, especially in Seattle, home to Microsoft, Amazon and a gazillion other start-ups. 

Being a poor kid, an idealistic kid, a part of me thought it would be different when I got there, but it wasn't.  You either joined, and were thereby corrupted by your own greedy compromises, or you didn't join and were kicked out.  

It made me disillusioned with the world and with God.  I railed at the universe, and I demanded answers or I was going to kill myself. Literally.

Sitting in the sun one afternoon, broke and abandoned by my first boyfriend, I picked up the guitar he had bought me, the one I couldn’t touch since he had left for fear of bludgeoning it into a thousand pieces, and I began to play. Not "chords" or "notes," but sounds and beats, like a caveman finding an odd-shaped piece of wood strung with odd strings that resonated various frequencies of emotion. 

I played and I sang in a made up language as tears streamed down my face. 

Answers came.  Answers to everything.  Answers to any questions I wanted, and even to many I had not known I had.  It was as if the universe peeled back it's curtain to casually show me its inner workings.

"It's not so complicated," the sun told me, and I realized I only ever wanted to put an end to my self because of what other's said or did to me.  I was shocked and overwhelmed, unable to doubt it because it was so clearly exactly what I had demanded, and so clearly changed everything.  

I opened myself then, and I let the universe in. And in accordance with our deal, I took suicide off the table. Forever. 

For it had always been there before, and you have no idea how hard it is to enjoy even a simple meal at that table, when the self-esteem centerpiece includes a self-destruct button.  It sounds obvious now, but it was one of those “you don’t know what you don’t know” moments that changed me forever.  

Deciding to stay here, to stick it out, and most of all, to settle that long-raging debate in my own favor helped me relax into my life more than I thought possible, more than I thought I needed.  It was the first time I truly took responsibility for who I was and who I wanted to be, instead of letting the outside world and other people box me into their corner, their vision.

I saw into the universe in a way that I am so grateful for each and every day.  It transformed me in an instant, and every time I go back to the memory, whether to share it or simply when I think of that day and that sun beam, it helps me again.

Prove It

Have you ever backed yourself into a corner, made promises you didn't keep and generally put things off until the last moment when you see your dreams dying on the vine before you?

I have, and I am.

This whole year has been a tortuous and expensive lesson in circular reasoning, and yet in the end, none of that matters.  The world moves on, with or without you.

Crunch time is here, and only these written words will tell if I respond or I fold.

Yet I write today with the intention of proving to myself that I can keep my word, proving that I can finish what I start and that I can believe in my own art (and my own Self) to see it through to completion.  

Good or bad, it is time to be done, and I commit today to write every day until it IS done.

The world is full of average artists, and in this unfair and unjust world, it may seem like there is no reason to add myself to their ranks. But then there is the most important reason of all: YOU.

I don't know who you are, and I've been struggling with knowing who I am in your eyes. But none of it really matters; so much noise signifying nothing.  Grief, like ambition or faith is relatively fleeting in the broadest of contexts, and reach as I might, I will never prove you exist more than I believe it today.

In the end, there is only the blinking cursor, the moving hands of the clock, the yellowing leaves falling from the trees and the shortening light of each day.  Yet my heartbeat's silent companionship is hopeful.

For I must prove to myself now that I am who I have always felt that I could be, and I must do it, not for myself as I've been struggling to find the confidence to do, nor for my family and friends, nor for any abstract lost souls out there who might find comfort in my story. 

I must do this for you.  For you, and for me.

Game on.

Fear of Success

I have held myself back for too long because I have not been able to see my own success.

It is still hard for me to see, but I feel it.  And I'm not letting go.  Not this time.

Sometimes trusting in that feeling you have inside is the hardest thing the universe can ask of you, and yet when the call comes, it comes.

All that matters now is what I produce.  My thoughts, my insights, my understanding are but water running away out of empty hands if I do not use them to fashion something else.

I am here to write, and to make you think with what I write.

And so I shall.

The Failure of Fear

The Right Wing of America is experiencing its own "call to arms" these days, driven exclusively by fear. They fear diversity.  They fear free expression.  They fear due process and equality under law.

So they rouse each other to increasingly disgraceful, violent and open resistance to our shared country. They call themselves patriots, but they are only loyal to their vision of America.

To the real America, they increasingly look like traitors.  They advocate violent opposition of our lawfully elected government, and they spit on and hurl insults at members of Congress.  Classy.

Boo-hoo, the country has people of colors, religions, orientations or choices you do not like.  Believe me, most of us wish you weren't in our America either.  Waa-waa, the government does things you don't agree with.  Believe me, Bush and Reagan did plenty of things we didn't agree with.

Like it or not, the Right Wing lives in this country with the rest of us, and for how long we, the not-so-silent majority allow this fringe minority to swelter in their own self-induced delusional frenzy is actually a very salient and important question.  

We have far more to fear from domestic, Right Wing terrorists than we do from jihadists.  Watch any tea party gathering, and that is abundantly and vividly clear with undeniable audio and video.

From the birth of Obama, to strident denial of the true causes of our economic meltdown (tax cuts for rich, lack of investment in middle class and American infrastructure) to the recent healthcare debate, the Right Wing wants to hurt us.  They want fear to rule.

But we can stop them.  We did it with healthcare, and we can continue to do it on every other important challenge facing this country from energy to education to infrastructure reinvestment.  

The Republicans are killing their own party, gripped by fear, dominated by fear and offering nothing more than fear and more of the same economic warfare they've sanctioned and waged on America for the past twenty-five years.  

They will die off eventually, and good riddance.  That kind of hate eats its own, and karma is a bitch.

For the failure of fear requires only the perseverance of good persons.  

In the face of admonitions to hate, to judge your fellow human, to sever the sacred bond that binds us together as citizens of the Earth, say NO, and stand up with light and hope.

When fear-mongering politicians or pundits encourage you to believe, when all other rational facts tell you otherwise, that you can somehow separate yourself from the rest of us, that you can protect what is yours, while diminishing and disrespecting what is mine, understand that this is a lie.

If we are to survive, fear must fail.  

We are in this together, for good or ill, stuck together on this crowded planet, like we are stuck together in this troubled, compromised country, and only by resisting fear and planning for the sustainable success of all will we find a way to right our wrongs and live together again in peace.  

One Step Forward, Squat and Hold

In my youth, I did a very complicated, yet ultimately predictable, "one step forward, two steps back" model of personal progression.  I identified issues and negative patterns in my life (plus one), but then usually blew them up in the process (minus one) and succumbed to their inevitable consequences (minus at least another one).

Then for the past nearly ten years, I've been congratulating myself on making slow and steady progress on my personal development, and yet I really wasn't.  The sad truth is that my improved model was still only "one step forward, one step back."  

Still better than my past and the old cliche, but not all that I can do.  Not really any forward progress of my own accord, more like going with the flow. The world's developing.  I'm aging, and the illusion of getting better was created by this motion.

Yet too often I still demolish my own progress.  We are nearly always the one wearing the boot we find standing on our neck.  Such a pain in the ass of being self-aware, but an intrinsic part of caring, trying and setting some kind of expectation for growth for your self, isn't it?

"Ah shit, is that *really* me? Again?"  Yes, it is.

So I realized something on my recent sojourn to Mother Nature: I can do better.  

I want to do better, and it's time I took my own advice I've been dolling out for years: "When you can't invest in the positive aspects of your life, at least don't invest in negative.  When you can't build, at least do not destroy."  

Shut worry down ASAP, protect your dreams above all else. One step forward, and refuse to give it back no matter what, squat and hold.

It is doubt, after all, that always leads me to destroy. Doubt in the wisdom of that step.  Doubt in my self (both higher and lower), doubt in the world, and doubt in the system (God).  To have a higher nature is perhaps to always question it in some fashion....But I will my self to do it less.

I want to be more about practice, and less about theory.  More about production, less about planning.

I get it.  I honestly feel like I do, and yet, it hasn't translated into living my life much differently yet. I'm aware of the programming running on me more now, more annoyed by that fact than ever before, but still a bundle of negative worry over a thin veneer of carefully applied positive dreaming.

Time to accept the doubts.  Time to hug them out.  Time to be the dream.

I see you future, up there, shining on that hill, closer than ever before.  <step>

<squat>

What Bothers Me?

My mind bothers me, and the World bothers me, the fucked up economic and social systems we have that make a mockery of equality and justice bother me.  I feel jaded and hypocritical all the time now: We deserve to die, and nobody said life was fair, but it’s always been good to me.   Does that make me part of the problem?

I hate being a baby and melodramatic, but I also feel like stopping typing. 

“NOTHING MATTERS,” is this viscous mantra echoing off the inside of my skull, and perhaps it doesn’t.  I’m seeking release from a battle that perhaps only death can achieve, and yet if I know one thing, it is that I don’t want to spend my life like this. 

I WANT things to matter.  I want to matter.

Life is short, and sitting up here day after day after day, cleaning this big house over and over and over as it slowly decays and depreciates before my eyes, I have let myself fall apart too.  I want to be a writer, but I have been haphazard about even trying.  I have engaged in my writing half-ass and half-heartedly, constantly making excuses for why I do not write.

When I do write, I have failed to do much with it.  I have created so much now that are like lost empty vessels, never to carry any water, never to be read by anyone.  I know not why I create them, but perhaps in this sentence I can find the beginning of an answer. 

Each word is a world unto itself, each sentence a solar system, each paragraph a galaxy.  Bringing my universe to life has meaning beyond me as its creator, even though I struggle with its value, or perhaps exactly because I do struggle. 

Yet, I know from my explorations of the heart, God favors the bold.  I want to be bold, and this life feels timid, scared and hiding.  If the world is going to destroy itself, and so far everything in my being tells me it will, then I want to go out in a vivid expansion of light bursting forth from the realization that new things are hard, but they are worth it. 

The seeds of this destruction, are the foreplay of our next conception.

I may be lost, but I’ll never give up.

I do believe, and in believing, I define more about who I am than with anything else. 

I don’t want to be wrong, but if I am, I’d rather believe and be wrong, than to not-believe and be wrong.  To not-believe and be right, would too, be cold consolation for what that means about the true nature of the world, so that's a easy dead end for me to avoid.

No, I want to believe, and I want to be right.  Maybe  I need to let go of the latter and focus on the former, but its hard.  Life is hard, isn’t it?

So much fake rhetorical confidence already oozes from the pores of America, that what is but one more deluded voice, insistent in their proclamations of ultimate victory even when their personal end is already in sight.

What bothers me is that the end is in sight.  But I can’t change that.

So do you keep chugging along, hoping to be wrong, or pull out all the stops, and gamble you are right?

My Heart in a Headlock

I stopped writing my blog because I lost confidence (again) that what I have to say means anything.

I stopped writing my novel because I got scared of the failing author's market.

I stopped writing my screenplay because I'm addicted to high grade perfection.

I stopped writing my short stories because I'm lazy and lost.

I stopped writing emails because the world is going to hell at mach five.

I stopped writing my journal because I'm tired of me.

I stopped writing.

I stop.

I Was There

I was there before the collapse, before the loss of chance, before the shackling of love to the limits of growth.  I grew up in a world of sunshine laced days, racing down the block to the cool metal poll, chalk on the sidewalk and balmy rains every afternoon.  Winning some and losing some, yet knowing the game was fair, the sun my friend.

I was there before the hate and the vitriol and the diatribe tribes propaganda propagated their profit mantra, before the fundamentalists peeled off and ex-communicated science, before we each were so willing to sacrifice the other in our own personal visage of truth, when truth meant something shared, something given and something uncertain accepted.

I was there before the abuse and the sexualization of honor, before anyone snorted meth off a toaster, before reason was overtook by blind faith and fear raped love then married her to raise their incestuous child on a reality show conceived in the test tank of a tube mogul's island party house.  I remember silence and the soft skin of lizards caught dashing between blades of solid green, a mirage fading with interconnectedness and digital everywhere and everything bleeding us into nothing.

I was there before tears stained my cheeks and hope wracked her bones on the shoals of a muse unable to see the tragedy of her song, compelled to sing yet ever hopeful to the future as the blind can never see the light yet bathe in the photons none the same.  We were opportunity and the chance was ours, slipping like a free market failure to find us the right solution in time to make different the trends that reveal unreal feelings failing to fulfill our falling call to destiny.

Biochemical Individuality, Systems Medicine & Personal Energy

The advance of modern medicine has been so profound for so many generations that most of us never pause to consider the accuracy of the fundamental principles behind most medical treatments.  Core among all sacred truths in medicine is the universality of the causes and solutions to disease.

Yet this view is finally changing as our genetic and chemical understandings increase, and many now feel that the universal approach is not sub-optimal method to heal, but actually may also be the cause of chronic disease in many individuals. 

By treating us all the same, modern medicine has missed the point that we are each dynamically individual with natural (and positive) variations across the core function of our biologic systems. In fact, as we uncover the complex interplay of genes, epi-genes and environmental factors, we now know there is a wide variety of chemical operational variation among humans.

So what is most important is not what your lab results say about the exact chemical nature of your blood or other bodily samples as compared against the mythical "normal human," but what is the interplay of your biology, your energy and your environment.

Systems medicine treats the core operations manual of the human body as an information system with DNA and genes operating not as a simple recipe to "make us," but instead, DNA is a complex decision making program that operates in the individual context and environment to express its amazing instructions into the actual cellular life that comprises each of us.

There are many gains to be had in ignoring our diversity and pushing ahead with the study of medicine that helps as many as possible, and yet, this core universal applicability model of medicine also dead ends many patients in "chronic" uncurable conditions, e.g. autism, fibromyalgia because no universal solution may exist.

Yet a "cure" may exist for these patients through a different approach to their own individual needs and expressions.  Our biochemical individuality, like our energetic individuality is from our personal source of being and purpose, and thus systems medicine asks more of its patients, just as it asks more of its doctors.

The doctors of the future must be co-collaborators with patients in manifesting health through a patient study and understanding of each individual's needs.  It means training doctors not on a disease by disease basis but on a system by system basis, focusing on the interplay between health and attitude in patients.

Likewise, patients of the future must know more about themselves.  In Bio Sense Suit terms, the pilot of the suit is in the best position to run and understand diagnostics.  Doctors will be there to help, as will an individual genome map, and yet systems medicine, if done right, empowers patients to take control of their own care and health.

The Three Modes of Your Mind

Your mind is a powerful control interface to both your body and your spirit, or energetic aspects.  Yet across all of the complex and diversified thoughts, beliefs and knowledge our minds process, there are only three modes to any mind: perception, intention and expectation.

We may be a mix of one or more modes at any time, but every human experience can be mapped to this closed set of mental operational modes. There are times of pure experience in one mode, but there are also times when all three modes unconsciously mix and obfuscate our own role in creating and allowing our personal reality. 

The goal of considering in what mode your mind is operating is to see if the mode is aligned with your goals for that thought, relationship or activity.  Moreover, being aware of the Laws of Thought, we realize that being aware means being a conscientious mind owner because different circumstances call for different mental operational modes.

For example, when performing art, it is sometimes more gratifying to forget the audience and focus on creating, i.e. to limit your perceptions and increase your intentions.  Likewise, once we understand the power of expectation on others, the ethics of relationships encourage us to own and limit our own expectations of others as a means to support their true nature.

In whatever mode, our mind is a powerful sun radiating energy and vibrations across both the primal network as well as through the various thought atmosphere's in which we participate.  Instead of an unconscious aggregation of default programming, awareness of the modes also allows us to operate across these modes in a conscious active way.

Perception is a state-of-mind in-time caused by the intersection of Intention (Love in the above drawing) and Expectation (as tempered by Knowledge in the above drawing). Perception is an aggregation of sensations, thoughts, emotions, memories and filters that streams through the mind in real-time.

Intention is the personal radiation of life content (purpose/fate) broadcast constantly from every mind (conscious or unconscious, deliberate or default) that creates their life experiences and can be measured as Flow (pure energy voltage) and Grow (energy-matter current/capacitance).  Intention is timeless and stored/formed from personal morphic fields (energetic DNA) and is carried on the same wave/particle as Expectation.

Expectation is the personal radiation of life form (allowance/limits) broadcast constantly from every mind to express or deny their Intentions and is usefully measured by Attitude (positive or negative charge) and Beliefs (flow and grow resistance) modified by cumulative Knowledge.  Expectation is time and memory-based, body-stored and Grow-dependent, i.e. fully rewritable by the Mind, and is carried on the same wave/particle as Expectation.

In the above decade-old first drawing I made to noodle out these modes, I called Flow "evolution" and "God's Plan" at the same time because I believe they are different labels for the same perceived phenomena in our lives.  We each feel we have a purpose, and that is key to personal happiness.

Countdown Now: The Power of One Human Life

Perception controls so much in our minds and therefore in our world.

Cultural blind spots are like collective denial practiced with such fervor that reality is held at bay (for a time) as one would hold an oncoming flood back with a powerful fan.  If you channel the flood waters with great care, then you can at first achieve remarkable results keeping the truth of a situation from fully manifesting.

But eventually the consequences of the forces at work manifest, and like the water held back from a bunch of hot air, reality rushes in and overwhelmingly destroys the source of resistance, but not the source of denial, for that is sadly infinite.

 If the "flood" we are in denial about was a cyclical sort of thing, a period of crises we could come together and solve at the appropriate time, then go back to normal, perhaps our denial might serve a good purpose to leave us blissfully happy as long as we can be before we turn to face the problem and solve it.  No reason to rush if we have time.

But aren't we really holding the flood waters at bay on the first floor of the house and emptying a hose from every window on every floor above?  Won't we ALL eventually drown in that kind of system?

How can we best be unflinchingly honest?  Should we even want to try?  In a world that is killing itself in every major category, from pollution and energy, to health and human care, to food supply and safety, to economic sustainability and human rights, do we want to hear the truth? 

Do we tell our kids there's a good chance they will not live to their projected life expectancy?  Do we tell them that their standard of living is going to be less than ours, that they will be paying for our mistakes their whole lives, that our selfishness ate up the good parts of Earth as quickly as free-market capitalism could allow it and we're sorry to (predictably) leave them a polluted, infected, waring time bomb?

Is it better to ignore the realities of what is going to happen in the next forty years, before our very eyes, keep our same economies and families and expect that somehow an additional 3-4 billion children added to our world will somehow make it better?

In planning our own merry little lives and families, it's romantic to be in denial, to enjoy the last generation with the luxury to do it and let hope and faith bridge the gap not even science or math can bridge any more.   Yet won't all these and more come due within the lifetime of a child born today?

Why would you want to break down these walls of denial to see such foreboding truths?  I don't think many do, and I can't say I blame them.  I just wish I could put my own blinders back on.

C'mon, Let's Get "Real"

What is real? and what is not real? 

Surely the people, places and things around us are real.  We can touch them, feel them, and they have mass and physical dimensions and/or biometrics we can sense.  They exist outside of us, and they are perceived by and interact with others who can confirm their reality with us.

What about ideas, things like freedom, love or justice?  Are they real?  By the above definition, they should be because they exist outside of us and we all perceive them as concepts, embodied perhaps with different memories and symbols specific to our own life experiences and knowledge bases, but still a shared reality of ideas.

What about your mind?  Is it real?  We can touch and feel your brain, your neurons and supporting systems that our best science suggests is the seat of the "mind," but we cannot point out a definitive, finite biologic structure that is one's "mind."

Your mind also does not exist outside of you, and is not independently perceived or interacted with by others.  They talk or email you, and they can see that you have a mind but they cannot independently access it without going through you. 

So is your mind real?  Maybe, maybe not.  Could it be an illusion brought on by self-awareness, or is it the seat of self-awareness>  What if your mind is not contained in one organ or system like our brain and nerves, but is somehow anchored in every part of you, from small to large?  Are cells the basic unit?  are atoms?

What about thoughts; are thoughts real?  Thoughts are both the input and output of your mind, and once, somewhere real shared ideas like freedom, love and justice began as thoughts in the mind of one or a few humans.  If they are now "real," then must not all thoughts also be "real?"

"But Chris, what you're saying is that if someone, anyone, anywhere, EVER thought of something, no matter how casually or in passing, then that thing is real?"

Yes: perception, expectation and intention create reality, constantly and always.  Every thing any conscious life thinks about becomes a part of reality, whether shared or not, whether initiated from outside stimulus or simply from thinking within. 

Thoughts are real.  Good or bad, "right" or "wrong," each exerting an influential force on our selves and our world.  Some grow, mature and attract more and more attention, get practiced over and over, by more and more people and those thoughts become beliefs and values and principles like freedom and love and justice.

Clearly, something the mind does to thought, something our collective minds do to shared thoughts, makes them more real, more concrete and more powerful in our lives.  Yet one new thought can always change the way we think, and thus change the world.

Perhaps our mind's are the true and only limits of reality.  Perhaps our shared part of the collective whole is such that no one mind truly exists without the infrastructure of all the minds together, and it is not just all of our body that is our mind, but all of everything, everywhere and everyone.

We are each a "real" individual body and mind, and yet that reality only exists, only finds meaning in the context of our collective minds.

We think, therefore I am

Hug Me Wire Mommy

"From the least to the most important, the affection and respect of others are vital for our happiness." --the 14th Dalai Lama

We covet our individuality, strutting like meticulous birds-of-paradise preening and posing for some unseen constantly watchful potential mate, without realizing that it is the communal aspects of our own being that are both our mate and muse.

We cannot be happy without others, and yet we only want them to come close to us under our own conditions and permissions.  From first meeting to groove-n-move to family-status and beyond, all relationships impact individual happiness, which is dependent on relations with and relation to "others" for a fulfilled daily experience.

The need for interaction and the special power of both affection and respect is physics-driven, expressed in our biology and complex systems of behavior, related or tied in some cases to reproductive instincts and in others, mixed with all instincts as part of the whole of the being--a critical self-development process resulting in positive expressions of affection and respect or their negative analogues of violence and contempt.

Interaction changes us, whether great or small, whether we like it or not, time is change and motion is change.  We already hurtle millions of miles per hour in multiple dimensions due to the rotation of our planet, the revolution of our solar system and the relative spin and speed of the Milky Way.

So change is constant, and yet the POWER of attention to direct change is astounding.  Beyond simple coincidence and into the realm of constructive relational interdependence, modern physics is learning the power of the observer and observed merge in a unified field of something.

Affection is a powerful operator in that unified field, call it whatever you want, e.g. "dark energy" or "consciousness."  Negative affection and disrespect, e.g. "violence" are also a powerful operators, but I think the data shows that affection has a stronger multiplier affect, a stronger creation-enabling resonance than the hollow energetic echo created by violence.

Affection and especially intense, passionate affection is perhaps the most powerful, most desired drug known to us as social-bio beings, and yet affection exists along a spectrum and balance among the types of affection seems also to be a multiplier increasing behavior. We can be affectionate in action, but also in word and thought.  Affection of thought is in fact the foundation for all true respect.

Closing down any port of giving or receiving affection, from lover to friend to kind stranger mode will damage the individual and effectively infect their self-esteem operating system with constant glitches due to the lacking positive and needed impact of the missing affection in a person's life.

Affection is different in every context, among all beings, and yet it seems to me that one's supply and balance of appropriate affection one's life is directly proportional to the amount and consistency of their respect for others.  The more our needs for affection are met, the more respectful of others we can be, and alternatively, the more our needs for contact, giving and receiving, are not met, the more we seem to almost lack conscious bandwidth to "afford" respect of others, or we use disrespect as an excuse or explanation for our unmet needs.

Perhaps this is because lack of affection often manifests itself by diminishing self-respect, and without respect of the Self, no alleged respect of others comes of free choice from an unconditional heart.  Affection is vital to our ability to grow, respect is vital to our ability to flow, and both depend on our interaction with others.

We are all in this together.

And You Go...

And you go

And I know

Nothing Lives

Nothing grows

 

I could live a thousand years

And never come back

To this Place

 

Why do you fight me so

I don’t know

I want to let it go

 Away

 

It was written in that

Great book that somebody told me

When I was young

Had all the answers but

 

I didn’t find them there

I didn’t find them anywhere

I looked for you

But you’d gone

 

Show your face to me

Show your face to me

Like some mystery

 

I won’t believe

In what you want me to

I won’t be what you said

I never could be and be true

But you know

 

We’re alive

Today

This very

Moment could tell you that my

My heart would never leave you

I’ve always been there but

You never seem to notice

Me

Me

 

Learning to be free

Your Astounding Magnificence

I drew down into human form yesterday, and I sat there, marveling at the astounding magnificence of being here whilst still there.  I felt the hair on my arms stir with the currents, chaotic and many, bombarding my senses, and I reached into my suit and I slowed everything down.

Maintenance Matters.

Time speeds up and covenants slip to promises slip to arrogant abrogation of the rights of others, and the whole machine is twisted into something so much less than it can be.

Yesterday I sat in my suit and I contemplated friendship and union and peace and justice on the microscopic level.  The lymphocyte doesn't hate the bacteria; they just can't be together in that place and time.

Building blocks locked in unions some may not prefer, the cell begets the organ begets the system, begets the being, the family, the community.  One day one cell changed everything, and yet one suit cannot change the nature of the universe.  Or can it?

Time slows down and humor hardens to beliefs which hardens to prejudices which feeds fear and hate and habit, displacement further and further away from the ability of the suit to change all that, the power within reach if reaching for the sake of the stretch were more valued.

Exercise Experience.

I saw myself in the mirror, not just in the suit, but in everything in all parts possible plus one.  I thought about oneness at the homo sapien level, and I started to cry.  To care is to feel the problems before us, and yet compassion must be married with action.

Time is relative to all, and laws change, and ecosystems evolve. 

My love for you shines on and on and on...

I Am My Brother's Keeper; I am My Sister's Keeper

"Cultivating a close, warmhearted feeling for others automatically puts the mind at ease.  From the least to the most important event, the affection and respect we have for others are vital to our own happiness."  --Dalai Lama

America is for EVERYONE

They call us un-American, but I think the GOP conservatives are truly the un-American ones with their desires to legislate morality in direct conflict with the most fundamental and basic rights granted by the Constitution: life, liberty and the pursuit of individual happiness.  

I also think McCain is a hero, and I was a fan of his before this general campaign really disappointed me with the people he choose to run his campaign, the topics and tactics they took and especially the repeated, repeated use of gay people and minorities as "the enemy" rallying cry to feed their angry crowds hate and fear.

Some of the videos of people outside the GOP rallies truly scared me, and how those dangerous people react is going to be the key to our collective ability to save our country.  If God calls you to be a moral person, you should work to make our world more moral in the individual decisions people in tough places are making and not abstractly in limiting existence (which you can't) or limiting behaviors you don’t like (which you doubly can't!)

Reducing people's rights and using minorities as targets or examples of our enemies or "terrorist" collaborators—like the GOP regularly does, is not right, and I don't think John McCain has ever agreed with any of that.  The people around him did him a disservice to his legacy, and I hope he lasts and has interest to stay in govt long enough to restore his reputation.

Whether gay Americans, Muslim Americans or black, white, green, red, yellow Americans, the tear-inducing beauty of my country to me is that we already are the world's melting pot.  A lot of white, Christian America doesn’t not like this, and some of them openly want "their America," but they need to read the Constitution.  "Their America" is not in that document because the founding fathers were smart enough to understand that in a diverse society of many, we must all, above all and first, support the independence of the Government from control by any one religion or group.

America is a test if humans can love and live together, or hate and die together.  If we pass, the world may live and gain sustainability, and if we fail, I fear tears and bloodshed are ahead for anyone left alive.

We are the grand experiment of the coming global community that the Earth has become—like it or not.  We cannot go backwards, and the enlightened principles of freedom and equality under one State AND a separation of religions and civic rule are critical to ensure a safe and secure future for ALL Americans.  The angry, bitterly divisive alternative is one of war, violence, separation into racial, economic and "lifestyle" camps, and the country we will leave our children will not be one worth having as it will be full of such fear, debt and crime.

Instead, I think a pretty big majority (for our bitterly divided electorate) stood up for a leader whom they think (or hope) represents the best of that "real America," the America that is in the Constitution, and they are strengthened by the steady hand of a cool leader who is smart, deliberative and committed to ALL Americans and not just his unconstitutional social agenda, big donors or the wealthy class of which he is a member.

One startling metric of the election to me is found in the issue of taxes.  McCain and the GOP use taxes with the common people to try and demonize Democrats as "socialists" or "redistributors of the wealth," and yet in this election, the people who make $250,000 a year, the only people whose taxes go up under Obama's plan, the people who would get much, much, much better tax treatment under McCain, they voted for Obama 62%!!!

What does this say?  To me, it says that even those who are right now being asked to help feel some more tax pain for the benefit of the nation are in overwhelming majority (me included!) saying, "Hell Yeah, I'm doing fine, I'll pay a little more to help with poverty and healthcare and education."  For anyone who thinks of "the big picture," this is a no-brainer because a consumer-driven economy cannot function if the basic average consumer cannot afford the basics of living.

Some may call it socialism, but I call it Effective Democracy, when the State uses the taxes (wealth) it is already collecting and spends it on things and in places that benefit the majority of the people in the society (spreading it around).  The is the highest and best purpose of government. 
If we are to live on this planet without destroying it or each other, we must design our economies and cultures to support the most efficient distribution of the necessities of life, food, shelter, healthcare, and education., and we must protect ALL citizens’ rights to individual freedom and due process.

We have lived shortsighted in the past, and especially in the recent past.  Spending and spending, exploiting and destroying the environment, all the while knowing this cannot last, knowing we are using a system our grandkids certainly cannot use because it is so out of kilter with sustainability.  We need to change that, and change it fast I fear if we are to have any hope...can it be done? 

<Getting down off my soap box>

I don't know if it can, but I have hope for the first time in a long time, and I have young friends and family who have the chance to live for the first time in your adult lives under a President that doesn't throw away our best laws, values and traditions to do what he personally thinks is best justified by some external threat to the State, and instead we will now see a President who respects the office, respects the Constitution and respects the Nation enough to tell us the truth.

Many in this family and this nation disagree with me, and some think they have the right to define morality in law.  They believe Christians have the ONLY path to God and salvation, and I guess anything is excusable to them in that kind of a "holy war" and with that exclusive endorsement by the almighty. 

They don't see how very illegal and UNAmerican their views are, they think their personal conduit to God is so exclusively correct, that it justifies ignoring or rewriting the equality and freedom out of our Constitution.  They do not value the continuing independence of our State, but want to create a Christian government that enforces their view of God’s laws.

But that's not me, and it never will be.

As I get older, and without my own kids (thankfully, really!:-) I find myself more impassioned to fight for a government that respects and protects ALL.  As I see the amazing beauty of my nieces, nephews, and now all the kids they are making too, I want us to leave them a world working well together, not fighting and dividing and seeking to exploit the worst in each other instead of lift up the best in each other.

"Some say I am a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.  I hope someday you'll join us (although I know you already have!), and the world will live as ONE."

The Triumph of Hope, The Challenge of Love

America is emerging from a long brutal Presidential election that pitted the politics of hope against the politics of fear, and with the election of our first non-white President, hope has triumphed in America. 

Fear was marginally set aside in some places and dramatically set aside in others as Americans came together to create a landslide of those who believe in the promise of our great nation, who are dedicated to work for a future we still believe can be ours and to reject the division of our diverse peoples into separate camps of race and gender and religion. 

Hope has triumphed, but love still has many great challenges ahead.  Fifty-three percent of us may be celebrating this victory, but at least forty-six percent of our fellow Americans are troubled and worried what this next President will mean for them and their loved ones.  Love is challenged to quell their fears, to stir their hope and to bring us all back together again as one nation under many visions of God.

Love is challenged to reconcile those who are still gripped by fear.  Love is challenged to bring all Americans under the fold of this new movement of hope, to see our shared possibilities through the lens of the best that can be and not the worse that can be.  Love is challenged to mend the families, friendships, businesses and private groups of citizens that have been divided in their choice of candidate, but ultimately unified in their great love and commitment to our nation of the people, by the people and for the people.

Barack Obama is a great American, but around the world, he is even more than that.  He is a symbol of the return of the American Dream, a rejection of the unilateral “go-it-alone” American foreign policy of the Bush Administrations and a demonstration that especially in America it doesn’t matter who you are, but what you do most of all—that anyone among the world’s poor and disenfranchised can work hard and rise to power to change their world.

At home, President-elect Obama is celebrated by many of us as the greatest example yet of the American dream of hard work, self-reliance and equality among all regardless of race, creed, color, orientation or origin.  Yet Obama is also feared by many Americans, unsure of him and perhaps taken in my negative propaganda or outright lies. 

But today and tomorrow can be very different from yesterday if we can but let yesterday go and focus on today.  Today and tomorrow are about our NOW vibration, and we have complete control over that.  You have complete control over that, and each moment we all make the choice to engage our fear, or to quell it, to reject our natural tendencies to love or to embrace and express them.

As someone who feared and yes, even hated the past eight years, I understand what it feels like to have a President that you do not agree with, do not relate to because of his policies, attitudes or upbringing, and yet over that time my heart has learned time and again that no matter who is in charge of the White House, we each have a choice to love or to hate, to hope or to fear.

Last minute, I was in Ohio as a voter protection volunteer for the Obama campaign on Election Day, and I was honored to do my very small part to help elect Barack Obama.  Some fear him as a secret agent for America’s enemies, while others raise the stakes to make him some kind of evil Anti-Christ, and yet those who invest in their fear so much say so much more about themselves than they do about Barack Obama.

We each must look inside and challenge our fears with hope, challenge our hate and discrimination with love.  Barack Obama is just one person, as I am just one person, and you are just one person.  We each always have a choice: to love or to fear, to act in anger or to act in positivity, to believe in the best or actualize the worst.

Hope will never eradicate fear, like love will never have any meaning without hate, and yet the triumph of hope in this election ignites a beacon for all Americans, for all people of the world.  Although we face many challenges, I am confident that love is on the rise and the powers of truth and light will always prevail in the end.

Believe in yourself, seek guidance from your Gods and be kind to your fears, but do not indulge them.  If we can do this together, I know hope will provide all the fuel we need to face our challenges with love.

Protect Our Forests

Forests are important because they are the cradle that nurtured us when we first evolved from the seas, dark and foreboding at first, warm and supportive once entered, the nexus between all plants and animals, the meeting place of more than just minds, but also of bodies and life energies entwined, enveloping entropy evolving ever onward towards our great what's next. 

Forests are our community square, our childhood home and our retirement plan rolled into one, and forests deserve our gratitude, our appreciation and our dedicated effort to nurture and protect them as they once did for us.