For me, personally speaking, the 30 Days of Prayer Experiment that I took part in throughout the month of March, and just completed, was a nothing short of a total success. I was able to discover so much about prayer, and its noticable side-effects, that I would not have been able to apart from such a month-long intensive. And there is no question in my mind that prayer will continue to remain a vital, daily, ongoing activity that I am going to consciously take part in. That much is pretty well sealed for me.

So, given that March was so fruitful a month for me--in the way described above--I am inclined to want to continue with a similar type of experiment. This time throughout the month of April. The only difference is going to be that for the month of April I have decided to focus on 'videotaping my sexual exploits.'



(uhm... April Fool's!)

April's Challenge

For the month of April my focus is going to be on trying to better understand the relationship between Art & Everyday Life;' and to then incorporate that better understanding in how I represent myself to the world in an artistic/creative fashion.

I have decided to make this my focus for the month of April because I have been wrestling with significant questions about creativity and livelihood throughout my adult years. That is some 20 plus years of trying to be creative and not get swallowed up by the Machine! That is some 20 plus years of trying to find my voice and not get 'lost in the crowd.' That is some 20 plus years of dancing with the Muse and hoping not to step on Her feet while doing so!   ; o )


Keeping The Spirit Alive

Much of our life is spent in trying to find our 'Self,' be who we are, realize our gifts, hone our talents. The late psychologist Carl GustavJung spoke of discovering one's Self as if it were the penultimate goal of our earthly existence. For in doing so, he said, we are able to be authentic, able to live truly, able to actualize a degree of psychological health and integration not known otherwise. As well, in realizing one's Self we are able to offer the world our most valuable gifts. Our secret treasures are just what the world needs. We are, as I put it in last month's writings, the answer to someone else's prayers.

So in discovering one's Self we are not as ... er.... uhm ... selfish as it might first seem. It is not all about us. Aligning with the Muse is also about the world---i.e., what the world needs, what someone else, miles away, is crying for as they go to sleep at night; it is about what some other being is aching to have fulfilled in them. We are That! We are the answer to someone else's question; just as they are the answer.

Yet, it can be exceedingly difficult to realize one's Self, let alone actualize that same Self in one's daily affairs. It is as if there is a conspiracy against our doing so. People may want us to fulfill roles for them that are not in keeping with the integrity of the Self. For instance, someone may want to put in service of their own dreams and ambitions: a tycoon wants you as a personal servant, and has his or her own interests in mind above your own; a romantic partner has gaping psychological holes that he or she seeks to have you fill, and so there is tension between you laying claim to your own sacred territory and his or her wanting you to be a constant source of psychological and emotional nourishment. So navigating the terrain of our daily lives can be a challenge to say the least.


The Greatest Journey

Jung, and those who have followed in Jung's wake--Joseph Campbell, James Hillman, Marion Woodman, Donald Hollis, among others--have all pointed to the process of individuation (realizing and actualizing the Self in one's daily affairs) as the greatest challenge we face. The greatest stories ever told are made of people realizing their own peculair genuis in life. They are inspiration to us all. For their journey speaks of our own journey; their struggles are our struggles. We all face similar challenges in seeking to become 'who we are' without becoming swallowed up in a matrix of relationships.
 
It is easy for us to become the pawns in the games other people may consciously--or unconsciously--choose to play with our lives. We can become caught up in secret dictatorships that are not as easily recognizable as those of the Saddam Hussein, Joseph Stalin, or Pol Pot variety. It may even seem like we are being offered a sense of significance, in that we are a real 'team player.' We can even be rewarded with prestige and honour, given kickbacks of gold and silver, diamonds and rubies, and all for the sake of our figuring our lives into the network of someone else's play for power.  

It is why we have to ask ourselves whether we are being honest, or if we are 'selling out' for other motives? Do we have a greater desire to be wanted and needed than a desire to actualize the Self? Do we get some unmet emotional need covered in being patted on the back--even though our soul sheds tears of regret at night? 

So the question we ask is whether or not we are just a functional necessity in the overall designs of someone else's drama, or we are truly actualizing those innate gifts and talents synonymous with the Self. We ask this question in light of the corporation, the government, the Church, and even the family. Those institutions--the pre-modern (family, tribe, and Church), the modern (government and corporation) and the post-modern (some admixture of all the former)--become the places where we can all too easily be led towards conspiring against the soul. They are the places where we can be convinced as to the necessity of selling our soul in trade for some daily bread.

No wonder the the process of individuation, of Self-actualization, of our aligning with the Muse has so widely been considered, by so many thoughtful people, throughout so many decades and centuries, the greatest journey that a human-being could ever undertake. Like all great journeys, this process, is one fraught with its own unique hazards and rewards. There are dangers and dilemmas unique to the journey; just as there are allies and friends along the way. It is my hope that I can become one of your allies as you continue to travel along your way, on this greatest of all journeys a human-being can ever undertake: which is to become the Self, and in doing so offer the world one's finest treasure in the process.
 

Got up this morning. I mean, afternoon. It was almost 1:00 PM. The time change. Spring ahead. That together with the fact that the band had to tear down after our weekend gig at the Sawmill in Grayling, meaning I made it home at about 5:00 AM, and it is little wonder why I slept in so late.
 
We had a good time playing this weekend (Keith Boynton, Tracy LaPorte, and myself). It is surprising to me, given that it never fails that I get so nervous the day preceding a gig that I literally want to quit the band and never play out in front of an audience again, only to perform 80 songs in two nights and feel energized and inspired afterwards. Odd.

It is probably a good thing that I get so nervous. I think it shows that I care. How I perform matters to me. Because it matters to me I feel anxiety about whether or not I am up to the task of delivering the goods or not. Nervousness is like a form of love and respect. I care about the audience and the people who pay to come see us play. So I am more than eager to deliver a good performance. In fact, I want to give the listener chills. I want them to experience something more than just a song; to feel this depth of soul injected into the singing and the strumming, the picking and the plucking, the gyrating and the jumping (well, maybe not so much the gyrating!).


Anxiety & Caring

Have you ever noticed how if you are indifferent towards something (a person, a place, a thing, or an event) you will not experience any anxiety. It is as if anxiety is--dare I say this--an offshoot of love. I know it is not spiritual and/or Vedantically-correct to say this, but anxiety and love seem to me to be woven together in such a way that the latter is not experienced apart from the former (unless of course you are a spiritual poseur pretending to be other-than-human).

For instance, Uriah Zen has contributed to me feeling a degree of concern and anxiety that I have not previously known. And the funny thing is that there have been times over the past couple of months (as Uriah Zen is now 2 months old) when I have felt an intense-variety of anxiety and smiled softly... knowingly. It is that realization that loving someone so much that you care about them to the point of feeling anxious about their fate... their state... their status... their condition.

It really makes me wonder if in dealing with our anxiety in a stereotypically New-Age, Eastern mysticism, psychoanalytic fashion--the viewing of anxiety as a problem that needs to be solved--is a way of trying to deal with our anxiety that ends up missing the larger point: that if you love ... anyone... anything... you will feel occasional pangs of anxiety washing over you.


Self & Anxiety

As I sit here reflecting on what this all has to do with this month's challenge of 'Art & Everyday Life' it suddenly dawns on me that in aligning with our true purpose--meaning the Muse, the repository of our greatest desires and deepest of all dreams--we should, perhaps, not find it surprising that in 'following our bliss' our anxiety also increases. After all, if we do something we are profoundly passionate about are we not going to 'care more' about it as we send our gifts out into the world? Do certain things start to matter more, rather than less? It seems so to me.

I wonder what other people's experience is. I don't have the feeling that it is just me. I know that many profound performers and artists have mentioned an almost paralyzing sense of nervousness and anxiety overcoming them prior to displaying their latest work, or tackling a new assignment, or taking the stage. And yet, the literature I have read seems to make no mention of this fact. The discussions relative to Self-actualization portray it as some sort of Omega Point; one wherein all supposedly 'negative' and 'afflictive' emotions are ended... over... kapoot... done... finished... finada. So, you individuate and all is golden; you integrate and you are in the Promised Land.
 
But what if that is not the case at all? What if realizing your Self is an apparent ending that is just the beginning? What if actualization of Self is fraught with as many twists and turns as the apparent ascent/descent cycle of realization of Self is? By that I mean to say, in discovering the source of our dreams we go through a series of personal tribulations.... followed by our beginning to actualize, in real-time, that source and those dreams, where follows a whole different set of personal tribulations.

My experience has been that love and anxiety can co-exist. Provided that the anxiety is not crippling--to the point where one isolates one's self for fear of risking anything at all by relating to others openly--there can be a healthy relationship between our loving, following our dreams, living robustly, and still experiencing what some Buddhist practitioners, Vedantic aspirants, or Yogic philosophers might consider to be an afflictive emotion.


Altering The Composition Of Human Emotions

One need not try to eliminate feelings of nervousness, concern, worry, or anxiety. They can be re-contextualized (one of my favourite techniques) so that an emotion or feeling doesn't change as much as the background to that emotion or feeling is made more or less expansive. Think about it like this: you are composing a photograph and your current composition has you feeling as if the 'subject' (the subject being anxiety, or some other afflictive emotion) is not quite right. So you shift the setting and alter your composition in such a way that the 'subject' feels like it fits. But you didn't change the 'subject' one bit. The so-called afflcitive emotion is still present. The subject is still the same. So what gives?

What changed to make all the difference? Maybe it was the way you framed the subject? Maybe you were too close to the subject and you had to get some distance? Or maybe you were too distant to the subject and you had to come closer and zoom in to get your subject to fit in a decent compositional way. 

Re-contextualizing phenomena like anxiety and depression, distress and even neurosis can make all the difference like that. Something that looks ugly and out of place can all of a sudden shine and stand out as the most exquisite thing in all the world. Yes, even your anxiety. That, too, is a jewel waiting to be captured in just the right light.

  

One may suppose that from the high-falutin' rhetoric spouted in certain circles of the human potential movement (which I take to be anything from transpersonal psychology to the self-help industry) that in discovering the source of our dreams we are set totally and completely free. In a sense, that is true. There is freedom in knowing your dreams have merit, are significant to you, are worth your time. Such 'Visions of Discovery' can be empowering and inspiring in a profoundly illuminating way. I know I have had my share of 'peak experiences' that seem to stand out as so many personal 'tipping-points.' And yet, as I expressed yesterday, those 'tipping points' where not really the mark of a final end, so much as the beginning of the journey itself.

The truth is when you find your passion the real work begins. It is one thing struggling with 'finding your self' and 'divining the depths of your own psyche'--so that you can get a better handle on what it is that you are destined to contribute to the world--and it is another thing entirely to get down to the nitty-gritty of offering those jewels and treasures up as gifts to others. Shoot, you might even say that 'We will confront more psychological obstacles in the process of giving our gifts than in the process of discovering them!'

A new concept that I am considering more and more lately is that being happy--or doing what makes us happy, gives us that special sense of peace, fulfillment, and deep satisfaction--could quite likely be the most un-selfish thing we can do. For if we are happy we spread it about like so many seeds. If we are happy we are not stressed and frustrated to the point that we 'snap' at others and precipitate arguments and more discontent. If we are happy we don't have to live with regret either. I mean, who regrets a fully happy moment.

Sitting here writing this right now leaves me with such a sense of well-being and overall contentment. And still there are things that I do which do not leave me with such a sense of well-being. There are things I still do for 'money' and out of a 'sense of necessity' that if I were totally free I would not take part in.

So why do I continue to do them? Why do I continue to persist in.... well.... un-happiness and its continual re-creation?


Giving The Gift Of Happiness & Well-Being

My gut tells me that if we all aligned with our deepest purpose and passion in life then the world would be a much better place. Happiness and well-being would be pervasive. We would all be swimming in pools of unbounded joy. We would be more relaxed, at ease, content. The world would shine like it never has before.

I can't prove this to you, but this is what my gut keeps telling me: Do what you love and the love will spread, inspiring others to do what they love; and they, in turn, will inspire others, and so on and so forth.
 
But don't do what you love, what then? What if you do the 'right thing for the wrong reasons?' What if you do what conventional wisdom seems to dictate is necessary, but while you are doing whatever it is that you are doing--like landing the job that pays more, but leaves you tired and spent everyday you come home to your family--you are constantly experiencing profound levels of dis-satisfaction and frustration? Doesn't the same principle apply in how such feelings can spread?
 
Could, then, the greatest gift we give to the world be our own happiness and well-being? 


The Other-Side Of The Story

There seem to me to be other angles that make our own happiness--and its proliferation throughout the world--more than just a little problematic. First off, there is this sense of our having to ocassionally do things that we don't want to. You know, that whole death and taxes business.

Even the Bible, in the New Testament conveys a sense of our not always being able to do what we enjoy. The reason for the New Testament, Jesus, is quoted as expressing a desire to not have to die on the Cross. He didn't want to be crucified! It was not a happy moment! And yet, he consented to 'His Father's Will in Heaven' that it be so if it needed to take place. Jesus foregoes his own happiness and wishes for God's.

It could be part of a larger story that we all find ourselves in to one degree or another: as we make sacrifices of our own happiness to ensure the happiness of others who matter to us.
 
But isn't it odd that we could find some sense of fulfillment in suffering to make others happy; that it makes us happy to suffer for the happiness of others; that we could take on pains in order to bring other people pleasure? 

It means that a father works longer hours than normal in a coal-mine so that his children can one day go to college and not have to suffer like he has... and does. It means that a single mother works multiple dead-end jobs to keep a roof over her babies head, food on the table, and clothes on his or her back. It means a soldier goes across the Atlantic to fight in a War against Hitler's desire for world-domination. It means we end up taking burdens upon our own back, as we bear our own peculiar crosses for reasons that we find significant: for people we love, for a world we seek to pass onto another generation.


Is Masochism Heaven's Way To Happiness? 

So... is happiness on earth overrated then? Does that mean one should not be happy; that one would be better off actively pursuing self-suffering and martyrdom in the hope that one's own pain will result in pleasure for others? Does it mean we turn to masochism in the attempt to make the world right?

Or are those ideas barbaric? Are those practices of martyrdom and masochism what we could call 'false necessities;' meaning that  they are only made necessary because of the beliefs we hold, the paradigm we live under the jurisdiction of?
 

Challenge to say the least! Maybe I should rephrase this month's heading to say something like 'opportunity' instead of 'challenge?'

I am tired. I feel rushed. I am hurried. It's like I don't have enough  time on my hands to be doing the kinds of things I want to be doing with my waking/working hours. In just minutes, for instance, I have to head off to a construction site where a house is being built. It's not that I have anything against houses. Shoot, houses are awesome. It is just that I would rather be spending my time making money in other ways that I find far more stimulating and satisfying.

I am sure there are some people who get totally geeked about construction. People who love it. People who find that building is a passionate endeavour for them. For me it borders on drudgery most of the time. When I was 24 and fresh out of the US Navy my father invited me to go to work for him in the construction business and I remember telling him that I had no interest in building houses. I had other things I wanted to build: books, records, dreams, visions, a new way of life and living that didn't consume so much of the world's energy and resources in the name of the American 'pursuit of happiness.' I told him I was interested in a different path---the road less travelled if you will.

And now, here I am building houses.

It pisses me off! It frustrates me. Yes, I am glad to have a job that more than pays the bills. But damn, why can't I friggin' pay the bills doing what I love? Am I holding myself back in some way? Am I not good enough to earn a living doing what I love doing? Can I not support my son and raise a child unless I sell out and submit to something that feels like a form of literal death to me? Do I have to sacrifice my dreams and ambitions for the sake of putting a roof over Uriah's head? Is that necessary? Is that what needs to happen?

I pray that I am not yet another parent in a long-line of parents who have had to forego his or her dreams in order to earn enough money to pay the bills. I would much rather scrape by doing what I love--and set for Uriah an example of being able to be happy doing what you feel you were born to do in this-world--then to have to drag my ass out of bed each and everyday knowing that I am nowhere near the man I wish I was.

And praying in such a way throws me right back into the midst of March's 30 Day Experiment: I am back to prayer. I am back to asking for guidance and instruction.... and yes, even opportunities. I am back to challenging the Universe... God... Spirit... the Cosmos... to open up doors so that Uriah doesn't have to look into his father's eye and see an emptiness and vacancy where once dreams used to thrive.

After all, other people do what they love and make a good living at it. So I know it's possible. Other people are an example to me of the possibilities that exist. So the door is open there. Which makes me asked where the door is closed. Is it closed in my own mind? Do I need to be more imaginative about ways to make money doing what I love? Do I need to stretch my own understanding about what is and is not possible? Do I need to dream a little more freely so that I can explore 'alternative realities' in the hope of finding one that fits like a glove?

Maybe that is what I am doing right now. Maybe I have been trying on construction to see what it feels like. Maybe I am still testing out opportunities to see what fits and what doesn't. And I have discovered that while have this job makes me look good in the eyes of others--as I provide financially--it is not very comfortable and so I am feeling stifled and choked. So all I have to do is adapt now. I have tried it. I put the opportunity on and I have worn it for a while now. It hasn't changed. And before I become malformed I need to take this construction suit of armour off, return to that Naked Self, so that I can try on other opportunities.

Funny, my prayer feels answered already.

How lovely.

  

Sacrifice

Growing up Christian I probably cannot help but have some issues pertaining to healthy vs. unhealthy forms of sacrifice. What is healthy sacrifice? Are we always supposed to subordinate our ‘self' to the wishes and designs and intentions of others? Are we supposed to lay our lives on the line for one another, and thereby exhibit, according to Christ, the greatest love of all? Is it even a question as to what is healthy or unhealthy sacrifice-as every time we give up our ‘self' for someone else it is a good thing.

Even a Buddhist reading of the nature of the virtuous life seems to indicate to us that selflessness is a profoundly blessed virtue for us to pursue: that ‘giving' in such a way is an aim worthy of our deep consideration, if not ongoing commitment. In fact, Buddhist writings also seem to suggest (even though there is deemed no ultimate self to sacrifice for an other) that the desires of the self are to be called into question, i.e., we are not supposed to be beholden to those desires, but to extinguish the underlying factors that create and re-create those very desires.

So, either way one slices it-Buddhist, Christian...even in an Islamic fashion or manner-there is a pervasive sense of skepticism as to the merit of those desires and wishes, aims and ambitions that seem to stem from one's self, and which inevitably put us in some degree of conflict with ‘others' as a result.

Spirit Serves

In one sense spirituality, seems to be about our serving others, regardless of our own self-interested motives. In India there is what is called ‘karma yoga' as a path one travel so as to realize moksha (liberation). Through the lifelong service of others one can be liberated, purified of all selfish tendencies (as those selfish tendencies are viewed as that which binds us. Mother Theresa or Gandhi would be a fine example of the practice of karma yoga. Neither seemed to have any self-ish interest whatsoever; an interest that was hell-bent on sacrificing the welfare of others for the sake of one's self.

The example of Mother Theresa and/or Gandhi seems to be quite different than a lot of that which is emulated in the West. Certain figures in business and politics, not to mention the pop-culture idols one sees everyday in the entertainment industry, seem to me to be polar opposites of selfless service. The stated emphasis is on propping up the self and employing others to make an idol out of the self. One need only think of the ways that people seek to remain in the spotlight-and how that is an ongoing effort to reinforce one's ‘self' by getting ‘others' to affirm that self through the giving of attention. Whereas a Mother Theresa gave the attention of her ‘self' to ‘others' the idols of Hollywood, for instance, seek to secure the attention of ‘others' for the sake of the ‘self.'

And yet, me saying all of this doesn't seal the deal for me on this matter. I don't think it is as simple as that for most of us (or maybe it is and I am in denial!). There is this matter of our striving to develop our talents and gifts in the name of serving and inspiring others for one's ‘self' by attracting the attention of ‘others' could also be an act of service on d attention to us in order to do so, is that a bad thing? Or, what if we assist in helping others to relax their own sense of self-contraction---thereby allowing them to transcend the tight knit little periphery of the self-by entertaining them in some way? What if appearing to be an ‘idol' who draws a lot of attention is also our serving as a vehicle for transcendence so that others can escape their sense of isolation and separateness? What if holding our ‘self' up for others to see is also, at times, an act of selflessness?

How can we know? How can we know when we are acting virtuously and still appearing to be selfish? Or when we think we are appearing virtuous and are really acting selfishly?

I am sure there are times when we have all seemed to do the ‘right thing, yet for the wrong reasons.' We can do a kind deed for someone else, but the reason we do so is so that we appear to be an ‘evolved soul,' or a ‘nice guy.' This is when apparent selflessness is really all about the self: as the world becomes merely the grounds wherein we can prop our ‘self' up before others as a spiritual light that shines so bright all ‘others' are eclipsed.

But enough of other people and what may or may not be happening. I am more interested in examining my own motives and basis for appearing to do the things that I do. Am I just being selfish? Am I trying to draw attention to my ‘self' for all the wrong reasons? Do I want to appear special and unique? Or am I being guided and directed by a Principle and Power that takes human selfishness---like It takes all things-and constructs something brave and beautiful out of it?

Maybe all I can know... or we can know ... is our intent? What is our intent, really? Are we interested in giving, or in taking? Because, to some degree, a self is an unavoidable thing here on Earth, so that which remains is only a question of whether we are seeking to affirm that self by taking and securing or by giving and offering?

What is the self for, in other words?

Yesterday I closed with the question 'What is a self for?' It's a question that strikes me as one similar to the Grail question popularized in Arthurian legend and myth: Whom does the Grail serve?

In asking 'What is the self for?' I feel all sorts of other questions and correlations arising. Like, if we cannot avoid a degree of self-hood, then the only question that remains is the orientation of that self-hood. To what is our self-hood directed? Is it a self-referential self-hood, only interested in its own operations and maintenance, its own continued existence and affirmation? Or is it a self-hood that exists to be a conduit and/or channel for something greater? 

Why a self? What's it for? is there a purpose for this 'thing' that so much of any one bookstore is dedicated its shelves to 'helping' (self-help)? Is there a reason for this 'thing' that so much of Buddhist literature has been intent on denouncing the inherent existence of? What is the meaning of the existence of this 'thing' that sends so many of us scurrying for relief from its chronic tightness and suffering through sexual liasons with others, through various powders and potions, pharmaceuticals and prescriptions, through distracting forms of entertainment?
 
Why does there exist this 'self' of we are on the one hand always trying to improve it, and on the other hand, we are always trying to escape it--not to mention forever trying to defend and affirm it?


Time For Self

Reflecting on all of the time we dedicate to our 'self' in terms of the money we have to earn to feed and clothe and entertain the self, the time we have to spend in consoling and encouraging the self, the time we have to spend in trying to prop up and improve the self leaves me with a sense that the number one pasttime of human's all over the world is 'devotion to self.'

How much time do we spend educating our self? How much time do we spend adorning our self? How much time do we spend searching out worthy attachments and appendages so that we can affix them to this self in the name of making that self appear worthy and valuable? And yet, to what end? To what end are all of those efforts?

From a Buddhist perspective the end of all of those efforts is a wasted lifetime. The time spent seeking to prop up the shaky ground upon which the self is erected would be better spent, according to Buddhists, penetrating the illusory veils which make up the self and appear to give it its substance and reality. That is much the same as the Gnostic conception of the self as a false entity meant to imprison and trap, enslave and deny Spirit, our true Self, from being realized. According to such schools of thought the more time we spend on affirming and propping up the false the less time we have for realizing that which is true.


Self As Vehicle For A Game

Buddhist and Gnostic voices proclaiming the illusory, false nature of the self are not the only voices that exist. There are other perspectives to consider as well. The self, some say, is but a temporary construct created for the purposes of play and pleasure so that the Divine can experience itself in a state other than its own Fullness and Glory. The irony here is that all of those human limitations and deficits and deficiencies that schools like various sects of Buddhism and Gnosticism may try to seek a way out of are from another persepctive the virtues of human existence that make it valuable for the Divine, the Numinous, the Infinite.

The limitation and the lack, in other words---the ignorance and the stupidity and the happy and tragic accidents alike--are for the Divine a temporary difference in state that not only allows the Divine to experience temporary limitation and lack, but also allows the Divine to resolve back into Its own Glory once the limitation of the human body-mind explodes back into the Numinous upon its termination.

In short, the self is the necessary contrast to the Self. The self is valued and exists because that self allows the Infinite to experience an 'otherness.' And this can happen quite easily, because the Greater has no trouble creating and entering into a more limited state (which I suppose no one here on Earth has a hard time arguing against). So, the Self collaspes into a self and feels this alien otherness--this stranger in a strange land effect, to borrow a phrase/title from Robert Heinlen, and then... explodes back into that breathless Infinitude as all limitation and lack melt away in the final hours of a self that, like a game, was never destined to last forever anyways.

Yes, the self exists only so that it can cease to exist. The Immortal wanted to experience mortality, taste lack, feel death, shoulder suffering. And if the Self were not convinced it were the self, then those illusions would not be convincing enough. So, like in a dream the figments feel more real than reality itself. And wouldn't you expect the Infinite to create best god-damned Game in all the Universe!! Wouldn't you expect the Sacred to create the most dramatic play of all--one to put Shakespeare to shame?

 

Another late-night. Good grief Charlie Brown! I can barely hold my head up. Coffee please!

At least I don't have to head off to the building site and work on the house today. Dan and his wife, Kristin, (the local Doctor, the wife, the one who is financing the house, and whose husband, Dan, I am building the house with) are off to some birthday party with their daughter Claire. So I have a day to refresh and recharge. Thankfully!

This is part of the frustration I often feel when it comes to following my bliss. Because I have bills to pay and need to make money working construction I am often too god-damned tired to do so. Sometimes it feels like I am dead-tired and crawling after my bliss. That's the only way I can follow it! I sure as hell can't run after it.

If you are able to finance your dreams through following your dreams (rather than financing your dreams through other endeavours, like construction, or waiting tables, or working in a factory somewhere) then you are blessed indeed. So, I just want all you lucky m*&ther f**kers to know just how m^%her-f*&kin lucky you are! And yeah, you better be appreciating that fact or this tired, overworked, dream-chasing dude is going to get up enough energy to come and beat down your f**in door to let you know just how the other 9/10's of humanity has to live!


Appreciating The Bliss

Of course, when I do have enough energy to follow my bliss (like, perhaps, tonight--after a day of chillin'  with some drinks and food) I may appreciate the time and capacity to do so all that much more. I can head upstairs to the studio and lay down some tracks until the wee hours of the morn and have a blast doing so (like I did last night, hence, the foggy head and the limp... er... uhm... body). In that regards I, too, am fortunate. I've been blessed with the freedom and capacity to create music and write books--even though those activities are not yet paying the bills in full. Yet, as you can see, I am not totaly barred from 'following my bliss,' just dog-ass tired when I do so sometimes.  ; o )

Someday I would like to be able to be an artist full-time. Not get up  and head to construction site until 6PM. Come home and eat. Spend time with son until about 9 or 10 PM when he goes to sleep. Then work on music until 2AM at the earilest, and 4AM at the latest... only to have to get up and do that all over again the next day. And if you know anything about construction work it is not easy my friends. It not only requires physical effort on a grand-scale when you do everything from haul the tile up two flights of stairs to the master bath with the walk-in shower to hanging drywall over your head while you simultaneously try to screw that drywall to the supporting ceiling joyces. That is not even taking into question the mental challenges of remembering exact measurements. All of which means that Johnny here comes home one tired chap.

Not Alone

I know I am not alone. I bet there are nurses who take care of patients all day only to want to come home and paint, or scuplt, or cook a gourmet meal. For one who is anything less than a full-time artist following his or her bliss 24-7 there are these challenges of having to balance different worlds: worlds that often conflict with one another. 

For instance, like what I have described here, you may also come home from one job you are working on with a desire to involve yourself in what you feel to be your passion and purpose in life, only to feel completely bereft of any energy with which to do so. I know that can be a brutal fact. The soul is willing but the body is beat!

Truth is it can be heart-breaking. You don't know if you would have had the opportunity to write and perform the best song of your life, or if you would have captured an image of a lifetime if you were only carrying enough energy to get outside and go for a walk with your camera... or if you could have danced yourself into another dimension. When you are bereft of physical energy (body-mind fuel) because you have spent it elsewhere (perhaps in assisting someone else with their dream-home!) then the realization of the fact that you don't have energy to devote to your Gods can be nothing short of tragic.

Tithing Time

I wonder if we would all be better off tithing the 'first fruits of our labour' to the God of our calling? What if we gave the height of our powers and energy to the God/Goddess whom we have chosen to serve? What if we made a deal with the Muse to give Her only our best? What if we consciously intended to enact the religious observance of our creative capacity when our energies are at their peak? What if we go to God full, rather than empty?

Maybe that is it? Maybe there is a secret there?

What if in giving the Muse only our leftovers She is only able to give us something similar in return? What if true artistic success comes when we offer up our fullness to the Muse... to God.... to Spirit... to the Cosmos? What if our energy is returned to us ten... twenty... thirty... a hundrefold? And so if we present more energy and give our best when we are at our best (physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, psychologically) the Universe... the Cosmos... responds to that fact with a much greater return on the investment we have made?

What if that is true? What if we make 'following our bliss' a more conflicted affair precisely because we have not prioritized it?

What if we receive low-energy states back from the Universe (poverty, sickness, suffering, relationship difficultuies) because we are giving a low-energy state through the Universal Hook-up of our Muse? What if the Muse is the channel through which we give and receive to and from the Cosmos? And it is unlike any other such channel--being it is the one where abundance (physical, spiritual, mental, emotional, psychological, creative, and so forth) is most readily magnified and multiplied?

What if we give the Muse the best of us.... and not just what is left of us after a long-day?? Would our life be transformed?

 

Something has to change. What I have been doing, and my efforts applied here in writing this little blog has not been satisfying me. I don't have the usual sense of fulfillment that I normally receive from writing. Something feels out of sorts. Like this is not a good fit for me at this time.

First, I have a lot going on right now. There are only so many hours in the day. One can only spread one's self so thin and then Pop! something snaps.

Am I saying I am about to snap? Well, not as far as I know. I don't think I am on the verge of snapping. What I do sense though is that if I were to continue in this way I probably would snap.


The Blessings Of Communication

In my lifetime I have been blessed with the written words offered by so many exemplary people. Thoreau. Emerson. Rumi. Freud. Jung. Maslow. Ken Wilber. Matthew Fox. James Hillman. I have been blessed by the fact that they sat down and took the time to formulate their thoughts and impressions on the world, then shared those thoughts and impressions through the medium of a book. So much for me in life has been worked out through books and the written word. Together with music there has not been a more invaluable form of art in my own life. Life has been enriched in countless ways because someone took the time to sit down and write, collected those sessions of sitting down to write, and edited them into a condensed volume that ended up in a library so some poor, soul-searching chap like myself would stumble across it and be convinced that life was worth the living!

That's what makes me want to extend the same gift to others. That is what inspires me to want to write: I want to extend the line of communication between those like Thoreau and Emerson to subsequent generations of people who will come after me. I want to be a literary and philosophical bridge linking the generations.

I feel that anytime you are given a gift of immeasurable value and worth you will someday want to give a gift of similar value and worth to others. It may not be to the person who gave you the gift--i.e., you may give the gift to someone else--but give it you will.

Why? Why do we feel so inclined to give such a gift? Why do I feel inclined to write and hope to bring some sense of meaning and significance, joy and relief, hope and possibility, direction and guidance to some fellow traveller searching for 'who knows what?'

I want to give because of the value. I value the act of communication through the written word. I value the realm of letters and signs. I value and appreciate that this is possible. And so because I value it so I deem it a worthy gift to give (though you may beg to differ).


What's The Problem Then?

The problem? Why do I feel something is not right about what I have been doing the past week or so--or maybe longer and it is now just starting to come through? Well, the problem for me is the lack of receptivity based upon the overwhelming volume of words made available on the Internet. There is just so damn much competition! There is just this overwhelming--almost inundating--regurgitation of signs and symbols that ... well... at times just wants to make me hurl!

The truth seems to me to be that one could binge and purge on so many words, signs, and symbols. And yet, in that act what is nourishing about ingesting, and then regurgitating so many communications from this, that, or the other corner of the globe? Where, in other words, can you discover the value--the value in communications! How can you discern what is worthy and nourishing and what is just more meaningless chatter from some sorry sap reflecting on his or her own subjectivity?

Are blogs supposed to be diaries? Are blogs any damn thing we want them to be? Are blogs valued... or valueless?

What, in other words, is the value of a word when there are so many god-damned words being propogated throughout the whole fruitful World Wide Web?

Do words lose their value? Do you cease to be struck anymore by the value of a story? Are you like some high-tech scanner that processes information at lightning speed? Do you find yourself discarding more information than you actually assimlate? Do you find yourself rushed and hurried? Do you find yourself missing out on the once immortal word that is now rendered all the more meaningless and superficial precisely because it is so pervasive?

Wasn't value once (and still is in some cases) the result of the rarity of an object or artifact? What does this mean for a world drowining in media and signs and symbols? Does it mean that the more we speak or write or share or talk or sign the more meaningless and insignificant all that speaking and writing and sharing and talking and signing becomes? 

I've got it (and if you don't know what I am referring to, then please check here) for the necessary prefatory info.

So what do I get? I get now that it's not about what others are doing, or not doing. The plethora of words matters described here) is not the problem for me that I was assuming it was. That wasn't what was really bothering me, frustrating me, concerning me. It wasn't getting ‘lost in the word-crowd.' What was concerning me was my own relationship to words and wording. I had become an unattentive lover of words and what they represented, stood for, held, carried.

Check this: It's like saying, when having an intimacy issue, that "The problem is not that everyone is having sex. It is not what others are doing that I have issue with. It's me." My own projection is coming home. I have been way too rushed of late in order to fully eroticize the Muse's offerings: the word-world creating. In short, I am not loving each and every word-entity enough. I am not involved in shaping the words with such sweet and soft caresses. I have been far too much in a rush to get past each word in order to make a larger point. I have been an abstract lover (which is no lover at all!)-loving words from afar.

It's not that I ever stopped being in love with the written word as a form of communication-i.e., as a medium through which love itself is transmitted. I was loving all along. I never stopped loving. I just let other things get in the way of love. I let other priorities trump loving as a fully present, totally eroticized awareness that would shape each word-entity with total Presence.

All the words were there. All the signs were present. All the symboles were linked together in long contextually-dependent sequences that communicated meaning. And yet, those sequences had no juice... no power... no passion... no intensity!

It's not unlike going through all of the ‘motions of sex.' You can have all the mechanics down. You can know the way to move. You can read Men's Health and pocket all of those secret strategies for being a better lover, and yet... and yet... if you are not Fully PRESENT with TOTAL AWARENESS it matters not at all. Your motions and movements and progressions from one series of rhythmic patterns to another series of rhythmic patterns will gain you little in the way of being a Skillful Lover.

The above applies to wording and writing and gardening and friending and flowing and working and even worrying. Total Awareness. Full Presence. Unmediated Directness to the Immediacy of the Present Process fulfilling its promise thorugh you... with you... as you... becase of you.

I am stopped in my tracks right now. The rhythm is slower. I realize that I was getting caught up in the flow of being something/someone other than fully eroticizing and engaging Lover to the Every-Momentness of This Here... and This Here... and This. I was moving to rhythms of hurriedness and rushedness and speed and the meth-like zoned-outness of people running past/through/around each other in the name of ‘Life.'

The best lovers are not in a hurry to get anywhere. The word is a nipple and you don't rush over/past/beyond the nipple to get to the clitoris, or rush past the clitoris to get to coitus. You flow with the place where you are at right now-be it nipple or clit or scrotum or armpit or ear lobe until you feel the pulsating rhythm guiding you to move along.... to breathe in your traveling along the countours of your Beloved's Body.

(these words are part(s) of the Beloved's Body)

Stop!

Linger here

...and here...

...and

Listen...

To

Breathes

Rise...

Fall...

Arching over...
????

Smooth surfaces

Gliding...

Effortless...

...Love

Slow Love

I do need to slow-down. I can't be a man proud of himself if I am rushing through/past/around everyone and everything that matters. I can't hold my head high and feel like I have done everything I can... or should... or ought to... if I am caught up in the rhythms of a mad-culture that has forgotten how to live/love erotically.

Truth is, that is what drew me to the lifestyle I have lived for the past 13 years-when I chose to leave the faster-pace of the city to live in these Walden-like woods. I felt the need to 'slow-down' and ‘take it easy' so that I could be a better Lover. I could feel the inspiration behind Thoreau's erotic invocations. I could feel the love and the awareness of how Thoreau related to his surroundings (funny that no one ever mentions the deeply erotic nature of Thoreau's writing and life-well, maybe me!).

Think about it. Someone who takes a step back and slows down is really someone deciding to be a better lover. It is someone who wants to savour and enjoy the delicated fruits of the Godhead in a way that is not often possible when your tempo is being accelerated by what one authour calls our ‘rapid-fire culture.'

The Presence Of Love

This is the key for me; this is what I have just discovered-though somewhere inside I have known this all along, and it is really a matter of re-orienting myself to a personal truth that has never not worked): namley that it matters not what speed the world lives at, or what others do with their time and whether or not they rush past these words in hope of arriving at the supernal word to end all words. What matters to me is that I move slowly and gently enough in my world so that the people, places, things, entities, animals, beings, creatures, (and yes, words!) are loved in their fullness. And that comes from me fully injecting awareness into every word that issues forth from my lips, every thrust that comes forth from my hips, every act that arises... every moment infused with Presence... to the extent that I, as Lover, am able to move in exquisite harmony with all others as if they were the Beloved's Body.

Every breath...
...touching down...

Landing on
soft earth

...
quietly...

Awakening
to
sounds beckoning...

Lovers...

Caress

The
Only thing
there
IS.

Could be that I have been in a bit of a panic the last few months. Expecting my first child, then becoming a parent a couple of months ago, has maybe pushed me to stretch and grow in some beneficial ways. I mean, there is nothing like becoming responsible for a little one to light a fire under your ass!

The trouble is I feel I have been running around like I have so many fires to put out. And that hurried, always-on-the-go state is leading me to now ask myself, 'What kind of example do I want to set for Uriah?' 

Do I want to get a lot done, and yet not ever be where I am at because I am always moving on to the next thing? Do I want to--well-intentioned as it may be--become that which I not-so-secretly despised as a child: which was my own father's absence, due to his many involvements and activities?

It may be the danger inherent in becoming a father. There have been several philosophers, David Deida among them, who have mentioned that that 'Masculine Principle' is bound up in doing and achieving. I wonder if this Masculine Principle can be all the more amplified when you have a child: that for many men the impetus to do in the name of providing can become all the more intense; that having a child can make a man more driven (and even if he was driven before!).

My suspicion is that it does happen in more instances than just my own. I don't feel that I am the only one who has had a child and then all of a sudden felt this sense of urgency coming to surround his activities and involvements with the world. Nor do I get the sense that I could be alone in coming to question whether or not those Masculine drives are getting out of hand.

What matters more to me than achieving any worldly success, is the example that I set for Uriah. What kind of a man do I want to be? How do I want to move? Do I want to move gracefully through the world, or do I want to move in a panic, as if there is never enough time and always too much to do?

I know I am showing Uriah--even at his young age--what kind of a man I am. And, I have to say, I am not entirely happy with what I have been showing him. Sure, he's got some nice clothes and some cool stuff. He has just about anything a 2-month old could want (which generally boils down to Momma's Breasts!). He is well-taken care of. And that is awesome. I am happy for that. Yet there is something I am not happy about and that is the 'speed' with which I have been living and the pace at which I have been moving through the world. It's not like I am on 'crack' or anything. I'm not smoking 'crystal meth' either!

It's different... a different speed I am talking about. It is about how one carries one's self. I don't want to be someone who looks like they are in a hurry to get through the day. I want to be free to stop and smell the roses. I want to be free to relax and unwind at various points in the day. I want to be free to not have to be living life in a rush.

And that's what I am going to do. Or... uhm .... be. I am going to once again be someone who brings a more relaxed and graceful attitude to wherever I go. I am going to be where I am at--instead of feeling so pushed to cram more and more into each and everyday as if my son's life depended on it. 

I guess I can see how many men get pulled into a vortex of doing that separates them from their children... their families. I am not sure this has been discussed anywhere in the way I am sensing this: that I can better understand now how things can go terribly wrong early in a father's life as a father. The impetus to provide is so great that the father ends up providing well, and being almost totally absent. Funny thing is, those fathers, like myself, all probably feel that they are doing the 'right thing.' 

It's the father's instinct, and like a mother's instinct to love and nurture can go too far and turn into smothering, a father's instinct to provide can turn into its own cruel pathology. 

I have set a couple of intentions very firmly in my heart and mind. After considering what I have the last couple of days (not being so rushed, another panicked parent, slowing down, relaxing) I have come to realize that I need to let others be where and what they want to be. if others want to feel rished and panicked and always on edge and go... go... go... then I need to let them be that. I can't control the pace of the world in a social or cultural context.

I can, though, very much decide the kind of example I want to set for Uriah, the kind of life I want to lead--one that offers better relationships and a deeper form of relating to everything and everyone, precisely because I am not zooming rapidly over the surface of everyone and everything--and be true to that. I don't, in other words, need to be in the 'rat race.'

Even if I am a parent and I have more responsibility than I ever have before, it doesn't necessarily mean that I need to feel this desperare urgency to ensure that 'my child has everything.' I'd much rather have the peace of heart and mind that comes with a more laid-back attitude and posture than offer my son all sorts of material luxury and be forever 'on the go' as a result. 

Funny for me to think that having a son would conspire to make me more laid-back and graceful. I can see how the opposite can be the case. I considered that yesterday (Day 10). Parenting can easily overwhelm the best of us to the point where all sense of balance and equilibrium is lost. I bet there are parents who never recover from that initial shock and therefore spend the rest of their lives running as fast as they can to catch up... and never doing so.

Doesn't that sort of remind you of that scene in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland where Lewis Carroll has the Red Queen say that in her dominion 'everyone runs as fast as they can, but nobody ever goes anywhere.' 

I guess my point is.... then why run? If you aren't really going anywhere (if as the non-dualists put it 'There is nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no one to be...') then why bother with the freneticism of the race? Why not chill and enjoy the scenery? Why not chill and enjoy the company? I mean, how much can you enjoy your lover if you are always out of breath? How much can you enjoy your kids if you are always looking at them over your shoulder? Do you really want to get to the end of the line and realize you were never where you were at; that you were always living with 'your eyes on the prize'---scanning the scene up ahead to see where you were going to make your next move?

Why not let the world go? Why not the spinning of the Earth's axis be less about a race and more about a dance---where rhythm's flux and flow... where the pace rises and falls as in a good piece of music? Why have to 'rush' all the time? 

Why not linger? Why not linger over the melody? Why not linger over these words and let them caress your tired soul> Why not linger over your next bit of food, your next drink of water, your next touch? Why not reach out to others and linger in the reaching out so that it is not a quick, jabbing entrance into the world.... but a soft, elegant---though confident and firm gesture... enacted by one who really gets that 'THIS IS IT?'


Linger....

....feel

the lingering:

Oh, how good it is;

...how sweet is
the melting
away
of the 
rush to be
elsewhen and where.

Linger....

in the cracks...

between the thoughts...
....of...
...what's...
...next.

Linger...

...in 
...the
....gently

...flowing

...River Of ????.

   

I hit the revelatory jackpot today. I mean, I really struck gold in terms of personal insight. It happened to me while I was walking out of the house I have been building with Dan. As we were heading out to the garage to cut some backer-board for the walk-in shower I was listening to Dan talk about how he ‘felt sick' and was ‘just not into working.' He said he ‘didn't feel like being productive.' And that is when it hit me. Wham! That Aha! moment. That lightbulb appeared over my head in the cartoon that is my life and I knew why... immediately... non-conceptually.... like a flash.

Arising in awareness was the realization why I so enjoy being an artist. This is it. The big Aha! No matter how you feel, as an artist, you can be productive, i.e., you can create... make art... be artistic. You can, in short, still work and work just as good as you ever have. Sometimes you can work even better when you are feeling down... blue... confused... or out of sorts.

Whether you are feeling happy or sad, sailing on top of 'cloud nine' or 'down in the dumps'... no matter what 'state' you are in psychologically you can create out of that complex of emotions.

This is a fact of life for the artist that is just not so for most other jobs/professions (with a few exceptions). For instance, in building a house you can't be productive and draw upon a depressed emotional palette in order to do good work. You end up with a severely depressed house if you do... and that's not good! Neither can you engage yourself emotionally-in all the varitieties of states that we traverse as human-beings-while doing the same thing day-after-day on an assembly line.

A prime example of what I mean to indicate is that of the perpetually peppy salesperson. To have to be on such an ‘upbeat' all of the time has to be brutal-not to mention annoying for most of the rest of us. Yet isn't that what is required of the salesperson, i.e., you have to act happy? Even if you don't feel ‘on top of your game' you have to ‘put on the face' and suck it up like a real pro.

Problem though. You can see this coming, right? The fact that artificial regeneration of a limited range of emotional states is hazardous to one's psychological health and well-being. It may be why people become addicted to various substances ranging from coffee and lattes to meth and coke. Because the body-mind (psyche) is not producing, in a natural way, the job-specific mood or emotional state, it then becomes a daily requirement that one ingest the proper substance that will mock-in an artificially induced way-the corresponding psychological state needed to perform the job in an effective manner (or as effective as is possible under the given circumstances).

I suspect that is one of the dangers inherent in most of our careers and professions: the narrow, overly limited, range of psychological states deemed acceptable for that job.

Fortunately the artist does not have this problem (though he or she may have others). For the artist there is a much wider psychological palette that one can draw from in terms of work. You can be depressed and touch something deep in depressed people that will help them know they are not alone. The next day you can offer up a vision of something beatific and glorious. There are no limits to the job-specific psychological terrain that the artist calls home. That's why I so love being an artist. I can wake up everyday and know-beyond a shadow of a doubt-that whatever I am awakening in the midst of is perfectly acceptable... and above all .... workable.

Whether I am writing songs to be sung or I am writing essays, or I am writing an e-book, or a traditional book there is an open invitation to bring to the table whatever one is at that moment and have it be transformed into something beautiful, truthful, revealing, sympathetic, touching, or resonant.

As an artist, you can wake up in any mood and know that the table will welcome you-that you will not be sent home. The easel, the canvas, the lens, the piano-they are all openly receptive to what you have to bring. They work with you. And that is an awesome thing to know. It is so awesome... to me at least... because it is so rare. In what other profession are you allowed to be depressed to the point that you can transform those feelings into pure beauty? In what other profession can you be pissed off at the world and thereby reflect everyone's potential for anger, also giving them release and comfort in the fact that you are expressing and giving body, shape, and rhythm to truths that they may find hard to express. So you do it for them. You let them know you are with them. That there is community not just in the heights of heaven but in the depths of samsaric hell too.

So all it boils down to is this: that an artist is able to be more psychologically authentic... more emotionally whole and complete... more honest and self-reflective... more true... than others are-just because of the vocation they happen to have.

Of course, it doesn't mean that all artists are this way-just that all artists have that potential available to them more than say, a salesman who has a vested interest in getting you to believe something he may not totally be buying himself.

Yesterday's insight, explained here, was quite profound for me. I had never before been able to put into exact words why so many jobs I have had over the years have felt so damn stifling. Now I realize why. Now I understand that any daily activity that is going to consume 6, 8, 10, 12, or more hours of your day-and does not engage you holistically, integrally (mind, body, soul, and spirit) is going to feel like a straitjacketing of your total self at some point. Eventually you will feel cramped in some way or other. The clothes of that job just will feel like a total and complete drag to put on.

I have approached the subject of work before, writing about what I was calling, at the time, Integral Work. To my understanding Integral Work is a topic very much fit for the 21st Century. One often hears about discovering a type of job or career that makes one money, that allows one to find success in material terms (mind and body issues), yet one does not hear often the topic of work being discussed in such a way that mind, body, soul, and spirit are given equal merit. After all, if we spend more time at work than we do anywhere else-doing anything else-then any deficit experienced during those hours is going to have a tremendous effect on our whole lives. So many patterns are ingrained and habits conditioned that much more deeply while we are at work. Which is why it could be argued very convincingly that work is the one area where we can exert the greatest impact on not just our own lives, personally speaking, but on the world as a whole, collectively speaking.

For instance, how would the ways we work change and adapt if we took into account not just the bottom-line voices of the mind and the body, but the subtle hunches and promptings of soul and spirit? Would our day be different? I think our day (or night, for that matter) would undergo a profound transformation in the manner in was a) experienced, and b) unfolded.

We might find ourselves more energized if there places of set aside for devotion and worship where we worked. Or what if there were brain-storming stations where we could go and be playful and child-like, exploring and engaging the Muse, so that the Muse were honoured at work, thereby allowing the Muse to have a voice in the work-place?

Or what if we were able to engage spirit at work and pray or meditate at various junctures throughout the day? Why are prayer and meditation seen as averse to work and counter-productive? Is that an unexamined bias on our part? Is that a cultural assumption, which under closer scrutiny and analysis stands to be crushed under the weight of volumes of evidence put forth by monasteries and ashrams throughout the generations that clearly states that prayer and meditation are fine combination for work and the working?

In fact, my argument is that without bringing soul and spirit into the equation (as mind and body are fairly well engaged in most work situations-well, maybe not the body for those who are involved in overly geeky, intellectual, cubicle-confined affairs of the head), all our work suffers. If we could find new ways-novel ways-to engage all the faculties we carry inherent within us then that is all the more energy and resources we have available to us for the many tasks at hand that confront us on any given workday.

Soul Discrimination

When I think of work as it is now-the current cultural formulations that dictate to us what is work and what isn't-I get the sense that most of our day is spent living in a compartmentalized fashion and manner. We are forced into a position of keeping things separated and divided in our lives. Like I am arguing, for the most part present-day constructions of work are devoid of soul and spirit. Thus we end up feeling depressed and depleted, degraded and dumbed-down. Then, after our work day is over we are in a headlong rush to try and activate and engage those aspects of our self that were left to atrophy during the workday. It is just such a state of conflicted affairs that most people find themselves in. I would even say that most people-the majourity, an astounding majourity!-are living a life of ongoing, chronic, seemingly unending conflict.

The whole self-the Integral Man or Woman-is not wanted at work. There is no place for the Wholistic You at work. There is no job for the soul of you, the spirit of you. Various emotions are off-limits while at work. You must deny certain aspects of yourself and keep a repressive hand on them throughout the day to make sure they don't leak through and... uhm... disrupt your work.

Isn't that an assumption? Isn't that a crude, unexamined notion on our parts: that a part of who we are is going to be disruptive so we have to keep that part (or parts) at bay?

To me, it seems the more likely course is that if we have to spend copious amounts of time repressing certain living aspects of the Total Man or Woman then we are going to be draining ourselves of energy that we could better use for some task other than repression and suppression!!

This is, to me, what far too many people-managers, executives, advisors, business gurus, consultants-fail to understand: that if you give someone a few minutes to engage their spirit or soul then that person is usually freed up to work more effectively. They are not pulling that draining weight of soul/spirit-denial behind them. You know, that nagging feeling of wanting to engage an aspect of your Total Self, and yet being denied that opportunity the whole work day-because that aspect has no place at work, it is not allowed-so that you have to literally push yourself just to get through the day. Then you arrive at home and feel so depleted that you may not even remember what was bothering you so bad at work. Too long has its voice been smothered and shut out. Too long has its message been denied.

And too many years of living like that and you could find yourself on your deathbed knowing in your heart of hearts that you never lived in any active way the Truth of Your Deepest Self. Your soul feels all withered and shriveled up like a fruit left on the vine too long. You didn't pick it. You wanted to. But the job you had didn't allow it. That fruit was forbidden. The soul was left out of the workplace. Spirit had to sit and wait for you... and wait for you... and wait for you.

And that empty place inside? Where do you think it comes from? How do you think it got there? What do you suspect is the reason for its existence? Could it be because a part of you-an essential part, a vital part, a necessary function of your Totality-is lost... homeless and unemployed. Soul and spirit wandering the streets like beggars because mind and body rule Wall Street, dominate Madison Avenue, own the Pentagon, rule on Capitol Hill.

Soul and spirit
wander
the street.

The beggars
bellowing
their incoherent
babble.

Speaking a language
foreign
to ears congregating
in the
bored-room.

Of course, there doesn't need to be the kinds of discriminatory practices prevalent in the workplace that I am contending do indeed exist. I would even go so far as to say that there is a damn-nhear global epidemic (oh know, not another one!) of discrimination against soul and spirit in the workplace.

Ask yourself:

Can you openly pray at work?
Can you actively meditate?
Do you feel comfortable honouring the spiritual and soulful aspects of your Total Being?

Or, do you feel these are denied at work and you must excercise your spiritual and soulful capacities elsewhere? And if that is the case, why? Why does there need to be such a steady, constant denial-actualized daily all across the world, in diverse settings, all sharing this one constant: soul and spirit need not apply?

Why must that be the case? Does it need to be? And if not, then what's preventing us from eploying more fully soul and spirit at work?

Funny to think how work offers us some of the greatest moments of fulfillment and satisfaction in our lives, while also offering us some of the most humiliating and degrading experiences that I would personally not wish on my worst enemy. For me, by far, the worst jobs I had were in factories. Industrial Revolution era-jobs suck. I know those jobs provided the majour impetus behind the Age of Modernity, where nation-states became veritable Empires on Earth. Still, for me-my personal experience-the industrial/manufacturing sector was the most mind-numbing, soul-destroying atmosphere that I have ever been in.

That daily grind-where your soul feels like it is slowly withering away, atrophying with every punch of the clock-was never anything I was happy with. Sure, I was able to make excellent money at the time. In fact, compared to all of my friends I was the higest-earner at the time. I could bring home $600 to $700 every 2 weeks back in 1988. In small Michigan farming community that was a lot. I drove a nice new, 4-wheel drive truck, had lots of musical equipment, could dress sharp. Every material luxury I could possibly want at that time was mine for the taking.

And yet, I would get up at 4:50 AM every morning in order to be at the shop by 6AM and it was hell to do so. I was never excited to go to work. My soul was not on fire. I was not enthusiastic about my job. I started to get that ‘Man cannot live by bread alone.' That truth was shining in my awareness like a neon sign lighting up the Las Vegas Strip.

So I quit. I stopped working at the factory. Only to be unemployed and out of work for a few weeks-running out of money-and then being forced to go back to work at some other factory. I did this in the Metro Detroit area. I did this in Saginaw. I did this in Lansing. I did this in that whole establishment known as the ‘Auto Industry.'

I always hated it too. I hated the mentality fostered at those places. I hated the chauvinism. I hated the prejudice and racism. I hated the gay-bashing and ethnic jokes. I hated the whole red-neck vibe of the places I worked at (and yes, even an manufacturing plant that seems integrated from someone looking in from the outside, on the inside there is massive segregation and racial divisions).

After awhile it began to hit me that the atmosphere of the Industrial Revolution-era job is itself a debilitating climate relative to certain fundamentals of human dignity and goodness. Those atmospheres of the Industrial Revolution-era job are not conducive to seeds of human kindness and compassion, generosity and friendliness. It is as if they bring out the worst in people. It is as if the Industrial Revolution-by virtue of the job atmosphere it created-led to the creation of a bunch of personal and public hells.

The fact is that unhappy... soul-debilitated folks will spread that vibe around the community. I know that a lot of good-paying jobs have left America over the past 25 years through out-sourcing. The up-side of that fact of early 21st Century America is that there is an opportunity to create new job-climates and work-atmospheres that are conducive to human decency and dignity. We can create new forms of meaningful work and industry that are not so ‘hardening to the human heart' and so ‘callousing to the soul.'

Loss As Opportunity

The tragedy of displaced workers who find their manufacturing sector jobs going overseas is also the possibility brought about by a new day dawning. We can now ask ourselves-be honest with ourselves about the fact that the great age of American manufacturing was not so great!-what kind of jobs we want to have, would love to get up in the morning for, and will leave a smile on our face as we go to sleep at night.

From an strictly economic perspective it is a hardship. The high-paying manufacturing job is a relic. It won't come back in the same way it existed in the past. And yes, this will lead to depressions and suicides and bankruptcies-as I am sure it already has in countless cases. But that is not the whole story. The other part of the story is that people can grow and have their talents fostered in ways that the Industrial Revolution-Era job did not allow.

We can plant new seeds of hopeful plants that bear fruit good for the soul; for the soil we are planting those seeds in now is not the same toxin-laced desert the the Industrial Revolution-Era job was. And that is, I am saying, a profoundly good thing: that the manufacturing loss, is a human blessing.

(P.S. I also wonder what all this may mean for those nations like India and China experiencing their first real Industrial Revolution?)

I'm getting set to complete the CD I have been working on now since early February. I'm getting so excited about it. I think the songs are great. And the concept behind the album is span-tacular! (just wait... you'll wonder why no one has done it... or even thought of it... before! It's that cool! I swear!)

Anywho, I am writing this quick little note to explain why there will be few, if any, writing posted here the rest of this month. Until the CD is finished it will be my primary artistic focus. So writing is going to be sidelined for a couple weeks at best, and a month at worst. I may get a chance to come by and post an update on how the project is going. I hope I am able to do that much. But any daily entry--such as I have been doing--is something that is going to have to take a backseat for awhile.

If you check this site there may be an occasional rotation of songs--as I include new material from the CD. I may also use it to put up B-sides and assorted tracks that didn't make onto the CD, yet deserve to also be heard (every song needs a little love and affection too ya know!).   ; o ) 

I also have in the works some interesting ideas for the coming summer (top-secret now). So please do stick around, drop by now and then, come back often over the next few months. See what's in store. I promise it will be... at the very least... interesting.   ; o )

My Heart-felt Thanks To Everyone Who Has Come Here, And Especially To Those Who Have Come Back.

Big Huggggggs to You All,
David Jon

I have a few minutes before making a phone-call to ask some technical questions regarding the artwork on the CD. It's kind of weird for me to be so excited about something so silly and small as a phonecall. It is something that I would have hated a few years ago. I didn't want any part of the business-side of art--or the technical-side that comes with getting one's work out to a wider audience. I just wanted to write songs. Let others mess with the details.

But now here I am dancing with the devil in the details and loving it. Maybe it's because I am in the studio till late at night mixing songs and touching up vocal tracks and I wake up brave and ballsy. I believe in these songs. I love 'em. I would pay to listen to them! They get me excited!

And perhaps that is the difference that makes all the difference in the world: that I am eager to involve myself in activties that I may not of in the past because this time I really am truly excited and ethusiastic about what I am doing. Which means that the work I have yet to do is not work at all. It is a labour of love. I love making this phone call I am about. I love being involved. I love how good this is all going to be.

(I wonder if that is when we are truly in the 'flow' of our own genuis. We don't have to force our 'self' to do things. Life seems to have a momentum all its own. Work gets done, but because there is minimal--if any--self-consciousness involved, the sense is that there is no one working. Things just start happening. We wake up one day and realize that there has been no struggle in this at all. And yet, great things have transpired. How amazing!)

May we all rest in the flow of our own unique genuis.

Did you hear that? That pounding sound? That's my head banging against the wall!

Ugh!! I feel like Charlie Brown at this moment in time. Like my best efforts are getting me nowhere at the moment. Like the harder I try the worse the result.

Yeah, I know... I was all eager-beaver and totally excited a few days ago. It was genuine. That sense of excitement was authentic. it's just that in the last couple of days I have hit a technical sanfu, and come to realize, in a very personal way, that the greatest forms of artisitic expression can be rendered meaningless apart from a proper vehicle for their transmission.

Van Gogh without paints and a brush. Beethoven without a piano. Bach without musical notation, so he could translate the interior into an exterior correlate---an exterior easily shared and conveyed with others... others spanning races and ethnicitis and generations.

Take away the medium and... uhm... well... you have no message, do you?

This has been brought to my attention in attempting to put the finishing touches on my own interiors rendered exterior. I want to create a package that people want to open. I want to create a surface that invites people to the depths that lie within and beyond that surface. I want to generate an appearance that goes beyond all appearances and stirs the seeds of enlightenment lying fallow within humanity to rise, to unfold, to stretch their own eager longings into something more than just this 'waiting on emptiness' spiel that I have heard so much about.

That's where my snag has come. Not in the depths but in creating an inviting appearance that draws the prospective listener all that much deeper. You know, that surface that a person sees and intuits that there is some 'thing' worthy of their time. IN this sense, I see now more than ever how much SURFACES MATTER!! It is not about the image in and of itself, or the appearance presented to the public. It is about whether or not that image is inviting. Does the APPEARANCE SPEAK! Does the IMAGE INVOKE an eagerness, such that the observer no longer wants to just observe the surface.... but actually dive into the surface and feel the depths for him or herself.

And so... thank God for those whose eye is skilled in images and appearances. I bow to those whose gift it is to be able to include depth and dimension in a flat surface, in a shallow appearance... that is.... in the final analysis... neither flat nor shallow.

'Breathe,' I remind myself, 'everything is going to be ok.'

'Relax,' I tell myself, 'everything is going to be just fine.'

Woke up at 5AM yesterday morning and drove 250 miles to help my parents move. Loaded a U-haul truck with everything from lamps to that ugodly sofa-sleeper, and an oak entertainment center that damn near was the death of us all. I have heard it said that 'moving' is the true test of love and friendship. That those who show up and the 'real friends' and 'true lovers'--and not those pathetic excuse-makers who talk about their back or their errands of their... uhm.... made up, on the spot, little of stories that always start with "Ooooohhhh, I would love to help you move.... but....'

For the sake of love and friends there are no.... 'buts!'   ; o )


Next Day

Today I am blessed with un-laoding the aforementioned U-haul. (I know, you would love to come and help... but... )   ; o )

You can relax. Hundreds if not thousands of miles is a perfectly good reason not to!! I accept that excuse as legitimate!   ; o)

The Good News

Upon arriving home last night I played the messages left on the answering machine and was promptly informed by Tracy (the drummer in Black Sheep) that we had been booked for a few more gigs. The first of these is Saturday May 6th in Atlanta (no, not that Atlanta!).  Atlanta, MI is where we will be playing. It'll be the closest we have played to home yet. I guess it means the 'rednecks' and 'hillbillies' are finally ready for us!

As it looks now we could have several more gigs booked throughout the year. There are a couple of establishments that are interested in booking us for several more gigs up through December. It means more people will get a chance to hear our kick-ass version of The Who classic  Baba O'Riley:

The exodus is here...
The happy ones are near...
Let's get together, before we get much older.... yeah ... yeah... yeah...


More Good News

I have virtually finished all the music slated for release very, very soon. The CD is going to be titled Samsara's Greatest Hits (featuring tracks like Going Global, Wandering, Ignorance, Anyone Remember?, The Ride, and The Wanting). I am stoked because the CD is destined to be a truly Zaadz-inspired project. I have sought out the help of some fellow Zaadzsters (who will be given full props!) in completing this project. I am excited to see how this all turns out. And especially stoked to see what kind of inspiration and creativity are going to be shared with you by the likes of ... Melissa ... and...  His Royal Coolness himself.


Which Reminds Me...

How great is it that we can support and encourage people who hold similar values... who want to make the world a better and brighter place for subsequent generations? How awesome is it that we can assist in each other manifesting our deepest dreams and desires while also actualizing our own skills and talents in the process? How great is it that a Zaadzster Revolution can literally sweep through all avenues of human creativity and culture? How spectacular is it that a Zaadz filmmaker can hook up with a Zaadz musician, so that one is supported and encouraged in providing a score to a film, while the other is supported and encouraged in shooting a video for the musician? How freakin' great is that!!

We can literally take nepotism and crony-ism to a whole new level. By enlisting and recruiting our friends and creative associates here at Zaadz we CAN TRANSFORM... culture.... society.... education... business... government... you name it. 

And think just how wonderful it is when you 'hook-up' with your felllow Zaadzsters in doing the Good Work. Just think of how magnified the energy becomes, how coherent the vision gets, how much more powerful the Good Work we are all doing gets. 

It's amazing because we are not fighting with the flow of others occupying different degrees of consciousness: we don't have to explain ourselves ad infinitum; nor do we need to convince others as to the rightness of our vision. Because here at Zaadz we all 'Get it!'
 
We know what this transformation is about and what it could potentially mean for the world--meaning, for generations to come.

And I for one am devoted to the possibility of numerous future projects with current Zaadzsters, as well as those Zaadzsters still looking for their home.

So let's rock it!!   ; o )

I am guessing--and this is just a guess on my part--that anyone who is involved, long-term, in a creative endeavour, where birthing something out of nothing takes place, has to go through a period of patient mothering.

Time to hold;
no pushing
now
enfolding seeds
in 
warming earth.

waiting...
...
waiting...

carrying
precious cargo;
clouds of glory
trailing
through
our insides

waiting....
....
waiting...

To mother further...
even as we
mother now.


Birthed In The Image & Likeness of The Primal Creator

We all mother possibilities, don't we? We are all mothers in one way or another. I don't say this to demean mothers who have laboured with children. Their gift is inestimable. At the same time, appreciating the inestimable worth of mothering in that sense (after all, where would each of us be without our mother---oh, I know, more successful and less-screwed up in the head!) in no way deprives us of being able to realize just how true it is that we are each ordained to mother possibilities and potentials in one way or another.

We can hold the future in our hands. Truth is, we do hold the future in our hands. The only remaining question is to what extent do we mother that future consciously--with love, care, nurturing, genuine affection, hope, appreciation, and grace--and to what extent do we remain un-conscious (or less than conscious) of the fact that we are mothering our own tomorrows.

How are we carrying the baby of tomorrow? Are we neurotic mother who is anxious, fearful, stricken with feelings of inadequacy--that we can neither care for our 'self' let alone our 'future?'

Perhaps how we have been mothered is how we mother our own possibilities? I have never really thought of that until now. It sure makes sense to me. It makes sense that we learn how to carry and hold and contain and warm those seeds of further potential and possibility in the same way that a mother carries and holds and contains and warms her children.

With warmth the seeds of our potential unfold. We need to be warm-hearted to unlock the frozen potential in ourselves, as well as in others--provided we are given to mother their potential in some way. Germination requires warming. We have to thaw out the capacities we carry within us through love. That patient, consistent, warm heat that is a mother's bosom is symbolic of what each of us is capable of. Imagine a world where we patiently held one another's potential in that way. Imagine a place like Zaadz, where we come and shower one another with this kind of patient, consistent, warmth that nurtures not only our own development as individual people, but our collective development as a species. Imagine what kind of world we would live in if we all mothered one another patiently.

Wasn't it Carl Gustav Jung who first insinuated that the human psyche contained all possibilities; that we, as psychological beings, were mother and father, hero and goat, puer and senex, betrayer and betrayed?

There is something a-sexual about the human psyche. Or perhaps I should say that there is something trans-sexual, and trans-gendered, about the human psyche. We are--psychologically speaking--both male and female, both masculine and feminine. We are capable of both the receptive and the active poles of consciousness.
 
Tibetan Buddhist religious iconography often portrays a coupling of the male and the female in way that indicates the possibilities Jung also pointed to: that opposites can join; that there is a complementary relationship between the masculine and feminine; that psychologically speaking the pinnacle of human development arises in a sort of sacred lovemaking on the internal plane, at ever subtler and subtler levels.

It's as if human consciousness becomes fused through an exquisite embrace of what are often interpreted as being polar opposites lined up in some sort of warring stance that makes conflict not only inevitable, but seem also to be something quite natural. Jung and the iconopgraphy of Tibetan Buddhism, of Tantra, state that the masculine/feminine bitch-slapping fest is not necessary. In fact, that state of affairs is the lesser-state--the embodied acts of delusion and ignorance, the conflicts bourne of separation run amok. It is the dissociated psyche that lives out that conflict. It is the masculine-onlyness of what Saniel Bonder calls hyper-masculinity. And no doubt there is a hyper-feminity that is just as degrading and depleting as its masculine counterpart.


Art As Integrative Therapy

One of the principal ways that I have been led to believe we can all access, for purposes of increased psychological unity and functional integration, is through the pathways of art. By creating songs, poems, sculptures, letters, signs, pictures, images, we are involved in an inherently erotic activity that requires we access both the masculine and feminine poles of consciousness. In the simplest terms I can put it, it requires that we are empty enough to receive (feminine) inspiration--that we become impregnated with ideas and insights, intuitions and hunches--which are then followed up on with some skillful action (masculine) in order for that original insemination of the psyche to become materialized into some sort of actual substance; substance that we can then share with the world... with others... and lovers.

Creating, then, is like a dance. We have to be able to give and take. Art is not always about leading. Nor about being led. Any artist worth his or her weight in gold will tell you that this holds true: that there are times where we let go and wait to be impregnated with some sort of seed; just as there are times when we need to have a warrior's spirit in seeing to it that the seed is protected and defended from foreign invaders, pests and threats. It's like your inner feminine is the holder and container of your images while the inner masculine stands as the guardian protecting that sacred chalice holding the New Wine that Christ spoke about each of us becoming drunk on.

(warning: somewhat erotic content follows)

As I reflect on the artistic process this morning, there is a degree of eroticism and sexuality that leap to the fore. Just as the most erotic moments of our own lives have involved various rhythms and tempos, so, too, does the artistic process--in its ultimate manifestation--also involve various rhythms and tempos. Good art, like good sex, is not meant to be a mechanical repetition of one type of movement or expression repeated ad nauseaum.

For instance, have you ever heard a new album by an artist that you have enjoyed over the years, and you cna literally hear them 'going through the motions?' To me, that is like sex that is mechanical. Someone hell-bent on trying to repeat their former glory is trying to recreate a moment than can never be. Good art, like good sex, demands that we be involved in the present to a degree that time does not enter the equation: we are not going somewhere (trying to get off, trying to create some 'thing;' nor are we trying to re-create a moment or 'thing' we have already been and done--no matter how fond we may hold it all in our memory).

Presence. This is what is required. And when Presence is in its fullness and immediacy, there is no time. Art becomes timeless. Love-making becomes timeless. Traces of Eternity enter into our art and our sex, our creating and our erosicizing. No past. No future. No history to overcome. No goal to achieve. Just this. This fullness that ebbs and flows, that rocks and rolls, that rises and falls, that undulates and oscillates. Just this Timeless Dance of Many Faces relishing their Eternal Nature; re-membring their own Timelessness in, as, and through one other.

And if we are fully present so that Presence outshines any and all reflections in time, then who we are and what we are doing--whether making love or making art--become these processes imbued with Timelessness to a degree that others are left feeling some unmistakable something. The audience tastes the Timeless. Our lover transcends the vagaries of time and the ticking-tocking of a world running out of time. Meaning, that to the degree we are embodied Presence as we flow in the fluid mediums of sex and/or art we embed a Realization of THAT in the ecstasy of its transmission.

It's why good sex and good art are both widely known as capable of inducing 'mind-blowing' experiences. Time falls away. Every 'thing' falls away and there is just this openness.... just this clearing... just this... horizonless vista of unfettered awareness resting in its own eternality.

Can we be ravished by the Spirit of God? Can we be undone---stripped lovingly, taken fiercely--by an Emptiness that seeks to consume all that is not essential relative to the life we think we are meant to live? Is it possible to be f*&ked so hard and so good that we are left proclaiming 'YES!... YES... YES!! Oh GOD YES!!'

Or do we live with walls, in a self-enclosed isolation of seeming psychological impenetrability? Shall we man the borders of the human psyche and fend off all potential intruders, for fear that the foreign invader--the unknown, the mysterious, the transcendent--is hell bent on stealing from us, robbing us, leaving us deaf, dumb, and blind?

What if we are broken down--and broken into--for the purpose of the entrance of Grace? What if our borders must needs collapse not because something precious from within needs to leave us, so much as there is being made a point of entry? What if holes in our psyche, leaks in our emotional dams, are portals for the Primordial? What if we are cracked open and left seemingly bloodied and bruised in the process so that we might be glorified!

What if 'getting f*&ed over royally is the best thing that has ever happened to us? What if we are prone to looking at it all ass backwards: that we assume loss as we are broken rather than fulfillment?

What if the psychological pain we so often feel as a result of our world 'cracking open' is due not so much to what is happening to us as to what we have spent so much time erecting? What if the walls of self-protection--the self-contraction that spiritual savant Adi Da has oft-pointed to as the chronic... as well as universal... dilemma of humanity--we have spent so much time and labour in maintaining come timbling down, and through our identification with those walls, we grieve the loss of something that is not us, and, in fact, is more that which has rendered us poor and bereft?

Walls don't just keep some 'things' in, walls also keep stuff out! Walls can prevent gifts from coming into our lives. Walls can also prevent us from being ravished by God, screwed by the Sacred, f*7ed by the Formless, enlightened by the Emptiness. Walls can--am I really saying this?--give us a sense of our need to protect some valuable cargo (ideals, images, beliefs, fears, fantasies, desires, dreams, wounds, past hurts, traumas, trailing clouds of glory, and such). And yet, what may be happening is that we are indeed protecting some valuable and precious cargo.... but what if an even more precious and valuable truth... reality... awareness... realization... is denied access and entry because of those walls we have come to call I, me, my, and mine?


Keeping The God-World At Bay

Here is the dilemma, as I'll interpret it today:

1) There is a sense that we need to protect our 'self' against possible and potential threats to both the bodily self, as well as the psychological self.

2) This same 'self' that we sense a need to protect and preserve is also a 'self' that is fundamentally insufficient. This 'self' cannot maintain itself!!

3) So we have a 'self' that needs to be protected and preserved, yet, is unable to subsist all on its own. Which means that the 'self' requiring protection and preservation needs to dare opening to 'others' (other 'selfs' with their own needs for self-protection and self-preservation--which certainly ratchets up the complications of all of this!) in order to have its needs for self-preservation met.

4) Thus, the GodWorld that is both the source of our continued bodily/psychological existence is, at the same time (meaning, simultaneously!), felt as potentially threatening.

Little wonder, then, that humanity can be seen as such a f*&ed up species. We are a) defensive in relation to others and prone to self-contraction... and yet... we are required to open up to others to some degree in order to have our beloved little 'self' preserved!!

Given such a state of affairs as that it is a miracle that we are not all schizophrenic. For our very existence as a 'self' presents us with a seeming double-bind: open... close... open... close... relax... contract... relax... contract... shut out... let in... shut out... let in...

Somewhere, someone is going, 'Make up your friggin mind, would you!!?!!' But we can't. That's not how it works. Cellular existence of the kind that we are primarily constituted of is based upon the necessity for both opening and closing... relaxing and contracting. That's Life. The dilemma of the inside and outside. The inner and the exterior. What do we define as 'self' and 'not-self?'

What do we accept? Who do we reject? What do we open up to---hoping it will enter us, transform us, heal us? And who or what do we close up against, contract in the face of, generating the armour of the human body-mind?
 

This may not be realistic. At the same time, what is realistic. Is it realistic to expect a whole culture to change and forego slavery? Is it realistic to expect women to be given equal rights and protection under the law? Is it realistic to have freedom of speech and religion after millennia without such concepts ever having been canonized into law? Is it realistic for Gandhi to win back India for Her people without the need for military force and violence?

Is it realistic to for us to dream dreams: to take those subtle intuitions we have about possibilities---i.e., about how things could be--and turn those into plans of action, ways of life, modes of being, styles of relating? Is it realistic to imagine there is a better way to live and saner stance to take in relation to all sentient beings? Or are we just supposed to accept 'what is' as 'what must be.'


Isness Is Not Necessity

We want to accept 'what is,' right? It is spiritually correct to do so, isn't it? We hear about this acceptance and read about it and have been told about it from so many fronts--Eastern and Western, Buddhist and Self-help, AA and NA. We have felt this 'need for acceptance' hit us from so many angles that we may not ever begin to question what the consequences of our acceptance of 'what is' may hold for us... not to mention the wider world of which we are a part. It is just felt to be right... just ... necessary.

Accept what is.

But what if our ancestors had accepted oppression and felt that it was necessary? What if no one ever in the history of the world felt that there was a better way to live, a more sane approach to take, a more noble stance to embody, a more loving way to engage the world? What if every human-being had just accepted 'what is' as 'what needs to be?'

What if no one had ever said 'No!'

What if no one ever stood defiant in the face of seeming reality? What if no one disobeyed reality for the purpose of transforming a lesser reality (meaning, a less-inclusive reality... a partial reality... a fragmented, isolating, dissociated portion of the Real masquerading as the Totality of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness)? What if no one ever stood in the face of 'what is' and proclaimed that there was more to be had from reality? What if no one ever dared to point to vistas that open up before us into worlds that more directly express and embody our True Nature As The Unonconditioned and Unborn?

What if the world had nothing but 'realistic' people living in it? Would it even be fit for habitation?


Get Real!

What is really being expressed when someone tells us to 'Get real!' Aren't they really demand that we accept their definition of the 'what is' as the only definition of 'what is?' Are they not trying to bring us back to their partial version of reality?

And if we get 'too far out there' for others does it mean we are losing our minds... or might it mean that we are just losing touch with a reality that does not meet the standards of our own Spirit... in the hope of engaging a world that does?

This is something that every artist (and aren't all true artists dreamers and visionaries in some sense?) has to deal with: the grip of the collective human ego seeking to define 'what is' as 'what has to be.'


A Collective Lack Of Imagination

It is the collective human ego that we have to break free from if we are ever to be this generation's freedom-fighters and truth-tellers. It is required that we denounce the myopic limitations and short-sighted political paradigm that, for instance, demands War is necessary. That is the kind of lack of imagination we are up against. That is the kind of dream-less slumber and sleep that has had humanity locked in chains of oppressive regimes of constrained thought and imagination for way too long. And even though there have been gains made in Humanity's Capacity for Imagining Tomorrow Today... there is still a lot of dreaming we can do.

Once again, it is time to be un-realistic. And believe me... if you are... the children of tomorrow... and their children.... will thank you. Your name will become one whose mere mention lifts spirits and elevates thought to a whole new level. Your name... will earn its place in The Book Of Life (which is also called The Book of Dreamers).