Divine Masculine

An Meaningful Song for Men

2011-12-07T19:16:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, I accompanied a good friend to a concert that I never would have gone to on my own: to hear/see Keb' Mo', a singer I hadn't known of before, in one of Portland's best musical venues. It was delightful: an earthy, high-energy performance by an uber-cool musician.

Anyway, was particularly struck by one of his songs--one that captures a lot of how I interpret the "divine masculine"...which, at least, expresses my feelings about the women I have/do/will care for...and my wish for us all to be "wild and free":

You don’t need no fancy tricks
Painted eyes or glossy lips

I love you just the way you are
Hope you don’t mind my beat up car

You don’t need to change your dress
You don’t need to change your shoes

Don’t try to hide your natural looks
Forget about the cover -- let me read the book

Don’t get me wrong I like them heels
But the way I feel is the way I feel

You don’t need to change your dress
You don’t need to change your shoes

Go ahead be wild and free
you don’t have to shave yo’ legs for me.

Hunnybabe, don’t starve yourself
You’re lookin good, you’re lookin well

And I’m proud to have you by my side
Glad to have you in my life

You don’t have to clean my house
You don’t have to wash my clothes

Go ahead be wild and free
Cause you don’t have to shave yo’ legs for me

You’re an angel

You don’t have to read them magazines
You already know how to get to me

Just be yourself and I will too
That’s all we really have to do

You don’t have to be ashamed
You don’t have to hide your knees

Go ahead be wild and free
You don’t have to shave yo legs for me.

Now go ahead be wild and free
You don’t have to shave yo legs for me.

[song titled "Shave Yo' Legs"]

Long, Long Ago

2011-10-14T09:17:00.000-07:00

Have been writing a fairly autobiographical novel and took one scene straight from my current life. Here's an excerpt:

Underneath that is a potpourri of loose photos from many times and places. He ignores the temptation to browse through them and plunks them in a box on another shelf that already has a cache of photos inside. Turning around, he spots an old identification badge on the floor.

What in the world is this? he wonders. I am so young here. A photo from what feels like another lifetime looks back at him through plastic laminate.

It can't be from General Dynamics in Fort Worth, where he'd lied about his education and intentions and barely managed to get a job driving a fork lift in the heart of the military-industrial complex -- the largest freakin building he was ever inside of, working as a cog in the production of F-111 fighter planes for Vietnam -- for a few months until he saved enough money to fly back to Portland for Christmas, which somehow (miraculously) enabled him to avoid being drafted and sent to that same Vietnam (although he would have slipped across the border into British Colombia; he already had the how-to pamphlet with detailed instructions) as he navigated Peace Corps trainings post-graduate school. No, I was consciously trying to stay beneath the radar then since management was already so suspicious of me and my likely politics.

It has to be after Peace Corps and Brazil because he never wore his hair that long until he was back in the States. Finally he decides: long-term temp job, Bank of America, graveyard shift, when I added 20 pounds from vending machine pastries at 2 AM. Once he's pegged the time, he looks more deeply at the face captured here, a face that stirs a cauldron buried deep within.

Oh my god, was I really the most innocent 33 year old in all of San Francisco at that time?

Deciduous Days

2011-09-23T07:30:00.000-07:00

I no longer yearn for an evergreen life
static in its deceptive depiction of ongoing youth

Instead, I crave a full-seasoned run
not wanting to miss the vibrant, rich colors of my own Autumn
as I distill the juices of beloved life experiences into a
penultimate expression

letting myself
be infused with the
blood reds and
butterfly yellows
of my core self

while choosing
at last
to
be
fully
seen

Writing a New Story

2011-09-11T10:12:00.000-07:00

Time to write the story of my life anew, with no holding back and no rationalizations. No half-assed scenes or weak dialog.

Not really sure about the plot or even how much it matters

...as long as it's heart felt

...as long as the hearts feel.

Breathing

2010-12-20T09:38:00.000-08:00

My attention continues being drawn to my breath…something so fundamental …so automatic…so essential…yet often unnoticed.

It’s the archetypal initial act possible after emerging from the birth canal…the act that releases the need for the umbilical cord and enables each of us to be our own person…to take that first breath and then another…and another…

How many do I take in a lifetime? What other noticeable event in my life totals so many?

I’m increasingly drawn to breathing consciously, leveraging the power of breath to both alter my state of consciousness and revitalize myself. Various spiritual traditions make the most basic acts of our lives sacred and conscious: eating...sex…breathing.

True enlightenment, I suspect, arises not from the extraordinary but from the quite ordinary…from how we relate to the ordinariness of our lives.

But unlike conceptual health practices and spirituality, conscious breathing brings its own reward: it feels good...it feels right.

These markers guide me.

Funny...

2010-12-19T15:55:00.001-08:00

Humor is a tricky proposition. Too often I experience some people reflexively using humor to keep out of the underlying realities of their life. Easier to joke and let it be…let a numbness stay…than to truly be with the real feelings.

Having said that, I cannot imagine me, or the rest of humanity, surviving the next decade or so without an ongoing ability to laugh at ourselves loudly and often…to take in human folly unfiltered…our relentless ridiculousness…that has brought us deep into the midst of profound, increasing chaos…a dynamic that will either shake us awake…or else.

I truly believe in the power of humor. My second wife was probably the least humorous person I ever met…it was probably close to 20 years before I ever heard her say something with the intent to be funny. But in her hard-edged, Manhattan-bred, driven demeanor, she could laugh at things I said…and her ability to see the humor being pointed out in something enabled us to make the relationship relatively successful.

I have to find my own arrogance and myopia amusing…in order to find my way through the maze we’ve personally and collectively co-created for ourselves…in order to become able to see with somewhat greater clarity.

Missing Writing

2010-12-19T15:45:00.000-08:00

I’ve missed the writing…there’s a rhythm that gets going in me…in my hand, in my feelings and thoughts…my whole body…but more than a “rhythm” it’s more like a muscle…or, better, a channel…from some unknown place…that opens and lets these words flow through…that lets something come forth.

“I” quote unquote am not “creating” what does emerge.

I’m just being relatively still

…and opening.

And feeling grateful.

A Piece of Jewelry

2010-11-01T15:44:00.000-07:00

I’ve been wearing a pendant since 2001 when I became a distributor of the line they’re a part of…the first time I’d ever worn “jewelry”. Well, I guess I wore a ring for a short while after both high school and college…but not long in either case. My parents were fairly insistant that I get a ring as a senior in college, although I was pretty sure it would be a waste. And, as far as I can recall, Alice and I had simple wedding bands in my first marriage. Or, did we? I’m not sure. Does it really matter?

But the pendant was for health
…for energy and holistic wellness
…for helping keep me grounded
…and enhancing my personal vital force.

For me, those were clearly reasons for not caring what something hanging on a chain looks like or what anyone else would think.

The pendants emit “tachyon energy”…raw primal energy that’s definitely woo woo…but only a problem if I share that with people who would make comments. So the easiest path for years was to wear it on a 24-inch silver chain…which caused it to hang far down my chest…heart-center level. That basically kept it out of sight.

A couple of years ago, I noticed that I no longer felt really “off” when I forgot to put it back on…that my energy field seemed to be stable enough on its own to handle its absence. I also stopped taking it off as often after going with a 20-inch chain that held it higher, but still largely invisible.

Last Spring, I began a new relationship and realized that I was getting tired of managing the somewhat large quartz crystal in our lovemaking…stopping to take it off so I didn’t bang my partner as it swung wildly at times.

I switched to 18-inches which lifted it close to my neck…a chain with a new clasp that was a pain to unlatch…so I wound up finally accepting this facet of my life. Not only that, I decided to replace the medium size crystal with a longer, more powerful one since it was no longer such a hazard to a lover.

A small story…but one of some daring…daring to actually be who I am
…to be, at least, comfortable with my choices.

Optimism & Pathology

2010-10-31T12:39:00.000-07:00

I am distinctly skewed towards optimism…and in my decades-long span of being on an avowed “spiritual journey,” I have been fiercely positive-minded at times.

Most of the knee-jerkness has been let go, floating away in a stream of unrelenting reality…but that’s still how I tend to view things…something of a default mode.

Perhaps I’m unnecessarily setting up the next piece here...but am wanting to be clear of where I’m coming from as I look back at my life: there are aspects of myself that seem pathological from this distance: the profound shyness, depths of confusion and lack of confidence in engaging with Life, from my early years...my teens and twenties especially.

Am now struck by the disparity of being so “successful” in rapidly spitting out various “right” answers to school subjects and my own blindness in navigating Life…in grokking the male/female dance.

Perhaps that phrase contains the clue: I never danced (well, except for two memorably drunken occasions) until I walked into the ecstatic dance studio in downtown Portland on my 61st birthday, practically pissing my pants in panic as I stepped through the doorway.

I was literally dropping out of a conceptual life and taking initial steps towards an actually embodied life.

I really don’t know much from books any more…my body is increasingly guiding me. My body knows people better than my mind ever has… guiding me in ways that feel ever fresh.

Never Heard

2010-10-31T12:32:00.000-07:00

My mother never told me…much about ”relationships”…as in “being lovers.” Maybe from not having that broad a perspective herself…a whole life with one man…from 16 till his death...till her own death as far as I'm aware. And maybe because farm girls from McAlister didn’t grow up talking about such things with males, including their sons.

And then again, little else in life told me truth about that subject…informed me how to navigate such mysterious realms with an open heart…a heart connected to my pelvis.

Did I actually know that many people in the course of my journey who knew what I wish I could have known?

Was I even capable of hearing the realities of life if I had been told…clearly….explicitly?

There is ample evidence of my inability to handle that much truth in my early years and, indeed, my “early years” seemed to stretch for a painfully long time. Yet, as the I Ching reportedly observes, “perseverance furthers”…and I feel gratitude for persevering…in spite of the magnitude of the mystery…
….in spite of the degree of my doubts and confusion at times
…and the allure of fantasy over reality until recently.

It’s…what’s the adjective?…”ironic”...I guess…to be the age I am, when many peers feel their lives have literally passed, with resignation firmly setting in, and to feel finally free myself…
…free to begin again
…free of the massive conditioning
…free to love fully, at last.

Writing...

2010-10-31T12:23:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I started an effective evening writing class where Jennifer, the facilitator, gives us various prompts to focus our writing...which I sometimes follow and sometimes don't.

It helps a lot to be in a we're-writing-here container...to be around "serious" writers and have their feedback and encouragement...and to witness their own dedication...to be inspired by others.

With gratitude for the others in my life who are playing key roles in the series of posts that will hopefully continue here for some time.

Gene

Emerging...

2010-07-06T09:41:00.000-07:00

About 30 years ago, halfway through an intense 12+ year process of learning/working with inner light/fire (a Western version of Agni Yoga), my mental chatter stopped. At the time, I was amazed and elated...as time passed, that just became the norm which I took for granted.

Now, I wonder about the loss/gain ratio of it all, of being so cut off from the voices of my own shit...having been shaken the past few days in uncovering a core feeling of being unloveable buried deep, deep within.

I haven't felt this in a long time, but it has certainly been there, as is clear by witnessing the strategies and emotional/energetic constructs I've put in place to compensate for said basic unloveableness...how I've distorted and over-invested myself in attempts to ensure being loved.

The cruelest cost of adapting to the belief of being unloveable is not being able to love myself fully...seemingly not even being able to reside totally in the vortex of my own energy...the energy that had to be "out there" ensuring that I would be loved...no matter if "I" was in it or not. (I never finished my thesis for a Master's in History...but somewhere along the way I got at least a Master's in Caretaking. Time to burn that diploma.)

Am feeling raw and fragile in this moment...and trusting that the new clarity and freedom I'm experiencing continues to grow.

Thankfully...

Being Called Deeper

2010-06-29T08:03:00.000-07:00

Life is calling me deeper now...my meditations no longer just about "getting centered"...instead, finding myself engaged with the waters of the Gulf, the Iran/Israel clusters of insanity, as well as Washington DC and the vast "military industrial complex" that Eisenhower presciently warned us about fifty years ago...giving thanks to the creative/healing forces of the Cosmos for helping our species emerge from our self-destructive patterns.

Actual, authentic Love is calling me deeper now.

In Grateful Memory of George Leonard

2010-02-23T20:39:00.000-08:00

In early January, one of the great pioneers of our time died. George Leonard was 87 years old by then and probably no one I had such little contact with ever affected me so greatly. Few, indeed, have impacted me as much.

He guided me as a journalist but his work went far beyond that. He became an activist and leader in the consciousness movement he originally described in his writings. I have memories of seeing who I knew must be him in an aikido dojo once or twice in San Francisco but that's as close a connection as I ever made...other than the deep one through his books and articles.

In the winter of '68-69 I was in the suburbs of New Orleans...teaching 5th grade 40 minutes further out...feeling quite lonely and alone near the weirdest city I ever spent time in. I was enlivened by the innate vitality of the 10 & 11 years olds in my class...but I missed Brazil...I missed my Peace Corps friends and the 4 year old son of my last girlfriend who I'd lived with in Salvador, Bahia, for six months...and I missed a former lover, Carol, terribly. I still missed not having been "home" in the States when MLK and Bobby were killed that year...and not hearing about it until later.

I especially missed a world that somewhat made sense....either my own personal one or the larger collective reality. I felt the collapse/de-structuring but nothing beyond that.

This was a time when magazines were hugely important...about the only way to discover anything "subversive" or "revolutionary" in the culture. Look was a major player...in an era when mass media was less homogenized and journalists had much more freedom than they seem to today. George Leonard was a senior editor who ran their San Francisco office...who was identifying a new reality emerging, initially, in California.

At some point that winter I bought an issue that introduced me to what Leonard heralded as "the Human Potential Movement," which led me to a truly remarkable book of his called Education & Ecstasy.

In graduate school I had become somewhat obsessed with the question of how we could transform education...avoiding the sort of life-force-draining experience my 18 straight years of public schooling had produced. A.S. Neil's description in Summerhill of his experimental, child-centered school in England fueled my imagination. And as a new teacher in Louisiana, I was hungry for the wisdom of a new genre of teachers/authors sharing their outside-the-box experiences at that time: Jim Herndon, John Holt and Jonathan Kozol were expressing a new consciousness arising on the fringes of public education.

But what Leonard was naming seemed something else entirely. It was a description of what others would later call "conscious evolution". This was a quantum shift of whatever reality I'd known before. He described the emergence of myriad foci of self-inquiry, self-discovery...with self-realization the potential payoff: the empowerment of people to co-create radical new ways of being within our stagnant social structures.

Finally, Life made sense. I felt like I belonged on this planet...at long last. It was a literal, living movement, an impressive wave of consciousness and actions, that he issued a clarion call for in his reporting...that I knew myself to be part of as soon as I read his words. He painted vivid mental pictures of Esalen and "alternative schools" in the Bay Area and various other seeds sprouting in the rich, fertile soil of that time.

That summer I left LaPlace Elementary with many fond memories, drove my Austin Healey back to Fort Worth, asked my father to please sell it for me and hopped a plane to San Francisco as soon as I could...where I lived 12 of the next 14 years.

My whole life transfigured there: I didn't make it into the long-term program at Esalen I'd hoped for nor ever taught in an "alternative school" but I met and married a wonderful woman, co-started Video Arts which is still going strong 33 years later and long after I left it, entered 12 years of intense inner light-fire training and eventually married the woman (who is still a great friend) with whom I started several businesses and had two sons who bless my life.

Primarily, I became rooted in exploring Jesus's guidance: "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free."

San Francisco was a terrific place for me to be in 1969-82. I might have found my way there somehow, someway...but George made sure I knew where to go.

...I've been blessed by many Way Showers on my journey...my deepest thanks to them all.

Getting back to blogging

2010-02-23T20:37:00.000-08:00

Was pulled astray for a while...but hope to be generating more posts for a while.

The Realities of Oneness

2009-10-19T07:50:00.000-07:00

Have been going through a lot of emotional purging, a steady flow of sadness...but in many ways it's been grief without necessarily an object. Yeah, I have caught threads of general themes...ala opportunities lost, years wasted, etc....but it's all been part of simultaneously feeling immense gratitude for where I am now and excitement at the choices I have.

Today is different. For several days, I have noticed a headline online about a FL family where the mom chose to go completely blind in order to continue healthcare for her two daughters...all of whom share a rare genetic disorder. I've been staying fairly focused the last few days...not letting myself be distracted by my usual interests...but for some reason I especially was not going to read that story.

Today curiosity won out...reading about how they've had "good" regular health insurance for years yet have lost so much: their house, and their peace and tranquility, to the burdens of mounting debt from medical co-pays. At some point I just start sobbing...one of the young girls telling her blind mother that it's going to be okay and rubbing her back. It is so not OK...to live in the most fabulously wealthy country of all time....bestowed with the most abundant set of natural resources on our entire beloved planet...and to know that this would not happen to any family in the rest of the industrialized world. It is so not OK to be reminded, once again, what a barbaric country the United States is in many respects...to realize, once again,what a travesty the adminstrations since 1980 have made of the profound, sacred vision that the founders of this country brought into form through the literal sacrifice of their blood.

All right, time for a walk...give the energy somewhere to move. Half a block from my house, I encounter a somewhat surreal scene playing out across the street. Another family with two young daughters is trying to gracefully conclude a conversation with a guy on the sidewalk and get in their car but he seems to not be registering any of it and is asking them in a loud, passionate voice if they remember an old comic book character that he's referencing.

Taking it in, I feel the immense loneliness that exists all around us...how many people don't feel seen or heard in their lives...and when there's an opening, all that hasn't been expressed starts pouring out in ways that trample social clues. As I write this am remembering how impacted I was by the synopsis of the book Bowling Alone when it first came out...describing the epidemic of people in this country who are cut off from others, who live terribly isolated existences. As I continue my walk, more tangible grief at the state of humanity surfaces...for the tragedy of our pervasive, multi-faceted, personal/collective disconnections...a disconnection syndrome.

What an utter, unrelenting blessing to be part of community.

Then, coming back with the intention of writing this post...the previous story is still on my screen and I notice a link to an article by Christiane Northrup MD that I've been wanting to read on an apparent move away from C-sections back to more vaginal births...wonderful news, indeed. But I haven't been really keeping up with the data, which is not surprising since it doesn't get much attention, does it? But "maternal deaths" have doubled in the United States in the past 25 years!

That is, new mothers dying because of childbirth. Doubled. Dead. Twice as many.

Is there something wrong here? Wrong in the reality itself? Wrong in the fact that something so fundamentally feminine...so truly human...gets so little notice?

Not only that but the United States ranks below 40 other countries in the world in terms of our maternal deaths...and, not only that, but we use skewed measurements of maternal deaths to make our healthcare system look better than it is when other countries don't...and, not only that, but our own CDC says that our actual maternal deaths are three times higher than reported. Forget the grief: it's rage I feel now.

Rage at the economic/political cesspool that this country has been dragged into...rage at the intentional dumbing down of the American populace...rage at the systemic graft and corruption that have become our political "system"...what journalist Greg Palast once labeled "the best democracy money can buy."

*****
For me this is one of the realities of the Oneness practices: I can no longer live in my isolated little bubble...with my own close friends nearby, in touch...and doing okay. I can't ignore that violence, in its abundant forms, happens with the magnitude it does.

I can no longer guard my heart in ways that I thought would protect it...but actually does violence to me (and others) by cutting me off from the truth of fully living...from the full-spectrum realities of Life.

The Gift of Presence

2009-09-24T20:01:00.000-07:00

“The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence.
When our mindfulness embraces those we love,
they will bloom like flowers.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh

This quote from today's practice in the 40-day Oneness Experiment I'm participating in...and it's having a real impact on me. It's helping me drop more fully into the reality of Oneness. For much of my life, I've been drawn to service. My intention has been to be a LightWorker helping midwife humanity's evolution. From that place, I acquired a variety of things I could do: sending people healing energy, clearing spaces energetically, etc.

I, in fact, became quite good at doing in general for others: wives, children, friends. My limitation was in being...truly being...being present. Indeed, I've had a lot of veils, walls, illusions and other protective constructs that profoundly limited my presence. Hence, I've had limited impact on others' real blossoming...I was actually not serving all that well.

The past 15 months, especially, I have been increasingly aware of the truth of what Thich Nhat Hanh says and moving more and more deeply into the reality of that...but there's something about his clear articulation in the midst of my own immersion in this 40-journey we're taking that enables this knowing to deeply penetrate my heart.

The Expression of Oneness

2009-09-14T10:52:00.000-07:00

[Again, I'm blogging from my experience with the Oneness Experiment: http://onenessexperiment.blogspot.com/]

Today on the treadmill, I was enjoying focusing on the first seven Oneness practices: Rhythm, Breath, Sound, Gaze, Heart, Body & Restoration.

And I realized the effortlessness of being in Oneness...these practices are simply awareness and presence...sort of a Meta Awareness Wheel...because the reality is that I'm not doing anything but being awake...Life is doing me...I'm simply an expression of Oneness.

Thank you, Yeshua...thank you, Yes!

A Course for Mystics

2009-09-11T12:55:00.000-07:00

[This is re-posted from http://onenessexperiment.blogspot.com, which is a new blog for those who've come together to do 40 Oneness Practices for 40 days....practices brought through by my friend Anakha Coman.]

I've done some of these practices before but it was more going through the motions, it seems in hindsight. Something's shifted. I have, I know. Anakha has. But I believe it's primarily the group container. To have most of 60 people practicing this path at the same time is wondrous in its impact.

This morning while working out on an Elliptical machine, I realized what a training for mystics these 40 practices truly are. They guide us into mystical reality.

As I gaze around the room at nurses and physical trainers, at treadmills and stationary bikes, at dumbells and rubber cords, at posters of exercises and salt intake...I feel like I am hearing a really great blessing at Thanksgiving dinner with everything that contributed to the feast being acknowledged: from sunlight, soil and seed to truck drivers and highway engineers, oil field workers and migrant fruit pickers, to Pilgrims and Native Americans, and grocery store stockers and checkers...and whoever installed the conveyer belt in the cranberry plant and the first peoples to root "gravy" into the human experience.

I have a similar experience as I look about: somewhere in Asia a factory worker finishing a part of one of the machines...contractors laying carpet on the floor....one staff member enrolling in college on the way to getting her degree...another woman's parents making her as a fertilized ovum 40 or so years ago...those same parents first seeing each other a decade before that...

My God...the amazing orchestrations of Life...of Life Abundant...Life Overflowing.

Right now I'm feeling immense love for those I connected with this morning...and those even from Thanksgivings past...and I'm especially loving each of you on this particular network of Oneness...joining together to evolve our own lives...to evolve humanity.

My Evolving Emotional Paradigm

2009-09-09T10:39:00.000-07:00

Last night at the McMinnville FireHeart Sanctuary group, I had a powerful experience listening to the members share where they're at. Two aspects impacted me the most: 1) the challenge that many members of New Thought churches seem to have in embracing our "dark" feelings, our shadow side, and 2) the empathy I experience with most of the men who spoke...talking of their emotional limits...the difficult of even knowing at times what they're actually feeling.

I thought "I've got at least a Masters, maybe a Ph.D., in what they're describing"...being so conditioned to not feel...punished for the "wrong" ones...steered toward and rewarded for being in my head. I was an extraordinary student...and I got with the program. A memory of a question floats up from decades ago, after getting married the second time: "What are you feeling?" How was I supposed to know?

During the 70s and 80s, there was so much focus on positive thinking and spiritual affirmations that I took in...and truly wanted to be true....thinking very positively indeed.

But the body/mind/spirit split held pretty well through it all.

Yes, I was working on it...and making changes along the way. I started dancing for the first time in my life on my 63rd birthday...managing to not piss my pants in fear when I first walked through that door. I got bodywork off and on through the years, did breathwork for a while, Tai Chi at times, Chi Kung as well...so I was occupying my body more but feelings were still rather alien territory.

When I first walked the Awareness Wheel 4 1/2 years ago, I was totally disoriented...it was a struggle...but I trusted that it was what I needed...and I continued saying "Yes" in spite of my own limitations.

When Ankaha came back from her 40-day retreat two years ago with her new focus on embodiment, she showed me a spiritual path that promised true integration. Then when we began the Lovers' Crucible in June 08, with the three-months stretching into a full year, culminating in our ongoing FireHeart Sanctuary...well, in this group container, I was too exposed, too visible to continue hiding in my head, behind my protective constructs. I've certainly been terrified at times since beginning a more demanding and effective path...yet always coming through the terror feeling further liberated.

We launched our group with an intention of spiritual alchemy (i.e., Love having its way with us)...and for me that has meant being in community with the radical, often relentless Lovers of this group caring so much for me that they insisted I live my "Yes".

There's much I'm still working on: shedding my habitual "nice guy"...being more connected with my darker emotions, being more expressive, more explicitly passionate. But I'm in the game now...I'm engaged with Life...I'm living.

One thing that came up at the church was the capacity of the congregation for holding the full spectrum of feelings...and not designating some as "Godly" and others as not. I'm very pleased to have begun feeling seeming opposites simultaneously....no longer just a one-note serial feeler. It's a rich experience.

Last night after the invitation of "all feelings are welcome here" was extended, we went into a brief meditation that I will likely remember for a long time. Sinking in, I felt both the joy that was clearly in the room and me, as well as a deep sadness that I've been feeling for a while (and was later revealed to truly be in the room also)...and in being with both of them as valid experiences, I had a realization.

What came to me was how I've used where I was on the scale of feelings to assess (or score) the status of my being. That is, if I was happy/joyful/grateful, I was "good". If I was angry/scared/sad/jealous, I was "not good". What was so obvious to me in that moment is what an arbitrary, irrelevant system that is. What I feel truly drawn to monitoring is how alive I feel...how present, aware and engaged I am. That tells me something useful!

Does it truly matter that much what I'm feeling? What absolutely does matter is if I'm checked out, numb or not feeling because my habits of repression are activated. Authentically feeling is its own reward.

I offer this as testimony to the payoff of the work we're all invited into....the living promise of emotional/spiritual liberation.

The True Revolution Is Finally Here

2009-09-07T20:20:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend, I watched the beginning of a film I hadn't seen in 54 years. The movie itself is quite dated but I only wanted to see the opening (and the same music at the end). I wanted to re-live the beginning of rock and roll...at least for me personally, for all my friends and, as far as I could tell, for Fort Worth in general: the sound of "Rock Around the Clock" pulsating through the theater...the electricity coming from the audience. There was no doubt in my mind that a revolution had begun...and I had no clue how sloppy, frustrating, incoherent and strung-out it was going to be.

To my ears now, Bill Haley and the Comets sound pretty silly...but I remember the fire and hunger within me they evoked. The past few days I've felt sad...and there's plenty to feel sad about...certainly around my own choices and blindness and patterns of playing small, playing safe, playing scared...during the decades since. But my feelings of grief are much bigger than that.

We are at the end of an age...measured by millennia, I believe...and everything that once seemed true and solid is dissolving. All of the past is being released...all of my pet fantasies and peripheral "plans" and other attachments...everything must be let go. I cannot know what is going with me...or who is going with me...and I cannot worry about that. I only have to step...both feet...fully into the new reality that awaits us...with an all-out "Yes"!

I would suggest that we let go of any thoughts of Mayan/Hopi/Biblical prophecies and just be in the living reality of what is incessantly emerging right now...with as much awareness and presence...as much fortitude and openness as we can.

This is the foretold time, but I can't understand it...I just have to live it...to be it....undiluted, unveiled.

The Promises of Life

2009-08-29T10:58:00.000-07:00

I started working the 12 Steps about a year ago...got stalled for a while...then completed the work last March. This was part of a wave of us in what has become the FireHeart Community deciding to work the Steps even though we didn't have typical substance issues...we just felt drawn to work on our own more subtle ways of numbing and distracting ourselves.

I didn't look at the Promises in the Big Book much then...ie, what will result from doing the work...but find myself now being curious how they will read in hindsight:

We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.

We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.

We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.

No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.

That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear.

We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.

Self-seeking will slip away.

Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.

Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us.

We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.

We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

Wow...it really is true...this approach delivers: diving in, doing a fearless moral inventory, letting God remove our "defects"...it absolutely does work. These are the promises of truly living our Life Abundant.

My life has been utterly transformed in the past 12 months. In full gratitude for all who have co-created this vast network of miracles...

one sees clearly only with the heart

2009-08-27T10:58:00.000-07:00

One of my Oneness collaborators on the www.fireheartsanctuary.com blog posted this yesterday:
Fox says to the Little Prince; "Here is my secret: one sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes."

When I read this, I went to a very personal place. In the Fall of 1968, I took over a 5th grade in a brand new elementary school...that had no library....as I wrote about a few weeks ago. We had typically ridiculous reading material as text books. That Spring I would read them To Kill a Mocking Bird out loud, but when first faced with the prospect of such a dearth of meaningful books, I went to a large bookstore in New Orleans and bought a bunch of individual copies of age-appropriate titles for my classroom and 30 copies of The Little Prince.

I remember most of the students loving the book...don't believe any had been exposed to it before...and it certainly impacted me, going through it again, sharing it with others...and I trust the message of seeing clearly with the heart has borne its own fruit in the hearts of some of those students as well.

I trust that all of humanity is getting this message now...the living truth of it.

Dismantling Patriarchy...and more

2009-08-08T10:56:00.001-07:00

I've had several conversations recently that make me realize that the end of a long epoch is here...the fundamental shift in our own inner masculine/feminine is unfolding...with a shift in the outer dynamic between women and men sure to follow suit.

The women I'm close to are certainly no longer willing to play out the imprints of their own conditioning...are no longer acting from their training to be "geishas to the oppressor," as Andrew Harvey calls this pattern.

At this time, I simply have a sense that the encrusted defensive constructs between genders is melting...and we are opening to relate in deeper, more fulfilling and sustainable ways. And that all of our internal disconnections will heal in accelerated fashion as a result.

For decades I've ruminated and ranted about humanity's megacrisis...about the immense grid of converging destructive trends...feeling both overwhelmed by the facts yet hopeful of a spiritual solution...and not really having a grasp on what that solution actually looks like.

In the midst of ongoing wars, pollution, greed, corruption, manipulation (ie, toxic/predatory capitalism)...and general rape of the Earth on a massive scale...I'm nevertheless beginning to feel a viable path: the mantra of our year plus time as the FireHeart community..."Love one another"...Jesus's essential teaching...which is bearing juicy fruit in my own life.

As we love one another, we cultivate self-love and we heal the splits within ourselves...we feel fortified to address and embrace the darkness we each carry. As each cultivates harmony and unity within, we anchor oneness on the planet....and oneness spreads...it's contageous.

This is not something I "figured out" in a quest to understand...it has simply evolved organically in my life...the consequence of a ripple effect.

This is clearly a scenario where we can only do our part: acting as much as possible from love, honesty and integrity...being willing to be vulnerable...listening for our truest guidance...focusing on our micro-reality and letting God handle the macro. (And out of that, certain people will be inspired to address macro dynamics from oneness consciousness for the benefit of all.)

This is primarily a post of deep gratitude. After a long, long time of feeling gridlock and stagnation in myself and the collective...I'm feeling flow.

The Compounding Costs of Playing Small

2009-08-08T09:55:00.000-07:00

This morning when I woke up, I went into deep communion with Yeshua...into the tangible energetic web of creation that he seems to occupy. Looking at the various aspects of my life from that perspective of greater union feels quite different than "ordinary" life. Thus fortified, I headed off to my cardiac rehab workout...testing the "safe" upper limits of pulse/bloodpressure.

On the treadmill I drop into the realities of my life over the past 30 years. I see how a somewhat subtle (to me at least) victim consciousness has played out...how I've been willing to settle in terms of what I want...how I bought into the upper limits consciousness of my working class, fairly juiceless family and resigned myself to not really having what I want...letting denial and rationalization run my life.

My involvement with video arose out of a burning passion in the mid-70s. My eventual business partner and my first wife and I bought the very first portable video gear in existence...we were among very few people in the States documenting our lives on videotape. Two years later, my friend Kim and I began Video Arts, Inc. in San Francisco. I initiated our starting the company...the vision and name, mine. Six years later, newly married for the second time, I left that reality behind...left active video work mostly behind until a couple of years ago. My last six months there were the most successful we'd ever had. Since then Kim has grown the company into the largest video post production house in northern CA...20+ employees, 13,500 sf of office space.

Yeah, I've gained something from my time in the desert...I was pursuing spiritual goals and am enormously grateful for the transformations I've gone through...for the emotional ditch digging that Jane & I went through and for having come out with two wonderful sons...and I still witness and feel the consequences of settling...of playing small...of not sufficiently honoring my own passions and visions.

Anakha was talking recently about much people focus on who to be with...as opposed to becoming clear on where each of us is going...and then seeing who wants to join us in going there. That's a paradigm shift!

The truth is I have gifts of value.
The truth is I can go for what I want.

I place all my denial/rationalization/smallness/distraction factors on the Divine Alter.
I surrender to aligning absolutely with God's Will...God's vision for my life...and living my remaining life fully.

I am deeply grateful for being liberated from my past...and brought utterly into the reality of Love awakened and joyous creative play.

for so it is