Robert M Pirsig is famous for having written Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), but to my mind he wrote a much more powerful and significant book called Lila (1991). The premise of the book is basically this: why would you trust an expert’s opinion over your own direct experience?
This book had a huge effect on me, because when I read it I was in the middle of my battle with mental illness and addiction. There was no end of experts, either in books or in person, telling me how to “fix” the problem. I consider myself to have been bred with a healthy dose of distrust for such figures, and that in the end this trait turned out to be of great benefit to me.
When I look around today, I see a “crisis of experts”. From the government regulators who were supposed to be overseeing the investment banks, to the economists who “never saw it coming”, to a body of work called “science” that is proving to be as incomplete as the religions it seeks to usurp.
If I hadn’t learned it already, I would be learning it now: “expert facts” make a weaker brew of reality than “anecdotal evidence”.

The way I see it, what we are witnessing right now is nothing short of humanity’s collective shadow being unveiled. This is a good thing, because it shines the light of day on what has so far been kept in the closet and hidden in the sand. It is a necessary step if we are ever going to go beyond the greed and corruption that is systemic in this world, and create something better.

If anything has become apparent to me over the past five years it is this: we are on our own. There is no government agency or charismatic leader who will save us from the fruits of our actions. Our salvation is ours alone to make. To this end, it is everyone’s responsibility to confront their personal shadow, and do the work of freeing ourselves from its grip.

One of the most powerful tools I used to transform my life was to stop seeing myself as a victim and instead believing that I had created every challenge in my life as part of my spiritual journey. In this way, the very things that threatened to destroy me were used as stepping stones toward my own personal empowerment. There were three books that helped me to see this, and I will list them here in the order that I found them.

The Nature of Personal Reality by Jane Roberts

The Anatomy of the Spirit by Carolyn Myss

The Power of Now by Eckhartt Tolle

The biggest learning I got from these books is that there is nothing outside of me that is more powerful than me. A grandiose thought, I know, but the alternative was believing that an illegal substance had control over my entire existence, which if you think about it, is equally grandiose (for the substance, that is.)

Self esteem is not just a catch phrase in the self-help section of your local bookstore. It is your fundamental power, and an ally you don’t want to be navigating life without.

Feel free to let me know if you’ve got book titles of your own to add to my list!

Margo

Capacity is defined as “the ability to receive, hold, or absorb; the maximum amount that can be contained.”
For the first four decades of my life, I was completely self-absorbed in that all of my resources were put toward the goal of keeping myself as emotionally stable as I possibly could. And this was a good thing; because when I went off the rails I not only hurt myself, but everyone else around me.
Only once I had healed to the point where I was no longer controlled by emotions like rage and pain did I resurface into the world of others. And when I resurfaced, I saw that I was not alone, that what I had lived through was a personal version of the wounds that affect many people in our society.
For the first time in my life, I had the capacity to give back to the world that has given so much to me. At first I did so in the form of introducing people to ice climbing through venues like Chicks with Picks and at various events like the Bozeman and Ouray Ice Festivals. And now that I have written a memoir, I do so through speaking engagements where I talk freely about the journey that has been my life.
I have been coming to Ouray almost every year for over a decade, and I am honoured to be given the chance to give back to a community that has given so much to me.
On Thursday, January 12th I will be giving a presentation at the Wilkinson Public Library in Telluride at 6:00 PM. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A, as well as book sales through Between the Covers.
And on Saturday, January 14th, I will be giving a very special presentation at the Chicks with Picks auction where we will be raising money for the Tri-County Women’s Resource Center.

NYSE Chairman Richard Grasso with a FARC Commander

“When the evidence is pieced together, it proves how corrupt, bankrupt and dishonest the financial/political cabal that runs America is, and reveals the complicity of the media in covering up their masters’ misdeeds.”
Gerald Celente, Leading Global Trends Forecaster, Trends Research Institute

For a primer on how drug money works, click HERE.

When my lawyer edited the best stories from my book I was devastated. But life has a way of balancing itself out, and true to form I get another go around when I speak at Canmore’s Night of Lies on November 26th, along with nine other presenters. Although I’ve never been to one, it comes highly recommended by anyone who has. So if you’re looking for an outrageous evening filled with lies, laughter, booze and booty, this one’s for you!

When: November 26th, 6:30 PM
Where: The Cornerstone Theatre, 125 Kananaskis Way, Canmore, AB T1W 2X2 (Map)
Warning: Tickets sell out in advance of every show. Get yours at Vertical Addiction in Canmore, or Wicked Gravity in Calgary.

Just before my presentation at Robinson’s Outdoors last week, I was interviewed for Shaw TV’s The Daily. Check it out.

I have long maintained that you can learn more about how the global economy works if you study organized crime than you can by reading mainstream media.
It would be more accurate to say that the world is being run as a criminal enterprise than it would be to say that we live in a free market economy.
There are many people who are confusing the systemic fraud that is now being unmasked with capitalism, and maintaining that perhaps we need to take a second look at socialism.
I couldn’t disagree more. Free enterprise is what allows small business and entrepreneurs to create and innovate, and this is the valuable engine that forms the basis of any healthy economy. We don’t have a financial crisis; we have a spiritual, moral, and ethical crisis. And we have a political crisis. Instead of pointing fingers at corporations and Wall Street, our time might be better spent looking at the ways in which we have been complicit in the current paradigm. Perhaps once we’ve gotten the world’s attention with placards and sit-ins, we can move forward with concrete action steps to create the kind of world envisioned by Ghandi, not the Godfather.

The hockey world is reeling from some major blows lately, including the deaths of three of their enforcers. Amid the myriad reports from within the league that claim to be “looking into the problem”, there is one article with a level of insight that stands out. In the September 8th edition of the Globe and Mail, Gary Mason wrote an editorial where he alluded to the “complicated back stories” that would have traced these players’ lack of mental peace far beyond their time on the ice. In the last line of his article, Mason quotes a line from his interview with Donald Brashear, one of the most feared fighters in the NHL: “I never had anyone to hold me and tell me they loved me. My mom never did. I just didn’t have that in my life.” I don’t know if Donald was an addict or if he was depressed, but the interviewer seems to be hinting at something that may lie hidden in the mist.
Studies have shown that people who suffer from addiction and depression have low levels of serotonin in their brains. Studies have also shown that these low levels of “happy chemicals” almost always coincide with a childhood of neglect or abuse, or some major life trauma. Mr Mason’s comments could not fit into this template more accurately. It is this kind of dot connecting that we need more of in our society if we are ever going to get to the bottom of issues like addiction and depression. The code of silence surrounding these topics needs to be broken, and we need more doctors like Gabor Mate looking into these matters than we need more pharmaceutical remedies. We need to move toward a future where we shine a light on a silent killer that moves amongst us.

Just when we think the experts have come up with every known way to relieve us of personal responsibility, we get the results of another study. The American Society of Addiction Medicine has come up with a new slant on addictive behaviour, one that reclassifies it as a primary illness i.e. it is biological and unavoidable and therefore to be treated like any other life-threatening disease… You can read more here