Stumbling Free

My Near Miss With A Fireball

2017-01-10T17:46:00.002-08:00

It was just one year ago that I FELT the heat of this car as it smashed into a fireball and flames shot past my own car windows to my right. Some part of my brain I'm not even wholly aware of had already heard the tires screeching as they hurtled toward me from behind, that part of my brain checked the rearview in a flash and saw that yes, that out-of-control car was aimed straight at me. And so in what couldn't have been more than a second or two, it assessed the entire situation almost totally without my conscious knowledge and took over and automatically veered my vehicle hard left into oncoming traffic (around 3am so thankfully the lane was empty)... and because my brain did this bit of automatic business, I survived, and I learned later, so did the drunk driver who very nearly killed me.

It feels like a lot has happened since then and I can't believe this was just one year ago. That night was and remains a stark personal reminder that tomorrow is promised to no one. It doesn't matter how great or how grim things seem, who I've lost or what I've gained. This is it. Now. Whatever "now" holds.

I write musicals. I love writing musicals. It took me a couple decades to give myself permission to do this-- I mean musicals are awesome and who the hell did I think I was? That was the useless conversation I frequently used to have with myself over being allowed to do things I love. The very first time the seed was planted and I consciously quietly allowed myself to think, "Maybe I want to write musicals too" ("too" meaning me and Jonathan Larson, obviously) was as a kid sitting in the front row of the Nederlander the week "Rent" opened on Broadway. I was one of the first-ever lottery winners and partway through act one, tears streamed down my face as I listened to the words "Forget regret or life is yours to miss."

Maybe the real gift of an exploding flaming car crash is that it wakes you up. It wakes you up to RIGHT NOW. Like it or not. And it keeps waking you up. It's uncomfortable, waking up. But thank God we get to do it every day.

So, maybe a baffling and terrifying leader who you just can't believe said the horrific things he's said about women, Muslims, Latinos, gay and trans people, people with disabilities and so much more-- and so much worse-- and horrible things that everyone saw and heard for over a year-- the fact that ANYONE voted for this obviously hateful self-involved bully who the majority of us wouldn't and didn't choose is mind-numbing. But maybe this fiery car crash of a president is here to wake us up. He doesn't know that maybe that's his cosmic job. But there he is, doing it by being a complete and utter monster. Waking us up to the present, to the gift of liberty and freedom and the inalienable rights that are as precious as the air we breathe, that maybe now after the fire shoots past our lives collectively, maybe those precious things are a little less invisible and intangible than before. And maybe we'll fight for them a little harder now and for the rest of our lives. Because now is what we've been handed-- car crashes and all.

Testicular Cancer

2017-01-07T02:54:00.002-08:00

Testicular Cancer

Matt's once-red bald head
lays limp with hospital sweat.
Rivers of acid solder pathways,
burrowing in through my eyes.

Oh my God
who was not Father
when monsters stirred
and rooted through his
flesh like spider legs
while I vanished into pits of me.

- David Orris

I lost a friend when I was very young to testicular cancer. I think I was 19. His name was Matt and he was diagnosed one day and it seemed like just seconds later he was gone. No warning. An outgoing guy, president of his senior class at his high school, I got to know Matt as the bass player of my Christian rock band when we were 16-17. We toured together-- including the summer before he passed. It was my first time confronting the passing of a peer and the sudden violence of cancer. This poem was my response.

Good Old Mariah

2017-01-01T11:55:00.003-08:00

The all-too-typical Mariah debacle on New Year's Eve actually kind of made me... a little nostalgic. I spent a magical summer as an intern at Sony Studios on West 54th before my last year of college. That summer I met Jeff Buckley and got to see him play live in a basement club. And this beautiful genius was recording in ''my" studio no less. No one knew who he was back then and so today, I have bragging rights to being among the first to have fallen immediately and deeply in love with Jeff. I had long ponderous conversations with Steve Perry of Journey about music (though I didn't know it was him the first time we chatted for over an hour) and I met folk legends Peter Paul and Mary among perhaps more dubious acts like The Spin Doctors (I did love their radio hit) and Hootie and the Blowfish.

This once-sheltered suburban Chicago kid was suddenly thrown into the Manhattan fire doing grunt work for my heroes who had become my mentors. It was the best thing for me and I loved it. I learned a ton-- about the music industry, recording, New York and life outside the midwestern Caucasian bubble I'd lived in my whole life.

I had chosen Sony by looking at the back of the CD jacket of "The Red Shoes" by Kate Bush (which had been my very-worthy musical obsession of the moment). I saw the words "Sony Music" and "New York, NY" and that was that. I WOULD have an internship there-- and so I did. And I was starstruck every day at that job as I found myself routinely getting to learn from and was treated with great kindness by icons of music-- everyone from Gloria Estefan to Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls-- and their brilliant producers and engineers. I remember one day mustering the nerve to brazenly hand Amy my homespun recording entitled "Weeping With Philistines"-- and she was so gracious. I'm not sure what I expected her to do with it or how many other fanboys had saddled her with demos that day. But she really took some time talking to me and even complimented me on the title. She was very genuine.

But Mariah...Mariah had always been the trainwreck of ego and pills you saw last night on live TV. The summer of my internship was the summer that Mariah (who was still a hitmaker at the time and was then married to Tommy Mottola, the head of all of Sony Music) was recording her Christmas album across the street at The Hit Factory. But for one reason or another she was always in the Sony Studios building... and for a summer, she was my own personal NIGHTMARE. It's hilarious to me now, but as a 20 year old running for his life through Manhattan every day trying to appease the diva's demands, it was a little scary at the time. Her rider (list of demands) was among the most hilarious of Mariah's bizarre behaviors. It included things like making sure every item in her dressing room was pink (chairs, hair dryers, brushes, rugs-- and guess which lowly intern had to run around Manhattan finding these pink treasures). And while recording that Christmas record, she eventually had to leave the Hit Factory's jacuzzi and its pinball machines to come across the street to do overdubs with us a couple different days. The first time this happened, it was to overdub ONE WORD. And in order for her to be "artistically inspired" to sing this word, it was my job (in June) to get a live Christmas tree, oak tables with red table cloths, three foot candy canes, coca-cola in the old fashioned glass bottles (though that one was a constant any time she came into the building-- along with the original-flavor Ricolas) and wreaths. Oh, and the word she was overdubbing... was "holy." Ah, the good old days.

Mariah is the stammering embodiment of why the music industry has all but totally imploded. I'm not laying that implosion at her feet whatsoever. She's merely emblematic of the immovable heft of massive executive and star egos sucking dry an industry that mostly abandoned music somewhere in the '70s in favor of 'cool' until by the late '90s the major label industry was nothing but a marketing effort. So be it. Music is now made in bedrooms for the love of it. And in the meantime, entitled divas publicly teeter at the edge on national television. And there may be a certain... artistic inspiration... in that just yet.

The Man Who Killed My Mother

2016-09-14T00:28:00.001-07:00

Fair warning, dear reader: this isn't light reading. This post is about a murder. An actual murder. Not an exciting fictional murder from an episode of TV or a bad novel. It's personal and certainly not for the faint of heart nor anyone who can't tolerate untidy things. This is about the murder of my beautiful late mother Lorraine Orris who died-- either passively, or as I have come to feel certain-- actively, at the hand of my father David L. Orris, Sr., who has a neatly-hidden lifelong history of violence. As of today, it is no longer going to be hidden, neatly or otherwise. I have kept silent for decades. No more.

My Beautiful Young Mom and Me

It's taken me over two years to get to the place emotionally where I have even been able to look at this horrific situation at all, let alone wrap my head around it with some clarity. Prior to 2016, I was blindly defending my father to his numerous detractors. To the police who appeared at his door the day my mother died. To relatives. And ultimately to myself. But as the fog of grief has begun to lift a little more than two years after my mom's passing, it has become impossible for me to ignore the facts.

I never wanted anything in all the world as much as I wanted a father, but looking at the reality of who my father is and the damage I have inherited from this man-- the impossible price of being this man's son-- I have come to the awful realization that I have nothing to lose. And there has been absolutely no justice for my murdered mother. This piece of writing about her death may end up being the only attempt at the truth that is ever publicly made. It is so much less than justice and so much less than what my late and truly-great mother Lorraine Anita Orris (Yescas) deserves, but it's all the legal recourse I have available to me.

Two weeks ago, Detective Michael Benedict of the Pinal County Sheriff's office in Arizona discontinued the investigation into the homicide of Lorraine Orris, my late mother. My father, David L Orris Sr was the prime suspect and I know this because I was one of many immediate relatives who had become certain my father had played a serious role in causing my mother's death and as one of those individuals, I had shared some of the information that led to the investigation of my father and the police bringing my father in for questioning. Before I was ready to even entertain the notion that my father had a hand in my mother's death, my mother's brother, former police detective and private detective Ken Yescas knew the day it happened. He sent Pinal County deputies to my father's door in Queen Creek the day after my mom had unexpectedly and suddenly passed away due to a sudden head injury. My Uncle Ken and I both believe my father caused my mother's death now, but I wasn't ready to even consider it the day my mom died. Ken knew immediately and I suspect my mom may have confided in her brother as she had confided in her sister about what was happening behind closed doors with my father, which I'll get to in a bit. But at the time, I thought the whole idea of my father killing my mom was an insane and disgusting suggestion. And I refused to even consider it. I actually defended my father against this idea and considered it a personal attack.

I actually know about Ken's call to the police firsthand because I was there at my parents' home when the deputies showed up the day following my mother's passing in April 2014. Even grief-stricken, I remember thinking how incredibly odd it was that the deputies showed up but did literally nothing. They rang the doorbell, my father and I both basically yelled at them together saying we had just lost someone and how dare you and go away. Remarkably, they did. There was no questioning, nothing. They simply apologized for their presence and left. That was the whole exchange. I guess the local Pinal County police saw my father as being above questioning that particular day. And I'm ashamed I played a role in sending them away. But I did. I was 100 miles underwater and I couldn't see facts or reason or anything beyond overwhelming grief.

Summer 2013, One of the last times I'd ever get to really spend time with my beautiful mom

Many of my mom's closest friends and relatives have confided that they had long feared the worst for years, that my father was hurting my mother. Not one or two stray friends, but a good many of the people who had known my mother and father for a very long time expressed they had carried the fear of my father harming my mother for decades. I have harrowing letters from longtime friends from around the country who confided their long-held worst fears as they watched my mother constantly showing up with bruises and neck braces, always having undergone another 'accident'.

And finally, my mom's sister Yvonne stepped forward this year confiding that my mom had actually handwritten a letter shortly before she died. My mother had always protected her abuser throughout their entire marriage and certainly throughout my life. But here she was, in her own handwriting, just prior to her death, saying that my father had been exhibiting terrifying cycles of violence 'worse than in the beginning of their marriage' and that as a result, my oft-injured mother, was 'afraid for her life.' These violent episodes my mom described included my father physically abusing my mother, 'knocking her around,' as well as psychotic episodes involving running around the house making threats with a large knife while threatening violence to my mother and even threatening his own life too.

Early days

These cycles of violence were not news to me-- I'd seen his violence my entire life, both physical and emotional violence. I'd been the recipient of most of his violence as a kid-- the most hittable member of the family and most-able-to-absorb my father's violence was me-- the boy, or so said that backwards way of thinking. But in my adulthood, I had foolishly allowed myself to believe things were very different. Things had changed. Improved. Maybe even healed. And now I was the one who needed to let go of the decades of abusive pain. I desperately wanted to believe that story and spent a lot of time and energy in therapy attempting to believe. And I believed my mother's stories about the ways in which things were now different. How my father had seemed to mellow over time. And all her constant injuries-- I wanted to believe what she always told us-- that they were just accidents.

Still unsure though even many years after I'd left home, every time my mother would be injured, I continued to asked her not infrequently, "Should I call social services? Is he hurting you? Do you need to come stay with me? Are you okay, mom?"

The answer was always that she was just fine. Just a little accident-prone. But if I'm honest, there were so many times my mother was in some kind of pain and I'd be on the phone with her as she was trying to keep herself standing and dealing with the pain while being a good little woman and getting dinner ready on time for the big man. If he came home, she'd hang up abruptly, seemingly not wanting to appear less than dutiful. But no matter what, she never confided what was actually going on. What she confided in that final letter to her sister saying she feared for her life because of my father's violence.

I only recently became aware of this letter because my mother had made my very kind, intelligent and well-meaning aunt promise my mother that she would keep it a secret from me because she knew I would take action. And as ever, my mother was protecting my father. But in light of my mother's passing and after some time, my aunt no longer felt she could keep the truth of this letter from me in good conscience and I appreciated her coming forward.

As the weight of grief has lessened this year and I was looking more clearly at the facts, I already reluctantly knew in my bones what had happened to my mother, but her letter from beyond the grave really was the final blood-curdling straw.

As Detective Benedict closed the case a couple weeks ago, saying there was no physical evidence he could legally use, and that my father had beaten their vocal stress test (a lie detector test of a sort), he said he leaned toward believing my father. And that was devastating but also unsurprising to me. I had actually told the detective back in March that that is how his investigation would end. My father would snow them and they would buy it-- a master manipulator.

My father is a masterful liar and I've watched him in action my entire life. I've watched my father look people straight in the eye and with total conviction, tell them gravity didn't exist, that up was down and the truth was just not so. And what I realized was that HE believed whatever it was he felt he needed to say. An incredibly religious man, he adds devout Christianity and what some of us refer to as "Christianese," to his bag of tricks. He points to the Bible frequently. Employs acronyms like "PTL" (the "Praise the Lord" acronym made popular by Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker in the '80s) whenever he can fit it in (and even when he can't). His most profound skill is that he has found a way not simply to sell any lie he felt compelled to tell, but to believe every lie he has ever needed to tell. It's a terrifying and remarkable skill and I've never seen anything like it anywhere else in my life. He really knows how to believe anything he's selling. Anything.

As a child, I'd be getting beaten at home within an inch of my life, hiding in closets when he'd come home to listen for what level of violence had come home that night. But to the world, he was a pillar of the community. A church leader. A leader in Christian business and the evangelical world at large. A "Godly" man. And it became painfully and impossibly clear that no matter what reign of violence was perpetrated by this man at home, he would never be held accountable. And he never had so much as a shadow cross his face when selling the community on what a loving, stand-up guy he was. That pattern remains true to this day.

As an adult, I spent years confronting him with the profound abuses and scars he left me with. And I even spent years, repeatedly, trying to reconcile with him, and to forgive him. But in the end, there was just no one home. No one behind his eyes. No one left in there to reconcile with. The first time I confronted him he denied anything I said had happened. The second time he said he had been abusive because of a previously undiagnosed allergy to chocolate (I kid you not). Dissatisfied (at best) with his total lack of sincerity or even vaguest appearance that he knew or cared that he had torn me in half and caused lifelong damage, I'd come to him again. He even eventually sort of apologized, but couching it with the idea that I needed to understand that as a kid, I had been an exceptionally bad kid and that I had it coming.

This sounds obviously biased, but I promise you-- I was the annoyingly 'good' child. I mean to a bizarre extent. Even as a teenager, I was the incredibly and doggedly religious (to please my father I now realize) teenager (to the point of a whole lot of peer ridicule-- and rightly so). I was the kid who started a Bible study at his public high school, was on the honor roll, a leader at three church youth groups, an all-state musician, student council (etc ad nauseam). I was THAT annoying goodie-goodie kid who everyone could see had been locked in this weird evangelical bubble and who LIVED the life of that bubble. And you can verify that with any of my school classmates or anyone who knew me as a kid. My father liked to say that I was an 'out of control rebellious kid who needed to be taught a lesson.' Ladies and gents, I promise you, I was the poster boy for the good-boy club and I was *not* rebellious. I was obedient to an extraordinary and bizarre extent. That's the truth. Not that any behavior would have justified his abuse, but as it happened, I was seriously a freaking angel.

My father is a man locked in his own room with whatever version of reality he needs to spin to make himself correct. If he needs his golden-boy son to be bad to grant him a little leeway with beating the shit out of and terrorizing the kid, that's what will happen. But in terms of a real human being-- something soulful... no one's home. There's a sharp intellect, and certainly an enormous fragile ego. But nothing actually human other than a calculating attempt to somehow 'win.'

This was a man who would throw me across the room by my hair. Kick me in the stomach. A man who began shrieking at me about finances and budgeting for five to six hours at a time from the time I was five years old. Bizarre, broken, beyond abusive behavior by any measure. Behavior that I have unpacked and demystified through years and years of therapy and meditation practice. And probably will continue to for the rest of my life to some degree. But whatever happened to my father to make him this violent shell... it has already happened. Permanently. I have come to the impossible realization of who and what my father is. A narcissist and sociopath. And because of this, my mother paid the ultimate price.

The days just following my mother's death in Arizona were made of a thick, underwater, impossible weight. I was drowning in a flood of grief and literally had a difficult time physically standing much of the time during those few days following my mother's completely sudden and untimely passing.

Her death was due to a sudden violent head injury that had gone untreated for too many hours. As I raced through the night April 26-27 from Los Angeles to just outside Phoenix, I called and pleaded and railed at anyone I could get on the phone at the hospital where my mother was finally being treated, having laid in bed un-rousable and untreated all day. Doctors told me that if she had gotten to the hospital even marginally sooner, they could have saved my mom. But because she had laid there unconscious for so many hours, her brain filling with blood like a balloon, with absolutely no help for hours and hours, her head injury became inoperable long before anyone even tried to take her to the hospital.

Mom pregnant with me-- one of the first photos of my mom and I together

Why did she lay there all day with no help following a serious blow to the head? Did my father not know she had this serious head injury? Putting aside my own certainty that he caused the head injury, in point of fact, he had been acutely aware of the head injury by his own admission and says he saw it happen. So why on earth was she not rushed to the hospital? The same reason, it turns out, he often let her be found seriously hurt or unconscious and just didn't bother-- "It was just getting too expensive."

On April 26, 2014, the day before my mom died, for the first time in some 45 year of marriage, the extraordinarily unusual (as in, it had never ever happened during the entire course of their decades of marriage, which my father acknowledged in writing in an email this very year) occurrence of my mom not getting out of bed with my father in the morning happened for the first time ever. In fact, she wouldn't wake up at all. My father who never had a morning he didn't shout at my mother, "Rainy, get me my coffee!" Or "Hey, Rainy, would ya get me the paper?" It was never a question. She was his hop-to-it-girl-- no matter how sick or bent over or run down she became. He wouldn't stand for anything else. And when his head-injured wife flatly would not wake up-- for the first time in 45 years of marriage-- did my father become concerned? Nah. Did he try harder to wake her? No one knows for sure, but his story is that he tried, she didn't wake up and that was that. So, when she wouldn't awaken, did he call an ambulance? No. Rush her to the hospital? Oh, goodness, no.

See, the thing is, my mother had sustained a series of "mysterious" injuries for years and years because she was "clumsy," she told us over and over. And as she sustained more and more injuries, she DID become clumsier and weaker. But no one is this weak. NO ONE is this clumsy. Dozens of injuries. And many, many of the injuries were untreated-- a broken hand they let heal mangled and that stayed mangled for over a year is an example that springs to mind because when I saw it, I literally gasped at the sight of my poor mother's mangled claw. In the end, she died with that hand still mangled. She was injured all the time.

So my father was over it, he'd told us time and again. He'd actually written me a remarkably hateful email threatening to divorce my mom because of these incredible medical bills when I railed at him for failing to take her to the ER when he'd found her unconscious. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Given my mom's handwritten letter from beyond the grave, my father's history of violence which I well know firsthand, the fact that his son, his brother-in-law and at least two of his sisters-in-law and a number of friends and other relatives also believe he pushed my mother into the wall and gave her that fatal injury (not that she 'fell' as he claims), it becomes hard to see anything other than my father's violence in all of this.

So it's a huge reach to even consider giving him the benefit of the doubt, but let's still go ahead and pretend we can all somehow magically believe my father didn't push my mother-- that he did not CAUSE the head injury (on the back of her head, by the way, which is often a sign of someone being pushed, I've come to learn-- people don't naturally fall backwards). An impossible reach, but let's buy into it for argument's sake anyway. Even if we believe he didn't CAUSE the head injury, he's still murderously neglectful. And why? Well, he said he felt she had just had "too many" injuries when I asked. Quite self-righteously actually. Like I was a real jerk for thinking when your head-injured wife won't wake up you take her to the ER and I'm also an incredible asshole for insisting he should take her every single time whatever the cost. And what he flatly said was that my mother didn't merit a trip to the hospital because she'd just been injured too often. And I mean, he really got behind that statement. In writing. Even after it took my mother's life. Essentially. 'Well, if she has to die she has to die. Hospital's fucking expensive.'

You see, more than several times before the event that killed my mother, my father had found my mother unconscious and in stupors lying on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night with injuries of all varieties (or he claims he found her with the injuries and not that he perpetrated them), and did he then rush his unconscious or helpless and injured wife to the hospital in THOSE instances prior to her death? No, no, "Because this had happened before."

So he'd put his un-rousable injured wife back in bed to see if she would die or wake up. The several times we actually know of that he did this, by the grace of God, my mother woke up. But on April 27, 2014... well, that time she didn't.

The day my mother died, my father found his head-injured wife just wouldn't wake up. Knowing the severity of her head injury did he spring into action? No, no. Make sure he could get her to come to and that she was okay? Why bother her? It's just a head injury. Let her lay there. So what if she won't wake up? You know what? She needs rest, right?

So instead of calling 9-1-1, rushing her to the ER or even just watching over her, he decided it was time to run some errands. They were in the middle of moving and he needed to go spend a number of hours doing errands. Well, she had a head injury and everyone obviously knows how serious head injuries are, so he, at the very, very least called a friend to come watch over her while he ran these 'emergency' errands requiring him to leave her otherwise alone and unconscious all day for some mystifying reason while she has major head trauma, right?

No. He just left his head-injured wife laying there, unconscious, and totally alone. In a coma.

Yes, about nine hours later, that afternoon, when he was good and ready to check for real-- by golly, he found she still wasn't waking up, and only then did my father "rush" my mother to the hospital. HOURS UPON HOURS after letting her lay there unconscious and totally alone and unattended, with a serious head injury. Leaving her to die. And to hear him tell the tale, he wants a star of valor for bothering to do so at all. He "took her to get the very best care available." Only after it was way too late.

Here are the facts, simplified and boiled down. My father has a lifelong history of violence. My mother kept "mysteriously" sustaining "falling" and other physical injuries, one after another, for years and years. He previously often refused to take her to the hospital even when she is in a coma-- at least three times that my father admitted to IN WRITING. And finally, there is a letter from beyond the grave from my mother in her own handwriting saying that he'd been hitting her and she feared for her life (and to continue to hide this information as she always had). So with all of that, included below is the obvious puzzle all put together for you, Detective Benedict.

My father hit my mother. She kept getting injured for years and years. They tried to hide it frequently by NOT taking her to the doctor when he'd hurt her. This last time that he hurt her and gave her another head injury, he did what he'd always done-- nothing. He let her lay there to see if she would die as he admits in writing he had done at least three times before. Only on April 27, 2014, she actually died.

I recently found something my mother had written out about how she had wanted to be buried. But I had never seen it at the time of her death. Her passing was so out of nowhere. And when my father insisted my mother had wanted to be cremated, and how she talked about it all the time, of course, we believed him without question. We weren't thinking about murder evidence or what he'd done to her. That was stupid given what he'd done prior, but we weren't. Like I said before, the heaviness of the grief just wouldn't let my mind go there. And we just hadn't planned for mom's death. At all. We just weren't prepared. We weren't remotely thinking he could have killed her and wanted to cremate her to get rid of evidence despite the fact that she COMMITTED TO WRITING that she wanted to be buried and how she wanted to be buried. No, my father went on and on about she had always wanted to be cremated, talked about it all the time. It was actually weird, but again, the weight of the grief just made everything else so slow-motion and underwater.

The fog of grief was impossibly thick and deep. And it's only been during 2016 that I began to come out of it and see clearly what many of my relatives had already been saying-- my father killed my mother.

It's not something a son comes to grips with about his father easily, no matter how terrible the relationship. It took time to see the obvious. But it is obvious. Horribly and painfully obvious.

Even if it's all circumstantial and I'm incorrect that he pushed her, and I feel certain he did cause the head injury, by his own admission, my father let my mother lay there with a head injury and not only didn't take her to the hospital-- he went and ran errands for hours upon hours. Even if it were a horrific mistake, which I know it was not, he isn't remotely apologetic for this lethal neglect. He's baffled. He's actually baffled that I'm upset.

And I'm writing this all out now, but I actually wrote him a letter back in April too which I am now preparing to share publicly soon. And that detailed letter outlines even more of the heart of the matter. Because this man killed his wife, either on purpose or by horrific neglect. With absolutely no sign of remorse.

Detective Benedict actually reported back to me that my father had actually said, "Gosh, I don't know where this is all coming from," when he was brought in for questioning. 'This' being the investigation inquiry launched by myself, my uncle, my aunt, friends and other relatives-- and of course, the Pinal County Sheriff and DA who also had enough reason to investigate. But my father went on, "We had Christmas together last year. And now suddenly, this." As though 'this' were a strange concoction I'd come up with this year for sport. As though I hadn't come to him directly and repeatedly telling him what I'd realized. And what was his response? Forget confessing or apologizing, he just did what he does: he looks you straight in the eye and says it's raining unicorns and how dare you even insinuate reality?

Losing my mother has been the hardest thing I've ever gone through. It's why I couldn't see straight. It's why I couldn't even let my mind close in around the facts-- including the fact that he let her lay there and die. Knowingly. And even after that I actually defended him. Because for a moment there, even after everything he's put me through, that he could have done what he did was too awful to even consider. My mind wouldn't even go there.

But he did. Objectively. He let her lay there and die-- and that's actually the best I can hope for. He let her lay there. Knowingly. And risked her dying. As he had done again and again previously. As he had done after which I had even gone to him pleading with him not to do again. And it is what did indeed end up happening the day my mother passed. I feared the worst the first few times he let her lay there unconscious. And then the worst happened.

Where this comes from is a lifetime of watching a sociopath who happens to be my father just get away with everything. Over and over. Where this comes from is the realization that except for my father's abject neglect of my mother, if not active physical abuse, my mother would be alive right now and probably for some decades to come. That's a fact. My mother would be alive right now if it weren't for my father. Strangers on the street would not neglect a woman lying unconscious with a head injury.

And this isn't a story he gets to un-tell with his bizarre spin, insidious "PTL"s and his Stepford smiles and his hollow religious jargon, hiding behind the Bible and his church community and everyone around him blithely lauding him and propping up because they share a belief system or because he gives them money and gifts and resources.

He has gotten away with everything. With taking a blow torch to my heart and my life. And I was prepared to actually let even that go. But not this. Not robbing me of my mother. And robbing my sister of her mother. And so many people who loved her, who would not have treated her like a slave and a burden. And then murdered her.

This story of murder does not end up with the son sitting silently and idly by. It just cannot end that way. The thing I've had to finally learn is the lesson all children have to learn about their parents. I've just had to learn it all the way to the very bottom of the truth. And that truth is that my father is merely a man. In my case, he's an incredibly broken, violent, selfish man. And this petty little man who took my beautiful mother's life, this woman who loved bigger and harder than anyone I've ever known, he should not be allowed to wander off into the sunset believing his own treacherous spin about his monstrous behavior.

As I look at all of this more and more clearly, I see that this man is not even really a man when it comes down to it. No. This is a small solipsistic selfish raging child who has wrought so much violence and havoc on my life and the lives of so many people I love, and who destroyed the greatest thing that ever happened to him-- either actively, passively, or likely both. No, this shell of creature, he's no man. And he's certainly no father of mine.

Try to Remember

2015-08-08T01:10:00.000-07:00

I was walking down Sunset Blvd near Vine this week where I've walked a jillion times before. And I got really caught up in people watching. The angry homeless man. The angry guy in a suit. The street musician who brought a full upright piano out onto the sidewalk in front of the Cineramadome. The desperate woman racing somewhere, clearly over-burdened.

And the strangest and most obvious thought sort of overcame me: that's someone's child. Every single person here. Is someone's child. This stupidly obvious thought rolled through me like some profound tidal wave. The profundity of what it means to be a daughter or a son. And my God-- we all have that insanely profound thing... foundationally. Without exception. I know I probably sound like a guy who's been hit in the head too many times, but my mind then instantly flashed through how many people I had angrily cut off in traffic or become impatient with just during that afternoon, and how often and how common it is to judge someone in big and small ways-- we all do it constantly. And how impossible it would have been for me to act quite so thoughtlessly if I were doing those things to someone who I was looking at as sacred and special. There was this bizarre and overwhelming moment of feeling this sense of loving and honoring every person I saw. I recognize how crazy and in need of meds that will sound to the judging mind because my own judging mind has a lot of commentary about this. But for just a moment, and at least in my own heart (and through that lens), we were all suddenly in the same boat. I mean, we had been all along, I just hadn't been looking at it that way until that moment. We were all daughters and sons. It's a whole lot harder to walk blithely past the homeless man when you think "What if he were my son?" Because he is someone's son. It's harder to judge the pushy woman or dismiss the angry jerk. Because suddenly, you realize the enormity of who these beings are. Sons and daughters. With impossibly enormous value.

There's something deliciously fast and cheap and sort of rock and roll about that intersection. But also sad too in how it seems to somehow sort of depersonalize and shrink the humanity of all of us bustling through there a little bit.

Losing my mom last year drove home what a truly profound thing the love between a mother and child can be. And suddenly watching every single person on this cheap corner through the lens of "that angry man is someone's son." Or "that exhausted overwrought woman is someone's daughter." Using this absurdly obvious truth as a lens just stopped me.

It's one thing to subscribe to some hippy-dippy notion that, 'Yeah, yeah, all life is meaningful and has value. We're all one. Whatever.' But pausing my typical self-involved mayhem for a second, using this idea about sons and daughters to look just a little more deeply... just for a second... I guess it let me see that underneath the bustling circumstance of every single one of us is something impossibly and immensely and unspeakably sacred. However you want to frame that, we all know it. And in the most blatant and obvious way. We all know that we are all sons and daughters. And as I stood in the commotion genuinely amazed by the incredible beauty in every person I saw, beauty that had been totally invisible to me moments before, I had another thought. Because undoubtedly, moments later when this little reverie passed, I would go right back to the habitually judging mind. That lifetime of habit doesn't just disappear and transform permanently. But that next thought that came to me was simply:

What would happen if I could manage to see through the lens of this truth all the time? I keep rediscovering that the most profound truths tend to be the simple ones. And isn't that the real trick in life? To try to remember them once we've stumbled upon them.

Letters to Erin, Part 1: Please Call Me By My True Names

2015-06-05T21:55:00.004-07:00

I haven't written much here of late, but I am constantly writing letters to my brilliant friend Erin. Erin is a phenomenal artist who I have known since I was 12. She has watched me go through a fairly dramatic number of changes throughout my life so far and she knows me pretty well. That is to say, she knows all the incarnations of me pretty damn well. We'll leave it at that for now.

 So, I occasionally write her some fairly bizarre letters. And I thought they might make interesting blog entries. Or I might get institutionalized after making them public. I guess we'll see. Because I'm going to start a little series of "Letters to Erin" and this will be #1.

 Also, we call each other "baddy." It's a silly inside thing. If I keep posting these letters and anyone actually cares to know why we do that, maybe I'll explain further at some point. But just so you know, it's affectionate.

 This letter followed one of my weird rants to her in which I copped to being totally brainwashed by biblical mythology and, tongue-in-cheek, wondered if we on planet earth are actually in Hell. So, it's a real barn-burner. Enjoy, kids.

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Baddy, I hate everyone.

I think if this were Hell, that there would be these things we call hope and love and even joy. Because if you were just on fire the whole time, you'd get used to it. No. For it to really be Hell, you would have to have the illusion that it could get better.

The things we call love and hope and joy, they're often so fleeting. We turn on each other when we don't like what someone does-- if they really defy our boundaries, regardless of our supposed love or loyalty to that person. There are no people who are un-betrayable. Even siblings and parents and children, or maybe especially, can be cast aside for treating us badly enough. I personally know a little about that. And I'm not even saying it's wrong. At all. But what I am saying is that we live in a deeply fucked-up dimension.

Abraham-Hicks teachings call this "contrast." They say that contrast is the place from which all "rockets of desire" are "launched." In other words, when you're sick, you are clearer on how much you desire health. When you're poor or hungry, you're never more clear that you want money and food and well-being. Etc. And they say that that is "the energy that creates worlds." But even that, when you parse it, is essentially saying the world is a fucked up place where people suffer tremendously and from that fucked up stuff, better things are created. Another way to say it more simply is that there is tremendous pain in birth. That seems to be a law of the universe.

Here's what I'm saying: that is fucked up beyond all comprehension. And my psyche has been programmed with the notion that that deep-fucked-up-ness is something that has been crafted by a "good" God. And I'd really like to punch that "God" in his sadistic face. To put it mildly.

Abraham is saying, even in the most extreme suffering- though they would wish it on no one, energies in the universe are born and those energies give rise to real-world things. Real-universe things. It's not just the food we grow, the water we drink and the air we breathe. It's the stars in the sky and the gravity under our feet. It's the planets and the solar system and the sun and the universe.

That's not good enough for me. The suffering in the world is so extreme.

I keep coming back to Buddhist thought because they're the only ones who make any sense to me. Buddhist tenet #1 is "In life there is suffering" (and the sooner you accept this, the more peace you will have). So instead of railing against suffering (like I am in this letter-- and in my life), you just work endlessly so you can finally face abject horror and learn to go, "Ah, yes, suffering."

It's that story of the monk saying to the warlord, "Don't you know that you could run your sword through me and I wouldn't blink an eye?" I don't think arrogance about the monk's enlightenment nor his non-reactiveness is the point of that story. I think the non-reactive mind itself is the point of that story. So as life runs its many swords through us, we are to learn to take it with grace and equanimity. And in that equanimity, there is less pain in the phenomena and thereby greater freedom.

But I just can't get around the fact that my genuine gut reaction to that is, "So... we have to learn to be the universe's battered wife? Quietly taking it like a good little woman should? And the sooner we accept this, the better off we'll be?"

And again, I want to find the architect of this and piss on him.

Clearly, I haven't even embraced tenet #1. Really at all.

But I do know meditation helps. And when I'm in the quieter meditative mind, which is like another planet from where I am right now, I think this angry mind is cute and funny and also a little silly. And not even harshly. More like in the way I might see a playful six-year-old as silly. I remember thinking this toward the end of my first 10-day vipassana course. And being very clear. And feeling genuinely lighter.

But thinking of that state of mind and being now, it's like I'm thinking about being someone else. It's like remembering a past life. Because when I'm deeply identified with my ideas of "David" and all of his wants and aversions and dreams and dislikes and reactions, as I am now, I can only remember that once upon a time I was this other person. But I have no idea right now how to even speak that almost totally foreign language of silence and gentle allowing of whatever appears.

I do know that when I read poems like this Thich Nhat Hanh poem (below) that I've probably referenced a million times, it makes me well up in a somewhat uncontrollable way. Even while totally not "taking the seat of the observer" in my life right now and not really in tune whatsoever with my "higher" self, even my ego-mind intuits when the truth is spoken. And seems to tell me with tears.

I guess it's just that right now, at least living as a 21st-century American in L.A., bringing that meditative mind to the fore is so demanding. And well, I'm currently in total-attachment-and-judgment-mode. And pretty averse to doing all that work. All that work... so that I can be free.

Hmm.

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Please Call Me By My True Names

By Thich Nhat Hanh

Don't say that I will depart tomorrow--even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving to be a bud on a Spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, to fear and to hope. The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that is alive.

I am a mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river. And I am the bird that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am a frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond. And I am the grass-snake that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks. And I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate. And I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands. And I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to my people dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth. My pain is like a river of tears, so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up and the door of my heart could be left open, the door of compassion.

Preface: I'm A Giant Mess

2014-01-27T03:18:00.000-08:00

I'm a mess. Let's just start there. Anything I may have to say in this blog, or anywhere for that matter, that may attempt to sound authoritative in any way should be heard through the filter of "This guy is a giant mess and is just trying to find his way." That's where the blog name "Stumbling Free" comes from. I'm just another schmuck trying to find his happy place-- trying to be free. Falling over myself the entire way.

I am the gay, Buddhist son of parents instrumental in co-founding the Christian Coalition. My dad was Pat Robertson's marketing guy for a time (among numerous other "Christian leadership" posts) and is an ordained evangelical leader. If I had to compare, I'd say my mom is even more into their evangelicalism than my dad. Two people with tremendous intentions.

As a result of where I come from and who I am, I've spent most of my life standing half-heartedly near the edge. Meaning I grew up understanding myself through the lens of the political church. In my case specifically, that literally meant that I understood myself as "an abomination to God." And to this day, there is no shortage of people from within that community who will smile at me, put their arms around me and act like they're doing me a tremendous and holy favor when they declare to me that they "Hate the sin, but love the sinner." Which sounds to me not a little bit like "Hate the left-handedness, not the left-handed." And that edge I've been standing near, despite this insane "Christian" message of wanting to sort of cut me off at the waist, is the edge I've just never quite gone all the way over, though very nearly. Quite a number of times if I'm to be totally honest. And man, I've tried to be honest.

"You're not going to break me of it," I've tried to explain to my very well-meaning mother. And I've not said that to her to be harsh, but because she's been a bit… stubborn… in not wanting to let go of the son she thought she'd raised. And I do get needing to mourn the loss of that fantasy child. But he was never real, and in the meantime, I nearly did pitch myself over that not-always-entirely-proverbial edge.

After years of ex-gay groups and the books that accompany that brand of emotional masochism, and my mother reminding me all the while that "That sweet Kellie Storm is still single, you know," and eliciting my dozenth round of "coming out to mom" and providing her with a definition of "gay" just one more time, a definition that, sadly, only includes Kellie Storm as a potential gal pal… I think I'm finally over the drama of most of that story. It was once incredibly heavy and sad for me, but then it eventually just sort of became more numbing than anything. And now, finally, it is even a bit funny. As some of my favorite spiritual teachers have said (and finally gotten through to me), 'What anyone else thinks of me is none of my business.'

The trouble inherent in all of this, though, was that I loved God. Or what I thought I knew about God. Based on what these well-meaning but more than marginally hateful people were teaching me-- and I don't actually mean my parents necessarily. My parents loved me. Or who they thought I was. I actually mean the "Bible-believing Christian community" that reared me, from my Christian grade school to my Christian university and the myriad evangelical churches in between. But I was also headstrong. And my well-meaning teachers and parents all told me to research the Bible and 'my' faith on my own. "Look into it for yourself. Don't just take my word for it. Your faith has to be real to you."

So in a very real way, I did take them at their word. I spent years "looking into it." Ultimately, that included studying with some of the best theological minds evangelicalism has to offer in the form of my theology professors at Wheaton College. And in the end, I just couldn't find compelling enough reason to believe this energy I called God belonged to Christians any more than it did Hindus or Muslims or even atheists. For a time, I pretended to throw God overboard. For a time there, I decided I'd "be agnostic." That's the hat I'd march around wearing.

But it just didn't fit. And my experience of the divine is part of my skin and I've finally had to admit that and express that. I can no more be truly agnostic than I can be someone who's never eaten chocolate. It's already happened and I can't un-know what I've tasted. I can't pretend I don't have skin. But I also can't go backwards and pretend that same baldly mean-spirited political church has some kind of ownership of that divinity I feel I've touched either. And I guess it's kind of funny in a way because it turns out, in the end, that by telling me to think for myself, all those well-meaning Bible-believers taught me to be that headstrong kid. I DID think for myself. In the face of a lot of messaging from the same places that clearly articulated I ought to "take it by faith" and that the Bible is "the inerrant Word of God," etc. And you know what? I appreciate the gift of that headstrong determination to think for myself. It kept me alive. Quite literally.

But it's left me with scars, for sure. It has impacted the way I see pretty much everything. There are challenges and gifts inherent in that broken sight. But regardless, my strong suspicion is that these broken eyes are probably it. From here on in. This is what I've got to work with and it's unlikely to change in any foundational way.

As I've spent years and years now during which I've meditated with the best of them, I've read, I've undergone a somewhat massive amount of therapy, I've detoxed-- physically and otherwise-- and the truth is I'm still a giant mess. The only real difference being that I'm now aware of it. Which is certainly valuable.

But really, I'm just another guy looking for a little peace. I don't really know anything other than what I've sort of bashed my own head against and the best I can do is show you the scars and the mended fractures and the bruises and describe how I got them. And how they eventually healed in some cases. Or how I'm still trying to heal them in many cases.

But that's why I'm writing. Why I'm making music and art. Because I figure that's not nothing. There's value in the shared journey. Not because I'm the sage guru with a lesson to impart. God knows that's just not true. I'm a guy learning life lessons in what is, frankly, the stupidest possible way-- by the seat of my pants. And maybe you're smarter than that.

So as I continue to describe the process of tripping over myself, my hope is that maybe it's useful to someone else too. Because I do genuinely wish for you what I continue to also wish for myself: joy and peace and freedom.

Hey, Occupy Wall Street: Why Not Short Sell Wall Street And Beat Them At Their Own Game?

2011-10-17T02:30:00.000-07:00

Why not hit Wall Street where it lives and destroy the value of the worst companies one at a time? This could easily and systematically be accomplished by people not willing to take it on the chin from corporate America's greed anymore.

This may seem far afield from a blog supposedly about a spiritually inquisitive life, but I actually think it is exactly on point for such a blog. Whether it is Jesus taking a whip through the temple in the gospels driving out those 'turning his father's house into a den of thieves' or Buddha's message of not being owned by desire, or as Gandhi so eloquently put it, "I can combine the greatest love with the greatest opposition to wrong", there is a long spiritual tradition throughout the world of standing up to greed in its many forms. And again, it would not be hard to stand up to the current cancer of American greed with a bit of organizational effort.

As I've quietly applauded the Occupy Wall Street-ers, I've also wondered when someone was going to offer a real solution to eradicate things, or at least give the out-of-balance power mongers a substantial spanking? Who brought Jesus's whip to the Occupy party?

What, nobody did? I don't know whether or not this is THE answer, but it is certainly a totally viable means of giving greedy companies a serious spanking if not taking them out altogether. And in doing so, encouraging other companies toward markedly better behavior.

Surprising as it may be, I, the least likely to day trade, have been learning just that. And specifically, I've been learning a particular form of it taught by a foul-mouthed spoiled brat who happens to really know his stuff. And historically, it's taken an obnoxious, brash personality to succeed in the Wall Street game. But isn't the point of all this Occupy Wall Street stuff that it's high time more than just obnoxious brash greedy white guys benefited or had a voice?

One of the things I've learned from this obnoxious guy is that you can short sell companies. This is actually pretty basic, it turns out. Instead of buying stock in a company, you can "borrow" shares (also known as short selling) from various brokers (the best ones I've found for this so far are Interactive Brokers, I've also heard Speed Trader is okay and once upon a time Think Or Swim had good borrows) and create what is called a short position by selling first and buying last. Normally when you buy a stock, you're betting the stock goes up. When your short sell (aka "Borrow") a stock, you're betting it will go down. So if you short sell a stock at, say, $5, you're betting it will go down. Say you got 100 shares of this $5 stock and it went down to $3. When you want to close the short/borrowed position, you do what's called "covering" your position or "buying to cover" the position. So, say we close out our 100 shares and buy to cover at that $3 point. That stock we shorted went down $2 and therefore, at 100 shares, we profited $200.

What I've learned that's even more interesting, as it applies to Wall Street, is that when someone buys a stock, that is part of what makes the price go higher. However, when the stock has a big sell-off, that drives the price/value of the stock down.

There are more variables, but that's basically it. It's just not the rocket science mystery Wall Street wants the common person to believe it is. Stocks do one of two things: they move up or they move down. Essentially.

If you want to hit Wall Street where it lives, why not beat it at its own game? Here's how it seems like it would be pretty easy to do.

Why not systematically create a list of the companies who most egregiously harm people in various ways? Take the greediest companies with the most overpaid CEOs and CFOs. Take the companies who have the most un-fair trade. Take the least green companies. Take the companies creating toxic foods or refusing to label their GMO foods or working with monsters like Monsanto. Take the companies harming children, domestically and abroad (through toxic chemicals in their products to use of child labor in poorer countries). Take companies that have run off with taxpayer money.

Take them and take them down.

It seems like it would be pretty easy to do if enough people organized and banded together to do it.

Interactive Brokers (in my experience), (although they have the crappiest customer service) has the best availability of shares to borrow to short sell a wide variety companies. You can short sell through many brokers, this is just one broker that happens to have a good number of shares to short, usually. You can go to this link and type in the stock symbol for any company and see if they have shares to short, and if so, how many:

http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/trading/ViewShortableStocks.php?cntry=usa&tag=United%20States&ib_entity=llc&ln=&asset=&b=USB&e=VCB

I am not a spokesperson and in no way shape or form represent Interactive Brokers or any other company and am not paid in any way to write any of this. I just genuinely want to offer a potential solution to how to address Wall Street in a way they will actually hear.

Why am I going on and on about short selling companies, you ask? Because if the Occupy Wall Street people wanted to hit Wall Street where it lives and get their attention (and scare the living hell out of them), they could easily do this by targeting the most offensive companies, one by one, and short sell them en masse. And this would drive down the price of the company's stock. Which would cause stockholders to sell of their stock. Which drive the price down further. Which cause negative news. Which would cause sell-offs. Which could potentially cause such a major panic that the stock would tank right into the toilet, even cause some companies to close down completely.

How many MILLIONS of people in this country are fed up with the status quo? How many people would happily say that with $1? $10? More? If even 100,000 committed $10 bucks to the cause, that would be a start of $1,000,000. There are a variety of ways this could be done, but it would have to be organized. So either folks could send money to an account holder (or holders) who would, of course, be 100% transparent with the account on behalf of the Occupy Wall Street group (by posting screenshots of the account, posting on trader sites like Covestor, etc.) and would use that money to drive down the price of a stock. Or, if enough people could establish their own brokerage accounts and do it individually, that would work too. That's more complicated in that starting many brokerage accounts takes anywhere from $1,000 to $25,000 for the kind of accounts we're talking about. So a couple group accounts makes more sense.

Regardless, you could then essentially put out a 'hit' on a given company and drive down the price of the company. In the example given, use the $1,000,000 either to buy $1,000,000 worth of the stock and then dump it at crucial moment for the company thus driving down the price dramatically. Or short sell the company which will instantly drive down the price. When you buy to cover eventually (or get bought-in by the broker, which can happen), that will make the price go back up somewhat, but nowhere near to the degree as when you shorted/sold it.

Also, you could and should publicize that you're doing this as you're doing it. Leak it to a publication like Seeking Alpha. Make sure it shows up on Yahoo Finance. The reason for this is the stock market is completely psychological game. Stocks live and die by good and bad news.

Recently, Starz pulled its completely lame original programming from Netflix. Who cares, right? The three people in America that watch that drivel already subscribe to Starz on cable. No one with Netflix cares. So Netflix raised their subscription price a few dollars? You know who's REALLY making a big stink about it? The media. And in response to what started as a piece or two of bad news, Netflix went from trading around $240 a share to just about $100 a share in a very short period of time. A devastating blow to the company.

So if news came out that Occupy Wall Street successfully drives down the price of stocks that it targets, and news then comes out of a company becoming a target, not only will the short selling efforts drive the price down, the very NEWS of the impending targeting of the company would cause shareholders to sell off their stock for fear of losing their shirts. THAT is power over Wall Street.

What if you could put the greediest banks on their knees this way? What if you could let a company know that they have become a target of Occupy Wall Street and that meant something very real to their bottom line?

It COULD mean that. It would just take a little organization and pooling of a little cash.

Why not short sell Wall Street? Or buy them up and then sell them at the edge of a cliff?

Why not, in this completely peaceful but MUCH more effective way, send Wall Street the message that we the people will take greedy evil companies out at the knees if they behave badly? Let's create a REAL checks and balances system whereby companies that are out of balance, get balanced. To the tune of millions and millions of dollars.

It can be done. And it wouldn't even be that hard.

ANYONE can buy and sell stock. This would not be that hard to do. Organize a fund and/or enough people to sell of a stock together, either by short selling or buying then selling at a critical moment, and you will send companies a message they will hear: "Listen to and heed what we have to say or we will make your company worth less. Or just plain worthless. Your choice."

The people can still speak. We just have to learn how to say it in a language they will hear. This is how.

How to Meditate, Part 1

2010-09-06T03:49:00.000-07:00

I remember that "still small voice" nudging me toward a meditation practice way back when I first sought it out more than 12 years ago. I wasn't even sure what meditation was, but I knew it was important for me to find out. The more I explored, the more confusing it became. There were so many forms of meditation and dogmas attached to each. So, I wanted to write a few simple pieces here in my blog on meditation and perhaps a simple how-to process, just to demystify the process. And perhaps to bring me back to my own practice in the process, too.

In my initial search to discover what meditation really is, eventually, a dear friend gave me a book that to this day has continued to be the clearest, simplest and most useful meditation book I've ever come across. It's called A Gradual Awakening by Stephen Levine.

Its language is clear and simple and poetic. "It is what is," as Ram Dass says of the book. I cannot recommend it highly enough. For that matter, everything Stephen and his sometimes co-author wife Ondrea have written, has been so enormously helpful to me, there are not words. The topics range from the process of dying mindfully to relationship and many others.

A few of the best include A Year To Live:

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Another is Who Dies?

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And finally, while I know this last book recommendation probably isn't news to anyone, Eckhart Tolle's books, particularly The Power Of Now, have been so enormously helpful to me and continue to be and I really feel it can be helpful to anyone ready to grow.

So enough with the book club for now and on with the meditation.

My first exposure to meditation practice was A Gradual Awakening and I remember what an earth-shaking discovery it was to realize I could relate TO the mind rather than FROM the mind. That may not even make sense until you delve into reading the book and/or practicing the meditation. But not long after beginning the practice as outline in the book, all manner of strange things began happening intermittently, just for flickering moments, and then more in more pronounced ways in my life. Light became more vivid. I seemed to understand things more deeply. Ideas and things I had never though of just occurred to me as obvious.

I think one of the many bigger lessons I understood more clearly at this time was this idea of understanding. Levine talks about digging deep and relating to our pain, our anger, our discomfort, our rage, our despair-- all of our so-called 'negative' feelings-- with presence and non-judgment. He says you would never approach a crying baby, scream at the baby and shake it and hit it in order to calm it. And yet this is how we so often relate to the many pieces of ourselves and our behaviors that we find lacking or intolerable. But it doesn't work. What works is this-- you cradle the baby. You whisper to it lovingly. You say, "Hey, I know you're hurting, I'm here. This is going to pass. It's going to be okay. And if it doesn't pass, I'm still going to be here. I love you."

What I began to discover is the ability to do this inwardly with myself, something I still struggle with to this day as it goes against all the masochistic training so much of us are raised with that teaches us there's some kind of honor in knowing how to properly berate ourselves, begins to move outward. When you can be kind to yourself, when you can be understanding with yourself, cradle yourself, you become that much more ready to do that with others.

And part of this is because understanding and a sort of wisdom begins to arise. As I watch my negative reactions rise within me, rather than judge them as negative or bad, I can simply note "Hmm, anger arising." And for whatever reason, this perspective and clarity allows me to then see more clearly "And I learned that when I was kid because I got hurt and now I have this defensive knee-jerk thing and that's where that comes from." And oddly, often, when I see "Oh, there's an actual reason I'm doing this 'negative' thing and it's understandable, somehow the understanding allows me to let go of the judgment.

Whether it's someone cutting you off in traffic and cursing at you or someone close to you betraying you, the way this works with others, is you can see "Hmm, this person probably learned this because they got hurt in one way or another." And it's almost like you slowly begin to be able to jump straight to understanding there's a reason-- or a series of reasons, usually-- for people's behaviors. And somehow, again, that understanding, makes it easier to drop judgment.

Non-judgment, choiceless awareness, is one of the most powerful things meditation can bring into our lives. My highest recommendation is still to grab a Levine book or two and go to town. But in the meantime, here's a quick meditation jumpstart.

1. Find a comfortable place to sit upright. It can be a chair or the floor. Just be comfortable and if possible, keep the spine relatively straight.
2. As you sit quietly, feel your whole body. You might even inwardly "scan" the body from head to toe. Feel the scalp, it might feel itchy or numb or even like bugs. Feel the face, the neck the shoulders, arms and hands. Feel the chest and the lungs and the stomach, the back of the shoulders, the length of the spine, the expanse of the entire back. Feel the buttocks pressed against the floor or the chair, the legs, knees, shins and calves, heels, feet, toes. Really get here, to this moment. Be present right where you are. Don't try to push anything away or make anything happen. Just let whatever's going on be.
3. Now, as you relax in your body, letting go completely, bring your attention to the air moving in and out of the nostrils at the point that the air touches the nostrils. Whatever you are able to feel as the air comes in, focus on that. You may not be able to feel the air until it's inside the nose, you may only feel it on the outside edge, either is fine. Whatever sensation is there, just bring your awareness to it and allow the air to come in and out all by itself. Just observing breath at the nostrils.
4. The mind will inevitably intervene, sometimes immediately. It will remind you that you have chores, unfinished work, that you're hungry, you need to scratch, etc. Don't make yourself nuts-- do what you must. But as much as you can, just stay with the breath. Whenever the mind starts thinking in WHATEVER way it starts thinking, simply note to yourself "Hmm, there's thinking" and return your attention gently to the breath. You may have to do this dozens of times a minute. Don't be dismayed. That's normal. The mind runs amuck. Which is why this process is so valuable. Just to be able to get that mind a little more still allows room for our natural wisdom and compassion and joy and peace and love to arise. Don't get lost in the mind's contents. If it helps to note the specifics of the arising thoughts, note "planning" or "there's hunger" or "there's anger" or "there's boredom" and return gently to the breath.

Continue watching the breath for 15 minutes if you can. The next day (or time), do it for 20, the next for 25. Finally, see if you can get yourself to meditate for 60 minutes without a break.

And if you get to that point and want to go further, I highly recommend a vipassana meditation course at either Spirit Rock:

http://www.spiritrock.org

Spirit Rock is about an hour outside of San Francisco, or one of the many vipassana centers taught in the tradition of S.N. Goenka:

http://www.dhamma.org

These centers are literally all over the world. They are a bit more rigorous and the first time you go, you are required to do a 10 day course and you take a vow of silence for the 10 days. It's long days of meditation, about 12 hours a day, but it's broken up into very doable blocks. You just need to know what you're signing up for. This is not for the casually interested. This center is run entirely on a donation basis.

I've done courses at both and have been challenged and ultimately grew immensely from courses at both.

If you want to bring the meditation into movement, there's no better way I know of than yoga. I've personally delved deeply into Hatha Yoga as well as Taoist Yoga. I've heard great things about Bikram Yoga, but have never done it personally. But we'll leave yoga for another blog.

Until next time, I hope that this little meditation lesson eases your ascent.

Big love

Just Say Yes

2010-02-08T02:10:00.000-08:00

I believe it was the time I heard spiritual teacher Ram Dass speak at a church here in L.A. called Agape years ago, when he invoked the idea: "Say yes to everything." The way he said it was almost flippant and it certainly seemed to be an almost commonplace idea to him that was something of an almost random aside the way it rolled out between more primary thoughts.

I'm going through a break-up right now. A difficult one following a passionate and loving, but also damaging and difficult, two-year relationship. I am devastated. And I know there are bigger problems in the world by far, but to stand where I am standing at this moment, is to stand in more than a bit of fire. However it may compare to any other fire, it hurts like hell. I am deeply in love with this man and I now have to pick apart the psychology of, as my friend Birdie might aptly say, "the part of you that's broken." The part that wants to revisit places and co-created situations that have hurt me-- hurt both of us-- over and over and over no matter how hard we've tried to do it differently. And I do this, probably, so that I can relive some parental trauma that feels like home. Yes. It's a bit of a personal fire I'm currently standing in. Maybe more than a bit. So the flippancy of someone telling me to say "yes" to this is kind of a pisser.

But the truth is that Ram Dass's statement couldn't have been made from a place that was entirely flippant. He was doing some heavy lifting, I'm fairly certain. And the reason I'm fairly certain of this is because this was the same sort of teaching Ram Dass had always offered in one form or another, but now he was offering it as a recent stroke victim who spoke even more meditatively than before. Slower. Exponentially slower. And he described trying to verbalize some of his ideas and looking for the right words as 'looking for the right article of clothing in a large closet and not knowing where you've placed it.' He was standing in his own very personal version of the fire and was seeming to say "Well, true, this is where I'm standing. Yes. What's the big deal?" Which kind of blew my mind. And still does.

To boot, his light-hearted, post-stroke, follow-up to his '60s bestseller classic "Be Here Now" was also entitled with equal levity: "Still Here."

Ram Dass along with Stephen Levine have been two of my most influential teachers as I've continued to re-embrace a more personal spirituality that has increasingly felt more compassionate and truer to my own spirit. This, after having given my childhood's taught notion of a misogynistic, vengeful God the less than proverbial finger after walking away some time prior to me finally fleeing to Los Angeles.

And I don't know why this idea of "saying yes to everything" pricked my ears so, but for whatever reason, it did. And even after years of meditation and yoga practice and generally having worked much harder than the average west-coast migrant to become what many members of my extended Midwestern family less than affectionately refer to as "A California Fruit and Nut," not having understood this idea just bugged me. I really thought I'd earned my stripes at least to some degree. But even that-- no, especially that, is something I'm sure Ram Dass would say is simply more mind fodder to meditatively note and undramatically return to the breath-- that it's more ego stuff, more "Grist for the Mill." And he'd be correct.

In meditation, whatever your particular method, you develop a one-pointed focus. My Western explanation of why this is done is basically: to quell (I learned from my last individual therapist) what the Buddhists call "the monkey brain". And it is also done in order to achieve this proximity to that quieter, one-pointed presence. Some chant mantras, some focus on one point like a flame and some, like I was taught, focus on one specific point where the breath passes in and out. This, in order to touch our truer nature, our divine nature that is interconnected with all that is, seen and unseen.

To this end, I have attended 12-day vipassana ("to see things as they truly are") meditation courses and taken the requisite vows of silence for the duration of those weeks in the woods at the meditation center near Yosemite. I have done serious yoga, often quite feverishly. Which is to say, often in a very un-yoga-like fashion. I have fasted and mantra'd and meditated with the best of them. And I think it frustrates the very-alive and present inner-adolescent that I'm finding that more and more, my childhood devotion to and love of the divine as I understood it in the context of my Born Again upbringing and childhood is really not so different from the healing of opening my heart in Bhakti yoga and song. I would even go as far as to say that even now, after years of anger and hurt toward the various forms bigotry and hypocrisy of almost every Christian I've known (including myself when I professed to be one), I am reconnecting in my own far-less organized and quiet way with that culturally charged word: God. And taking it a step dramatically further, at least in the sense of my own belief of "it may be mythology, but it undeniably moves me:" Jesus.

It frustrates me for the same reason that I didn't understand Ram Dass's statement. We have these scavenger "monkey brains" which are constantly identifying desires and aversions, ideas and constructs that we attach ourselves to, all of it temporary. These monkey gather up all of this temporary stuff and lay it out to look at and admire, all shiny and interesting. And most of the time, we have no idea the monkey is even doing this. It's just happening. The monkey's collection is not collectively things we would say we love or hate, but they are simply the collection of things we're currently clinging to. And it doesn't take much more than a decade before a veritable warehouse is required in order to hold this constantly growing collection. And further, it takes an expert guide just to walk you through the warehouse. That reason, simply labeled, is the ego or the idea or notion of oneself. The notion of "me."

So you get your version of your personal warehouse tour guide to try not to get too lost in the ego warehouse-- you get the therapist, the friend, the teacher, the guru, the mentor, the pastor, whomever-- and it takes seemingly forever to walk through the place as the guide begins, "Over here we have the idea of our intellect-- I'm smart or average, book smart or street smart or maybe I'm stupid and have a hard time learning. Over here, we have our sense of aesthetics-- I like this art and this movie and this sound and this color, I arrange visual, aural and all things sensual in this way and that. I abhor this style, I love this one, etc. Step over to this aisle for personal history-- everything I've done, what my parents did and didn't do, siblings, where I lived and traveled and went to school, who I've loved and fucked and forgotten and been forgotten by, etc. In this wing we have people we're connected to-- family, friends, lovers, enemies, employers, etc. Over here we have all the hurts we've held onto, knowingly or otherwise. And over here we have our triumphs. Over here we have a sense of our physical selves-- I'm beautiful or ugly or average or what have you. Over here we have religious beliefs and very nearby, political beliefs (who can say way they're in such close proximity). And on and on and on. And then with all of this host of fleeting things, all the accompanying beliefs therein, each has its own unique bearing on whether or not that impacts the ability to connect with other people as a lover, friend, family member, student, teacher or whatever aspect of our identity we're invested in creating at this moment, how we connect with others and the world, where we think we fit and how, etc."

And the warehouse goes on forever. But inevitably, no matter how big it is, we gather up that billion-ton monolith of a warehouse and try to carry it around on our backs and insist on calling it... "me." We live our whole lives from this confused place of believing all these fleeting notions that our monkey brain is collecting and clinging to is who we are. Without them, who would we be? It's terrifying to think of putting it down.

And that is the big "trick" I keep trying to learn. I've said before that I keep relearning this, but I think the truth is I'm really trying to get it at all for the first time. And really, it's not a trick at all. And my Grandma might have said something as simple as this to express it: "You just need a little perspective." Other Eastern teachings often talk about "Taking the seat of the observer."

So when Ram Dass casually insinuates that I should "say yes to everything," I think it means something that, to my monkey brain, is not immediately as obvious as it might be for Ram Dass. And that is, just like in meditation, whatever arises, you stay with the one-pointed focus and just stubbornly keep returning to that focus regardless of what is going on. It could be terror that is arising at this particular moment or boredom or planning or lust or giddiness or, really, anything at all that arises in that monkey brain as it scampers to squirrel it away and trick me into identifying with the shiny new object of mind. A big one for me in meditation is actually pretty funny: "Let's eat. Screw this meditation stuff. I'm hungry." The food's usually not more than 30 minutes from happening anyway. I'm not starving. It's just the monkey brain throwing something at me that it knows will give it the run of the kingdom again. Sometimes it's nothing more than an itch that comes up and the desire to scratch it. And sometimes I do just go ahead and scratch rather than choicelessly let the itch arise and pass. And that's fine too.

But I think what Ram Dass might be saying is, whatever crosses our path in life, and whatever our response or particular choice of action may be at any given moment, respond by take the seat of the observer. I don't think in imploring us to "say yes to everything" that he's encouraging us to walk into life's storehouse and make no choices and just look at the stockpiled shelves and "say yes" to eating and grabbing every single thing in the store. I think he's saying wherever you are, be there. Say yes to the moment. You're in a moment of joy, be there, feel it, walk around it, feel the connectedness to who you really are. You're in a moment of panic or fear, be there, feel it, walk around it. And when every cell in my being realizes as I sit in a place of terror "Run away now" and then I choose to run away, be with that too. "Okay, yes, now I'm running away. I'm terrified. Yes. Okay. I'm here with it."

It's not about control. At all. It's about loosening my grip on trying to control everything. And the paradox that whenever I find myself, as I have this week, in the middle of a painful break-up and it hurts so bad that I want to run in five different directions all at the same time as hard as I can, so much so that I just become paralyzed, even in the middle of that I can stop and say "Yes. This too."

It's not "me." It's a moment I'm experiencing. It's the tide I'm happen to be standing in. Moving in and moving back out. And again, as my Grandma might have said, "This too shall pass."

But even beyond that, I begin to feel, bit by bit as many of the great mystics have, from Siddhartha to St. Francis, that "God" imbues everything. Everything. Every rock, every tree, every atom. Everywhere. And to me, that means that God also inhabits all the joy and all the terror. All the heaven and all the hell.

I can't properly define what I mean by "God," but I can certainly feel what I mean.

Because of my incredibly difficult history with Jesus-- and all the people claiming him (right there is more fodder from that warehouse I'm carrying around yet again), I find it hard to admit that I am also still, or maybe once again in a new way (I'm not totally sure), moved by the mythology of Jesus. It's REALLY hard for me to bite down on. BUT I also love the story. And my understanding of the story of Christ's death in particular is very moving to me. The way I understand it is that he goes through this unbelievably horrific experience of physical pain, while also being shamed in the deepest way imaginable. And consistent with what he taught, he offered in response to all of this inflicted hell-- love. He went through as much hell as we could manufacture here on earth and he responded with love. And, again, as I understand it, the story has him finishing this off by declaring "It is accomplished." As if to say "I have now created a new level of what it means to love no matter what. Spit on me, shame me, nail my body to something naked and mock me while you do it and I will stay in that balanced place of the seat of the observer. I live in the seat of the observer. I live in the place where I am never not saying 'Yes, this too.' Just as I am to you now, dear one. Here is what love is. Try to get this." And of course, almost none of us ever do. And it is likely just a story, but I really love that story. And I think if nothing else, the millions of people who have truly loved that story have endowed it with something powerful that can be called upon.

To my mind, and my experience, there is nowhere that God disappears. God/our-higher-self/whatever-you-want-to-call it (I don't think God is concerned either) is not absent even in the presence of a hell. And if that is true, and it does feel that way to me, I can have the requisite faith to at least try to say "Yes" to everything. Yes to what scares me, yes to what exhilarates me and even yes to what hurts. And if I start screaming in terror "No no no no, not fucking this!" as I'm apt to do, eventually, I'll hopefully learn to once again gather up enough of that faith to again stand back up on my weathered legs and say "Yes. This too." Whatever it is that's been placed at my feet, maybe one of these days, I'll learn to skip some of the drama I'm so prone to and just say yes.

Don't Panic

2009-10-10T07:14:00.000-07:00

Here's the "new" thing I'm learning: you just cannot get what you want by pushing against what you don't want. I should probably put that in quotation marks because it's probably a verbatim Esther Hicks-ism.

I think Mother Teresa said it near-perfectly:

"I was once asked why I don't participate in anti-war demonstrations. I said that I will never do that, but as soon as you have a pro-peace rally, I'll be there."

Every new lesson seems like 'everything' when you're starting to grasp it (or feel like you are). And this is no exception. This is everything.

Every challenge, every goal, every crisis, every annoyance, every joy-- whatever is wanted or unwanted-- the desired outcome will never turn up while I'm proclaiming my grievances.

It feels so necessary I tell you how I was done wrong and by whom. It feels essential I "solve" the problem by addressing it "head on." I mean, I'm not going to stick my head in the sand. Or am I?

I've had a number of people in my life with some difficult behaviors showing up with their difficult behaviors. How I brought that in is anyone's guess. Maybe I complained or worried about money or relationship or health-- it's usually one of those-- and the vibrational match of the crappy behavior patterns heard the clarion call I sent out. But regardless, because that quickly becomes and upstream blame game anyway, here is this unwanted thing-- these people showing up, all different people who don't even know each other, but all of them behave in these maddening and inconsistent manners. All very like each other.

It's as though they called each other up and said "Let's get him. While all do it simultaneously." Very victim of me, I know.

And I would moan and complain and push against one and wouldn't you know it, another's maddening behavior would seem to flare up. I'd scream about how I can't believe that and two of 'em would show up.

Then it started affecting my income. Then it started affecting my relationships. And I railed against those situations.

It starts to take on this Job-like quality (in my indulgent estimation), my woes. Someone probably should have let Job know "the worse it gets, the worse it gets." And when it does, it's more important than ever to look for the thought that feels best.

But I'm not Job. And it's not that bad. And the people doing the maddening things are not that out there. And it's momentary anyway. This too really shall pass. The money will come. The rifts are not that deep and will heal. And I'm turning my boat in the stream. Things are fine.

But it is so much clearer to me than ever that I have this, like, tick-- like I need to rail against something I don't want. It's a reflex. It's what you do. You paddle hard. God forbid you drop those oars. God forbid. Don't put your head in the sand, remember.

Call it what you will, I do need to turn toward what feels better. I gain nothing, practically or otherwise, by detailing my grievances at length. I gain feeling better by talking about what I like. I gain relief by focusing on what is working and what I appreciate. And in those feeling-places, I actually do attract more of the things I want. They're not pinched off and just have an easier time finding their way in.

That's all it is. In sage words of Douglas Adams, "Don't panic." And, really, while you're at it, don't quibble about it, talk about it... don't even write a blog about it. (That was for me).

Talk about what feels better. "Whatever is pure, whatever is lovely..."

Not to get needlessly biblical, but it's the same idea. Along with the 'Doesn't God take great care of the flowers, how much more will God take care of you' bit.

Don't panic. Relax. Focus on what feels like relief and joy and bliss and ease. Don't give your attention to what diminishes those things.

I know I keep relearning the same thing again and again, but it feels a bit more to the point each time.

This may be helping no one but myself, but that has its merits. (I'm learning to be selfish).

Monkey Brain Tsunami

2009-08-13T06:28:00.000-07:00

When the shit hits the fan, some of this spiritual crap doesn't always seem to cut the mustard. But I'm thinking that maybe the tougher times might be exactly the time it does.

Non-judgment is something that I've been knocking my head into most of my life and it seems to me to be a primary theme of many belief systems, ostensibly anyway. And in some teachings, it's also described as non-resistance, or to simplify-- just freaking relaxing.

What if one of the big so-called secrets of life really is that simple? Just let go. That's it. Let go. Just freaking relax.

Could it really be that basic? And to boot, it's not even saying let's worry about the "Let God" part of the commonly voiced equation, however you define that. If you let go, the other part happens anway. Or so it seems...

Perhaps. I'm still mid-observation on that.

But as I continue my peculiar observations, I keep finding that the wisdom that is most worth embodying, is often the simplest. But this is not to be confused with the fact that the simplest things are often the hardest. And I think the phrase "JUST let go" could do without the "JUST." It ain't a "JUST" do something situation. Not with our monkey brains.

Taking the seat of the observer within myself, as in meditation, the arising and passing of all the crazy mind-stuff can be seen. In meditation, you bring your attention to a one-pointed focus on the breath moving in and moving out. Nothing else. Inevitably, the constantly spinning mind reveals itself.

I meditate watching the breath without thinking-- just noting: IN... OUT... IN... OUT... and then the spinning mind-stuff comes up. IN... "I'm hungry... Ooh, that itches, scratch that..." OUT... IN... "Did I pay the electric? Oh yeah-- note 'planning'... back to the breath..." OUT... IN.... OUT... "You know, she never even returned my call... oh yeah, noting the anger arising, back to the breath..." IN... OUT... And on and on. The spinning mind.

I recently heard a secondhand story of a monk who refers to that spinning mind as our "monkey brain." I love that. The evolutionary lingering of all these needless fight-or-flight kneejerk mind impulses that are ultimately about survival stuff that our minds do is just funny. And frustrating. But only because I'm resisting it and not relaxing (love those catch 22s).

Craving, aversion, craving, aversion... thousands of these mind moments, on a minute by minute, even second by second basis. Almost totally unseen. And we also unconsciously react.

Doctors talk about "stress" in this broad way and how it causes bad shit to happen. What if we dismantled the stress function? I'm not saying losing our inner-guidance system or our ability to know when we're moving toward or away from love and who we truly are.

But what if we got still and peaceful enough inwardly that the shit could hit the fan and we wouldn't be rocked. Or even knocked. What if the rejection came, the illness showed up, the let-down happened... what if the biggest tsunamis hit... and rather than panic, we noted it. Just like in mediation. Taking the seat of the observer and saying "Ah, tsumani. Back to the breath." Not as a means of evasion or denial. Just as a means of staying calm and not panicking. Like, in my life.

And not making everything so personal really helps me in a very personal way.

I have an insane headache right now. And it's interesting to take a migraine and watch the panic come up and the resistance. And sometimes all I can do is go "Ah, panic. Resistance. Fear." But noting the situation is a step toward freedom. Because in that moment, it's not "MY panic" and it's not "I" am afraid. It's just the motion of the tide. "Ah, here's this sensation." And I gently move into it and see what it's made of. In the case of this headache, it's made of pulsing, dense sensations with sort of a rounded quality.

When you look at what something really is, and you pause from the busy schedule of "OH MY GOD OH MY GOD THE TSUNAMI..." it just allows more space and freedom. And I think maybe that's what we're built for. Freedom.

I'll finish writing this minor tome and totally forget all of it and get totally lost and start panicking about five things that will just have my guts for lunch. But then I'll just have one moment mid-panic of "Ah, observing panic." And that's all it takes sometimes. To have another moment of perspective. Which is another step toward freedom. And within that space, I can start to get better at it.

Some places I stay very blocked. Some places I feel like I need to. As I mentioned previously, any yoga teacher I've ever had who was worth their salt will tell you-- you do the pose to your own degree. Diving too deeply into a stretch your body isn't ready to do will only tear and damage things.

And I know this is getting long. But sometimes I have to work my around a subject to get to the center of it. (Thanks for making it this far.)

I think the reason we're designed for freedom and space is because we're built to love. And when the chattering "monkey brain" mind starts to quiet down a little, that space that is freed is heart space. Which is who we really are.

When the resistance, in whatever form it's currently taking, falls away in a given moment, I think it's like removing stones from the dam and what floods in is love. And it feels like freedom because love is what we are.

And when you consider that we're literally made of light, made of stars, all basically made of the same stuff, it's cool to think about how we basically ARE each other.

There's so much mystery in the universe. And when you take the time to turn and look inward, there's a chance to see everything. The universe we're in seems to be inside us.

There have been a number of different studies that successfully showed when a mass of people would meditate together in an urban area, crime would decrease significantly among other notable positive effects. And I like to think that maybe, since we're all made of the same stuff, that just by helping myself in this way-- taking the time to get still, cutting myself a break-- and doing the sometimes surprisingly hard work of letting go, just maybe... it helps everyone a little.

Big Bag of Hollywood Bullshit

2009-08-11T05:57:00.000-07:00

This is me climbing the emotional scale... from powerlessness into rage. If you're up there in bliss, you may not want to join me down here. On the other hand, it might give you a giggle...

There are good freaks and then there are celebrity freaks who drive Hummers (or think they're God's gift for 'lowering' themselves to drive a Prius). In L.A., we have vast quanitities of both, but especially the latter.

Having just come in from another grueling day of Hollywood nonsense, I'd like to offer the following rant to the latter group and their big bag of bullshit which they offer not only to L.A., but to the world. Simple pointers to take to heart:

1. If you are walking or moving in a direction, look in that direction.
2. Driving a BMW, Lexus, Mercedes, RR, Bentley or some variety of SUV does not entitle you to more of the road, to honk at other cars when they're making turns or parking or give you greater ownership of public places.
3. Being a celebrity simply means in five minutes, the public will loathe you. In ten, they'll have forgotten you. If I'm staring at you, it's so you'll move out of the way, nothing more. Get over yourself.
4. Use your "inside voice" when you're talking on your cell phone in public (and put the damn thing on vibrate).
5. Higher box office or greater sales of a media product does not endow you with artistic integrity, personal validity or entitle you to my table at Real Food Daily. I'm a little indie musician, but I still love my vegetarian food too. Kindly wait your turn like the rest of us.
6. Spirituality is not something you can purchase at the Bodhi Tree or the yoga accessories shop.
7. Sunglasses inside makes you look like the drug addict you probably are, not mysterious. Get yourself to your overpaid Promises retreat (aka "rehab") and get on with it.
8. The waitress you just ripped a new one for not bringing your fucking miso soup fast enough is the next Julia Roberts. And she'll remember you. Try to be nice.
9. Aggression does not equal strength. Shouting does not make you heard. Arrogance does not give you importance. Rein it in.
10. You are one person among billions on a relatively small planet. One. Other people exist.

Aaaah. Feeling better already.

Let It Happen

2009-08-11T05:25:00.000-07:00

Something really came together for me very recently. I'm navigating an intricate maze. Let me start by piecing together some of the great teachings I have taken to heart in various forms, but haven't begun to understand how to marry to each other within myself. Until now.

Jesus: "Love God, love your neighbor.... The kingdom of Heaven is within."

Mother Teresa: (The people she served are:) "Simply Jesus in his distressing diguise."

Abraham-Hicks: "You are here to serve yourself. You are selfishly oriented and that is a good thing. It's not your work to make anything happen. It's your work to dream it and let it happen."

Dalai Lama: "There are wise selfish people and foolish selfish people. Foolish selfish people act only for themselves thinking they're advancing their cause. In contrast, wise selfish people understand that serving others first is in their own spiritual best interest."

Ram Dass: "Being conscious is cutting through your own melodrama and being right here. Exist in no mind, be empty, here now, and trust that as a situation arises, out of you will come what is necessary to deal with that situation including the use of your intellect when appropriate."

Joseph Campbell: "The best way to help others is by perfecting yourself.... Follow your bliss."

Stephen Levine: "Let the mind sink into the heart."

Joseph Campbell often talked about the importance of digging one well and digging it deeply. Through my own exploration and intuition, I've come to really believe and trust this way of approaching life. It's not about "choosing a religion." It's a principle. You can apply it to anything.

Take sex and monogamy as an example. For me, I feel that a mate who I know I can dig that well deeply with, with whom the connection far surpasses the exterior but translates to something that will create that expanding, profound bond that can remain real until your ass is down to your knees and they're still the most beautiful thing you've ever laid eyes on-- pouring all your sexual energy and intimacy into one "well"-- is what creates something truly rich. Rather than, as Joseph points out, hundreds of shallow mud puddles that add nothing to your life and leave you lacking in a profound manner. The ability to deepen gratitude, to be blown away by the essence of another being, on a daily basis. Until it grows and grows and grows and the energetic mark you leave on the planet literally adds to the possibility of what love can be.

I believe this principle applies to everything in life that really matters, that you do for the long haul.

So for the thousandth time, I am rediscovering a signpost on my path pointing me back "home." My path, the well I'm digging, is definitely centered around mindfulness/vipassana meditation. As Joseph Campbell also shows us, a truth is a truth. If I describe it to you as a Buddhist or a Christian or an Agnostic, if it's really truth, it doesn't matter. Mythology and perspective- places to stand and view these truths from- are both important and still incidental. And the key truth I'm relearning yet again is that whatever is happening... to let it happen.

It sounds so simple. And it is. But not necessarily easy.

This is such a big lesson I keep returning to as I wander away, like my mind wandering off from the breath. I think I first really got this in reading Stephen Levine's seminal meditation book, A Gradual Awakening, almost ten years ago now. This is the book I never have in my possession because I always give it away (except thanks to my dear friend Erin, who gave ME a copy as a gift so I would keep it, I now own it).

Letting it happen is terrifying. Sometimes it's easy. Mostly, it's just hard to remember. Most of us aren't ready for nirvana this lifetime (myself very included in that, though I'm sure it's lovely) and usually, we're all id. There's an itch, I scratch it. I want something, I reach for it. Someone says something insulting to me, I react negatively. "I" have "my" pain. "I" have "my" desire. "I" have "my" aversion. Etc. ad nauseam.

And it's such a strangely freeing moment when you ACTUALLY take the seat of the observer and watch it all unfold and everything you observe that comes, you greet with "Okay." Or "Hmm, this too." There's no trying to change it. Just seeing whatever is and allowing. In meditation, you lock onto some area of one-pointed focus, for me (and in many meditation teachings), the nasal breath. "In, out. In, out. In, out." But in meditation, the truth is more something like "In, out. In-- hey, why haven't they called me back yet? Oh God, did I do something wrong? In, out. In, out-- will they like me? In-- Jesus, the laundry. Got to do that fucking laundry. Out. In-- you know what? I'm freaking hungry... In..." And so on. And it's often this little tennis match, consciousness bouncing into mind and out of mind and being able to instead observe it thinking rather than being the thinker. And finally, as the meditation deepens, being able to even stay with one thing for a while because the mind gives up a little. And a little more... BUT that's not what I'm talking about.

In "taking the meditation off the cushion" and into everyday life, being present, letting it happen is trickier. I can be incredibly reactive. If I manage to gain enough perspective to see that, finding a way to gain further perspective and ALLOW my reaction, my negativity, whatever you want to call it, that's where it gets interesting.

The Dalai Lama's quote and Ram Dass' quote, and Eastern teachings in general (which continue to be amazingly helpful to me, as does my Buddhist-based meditation practice), tend to lead people to this place where taking the seat of the observer means while you observe and allow WHATEVER is happening, what you are actually doing is "trying" to eradicate something unwanted, not allow whatever comes up. I've done this. A lot. "I will meditate to become more peaceful (and thereby get rid of these icky feelings.)" In an oversimplified nutshell.

And it SEEMS like that is antithetical to allowing. So here comes the thing that was a bigger "Ah-ha" for me... IN THAT MOMENT where I saw myself meditation with a non-allowing goal of eradication... I allow that too. It's just saying the same thing: Let it happen. That does not mean "Let it happen until you see yourself not letting it happen and then choke it and judge yourself for it." OR if you do that- - and you see it- - THEN in that moment, as absurd as it might seem, I say "Okay: judging and punishing myself. Okay. Interesting. Back to the breath."

The funny thing is that often, the moment I see my "bad" stuff-- thought-patterns/behavior/neuroses/judgments/masochistic-tendencies/fill-in-the-blank-
with-your-self-torture-of-choice... at the moment I see that... WHICH IS SUCH A BEAUTIFUL MOMENT OF DEEP CLARITY that I can see that... I often tend to snap OUT of that deep clarity and BACK into the blindness of the id and into another form of judgment. Judging judgment. Feeling bad about feeling bad.

And I think of Abraham(-Hicks), and the non-physical faeries of the universe that must have such a chuckle. Because sometimes, in that moment when I've peeled back more of these layers to see what's there, all resulting in that I finally relax and allow and cut myself a break and just be happy because of ACTUALLY letting go and not trying to be happy. Happiness is, I believe, our natural state and what naturally arises when we simply step back and allow everything.

The seven quotes above have hung me up because I thought I saw contradiction between these perspectives. But to go back to Jospeph Campbell, what's true is true, regardless of the mythological origin from which we receive it. And again, it could all just be simpler if I could "allow" the contradiction and know that what feels true in my heart (despite the neurotic over-thinking voices in my head), always is. The heart has a way knowing deeply. The mind likes to jump into the fray and protect us and keep us alive, that's its job. But letting "the mind sink into the heart," is ultimately a much more satisfying, fulfilling journey. And there's my hang-up. Wanting... anything. Satisfaction. Desire.

So here's where Abraham, the Dalai Lama, Stephen Levine-- all of them-- meet. My big, big, big "Ah-ha" for the week that I want to articulate now while it's fresh inside me. The "desire" comes up, is born of the ego, the id, that thing we're crawling out of to observe. Without that perspective, it rules us. And it hurts. But even there within that hurt is the desire again. The ego-derived thing. The desire to become free, the desire that led me to meditation in the first place. And that's the big ah-ha. TO ALLOW THAT TOO. There's no place where the "Let it happen" principle stops. The ego/self-desire comes up to do something, and even if I am managing to maintain one foot in the perspective of "observer," I do that thing "I" WANT to do. And I allow that too.

I go further than that though. I JUDGE my action as GOOD. I APPRECIATE my action. I (ego/self-I) go as far as to CHOOSE a joyful response. And ALLOW that choice. And that joy is easily accessed BECAUSE I'm in that place of allowing. And in the allowing, my natural state of joy and happiness is already radiating. And sometimes it's radiating out even through some of the more painful stuff I might be feeling at the same time, and I'm allowing that painful stuff too. No resistance. I may even slip into a negative judgment about the pain I'm feeling alongside that joy and the lighter experience. And I see it. And I let it happen. I allow it. I say to it "Okay." "There's pain. Back to the (proverbial or actual) breath. Back to the moment. The WHOLE moment."

And I may not be "watching the breath" every moment of my life or "observing sensations in the body." But I'm more awake. And I like that. And I do feel a sense of momentum and slight goal-orientedness about becoming "more awake," and moving more consciously toward joy because it feels good and I fucking like it. I love it actually. I'm creating freedom and I love it. And that is desire. And that is self/identity/ego-born. And that is perfect. I allow it. And because I allow it, it grows.

That's another interesting effect. When you allow pain and negativity, you don't fight them, you seem them and you just let them run their course without getting too involved-- to the best of your ability from wherever you happen to be at the moment, in the light of awareness the pain begins to dissolve. Because in the light of awareness and allowing, we move back toward who we more fully are- - souls with feet- - souls that were born out of and made of "God"- - joy/compassion/peace/strength/gentleness... love. When you mindfully allow pain, it dissolves. It becomes merely vibration. And when you allow joy and desire born from energies true to our nature like creation, compassion, etc... it multiplies itself.

And instead of this inner-conflict I've fostered about thinking of these things as contradictory, not in SPITE of Ram Dass or Eastern thought, do I come full circle to the teachings of Abraham and "The Secret" and "the law of attraction," but I come to it with an incredible strength and joy BECAUSE of the tools of allowing I've fostered and grown from the rich soil of those amazing teachers from the East. And I'm so grateful. So grateful.

The universe is magical. This realizing itself all came about because a whole series of synchronistic things were sparked in me during a conversation with someone truly amazing who I met last Thursday under dense purple clouds and a cheshire cat moon. To whom I can only offer my deepest gratitude for being an unwitting teacher for me at a pivotal moment. Much like the parallel pivotal moments we unknowingly shared in 1998 at a Tori Amos concert before we met.

The universe is a mystical, vast place with so much mystery and contrast and magic, it could never be fully deciphered. Thank "God" for giving my overactive soul and mind enough to chew on.

Big love...

Eating My Enlightenment

2009-08-10T05:00:00.000-07:00

I'm very excited that my otherwise typically "black thumb" has managed to produce these thriving new-- and very green I'll have you know-- Goji berry sprouts. They're two Sundays old which I remember because I planted them during my ritualistic viewing of "True Blood." Appropo of nothing other than confessing a guilty pleasure.

The reason goji berries and superfoods are noteworthy for our purposes is that here in the "Stumbling Free" blog, I'm attempting to broadcast my law of attraction experiment to find the best-feeling thoughts and, well, the best feeling... feelings... I can find. And see what good, if any, is truly manifested in my life. It is "effort," but it is primarily thought and emotional "effort" as opposed to action effort-- and it is the effort to relax. To effort... less. And raw superfoods do seem to be one of the many ways that help my cells sing and feel good. Which helps me find that feeling of relief and letting go.

There is definitely some work involved though, and I haven't always been totally aligned in the past with wanting do all that work. Sometimes it's a bit more of pulling myself up by the proverbial bootstraps than it is drinking unicorn kisses and holding hands and skipping. Sometimes it's less about feeling happy about what I'm doing in the moment while I'm doing the work. And I want to explore that more as this little experiment unfolds-- why sometimes it DOES seem like in certain situations, doing the thing that doesn't quite feel like "turning toward the best feeling thought" and "moving downstream," but rather paddling a little and doing something that doesn't feel so great in the moment, ultimately DOES feel better in the long run. As was in this case when I first started "making" myself create the superfood habit. This forceful "making myself" element seems to go against the idea of doing only what feels inspired and joyful. But in short, I think it's just a bit of digging into some of my negative attachments and habits and tearing out something slightly diseased.

In this case, eating convenient but also processed unhealthy foods (yes, friends and neighbors, vegan food CAN be QUITE unhealthy), in reality, genuinely doesn't feel aligned or "downstream" with my inner-being. But these food habits are such longtime habits with which I've learned to have a sort of emotional-guidance-system... numbness, so much so that the call of Source on this topic which has been ignored for so long, initially because parents or friends or other people told me it was healthy so I ignored what my inner-being told me, that I don't even know I'm doing anything out of alignment. I can't feel it. I've trained myself to ignore the feeling because other people told me to.

And now as I become more sensitive and listen to my emotional guidance a little more closely, and I do finally recognize that I want to move more downstream on a given topic-- like food or health-- I am one of those people who sometimes gets a little graceless and brash with myself. I sometimes don't "turn in the stream" toward what feels good incrementally as much as yank myself around, trying to tear out the old pattern all at once.

To put it in terms my yoga teachers have often used, you never slam your body all the way into the splits the first time you stretch. You'll tear something. But that is my proclivity sometimes.

But with the superfoods, however it's happened, I have found a way to have these be a part of my life and have gotten into a good rhythm with it. Now it's part of what I do and who I am. Literally-- the superfoods are what my body is made of which is just such a cool idea. I just love that.

As far as growing the goji berries, I have zero idea what I'm doing, but it seems to be working so far. Cathy Silvers (remember Jenny Piccolo from "Happy Days"? Same person) has a company that sells these raw dehydrated Himalayan Goji berries that I buy at Erewhon here in Los Angeles. I like these or David Wolfe's Sunfood brand best of all the ones I've tried. I find them to be softer and fresher. And in keeping with the law of attraction theme of this blog and listening to my emotional guidance system, they just "feel" better to me. No disrespect to any of the other great companies out there.

Anyway, I split open a bunch of the goji berries, simply exposing the seeds while still in the berry, put them in some of the "organic" (not sure what that means when you're talking a bag of dirt, but Whole Foods makes everything sound so shi-shi foo-foo good, so I went for it) soil in a couple pots and trays and have made sure the soil stayed moist, watering every one to two days. And miraculously, so far, they're actually growing.

The reason I'm growing fresh goji berries is that my "mornings" (I work graveyard, so morning comes in the p.m.) always start with a superfood shake. And some small portion of a high protein meal. And I'm telling you, this one thing alone has made a pretty dramatic difference in my mood and energy. I've been doing this for over a year now in various forms as I've experimented with it-- and much of what I do now is actually what I have learned from my boyfriend Jeremy who has self-educated himself on this stuff in incredible detail through various teachers, primarily David Wolfe.

And over the past year, I've found myself in difficult times, depressed, low on money, low on energy, low in inspiration... and then I drink my superfood shake. And I don't mean to sound like a snake oil salesman, but honestly, it's like I DRINK my way to positivity. It doesn't happen the first time you have the superfoods (though you might feel something), but as I spent days and weeks and months giving my body all these superfoods, I began to really look forward to it. It was like someone turned on the lights inside my cells and it just... made me lighter. Made me light up. Inside.

Sometimes, especially when a really heavy state confronts us, in the form of relationship trouble or money trouble or health trouble especially, it seems nearly impossible to find a thought that feels better. When I find myself in the grip of really hating where I am, or even just deeply dreading what horrifying situation MAY arise, the fear and anger and powerlessness and the myriad heavy states that arise feel like they're the only reality that is and that ever will be. An author I love, Stephen Levine, talks about how heavy states seem to scream that they are the ultimate and only truth. When in actuality, it is just what the present moment is carrying in with it like the tide. It will go back out again. But we don't believe that when it's happening. Which is why meditation is so crucial for me, but more on that later.

My long-winded point is that making this commitment to myself to enjoy these superfoods everyday is no longer a chore. It's something I look forward to. And if I miss it, I feel the difference. It is has made my skin clearer, it has given me more even and balanced energy levels, it has made me look and feel younger, it seems to have reversed a host of little health difficulties that had the potential to become bad conditions including a pre-diabetic condition to which I am genealogically predisposed among many others.

I put a whole bunch of amazing things in my morning shake and I do vary it, but I thought I would share what I use. I'd be curious to hear if anyone else reading this does something similar, has recommendations or stories and what your experience has been overall.

My one sort of disclaimer is that I have somewhat mixed feelings about raw cacao and there is mixed information out there. However, I believe so strongly in the law of attraction, and there is so much that is good about cacao, that I do ultimately believe that if you feel aligned with having massive amounts of cacao daily and really believe it's good for you, it probably will be good for you. I'm not aligned with having it all the time. It's a medicinal plant ultimately just as much or more than it is a superfood, but I'm going to let other folks battle that one out. Cacao's great. I just do my utmost to eat intuitively and I'm on the fence with cacao. Or as Abraham is always quoting at the art of allowing seminars "If it's not a hell yes, it's a hell no." I'm not exactly sure what a "Hell sometimes" means. Split vibration.

One sort of disclaimer with all of this is that it really does make an enormous difference to have the digestive system working right. It just makes it easier for the body to receive all these wonderful nutrients. I know people get funny about a little bowel talk, but I'll simply mention a couple things that have worked for me. Psyllium husk is great-- I get mine at Trader Joe's ("Secret of the Psyllium"). And Dr. Schulze's bowel cleanse program is very effective. His style of teaching can be more than a little off-putting, but his stuff works. And you DO need both the Intestinal formula #1 AND #2. He also has a newer product called "Bowel Shots" which I've used somewhat extensively already and one shot WILL clean you out. Dr. Schulze's site is herbdoc.com and no, I don't get any money for writing this. It's just something that's worked for me.

Anyway, I wanted to share my shake concoction. Again, I'd love to hear other folks' experiences and I am happy to answer any questions to the best of my ability (or I'll enlist Jeremy's help to answer if I don't know) or simply point you to better teachers like David Wolfe.

Jeremy calls his concoction his Badass Cacao Shake. And I sort of like that. So I'm going to steal it....

Badass Superfood Shake (as concocted by Jeremy and I)

*Note: I am in no way associated with any of the companies or brands I'm mentioning and don't get anything from the companies for talking about what I use. I just genuinely love the stuff.*

- Navitas brand Goji powder (I strongly prefer the raw powder to the actual berries for the shake, believe it or not, because in the big picture, although you don't get the fat from the berries, you get about a pound worth of the nutrients in one tablespoon and we're adding good fat with some other oils and such), 1 tablespoon (I get this at Erewhon, this is Navitas' website: http://www.navitasnaturals.com)
- Navitas brand Acai powder 1 tablespoon (In L.A., I get mine at Erewhon Market)
- Either Navitas brand powdered Yacon or Sunfood.com brand (david wolfe's website - http://www.sunfood.com) Yacon syurp - 1 tablespoon (Navitas or Sunfood.com)
- Sun Warrior Brand Activated Barley - 1 tablespoon (sunwarrior.com)
- Sun Warrior Brand Raw/Vegan Rice Protein (choose your flavor) - 1 scoop (about 2 tblspns) (http://www.sunwarrior.com)
- (again, follow your own guidance on this) Ultimate brand cacao powder - 1-2 tablespoons depending on your taste and budget
- Noniland Noni (sunfood.com)
- Ultimate brand Maca - 1-2 tablespoons, same as cacao
- Ultimate brand Himalayan Pink Salt - 1/4 teaspoon
- Navitas Brand Pomegranate Powder - 1 tblspn
- Ultimate brand cacao butter/oil - 1 tablespoon
- Coconut oil/butter - 1 tablespoon
- Dr. Schulze's Superfood - 2 tablespoons (herbdoc.com)
- Ocean's Alive Phytoplankton - 1 dropperful
- Y.S. Brand Bee Pollen/Propolis/Royal Jelly
- Ultimate Brand Chlorella/Spirulina - 20 "tablets"
- Really Raw Brand Honey - 1-2 tablespoons depending on taste
- Navitas Brand Raw Stevia - 1 tblspn
- Organic Blueberries (I get frozen ones at Trader Joe's) - 1/4 cup
- Navitas Brand Palm Sugar (raw "sugar" from coconuts- so good) - 1-2 tablespoons
- Brand of your choosing, I like Zico or straight from the young coconut (as with all of this obviously) 8-16 ounces coconut water

So, as funny as it is to say aloud, that is literally my recipe for a little piece of enlightenment. Just one of many ways to help the body feel better and thereby help everything feel better.

The law of attraction is a spiritual law for physical beings in a physical universe. And the bottom line of all this prattle is that this superfood stuff really make it easier for me to think a better feeling thought. In fact, sometimes I can skip right past the thought and go straight to the feeling good.

Finally, I know this is a little frenetic and all over the place. And I'm aware of the law of attraction "lingo." I think it's plain enough, but I've been a student of Abraham a long time now so it may be more opaque than I realize. For anyone who's lost and cares to understand, you can visit abraham-hicks.com for more information.

And I'll leave you here with a video that encapsulates a lot of what I've referenced.

May it ease your ascent.

Be well.

Mr. Orris's Wild Ride

2009-08-08T07:11:00.000-07:00

It's almost bedtime at 6:32 a.m. here in my Hollywood hovel where I've secured my survival since 1999. Hard to believe it's been over 10 years in this noise-hole, all while working mostly for major record labels and bitchy women (who had to try 10 times harder than their male counterparts to gain position and were thus worse for the wear)-- mostly at the same time.

These overworked and undervalued women do not include the demanding likes of Mariah and J-Lo and similar cohorts, for whom I spent the better parts of 1994 and 1999 respectively, making sure they had their coca-cola in the old fashioned bottles, seeing to it that everything in their dressing room was pink (or white), making sure they had three-foot candy canes in June in order to be "artistically inspired" to overdub the word "holy" on their Christmas album, getting label presidents Jordan or Jeff on the phone for her "right fucking now!!!" and being made to sit in on calls which outlined in gloriously gory detail why a certain artist's marketing budget cap (in the entire history of Sony Music to that point in time) didn't apply due to being the biggest-bigwig's playmate and as such, he thereby essentially mandated the debut album debut at #1 to the detriment of better artists on the label...

And the odious Hollywood like.

When I moved into this Hollywood apartment a decade ago, this place was an upgrade from my former shoebox "bachelor" on Crescent Heights and Fountain where I lived for a couple years prior to that, an apartment through which the rain literally poured in over the doorway making a short river diagonally from corner of the tiny unit to the other during the torrential rain season called El Niño.

This morning as I sit in the cool darkness, it's comfortable and quiet with my hard-earned portable AC blowing, the cable TV paused, the air purifiers spinning, the curtains drawn. This is my haven, such as it is. I've survived a cheating boyfriend here, gained and lost 80 pounds (and am re-losing the 40 I put back on again... I call it my Oprah syndrome), written countless songs and pieces of music, signed a music publishing deal and gotten my first TV and film song placements, done my 10-day-vow-of-silence meditation courses, became vegan for seven years (and then traded it back in for fish and eggs), starved through countless raw-food and juice detoxes, buried a beloved pet of 10 years and fallen in love again... all while living in this one-bedroom off of Franklin Avenue. The ghosts here are all mine.

Well, unless you consider that Jim Morrison, Tori Amos, Jeff Buckley and Janis Joplin all lived within a block of this apartment at some point in their lives. And as cool as the bragging rights of this block are, it's also a dark, brooding, and with the exception of Tori, deceased bunch. But still cool, all the same. Especially to me, since I'm a musician who started playing piano at age four.

My folks paid for lessons but took them away at five years old due to "lack of diligence" in my practicing regimen. At seven, I begged the lessons back and they never were able to silence me again after that.

My father, a "Christian businessman" and ordained minister changed jobs frequently throughout my childhood. He was Pat Robertson's right-hand man for a spell while I was in college. And he was the president of various Christian publishing houses most of the other times. He was actually instrumental in co-founding the Christian Coalition and was often found in the deepest inner-circle of the Christian Right, holding court and even sometimes sharing top-level clearance confidences with everyone from top U.S. Generals to world leaders.

Imagine my folks' utter delight in discovering their son was more metaphysically curious than Christian and more, well, queer than not.

When I was 12, my staunchly religious family was run off the beautiful San Bernardino mountains that had been our home for eight years by the good Christian folk of Twin Peaks and Lake Arrowhead, specifically those of the Twin Peaks Community Church and Calvary Chapel. It had apparently been decided through a mountainwide game of "telephone" (as far as I could tell) that my over-zealously Jesus-loving folks were... (drumroll please)...

Occult leaders who ritually sacrificed children in the woods. That was the Salem-ish crux of the brouhaha.

My best friend's mother, a woman named Marjorie, reportedly claimed that after my mother had been in her home she began seeing "creatures that looked like Gremlins" around her. It was, after all, the hit blockbuster of the moment. That evil, brainwashing Hollywood machine hard at work on the sharp minds of the small-town genius.

And that depraved nonsense is what took us to Chicago, which is a city I still love very much. Man, I miss Chicago. The people, the seasons (well, mostly), the air...

But don't feel too sorry for my crazy family. Remember, I'm all about the law of attraction here. And they create their own reality too.

Shortly after moving to Los Angeles in 1997, I was in a car accident in which I shattered my femur, lost something like 20% of my body weight in blood (I didn't even know you could do that), sustained a concussion and all kinds of physical fun. And my folks' immediate response was to send an ex-gay minister to my hospital bedside to inform me that "God" had put me in this situation to "get my attention" because apparently God wasn't pleased with my "lifestyle" (before my mother did come to L.A., Bible in hand, to look after me). I remember thinking it was a shame that he was now married to an ex-gay lesbian... he was cute. And I remember that through the pain and morphine-haze, I woke up at one point during one of his sermons about my evil-doing just long enough to tell this guy to "pull the log from his own eye." And then I passed back out.

From where I'm sitting, my folks are probably the most masterful people I've ever seen (seen in person, anyway) at exacting judgment upon anyone and everyone not in identical agreement with them. My mother would sometimes lean over to whisper secret nuggets of wisdom like "Catholics are going to hell too, you know. They pray to MARY."

So from my perspective, seeing what I've seen now in so many places in my life about how the law of attraction really works, my observation about my folks and the mountain witch hunt is that these (somewhat crazed, frankly) super-judgmental folks of mine attracted the crazed super-judgmental folks of Twin Peaks to pass crazy judgment on them. The energy of judgment is what you're eminating constantly, and so now that's what you've become a lightning rod for... that's my theory anyway. Judgmental as it may be.

And don't get me wrong. I don't think I've arrived. By any means.

In fact, I'm starting to see more and more clearly I never will. And I'm seeing what a great thing that really is. I'm actually just now starting to really get how I might enjoy the road to never arriving.

Everything in this universe is in constant motion. We're no different. And I can be at odds with it or I can flow with the current. But either way, that river's moving.

In any given moment I have a choice. There's feeling good and feeling bad. And maybe it really is that simple. And if I can just stop in any given moment and become present and recognize what's going on inside me, that's all the wisdom I may ever need to know which direction to move next.

That wisdom may lead me to joy and health and connection and freedom and exuberance and bliss in more forms than I can conceive of. And on the flipside, my previous decades of programming may kick in-- decades that have taught me to struggle and beat the drum of what I don't want because I'm so afraid of it that I actually forget that beating that drum is like sending what I don't want an invitational homing signal straight to my door and that actually, I have the power to do something very different and far more rewarding if I will just snap out of it and remember to put my attention on what feels better not worse.

Hence, this blog. Where I will publicly air my stumbling, fumbling efforts to gently (or maybe not so gently sometimes) turn toward what feels better. And see where it leads me-- in health and relationship and money and freedom. And this starts right here and now, in a moment when I truly have so much to feel good about.

There are specific things that I want. And I'll use this blog as not only documentation of my "route," but also as a public record of the experiment. It is my excuse to remember to find thoughts that feel better.

As I use "trying to think a better-feeling thought" to reap the things I hope for and also to see what surprises manifest that are a "vibrational match" to what I'm putting out there, which is always fun too, maybe someone out there is doing the same thing. And maybe in some weird way, we're co-creating.

This morning, I am so grateful. All the crazy contrast of my life leading up to where I am now have somehow led me to a place of gratitude. They've pretty much forced me to learn to let go and soften on any number of topics.

So here I am right now... in my cool, comfortable apartment. I'm safe. And I'll sleep in a comfortable bed. I have the incredible luxury of getting to learn and grow and understand more deeply. I have the amazing luxury of being able to sit down and type out my thoughts on a computer, putting them into the electronic ether and maybe even connecting with a kindred spirit or two somewhere along the way.

I have amazing people and love in my life and I feel loved and well.

And having written out all the insane milestones and speed bumps along the way was actually kind of fun. And bizarre... to see all that strung together in one rambling article. It's a little out-of-body, but kind of in the best way. Maybe I'm just masochistic.

Whatever got me here, I have so much to feel good about.

And I wish the same for you.

Be well.

Learning to Breathe Amongst the Ghosts

2009-08-08T06:28:00.000-07:00

This is to document my ascent. I no longer have any question that "what you think and feel and what manifests is always a match" as Esther Hicks has it. It could be that my upbringing prepared me for superstition and I'm a sucker. Maybe. But if I were crazy, I probably wouldn't know it. So I'm going to do my best with I've got while keeping an open mind and heart.

I want document my often clumsy, stumbling path toward freedom. If only to record the twists and turns of my particular route. Toward joy, toward peace, toward exuberance, toward connection, toward happiness and again, freedom. All of which I believe to be our true nature.

As with anything, "there are two points of vibrational relativity-- where you are and where you want to be." I've learned that a lot of what is my "past" is actually something I carry around in my present until it is diffused by the light of awareness. I'm still untying a good bit of it, but mostly, none of it carries the weight it once did. So as you hear some of the sometimes shocking and often absurd details, don't panic. Mostly, these are old news. They're just good backstory for all the crazy that's sure to follow in the days and months to come. So here we go...