MAY RADICAL EXPRESSION

For the past several weeks, I have been rehearsing for a concert I will be performing with my dear friend Suzanne in mid-May. We have put together a number of really great arrangements, and are performing a variety of musical styles and genres. While I have mostly been enjoying this artistic and challenging endeavor, it also has been presenting me with a few lessons that have been impossible to miss and not to easy to digest. I actually have a deep and abiding appreciation for the fact that my life is always unfolding in just that way; everything I do brings with it a myriad of lessons to be learned. I realize that it is not unique to me. It is just that I am almost always paying attention, choosing to hone in rather than to zone out.
There was an extended period of time in my life when I must humbly say that I was a very fine singer. I was blessed with a natural ability that presented its self early in my life, and then was enhanced by a number of really gifted voice teachers. I was told often during the time I was living and performing in New York City that I would one day be performing on Broadway. That, alas, never happened. Perhaps I really did have the talent. What I did not possess was the confidence. Rehearsing for this concert has put me in touch with the part of my wounded self that actually diminished my own talent based on what I was saying to myself, about my self. I began early on in these practice sessions to feel some once familiar feelings in the pit of my stomach. As I chose to listen in to those feelings, I discovered that I had begun again to criticize myself for the way I was singing, comparing my abilities with those of Suzanne, and with the way I had once been able to perform at the height of my career. Beyond just recognizing the scrutiny I was bringing to this particular project, I also courted this awareness as it revealed to me that most of what I have done in my life experience has been done in the starkness of this same analysis. I have never really been on my side. For the depth of my mystical devotion and practice, I fall short when it comes to truly affirming my self and my abilities in terms of human expression. I believed early on that no matter what I did, it would never be good enough to win the approval of my parents, and specifically my mother. She wanted so much to see her children succeed, yet the only tools she had at her disposal were the criticism and judgment used so liberally by her mother. I adopted this quality of attention, and turned the volume up. I do not fault my mother. I truly and deeply know that these are my lessons to learn. I was gifted with the perfect messengers. I am so very grateful to be able to see this today, and to have the inner musculature to make a different choice.

And a choice it is. The quality of our life experiences will be directly equal to our quality of attention. During this month of celebrating mothers, I would offer to you that in terms of energetics, the father is intention and the mother is attention. Both must be in balance and harmony in order to co-create lives that are reflective of whom we are in Truth. While I had many intentions about what I wanted to manifest and to express in my life, I didn’t have the quality of attention to support it. I literally miscarried my dreams because of the way I was holding them. The constant scrutiny was a toxic environment, one that began to chip away even further at my habitual low esteem. It also began to affect my abilities to perform and to want to pursue what I was once so passionate about.

We are each, male and female, invited to create a nurturing and affirmative mothering inner atmosphere in which to live and from which to express. We must align with the Cosmic Mother in her infinite and unwavering compassionate embrace. We rarely if ever know unconditional love in this world. And yet we are not of this world. Our Source is Unconditional Love. It is Mother Attention and Father Intention, and It wants only to co-create and to joyfully express as and through us. It truly is a Love song waiting to be sung. Listen deeply to what you are saying to your self about your self. Is it Truth? Is it supportive? Is it affirming? Is it loving? Is it worthy of an emanation of the One? If you are not willing to bring this quality of attention to yourself, no one else can or will. It is truly an inside job. Remember: the quality of your attention will be the quality of your life. Sing a new song, and just feel what happens.

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A BIRTHDAY BLOG

As I begin this edition of RADICAL EXPRESSION, I am keenly aware of a profound sense of AWE within the center of my being. I have been riding on waves of APPRECIATION most of this day, though I have had a number of tasks to accomplish. I am particularly grateful to be connected to a sense of BLESSING at this venture of my life journey; tomorrow, the 21st, another numerical digit will be added onto this incarnation. I giggle as I recall a line from the play THE LION IN WINTER: “I am older than I ever intended to be.” Though the cliché “age is a state of mind” has been parroted repeatedly to me during the past weeks, my humanness is perceiving fifty- two as a bit daunting. I am actually welcoming that feeling. I have no need to label it away. The fact is that I have entered the autumn of my life, and I want to experience all that my humanity offers in its fullest expression. Aging, when embraced, brings with it a myriad of lessons. I personally do not care to act as if I am not aging, or to deny how that may feel within the human realm. I recognize that I am not choosing to identify with all of the limitations that tribal thinking brings to this era of my life. Nor am I disconnecting from the embodied form that is changing with the passing years. I am indeed an eternal spiritual Essence, and I am housed now in human form. One is an eternal Truth, and one is relative. But both are to be embraced. My current level of consciousness is what is bringing about the sense of awe, appreciation, and blessing that I mentioned above. I spend great periods of my days awake to what is happening within and around me. I live in a perpetual state of Remembrance. That brings me great joy. At the same time, I am experiencing physical changes that are calling me to an increased level of compassion and Presence. They are not changes that are preferred, yet here they are. A much older man is now looking at me from my mirror. Things are not physically where they used to be. The law of gravity is at work, and the toning exercises that seemed to always give a lift are now resulting in more of a lag. So there is very evident spirit, and there is fairly visible sag. And all of it is a part of my life experience, so I am choosing to open to it all.

Even with the slight trepidation about turning 52, I have a great sense of possibility about my Nows. I am in a state of Being where I can look back at all that has been and smile. I can look upon all of the unskillfulness with compassion and with mercy. I am treating myself with more loving-kindness than ever before. That capability is expanding the givingness that is so much a part of my purpose. I awaken with a sense of gratitude for simply being here upon this wondrous planet another day. I live within the felt-sense Knowingness of Who and What I am, and why I am here in this incarnation. I open daily into the inquiries of HOW NOW SHALL I LIVE? WHAT NOW MAY I GIVE? Those questions have become my guiding stars, and I keep my sights upon them as I navigate through my days. I know that I am in the best time of my life, and that I have a great gift of love to give while I am still here in this slightly sagging, sometimes creaking body temple. And that is truly the reason I am here. To live into and to give from within the Love I am. I am truly grateful to be just as I am this day, and I have waited 52 years to be able to say that.
As I end this edition of RADICAL EXPRESSION, I do so with an even greater sense of AWE and appreciation: for you, my beloved readers. And for myself, the older yet wiser man in the mirror who continues to show up giving his gifts of love.


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