Thursday, December 20, 2012

MY "MUST"

As I begin to type these words I feel a pressure in my chest that I easily identify as the desire, the need, the pent up passion of giving expression to what is most precious, vital, and sacred within me. I have had a deep and quenchless thirst for the Beloved my entire life. Though I have been sidetracked and hoodwinked countless times, life has for me always come back to wanting, indeed longing for the direct experience of my Source more than anything else. My late spiritual director once told me I expect too much from my spirituality. I will always love and respect her and that it is a point we never did agree on. While I thought I was here on this planet to do and to accomplish many things, my top priority has always come back to the mystical merging I know I am meant for. I believe I spent too many years expecting not too much but far too little. Stories of long dead avatars are fine but I want my own interrelationship. Way-showers are great for pointing the way but no other person or intellectual map can replace the intimate encounter I know is my birthright. Rilke invited his students to find their “must” in life and then to pursue it relentlessly. I know what my must is. I have always known what my must is. It is a life rooted in my Source, and an expression that shines that forth into all my encounters and activities.

And so we collectively step through an enormous energetic portal at this time in our collective evolution. An old age is ending, and a new one is birthing forth. Some of us will go through this birth consciously, and some will remain longer in the trance. I know I was born for this time. I know I was born to be freed from the story of unworthiness, shame, addiction, depression, and self-aversion. I know my transcendence is up to me yet not for me alone. Self aversion is very self absorbing. Fearful withholding only seems to be the effect of depression. It is the cause. Being a prisoner in my own programming for so many years was the real hell I was taught was a likely punishment after death. Being locked in my own limiting beliefs, unable to give freely the love I was meant to give, WAS death. It was the real crucifixion. I can no longer hide in fear. I can no longer stay in that old sad story of separation. I can no longer pretend to be less than I incarnated to be. I am here to shine, to serve, to let my life be a story of overcoming and transcendence. And I am here to uplift you as well. As I know my own Sourced splendor I know yours as well. And when you forget I am here to be a loving reminder. I am here to shine my Light into your temporary darkness. I will compassionately listen to your self-stories but I will not believe them. You and I have suffered long enough. The world has suffered long enough.

I am done playing small for fear of being somehow exposed or misunderstood. My Source is greater than any ego story. This is the time for a mass spiritual awakening, and I am devoted to playing my part in this great myth of illumination. I feel myself typing faster and faster and I feel the pressure in my chest becoming words and expression and inspiration. Whatever else I may do during this incarnation I devote myself to enlightened Beingness. I dedicate myself to being a force for peace and compassion. If I begin to slide back into the old habitual story I will stop and I will reconnect to my Soul’s purpose here on earth. I will remember that I am here for something much bigger than myself. I will synch back into my “must.” I must be who and what I came here to be. I must shine the Light of awareness and the frequency of love into all of my moments, into all of my interactions.

The time has come to fully become my must. And there is no turning back now.

www.taylorestevens.com

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

MY I AM PROPHESY: ONE!

I am continually amazed by my retrospective relationship to the passage of time, and to the seeming speed-up this relationship projects. I can scarcely believe that I am writing these words in the last week of November, and reflecting upon how quickly the months have passed since the beginning of this year. I looked back at my first blog of 2012, and have been reflecting on how I intended to spend this year verses how it actually has unfolded. It is clear to me that the inner aspects of what I intended to experience during these months have indeed been the atmosphere in which I have lived. The outer accomplishments and external goals have been much more variable. In a year that has carried with it much speculation and even fearful anticipation for many, I feel a deep appreciation for the inner advances that I am able to recognize as we move toward the completion of 2012. For years there has been prophetic drama steeped in a misunderstanding of what the ending of the Mayan calendar on 12.21.12 might signify. It never felt scary to me at all. It did and does carry with it an enormous sense of possibility and transformation. As I shared in my original blog of this year, it has not been for me a fearing of what the ancient Mayan prophesies might mean. Rather I have used it as a series of invitations as to the fulfillment of My I Am prophesy flowing forth from center to circumference during this rich time here on wondrous planet earth.

I am feeling called to share my musings regarding what I have termed I Am Prophesy during these last few weeks of the year in order to clarify for myself what is continuing to unfold in increasing speed and expanding clarity. There is a passion within me that no amount of time or fear-based misperception can deaden. I am met each day with a deep, felt-sense knowing that despite a lifetime of goals, dreams, aspirations, and ambitions, I am really here in this earthly realm to awaken to Who and What I am in Truth. Even as I type these words, they feel pitifully anemic compared to the inner call from which they come. I am here first to be freed from the theology that kept me bound for so very long, and to actualize the Truth of a Source that is an All and Only Love that is rapturously transcendent of religion, dogma, or creed. Secondly, I have come to learn that I cannot know this Unified Truth with a dualistic mind. A concept, no matter how beautifully described, will never lead me to the direct experience of the One Source IN which I forever dwell. I am called to embody this Source while still here in this human experience. Though I was taught that the body is a limitation keeping me from G-awed, I have learned that though temporal, this body with its central nervous system is the vehicle in which I get to vibrate at the frequency OF G-awed. My I Am Prophesy is is all about the experience of being here in this realm of finite experience! I do not have to wait to die to experience “heaven.” Heaven is not a future place but a present state of Being. I will always be Source Spirit, but this adventure is about bringing the frequency of Source into the density of matter. I get to consciously experience both! And I get to allow consciousness and matter to dance within me and show me the way to an integration the mind alone is not capable of.

And so I get to use my days as a devotion to Being all that I am called to be while here in this body, in this story, in this emerging prophesy. I get to choose how to relate to my limitations from the perspective of that which is Limitless. I get to choose each and every day how I am going to show up in the world. I get to choose what I am energizing by my focused attention, and what energy I am going to emit into this world. Moment by precious moment I get to choose to either believe and contract into the fear, or reopen into Love. Will I be a programmed imposter, or a Sourced authentic Being as I move through my moments? Will I hide, or will I shine?

The choice to shine is the velocity that is moving me towards 12.21.12. It is for the Mayan people the completion of an age. It is for me the completion of a false identity. It is the end of an age of disempowerment. It is the final curtain in the drama of who I thought I was and why I thought I was here. For the rest of 2012 and indeed for the rest of my earthly days my priority is the fulfillment of my prophesy. And that prophesy is nothing less than fully becoming the “G-awed-ling” I came to this earth to be. When I am awake to that purpose, I am congruent and flowful. When I am asleep to it, I am contracted.

Transformation doesn’t take time. It takes the healing of mis-perception. I am willing to surrender the misperceptions regarding my Source and myself this day, this moment. That is all I am about. Living wakefully within this moment of and within One Source G-awed. That IS my I Am prophesy. That is my fulfillment. That is Who I Am and why I am here. And if it took many years and ample amounts of pain and a speedup of time to discover that Truth, then so be it. This is the moment. I am the One. I Am is what I Am.

www.taylorestevens.com

Thursday, November 22, 2012

IN ALL THINGS

Spiritual writings from various traditions invite us to be grateful in all things. I have found this to be a most transformative practice. So much of spiritual Principle can be theoretical in terms of how it informs our moments. What we say we believe is often a far cry from what gets activated when the chips are down. It is more likely that what we say we believe is what we WANT to believe. We know it in our guts and hearts when we hear Truth, and yet in this realm of duality, Truth must become true. This integration happens when we are challenged; when we are not getting our way, when the dream has died, the lover has left, the account is empty, and the diagnosis is dire. This is when what we say we believe to be true is strained to the breaking point. This is when our unconscious core beliefs come crashing forward and our affirmations sound like the pitiful cries of a desperate child. When it is most difficult to be grateful is when we most need to be.

It is when it appeared that everything important had been taken from me that I learned the most about gratitude. It was staring at an empty table that taught me the most about fullness. It was death that taught me about life, poverty that demonstrated abundance, and loss about infinity. Being pushed to the edge gave me wings. I have leaned that gratitude is a sign of awakeness. Thanksgiving is prescriptive. In concert with my faith gratitude is the aperture of coming attractions. It is vision. When I am able to be grateful in all things I become a vehicle for the miraculous. My openness gives way to possibility. I am not tempted to pinch off potential.

At this time in my life my preferences are being pushed, and my perceptions are being challenged. My thankfulness is more than ever a moment by moment choice. Integration is my constant companion and my sweetest friend. I am grateful this day in all things. In ALL things. I would prefer that some things be different right now, and I am trusting that they are as they are currently meant to be. I will not be tempted into resistance, seduced into rejection. I am grateful in all things, for I am within the Source of all. Appearances come and go, yet my gratitude remains my constant. I am awake. I am grateful. I am giving thanks. I am in the knowing that as long as I remain in gratitude, I am aligned in the Highest Good that is ever seeking to flow forth through me.

In all things. Yes, thank you, yes. In all things.

www.taylorestevens.com

Thursday, November 8, 2012

DO YOU APPROVE?

I was well into my forties before I realized to what extent I was still trying to get the approval of my mother. Now, I haven’t lived near her for thirty years, and she is rarely privy to what I may be accomplishing professionally or in any other area of my life. But one day I realized, as I was sharing something I had done with a mother figure close to me that I was longing for a certain reaction from this woman. I longed for a response that affirmed not so much what I had done, but for a validation that it mattered that I was even here expressing on earth. I was stunned. After a flurry of emotions and self-denigrating interpretations passed through my awareness, I came to the knowing that we are hardwired to want and to even need the acceptance, approval, and affirmation from those around us. It is spiritually correct to say that the only real approval we ever need is the approval that comes from ourselves. While this is at a level true, at another level it belittles the importance of our connection one with each other. It denies the importance we play in the story lines of those we care about. To confuse having needs with being needy is a painful and unhelpful perception.

We all want to be loved, cared for, acknowledged, complimented, and affirmed. While my first reaction to the revelation that I was still wanting mommy to say “hey, you did well” was one of embarrassment and shame, I was later able to open to the deeper truth that this a precious part of our human connection. My mother is not someone that is comfortable lavishing praise, or even speaking the language of acknowledgment or approval. I know where that came from. I knew my grandmother. And so that important aspect of nourishment was largely missing from my youth. I did know well the language of criticism and censor. I still at times feel a wince when I show up in some way that opens me to evaluation. While I would like to believe that I am at this point in my spiritual emergence beyond the need for the good opinion of others, it simply isn’t true. My life is filled with people I love and it matters to me how they see me and the gifts I give in this world. When I express my passionate heart it is nice to be acknowledged. I personally love to praise and uplift people, and I am committed to opening to receive more of that as well.

So while approval seeking is mostly on the list of “need to fix” attributes, I would offer to you that this desire is indicative of how beautiful and important our connection is here in this human experience. Our age of social media demonstrates this perfectly. For anyone that has ever posted something on My Space or Facebook and then gone back in to see how many people clicked “Like” you get my drift. There is an intrinsic need to know we matter. There is an inborn need to be affirmed for who we are and for what we do. We are not robots or aloof, dissociative mountain sitters. We are humans that have hearts that are in need of being touched. We need to hear that we are loved and that life is better because we are here. We need praise. Healthy criticism can indeed be helpful, but it doesn’t go nearly as far as a simple, heart-felt compliment.

I will not be governed or identified by the feedback of outer sources, and I also fully embrace the little boy in me that needs to hear that what I am being and doing is good. I compassion the wince, and I welcome the praise. Your approval matters to me for I am a fellow human and a part of the One. I have a very much alive heart, and it responds well to words that approve and affirm. So go ahead. Send a compliment my way. I won’t deflect. I will take it right in. And know that there is plenty of that coming back at you. Your beauty makes mine a better world, and it gives me great joy to tell you so.

www.taylorestevens.com

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

G-AWED'S FACEBOOK PAGE

It is becoming hard to remember what personal interaction was like before the advent of social media. As often as it is criticized, especially in spiritual circles, social media is clearly here to stay. I must say that I have greatly enjoyed re-connecting with people that I long ago lost touch with. After 30 years suddenly someone is right there before me on the screen of my computer! There is a strange sense then that those thirty years didn’t happen at all. That the real and true connection was never broken, and the fact that we have taken a step as simple as Facebook “friending” is evidence of that truth. Though I do not and probably will not know the facts and details of those intervening years the depth of the intimacy is reignited in the way that I still feel about that person within my heart. I am certainly aware that many wonderful and tragic, momentous and mundane happenings have occurred to these friends which I am not and probably will not be privy. The same is true of the reverse. And yet my heart feels somehow more whole due to the re-connection. I feel somehow more complete knowing that what had seemed lost is now re-found.

I wonder if G-awed had a Facebook page how many friends It would have? I am betting that Source has sent a friend request to every living creature that has ever taken a breath of the One Life of Only Source Love. And yet most of those requests are floating around in the cyber space of spiritual amnesia, while we are frantically looking for something to fill the void that comes from not realizing that we are within what we are endlessly seeking to uncover. We feel incomplete because we have forgotten the first and primal connection which brings all of life together as a whole. And so many become entranced with the data that dances before their eyes and the commentary that fills the mind via the internet and the seduction of social media connections. The emptiness that comes from feeling “unfriended” within a world divided is vast and emotionally traumatic. No matter how many friends you collect on Facebook or Linked In you will never feel complete and fulfilled until you know you are a precious friend within the One. Until you know at depth that you are Loved within the One Love. Until you know that you matter, and that the life you are living matters in a real and intimate way. Your triumphs and tragedies are important, as are your chuckles and your tears. There is a cosmic photo gallery in which snapshots of you are held and stroked and cherished. From birth until death what you think, feel, and do is precious and revered. The unconscious and the awake, the unskillful and the enlightened; there is no judgment in the Social Media of the One Mind. Everyone is ultimately a friend, for there are no foes within the One. We can and do temporarily disconnect, and we suffer from this unconscious splintering. We will never be whole until we are One, and we will never know that we are One until we are whole. In the Cosmic scheme, we are meant to keep connection with every emanation of the One Life. Whichever “friend requests” we ignore will only keep us divided within our selves. Behaviors may be distancing, but the True connection of the heart cannot be broken.

As silly as the illustration may seem, I ask again; “If G-awed had a Facebook page, how many friends do you think It would have?” Are you among them? Have you fully accepted and are you living within the context of a friendly Universe? Are you allowing connection to be your guide and your compass? Are you being fully friendly within your self, and friending within your Source? What will you post this day upon your wall as your experience, and who will you include within your social sphere?

It doesn’t matter how long you may felt disconnected. In a moment, an intimate re-connection can occur. Check the inbox of your heart. I will bet that you will find the Ultimate friend request is there just waiting for your response.

www.taylorestevens.com

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

THE CALL OF CONTRACTION

There is a very real place in consciousness where the Call of the Universal meets the fearfulness of the individual.

There is a place within where the fallacy of separation becomes an obstacle to free and inspired manifestation and expression.

There is a perceptual web in which the personality gets caught. There are strands of beliefs in which the ego-self becomes entangled. The realization that it is we ourselves that is spinning this web eludes us until an awakening in consciousness occurs and we come to the astounding recognition that then frees us from the clutches of our own faulty sense of who.

There is undoubtedly a mass awakening that is happening at the personal and at the collective level of humanity. This awakening presents as an internal chaos that becomes a collective storm of perception meeting the Indwelling Presence. The tension, however, that pervades our bodies and our interactions is not an enemy to be conquered but an invitation to be answered.

Discomfort and discontent, as loathsome as most people find them, are the sensations of an expanding Universe as It is emerging within each of us. We are holographic beings in a Unified Field of Truth. There is no actual separation from our Source. The whole is reflected within the one at every level of experience. All of the darkness and every photon of the Light of the over-Soul is present within each and every one of us. Until we bring back to wholeness that which has been perceptually divided and repressed, energetic contractions will lead us not to unending suffering, but back to One.

It is our frequent and often ferocious addiction to comfort that keeps our awakening at bay. Letting go of an all-pervading false self isn’t comfortable. It is simple but certainly is not easy. We have made identities out of our stories and without these ego-tales we fear we will not exist. And indeed we will not. Not as the fearful beings of limitation and lies that we have inadvertently made of ourselves. We live in fear of our authentic Power because it calls us to live lives beyond what the mind can fathom or the personality contain. Eventually, awakening is an all or nothing proposition. We can’t judge, fault, blame, or criticize another without also demeaning ourselves. This is where Oneness becomes intensely practical. We suffer when we are divided against each other, and we are divided against each other when we are divided against ourselves. The density in our guts and the tension in our muscles are Divine guidance that needs to be heeded rather than deadened. Contraction embraced will not become resistance. And contraction embraced will lead us to the Self we are each being called to be.

There is a very real place in consciousness where the Call of the Universal meets the fearfulness of the individual. Feel openly into that fear. Know that the Universal is bigger and grander than any individual fear or story you may currently be identified with. Rely on the Universal to expand you beyond the personal. Say yes to what seeks to expand as you. Say yes to the discomfort and the discontent, and know that the feelings are the Soulful GPS operating perfectly. Kiss the belief in separation wherever it arises and let it melt back into the One. While it is the nature of the personality to struggle and to try and please it is the nature of the Soulful Self to allow and to simply shine as is. The call of contraction is the call to finally open. It has all been a story within the perception of separation. Tragic at times, for sure. But a story none-the-less.

The Call to open is within your heart even now. Do you sense, hear, feel it? And will you say yes?

www.taylorestevens.com

Monday, August 13, 2012

TO LOVE IS TO BE ONE WITH

Much of what is called love today is in actuality a mental concept that inadvertently prevents a deep and abiding experience of true and felt-sense Love. I whole-heartedly believe that the greatest fear we individually and collectively possess is the fear of love. I know it won’t make sense to your mind, for it is indeed nonsensical. The unconscious fear of love began before we were cognitive beings. We fear the giving of love, the receiving of love, and, in particular, the unguardedness and vulnerability that the direct experience of love requires.

When our hearts were most open and unguarded was in the period from infancy to late childhood. We were then primarily emotional beings, and we at a deep level believed we were the energies that were coming at and moving in and through us. We could also in the early years still hear the faint murmurings of the celestial voices that speak only of Light and unconditional love. When we are attuned to that Spiritual sound we are entrained within our hearts, and we expect to be met and received with the all embracing energies of pure and boundless Love. We are at Essence pure and boundless Love. When we are instead met with judgment, criticism, shaming, closed-heartedness and indifference, our tender hearts become veiled and we begin to wince, flinch, and pullback where we once were open, receptive, and unprotected. This emotional imprinting distorts our truth and deadens our senses. Toward the end of childhood we begin to live within the stories we have been told and are now believing and telling about ourselves. We take on false identities and begin to live from pretense rather than from our natural loving presence. The veiling around our hearts becomes our shroud. We can no longer feel the energetic experience of vibrational Love and so the default is to think love with the dualistic mind. It becomes a concept that we try and get and even earn. As much as we crave the experience of love it also terrifies us. We do not want to re-experience the pain that came from the early rejection and shaming that occurred in our most open state.

Love requires that our hearts be open. Love requires that we be unguarded. Love requires that we be totally available. It is only experienced at the felt-level. You cannot think love. You cannot get or earn love either. It is a vibration that is extended from the open and intimately engaged heart. To love is to be atone with. It is a verb. To love is to consciously join and merge with the objects of our love from the subjective level of our authentic self. Dropping out of the mind is a prerequisite. The heart must be active, alive, and engaged. It must be totally open. As the heart is consciously activated loving atonement will be the natural experience. This atonement is in fact the activation of the authentic self. It is the engagement of what is Essential. It is in a literal way the practicing of the One Presence.

When our hearts are closed and we are not feeling the vibrational experience of love we are quite literally asleep to Who and What we are. We are lost in a trance of separation, illusion, and dislocation. The emotional veiling clouds our vision and deadens our innate vibration. In this state of amnesia we feel separate and alone instead of unified and atone. We think we have to get love by behaving in ways we were taught were acceptable and loveable. Love becomes a mental commodity, an ego-barter. In a very real sense, love is a one way dynamic. We are always living in and experiencing the level of love that we are currently capable of giving. This doesn’t mean that we are not to receive love. Of course we do. It just means that love is always a choice we ourselves must make. We cannot make anyone else love us. It is also only as good as the present moment. We are required to constantly feel into the heart-space to insure that it is open and activated. Is my heart open? Am I choosing to extend love, regardless of what seems to be coming at me? When I am awake I am energetically feeling and extending love. No exceptions. Love is Who I am and extending love is what I do.

To love is to be atone with. I look at you, and I choose to relax open any guardedness. I choose to allow my heart to stay open and my eyes to remain soft. I invoke the love that is always present in my Sourced sacred heart center and I embrace you in and with that Love. Within that heartful merging is heaven itself. In that atonement is my liberation. I breathe into the Love, and I vibrate at the frequency of that Love. I meet you in that Love and realize that we indeed IS One. If I flinch, I choose to re-open into love. If I pullback, I choose to move forward within the love. I come to know myself as I choose to stay in Love with you. I come to know my Source when I give atone within the Love I am.

www.taylorestevens.com

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

MY ODE TO ALYX

It shouldn’t have happened then.

Sunday is a day of life, renewal, of resurrection; not a day of depression, despair, and death.

It shouldn’t have happened there.

The oceans edge is the birthing bed of the cosmic womb. Every wave is whispering "live." The beach is where the infinite potential meets and gives way to the manifest expression. It is not where endless potential is brought to a bitter end

It shouldn’t have happened to you.

You were a being of incredible beauty, endless creativity, boundless generosity and compassion. You fed those who were hungry, and encouraged those who had lost hope.

It shouldn’t have happened like that.

You were a woman of passion and also of peace. Violence was not in your weave. You captured photos of it and yet it didn’t capture you.

It shouldn’t be your legacy. It will not be your legacy.

You lived a life of adventure and courage and imagination and givingness. You inspired others in countless ways. You called forth the suppressed creativity in others, and you saw splendor where others only saw the ordinary.

And even if it shouldn’t have been we are left to know indeed it is. That was the day, the place, the way in which you chose to leave this world. Your memory is now surrounded by endless and well-deserved accolades, even amid the stunned and ravaging disbelief. Did you not know of the love that constantly surrounded you? Were not able to see through the dense, impenetrable fog of your despair the gifts that you were giving to the world? Could you not from within the illness catch a glimpse of how much you mattered to those around you? Did you not for even a moment see your beauty that was reflected in the admiring eyes that looked upon you?

If only someone had known in time. If only someone had been in that place, on that day, and at that time with oh so beautiful you. To stop you. To stop you from stopping you. To tell you how wondrous and important and valuable and precious you were. To remind you in your self-amnesia how much you mattered. Someone that could have shined the light of love through the darkness of your engulfing depth of despair. To tell you that life is meant to be lived, to be loved, to be cherished, and to be preserved.

And yet it was for you to return to the realm of eternity. Your departure has startled and disturbed us in ways we are only beginning to comprehend. The waves of grief are just beginning to lap upon the shores of that place that is now so empty without you. And even in the vulnerability of this current emotional state I am opening to the gifts your living and indeed your dying have given to me. You remind me of the dark and dismal day I too stood ready to end my own depression, darkness, the despair that then so colored my life. You remind me that as self-destruction was not to be my chosen path, I must now choose that every day be a precious gift in which to give my love and live life to the fullest of my potential. I am a voice for those who are now voiceless as a result of succumbing to addiction and mental illness. You remind me to cherish every encounter, and that no meeting is ever by chance. You remind me to be liberal with my praise, and sparring with my criticism. You challenge me to transcend my internal darkness, and to continually tap into the Light of my Source. You inspire me to fuel my creativity with the passion of my Soul, and to touch others with the enthusiasm of my expression.

And mostly you remind me to stay connected to my love, and to energetically, verbally, physically, and vocally always share of this priceless commodity called life. I relish the memory of our every encounter. Many of them seemed quite by chance. And yet they were always contained in warmth, laughter, affection, and heartfulness. Those encounters mattered to me. You mattered to me, Alyx. You still matter to me and you will always matter to me. You have left an indelible legacy of beauty, creativity, and love upon this earth. And that is what will be remembered most.

Rest in Peace, my friend. Rest in peace.

www.taylorestevens.com

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

P&G SPIRITUALITY

Though one would hardly suspect it at this point in my incarnation I spent some years as a commercial print model while living and working in New York City. Commercial print modeling is very different from fashion modeling, a faction I never would have been considered for. Commercial print modeling is all about a certain look that can sell a certain product or service. It is a composite of look, energy, and believability. Models fall into certain categories, and these slots are very difficult to ever move out of and still stay viable in the business. An ingénue, for instance, will rarely find herself one day obtaining work as a vixen. People age out of the business more often than they change categories. As I chose to alter my look or “brand” in order to move into different theatrical roles, my commercial print days ended. I was, while employed, known as a “P&G” model. A “P&G” refers to someone who has a Proctor & Gamble type of look. It is the clean cut guy/girl next door, the all-American person who is goodness and wholesomeness incarnate. Yes I know. From my current perspective it is hard to see me through the P&G lens. Yet that is where I landed and that is what got me jobs. It didn’t matter if that was how I really expressed and lived. It only mattered that I could maintain that look and play that part.
It was during this period of my life that I became intensely serious about my spiritual awakening and my emotional healing. I began attending Unity of New York, became a student of A Course In Miracles, and steeped myself in prayer, meditation, and recovery. During the earlier years of this quest I inadvertently cast myself in a P&G pseudo-spiritual role of always trying to look like the better-than-good guy next door, a living embodiment of only Love and Light. Regardless of what was really happening in my interior I tried desperately to look the part of what I perceived an enlightened being would look like. Denial and suppression became my tools for modeling what I thought would somehow gain me entrance into the spirit-life I so longed to live. The tension between what was seeking to occur inside of me and what I was trying to portray on the outside literally did me in. The boy next door began to rage on the streets and in the subways of New York City, and the disguise finally and mercifully dissolved in a messy yet liberating look-good meltdown. All that had been suppressed was exposed and the role I thought I had to play no longer served my emergence. I hit a wall with my pasted on “church face,” and slowly it seemed I was forced to confront all the inner demons that I had tried so hard to hide. I “aged out” of the limiting mental images of what a spiritual being looked like, and I came to know that no matter how uncomfortable and messy and unskillful the immediate expression, what I saw in the mirror was actually the spiritual man I had always wanted to be. The charade never led me to an experience of my Source. Trying to be good, sweet, and perfect led only to lies, resistance, and emptiness. It was in the darkness of my deepest despair that I finally found the Spirit I had so longed to feel. It was in getting real that I caught my first glimpses of Truth.
And so my modeling days are long over, and so are the days of “P&G” spirituality. I resist the recurrent temptation to put on the mask of inauthentic Love and Light so that the reality of those Qualities can shine essentially through. What role others may cast me in is truly none of my business. With Carl Jung I am much more interested in being whole than in looking good. I am devoted to letting Source shine from the interior of my being to the circumference of my heartful expression. I am dedicated to being a real and authentic Presence in the world. I am committed to contributing consciously to the Field of One. I choose Presence over pretense, conscious staying over suppression, and deliberate attending over denial. Source is not a part I want to play or a look I seek to adopt. It is the Reality I am committed to living. Whether or not I think I look the part in any given moment is truly beside the point. I am letting the authenticity of my Essential Self be my guide, my direction, and my referral. That is the only real role I was born to play, and it isn’t really a role at all. Having faced the suppressed trauma and denied darkness of pretence- spirituality, I am now free to finally be the entirety of the authentic me.
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Thursday, June 28, 2012

ESTEEMABLE ME

I hail from a long line of people who have worn low self-esteem as a badge of honor. Humility and humiliation are so intertwined that the crucial distinction is mostly imperceptible. The admonition that I was given was if you dare to feel good about yourself, the world will surely knock you back down to size. It is the old pedestal-take a fall scenario. To be aware of and celebratory of one’s gifts and talents was thought to be arrogant and self-serving. To possess a strong sense of self and personal mission was deemed to be willful and egotistical. I totally get that this ancestral programming was done in service of what was believed to be safety and security within a dangerous and potentially hostile world. If you play small you won’t become a target. There was and is nothing malicious. And that fact doesn’t stop it from being a damning sentence to live under.
It has taken me years to realize the extent and the effects of this conditioning. It has taken me decades and much inner-work to soften the wince in a world that was designed to keep me in my proper and limited place. I have always sensed a tension between what my Soul was calling me to express and what my personality believed it was safe to allow. This didn’t keep me from daring to follow at least a few of my dreams. I did manage to plough through the fear and ignore the self loathing long enough to take a stab at what I wanted to bring forth in my life. I also, however, unconsciously sabotaged my dreams ultimate achievement.
Standing at the far end of this strong and perpetuating perceptual system let me say that there is nothing noble about self-scrutiny and subsequent diminishment. There is nothing humble about playing small and hiding your gifts. I know from personal experience that it benefits no one to withhold your talents and then attribute this suppression to the will of some God that seemingly wants us to hide the talents that It has endowed us with. Suppression of any kind leads to depression and depression is very self-absorbing. It becomes a shroud that veils the Light that is the Truth of our Sourced-identity. Self-aversion is the shadow side of narcissism, and they both stem from amnesia of our true and authentic nature. Self-opinion blinds us to opportunity and deadens us to possibility. Daring to feel good about one’s self and affirming of our talents is a direct celebration of the Source of those very gifts. Accepting our innate worth is a full time commitment and one that gives massive benefit to our world. It is the greatest gift we can give to the critical mass. Feeling through and moving out of our painful self stories is a contribution of enormous consequence. Low self esteem is epidemic in western culture. It is in vogue to lead with our neurosis and self-negations. And it keeps us mired in emotional quicksand and mental prisons. It robs us and the world of the song we came to sing.
It is time to truly and deliberately take a stand for stepping into a Reality that is worthy of one that is sourced by the One. It is time to commit to seeing ourselves and each other with the Vision of the One that Knows. It is time to step out of the suppression and to open into the blissfulness of giving our gifts and sharing our talents. It is time to move out of the self-absorption and into passionate self-expression. Celebrate Source by celebrating your own wonderful Self! Do it today- just the way you are! Be bold in your affirmation and liberal with your praise. It is safe and advantageous to be upon the pedestal. There is nothing and no one to waiting to knock you off. That is where life wants us to be. It wants to proudly display Itself through our moments and our days, our giving and our gifts. It is actually egotistical to suppress the magnificence that is within you. It is arrogant to place our personal opinion above that of Source Presence. Humility seeks to live a life of grandeur and of glory. It knows that each of us is worthy of the best. The very, very best.
So if you find yourself belittling yourself: STOP! Listen to what you are saying and take a deep breath of awareness. That old programming and its subsequent self-diminishment is nothing less than blasphemy. Stop and ask for help. Ask the Universe, God, Buddha, your own Higher Self, just stop and ask. Ask to be shown who and what you really are. And then forgive yourself and begin today to tell a new tale. A tale of one who is here on earth to live and to give the best that is our Source. Only worthiness is of the One. Allow your esteem to come from Source. Allow yourself to be lifted to the heights of all you can be. And know that you do it for us all. There is no greater legacy than integrated self-love.
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Wednesday, June 13, 2012

BIG DADDY

While my relationship to it is radically different than it once was, I am still aware that I was brought up in a patriarchal religion. As Father’s Day approaches I feel the wafts of how pervasive the “big daddy in the sky” theology is. It has now been decades since that was my predominant thought system, yet vestiges of it still pop up from time to time in my consciousness. I believe that it is partly because I am an energetic being in a Field for which that is still considered a governing reality. Praying TO an outer paternal God is the religious dynamic for a goodly portion of the world’s population. Not only is this super-parent somewhere “up and out there” it is also looking down here in critical, punitive, and condemning ways. At a level that is mostly unconscious most of humanity has a vague sense of being scrutinized almost all of the time. Patriarchal religion is a lens through which we experience our Source, our selves, each other, and our world. Though it is less obvious in more New Thought schools of spirituality, it is still alive and well as a life diminishing paradigm. If you ever judge yourself based on what you think is the spiritual ideal Big Daddy has a hold on you. If you ever compare yourself to some homogenized humanity and then feel shame in the comparison the patriarchy has you in its grips. If you are lost somehow in your own self-definition you are caught in the trance of a faulty story about Source.
While parental images of G-awed can sometimes feel comforting they also create a slippery slope into lovelessness. Parents, no matter how well-intentioned, are not capable of loving unconditionally. It is a fact of the human condition. A big piece of the way our life stories show up in order to be transcended is through our parents and authority figures. Much of our early wounding occurs in relationship to our parents. Discipline can be a traumatizing experience. When we place our Source in the same category as our human parentage a deepening of the belief in separation occurs. No matter how close we may be to our mothers and/or fathers we are still distinct and unique from them. No matter how close the apple falls it is still separate from the tree. This is simply not the case within our Source. We are part and parcel of this One Infinitely Intelligent- all Loving Creative Force. It could never look down upon us for we are contained within It. It cannot judge or condemn us because It knows no such thing. We are truly the Gleam in the Sources I.
And so patriarchal theology needs to fade back into the limiting perceptual system from whence it came. It could be said that Source G-awed is Father in that It is First Cause. Of course It is also the Loving Embrace of the Cosmic Mother. To think of Father G-awed as a force greater and more powerful than the individualized ego-self is for me not only prudent but also empowering. There is no dead-beat dad in this Universe of One. It is always right here for me to pray INTO. It is never distant or remote. Only my fearful misperception births that illusory experience. It is in deepening INTO heartful, connected prayer that I experience directly my Source, my sustenance, and my provision. If there is parenting to be done it is in my choice to open and to mother First Source Gawed, and then to channel that Power in inspiring ways that father this realm called earth. Because I am Fathered I consciously father. I am the choice to return home to Source.
And so to pray to Father-Mother G-awed is a dynamic that connects me to my Source here within this realm of space and time, but is ultimately meaningless in Eternity. I am IN the One Source by whatever name I choose to call it. It is not a Big Daddy in the sky. It is the Father Force from whence I came and that I have never left.
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Wednesday, May 30, 2012

ALL THAT I CAN BE

I don’t know why the rapid passage of time continues to surprise me but indeed it does. It seems as though I just celebrated the great possibility of a new calendar year and now it almost half completed. The promise of 2012 seems especially pregnant to me, and the pains of contraction and expansion most profound. If in the past I have been able to suppress what my Soul is seeking to express more fully and passionately I am not able to squelch it now. The Universe has me at full attention and is giving total disregard to my discomfort. I am surrounded by synchronicities that only the most obtuse could miss. I am at a stage in my emergence where the collision of my fears with my greatest potentialities is keeping me in an internal tension that will not be denied. I know beyond knowing that what sometimes feels like breakdown is breakthrough of incredible proportion. I carefully walk the tightrope that is strung above the abyss of my past limits, fears, failures, and regrets. In order to keep my balance I must stay focused in a forward direction. I must consciously place one foot in front of the other. I cannot become distracted by the egoic chatter of the surface mind. I cannot become entranced by the projections I see before me, or the naysayers who warn me of what amount to their own past-based fears. I must be vigilant and diligent. I must stay internally directed and heartfully navigated. I must listen within as intimately as if my life depended upon the directions I am hearing.
I dance between the perception that everything is perfect exactly as it is, and there is so much more that I am called to be. Mediocrity is a quicksand that threatens to pull me under. I know that there is more for me to be and I am committed to uncovering that greater potential. My passion for Truth is a fire that if left contained will burn me up and smoke me out. My greatest gifts are yet to be given. I know that to be true. I can feel the velocity moving and growing within me. These gifts must be celebrated, extended, and expressed. They are the reason for my incarnation, and to hold them back would be to refuse to live. I have always known that there was something in me yet not of me that was meant to be given to the masses. Numbers are not the point. Limitlessness is. The stronger the felt-connection to the One Source G-awed of my Being the greater the need to actively live and to give that Source. G-awed is a verb in this earthly realm or it simply is not G-awed. It is a heart that beats and flows forth love with every impulse, every response, and every interaction. It is a love that is all inclusive and ever-expanding. This Source Love is leading me to be all that I meant to be. It is prompting me, cajoling me, encouraging me, and affirming me. It is an infallible GPS though it seems to be playfully hiding the destination. It is a journey to the fully here and now. It is a journey of self revelation and magnified expression. With every moment and every mile marker it whispers “more, my Beloved; there is always, ever more.”
And so in this halfway mark of 2012 it is mine to simply say yes. To feel openly into the present moment and to receptively welcome the gift that it contains. It is mine to own and to relish this life that I have been given. I am drinking deeply from the well of the One Life, and I am gratefully serving of that elixir to others I am led to serve. I pray to be a responsible steward of the One Power that is coursing through me. I allow my presence to be a Light, my power to be a torch. Whatever time I have left I give as a consecration, a testimony to the Power of the One Source as evidenced in one human life.
All that I can be, my G-awed. All that I can be. SEE SITE FOR CURRENT LISTING OF EVENTS, SERVICES, AND WRITING

Thursday, May 10, 2012

WHAT I WANT FOR YOU, MOM

I guess I finally let her go the day she married my step-father. I didn’t do so willingly or gracefully. At some barley conscious level I surmised there wouldn’t be room for two men in her life so I tenuously released the grip and left her to her new life. I was already an adult with a man of my own. Yet she had been my best friend, my sustainer, my comrade. We had forged on together through a jungle of crises and catastrophes and came out the other side bruised but not broken. Hand in hand, enmeshed yet not enshrouded, it was time to be the adult son and let my mom be an independent woman and wife. And so I internally detached and claimed my autonomy from this woman who had maintained such complete command over me. I wanted her to finally have the life she had so long wanted. To see her rely on a man who didn’t require her constant attention, dependence, and care. To be freed from the constant rigors of both mothering and fathering three children while also maintaining a job to support us all. I had long known that marriage and motherhood had been her own mother’s decision for her. She had wanted higher education and a single independence. My grandmother saw a good match in my father, though, and so down the aisle she halted. Settling for a new dream she then wanted a husband and home in the old traditional sense. She wanted a boy and then a girl, security and stability with this man she grew to love. What she got was a boy and then a boy, an adopted and troubled girl when nature couldn’t give her the daughter she so wanted, and then a husband with a terminal diagnosis that would send him into a home and her into the workforce. If there was to be stability it leaned upon and into her to provide it. If there was to be security it fell to her to build its walls. I wanted more for her. I wanted more for us all, but especially for her. I tried so hard to make up for the lost dreams and shattered goals. I cooked and cleaned and became a friend and welcoming ear. I garnered good grades and played the role of the good kid with gusto. I knew it wasn’t enough but it was what I could do for her. I wanted to see one glimmer in her eyes that was a testimony to her wants finally being fulfilled. I caught a glance of that at her second and “non-arranged” marriage. And so I walked away and prayed that this time it would be different. That this time it would be better. Softer. Easier. Fulfilling.
In some ways I guess it has been. And yet the circumstances have continued to push, challenge, and stress this now golden-age lady, and the body is mirroring the years of abuse, resistance and wear. The pain is constant, and the demands still relentless. Having capably mothered her grandchild she now watches as her eldest falls prey to a disease not unlike that which claimed his father. There are days where it seems like more than she can bear. I want more for her. I want to take away the pain and shoulder the burdens that so torment her now. I want for her a life that she truly wants. I want to know that though I was an interruption of sorts in her plan my life has brought her some joy amidst so many years of sorrow. I want for her the peace that comes from wanting the life she already has. All of it. Every last messy, infuriating, exasperating bit of it. The age-old problems and the problems of old age. The disappointment and the pain. The remembrances, the regrets, the turmoil, the tragedy, and the triumphs. The interrupted plans and the unexpected jolts. I want her to see how much she overcame and how much she was able to give against incredible and overwhelming odds. I want her to know that though I detached I certainly never left. That though I rebelled, I never really rejected. I want her to know that I still want her as my mom. That as vastly different as we now are in so many ways I will always be a son who wants her as my mother. Just as she is. That her life is my life and it is a life I embrace and want and love. I want her to know that I know, see, and feel the perfection of having her as my mom, even in her imperfections. I want her to know that I know she did her best.
What do I really want for you, Mom? I want peace for you. I want you to relax into a deep and heartful peace. I want you to know deeply how loved you really are. I want you to know you are wanted. You are a part of everything I be and everything I do and share. And I thank you. I want to thank you for letting me know beyond all the circumstances and seemingly contrary evidence that I too was wanted.
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Thursday, April 26, 2012

FACEBOOK BLUES

I’ve the Facebook-MySpace-Twitter-time blues.

Last week I celebrated somewhat sheepishly another birthday upon this planet. I did not approach this one with my usual gusto, and I curiously watched as my friends and loved ones tried to talk me out of my experience and into what they thought my attitude should be. If I heard “age is only a state of mind” one more time I, well, I don’t know what I would have done. It felt like one more rather mindless statement that pastes a New Thought happy sticker on what a more authentic response is trying to reveal. I have spent a lot of this incarnation trying to get out of the human experience and into a now-recognized kind of Disneyesque pseudo-spiritual disassociation. In my later years I have committed to myself to be my whole self from here on out. That doesn’t mean I believe the programmed stories of the surface mind. It doesn’t lead me to identifying with my rather lively emotional currents. It certainly doesn’t mean I lose touch with my authentic, essential self. I am finally and gratefully aware that I am aware, and that includes experiencing and including the totality of my being. And part of that totality didn’t relish turning fifty-five. I feel no need to make that wrong, right, or different. The ageless and eternal part of my being was quite content to watch as the aging mortal me struggled a bit with the turning of another page. No happy story needed.

A particularly curious part of this birthday was the astounding number of Facebook posts I received from people I know very well to others about which I haven’t even got a clue. Rather than the usual tertiary cyber-linking’s of this vast social network, I received warm and truly moving messages from people I don’t even know. To look at my “wall” you would think that I am a very popular fellow indeed. Not losing sight of the sweet intent behind these messages I must admit I found it rather odd. Sweet and odd, for sure. But odd none-the-less.

With the millions of people who are seemingly connected via the social networks it seems to me that there is less overall intimacy than ever. While it is at worst benign to receive a gushing tribute from someone you have never even met ( I “friend” anyone who asks) It points to the profound need within all of us to touch what is in Truth a part of us. We have a deep and driving need for connection. We need to be heard, and we need to really listen to others. We need to feel the warmth of an embrace. The heart-beat of the ones we love and who love us. We need to see ourselves reflected in the unmoving gaze of a truly attentive other. We need to hear the actual and revealing tones of voice that are often so misconstrued in our texts and e-mail society. And yet how often are people that are in the same physical space so entranced in their mobile device, seeking to connect with someone that is continents away, and thus missing the experience of the person that is feet and yet light-years away from them? I deeply appreciate the birthday salutations. I do. I also pray that they weren’t sent at the expense of the attention to some spouse, partner, sibling, parent, child, or friend. Please take back the glowing affirmations and give them to the one you have barely grunted at in days, weeks, or even months.

I use and appreciate the social media outlets. This very writing will be posted on two of them. Yet it is no substitute for being directly in your sphere. I can’t truly feel the depth of your presence in a text message or Facebook post. I want to feel your skin and smell your hair and look deeply into your eyes. There is a great gift to turning fifty-five. It is the realization that I have already lived more years than my future will contain. Please save the New Thought adage about that. Knowing that my future is shorter than my past makes our connection more important. More of a priority. It makes being directly with you more vital and precious. I know not the number of days I have left, or that you have left. So let’s not waste them on Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter. Let’s not have our final connection be via a mobile device or a cyber blurt. Come and touch me. Look into these aging eyes and see my timeless love. Hear my voice and feel my heart. Let me be with you in a way that we truly know we are one. Let’s bring down the walls rather than post upon them.

Gee, I already feel better about this birthday. I think I’ll go and call a couple of people I love. A Facebook post or e-mail just doesn’t convey what is too big for even the internet.

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Thursday, April 5, 2012

A PERSONAL PASSOVER

I was born on a long ago Easter Sunday, and I have been dealing with the cross and with the tomb ever since. It has been an archetypal journey that has led me from the vast canyons of Evangelical sanctuaries to my own deserts of inner desolation. I was told several years ago that I have a Grand Cross in my astrological chart, and I remember thinking “yeah, like I didn’t already know that.” I have tried in every which way to avoid that glaring cross, until I finally decided that the only thing to do was to hang upon it for a while. In truth, I was already up there. I was already nailed to the cross of my own misperceptions and self aversion. My limiting and self-diminishing thoughts were my crown of thorns, and the habitual way in which I held myself was the repetitive sword to my side. Whether or not the religious symbols of this Passover-Easter season are ones that you identify directly with, it is a schema that we are all plugged into at the symbolic level. We all know the pain of inner bondage and slavery which is what the Egyptian experience of the Jews represents. We know the plagues of unworthiness, self-aversion, shame, and lovelessness. We have all at times been swallowed up in a sea of emotional turmoil, fearing we will never reach the promised land of inner peace and Soulful balance. We know the pain of crucifixion. Many of us know it well. We know what it feels like to be nailed to and held hostage by the forces of the world. We have known betrayal and injustice. We have been sold out and left to die. We have felt the emptiness of the tomb, and we have also felt the inner–action of the resurrecting power of One Life bringing us from the depths of despair to the heights of awakened awareness. We have each tasted the bitter wine of this passage. And we will each reap the benefit of those of who have gone from Gethsemane to Golgotha to tomb to resurrection. That journey may be made in one act of prayerful submission. I know. I have done it countless times.

Each day is Passover Day. Each day is Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Each day is Ascension Day. I invite you to take personally this journey. Welcome it. Learn from embracing it. The cross is the symbol of the axis for the horizontal and vertical levels of experience. The present moment is always the intersection point. The heart is where that axis meets. Allow the heart to be a tomb and it naturally opens into a womb. The cross is meaningless without a personal resurrection. The prayer of “thy will be done” referred not to the crucifixion but to the resurrection. There was no G-awed ordained murder. That is a projection of human self aversion. The patters of crucifixion and resurrection are psychological patterns. They are philosophical. They are energetics. Feel them as they occur. Move with them and not against them. Feel the cross of human experience, and feel the resurrection that comes from humble surrender. In this very moment, the moment that you are reading; this is your Passover moment. This is your resurrection appointment. Open to it. Let it be within you. Rise up. You are free of the cross and the tomb. You are soaring free on the wings of loving transcendence. You have made the journey your own. And now you are truly free.

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Friday, March 30, 2012

ILLOGICAL LOVE

The vast majority of the world’s population is trying to love from a mental perspective. The filters of programming, mores, and tribal conditioning create a lens through which we then decide whether or not to give and/or to receive love. The reptilian brain is standing between the mental protective shields and the open welcoming heart. If you really stop and feel deeply and directly into it, most of the times that people say I love you there is no real emotional connection to it. It is the thought of I love you landing somewhere between the well intentioned mouth that is saying it and the slightly wincing ears that can barely hear it. The unconscious fear of love is the chasm into which falls the intimate direct connection to our Source and an undefended experience of each other. We are terrified to really be exposed, vulnerable, defenseless, and limitless in our loving. When we were the most open, loving, and authentic, we were hurt. We perceived rejection, and the energetic protective walls went up. This wounding is precognitive, and if you think it isn’t true for you, stop thinking and start feeling. Feel behind the urge to really give irrationally of your love. Are you even in touch with that urge? Feel into the subtle desire to love in spite of. Feel the incessant prompting to release the painful withholding and perceptual pullback. The greatest desire of the heart is to live in integrity with its true nature. Contraction is a natural part of our heartful rhythm. This contraction gives way to and becomes the velocity behind giving the love we are in Truth. To withhold love is to be out of synch with our authenticity. To recoil in fear is the forgetfulness of who we are. Love cannot be rational. It cannot be defended. It cannot be earned. It cannot be conceptualized or thought. It is radical and relentless and non-resistant. It is meant to flow unimpeded from center to circumference. The pain of perpetually withholding will break us in our humanity. It will choke out our life force. We will love or we will die. We love not so much because we choose but because we must. Our evolution is the process of becoming the love we already are. To be too defended to love is to live in a tortuous knot of unexpressed and so unrequited love. To recoil and to hide in perceptual and protective lovelessness is hell. It is hell.

It took me decades to realize the extent to which I was defending my wounded heart. It took enormous amounts of painful withholding to find I was locked in a prison of false identity and lost expression. It took the death of many dreams to realize the fearful inner atmosphere in which I was living was not conducive to living a life that was beyond that fearfulness. Many friends have been lost to the pullback of perceived slights and unmet expectations. It took even longer to awaken to the truth that a life of service is a one way extension. What anyone else thinks of my lectures, writing, teachings, forms of creative expression is none of my business. If I find that I am giving or loving in order to receive approval or affirmation I stop whatever it is that I am doing and I feel the fallacy of that arrangement. The truth of my Soul contract is that I am here to live, to give, to serve love from the Essence of my being to the circumference of my expression. The only seeming loss of love in my life is the love I am unwilling to give. No matter how defended or contracted you may be I am here to love you in and beyond that pretense. It is too painful for me to stay in pullback. It is too tortuous for me to remain in recoil. I am here to love because I must. I must because love is what I am. I am loving beyond reason and beyond duality. I will see the unconsciousness and unskillfulness and I will feel the defense of what is True. And I will love. By staying in vibrational alignment with the One Source of all Love I will choose to be that love. Especially when it makes no sense to this programmed and conditional head, I will welcome you into my open and tender heart. I will risk giving you my love because it is too painful to live in the fear of not doing so. Undefended and undivided no more, I am loving you exactly as you are and I am loving me exactly as I am. In that way, I get to be the love I am in an integrated and embodied way. I get to be a verb of unconditional love. I get to be the love I truly am.

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Tuesday, March 20, 2012

A SPRING FREEZE

I love the feeling-tone that is energetically behind and pulsing forward as what we term the Spring Equinox. I totally relate to the impulse of emerging and expanding life, and I recognize at a deep level that the reason I do so relate is because the same impulse is at work within me. It is not theoretical for me that creation is forever expanding Itself through Its creation in order to Know and to experience Itself in Essence and in form. While the flowering forth of spring is more subtle for those of us who dwell in a sub-to tropical climate, the dynamic is none-the-less engaged. I feel the shifting of the seasons in the intensification of the process of coming forth from seed to flower to fruit. I hear and sense this synergy as it moves and dances through the birds and the other wildlife so prevalent in this part of the globe. Life had taken a respite called winter, and is now busily using this renewed energy to literally spring forth as creation.

I was speaking to a dear friend that dwells in the northern part of the country, and who was describing what she viewed as a kind of spring confusion as a result of a warm winter followed by a late freeze. The flowers were already blooming when a snow and sleet storm dumped frozen precipitation down on the tender new blossoms. There was understandable fear that the storm would deprive that region of a much anticipated floral array of color, fragrance, and natural spectacle. It was a great reminder for me of how crucial climate variables can be to the manifestation of creation. As she was speaking of this in terms of flowers, trees, and shrubs, I was relating to how the very same dynamic is at work within my own internal spring.

I have always been blessed with a very alive and dynamic sense of creativity. It takes a variety of forms, and at times I feel as though I will never have enough time to bring forth into manifestation all of the ideas I would like to bring into form. I was born in the springtime, and remain acutely aware of the life force that is pulsing forth within and through me. I am also keenly aware that there have been multiple examples of me jumping forward with an idea, beginning to act from a place of what I knew to be Sourced-inspiration, and then fearfully freezing when I met the obstacles of my own perceived doubts and limitations. Emotional chaos is a vital part of all co-creation. Part of the way we humans evolve is by moving forward with an impulse or desire to create, and then by working though the internal barriers that the process of creation reveals. Challenges, obstacles, barriers exist in the creative process at every level. Can you imagine the force needed for a seed to crack open its protective shell, begin its ascent up through multiple levels of soil, and finally push up above the level of the ground in order to move vertically toward the sun? It is a force for sure and yet it is also non-resistant. As plants do not possess self-reflective consciousness, they are not labeling or interpreting the process as it is occurring. They do not become fearful and so try and retreat back toward the seeming safety of the seed. In fact, there is nothing left to return to. The seed has become the plant which is now already in process. There are certainly occasions where a lack of moisture, light, or necessary temperature can kill out a fledgling plant. This is a part of the natural order. But this is not due to internal conditions that are generated by the plant itself.

Our fear-based evaluations often create a climate that is not conducive to growth, and so countless ideas and inspirations die out before they are allowed to come to fruition. When in the process of bringing forth a seed idea we are faced with the programming and conditioning that reveals where our core beliefs don’t support the natural creative process, we quite literally freeze. We may blame or form excuses as to why we can’t move forward to actualize our dreams, but these are rarely valid. The truth is that we currently don’t have a quality of inner attention that will allow the full expression of our intentions, aspirations, and goals. The climate isn’t right. The inner realm is hostile. We fear really facing our fears and so we quite. We stop the springtime impulse that is moving forward within us, and every time we stop it, we die just a little bit. We kill our own creations. We abort our fondest dreams. We internally freeze out the garden of consciousness we have been given to attend. And then we rarely take the time to grieve the loss of what is so essential and true to our being.

And so dear reader, what springtime impulse is moving in you this day? What is seeking to flower forth, and are you willing to maintain an inner atmosphere that is conducive to the creative process? Are you willing to bring the warmth of Presence to the places that scare you? Are you willing to compassion the habitual reactivity of past failed attempts? Are you willing to stay awake and receptive to allowing the Universal Creative Impulse to move in you, to inspire you, and to also orchestrate the fulfillment of the dream? Are you willing to let Spring spring forth as you?

Be vigilant in this season to maintain an inner atmosphere that is aligned with Source Beingness. Surrender the fears and say yes to all that is moving forward within you. Celebrate as you watch your seed intentions come forth as flower and then as fruit. And then give your creations in service and in celebration of the One. Be an active part of this dynamic season. Spring forth in all your splendor. You are indeed the beauty of this season.

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Wednesday, March 7, 2012

SURRENDER DOROTHY!



The best day of my life was the day I once again fell flat on my face, and I didn’t jump back up.


I know that the preceding declaration defies all conventional wisdom and blows more than a few Hallmark sentiments right off the rack. How many times have we heard that no matter how many times we get knocked down the important thing is that we get back up? Yet after unconsciously following that advice for a decade or so I found that the greater wisdom came from exploring why it was that I kept landing on the proverbial floor. After getting up repeatedly only to fall once again I began to get the sense that it was on the floor that I actually needed to be.

We are a take charge culture. We are a people that take the bull by the horns. The macro-power that is the United States of America is comprised of micro-units of making things happen individuals. If we are ruthlessly honest the vast majority of us are in many ways control freaks. We continually fight reality be it internal or societal. We are in a perpetual struggle with what already is. Even in areas of spiritual aspiration we demand that the Universe act in a way that we deem right and appropriate and comfortable. We decide what we think we want and we expect Life to line up and to give it to us in a certain way and in our specified time frame. And when that doesn’t happen we rush to blame any number of external factors from our significant others to our Kindergarten experiences. Or we simply think that our mystical magical wand is broken or that we aren’t in on the real Secret.

I am plum tired of fighting reality. I am worn out from trying to control what ultimately is uncontrollable. I am weary of seeking to manipulate Universal Principle in order to fix what my surface mind swears is broken. I am exhausted from pushing against the parts of myself I so want to be rid of. I have lost total interest in turning myself every which way but loose in an effort to get the love and affirmation I feel I’ve never had. I have finally accumulated enough evidence that my way isn’t the best way, and I am open to a Higher wisdom than my own perceptual system. I am relaxing open and exhaling freely into the Knowing that there is a flow to Life that swimming against will never prevail. Life is for me and it is only my fearful need to control and to manipulate that keeps me from the felt-experience of that Force.

I guess what I am really seeking to say is that I am surrendering my story into my Source. I am surrendering what I think needs to change into a Clarity that sees beyond appearances and easily orchestrates a blessed transcendence within me. There is nothing as futile as seeking to change what already is. There is nothing as freeing as releasing the grip and surrendering into a deep Knowingness that within the Flow of Sourced-emergence all is well and will always be well. The linear mind will never get that, and the heart has always known it. It is a spiritual axiom that it is only in surrender that True power is found. It is only in giving up the fight that the internal war is won. When we choose to arm wrestle with the Universe we will eventually wear down. And it is in that broken surrender that the resplendence of Source shines through. It is from the moment that you feel most weak that the greatest strength is born.

If you are tired of struggling, and straining and figuring and fixing and demanding and controlling: consider a different tact. Relax. No, really. Relax. Let go into letting Be. Feel the flow of Life that is seeking to Live as you. Surrender into that river of life. Let it carry you easily, gently. As I frequently tell a beloved friend; give it a rest. Surrender, Dorothy! And then watch what authentic power can do through you.


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Tuesday, February 28, 2012

LEAP YEAR LOVE

I have found myself recently in my work repeatedly being drawn to share a story of something that happened to me when I was three to four years of age, an incident that may well be my earliest memory. My father is standing chest deep in the waters of the local swimming pool to which we belonged, and it is dusk on a summer evening. My father has his arms extended toward me, and I am standing on the side of the pool listening to his call. I remember how special the time and the attention with my Dad felt, and though there was some trepidation about jumping into what was for me very deep water, I moved past the fear to leap into his cajoling embrace. I jumped gleefully toward my father, and he missed me as I fell into the water between him and the edge of the pool. I cannot begin to describe the clarity of the memory of the moments that ensued. I can see myself falling down through the water, passing in front of the length of my fathers body with little air bubbles passing between him and me. I remember the flailing of his arms under water as he tried to find and retrieve me from the pool. I perhaps most vividly recall the shock and dismay that filled my little being with the purely emotional recognition that my father said he would catch me, and yet he let me fall. I totally trusted him, and in that faith I was dropped. Though I was recovered with no injury or further incident, I know that something profound changed inside of me that day. A level of fear and mistrust was imprinted upon my child-like openness that I continue to dance with to this very day. An unconscious message was delivered to that impressionable little boy that has represented an incarnational lesson that I know I came here to learn: when I risk going beyond the fear and choosing to leap into the arms of love, I very well may be dropped.

I shared with an audience just this past Sunday that no matter what psychologists and researchers tell us, I firmly believe that the number one fear common to the human race is in fact the fear to love. It is the fear to give love, and the fear to allow love in. At some point in our early years on earth we have emotionally received the message that there is something wrong or bad about us, that we are somehow less than worthy and loveable. While I happen to vividly remember one of the incidents from which I derived that message I believe we all carry emotional imprinting that makes opening totally to love a scary and risky proposition. Most of this wounding is pre-cognitive and is heavily suppressed from our surface awareness. Some of the more obvious evidence of it is the way we interact within ourselves in thought, feeling, inner dialogue, and relational interaction. I say obvious, though our internal conversation becomes so habitual that we don’t even consciously hear it anymore. Most people live in an almost perpetual state of both self-aversion and recoil. We endlessly distract ourselves so that we do not have to feel the inner yearnings of our oh-so tender hearts. We think in repetitive cycles so that we don’t risk feeling the emotional cause beneath those looping stories. We crave love, and yet we fear it beyond reason. There are none of us who were reared in truly unconditional love. As children we take the slightest hint of rejection and it becomes a part of the very fiber of our being. This sense of abandonment and rejection in our emotional bodies then becomes a cognitive story that surrounds us and vibrates from us. It is then the attractor for our relationships. Do you have any idea how many times I have mustered up the courage to leap again into inviting, waiting arms, only to be dropped in one way or another once again?

And yet it is our journey and our lesson here on earth to feel through and beyond this imprinted fear of love and to faithfully take the leap into a Love that cannot fail or drop. Humans are fallible. Even the most well-intentioned among us may hurt or betray us. The Source of Love will not. Though theology has painted portraits of an avenging and angry God-force who loves one moment and withholds or destroys the next, this is the misperception of dualistic and projecting minds. Source is Love. Unconditional love. Non-dualistic Love. It is the Source and Container of all that is. While the felt-sense dynamic may well be that we are leaping and falling into the endless pool of Perfect Love there is in fact no separation or division from which to leap or in which to fall. There is Love and only Love. And yes, we must become vulnerable and exposed in order to experience this vital Essence energy. We must become undefended and we must risk. We are called to open to love like our hearts have never been hurt. It is the very crux of spiritual awakening. We are here to awaken into the Perfect and Unbounded Love that is our Source. And then we are called to give that Love in order to fully know it.

In this leap year, we have an additional day to take a risk and to leap fully and courageously into Love. The Infinite Arms are open. Go ahead. Jump. Take a risk. Even if you have to close your eyes: Leap. Leap into the Love you are. I guarantee you won’t be dropped.

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Tuesday, February 14, 2012

WHITE SUGAR LOVE?


I giggled this morning as I had a recollection of the little pastel candy hearts that were popular during the Valentines Day’s of my youth. They were embossed with one or two words little messages such as “Be Mine,” and were composed of nothing more than pure processed sugar. The thought of eating one today is totally unappealing, yet they remain a sweet memory of an innocent time before the adult complications surrounding romantic love cast a pawl around this romance-centered holiday. While I am happily married today I have indeed spent many a Valentines Day uncommitted yet admittedly unavailable. In a world filled with Hallmark images and conceptual renderings of what the perfect loving companionship looks like there are a great number of people starved for love both inside and outside of relationships. The “what I will get from being loved” paradigm is still in dominion, and the false notion that someone outside of us is going to mend our broken heart and leave us feeling complete is a fallacy that leads to enormous amounts of suffering and vengeful separations. Love is indeed first an inside job. It doesn’t mean there isn’t a part of us that needs the love of other people. We do. It is for me dissociative to say that if we love ourselves enough we won’t need the love of others around us. We are each at Essence the unconditional Love of Source. That is who and what we are, individually and collectively. We are designed in such a way that our greatest joy in life will come from living in an inner atmosphere of that Sourced Divine love, choose to extend easily and freely love to all those around us, and then also to be open enough to always receive love with an open and willing heart. In my counseling practice I am frequently in the presence of people who say they want nothing more than to be in a committed loving relationship, yet they are unconsciously unable to be vulnerable and defenseless enough to actually let that love in.

What we think love is it isn’t. This is because you cannot think love. It is not a concept in the mind. It is a Reality of the heart. The images we hold of what the perfect relationship will look like are much like those little candy hearts. Conceptual love is sugary and seductive and gives us a fast and furious artificial high. We as a race are in love with the idea of being in love. Our lonely and hurting hearts think that by getting a sugar-high romance from joining with someone who is very likely as lonely as we are we will finally get the love we believe we have never really received. There may indeed be an initial high from being in love with love but then the sugar wears off and we crash into the reality that this person is inept at meeting our needs and assuaging our deep and pervasive woundedness. Eating sugar isn’t nourishing. Too much of it wreaks havoc on our blood sugar levels and creates emotional chaos and energetic hangovers. Surface infatuation has much the same effect. Conceptual love doesn’t nourish. It isn’t a reality that connects us to the deepest level of who we are. It is seeking to get something you perceive you do not have. Mature love is all about seeking to give. It isn’t about trying to find the perfect person to love you. It is about loving the imperfect in you and in the other perfectly. Love isn’t a high. It is an unshakeable context that contains and embraces the totality of being. You don’t love, become disillusioned, and then leave. You love and you choose to stay. Whatever arises you choose to stay. You continue to love because love is what you are. Being love it is naturally and organically what you do. You love whether the other is being loveable in the moment or not. It isn’t a white sugar love that leaves you feeling empty, exhausted, and spent. Real love is deep and abiding and essential. It is nourishing because you are literally giving and partaking of what you are at depth. You are living in the love you are choosing to give, and you are giving because it is what you are.

And so this Valentines Day there will be no sugary hearts for me to eat. There will be no experience of white-sugar love with its inevitable crash. There is only a deep and abiding love In which I live and from which I give. This is my reality. This is my joy and my fulfillment and my purpose. I am choosing to love the imperfect perfectly by keeping my heart open and letting myself live, give, and receive the depths of unconditional love. It isn’t always easy. Love can be daunting. It can be confrontive. It will expose you. And it is ultimately the Source of all that is and the reason for our very Being. Aligning in the One Source Love and giving way vibrationally and actively to that love makes everyday Valentines Day. And from that there is no fall.

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Tuesday, January 31, 2012

MIRROR MIRROR



I find it curious that there are two star-studded movies being released this month that center on the age-old story of Snow White. The movie trailers I have seen present remarkably different takes on the Grimm’s Brothers classic, but each contain an Oscar Award winning actress not in the role of Snow White, but in the role of the Wicked Queen. I have really always thought it was her story anyway. While Snow White is certainly integral to the drama and is the namesake and heroine for which everyone roots and cheers, it is the neurosis, projections, and evil-motivated actions of the Queen that actually animate the tale. No story in any form of entertainment is worth telling without a healthy dose of conflict, and the Queen provides this brilliantly. As I’m sure you recall it is the Queen’s inquiry into the magic mirror that is the beginning of all the drama. Well, more accurately, it is the answer of the mirror to the Queen that causes all fury to break loose from her fragmented psyche. If the magic mirror had just continued on with a peace-promoting yet deceitful answer of “You are” to the Queen’s ongoing question of “who is the fairest in all the land?” it would have saved Snow White and many other characters a whole lot of trouble. When the Queen no longer hears what she wants and so needs to hear, she seeks to destroy the far younger and more beautiful interloper that she perceives has stolen her rightful title. When what is true is not only reflected but proclaimed by the uncompromising and ruthlessly honest mirror, that truth is too much for her to bear.

There is no better learning device for me in my psycho-spiritual tool chest than the always unfailing mirror of my relationships. It is an inescapable and non-negotiable axiom for me that whenever I am disturbed or distressed by something I am seeing in another it is because they are mirroring something that I have been unable or unwilling to see in myself. There is always an aspect of the ego mind that is asking for life’s assent that we are in fact the very fairest of them all, although we often unconsciously suspect that we are most certainly not. There is a part of our fragile selves that needs to feel that it is right regardless of evidence that is so often to the contrary. Projections are a gift that allows us to see what is in our own suppressed storehouse of disowned personal attributes. The pain, darkness, shame, and seeming evil are cast away as things that are happening out there by a supposed them. It is a survival structure that actually serves us until we are strong enough to look squarely into the mirror of our own consciousness and allow ourselves to really see what is there, without projecting it out onto an often unsuspecting world of supporting characters.


One of the foundational truths of projection is that we are all wounded in relationship and we will ultimately heal in relationship. This is rarely a tidy proposition. It requires that we see all the aspects of ourselves that we have avoided for most of our entire lives. We may well have the experience of the Evil Queen when the sight of a perceived “better” will have us looking for the flaw that brings them back down to size, a size that usage our sense of wounded inferiority. We will send out bitter thoughts that seek the heart of that blasted and beautiful maiden, when we perceive she is getting what we so long to have for ourselves. We will have the very human experience of secretly being glad that we are spiritually or morally or intellectually above poor so-in-so in those sad and unfortunate circumstances. We will project our suppressed stuff onto family, lovers, politicians, and the mail carrier. We will search and ask and manipulate and cajole that darn mirror in every which way we can to try and find that we are the one that is the fairest and is right.


And then one day we awaken to find that the mirror is indeed magical after all. It has always been reflecting exactly what we were able to see at any given time along the way. The mirror has become slowly and steadily more honest and revealing as our consciousness became more receptive and ready to see what the mirror of relationship was really showing us. And we recognize that every Evil Queen and fair maiden along the way have been aspects of the totality of our own fragmented self that was in search of integration and authenticity in this transformative realm of mirroring relationship. We can choose to break or cover the mirrors, but the refection will eventually come through via another character in a different storyline. We can shriek and rail about what we see or we can open to know at depth that the revelation of what we see is in service of our highest emergence. And when we can authentically thank the mirror for showing us what we needed to see a peace will fill our hearts that is indeed a most happy ending to a most painful yet meaningful tale.



Tuesday, January 17, 2012

FOR DAD:THEY CAN'T TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME


So I am sitting at my computer less than three hours after my father-in-law took the final breath of an almost ninety-four year incarnation. The sadness is still somewhat vague as the full impact of his passing has not yet landed. As I write these words it occurs to me that I get to legally and literally call him my father-in-law as his now lifeless body is in Massachusetts, a state where the lifetime commitment of man to man is recognized as an equally valid marriage. I do not enjoy that privilege in this state and in my community where I reside, pay taxes, and offer civic service. I have little need of lamentation this day about that fact. For I realize in this day of transition and subsequent sadness that those who can and do deny me the equal rights of other Americans cannot take away the familial bond of deep connection with the man who sired the man I am choosing to share my life with. Legislation can never rob me of the beautiful memories I will forever have of our times together in person and on the phone. No one can take away the jovial tone in his voice as he chose to call me son. No one can make love illegal, no matter how hard they try.


My father-in-law was for all appearances a man who would never tolerate the notion of homosexuality or same sex marriage, especially if it applied to someone in his own home or family. It was not religiously, morally, politically, or socially something that he would have included in his sphere. He would have for perhaps most of his life been on the side of constitutional amendments prohibiting the legalization of marriage between man and man or woman with woman. And then, very late in his life, along came the impending marriage of his son to a person of the same gender. A son that had struggled for years with his own issues of internalized homophobia, and bore the added burden of so wanting the acceptance of the Dad he so long ago distanced himself from. As we considered marrying in a different town which would not bring embarrassment to this well known small town man, he not only endorsed our marrying in the family home town, but also announced that he would be attending the wedding! And front and center he was. Out in the very public space of the town commons we said our I do’s in front of the Dad who with open arms and heart lovingly embraced his “sons.” Political ideologies melted away as the family expanded to include the very grateful me.


And now his body is gone from this earth, yet his enigmatic memory goes on. His recent final words of “love you son” still ring in my heart, a song I know I will always be able to hear. And for all of the political debate and controversy over whether or not who I am and whom I love should be legalized or not, they can never take away my memory of the father-in-law I grew to love. Love cannot be legislated, and it cannot be made less by little minds and censored hearts. The power of love moved this man from the far-right to right between the men, and in doing so, he created a space for others to follow. Love is love, and I know he loved me and I certainly know I love him.

And so I say goodbye, and thanks. Thanks for opening to include me and for always calling me son. No, no; they can’t take that away from me.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

BEWARE TO HAVE A DREAM?


I have been afraid of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for most of my life. And it all started with Jesus.


One of if not the first time that my parents ever let me stay alone at home while they were gone was on an April evening in 1968. My little sister was in bed, and I felt so very grown up as I watched television in the living room of our quaint little ranch house in suburban Columbus Ohio. I sat in my fathers’ favorite chair as for this evening I was the one in charge. As I continued to watch TV and to contemplate having a usually forbidden late evening snack regular programming was interrupted by a news bulletin announcing the assassination of a minister-Civil Rights leader earlier that evening on the balcony of a motel in Memphis, Tennessee. The name was recognizable to me, though only through contracted reactions to the work the man was doing on behalf of the people my family seemed intent on avoiding. He was a trouble making preacher, and even his murder was evoking violence and rioting not long after the announcement of his death.


I began to sink lower into my fathers’ chair, and the moments ago celebration of sudden independence gave way to a nagging anticipation of hearing my parents’ car arriving back into the carport of our home. I purposefully angled the swivel chair so that I could not be seen from the decorative window in our living-room located front door. In my nine year old mind the rioting throngs were soon to be upon our porch. Reports of violence were spreading beyond the confines of Memphis, and I was just sure Columbus was going to be next. Though my parents carefully located our family several miles from “them,” I reasoned that the separation would make us even more of a target. The repeated photos of the slain leader imprinted within my emotional body a wounding that would take years of conscious exploration to fully recognize. Even after I had come to greatly appreciate and even emulate the vast contributions of this masterful man, photographs of him invoked a subtle yet palpable ripple of fear throughout my body. Even while actively marching in MLK walks and peaceful civil rights demonstrations, I found myself averting my eyes from pictures and graphic representations of him.


Beyond the race related implications this experience would come to teach me, there is perhaps a greater lesson that is even now becoming clearer as I work toward another Rev. Dr. King observance. The unconscious lesson I received on that fateful April evening was that if you have a dream and work relentlessly toward the actualization of it you well might be killed. And this is where the example of Jesus comes in. I learned from an even earlier age than nine that kind, compassionate, loving, perfect people who take an unconditional stand as an exemplification of Source are murdered in the name of the very Source they chose to serve. Though a twist of theology seeks to justify this cruel and vicious act in a rendering of “God’s will for humanity,” the unconscious message is not averted. Take an uncompromising stand for Truth and universal justice and someone is likely to take your life.

I have always been drawn to radicals within this world, and it has historically been radicals that moved the race consciousness forward. Jesus was certainly a clear example of this. Rev. Dr. King is a superlative representative of this dynamic. So were Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Robert Kennedy, Harvey Milk, Yitzhak Rabin, and Benazir Bhutto. They are just a few of the strong and courageous men and women who took a stand for Truth and were martyred for it. They each had a dream of a better world for all and paid the ultimate price for the actualization of that dream. The subliminal message is clear: to follow the living example is to risk the same uncomely demise. We are even now witnessing the daily character assassination of a modern day prophet who dared to promise the masses that change would come to America, and yes we can.


Though perhaps none of us in this readership will be called to make the kind of demonstration the afore mentioned way showers were driven to make, I wonder how many risks I have failed to take because of an unconscious fear of meeting the same fate as these seeming fearless hero’s? How many times have I remained silent when everything in my being wanted to take a stand for Truth? How many opportunities have I let pass by when mine could have been the voice that made a difference in an ego-mired circumstance? When and where have I fearfully played small when deep within my gut I knew it was my time to stand tall?


I embrace these profound and confrontational questions as I recommit to making my dream of a world that works for all a living reality. I am facing the vestiges of my fear, and I am motivated by my love. Mine may not be the legacy of one of these masters, but their message is alive and thriving in me. They are no longer here. But I am. And I dare to have a dream. I dare to live a dream. I dare to embody a dream. I dare to dare. That little scared boy in Daddy’s chair has grown up now to take a stand. And take a stand I am.




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