LEAVING MY CHAIR FOR LIVE AID

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Recently I was getting two teeth rooted at my dentist. It was a grim afternoon. The pain was so intense that my sweet dentist decided to give me a combination of the gas and much freezing which included many fun needles.

The assisstant put some glasses on me and suggested an ipod with some kind of pre programmed nonsense on it...but I thankfully accepted.

Before I knew it , laying right back into oblivion, this healthy sober balanced guy was transported to the LIVE AID LED ZEPPELIN  SET from 1985. OMG, this was insane..

 As I was feeling like I was being swallowed by a large beautiful warm pulsing light I realized that the beginning of the next song was so intense, I might start flying from my seat...

You need coolin', baby, I'm not foolin',
I'm gonna send you back to schoolin',
Way down inside honey, you need it,
I'm gonna give you my love,
I'm gonna give you my love.


"Gotta whole lotta love. Jimmy Pages guitar sounded like it was sweetly sawing my heart in half. No amputating it."

Surely this dentist can see that I have left the building, but yet she doesn't seem to care. She looks like she is talking to her assistant about Wagjags or something. 

Is this what Anthony Keidas was describing in his book Scar Tissue.....this was the experience.  Like Heroin he said, you just want it to continue for ever.  Time certainly doesn't exist , and you bloody hope that it doesn't come popping right back, not now for gods sake.

Long after the freezing wore off and I was back to my reality, I started thinking about how easily somebody could get to love getting high.  Reality is very linear and fraught with responsibility, suffering and boredom. This type of experience was a 4 dimensional hammer to your inner being.

I had been reading a book where the Author was disputing the idea that one has to sit still and meditate and breathe and let go in order to experience the field of pure potential and of being whole.

She said that she found that her experiences that brought her closest to the divine...didn't take place when she was still with her eyes closed but when she was doing what she loved...playing music , cooking, skiing down some mountain. When she was in the zone and being creative. Makes sense I thought. 

I think that inspiring moments give you this unimaginable insight into the world beyond our 5 senses.  Some kind of dimension that is so powerful and genuine, that time absolutely doesn't exist.  You can reshape time in that place. I want to live in that fucking place.

Now, you don't have to get there via the Dentist chair,  via laughing gas... boys and impressionable girls, but when you arrive and you are there, you might want to remember to slide the roadmap slowly and methodically into the back of your mind. 

I love this quote I read the other day:

"Pure consciousness is our spiritual essence. Being infinite and unbounded, it is also pure joy. Other attributes of consciousness are pure knowledge, infinite silence, perfect balance, invincibility, simplicity and bliss. This is our essential nature. Our essential nature is one of pure potentiality."

Oh so great. I also might want to bring a little Zeppelin along with me for the ride before I get too old to remember.  Which reminds me, maybe I should download the movie "Woodstock" just in case.

Rick

Losing the role of the Victim

Often I get the feeling that planet earth is so far out of control in terms of negativity, chaos and destruction that it would really be impossible to repair it.  The damage we have done to the planet in the last 100 years is unprecedented.  Alot of the spiritual technologies or religions including Buddhism, Scientology and Kabbalah talk about a community of people changing the direction of the world through a new mindset.

Kabbalah talks about the "End of Days" coming in the next 50 years or so and there is some sort of race against time to see whether the entire human race can get the idea that we have to purge our collective egos and become "givers" before then. 

Scientology has a few interesting philosophies...The two rules for happy living are.......1:  Be able to experience anything easily. and 2:  Cause only those things which others are able to experience easily.

They also believe that after the world destructs....the Scientologists will lead a new world out of the dark with proper morals and ethics.  (Certainly not based up the appalling conditions fostered by their current leadership)


The Buddhists believe in many beautiful ideas. Love, Peace, Harmony, Non-Violence, Reincarnation and the community of fellow Buddhists.  They believe that their peaceful energies will filter throughout the world in some sort of tipping point and the rest of the self absorbed and corrupted will one day just drop the facade and start meditating.  Hmmm. At least they are adding a peaceful energy to the world, how strong it is in the universe and how it will manifest I am not sure .  


One constant idea that I keep coming across in my readings is this idea of Victimization.  Taking responsibility for your own life and not just becoming a "victim".

On a personal level I can relate strongly to this. Two years ago I felt that some of the battles I was fighting were just too strong;  they were consuming me physically with lack of nutrition and the  ingestion of toxins. Mentally I felt that I was loosing a vigorous battle against the constant chaos that the world supplies in abundance if you are looking for it.

So I would wake-up and feel that I was the only one that recognized that this world was simply a very random and crushing place for anybody with a myriad of feelings and a plethora of challenges. 

IN A NUTSHELL...I WAS A VICTIM.

Today I feel the complete opposite.  I am in control of the energies I put out,  including my intentions and my interpretations. I generally choose to be a positive individual. When I don't feel like it...I take a close look at why? That's me right now.  Who knows...tomorrow I may be a negative bastard who feels like the battle is never going to be won, but I truly hope not, that position is just too easy and too exhausting.


Deepak Chopra said: " Reality is everyone's personal creation"  (ofcourse you did Deepak)
He says that what we experience as reality in our life is the result of our thoughts, beliefs and conditioning.  We are not being randomly just tossed around in life, we are co-creators of our universe. However we can never expect to tap into that power until we accept FULL RESPONSIBILITY for EVERYTHING that shows up in our lives. (This takes some practice because of our conditioning)


I came across this great paragraph recently on responsibility by Parker J Palmer:

The great insight of our spiritual conditions is that we co-create the world, that we live in  and through a complex interaction of spirit and matter, a complex interaction of what is inside of us and what is "out there,"
The insight of our spiritual traditions is not to deny the reality of the outer world, but to help us understand that we create the world in part, by projecting our spirit on it-----for better or worse.  We share responsibility for creating the external world by projecting either a spirit of light or a spirit of shadow on that which is "other" than us.  Either a spirit of hope or a spirit of despair.  Either an inner confidence in wholeness and integration or an inner terror about life being diseased and ultimately terminal.  We have a choice about what we are going to project, and in that choice we help create the world that is.


A little heavy before breakfast but I think the image of a person living this way is very positive to us all.  It makes it a hell of a lot easier to look in the mirror in the morning that is for sure, and is certainly uplifting in my life at the moment.



That's all, at 8am on a beautiful sunny Sunday morning in September, 2012.


Rick

WE ARE, THEREFORE WE WILL ALWAYS BE

Recently my brave mother had an unexpected heart attack in the middle of the night.  It's amazing how thoroughly and quickly one is placed in a position of feeling that your contribution to the situation must be precise and strong. You simply must rise to the occasion or fold under the pressure. In this particular case her entire tribe of loved ones were there for her..... beautifully offering her the psychological support that we all need during times of brushing a little too close to the darkness.



I must say that the great news is Judy has gotten past the triple bypass surgery now, and after picking her up from the hospital, I saw a certain light in her eyes glimmering when she said "I am so happy to be free". The worst is behind her and I am very optimistic that her future looks very bright without the lingering fatigue that she was feeling before.



That brings me to the other more metaphysical stuff that reverberates through my the mind and lingers in the soul during these times.....

These thoughts:

"What is it all for?"..."This whole process of life and death seems so random and chaotic"...
Or as Woody Allen put it recently when asked about the prospect of God and some kind of plan in the universe...."Nobody out there knows what's going on?".


The truth that resonates somewhere beneath it all is that the more of an intellect you use, the more difficult it is to believe in some sort of a Monotheistic God that has some sort of a plan for us and a beautiful end game. I have to say that with the hunger crisis in Africa threatening 20 million people as we speak, the idea of a divine plan for these unlucky people seems preposterous.
(See John Folwes "The Aristos" and his ideas on "hazard" playing such a large role.)


However, that's why we call it "faith" I suppose. What about this idea that God is "in nature"...that God is in everything...It's a wonderful idea that is comforting....but does that mean we should just sit out under a tree out in a field for most of our lives and smile as much as we can until they put us in the ground? Wow that sounded negative... For me ....I must believe in something that is much larger than myself.(But what)..When I look into the mirror, I know that I am definitely not calling the universal shots from my ego based lair.


There is an idea that we have all heard before in the self-help community which states...."Live this day as if it were your last"....

I do like this advice, although I feel personally that is very difficult because we like to fall back into a comfort zone that we are used to.  We want to feel stable, not to be embracing every change around the corner for the sake of some mantra.

Who knows...the smartest scientists out there are totally conflicted about energy and how it works in the universe, and the meaning of time and the meaning of our ability to effect our future with our thoughts. We know that thoughts do effect energy particles from vast distances..but what does it all mean. So what?


Hmm. When you are faced with a life defining operation like my mothers or like the one I had a few years ago, you simply fight as hard as you can do get one more day.  When you get that one more day...then you can ponder these types of big questions.

Or you might decide that nobody will ever figure this stuff out and the way to go is just to live an honest, moral life that effects the most people possible in the most positive way possible.  If you can fit some good old fashioned fun in between, well then you might not care if there are no answers.


Recently I came across this healer in a Saturday market up north that shared with me some spiritual ideas that he put down on paper when he was in Tibet..At least, that was his story and I went with it. 

Nice thoughts that definitely resonate somewhere... not sure what the relevance is to daily tasks though.   Note:  The Law of Continuation is particularly perfect. 






The Laws of the Universe


1:   The Law of Conservation:
     The Universe wastes nothing.

2:  The Law Of Prosperity:

      Prosperity comes from something higher than us,  flows through us but is not for us,
      But meets our every need want and desire as it flows through.

3.  The Law of the Unending Circle:
     What effects one, effects all.

4.  The Law of Continuation:
      We are, therefore we will always be,
     The form is not as important as the deed done by that form.

5.  The Law Of Constants:
      God in all forms from energy to spirit, to matter and to vastness that is, is the only constant.

6.   The Law of Creation:
      What was created will always be just that, created.
       But remember that within us is the force that created us.

7.   The Law of  Connection:
       By design we are interconnected and interdependent to every other  being on this plane.

8.   The Law of Understanding:
       Love is built in every creation.  Our job is to come to understand it is there.

9:    The Law of Peace:
        Peace is defined by the chaos it balances.

10:   The Law of Events:
        All things are meant to happen, we must open to the understanding that
        Each gives us a way to move closer to the one that created us.




It all  sounds absolutely brilliant.  I would like some real answers in the mail if possible.


Rick
September 3/2012