Now, Sayulita

Mee is at don Pedros hanging with the MANGO MAMA'S. I'm sitting at the bar in Lalo and ginas playing with the computer and listening to the sounds of our world. Little girls playing in the pool , trucks on the dirt road outside the walls, and birds and waves breaking.

Everything about what I've called cool in life is offering me an engraved invitation to finish my work in Tennessee and come back home to Mexico and get busy here with what I love doing. I told my friend Dana Walden today that there are opportunities coming from 12 different directions , none of which you can see, and I'm so on it to follow my faith into the sunset.

Maybe what I've considered at times is going to be real, that is ...thru healing ways we humans will finally let go of our differences being the basis of perception and live with sharing experiences being the foundation. Good set up for an American guy to come to Mexico and streach his world to allow SPIRIT to create with him in a new reality. You can take TV's from culture to culture but healing ways are pretty sacred and we aren't very open to healing anyway unless we have had a taste.

So, Lalo sends me pics of an old Hacienda some where in Old Mexico. This after, yesterday, seeing the most beautiful compound here in Puerto Vallarta that for sure we want to create an Integrative Healing/ Recovery Center at.

What is so cool is that we humans are close to realizing that we can recreate our world any way we choose and we can make that choosing a rockin deal.All of that is coming and the admission price is we have to undo our attachment to being ..in reaction, the victum, less than, pissed off, drama queens...etc...we must get over the ourselves we've created for ourselves and come to believe we are and we aren't.

We are such suckers we really should not be allowed to believe anything for a time out. Ok wn't happen...but....So hey, whats coming to you that you won't get out of the way for? The only one keeps us from doing what we want is us. Vaya con dios.....

Key One#1. give More attention to where you are going than to where you have been.

Practice Key one for a while and lets see what happens.....

ETERNAL NOW-ADYASHANTI

***** My friend Maru sent this poem and all the words needed are set in perfect place and time...enjoy the gift of a master....

Eternal Now



Take a moment

to check and see if you are actually here.



Before there is right and wrong

we are just here.

Before there is good or bad, or unworthy,

and before there is the sinner or saint,

we are just here.

Just meet here, where silence is-

where the stillness inside dances.

Just here, before knowing something, or not knowing.

Just meet here where all points of view merge into one point,

And the one point disappears.



Just see if you can meet right now

where you touch the eternal,

and feel the eternal living and dying at each moment.

Just meet here-

before you were an expert,

before you were a beginner.



To just be here,

where you are what you always will be,

where you will add anything to this,

or subtract anything.



Meet here, where you want nothing,

and where you are nothing.

The here that is unspeakable.

Where we meet only mystery to mystery,

or we don´t meet at all.

Meet here where you find yourself

by not finding yourself.

In this place where quietness is deafening,

and the stillness moves to fast to catch it.



Meet here where you are what you want

and you want what you are

and everything falls away into radiant emptiness.

ADYASHANTI

A Warriors Call

We were awake at 3am. Plan was to get to the Nashville airport by 7:30 to make a flight to Palm Beach , a little work and a little beach time. I could feel Lola's feet on my back in the night and knew she was hot, another fever, another cold. Laying awake in bed before sunrise I went through the possibilities of what we might do rearranging our June schedule to fit it all in. No worries, all the choices were great so what does the order matter.

Being a Dad is my closest connection to God. I can't imagine loving more than I love these little girls...all my girls, from 26 to 2. Lola, Bella, Ana , Alexis and now two granddaughters, Sydney and Avery.Unconditional love is always with me just under the surface of my relationship to the world I live in outside of me.

Feeling Lola's feet didn't make for an Oh No , We can't go reaction...in fact I just felt how much I love having this little character for a daughter and her Mom for my wife.

My main reason in flying to Palm Beach was to see a man I respect and feel a connection to cuse we have both done our best to create a doorway for those trying to undo their addictions and suffering for the sake of living a life they love. Call it recovery if you want..I'm not sure that word is accurate..doesn't really matter, it is the evolution of our human legacy and Don Mullaney and I have very different looking approaches to our work while both work from that place within us that is so grateful for our life and transformation that we had to share that gratitude the best way we know how. Really very simple and sometimes very challenging when you can't settle for less than what you feel is the best for your people, the ones we serve in our work.

From the outside we don't appear to have much at all in common but I would bet you through the eyes of God we look like two brothers who have their own style and way of getting the job done.One thing I have come to see and know about the truth of life, looks don't have anything to do with substance and real truth brings great respect and honor with it. Among warriors there is always a mutual respect that will come forward at some point, whether in victory or defeat, in argument or agreement, true warriors live for the closeness to life's integrity, a closeness that being the warrior brings.Going with the flow is usually just an annoyance to a warrior. We do it to get in position to act sometimes but I don't think we ever like it.

Being a warrior is sure not a popularity contest either. Popularity is another one of those social conventions that seems to breed soft, lazy actors rather than solid courageous Characters, warriors. I've become such a jackass these days that I almost don't trust anybody who is too popular in any field, recovery,politics, film, music, doesn't matter, authenticity brings uniqueness and social compliance as a culture has a hard time with unique.It also has a hard time with the truth.

When I realized we couldn't make the flight this morning I came down stairs and got online cancelling the flight and re-booking the Singer Island Hilton for the end of June. I'm going to see Don Mullaney, the exact day is not the point.

Many times in my life I have had powerful feelings that I needed to do something and wouldn't "understand " why..today I know that is God directing me and I don't need to understand why. Actually it's more fun not knowing, I get to figure it out as I move forward, with faith, rather than believing a head full of bullshit thinking I know something.

Palm Beach will be there and I'll play on that sugar white sand beach with my girls and visit my warrior compadre...sometimes we need to check in with each other because we are here to learn and share who we are with each other as individuals not as business people or friends or any other roles we have given so much value to. We need to check in Man to man, human to human..life to life.

Today I'm going to The Ranch and work with some wild two year old colts of ours...Now that's a mirror of Spirit for you, a two year old colt all fat and wide eyed.

To all the warriors out there I salute you and look forward to meeting you along the way...we do recognize each other and there aren't that many of us in circulation these days. To death I say "I see you and when the time comes we'll dance and sing an old Sweatlodge song to the Great Mystery" Weyah hey hey Weyah Hey......

Conscious Contact

Who am I listening to in my life? So many voices so little attention.The world around us looks more like a world in need of treatment than a world we might aspire to be loyal subscribers to. On one hand our culture and our world is not responsible for us as individuals, we are, and at the same time we are the children of this world and all its conflicts, insecurities, insanity and lies.Attempting to sort the truth out of the agenda is , well, more trouble than it's worth. I may be powerless over the world outside of myself but I am not powerless over myself ,what I believe about me, agree to concerning me, or choose to act on in relation to me.Bringing my attention back to myself keeps me from getting all caught up in all the stuff that in truth does not matter anyway.

My world exists within me. My world is a perception, a matrix of beliefs and stories. In my world there are continuously changing weather patterns of emotion, hunger, thought, sensation and experience.

In the world outside of me there are also constantly changing aspects of life, weather, belief, reaction. We are caught up in a whirlwind of economic, energetic, environmental, political and religious turmoil. What we were taught as kids as the "right" way to live has turned out to have been a very short sighted, unsustainable, addicted, demanding, borderline behaving quagmire of cultural mess. Everybody seems to be lying to everybody about almost everything and all we know for sure is that we can't count on the politicos or the systems as they exist today to save us from ourselves. See what I mean by our World being in need of treatment....

In the midst of all this, change keeps happening and with that change, opportunity comes forward...So, where is our attention? Are we seeing the opportunities or are we fighting to keep up our attachment to what has been familiar to us.

Like an individual in need of treatment, when what you have lived as "reality" stops working, there can be a real sense of the whole house of cards coming down. We are the culture of the world and the culture of the world is us. The rethinking of how we live one day to the next as a society, is , if it's going to evolve toward Happy, Joyous, and Free, going to be a leap of faith into the unknown. My point of view about Recovery has shifted from the goal being to become a "happy, productive member of society" to being re-connected to the truth of who I am underneath all the beliefs , baggage, stories and imbalances that had become my perception of myself. That perception of myself was born of my relationship with this Society and how I saw me, judged me, defined me according to societies rules. I really tried to fit in..sort of...that's funny now..but it sure as hell wasn't funny when I believed Society knew something I didn't.

Where do we go now, people of recovery, society of the USA...where do we go now Humans? Our world has hit the fan and most of our all powerful systems have shown themselves to be incapable of changing toward the opportunity of a new Paradigm.Our systems are reflections of ourselves. We are so attached and addicted to suffering as a measure of accomplishment we seem to be indulging into suffering rather than stepping back with a broad, open minded point of view and being honest about how Huge our collective and individual challenges and opportunities are.

In the USA if you work, work, work then you might believe you are ok and accomplished and headed for some promised land...good luck with that one.Life is changing the stakes to not being about how hard we work and suffer for our causes but how smart we live and how much love and joy we express, minute to minute, day by day.

Some where in the mix of our beliefs we bought into being small and imperfect as the foundation of our experience.We have no idea if we are perfect or not, we have no idea the intentions of the one that created us so who are we to even have an opinion of what we are. We've even been told we were born in Sin and must earn Gods love. So many of our beliefs have been passed on from generation to generation and regardless of how much suffering and fear those beliefs create we stay loyal to them or at best go into a like minded reaction to them. All aspects of the same way of thinking.

There is nothing sacred here but life itself...our beliefs are not sacred,our educations are not sacred...our sobriety is not sacred...the religions are not sacred..the cows may be, at least they were, like us, created by Life, not the minds of men.

What we are being shown today is the truth that our interpretations of ourselves are simply opinions and always removed from the truth, as truth exists within us as Spirit.We are that Spirit not what we have projected into the world as identity and called it "me". We recover from our identity as "Me" or we live as "me" better or less than, in recovery, small and imperfect, same ol' same ol' , Again, same way of thinking that created the problem in the first place.

All of this point of view applies to our societies and our cultures...all of this applies to our Human world as we create it and then live in it.If we want to change the world we must come to terms with the foundation of our personal beliefs. The world is a projector screen for our beliefs, we act according to our beliefs, we experience based on beliefs and we perceive through the filters of our beliefs...no way of getting around dealing with our beliefs if anything is going to change beyond cosmetics and affiliations.

In my life there is, today, a conscious contact with a presence within me. A presence that is always there and always holding me in unconditional Love and awareness. I feel from that presence that everything is and has always been ok...There is a conscious contact that exists within all of us that when we have brought our attention back to ourselves will reveal to us the thread of life that connects us all.Until we have brought our attention back to ourselves we will continue to live from the insanity of our own projections. We will continue to live from the world around us rather than from the world within us. Bringing our attention back to ourselves will require a great leap of faith. We will have to believe we are worth it and let go of the grand excuses that we are small and imperfect, that there is a measure called Normal, that has some relevance to anything. We will have to let go of our Gods and projections, our agendas and affiliations..our diagnosis and cool cards. We will have to be willing to be happy, joyous and Free...all for the sake of a conscious contact.

Spinning Wheel.

Wednesday evening 7:15 p.m....The orbit of star-ship Lee took an elliptical variance today. Shifts come and we go..onward, choosing, feeling, wondering. I'm wondering , again, what really matters here as I dream my life on Earth? It is so easy to believe so many of the things I've been taught matter, matter, but sometimes, like right now, I KNOW most all those cultural teachings are not the point to this life.There is this place between stepping into a life of absolute faith in what I feel, and I feel deep and still,and that fear that I better be reasonable cuse I have a family and all this stuff that I once thought I owned but now know full well the stuff owns me.

Wouldn't life be amazing if ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE was what we chose to live..it would sure be a HUGE leap of faith from what we are told to live for. See, the feeling of letting go of all this structure of success and responsible American stuff seems to be following me like my shadow. What was real is not anymore and what might be is a giant step from where I sit now and I'm a guy who has lived on the edge all my life so I should be much closer to jumping into the paradigm shift than a lot of others and here I am still sitting talking, or writing, about it.

The ground IS MOVING UNDER OUR FEET. That sensation is real, it's not just you. Paradigm shift is the reality that nothing outside of our center will be familiar as we move into a greater vibration. Life is a band width of frequencies and we are familiar with only a couple variations of those infinite frequencies. Today was a validation for me that the shift is not about the world around us but what we are capable of perceiving that has always been around us, we just were too stuck on what we think we know to see past all our Knowing.If you don't live from your center then good luck cuse chasing the shadows is going to be a black comedy of errors.

Anyhow...what was I saying??? Do you feel what I'm talking about?? Ummm Hummm...We are in for a Ride folks...Safety is no longer going to be a hole card..faith is the ticket now..so get you some..and let go of that life raft...lets rock this Dream....

Soft Green World

I spent the last week in Santa Fe, New Mexico. There were 400 or so people gathered for a Mental Health / Addictions conference and several of them are good friends.Santa Fe is a beautiful place with a history of Deep faith and mystery as well as a true melting pot of cultures and social classes.

Every morning I'd awaken to the sunrise bringing light back into the world. My room had a great view looking North over the roof tops of the old Pueblo toward the Sangre de Cristo Mountains that run from Southern Colorado down into New Mexico.

It is early Spring in the Rockies. There is still a blanket of white spread over the land and Mountains. Some of the trees had begun to bud, almost blooming into the Light of Spring. On my last day we had a Spring Snow, like a mini white out, big wet heavy flakes drifting down to cover the street signs and roof tops.As I watched and walked through the crystal Snow flakes I was touched deep inside by my connection to the soft green hills and pastures of Tennessee. I could sense the way my foot steps fall on the thick green grass that covers so much of The Ranch, my spirit place in Tennessee. Immediately I was aware that behind my thoughts , beliefs and agendas there is a connection to Spirit, to life, that has grown from the deep soil and soft contours of the Tennessee hills.

My attention would shift back and forth from the scene of Santa Fe to my bodies memories of the feeling of being on the land at home, at The Ranch. We have an awareness in the Toltec work of our human ability to be in two places at once. We can be standing in a Plaza in New Mexico and be listening to the sounds of a River in Tennessee both simultaneously. For sure this is one of those experiences you have to have to understand what I'm talking about. Truth is those experiences are not as far fetched as we might want to believe.

My awareness was that a great aspect of my heart is very connected to the soft green landscape of the Tennessee hills and although my personality would like to be lots of other places my heart keeps bringing me back to those hills.

The day before the Snow I was talking with Laurie Ann Levin, a mystical being herself when I mentioned how much Mee and I love Los Angeles and Malibu and she looked me in the eye and said " Yes, but you are very connected to the animals, the horses, and in a deeper way than most. You do your work in Tennessee by a greater calling."
I had no reply to her statement, actually, she didn't say it with any need of a reply, it was what it was and it was the truth.

Flash back to a couple weeks back when I was with Meg Blackburn Losey, a gifted and successful writer, "THE CHILDREN OF NOW" among her credits. Meg is also a channel...to me a channel is a Human who can also be the facilitator for consciousness that's not in a body. Not all that strange really. Meg was channeling and I asked her or her Spirit's " Why am I back in Tennessee?"....she turned staring at me like I'm dumb or something and said " well my dearest, you picked it and now you have a role to complete before you will move on". Of course when Meg channels it is not her personality that is speaking and I knew that. I had been told again, contrary to my personalities confusion, that there is a greater unfolding at work here.

Yesterday I flew home after spending the morning horse back riding over the Pinion and Juniper Hills south of Santa Fe. The snow was still heavy and soft on the ground and I was feeling deep inside a longing to get back to my esposa and little girls and these Tennessee hills.

This morning that same front that brought the snow to New Mexico was pouring rain on Nashville. I've been looking through the stack of business cards collected at the conference and I feel grateful for the true friends and co-creators that I got to share time with in Santa Fe. They all have their unique offerings of spirit into this world of the minds of men and together I expect we shall continue to create greater opportunities for Healing and authenticity in the lives of those seeking such support.

So thanks for the truth Laurie and Meg and to all of you who have found that underneath all our layers there is a most amazing ability to love and be grateful for where we are, where ever we are I hope our paths are not long in crossing again.....Peace Be With You....

Peace- As has Always Been....

More knowledge is not going to bring more peace into our lives. Another teaching, another training, another degree, more initials, none of that is going to bring Peace into our lives. Peace dwells within us like the space between the clouds. We have given so much attention and value to the amount of information or knowledge we hold in our mind while we move through life measuring and judging based on our inventory of knowledge and opinion and the whole time the peace within us goes without our attention or awareness. This is the way of the world today, the way of the world for a long time now.

Until I was offered a point of view that questioned all of my blind faith acceptance of what I had been taught as truth I had no idea that in truth I didn't really believe much of what I was demanding the truth be.I tried to make what I was told right and the whole time , deep inside , I knew something was not ok. This happened with me and religion, with me and recovery, with me and politics with me and my teachers.

In congruent, that's the best way to describe the feeling of what I was trying to believe and what was happening with the energy of those beliefs in my body. Like eating bad food, the stories, "facts", Gospels, and suggestions all felt like a bad case of indigestion. Of course the ones who perpetuated these beliefs and opinions believed what they were offering was "the truth" or did they really? The truth doesn't demand or need defending or require indignant posturing and there was and is a lot of both that goes on with those who have given their faith to their beliefs.

Beyond belief there is the reality of consciousness. The presence of life, the duality of creation, the awareness of experience, the formless mystery of life itself. All of these aspects of existence are of consciousness and we are of consciousness not of form or belief or measure..we do all these things as human and we are not these things.Fear as faith demands something to hold onto , something to carry into the world as proof that we are ok and have "it " figured out. Fear measures against itself and we give our self to fear and ask "Am I good enough now". There is no peace in the faith of fear or the reality of fear as an advisor. Hell is not waiting for us, we are creating hell desperately trying to make our insane beliefs truth.

If God is Love then there is no judgement...there is no less than, there are no victims...there is life and Love and the living of life is not personal, the experiences of life are not personal. Consciousness has no report card beyond the cause and effect of experience as we create experience.No one but us is doing anything to us.

Truth can not be bound by definition, opinion or demand to know. Truth is there with us or without us. We are not the key to truths existence.

Free will has allowed for a lot of weird action on the part of us humans. We are so self important and arrogant in our desperation to rationalize our lives based in fear and need.We live almost completely outside of our center and look in all directions for answers that can not be found anywhere but with in.Interestingly enough we are here now at the time when the way we have been taught to live is coming apart at the seems, that way of living was never anything but story and the story has run it's course.

So if all that you believe was to fall apart around you where would you turn for help? Would you go back to the bank, or your attorney, or your church...would you ever consider sitting and asking within yourself what would Love do here? What would true faith ,which is faith in the mystery not the knowing or believing, what would true faith feel like as the world melts down around you?

Having been sold so many lies in the name of truth and reality...the arrival of the truth in this world will for most appear to be the end of times and for those who awaken to the mystery within the arrival of truth will be the gateway to Heaven on Earth..."the kingdom of Heaven will not be found over there, or behind some special door, the kingdom is not above you or outside of you but the Kingdom of Heaven is, as has always been, within you." It is time..let go.... and Dream from that most amazing Heart of yours....