GUN CONTROL OR LOVE ..LACKING

Gun Control or Love.. Lacking?

In the wake of the Connecticut killings there is, an emotional and particular outcry  of injustice in that most of these victims were young innocent child (their whole lives ahead of them). Although it is an obvious tragedy to have these lives cut so short, is it a lessor tragedy when large numbers of adults are murdered? I ask this question because I, like many of us, seem to have more compassion and outrage when bad things happen to children then when they happen to adults. But-from a spiritual stance, aren’t we all just children...children of God? 

I find I don’t have much patience or compassion for adults when they screw up. They should know better by now, I usually think. Yet, I know that’s not realistic. Since we all came from childhoods

less than perfect we brought with us the wounds, the neglects, and the abuses  of our innocent past. We who survived the hard often cruel experiences of “growing up” have done so in large part by desensitizing ourselves to our own pain and the pain of others. But carry a dead child in your arms, or the family dog and the whole world feels empathy. 

I think that’s wonderful. And I think it’s a problem though, that we don’t have the same ready compassion for grown ups. Personally I don’t feel as freely compassionate with my own self as I do for children and pets. Why is this? Why is it so easy for me to judge and condemn myself for not being better, for not having or doing more?

It appears to me that children dying young and violently touches our hearts, that place in us that feels love and concern for others, for life itself. But what of the millions of soldiers, adults deemed collateral damage (what a farce that term is!), homicides, suicides, addicts, and the depressed adults of our affluent modernized culture?  Why stop at children? Why not be up in arms at the abuse of arms no matter who or how many killed? Why not be up in arms at violence and the causes of it at all times? 

It seems to me that most of us don’t know how to love others or ourselves adequately. And that lack of love is a hurt that wounds us all. And wounded, with or without intention, we wound one another. Hurt people hurt people. 

a good poem conveys volumes of wisdom

in very few words,

i like simple poetry

that i can understand with one reading,

i’ve decided that anything complicated is simply untrue, 

or at best, irrelevant,

  I appreciate activism and at times give in 

just to show my support 

but I’m older now

and like many of us

am deciding that changing, 

correcting, improving, and making myself a better place

to live, will do more to change the world 

than all the impassioned outward action in the world, 

everything I need to know

for guidance, 

can fit comfortably on a bumper sticker:

be the change you wish to see

embody your knowledge

trust in a loving universe

awaken from the illusion of our separateness

if,  or when I stop altogether

interfering, sabotaging and postponing enlightenment

by ignoring my souls patient, relentless voice

calling me to the highest life i can live..

oh boy, won’t that be the beginning of a 

deliriously joyous adventure. 

Moments

Stillness

GRATITUDE FOR..

GRATITUDE FOR

sunrises, sunsets,

soft breezes, wind chimes,

dogs and the sound of power saws,

and neighbors building and repairing things,

favorite foods, popcorn, chocolate,

movies that move me,

a good nights sleep, a brand new day,

beauty, art and music,

the written word and truths spoken,

honest joy and instructive pain,

conversations and arguments,

difficulties and victories,

loss, and grief

and unexpected pleasure,

the generosity of people,

their inherent kindness,

children-yours and mine,

old people whose eyes still twinkle,

our absurd and often deranged behavior

and the ability to see this and laugh our asses off,

fear and then 

the safety found in faith

and trusting in a loving universe,

accidents and the likelihood that there are none-

the people I hold in my heart

who hold me in theirs,

that listen and accept me as i am,

and trust me to do the same for them,

this breath...

& if I’m still lucky,

the next one too...

VIVA LA DEATH!

VIVA LA DEATH!

IT’S NOT EASY...

to be a true outlaw, an outlaw down to your very core. If you are, I feel for you because i know you must subvert all paradigms and rebel against all and each belief. As soon as you have revolted and destroyed the dominant belief, a new belief takes it’s place and then of course because your job, like  it or not, is to rebel-you must take down the newly established belief This makes no sense unless you believe that life is supposed to change perpetually. That the universe is always under going transformation and we lag behind trying desperately to hold on to what we think we know and what we think will provide us with safety and security. Inevitably, soon or later-once again we recognize that there is a new belief system that constrains us as ALL 

belief systems do. 

Are you a true rebel? Do you live your life freely and unpredictably? Are

you really free?  Are you free of gramMatical rooLs? Free of needing acceptance from and belonging to others? Free of that fear of physically dying? Free from yesterdays deepest truth, the one you subscribed to and fought for and lost friends and love for?

If you are,

 than your life is the adventure you once dreamt it could be.

 It is your favoritist movie and you are writing your part in the script at

 ALL TIMES-

If you are tired and unwilling to conform to even ur own deepest convictions, especially ur deepest convictions...

come join me 

by departing from this world of delusion and insanity, 

then join me by departing from me and finally, yes-

join no one and no thing,

just depart from your own precious selfhood. 

If you are a true revolutionary you can not name yourself. 

You cannot even name a thing. You have fled the confines of language 

and the thought that you even think you know anything-

 for that vast infinity of mystery we like to call the universe. 

Be free of this idea of freedom. Be free of what you thought you knew. 

to steal a line from the dead who are the 

only truly informed ones...

the ones I trust-

“wash yourself of yourself,

...be like the melting snow.....” 

Goodnight Rumi.

 I can only heed a teacher who has no longer a body. 

Your deadness models for me, 

how I must be, 

dead to all I think of me, 

dead in order to be finally

free of even that which I think is 

FREE..

Hitler was the first to demonstrate the power of media

11/2/12

What concerns me most regarding the campaigning and marketing onslaughts we’ve endured during this race to the White House, is that commercials work. If they didn’t we wouldn’t be inundated endlessly by soda, drug, beer, injury lawyer, auto sales, insurance companies, etc- on T.V., in magazines, billboards and internet. 30 and 60 second sound bytes orchestrated (masterfully) to persuade you to buy a product or service aimed NOT at your intellect but directly at your emotions instead, is the major source of information and decision making for most Americans who are far too exhausted from working and raising a family to do any in depth research to check the validity of these often outrageously disingenuous claims advertised. Professional marketing knows well how powerful the results of covert, subliminal and emotionally appealing advertising can be. That’s why millions are spent on them. Because they work and are well worth the investment.

To reduce something as important as a Presidential election to these sorts of schemes

belittles not only the political arena as a whole, but insults every American voter as well. The implementation of unrestricted Super Pac money has created so much unsubstantiated hype that I feel like the Super Bowl, not election day is playing Nov. 6th. 

Why can’t we just see candidates themselves be interviewed unbiasedly at length and in depth on television so that their “real” positions and thinking on issues can be thoroughly investigated and revealed. The media scored the debates like it was a WWF match; the winner was whoever came across with the best “appearance”. Campaign reform is essential if we are to have educated informed voting which is the very basis for our psuedo Democracy-the best that money can buy.

IMPRISONED

fear

imprisons us all,

once we learn to distrust ourselves

we stop trusting everybody,

we distrust life itself.

i am tired of blaming

what I am afraid you’ll think of me,

if I allow myself to be fully free

each uncertain moment,

because I have not made a lasting peace

with myself, I still look to you

for approval and acceptance,

I am addicted to love,

to people who applaud me, 

i am addicted to achievement

and the brief ego pump that it affords me,

i am addicted to distracting my self from my 

uncomfortable feelings with busyness, 

the news, T.V..with anything,

I self abandon..

i surf the internet to avoid meeting myself

i am a crazy person and can be dangerous;

i can criticize and condemn my thoughts, actions, and lack of action,

my mind is a bad neighborhood and i’ve been told more than once

not to travel there alone,

what will it take for me to say

“FUCK YOU” 

to my fear  and mean it?

when will i review my case, 

forgive and parole me?

at least i see and admit 

that this jail cell keeps me much smaller than

i’m meant to be,

i acknowledge the impact of global warming too..

they say you need only three things 

to wake up to joyous enlightenment:

awareness, awareness and...awareness.

EMPTY

Empty

When you enter life,

infused by light-ignited,

all the world is welcomed when  

completely open sighted,

The conduit you are for Love

is open, free and flowing,

we have no names for anything,

only total knowing,

Ironic that the more we “learn” 

the less we live in awe,

it’s emptiness our soul yearns for,

a lighter load from which  to soar,

That leap of faith from all we think,

grows wings to let our spirits fly,

the infinite delight we seek

is waiting, we just have to die,

The Dark Side of “Equality”

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The Dark Side of “Equality”

There was a psychological experiment done in Germany several years ago. People were partnered and put into rooms with one person given ten dollars to split with the other person any way they saw fit. The other person either accepted his portion or not. If he rejected the split, then neither of them got to keep any money. 

In almost every case, any time the split was other than 50/50 the offer was turned down and no one left with any money. They repeated this test with one hundred dollars and had the same results. If the split wasn’t deemed fair by the intended recipient, it was rejected and neither got to keep any money. 

This story was found in a book entitled “The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior” and illustrates that most people (in competitive modern societies) will choose no money over a shared amount they consider unequal or unfair. Interestingly enough, when the same experiment was conducted in a remote Amazon village everyone accepted the money irregardless of whether it was an even split or not. They reasoned (reasonably) that any money was better than no money. They also accepted and understood how someone would keep the larger share for themselves; they weren’t troubled because they comprehended that they now at least  had “some” money which was freely given to them and they didn’t feel entitled to it; instead they felt grateful.

I found this fascinating with far reaching implications for us modern urbanites. From the time we are children measuring our brothers glass of soda to our own, the size of his slice of pie compared to mine and so forth we insist on “fairness and equality” in the family and whine and complain when it isn't present. 

Later we extend this entitlement to fairness to many other aspects of our lives. We compare ourselves endlessly  to one another to determine whether we are getting our fair share of opportunities, salaries, educations, promotions; we assess our skills and abilities, size and shape and looks and create our self regard from how well we stack up against everybody else. Some of us find it preferable to be a big fish in a small pond than to compete with all the predators and end up small fish in the big sea of ambitions.

I believe this obsession and insistence on “fairness” has far reaching consequences. It helps to explain

why so often in our individual interactions we end up in either win/lose or lose/lose situations. It explains how 2 congressional parties can become uncompromising and therefore, completely frozen and ineffective the same way two spouses can refuse to come to agreements which sometimes leads to divorce.

I think this “fairness” attitude is present in our rigid ideas of right and wrong, and  good and bad.  Most of us rarely consider  the grayness which is a far more accurate description of reality than simple black and white perceptions and interpretations.

Rather than acknowledging the merits of differing opinions and perhaps collaborating which could lead to successful negotiations we often prefer to choose no solution over a partial or compromised one. These irreconcilable interactions with one another at individual, national and global levels do not bode well for our future.

In modern urban cultures, in education and in business we are taught over and over again to compete with one another. If someone wins someone else must lose. Where in our society is cooperation modeled? How many urban folks interact much at all with their neighbors? Are we shown how to be helpful when others are in need or are we taught fearfully and selfishly to stay on our side of the gated fence in our upscale community and spout idiotic idioms like, ‘self-made man, rags to riches, pulling yourself up (by yourself) by your bootstraps.  Heroes are the highly ambitious and competitive winners in a culture measured by material wealth and that intangible false esteem known as “status”. Is it possible we have been choosing the wrong role models most of our lives? Possible that maybe we have chosen a life of appearing successful over a life of genuine quality? What do we value; what is truly important? What feeds the heart and soul? 

If you haven’t noticed by now that millions upon millions of successful  Americans are addicted to one thing or another, depressed and bolstering themselves just to get through one more day. When and why did life become such a drudgery?

We each of us walk our own paths and are often headed in different directions altogether. I have no answers for anyone outside myself (and not always myself either) but I think it’s important to pose questions, to stop occasionally in our urgent flight through life to look within ourselves and consider if we are truly happy and healthy or are we still blindly doing “whatever gets us through the day?”

I have a very happy neighbor with an unsinkable positive attitude; we both live on opposite sides of the same street in the same neighborhood but evidently see and live in different worlds. The sound of a power saw annoys and disturbs me while he is grateful that such a tool exists to create and build with.  Maybe I should move to his side of the street...or at least, visit him more often.

EACH BREATH A GIFT

EACH BREATH A GIFT

How fragile is life

And what a gift

Each moment is,

Until life is at risk

I forget this simple blessing,

Each breath

Cool and sweet

Could be my last,

Could be your lover’s last,

Could be your child’s last,

Remember this then:

Don’t take for granted 

The life that has been granted you.

ANGER TO FEAR TO FAITH

I used to get angry easily and often. as a matter of fact as I look back and recall, I see that I was always slightly angry; i had a rough and raw edge about me that I wasn’t even aware of. It was so constant and normal I didn’t see it. 

With enough awareness work, I have found that today I’m rarely angry and its not from suppressing or denying it-when I used to do that, I’d explode unpredictably with rage. I haven’t raged in a long long time. 

When I begin to feel angry or irritated, frustrated etc, I stop and breathe and then lower myself into the more accurate feeling; I am scared. I believe that under anger and grief and other uncomfortable or debilitating feelings, lies fear...always fear. Fear of losing something essential to your well being or survival. Fear of not getting, or never getting what you want and think you need. Fear of yourself; self criticism, self shaming or that you will never figure out how to truly accept life on life's terms, i, e; reality and achievr a sustainable equilibrium and serenity.

But I’ve even learned how to let go of fear because each time it arises it challenges my faith in a loving higher power, a power that I trust will continue to provide me everything I really do need (as it always has). It’s not always easy to trust the universe. But when I am in pain, anger, or fear I am clearly resisting and rejecting some aspect of reality be it, weather, other people’s actions, politics or even more insidiously, my own feelings and thoughts-I can be rejecting me and that is perhaps the scariest fear of them all. 

So what I mostly work on today and I must it is conscious work to detach with awareness, is my own self rejection based on this idea that before i can relax and love and accept myself fully, the world must be or I must be a certain way. 

I have found for myself that anger does have it’s positive place as a catalyst to awaken me to a real threat; either physically or emotionally. The response to that anger is the same as the response to putting your hand on a hot stove; you remove your hand. And in the case of anger, I have choices of how I am going to protect myself from that “heat”. It may mean changing locations or relationships or my own attitude. But I’m not a powerless victim of my anger; I can explore it and follow it to it’s real source and then resolve it by loving and taking care of myself. 

Brother to Brother

This is a link to a rap written by my older son to his younger brother. I think you'll love it; give it a listen ya-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohLqZpFzXAA

A SHORT STORY ABOUT A TALL FRIEND FROM A LONG TIME AGO

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Several months ago I tracked down the son of my best friend who is now passed. I “friended” him on Facebook and forgot about connecting when I didn’t hear back. I wasn’t even a hundred percent certain that he was my friends son but...

Months later, today I received a reply and within minutes we were speaking on the phone and it was phenomenal! Although I didn’t know G really-he had been a teenager last time i briefly saw him, I was surprised by the amount of emotion his call stirred in my heart. We spoke for 20 minutes and after promising to hook up before the years end in LA. I hung up and this great grief and joy poured up out of my heart and overwhelmed me. G’s reaction to being the neglected child of 2 crazy drug addled addicts (like myself) had been to make sure he didn’t go that same route. He sounded like a man who’d made the best he could of himself and it brought up a lot of joy for me. I couldn’t imagine him not having a painful life and as tough as it was, he sounded strong and sane. His mother died in June, he shared that he had taken care of her for the past 15 years as she convalesced with debilitating depression that never lifted. Her own mom committed suicide when she was fifty and J was still in high school with the optimistic possibilities of her own life stretched out before her, just as we all had at that time in our lives. 

 I hadn’t connected with that time of my life, nor with the people from that time in so many many years. I never loved a man more than I loved his father. He was an incredible spirit and had so very much going for him. At the end of high school we became Mutt and Jeff, inseparable and ventured out together into a dangerous world full of alluring sex and drugs and rock and roll. The wild ride began. 

In my mid thirties I made a decision that was healthy and I’m sure saved my life; I married a straight, sober woman and she became an anchor to put my feet on the ground. Through her direction and support I finished college, taught school for over 20 years, raised two sons. And I’m still alive. Gok was not so fortunate. 

The real beginning of the end of his chances for a long and fruitful life came when heroin arrived. He used to joke and blame me for his downfall; because I was the one who turned him onto pot and from there, Reefer Madness followed and all the various drugs that that entailed. Of course, once you hit heroin you’ve found “the One” and stop looking around for anything better. After many addicted years, while I cleaned up and found my sober influence in my wife, Gok struggled,  switched to methadone (a supposed cure)  and developed a constant ringing in his ears. I forget the term for it but I can’t imagine how that wouldn’t drive a person mad. Shortly after that we lost touch altogether.

The last I”d heard of Gary he had moved in with his aging mother in Arizona, and they cared for one another. 

Six or eight years ago Gok died one night late on an Arizona highway alone. No one was there so no one knew if it was an accident or intentional. The last time I spoke to him was 1995 shortly after I did the Warrior Training weekend. I was so jazzed (temporarily) I called both of my two oldest and closest friends to encourage them to do the training. When I spoke with Gok last, he cried. He spoke about another addict friend who’d died recently and he felt responsible for the death, as if he could have or should have done something to save him. He was beating himself up about it and sounded so lost and confused and alone. It was a short conversation and I don’t know what it was for him but for me, the man I spoke with was not the man I knew so well and loved so long. 

It feels good and real to have been brought back to these deep old emotions; I am in my heart and feel the great love and the great times we shared together, as well as the deep sadness over how differently our lives went compared to our youthful, joyful  plans. Gary and I bought identical Triumph Bonneville motorcycles in 1967 and cruised all over the city that summer. We were going to do the Easy Rider thing together but the universe had other plans for us. After his bike was stolen, and that dream fell, I sold my bike (to a thief) and then collected insurance money for it and went away to college. I left him with the job of keeping my girlfriend from fucking around with anyone. Of course they fell for each other in no time, later got married and had thier one and only son in 1969. 

So here I am today, blessed to have reconnected with his son whom although I never knew, I feel this deep river of love for. Life is a trip for sure. I am excited to see this man in the flesh and look forward to telling him stories he needs to hear; stories that convey the incredible gold that his father carried in his heart and shared with so many others...

To Be Whole

I think it's a mistake to ever look for hope outside of one's self.

One day the house smells of fresh bread, the next of smoke and blood. One day you faint because the gardener cuts his finger off, within a week you're climbing over corpses of children bombed in a subway. What hope can there be if that is so? I tried to die near the end of the war. The same dream returned each night until I dared not to go to sleep and grew quite ill. I dreamed I had a child, and even in the dream I saw it was my life, and it was an idiot, and I ran away. But it always crept onto my lap again, clutched at my clothes. Until I thought, if I could kiss it, whatever in it was my own, perhaps I could sleep. And I bent to its broken face, and it was horrible ... but I kissed it.   I think one must finally take one's life in one's arms.    

                                                                                                       arthur miller

The only people that really know anything
are those that are aware that they know nothing-

Everything else is a costume party 

where people who don't know who they are dress up 

as people they aren't.

PEOPLE WE LOVE

People we neglect to love
die and we realize

we should have loved them better,

this happens all the time.

Once they are gone it’s  hard

to remember what it was

about them

that we didn't like..

We feel petty, and stupid and small,

and we should

because we were gifted someone

to give our love to

and we didn’t

perhaps the saddest thing

is that we don’t change,

we don’t learn and grow smarter,

kinder, wiser..

no, we keep trying to give our love away

but it’s not giving when you”re demanding  to be loved back,

that is a "barter"

it’s hard to give from an empty place

from a deserted or closed down heart,

what is there to give away

but hollow thoughts of love

empty as air.

people we love die and suddenly 

we remember all that it was that 

we loved about them and then 

again we face our remorse

resolving to love while we can

while there are others close enough by, 

for us to reach out to and embrace,

no strangers here,

only fearful friends who have not yet met

hoping for a safe place

to fall apart, 

open up 

to all the wonder of this world,

the only place of safety 

is the center of your own loving heart

everywhere else...

fear.

Empty, Dumb and Free at Last!

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Empty, Dumb and Free at Last!

i used to think there was a “right answer”. I was trained to think that. When I got the right answer-said or did-the right thing at home, i got approval and acceptance. When I got the answer right, especially when I got it right quickly, I got praise and high grades. When i grew older and  left home and finished schooling I began working in the so-called, adult world. 

I rebelled against the world I had been raised to fit into and chose to live on the edges complaining about the injustices of the world, the horrors humans perpetrated upon one another and to assuage my suffering, did a lot of drugs and lost myself in brief pleasures. All the while I was keeping one eye on the lookout for “the right” answer for myself. I was on a laudable suffering journey looking for the meaning, the purpose of life. I became a very depressed existentialist.

Many years and people and jobs and marriages and children went by. Many workshops and seminars and recovery rooms and rituals and personal growth and enlightenment books went by. Many many years...

Finally I gave up or more accurately began the process of giving up everything I knew, my beliefs, my judgments, my rightness and my wrongness, my ideas of good and bad. From this empty and dumb place I finally became a student; one without the learning disability of arrogance or despair. Now that the student has appeared, the teachers are everywhere!

They were there all along but in my compulsion to find my perfect  “guru” I was habitually looking for my answers “out there”. What is the meaning of life? What is my purpose? Now that I can see, the answer (as per usual) seems so simple and clear. 

The purpose of my life is to create a purpose for my life. I decide the meaning; what is important and what is not. And...I knew who I was and what I was about until the colossal self doubt that I developed from working so hard to be what I was not, to fit into a deranged world founded on fear, a belief in scarcity and bereft of any support to fuel a genuine spiritual (not religious)  connection, separated me from the truth of myself all these many years.  The powerful need to belong and be acceptance from the herd over rode my authenticity and my relationship with my real self. 

For some and at different times in ones life, the meaning and purpose of life changes. Perhaps scaling a mountain is your calling, at least until your knees go bad like most knees eventually do. Or singing or teaching, or traveling and writing; it really doesn’t matter. For me, as long as I source whatever it is I’m doing from kindness and appreciation for the world and everything and everyone in it-including myself-then the endless seeking journey ends and life becomes ongoing moments of arrival after arrival to this very moment here and now.

LIVE LARGE

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Live Large, 

(You Only Die Once)

Sing

i don’t care if you sing in a church choir

a prayer of praise and thanks

or if you wail the blues in a dark smokey tavern

whose chairs are mostly vacant,

Sing

Dance

i don’t care if you dance a drunken stagger 

among tombstones in a graveyard

or kick your heels to the sky in a leaping pirouette

Dance

Cry

i don’t care if you cry because your beloved has been crushed

by a errant runaway truck

or because your first born just won the nobel prize

Cry

Laugh

i don’t care if you laugh because you suddenly 

notice what a fool you’ve been all your life

and you sure as hell are not alone

or if you laugh when one final obstacle drops out of the sky

stopping your mad urgent rush

to complete your “to do” list,

Laugh

Love

i don’t care if you love because the one 

you took for granted has left you 

with nothing but a letter of departure 

or because your toddler has

crawled up to cuddle himself in your lap

Love

Forgive

I don’t care if you’ve held a grudge for years 

until the moment that you recognize we all are doing 

the best we can

or if you finally accept your human imperfection

and embrace your self wholly 

as you imperfectly are

Forgive

Run

i don’t care if you run because a stick snapped in the darkness

and the door to safety is a half mile thru the woods

or if the love of your love has just returned

alive from a war in a foreign land

Run

Embrace

I don’t care if you embrace your grown up daughter

with a blessing and a letting go at her marriage

or if you embrace someone you blamed for your pain

releasing your darkest enemy

Embrace

Live

I don’t care if you wake up with a sudden jolt

of insight that you are the creator of everything you think and feel

or if you draw your last breath with satisfaction

that you have loved many and loved well

Live

Breathe

I don’t care what you do or don’t do

today,

but if you wish to be here to explore tomorrow

Breathe