When the ego meets the spirit, it often seems as if an irresistable force is going up against an immoveable object.  Nothing could be further from the truth. In the first instance, the ego is the spirit’s tool, designed to help navigate the currents and shoals of experience. The ego’s job was originally designed to man the helm of our conscious journey through the world, following the directives of our spiritual imperatives, handling the gross material details of our body’s movement through the four-dimensional world of space and time while the spirit maintained the more subtle and intricate aspects of the quantum mathematical formulations that regulate our unconscious bodily functions. In the second instance, there is no real separation between the ego and the spirit, and any distinction between the two is illusory. The ego is a personality construct formed in response to the dimensional manifestation of consciousness upon the material plane. Within a hierarchical structure of duties, the ego is to our spirit as an operating system might be to a hard drive; created to order, interpret and present Reality as an operating system orders, interprets and presents binary code. In the third instance, any illusion created by the appearance of separation is an affectation. A choice we make, to interpret only what the ego interprets as the totality of reality. To ignore the evidence of our senses beyond the five and live limited perceptively by the constraints of our bodily organs and the material world.

When social and personal imperatives elevate the importance of material success, personal strength as exemplified by well-developed egocentric personality constructs become the norm, sublimating the inner, spiritual core that undergirds the ego, bolsters it, informs it at its foundation. Success as defined by worldly pursuits minimizes empathy, compassion and the importance of the collective over the individual. The Cult of I proliferates and the spirit is sublimated beneath the chorus of experiences that chatter incessantly, drowning out the quiet voice that originates in our center. Past and future take on real and threatening aspects that obscure the moment. As we regret and worry, the petty events of our days and nights, our interactions with others, all lead us into the cause and effect creation of karmic debt that then limits the cast of possible future situations, while simultaneously hardening the imprint of past situations and their related choices. We are then pushed remorselessly into temporally impenetrable future choices and situations that, once we make them, also seem as inevitable as the originating choices and situations themselves.

The ego revels in its position as Chief Interpreter of Events. The improbable battle between our deeper Self and the ego is waged incessently at the almost subliminal level of consciousness. Sometimes we can hear it and feel it as an argument between the chatter of our egoic mind as it struggles against a feeling, or a quiet knowing deep within that tells us when we’re about to make the wrong decision, go down a more difficult path, choose the harder way through an experience. The voice of our egos seems to argue with something else - voiceless yet as present and real as thought itself – that we never take the time to identify, yet recognize as our Selves, conscious and knowing beyond all intelligence and reason. All too often, the ego wins and we ignore that deep knowing in favor of rationalizations, of intellectual bombast and flawed logical arguments that leads us unerringly in pursuit of our desires and material gain, often to our own detriment. We look back and shake our heads at our ignorance, wondering why we didn’t listen to ourselves in the first place, knowing full-well that, given similiar circumstances, in all likelihood, we would make the same decision again and, as a result, the same mistake. The problem is not our reasoning, our intellect or our decision-making ability, it is our dependence upon a mental faculty that has been overtaxed way beyond its ability to cope with the intricate, multi-dimensional folds of a quantum, holographic Reality.

It really is that simple. All knowledge is internal not external, and we know the answer to all of our questions before we even ask them. Once we realize a few things about ourselves, consciousness and the world around us, we realize that things we’ve always believed to be true about life just aren’t, and that there is more to existence than the pursuit of material satisfaction, happiness or riches. Perfecting clarity, or removing the multiplicity of experientially-biased lenses that we and society have created in order to limit our perception, becomes the only goal worth achieving, at this point. And this means going above and beyond, shifting our efforts from external pursuits to internal. Undergoing a life-review in extensive and personal detail, finding out where our most deeply held beliefs were born, where our most secret disfunctions live, where our most intimate desires are whispering for us to go. Clearing a lifetime of mental and emotional detritus, all of which are spattered viscous and gross, like bugs on the windshield of perception, causing Self to squint and crane in the attempt to see past the mess and interpret incoming stimuli accurately and in the service of our best karmic and dharmic interests.  Life deserves our best effort, and we can only give it if we obtain Knowledge of Self first, and then use that to better the lot of those around us, in service of the Divine that we finally realize is manifest in every single aspect of Creation, from the most humble beggar to the most arrogant Moabite.

The force of life is the lifeforce. That which gives us breath, the animating force of the Creative Principle itself, the Creatrix, preceding conceptualization (omniscience), dichotomization (omnipotence) and manifestation (omnipresence) by any other name (or Divine Moniker). Serpent Power energy, Chi, Ki, Qi, Kundalini, Prana, however it is described, suffuses Creation, the life force and life consciousness that animates every aspect of material incarnation. We are all connected in this web of subtle energy at the level of thought, directed action, auric blooms and beyond, our sometimes inconsequential interactions and true st intentions more far-reaching than we could ever imagine, given the intricate weaving of meaning and destiny that originates in hidden histories far past the wildest postulations of our most febrile imaginative jaunts. But such is the life we’ve all chosen to live, as your presence here indicates our pre-life decision to interact and share experience during this Cycle of Incarnation and who knows how many others. Let go of the limiting beliefs and manifest the power of oceanic divinity through the droplets of consciousness we have chosen to become, this time around. Failure is not possible and fear is only a choice we make when we forget that we are greater than we seem to be, as boundless and powerful as the stars that shine above and the rocks that quake beneath our feet. G-d is Change, and embracing that fact releases us to wonder, and the joy of Becoming all that we were born to Be.

One of these experiences is something that is called, as defined by Stanford University no less, sleep paralysis. The official definition of the term (from the website) is:

“Sleep paralysis consists of a period of inability to perform voluntary movements either at sleep onset (called hypnogogic or predormital form) or upon awakening (called hypnopompic or postdormtal form).
Sleep paralysis may also be referred to as isolated sleep paralysis, familial sleep paralysis, hynogogic or hypnopompic paralysis, predormital or postdormital paralysis.”

The phenomena has been studied by Clinicians and Doctors using human test subjects in sleep labs. Simply stated, people go to sleep, their REM (random eye movement) is monitored – as are their alpha, theta and delta rhythms/waves – which are endemic to the sleep and near-sleep-states. These doctors even say that sleep paralysis is closely related to narcolepsy, which seems to be an inability to regulate sleep on a consistent basis.

But the real truth is, while much of what is stated by these researchers is applicable on the surface – and according to the most obvious and psychologically appropriate aspects of its occurence – these facts are by no means the entirety of the story. There is more to what goes on in our bodies than can be fully explained by dry, clinical theories regarding the transport and transformation of different chemical combinations and energy exchanges.

A more holistic form of truth is, that the psychiatrists and others who relegate the experience of sleep paralysis to the fully material (incarnate spatial) realm, don’t really know what they’re talking about. Because, for the most part, they haven’t experienced it. They haven’t explored it. They haven’t related it to the thousands of years of spiritual and mythological documentation which is, really, quite explicit on the topic.

Sleep paralysis is nothing new, nor is it a purely physical reaction that consists of the misfiring of some nerves or the failure of some mechanism designed to keep you from harming yourself. But it is a mechanism of sorts, one that is recognized across the world in many cultures.

So, in that vein, I’m going to share a few of my experiences, since I consider myself somewhat versed (experientially) in this one particular area, if no others.

My earliest memory of sleep paralysis occured at about the age of eight. My family lived on the island of Crete, Greece at the time, because my father was in the Air Force and there was a base there, Iraklion Air Station, which has since been turned over to the Greek government.

As a precursor to the story, I’ve been an insomniac since my earliest memories. I clearly remember, around Kindergarten age, being up, awake, quite often when nobody else in the house was. As a result, night – the darkness – has always been my friend and many things associated with this state, spiritually and psychologically, have been an integral part of my own sojourn and experience within this body and this life.

That night I was in bed, just lying there before falling asleep, when, all of a sudden, my body began to take on a leaden quality. At a very quick rate, it seemed that my limbs were getting heavier and heavier and it took an increasingly strong mental effort of will to move at all. Accompanying this feeling of paralysis was an intense fear that increased as the idea seeped into my head that I wouldn’t be able to move, and yet, I would be still be awake! So I fought it with everything I had, and continued to fight the paralysis and the fear for the rest of my childhood.

I experienced sleep paralysis often. A few times a week, for most of my life, I’d average. Back then, my remedy was to fight it and then wiggle my body around for a while, until the feeling left me, because when it happens, you can’t just lie right back down, it’ll come back. The feeling itself is significant; it’s like vibrations that come over your body, at first, lightly, then increasing in strength, and as the vibrations increase, your body gets heavier and heavier. Needless to say, for a young child, this is terrifying.

And yet, I never told anybody until I was a teen, at which point I told my mother, who, being the wonderful Christian Saint that she is, promptly told me that if I leave my body I’ll be possessed by demons.

Throughout my youth, this was the pattern. I had no idea what it was, but it was the same every time. Paralysis, fear, me fighting. Paralysis, fear, me fighting. Paralysis, fear, me fighting.

There are many ideas about sleep paralysis; from it being just a plain old sleep disorder, to it being something more. Some people call it “The Hag”, because people who experience it often have a feeling of the presence of a malevolent spirit, a woman’s spirit, sitting upon their chest. They find it difficult to breath. Other times, other ‘evil’ spirits are associated with it. You can hear voices during the time of the paralysis. Loud noises, and audio hallucinations have also been reported.

Sleep paralysis is something else altogether, but it is something real. My awakening, as it were, came when I was in my early 20s, stationed in Kaiserslautern, Germany. I’d found a book called Journeys out of the Body by Robert Monroe, which described the feelings that I’d been having since I was a small child perfectly. When he told me that sleep paralysis was a precursor to Out Of Body Experiences (OOBEs)! I felt, at the moment of reading this, as if my entire life had been illuminated, and my first thought was why, why, why had this been happening to me for most of my life??? From that point on, I began using sleep paralysis as a tool to explore the inner life, to bring on lucid dreamstates and to attempt to ‘get over’ and ‘move past’ my childhood fear of the unknown.

I expect to write more about the experiences that I’ve had over the years, dealing with sleep paralysis, and to talk more about the details of cultivating OOBEs and Lucid Dreams, if there is interested in such. There is so much more to say about this, but I’ll end this write with this thought:

There is more to existence than our waking lives, and we have an innate ability to access other Realities through our own volition, if only we will it to be so. Being relegated to one experience of the world during our waking hours is a choice that we make. To make another choice is to move into uncharted realms of inner experience that will amaze, scare and enlighten us all, if we dare to make it so.

Trust: Changing your codes – Part I

Hosea 8-7: For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind; it hath no stalk: the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up.

In the first installment of this series, I examined the issue of trust and how it can affect friendships, making the point that trust is something that has to be offered to the Multiverse and to Life itself, rather than to individuals. Trust cannot be taken, trust cannot be given. Trust can only be offered forth as a gift, as an acknowledgment of love, of solidarity, of belief in a larger, connected conception of Reality that goes beyond the individualized conception of self-protection and selfishness that seems to be the natural human condition. 

In explanation of that last controversial statement, let me explain further. Many might argue that trust is a natural part of the human condition; that children – when they are very young – are very trusting and that, as they grow older, life presents them with trials and tribulations that lessen their trust in people, in society and in life in general. Bad experiences, untrustworthy individuals and the experience of pain and suffering combine to create the masks that we wear to fit occasions where the exposure of our true faces might result in some type of social or physical pain or rejection. I would argue, to this point, simply that life itself is natural, so distrust, being a condition of the experience of life, is also natural.

The Buddhists believe that the Four Noble Truths - the first three of which state simply that life is desire, desire causes suffering, so life, therefore, is suffering - encapsulate the drama experienced by all people in all times and all places. The fourth of the Noble Truths states the solution to this conundrum succinctly: in order to end suffering, one must cease to desire. Trust is, many times, confused with the desire to be intimate with another. So when that faux-trust is broken, we feel betrayed.

Who hasn’t been in a social situation where someone you’ve trusted acts in an untrustworthy manner? A family member has betrayed you by taking the side of another family member, or does something that is directly counter to your interests, maybe stealing something from you, or lying to you.Children, in their experiences with their parents, siblings and society in general, get their trust betrayed every day.

Just the simple experience of having a parent tell them they can have or do something and then change their mind about it, for whatever reason, is a betrayal of trust that begins the process of qualifying unconditional trust; of creating barriers, separation between that child and his or her family, friends and the world. This process of mask creation forms the social face that becomes necessary as a wall between our true st, inner selves and the world as we age and begin to interact more and more with external society. Many of us as adults still have an Inner Child that is in need of healing, of love and understanding, as an acknowledgement that we exist and that our existence is meaningful. Learning to trust should be a large part of that healing process. 

So how do these issues of trust affect people at a wider scale? Individual questions of trust, family, friends, our personalized degrees of interactions, mirror the relationship of individuals to society, and the relationships between different societies as they interact at the regional and global scale.There is an old adage from the Christian religion that states, as above, so below. In the most abstract sense, this means that the experiences that we have as individuals are akin to the experiences that groups have when interacting with other groups and with the world at large.

For example, my relationship with a sibling may be discordant in some manner or another. I may fight with my brother incessantly, over trivial and serious matters alike. Likewise, Christians may fight against Muslims incessantly, over trivial and serious matters alike. Texans may fight with Californians over the size and importance of their states. The Flemish may fight with the Walloons over language differences and the superiority of French over Dutch culture. The examples are voluminous.

Many years ago, the social sciences (Geography, Anthropology, Sociology, Political Science, etc.) believed in this theory known as Environmental Determinism (ED). The theory itself was very simple. Humans who evolved in hot climates (Africa, the Americas, etc.) were inferior to and less industrious than humans who evolved in cold climates (Europe, E. Asia, etc.), because people in cold weather climates were driven to create technologies based upon their diligent resistance to the cold environment, whereas, those in the hot weather lands had no incentive to do anything but have Siestas, party, pick and eat fruit off of the trees, run around naked and have sex all of the time.

The not-so-underlying resentment that infuses the previous perceptions continues to fuel, even today, racist beliefs about people based upon illogical and historically inaccurate environmental assumptions. The misperception of ease, and of these brown, red and black people being held in the bosom of Gaia, the Earth Mother, was internalized by Europeans used to hard, cold lives and reflected back at the Sun-blessed Peoples in a paroxysm of violence and bloodshed that lasted for centuries and that may still have not yet ended.

Ostensibly based upon Darwins theory of Evolution, philosophies such as ED became known as theories of Social Darwinism, in which the world was a battle for survival, and only the fittest survived. Disciplines such as Geography and Political Science (then known as Geopolitics), used Environmental Determinism in order to philosophically and scientifically justify racism and colonial expansion across the world.

During that same period of time, Robert Malthus proposed that the world only had a limited amount of resources, and that overpopulation would soon drive the worlds poor to the shores of the richest countries in the world, seeking solace from the sheer bleakness of their plights. Today, his followers are called Neo-Malthusians. 

Other scholars, such as  Garrett Hardin, came up with corresponding theoretical exemplars such as the idea of Lifeboat Ethics, whereas the rich countries are afloat upon an ocean of despair with all of their amenities, and the poor and unwashed masses of the world are swimming toward the lifeboat, wanting to get on, giving rise to the questions: Can the Western lifeboats carry all of the world’s populations? Is there room on the lifeboat for everyone? 

I raise these questions and mention these academic philosophies in light of the question of trust. As should be clear by now, the lack of trust among groups of people has resulted in the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Xenophobia and greed are on the rise and there seems to be no end in sight to the increasing distance growing between the richest one percent of the world’s population and the rest of us. Here, in the United States, national and global forces are working to destroy the middle class and open the borders between countries, creating an indivisible gulf between the classes that will make the American Dream more of an impossibility than it ever has been. Even so, for many Americans, the Dream has alwaysbeen just that, a dream, and no more.

More and more, the idea of biological racial categorization is coming to be seen as an anachronism, although the institutional structures that have resulted in the system of white privilege remain and generations of immigrants benefit from them daily, through no fault of their own.  This, on the other hand, is sociological racial categorization, and it is as real in the lives of Americans and people the world over as is the Sun coming up every day.  And yet, it is possible, these days, for a European-descended man or woman to say with a clear conscience, “I’m not racist, I’ve never said the “N” word or discriminated against a black, brown, red or yellow person once in my life.”  Because of our complete immersion within the culturally-delineated, institutional structures of our daily lives, these individuals are, in large part, unaware of the privileged nature of their experience unless they forcibly encounter “The Other” by way of negative encounters with law enforcement or abrupt changes in economic and social status. 

I’m reminded at this juncture of that South Park episode where Jerome “Chef” McGilroy was irate over the racist South Park flag that showed a black stick figure being lynched by white stick figures. Throughout the episode, he’s arguing civil rights with the Klan, who are clearly racist, and the townspeople, who are more interested in the town’s heritage, while the kids debate both sides of the flag question without ever realizing that race has anything to do with it at all. 

Other scholars say that the need to accumulate material goods, to hoard energy and wealth, is a result of evolutionary and environmental stressors that have shaped the experience of different groups of people. They state that ethnic groupings that have lived for thousands of years in tropical environments are different from ethnic groupings that have lived for thousands of years in maritime or cold environments. Each group has been shaped by their environment to deal with the world in different ways.

Many use the example of the Aryan invasion of India, where the matriarchal and melanated Dravidians were conquered by the patriarchal and pale-skinned Aryans, or, the more recent examples of the Maafa/Triangular Trade, otherwise know as the Slave Trade - a period which lasted approximately 400 years - upon which foundation the wealth of Europe and the Americas was built, as clear examples of the Iceman Inheritance of Europe and European-descended peoples. The need to hoard food, energy and riches against a hard future ahead is the epitome of distrust; not only a distrust of other people, but a distrust of the world itself. An institutionalized and somewhat sublimated cultural distrust whose expression has been proven valid over centuries and millennia of harsh living conditions and warfare between Clans, then Tribes, then Ethnicities, then Nations and then, finally and perhaps even originally, between Races.

As above, so below. As we are pushed toward greater self-understanding, so must we also understand who we are as groups and as nations, and by doing so, understand where we have been, where we currently are and where we are going in our relationships with other groups and with the natural world. While Gaia may shrug, casting diseased humanity into oblivion, she will continue to exist, incorporating our ills within her very structure. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Trust between nations and peoples can only exist as a gift that we collectively choose to give to the Multiverse. There is no other rational course of action.

Strife and discord have been the rule in the relationships between groups and nations, and trust, the exception. Considering the extraordinary selflessness required in the cultivation of trust – to gift trust – it is easy to understand why things are the way that they are right now in the world. Also considering such, it is possible to take on a very negative outlook regarding future prognostications about the fate of the world.

What incentive do aboriginal Americans have to trust whites after being the subject of merciless genocide and land theft? Why should Koreanstrust the Japanese after what happened between them during Japan’s colonial era?  Why should Zionist Jews trust Muslims after every nation inSouthwest Asia rose against them the day they declared themselves a country?  And why should the enslaved ancestors of Africans in theAmericas ever trust an institutionalized system of governance and law that was formed in direct opposition to the very concept of their humanity? 

The desire to trust is beyond the Four Noble Truths and approximates the answer to the human condition, in that true , freely gifted Trust elevates human consciousness to a plane of selflessness that is exemplified by the willingness of an individual to sacrifice of one’s Self. By the ability to give of one’s Self without expecting anything in return. To gift trust, not expecting that trust to be honored.  And, by the even more daunting prospect of self-sacrifice, of freely gifted trust, in the face of death itself.

As I state in the very first paragraph of this essay, trust can only be offered forth as a gift, as an acknowledgment of love, of solidarity, of belief in a larger, connected conception of Reality that goes beyond the individualized conception of self-protection and selfishness that seems to be the natural human condition. Individual experiences and beliefs mirror group experiences and beliefs, and our very own personal stories can cast a bright light upon the stories of people through time and across space. The gift of trust is our only salvation. Beyond spirit, soul and religion, selfless trust can be considered a principled promise to our species; faith, if you will, in our proven ability to persevere and survive past all logical conceptions of our continuance.

If we do not, as a species, decide to let go of the past and move forward in trust and solidarity, the karma of the Ages shall continue to cycle remorselessly and we shall, indeed, reap the whirlwind. The sins of the Fathers gather unto infinite generations only find relief when the cycle is broken, when some person, or group, decides to rise above, to go beyond, to go within and trust. If this elemental choice is not made, the continuous cycle of inevitability is virtually guaranteed, and the resulting conflagration of Spirit and Soul might leave the present world bereft of human life, our collective legacy broken and cast, desolate, to the Four Winds.

Not all years are brought in with the hoopla surrounding them like this particular year is experiencing. So many people have been looking forward to it with anticipation or fear that nobody knows exactly what to think. Most people are comfortable believing that it is going to be a year like any other with no special significance. Other people are desperately hoping and believing that this year will mark a shift in the world and its people, for better or for worse.

Religious folks look to prophecy and ancient tomes and herald this year as the end of a long period of testing. Spiritual folks look also to prophecy, ancient tomes and ethereal voices and see the same. Materially-oriented folks look to the state of the world, the economy, wars and rumors of war and see pessimistic possibilities also. It seems that no matter what perspective that one might cultivate, the outlook for 2012 is one of transformation. Transformation of the world that we live in and and possibly of ourselves.

What do you see occurring in 2012? Do you see the year as being one of transformation? Do you think that the transformation will be positive or negative? That the world will become a better place because of it or a worse place?

Depending upon your viewpoint and perspective, the world may indeed change for better or for worse, believe it or not. The power of intention is under-rated, for the most part. In our personal lives, if we are not consciously following a path of personal transformation, our intentions are ephemeral and shift with the moment. Our motivations are decided by our emotional states, by circumstances or by whimsy. We don’t necessarily pay close attention to where we might be coming from or what we might intend in general. Depending upon our level of self-knowledge, this could result in the expression of a life without direction or  motivation.

Individually, we affect all those with whom we interact and sometimes even more people than that. We affect the way they think, which can affect their intentions which eventually results in a change in their behavior through a shift in their actions. If we can each, individually, affect one another in this way, consider the greater implications of societies and cultures and the possibility that each can be viewed organically as well.

What are the intentions of the United States toward the rest of the world? How do those intentions affect others? How do the intentions of the US manifest as thoughts? And how do those thoughts eventually result in actions that express the intentions of the US? Canada? Great Britain?

As we are indoctrinated in the cultures of our countries, so our intentions, thoughts and actions are a reflection of that subliminal indoctrination and we come to express, individually, a national character that is distinct and recognizable in other countries as we represent ourselves and our countries in our travels. The extent to which we consciously become aware of this process of indoctrination and how deeply we internalize it ourselves determines the extent to which we then become responsible for the intentions, thoughts and actions of the nations within which we have each achieved self-awareness, to greater or lesser degrees.

Disassociating one’s self from the indoctrination process allows one to then become aware of who they are, individually, perhaps, for the first time ever. Going deeper than the nationalism, the patriotism, understanding the extent to which the society, the educational system, the media, friends and family conspire to keep each other in a state of somnolence is necessary for each of us.  The ending of the restless and fitful slumber of the masses, interrupted by fits and starts like 911, like the 2008 financial crash, like the arrival of a year like 2012 that threaten to fully rouse populaces tired of sleeping and ready to wake and look around, finally aware of what is truly going on in the world around them, allows us each to understand that it is our responsibility to infuse the national character with conscious intentions commiserate with those of their individual components.

It takes a year such as 2012 and the attention of a vast number of people to bring sub-surface intentions and thought-processes, both individual and collective, to the surface. It takes a year like 2012 and the strident arguments, the passionate contentiousness, the awakening realization of billions of people that we are all in this together to consciously make a shift in this world that will result in its betterment. It takes a year like 2012 and the recognition that the pyramidal control structure that has been in charge off the planet for far too long is not our only alternative when it comes to governance. It takes a year like 2012 and the understanding that Banks have not been the repositories of security for the populace that they’ve advertised themselves as being for so long. It takes a year such as 2012 for people to understand that divide and conquer results in the empowerment of a minority to the detriment of the majority.

Whatever happens this year, it will be what we all choose. What we all decide, together. If there is to be war, then it will be with the consent of the majority of the world because wars cannot be fought without warriors to fight them or their parents, wives and children to support them, passively or actively. If there is to be financial ruin, it will only because we decide that it will be so, because we continue to give power to fiat currency and to a system of banking that rewards the 1% and punishes the 99%. If there is to be racial and ethnic conflict, it will be because we decide that we are different from those who do not look like us and that that difference is enough to determine who belongs at the apex of the power structure. If we decide to go down the pathway of the catastrophic earth it will be because we all choose to do so, together.

Of course, there is another choice. There always is. If we individually decide that we want 2012 to be the best year of our lives, then we can make it so, no matter what happens in the world around us. And if many people make that decision and affect each other’s intentions, thought processes and actions, then, together, we can all make 2012 a year to mark the progression of years through the timeline of evolution and consciousness, to make this year a banner year despite the intentions of the minority in power and despite whatever may happen around us in the world. Come comets, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, cold spells, hot spells, droughts, famine, pestilence, disease, the world as it is perceived is as we decide it to be, subject to the infinite power of intention.

Make 2012 a banner year, for yourself. From you, this intention will spread to others and from them, to others still. Instead of being a year to end all years, 2012 can be a year to begin all years. Year 0 in a brand new future beyond the prognostications and prophecies of the ancient and new traditions. 2012 will be what we make it, individually and collectively.

Happy New Year, to One and All.

Dear Lord, protect me from your followers!

Life is long but time is short. We take ourselves way too seriously far too often. Sometimes, the injection of a little humor into a situation can result in a lessening of tension not only for others but for ourselves as well.

The quieting reflex is an exercise that consists simply of alleviating your stress by relaxing, breathing deeply, smiling and saying a little mantra that can shift your mood from one of anger and annoyance to one of calmness and peace in as little as 6 seconds. That can be the time it takes you to stop yourself from saying something you might regret or stopping a stressful situation from becoming worse than it has to be.

The phrase, “Let go and let God” is not necessarily connected to one religion or one spiritual practice, it can be applied to any concept of a greater good outside of or inside of one’s Self, something larger that one can invoke in order to allow one’s self to release the energy of tension that is built up during the processes of fear expression and its symptoms, anger, depression, regret and worry. These processes often become ingrained into our daily behavior to such an extent that we are not even aware that we seem stressed or tense, while, to others, it is as plain as the grim expression on our faces or the lack of emoticons in the words we write.

Let go of the stress in the moment, caused by that situation, people or person that upset you. Breath deep and smile. Consciously attempt to manifest the exact opposite emotional state to that which you are currently experiencing. In life’s situations or as you are reading this, allow your face to relax, your body. Smile. Don’t be critical. Laugh, if you can.

Make the choice NOT to be ruled by your emotions. Recognize that it is possible, that it truly is a choice.

In life, as you go about your days and nights, choose to internalize the habit of quieting yourself in moments of stress before responding. Choose not to take offense. Choose to apologize or end the fight. Choose to find some kind of compromise or choose to walk away altogether. Wait till later or don’t respond at all, the world won’t end if we take the higher road.

All of this said in recognition of the reality that measured and controlled aggression can indeed sometimes be the correct response to a situation. Just not all the time.

Time is long but life is too short to fight ALL THE TIME. You’ll find your lifespan much shorter than it should be and the quality of it much lower than it should be unless you make the conscious decision NOT to take yourself so seriously.

Money will make you happy. That is a “little t” truth. Money will give you the capacity to pay your bills, to buy gifts for people during birthdays and special celebrations, to get things that you desire and think you need in your life.

More money, more problems. That is a “big T” Truth. Money will not only allow you to take care of the material things in your life that you need, it will also allow you to engage in behavior that you may desire, which is not the same as need. Indulging our desires is the quickest way to find out who we truly are and, sometimes, that is not necessarily a good thing.

Now here are two examples of “little s” self versus “big S” Self.

I’m an individual. I like certain things and dislike other things. This is an example of the “little s” self. There are things that happen in life that make us happy and sad. Naturally, we like the things that make us happy and we dislike the things that make us sad. Our bodies react to our thoughts by sending a cascade of chemicals out from the hypothalamus (neuro-peptides) that suffuse our cells, changing their state, which we call having an emotional reaction. Being happy, being sad, etc. Chemical reactions which are imminently controllable, if we so choose. Our emotions are powerful and they are often an important factor in the decisions we make in our lives.

We are One. We are all a part of God.  This is an example of the “big S” Self. Also called the Higher Self or one of the 72 Names of God, we are, individually, like cells in a human body or like droplets in the ocean, a part of something larger and beyond our individuated consciousnesses. Being such, we are not our egos or personalities, we are the silent stillness of Awareness that lies beneath the thoughts that often course remorselessly through our minds. This Awareness is our connection to our Higher Self and to that higher Divinity which lies beyond. This is who we really are. The core of our BEing, that which is aligned with the Eternal and Infinite.

Coming to understand these differences between self and Self, between truth and Truth is coming to terms with the reality of the holographic matrix within which we live and carry out the conditions of our lifetimes. Our “little t and s” truths and selves are the ego-bound, personality-driven, limited almost mechanical constructs through which we view the world and our interactions. They are the product of our upbringings, our family values, our societal mores and our conceptions of dualistic existence. It consists of our likes and dislikes, our rights and wrongs, our goods and bads, our positives and negatives.

Our “big T and S” Truths and Selves are our connection to each other, to the world and to the cosmos and the Infinite and Eternal beyond even that. They are our resonant response to the thrill and joy of existence, to the contradictory and yet supportive conditions of a limited material existence and an unlimited immaterial existence. The contradictory understanding that we will die, and yet we will live again. That we have only a short while upon this earth, yet there is no end to what lies beyond.

A general response to these Truths that lie beyond the ken of too many is an immersion within the daily grind. A concentration upon minutia. An over exaggeration of our physical bodies to the detriment of our spiritual bodies. An elevation of the emotional and personal entrapment to the exclusion of a greater form of emotional and personal detachment. We often desperately hold on to the “I”, to the “me”, so that we don’t have to admit the existence of a greater “We”. The contradictions of our existences demand this willful blindness to the Truth in favor of our truths.

To enjoy material life in the Western cultures is to celebrate the “I” and the “me” over the “We”. To live within a capitalist culture is to celebrate the “I” and the “me” over the “We”. To continue to internalize the inherently separative qualities of our culture, we must create a virtual battlezone within ourselves between self and Other, the Other in this instance being everyone outside of self, to include family members and friends. This results in the fundamental schism of a lifetime, when considering the fact that, in order to alienate others, we must first create division and separation within ourselves. This division and separation comes at the cost of the greater “We” and often occurs at a very young age.

The journey of a lifetime then becomes a reclaiming of the innocence of childhood; an innocence that recognizes the Truth of Oneness and a resonant, compassionate understanding in the collectivity of BEingness. We are alike, we share more in common than may be immediately obvious, your good fortune is mine, your happiness is my joy. Being happy for your sister because she is happy, celebrating your friend’s good fortune because it is also yours, honoring the stranger because you have also been a stranger before and know how it feels.

Awakening to the necessity of piercing the “little t’s and s’s” is one of the first steps along the journey of reconnecting with your spiritual and greater Self. Controlling your emotional states and the inner dialogue, finding out who you truly are within and living life in the Present and not the Past and the Future are all attainable goals, if and when you decide to embark upon that path. Going within to meet your Inner Child, seeking to heal her or him and send that part of yourself on a journey of re-connection with your Higher Self will lead to sustained and constant spiritual growth and a more joyous and connected experiential journey through the days of your life. This is the goal of an incarnation, at heart. Not money, not security, not happiness. These things are ephemeral and do not last. Only what is within and reflected without, lasts, and only what is within and reflected without, is Truth. Only what is beneath the inner-voice, beyond the thoughts, is Self.

Learn to recognize the Rules of Capitalization. Then live your life seeking to internalize them with eyes and hearts wide open to experience.

This body I inhabit was born in the United States of America, In the late 1960s, to parents born but also raised in the big sky and red dirt country of the lower Panhandle region of West Texas. Our people are the descendents of enslaved Africans, galvanized by intimate, cultural interactions with both Europeans and Indigenous Americans, creating a singular and genetically consistent sub-racial/ethnic population identified as African-American. My own specific indoctrination into American culture is as a member of the generational cohort designated Gen-X, the child of an Air Force Veteran, being raised across the country and the world surrounded by the trappings of militarism and nationalism in a concentrated and volatile format. Being thusly sired, it was no stretch for me to enter the Army myself in the late 1980s culiminating in the First Gulf War-Desert Storm in 1991, whereupon the completion of my tour of duty found me more than ready to resume the formal aspect of my educational career, which I came to the end of 15 years later. It was only then that I formally embarked in a more concentrated manner upon the individualized spiritual journey that, earlier on, had characterized my life as a parallel thread of interest, but that has, over time, come to define the middle years of my life as the primary focus of my personal endeavors.

For most of my life, questions of religion and spirituality were answered within the confines of the Baptist and non-denominational Protestant Christian churches, where the perceived and affected africanisms, remnants of the continental genetic inheritance of an enslaved peoples familarized me with the intimate spiritual nature of African-descended folk, including such storied psychic capabilities as speaking in tongues(glossolalia), getting the spirit(possession), and the inherent and undeniable power of souls in synch expressing God-consciousness through the invocation of The Word put to music and the pounding, throbbing rhythms of the beat, either by drum, feet or both. The power of raw emotionality, the ability to leave the body and experience reality as Other than ordinary – as expressed equally in the synthetic religions of Santeria and Vodun – a cultural as well as a racial inheritance of the Middle Passage, known to Africanists the world across as the Maafa.

 The contradictory nature of spirituality and nationalism confront all spiritual seekers at some point of their personal evolution. And yet, our specific circumstances, our dharmic inheritance as it were, serves a purpose in the unfolding of our spiritual destinies as nationless Citizens of the World. Coming to grips with one’s Past and integrating it with one’s Present is a key component in the journey towards Transcendence of the material plane of existence, which can mean many things to many people. For me, personally, Bush’s War on Terror and Obama’s War on Liberty aftermath has left me struggling, caught within the grips of an extreme case of cognitive dissonance as my training and upbringing as a member of the American Warrior Class(AWC) surges within my mind. Memories of soldiering, the endless repetitions of the National Anthem, Pledge of Allegience and Star Spangled Banner during my early years combine with the direct military indoctrination of my young adulthood and the subsequent, rough cameraderie of soldiers, as well as the life and loves that have formed an indeliable impression upon me in the Past have made me the man that I am in the Present. I would not be who I am now, if it were not for who I was then.

When I was stationed in Germany during the late 80s and early 90s we used to call the United States the World. When someone’s tour of duty ended, they were headed back to the World. For us, everything that we could ever want was back home in the States, the World. I rather expect that soldiers, wherever they are stationed, continue to do so. In fact, I have seen movies of Vietnam where this convention is honored, and it signifies the way that soldiers think of the United States, of home, even though, technically speaking, their deployment across the planet might more accurately be considered an experience of the World. Sentimentality knows no bounds of logic or experience, it seems.

The expression of this dichotomous viewpoint, the struggle between the World and one’s current circumstances and understandings is the stuff of spiritual elevation. In each moment, it is possible for us to let goof the Past, to die to who we were in order to become who we are meant to be. As an example, it is as if there were a grand template of Rahkyt out there somewhere, a vision of perfection and peace whereby I realize my inherent probabilities, manifest at the highest level of Being, the possibilities of my spirit and my soul. A similar vision exists for all of us, regardless of our stations in life, or our individual experiences, because we are all One, connected at every level of interaction, our actions and reactions being determined by the chaotic effects of stimuli too many and diverse to specify ranging from an vast number of options spanning both space and time, creating matrices of chance and probability that result in our individualized Destinies, sending us upon life-journeys of perfection and peace, despite the emotional highs and lows of illusory materialism that distract us from what is really going on, beneath the surface drama of life and its attendent trials and tribulations.

And yet, this illusory materialism is the very stuff of life, isn’t it. It is the daily grind, the emotional relationships we share the history, and the cultural and social milieu that we inhabit forms the majority proportion of our perception, given our tendency as socially conditioned Westerners to elevate the external, material conditions of our shared realities over the internal, spiritual conditions of that selfsame reality. Which brings me back to Nationalism.

It almost goes without saying that the connection of body and mind, and some aspects of the spirit, to the collective of humanity is of necessity a mandatory expression of Oneness and that Nationalism, even considering all of its ills, is reflective of this subconscious desire of disparate groups of humanity to express this reality, given their shared ethnic and cultural affiliations. Group-mind, mob behavior, both have an aspect of shared consciousness at the level of the human sub-conscious, binding individuals together in ways that are scientifically documented and verifiable through varied methods utilized by the mass media, corporations and governments in order to direct and control populations.

So on the individual level, for those of us seeking elevation and death to the Self, it become incumbent upon us to examine all of our previously unexamined habits and beliefs in order to determine what istrue and real in our lives, what is Ego and what is Soul, and sublimate our tendencies toward the ease of groupthink accordingly. For me, personally, the heartache and pain of American soldiers fighting and dying on foreign soil is a visceral experience to me because I feel them on an individual level, know what they are going through to an extent and recognize what it took and takes for them to live the lives that they have chosen.

On the other hand, because of my empathic abilities and somewhat specialized, geographic knowedge I can feel and intuit the pain of those in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya, as they are subjugated to a foreign power, Palestinians and Israelis fighting for their lives and land, Iranians, Egyptians, Syrians and Kurdistanis seeking to make sense out of the shifting, political sands. All of these groups change, evolve, merging and interacting on a super-personal level as collective, psychic entities embroiled upon multiple levels of interaction, sending tendrils of potentiality out into the aether which respond to the collective intent and desire of nations and people across the globe, all connected within the miasma of Gaia’s aetheric emanations, collectively, as macro-level expressions of the diversity of lifeforms within our own bodies, working and living together as individuals and organizations for the evolution of the whole.

This body I inhabit is formed of Stardust born of Earth, third planetary body from Sol, one solar system among many clustered within the Milky Way galaxy, reflecting the Infinite Array, expressive of the expansive nature of both matter and consciousness and the continuing evolution of the multiverse, transcending time and space within the remorseless imperative of the evolutionary process occuring within the soul of each moment, born anew with each thought and subsequent action at every level of Creation Become. My experiences and genetic programming, explicit towards the manifestation of my own personal destiny as a microcosm of our shared, collective destiny, the fulfillment of an imperative born far beyond my, or our, capacity to conceive of in its awesome and terrifying immensity.

It is a difficult proposition no matter our chosen response. For me, missing my children is a constant. The pain of their daily absence in my life has not lessened since it occurred. Time and distance has a way of placing this odd sheen of blurred recollection between us and our memories, but our hearts can’t see in the same way and pain has a way of refreshing itself. We re-create trauma in our lives by dwelling on it, we define ourselves by our pain, we claim it and cherish it, making it an integral part of our self expression. Whether or not that is the correct way to deal with it, it is often a very human way to do so that transcends culture or ethnicity to become a part of the human condition that afflicts us all and that anyone can resonate to, anywhere in the world.

Remembering past injustices by friends or family members, Christmases spent in conflict or in love, holiday seasons of deprivation or of excess, the rise and fall, the ebb and flow of emotionalism as those feelings we felt then come back to haunt us now, contextualizing the moment, taking us out of the Now and back into the Past, effectively re-creating the emotional conditions of yesteryear in the crucible of the present.

It is always a choice.

A choice that can be made in each instance. A choice that we often do not recognize unless it is pointed out to us in some fashion. That each thought is a choice. That each action is a choice. That the future is totally up to us and is a result of all of the choices that we will ever make.

Exiting our memories and entering the present moment can lead to an encounter with fear as the option of releasing our past confronts us. Does letting go mean that I love any less? Does moving on mean that I am heartless? Does releasing memories mean that they are no longer important? Does embracing the Now mean that the past is meaningless?

Releasing the emotional detritus of the past effectively allows us to embrace the present moment fully, perhaps for the first time. Consciously living in the Now, not allowing the regrets of the past to intervene and ruin it creates new flows of memory, new associations, new neural networks created by neurons flowing along new pathways, creating new connections as synapses fire in different ways, allowing us to think in totally new patterns. It is possible for people to change their ways if they allow themselves to, if they, we, actively engage ourselves in the challenge of living each moment anew, without applying the values and conclusions of the past to current events and people, by allowing the Now to become new, to effectively choose a sort of Innocence as an expression o f a new commitment to life and to possibility.

Allowing the magic to re-enter into one’s life, much as Scrooge did in that old classic Christmas tale. When confronted with the inevitability of mortality we become apprised of the reality that we are not promised tomorrow and what we do with today is the most important decision that we can make. If we choose to make today all about yesterday then we engage in the very definition of insanity, by doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. If we choose to always be the same, then we are choosing the same results. We cannot expect our lives, our inner selves, our emotional bodies, to change, if we do not manage that change consciously ourselves, committing to the idea of living our lives and experiencing each day to the fullest.

Our love is eternal. Just because we have lost our loved ones in the Now, it does not mean that they have left us forever. Just because we are not with the ones we love right now, it does not mean we will never be with them again. Just because we are estranged now, it does not mean we will be estranged forever and just because we are hurting today, it does not mean we have to hurt tomorrow. It is our choice. The future is an open book. We write it with each decision that we undertake. Our intention is paramount. If we live with love, then love is our expression and can be felt by those whom we share it with, whether they are present with us or distant. We are entangled, we are One, as all of Creation is an expression of a Divine Thought made manifest and animated with individual consciousness, Awareness becoming Aware of, and Loving, its Self.

Enjoy the Season, enjoy the Now. Choosing to live, is choosing to Love. Choosing to Love is the fullest expression of Life Itself.

Happy Holidays to One and All, however you may express it.

So we’ve waited for weeks for it to be fixed, but finally, today they came to fix it. As I answered the door, still mentally in PA and with my son in my arms, thinking about my response and future actions, the workmen stood there. I said hello and the lead workman, Luc, looked at the door, bent to check out the frame and immediately collapsed.

I asked if he was ok, his companion, speaking in French, did the same, a small smile on his face as if, perhaps, his friend was joking around. But it was no joke. Immediately Luc began harsh, grunting and laborious breathing, his body began shaking violently, he was in the midst of what looked to be an epileptic seizure. He was face down, his head wedged into the space between the door and the frame. I immediately grabbed his shoulders and motioned to his friend – who spoke no English – to grab his legs and we turned him over.

I ran quickly upstairs to wake up my partner and hand her the boy, but she had heard the door and was already stirring. Hearing my voice below become strident, she knew something was wrong. She took the boy from me and I told her to call an ambulance and ran back downstairs. The other guy was standing there, tentatively, watching his friend, his voice high as I assume, he kept asking Luc in French if he was ok. But Luc’s eyes were rolled up in his head and he was breathing like a freight train, spittle blowing all over his face and jacket, his body trembling uncontrollably. I called upstairs for a blanket and my partner brought it. Luc’s friend ran downstairs then, calling something to me that I did not understand.

I sat with Luc, one hand over his heart, the other behind his head, holding him up, staring into his eyes, telling him, “relax, you’re going to be ok, you’re going to be ok”, and consciously sent him energy from my core through my hands into his body. I kept on in this manner as Luc’s friend returned, this time with two younger guys in tow whom I recognized as being co-workers, as they were all working on another shop in the back of the building. One of them told me that he was Luc’s nephew and he knelt beside us and spoke to his uncle in French, holding his hand and reassuring him. I asked him if his uncle was epileptic and he said no, this is the first time this has ever happened.

My partner brought down blankets and knelt with me, holding his head, also sending him energy, engaging in the work of her soul. We both continued to do so, eyes closed, her silent, me speaking softly, to his soul, as he trembled and moaned on the ground between us all.

As his tremors began to subside and his eyes flickered, the first responders arrived on the scene. At that time, his tremors had almost stopped. I’d only met him once previously, when he had first come to see the door. He’d measured it, told me they’d have to order a new door and that his name was Luc. He seemed to me a good guy. Now, as he was returning to himself, he seemed a bit sheepish as his awareness returned and he saw his nephew, two co-workers, me and my partner and three first responders encircled around him with concerned expressions on our faces.

He tried to stand up but couldn’t and he was helped to a couch, where he sat and answered a few questions. I moved back then, wearing only a pair of sweats and my winter coat which my partner had brought out to me at some point as I knelt there with only the sweats on in 0 degree Celsius weather, helping a near-stranger to the best of my ability. I looked out over the village as they spoke to him and others took charge, thinking about this moment. Why this had happened at this particular moment and what it meant in the larger scheme of things. I felt my heart wide open, bare in the face of mortality, and tears threatened as the fragility of life and the immediacy of the Now was impressed upon me yet again.

We are not promised tomorrow. We are not promised the next minute. Even in the midst of constant change, as life flows and we flow along with it, there are moments when you have to be forced into a recognition that we are the sum not only of our environment but out choices and those deeper streams of genetic and biological truth that we are not necessarily cognizant of. The confluence of time and space conspires to create moments of awareness, flickers of a candle’s flame against the dark resonance of the unknown, each moment a step into that darkness, taken with the faith of innocence that it will land upon something solid and that we are assured of a safe passage into the future. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The choices we make pre-life are mysteries to us now. Luc did not know when he knocked on my door that a life-changing event was about to occur. I did not know when I answered the door that a perception-changing event was about to occur.

Each of us influences each other as we interact, even if we are only within the context of an internet community. Those of us who look upon our interactions here without thinking about the deeper moral and spiritual aspects of those interactions are missing the lion’s share of the meaning that is inherent within each successive moment. Those of us who act without thinking about that importance, those of us who speak from pride, from a deeper, ingrained hubris,must look further for meaning than the rules of an old society, the understandings of an outdated paradigm.

We are each responsible for every single thought, every single word we utter, every single intention that we manifest, whether spoken or written, and will stand to account for it at a time not of our conscious choosing but at the choosing of our Over-soul. Coming to grips with that reality in the face of a cold gust of mortality can be a bracing thing if you’re not expecting it.

Our reminders are synchronicitous whether we realize it or not, each event holding meaning, following from some prior causation originating materially from immateriality. We are given precious glimpses into this Truth at key moments. These are moments that are designed to remind us of who we are and why we are here.

These are moments when life has a way of reminding us of what is important.

Transcendental: a. Concerned with the a priori or intuitive basis of knowledge as independent of experience.

b. Asserting a fundamental irrationality or supernatural element in experience.

38. Do thou fighting for the sake of fighting, without considering happiness or distress, loss or gain, victory or defeat-and by so doing you shall never incur sin. Chapter 2, Bhagavad-Gita (as it is) translated and explicated upon by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.

The latter, from the Bhagavad-Gita, which is the text of choice for those adherents of Hinduism and also those who observe the tenets of Krishna-consciousness, who have also been called, sometimes derogatorily, Hare Krishnas, and who also engage in what has become a sect-less practice known as Transcendental Meditation.

While reading the above passage I experienced an epiphany on the scale of my first viewing of The Secret, another confirmation that this time period in my life is to be one of a deepening of previous understandings and an opportunity to take the higher road, fully and finally, rather than continuing to consciously remain plateaued because of ingrained fear of leaving my Self behind.

For those who don’t know, the Bhagavad-Gita is the story of Krishna and Arjuna, on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. Krisha, the Supreme Personality of Godhead has incarnated into Arjuna’s extended family and has chosen to be Arjuna’s charioteer in the final battle between warring factions of that selfsame family.  Arjuna, facing a battle as a result of which he is expected to kill his friends, family members and mentors, despairs and falls prey to fear and attachment, both qualities that Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead spends the entire text exhorting against.

It is an amazing story and a sublime treaties upon the ideas of karma and dharma, one’s cause/effect relationship with the cosmos and one’s duty to one’s family group, culture and world. The quote that leads directly into this exploration, which is actually a reminiscence that I’ve touched upon before and which is a key realization in the journey toward self-actualization. And so I present an extended version of that story, including further contextual analysis.

Learning new things has always come easy to me. A Blessing from God that has allowed me to pick up and hone talents that have helped me to shape my life and express my interests, beliefs and thoughts in a form that people seem to resonate to. At the age of twelve, I learned to play the Happy Days theme on my saxaphone so well that none of my peers would believe that I’d learned it just by listening to it on television.  In 8th grade, a young Jewish boy named Joel and I used to improvise together, he on clarinet and I on sax. We particularly enjoying jamming to that old standard, The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company C, upon completion of which Joel would be left giggling uncontrollably and I, laughing along with him, also enjoying the fact that I’d finally found somebody else who could play like I could.

Enforced practice in church, jazz, marching and pep bands allowed me to retain my skills with the saxophone, as years of drawing comic book heroes, learning perspective and the art of design allowed me to also bring these skills into adulthood. Younger years spent playing T-ball, flag football and baseball cultivated an athletic sense within me as well, although a hiatus between 5th and 9th grade reflected a time period of intense personal and spiritual growth that coincided with the onset of puberty and the resultant emotional, psychic and physical growth.

A year of JV football sophomore year and JV basketball junior year reawakened my love of athletics. A spring and summer spent practicing in the Fairchild AFB gym placed me firmly in the Varsity Basketball camp as a starter during senior year then, leading to a 2nd place finish in our League and MVP status for me. That spring, I ran track for the first time, just because my Art teacher, Mr. Cicero, was also the Track coach and he urged me to.

I competed in the high jump, triple jump, long jump and 110 high hurdles.Went to State in the high and triple jumps, finishing 3rd in the high jump at 6’5, a record which, although not the highest or best leap ever, stood for 20 years. The entire season, Mr. Cicero lamented our lost time, ‘if only’ I’d've gone out for track during my sophomore and junior years as well.

Which brings me, naturally, back to the Bhagavad-Gita. When the above quote is written, it is Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead speaking, remonstrating Arjuna for refusing to fight. It was his destiny, Krishna exhorted, and for him to refuse to fight because his relatives were on the other side would be worse than him dying on the field of battle. They were dead already, Krishna argued, unarguably so, since nobody ever really dies, the Soul being eternal in nature. Furthermore, to live as a coward and lose all respect was much worse than dying as a hero, thereby fulfilling his dharmic and caste responsibilities. As a Ksatriya, a warrior-protector, killing in the name of Krishna was his chosen dharmic path to a Heavenly reward.

The Hindu caste system, with all of its negatives, is, at its heart, based upon spiritual rather than racial standards. Originally, the term Aryan meant one who was spiritually righteous, filled with light, divine, strong and courageous. Over centuries and millenia, these underlying principles have become subsumed by the collected racial animus of dark versus light, a reversal that is discussed in an extremely comprehensive fashion in Marimba Ani’s seminal text, Yurugu: An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior. 

We are all born within a certain context. Our lives lead us, inevitably toward the fulfillment or the renunciation of those contextual events that make up the days, weeks, months and years of our lives. Our ability to fulfill those duties is reflected by the choices that we make, whether they be for the better or for the worse and regardless of our choice, our decisions are made within the greater context of our individual, family, cultural, ethnic, racial and greater-human dharmic narratives, and it is our decision whether or not we are going to fulfill our dharmic duties or whether we are going to renounce all responsibility and take the path of the Lone Ascetic and Wanderer, the innermost, contemplative path. Self-actualization refers to our ability to either fulfill or not fulfill these dharmic duties to the best of our abilities, and to manifest the skills and talents that we’ve been blessed with for the greatest glory of Divinity.

So during that same summer I spent at the Fairchild AFB gym preparing for my senior year, I was also break-dancing in the parks and the teen club Players and Spectators Jr., in Spokane, Washington, practicing and battling with my boys, Roger Davis and Spencer Alexander. As a team, we had some routines that we’d take to the parks – Spencer only sometimes, because he was a bit younger than Roger and I – and battle the kids from the city. We danced for money and girls, and, being teens with few responsibilities other than our own well-being, there was no shortage of either.

An opportunity arose in the form of a break-dancing contest for Jay Jacobs Clothing Store, which we entered as a team, from which I was picked, along with 15 others, to be in a commercial, which ran at the end of the summer through the spring of 1985. Another ‘skillset’ with which I was able to manifest artistic expression, albeit in a commercial and self-absorbed fashion.

Nevertheless, each talent, cultivated for the pure joy of engagement and competition; of offense and defense - putting the ball through the hole, hitting it with the bat, dodging the defense - of timing - perfecting form in jumping and leaping - of the thickness of lines and curves - intensities of shade – of pianissimo and forte chord progressions and harmonics, of windmilling and locking, flipping and spinning, of achievement for the sake of achievement itself, and not any material or social awards. Learning, for learning’s sake.  

According to His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the above quote regarding Arjuna’s refusal to fight is one of the final exhortations in that chapter that concludes Krishna’s opening discourse on the nature of the Atomic-Soul and the Super-Soul. The chapters which follow continue to expound upon the natures of dharma and karma, the meaning of life, the magic worlds and universes of spirit and soul as well as the nature of Heaven, Atman and Nirvana.

I find many correspondences in the teachings of the Bhagavad-Gita and Christianity, from its ideas of karma (sowing and reaping the whirlwind/children responsible for the sins of the fathers, etc.) and dharma (giving unto Caesar what is his/utilizing talents for the glory of God), to the physical manifestation of Krishna in human form, as Jesus was also considered to be God in human form, was born and died, vacated the flesh and returned again to prove his eternal and abiding nature.

While there are very obvious differences on the face of it, culturally speaking, the eternal nature of the deepest teachings coincide at their very essence, which is self-actualization. As Jesus the Christ exhorted his disciples, and taught them through their failings to ‘become like him’, so Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead exhorted Arjuna that he was the All, and that each aspect of Creation – from the mineral to the animal kingdom – was some small part (atomic) of Him, conscious and eternally existing.

Even the concept of one life for one person, that Christianity speaks of, finds some expression in the eternal individuality of each Soul, whichKrishna-consciousness details with some authority. Although the question of reincarnation is firmly rejected by orthodox Christianity (to include both protestant and catholic denominations), the individuality of each soul is assured – in Judaism, Christianity and Islam as well – even past the end of Incarnation – in Hinduism and the Krishna-consciousnessmovement - and the ascension of perfected souls to the spiritual planets and universes beyond human ken.

After a year of track at Morehouse College (where I reached 6’10 in the high jump) - and which is also a blog in and of itself - and a semester at San Antonio College I joined the Army and went to Basic Training at Fort Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina and Advanced Individual Training (AIT), at the signal center at Fort Gordon, in Augusta, Georgia. I did well on the Army Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) and chose to train as a Single Channel Radio Operator, which was a combat military occupational specialty (MOS 31C) and that also gave me access to both the GI Bill and the Army College fund. Excelling in that training (Honor Graduate), I was also chosen to learn International Morse code (IMC), which was an additional skill identifier. That course was a month long and consisted of sitting at a desk wearing headphones and armed with a morse code tapper of Vietnam-era vintage, as had been the radio and teletype equipment that I’d trained on for the initial operator’s skillset, I proceeded to embark upon an amazing inner journey.

The training regime was relaxed. In the first week, we were responsible for tapping out and being able to interpret 3 groups, repeating what we heard in our headphones. Each group consisted of 5 dits and dashes (didadadittydadadittyda) that represented numbers and letters. The second week, we were responsible for 3 more, and so on, until the final number of groups we had to learn was 10, in order to pass the course and become certified in IMC.

The first week was simple enough. Three groups, fine. I was along with everyone else with the class, progressing normally, we made our quota. And then, late in the second week, something happened.

I’ve attempted to describe the actual experience I am writing of here previously, but those attempts have been inadequate to the task of truly encompassing what happened that day. To just say it, I progressed from 3 to 12 groups in the space of 1 hour. The Sergeant, who had been teaching there for 12 years, could not, would not believe I’d never learned morse code before.

I remember the room was dark, our desks side by side and the groups blended together like a song. One moment, I was listening and tapping code, understanding some and having to think to get the meanings of other letters and numbers, engaging in the reminscence and recognition pattern that typifies all rote memorization learning methods. At some point, I entered a mode of reverie, where the dits and dashes were audible as echoes only as my mind blurred the distinction and what had been audial became also graphical and there was an actual, physical bending of my mental space as if I’d flexed a previously unknown muscle and switched over to another mode where, suddenly, there appeared a depiction of  morse code in a perfect pattern of resonance and harmonics. It was as if I’d entered a hidden space that was infinite in nature, I remember the sensation of openness, impossibily deep within my mind, of texture and depth beyond my current needs available and waiting for input. As I was listening and experiencing this, my fingers moved faster and I instantly knew the code, could see the code in front of my mind’s eye, and utilized this precious insight to cement my understanding. Coming out of  it, that unknown muscle flexed once again, leaving me drained and confused, but excited beyond belief. Watching the Instructor walking over to me looking just as confused, was confirmation that something strange had indeed just occured.

After that initial jump, I knew Morse code and finally ended up at a speed of 28 groups, the last two weeks of the course being spent practicing and just increasing my speed. The next closest person was 14.

I’ve never returned to that space since. I’ve also never been challenged like that, since. But, knowing it exists, having experienced it, is like a tantalizing glimpse into possibility, into the potential of the human mind to access supposedly superhuman capabilities in order to accomplish tasks that have been thought heretofor unachievable.

As i was reading the above quote from the Bhagavad-Gita, this memory returned to me, and with it, a rushing onslaught of similar memories, of times where I’d learned something quickly - simply for the joy of learning - only to lose it again from lack of practice and neglect. What typified each and every one of these experiences was the joy of the moment, of concentrating to the point where everything else was lost. No thought of material gain, of getting paid for completing an article, a paper, a piece of artwork, of achieving honors for being the best or the greatest, of trophies, of accolades, of anything other than the sheer joy of doing it, of living it, of engagingTranscendental Being itself as a tool in the pursuit of self-actualization.

I recognize the possible affront offered by this essay. But I cannot and will not apologize for who I am and what my experiences have been because they are mine, and they have made me the man that I am. I am manifesting, with all glory given to Divinity, a potential that we all have, and that we all make real in our lives - to a greater or lesser degree - depending upon our own proclivities and potentials, which have been shaped by our life experiences and our individuated zodiacal natures. What we are capable of doing is so much more than what we generally allow ourselves to do, or even to believe can be done. The human mind and body are the most amazing energetic and physical creations upon this planet. To seek to discover their capabilities and manifest them in our lives should be among the greatest goals of a lifetime.

The Law of Attraction assures of us the multiverse’s complicity in the achievement of our individual destinies. The key component of creative visualization and prayer is the ability to associate emotivity, vision and intention in a manner that colludes with our destiny and brings us into a place where we are utilizing our talents in the expression of Divinity, as we are each atomic expressions of the super-soul of which we all form an intergral part. Divinity divining Itself, as it were.

Use your talents for God, Krishna, Allah, Oldumare, Legba, Yemaya, Buddha, or whomever your personal diety is. Be thankful for your gifts, and share them equitably. Be sure of your present and future paths, and know that Divinity is within us all, watching ever, loving fully and understanding us each, with all of our failings, neuroses and problems. No matter our current paths, or the extent to which we feel we’ve doomed ourselves to eternal hell, the potential to achieve what we were born to achieve remains real.

Know that. Believe it. And then live it.