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LISTENING TO THOUGHTS

Spirit Recovery — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 19:07:09 +0000

Listening to Thoughts

Listening to thoughts, they feel alive, these thoughts that follow me into this world from where ever it is we are actually Dreaming this realty. To be able to listen to my own thoughts is evidence to me that the frequency of life I’m living has shifted from the experience I lived for many years as the one in reaction to my thoughts, never realizing that listening was even an option. Lately, as the thoughts arrive I’m listening to the feelings conveyed through the thoughts. Listening to a feeling sounds weird but that’s what it feels like, listening, hearing the thought, hearing the feeling. As feelings are sensed in the body there is also awareness of information or thought in the sensing, in the feeling. These aspects of my being human are all merging with each other, swirling around and through one another like the clouds in the eye of a hurricane, travelling through space and time, always bleeding through the barriers of realms unseen, connecting the energies of the worlds behind the world.

I wonder if, as I breath, in and out, in this world, if my breath might be connected to a breath, or sense, or awareness, in some other frequency by some other conscious one living their experience of a reality.

God from God, light from Light, true God from True God, begotten not made. If we are eternal how could we be “made”, to be made we would have to have not existed before our being made. Begotten seems to me to be with out beginning or end, begotten from source, an aspect of source originating from beyond our understanding, free from needing to understand yet obsessed with what is none of our business.

Creating the aspects of reality that my intentions are directed toward is an extension of being begotten not made. Are our creations without beginning or end? Is form an image that reflects light and sound yet only exists in truth in the quality of intent and awareness that bore form into this world? What are our relationships really? Do we relate from love and faith in our self or do we relate from lack of love and faith in our self? Until we are Love and faith in our self there can’t be a real relationship with someone else.

I miss home when I am away and deep inside I know I have never been away from my home, from the place of my begetting. This world of ours has all the aspects we have brought into being from our living as though the beginning and end were truth and yet if we really believed that death was an end, I mean really believed that, then why would we live using that death as a threat against life.

I don’t believe we know what we believe. To “know” what we believe on a soul level requires way more introspection and listening than this culture lives, way more than our shallow belief systems are interested in seeking out. Coming into awareness of what we really believe brings a huge awareness and responsibility for holding those beliefs and we are just not that responsible or aware. Maybe that’s what we are looking at as the great 2012 prophecy comes to bear light on our modern age. Maybe by Grace we will be made aware of the suffering we live as a legacy of life. Suffering that has been “made” as the result of our living blind and completely irresponsible for our unquestioned blind beliefs.

The truth never needs defending, beliefs demand defending. Beliefs are not Truth. The light of the World is within all of us and we choose to live by beliefs and legacies born to us by the world around us. We give faith to shadows while all the time we are the light.

Begotten not made…sit with that one for while and see what your thoughts feel like. Listen and if you don’t get an answer be grateful that the answers will come from where your listening mind least expects it and maybe, just maybe, a deeper eternal voice, a long forsaken aspect of your own self will answer on its own time, in it’s own way.
Awakening will not come by expectation. We are all in this together, begotten not made, life from life, God from God….Ometeotl

Another Flight

Spirit Recovery — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 18:40:08 +0000

TRYING TO GET THERE FROM HERE

Another flight, from Manchester, New Hampshire to Nashville by way of Tampa, It’s the route that got me thinking. To get to Nashville by way of Tampa doesn’t make much sense until you realize that’s the way it is, and so it is. My life has been that way, not a straight line. Truth is, reason would have a challenge making sense of my life’s path and I am totally cool with the path not being reasonable. Reason has damn near wrecked the culture of the USA and the magical nature of our being human. You can have reason as your guide, I don’t trust it. I am fifty-four years old/young with a barely controllable continuous urge to sell everything, move back to a beach somewhere and spend my time surfing and doing whatever life offers as a work/lifestyle. I have four daughters 26, 21,7 and the youngest being 3 ½. Reason would ask “why would you want two more kids when you were done with all that, why, you had your life back?” Reason has never held it’s own babies and been overwhelmed with Gods presence flowing through with all the love life has to offer. Reason doesn’t play on the beach or teach a little girl how to brush a pony or make snow angels on a December morning.
As a kid I was taught this straight-line attitude toward life. You go to school, get good grades, choose a profession, go to college, get a good job, find a nice girl, get married have babies, save your money, buy a house, get to be a boss, save more money, buy a fat car, become important, be responsible, play golf, retire, and wait to die satisfied that you did it all “right”. That whole set up scared the shit out me, no way; I just don’t trust that bullshit at all. So I did what I wanted, really wanted. I played music in honky tonks and bars, lifeguarded, learned to be a decent hand with horses and cattle, played more music,moved to Nashville, got lost in the shadows of the seductive world of strippers, drugs and banditos, tried to be a husband and father while living like a fool on a mission, broke the hearts of the ones I loved most and crashed into the desert outside of Tucson trying to find a handle on a life gone crazy. That’s where I was introduced to “recovery”. The funny thing for me was “recovery” was focused on that original idea that to be happy we should be happy, productive members of society and do the American Dream thing, which had no appeal to me still, even after all my insanity. The straight and narrow looked like a socially acceptable hell. My path was more like getting to Nashville from New Hampshire by way of Tampa than a non-stop reasonable route.

All my life there has been a presence that seemed to call me out from the accept things the way they are world and inspired me to see things the way it might be if we were all allowed to be FREE, free to be who we are underneath the story of what we should do as life if we would be safe and reasonable.

I am a bit crazy, that I know, but that’s just the way it is and I am fine with that. What I realized while doing the recovery work was that there was no way I could live happy and healthy unless I was as authentic as I could possibly be reguardless of what those who were there to show me the “way” might suggest. I do appreciate the help and suggestions and I will have to go my own way.
This whole idea of “recovery” is still an interesting concept to me. After 12 years in the business and before that 6 or 7 years of referring to myself as in the process of recovery I continue to feel like recovery is not as authentic a journey as people seeking it are deserving of if they are to get beyond the haunting that they are recovering from and actually RECOVER. Just saying “I am recovered”, freaks most recovery people out. What’s up with that? If you went to a Doctor and the Doc told you you’d be sick forever wouldn’t you go looking for a second opinion? I did.

It takes a huge amount of courage and will to choose to recover our authenticity from the ways in which this world hijacks us. Of course we get lost in mind numbing behaviours. We live lives that are only sort of authentic. Living only sort of authentic is phony and phony is never fulfilling. It is a weird perfect storm. The culture of the USA is all about more, stuff, information, degrees, money, power…we need more because living as less than authentic leaves our human longing for wholeness and peace. Living a lie is a drag and our culture tells us that being what is expected of us is what responcibleity and service look like so , not knowing any better we go for it. Then we have the monster in the room, the USA’a sick fascination with the pharmaceutical industries offer to provide a pill to make every ailment easier to live with, live with, not recover from, as in heal the reason for all the symptoms in the first place. So we fly from New Hampshire to Tampa to get to Nashville.

Authenticity is a place within us, not a job description or career. To live authentic is to get to know your self as human. Growing up I wasn’t taught anything about being human. I was given a bunch of scientific info on the human body and psychology and blah, blah, blah and that had nothing to do with BEING HUMAN. So my “recovery” process became a journey into the awareness of that greatest of experiences, being human. What I know today is there is no true definition for living the being human. There is no step-by-step path to achieving being human, you have to live it, paying attention and practicing, one day at a time. We are, each of us, greater than all the sums of all the parts of this matrix of a world. We are, our consciousness, our spirit, Real .We are eternal, the light of the world, Children of the Sun. The matrix of the “reality” of being American, or Buddhist, or Republican or recovering or any of the zillions of labels that are applied in an attempt to appease the minds need to know “who” we are, are not “real” they are masks, applications, applied to the business of being human. Reality “is”,whether we believe it or not, see it or not, understand it or not. Reality is what is still with you when you take your last breath, all the rest is matrix.

I’m now on the last leg of my return from New Hampshire to Nashville. Tampa is fading into the distance and Tennessee is somewhere north of the Palm trees that remind me of all my years calling Florida home. I grew up in Florida and man did I love it. Seems like another lifetime ago…and it was. In New Hampshire I spent 4 days leading an awareness experience for a group of High school students at a prestigious Prep school. The kids were amazing. They we intuitive, bright, clever, they were also sad and disenchanted and on all kinds of meds because they were kids and that is, these days, too inconvenient for parents to have to deal with so they are kept stoned on prescription drugs and told smoking grass is bad. Yes they know hypocrisy when they are fed it. So we built a great stone spiral in the woods and walked in meditation. We held two Sweat lodge ceremonies and sat in Dreaming practice in the evenings. We cooked and ate together, washed dishes and talked about life and dreams and their stories. Most of them “forgot” to take their meds and remarked how clear and calm and focused they were. Their eyes lit up and they smiled as they shared their dreams and visions from the ceremonies and meditations. I was and am humbled by their spirit and honesty and am saddened and angered at the way they are treated by our culture.

I read a book recently by Michael Ortiz Hill and his African brother Mandazza that portrays the culture of the USA as a culture of black magic witches that place all the people, even children, under a spell and then cast the people into servitude to a dream and system that sucks the soul and life out of you all to feed the powerful and wealthy. I swear I see what they say. I see it on the news and on the street. I see it in the schools and from the preachers on TV. No thanks…not my Dream. I’ll keep living out here on the edge. Questioning everything and giving more time to my kids and my dreaming than I do to business or the system. I’ll keep bringing freedom into the recovery work I do, freedom to be true to our self first and this matrix of a world later. Maybe we’ll cross paths in an airport somewhere trying to get from one place to the next in one of these most reasonable straight lines. Vaya Con Dios….

Stone People and mist of the waters, Healing all who come to sit in their presence…

RETURN TO LIFE

Spirit Recovery — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:57:50 +0000

I’m on a flight from L.A. to Guadalajara. Tonight I’ll sleep in my little blue house in Teotihuacan. The last few days I have been shifting my attention between the main aspects of my life, from my family, to The Ranch, from the Ocean and waves of Malibu to the music and creation of our Documentary DREAMING HEAVEN. One conversation I’m talking about cattle and the future of the cattle business as we shift from a life time of commercial beef cattle production to the organic grass fed business, and the next I’m working on the creation of the Integrative Life Centers, a new format for Recovery and Integrative wellness in an out patient setting allowing more people to come to terms with all that they live, believe, choose and give their faith to. Recovery is becoming about our Integrity as human beings, a much greater picture than what I experienced 11 years ago when I was first introduced to the term Recovery as a way of life. Eleven years ago “recovery” was about being sober from drugs and alcohol, that is still a very important, yet narrow beginning point leading to the opportunities to live life Free, creative, authentic and aware.

As all the pieces of my world orbit through me and around me I feel a little crazy, like the threads are coming unraveled faster than I expected, like the ground under my feet is not solid at all but a fluid almost wave like place where I stand in consciousness not in a solid reality. This is the awareness of Dreaming Life, a term I’ve used for several years and still one that my mind argues with. To say life is a dream sounds to my mind like it’s not serious enough, the mind needs to believe that it has life figured out or it wants to freak. So I let my mind freak cuse when I let my mind run my life my life got to be a mess, my mind freaking is a breeze compared to my mind calling the shots.
The dreaming is awareness that the creation of my life is an act of intent and opportunity mixed with free will and awareness. Sounds more like a sorcerers recipe than a serious drama and it is and I am so grateful.

The fabric or this world of ours has hit the great cosmic hyperspace warp drive and what we have been taught to give faith too is becoming more and more not real or true. Where to now? The new security is faith in you, first, and then when we give faith to anything else that faith has real value. Until then we give faith out of a need to believe that something outside of us can save us. That’s a lie. Too bad for our worlds great religions and the American Dream that money, power, stuff and good looks will get you to the promised land It won’t. It will get you to the lost center of the universe with out a map.

I know I have said this before but it keeps coming back around, if you do not have faith in yourself you can not have real faith in God, or Spirit or anything else out there. If God is unconditional Love and we are the creation of God then we are an extension of the one that created us and to not care for our self or do the work, internally, to claim true faith in our self we are saying by action that God makes messes with us humans and we are the result of that mess. I don’t think so. To take care of our self first is to care for Gods creation. When we are living from our integrity, as a result of having cared for our self, then we are a gift to the world. Our choices, actions, presence are all clean and clear and aligned with the intent of our creator.
Of course our world is coming apart it is based in small minded, fear based, lies and distortions perpetrated by those in power and accepted by people not interested in taking responsibility or even a good look at themselves. Sure we can save the whales or the birds or something else out there but if we do not wake up in consciousness all those creatures we have been saving will come to the same demise as the humans with no good planet to survive on. More Wal marts or better health care or another political party is not going to get that job done for us. We have to do this individually, one person at a time, one day at a time and by sharing our increased awareness and perspectives we will create new communities of awakened people who are living from integrity rather than from beliefs.

Today I led a ceremony on a 1500 year old alter in central Mexico with a group of 25 very accomplished professionals from all walks of American Life. Most of the group was new to ceremony and had never been to an ancient ceremonial center like Teotihuacan. After we were finished they all had a new and greater awareness of what Life, light, awareness and possibility mean to them. Each living their own unique and personal experience, this is one path back to our center, our integrity our freedom and our worlds salvation. This is our mess; Jesus is not going to come flying down out of the clouds to rescue this lazy mess of humanity. We are doing this to our selves and when we decide to stop it we will and not before then. The group on the Alter today has a greater perspective to base their next decision on. That is progress.

Where ever you are, whatever flavor of evolution you might choose for yourself I hope for all of us that you have a path on evolution that you are living. I hope for you that your path holds you accountable for your own salvation. You are the only one that can get you to the dance of the cosmos and what a dance it can be whenever we decide to stop ignoring the calling of the truth to look at how we are all creating this world we live in. Life is as life has always been 100% on our side and all we need to is take that next step toward the unknown. Ready…1, 2, 3, go….

MARMALADE SKIES

Spirit Recovery — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:21:02 +0000

Marmalade Skies

Picture yourself in a boat on a river,,,,,with tangerine trees and marmalade skies,,,,,,

Looking out the window of this 737 I watch the maze of Mexico City fade into the distance. The sky is blue today, rare in this place of 26million humans. Seems these days wherever the humanity masses the Earth pays a terrible price.

Over the last 12 days I have led a beautiful group of people into and out of the Dreams of a world created over 2000 years ago to serve all of us in awakening to the truth of Divinity as a way of life on Earth. Sounds like some big mystical deal when all it’s about is being what you are really rather than trying to be what you believe you are. The latter takes years of programming and conditioning while the other requires believing nothing.

Imagine there’s no Heaven, it’s easy if you try….no Hell below us, above us only sky…imagine all the people living for today….ah ahhh….

To dare to awaken today from our inherited slumber with its matrix of shadows, false Gods, lies and manipulations is a daunting task and the task we are created for. The truth lives with in, you, me them, us. The truth is in each breath taken, in each thought passing thru from there to hear. We breathe, we feel, we laugh, we cry…we dream and we follow the leader straight into the colorful palaces of Hell. “Come to me”, the painted characters beckon us with promises of security, wealth, pride and accomplishment. We go. Of course we go, it is the dance of the world and the dance must be played out if we are to rewrite it’s riffs and refrains, redirecting the players to a greater dynamic of Magical, mystical, three quarter time, waltzes and rumbas.
“Off with their heads”, the red Queen demands… “Take mine first my Lady, this head of mine has only gotten me deeper and deeper into nowhere”.

All things must pass….George knows. All things must pass away.
Twelve days in the heart of the world according to me. After all we each have our own heart of the world or if we do not then certainly we must rediscover it if we are to remember.

My Sweet Lord, ummm my Lord, ummm my Lord, I really want to see you, really want to be with you.
I hear you today with out even listening, I feel you always without even knowing. I don’t have to look cuse you’ve never not been here. I have remembered with no story to tell.
Stories are great but the truth doesn’t need one, in fact THE TRUTH can’t be found in one, still our stories paint the canvass, connecting the matrix of dreams from day to day, person to person, thought to thought.

The last three days in Mexico I worked with an idea shared by myself and a Producer from L.A. that I met trying to bring a REaliy show to the USA on what real Healing and Recovery can look like. That idea scared people, they couldn’t seem to get their head around it. Go figure, we are in love with the excuses to suffer. It would be against our cultural vows to question the boundaries of what we might be if we dropped ALL the Bull shit.

Our new idea is to create a TV show that follows yours truly around the planet connecting with the Ancient Sacred knowledge and mysteries of the peoples who have never stopped dreaming reality from the depths of their Divinity. To bring the story and beauty of this world’s mystery tradition into Americas living rooms might just fill a void we have suffered from for a long, long time. The culture of the USA has no conscious relationship with Creation or the world that was born of the Mother Earth. We’d rather control and manipulate to maintain our lifestyle and twisted sense of security.
I want to believe that with the great shifts we are living in there would be some awareness and, if only on the deepest level, recognition of the presence of the Creator in the stories and ceremonies reveled through this show. Why not? If we can get as disconnected and insane as we are now surely we can see the opportunity to do something else, if only virtually, sitting in the comfort of our own home.

I was told 12 years ago I could never make my ideas of a treatment center work…and we did. Now I don’t bother to ask for validation, I have too great a faith in where these compelling feelings that morph into ideas come from and I just do it. If God had wanted us to ask each other for permission to follow our own Divinity we would never have been given free will.

Tonight my Mee, Bella, Lola and myself will sleep in our beds in Nashville. We will all Dream with our Mexico and soon, before this year ends, we will travel once again to the next landing zone for the McCormick family Dreams. Maybe L.A., maybe Manhattan, maybe back to Mexico…that will be revealed, no worries.

By now we must be over south Texas, welcome to Gringo Landia. There’s a cloud outside my window that looks like Jim Morrison. “ Before you slip into unconsciousness, I’d love to have another kiss…….” See you in the Dreamtime….

A PRAYER ON THE WALK BACK HOME

Spirit Recovery — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:49:47 +0000

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

A PRAYER ON THE WALK BACK HOME

I am just here with you creator , I am just here in you…

First thing this morning I went over to the gate one of Teotihuacan. Whenever I arrive back in Teo I like to go walk through my life there as soon as I can, alone, with myself and my relationship with all that exists there. Today felt interesting as though I am now seeing this place of my awakening from a greater perspective, a less personal more expansive view. As always being in Teotihuacan is more a feeling than a physical experience.

So I walked across the Avenue of the Dead and climbed the steps to the Plaza of Quetzelquatal. Connections come easy here. After some time I said thank you to all that might be listening and moved on up the Avenue of the Dead.

Some hour or so later I arrived at the Alter in front of the Pyramid of the Moon.Itis on this alter that so many have offered back to life all the energies that have been held onto over a life time not realizing that it is our clinging that traps us in our mind and feeds our suffering. Of course we have no idea until we wake up to what we are doing and then it is still a great leap to be willing to let go of all that we define ourselves and our world by.

Sitting on the alter I heard my mantra, one that I picked up in the Catholic Church and have always loved to say to myself and all that listens within me,”Lamb of God take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us, Lamb of God take away the sins of the world, grant us Peace”.I was slowly saying my mantra over and over when I was moved to take some Coca leaves from Peru from my bag and hold them with a great open and loving heart sending my prayers into the light that falls on the Peruvian world.Sitting with my eyes closed I heard someone walking up beside me and a gruff almost angry voice said, “Jesus Christ is the way son, Jesus Christ is the only way”. Opening my eyes there was a 60 something year old American guy looking down at me like I was da Devil. I guess he couldn’t hear my mantra or if he could he wasn’t to hot on Catholic prayers..whatever. I just looked at him, there was nothing to say.Evidently he believed we lived in the same world and the truth is we don’t.

I closed my eyes and rejoined the love that moves through me wondering if the man would have even cared to know what it was I was praying. I don’t think so, who knows, who cares.

Once again I got up and continued my walk through the magical world of Teo eventually ending up in front of the pyramid of the Sun. Climbing the steps to the Alter in front of the Sun I put my attention on the doorway to the ancient cave that rests beneath the Pyramid. Last winter I had the opportunity to spend some time in the cave and that experience shifted my relationship with the Pyramid to something very etheric.

Taking out my bells I gently let the wind ring the bells and dreamed back through the 10 years of personal growth and evolution that I’ve lived with the Sun as my witness. Opening my eyes I sat and watched people climb and desend the steps to the top, listening to the conversations of the people coming and going.Looking up I saw the man that offered Jesus as the way coming down the steps and right behind him was a Fransiscan Monk and some Nuns, their robes flowing with the breeze. As I looked around there was a Mexican man dressed all in white that was saying prayers to the four directions and the spirits of his world, offering his hands up toward the Pyramid. Many paths, many masters. I just sat and watched.

A few minutes later I realized I was hungry and our Dreaming House has the best food this side of all our little heavens so again I got up and started walking home. On the way the words…”I am just here with you father, I am just here with you, I am just here in you Creator, I am just here in you….and that is the truth.

Vaya Con Dios…….

Putting Two and Two Together-Jill Bolte Taylor’s Gift

Spirit Recovery — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:03:33 +0000

Many of you have seen this video of Jill Bolte Taylor, some may have read her book. I did. What I find interesting here is when you overlay her experiences of consciousness on top of the “recovery” process.
We have multi-dimensional realities and perceptions within us. The traditional recovery process gives only surface level attention to the deeper aspects of our consciousness. What we suffer from is our loss of awareness and conscious connection with our greater Consciousness. We are huge creative beings that have been born into a “reality” that is very small minded and literal in interpretation interaction. Living disconnected from our right brain consciousness is certainly enough of a loss of true reality to cause great discomfort and even more disturbing a very skewed perception of our self, the world , others, potential, etc…. Reality is not literal , reality is more dream like than reasonable.
We speak of evidenced based and research proven when all those two terms imply is that someone watched and measured the cause and effect of a particular interaction in a particular set up. The results are specific to the test and we have been taught to place studies done by institutions or Corporations ahead of the opportunities presented by living day to day experience with people in their own personal process. I believe what I see and feel not what I am told by so called experts or University/ Big Pharma Studies. I am completely responsible for what I choose to believe and how I allow my beliefs to limit or expand my awareness and also how I apply my craft in working with others.
Dr. Taylor’s experience is so beautiful in that we hear the experience and see the awareness of one who has bridged the two aspects of her one mind into a whole. Unless you have a balanced connection between the two you will miss out on at least half of what Life is offering. When we live disconnected from great aspects of our consciousness we will live out of balance and when we live out of balance long enough we settle into that condition as though it were “normal”. Living out of balance will also cause discomfort and suffering that we;ll then only be able to identify from our distorted left brained perspective. You see the choices we perceive are limited by the awareness we live from. Small awareness small choices, greater awareness greater choices.
We can not offer what we do not have. As professionals in the healing arts we are subject to the same limited ways of thinking, perceiving and living as our clients and the culture as a whole. If we are to be more than a band aid to the issues then we must be willing to stretch beyond the limitations of left Brain knowledge. We must be the Change we want to see in our clients and the world and live it or we aren’t offering anything but a better version of the same ol’ hell.

This is our opportunity to not be satisfied with what has become acceptable as a profession and go for the freedom that is so clearly what Dr. Taylor found, within herself , as a result of her experience. Maybe you’ll watch this video and consider what are you living as reality and how much of your time and attention do you give to the greater aspects of your consciousness. We have settled long enough, now is the opportunity to live from our greater awareness.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyyjU8fzEYU

LEE R. MCCORMICK

SEEING THROUGH THE SHADOWS

Spirit Recovery — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:38:49 +0000

My wife tells me I am never home, I’m always going somewhere. Yes, I am going somewhere a lot. Twice this year to Peru, three times to Teotihuacan, Mexico, a couple times to New York City. Sometimes I feel like I am gone from home and sometimes I feel more at home in the places of great mystery than I do in the world that is so familiar and set in it’s ways. What I miss are my girls and my wife not the structure, rigid reality and supposed security of the United States.

I have found what I’ll call levels in experience and reality through my living so many journeys and opportunities to expand and challenge myself and my perceptions. In this world there are great shadows cast across the landscapes that we have been taught to perceive as reality. Shadows like Cultural dynamics and religious attachments, definitions, titles,Power and self importance. Shadows like the projections of our beliefs onto the worlds stage which we then seek to either have validated or we respond in judgement needing to defend our having given precious faith to those beliefs when beliefs are never truth in the absolute sense. Truth does not need our distorted beliefs to be present and alive in our lives.Our beliefs are very small, thin, desperate attempts to feel secure. Truth is what we are ,we are life’s’ expression as human with all that Human entails.Beliefs are generated from our need to “know”, our need to believe we are “safe” and that the next move can be predictable. We believe out of fear because we have no real relationship with the freedom that Faith in Life, faith in ourselves, offers.

I get frustrated with all the resistance of moving though the quagmire of beliefs that suffocate this world.Must be my Scottish blood and the past generations of Warriors with all their lust for battle when anyone came to squelch their personal freedom with some doctrine of irrelevant beliefs that were offered as an option to the freedom of spirit that they lived for.

The Humanity has traded Spiritual freedom for the weak association of like minded “Spiritual” beliefs. Beyond our attachment to belief is that no mans land of learning to live the tight rope of just being in life without attachment. Freedom can only be found through faith in life before faith in Belief. It is tricky to take the power of faith away from the mind which has for so long been the moderator of fear and our defender of the unknown.When we fall into automatically believing our minds thoughts we will soon be lost in the traps of self importance, self doubt, fear and the need to defend our attachments to our beliefs.Before we know it we are living in our head rather than in the flow of the true reality that surrounds us.

As an aspect of a journey to New York City last year we went to see THE LION KING on Broadway. The participants were a bit skeptical, after all, LION KING is supposed to be a kids show. By the end of that evening they got it. The Shadow lands of that beautiful show were our inheritance if we should lose our connection to our own Divinity and the mystery of consciousness. Life is a great mystery. The Native Americans knew that and so lived in relation with all living things not as the separate and self righteous manipulators of all that surrounds us as modern man has done.We are not separate and apart and will now and for years to come pay the price of our self indulgent ignorance. Cause and effect…Life is as simple as cause and effect.Life is not personal as our victim minded cultures would have us believe. There is no true judgement from God or life merely simple cause and effect and life’s own unique flow. To take life personally requires we see ourselves and separate and apart rather than a simple aspect of the whole.

As I live my journeys I experience greater and greater expansion of perception and the melting away of beliefs as my guide. In the moment there is my awareness and Life as it moves through me. I have no need to know, as I am there in it , with it, I am free…knowing takes me from that awareness, from that freedom, into the virtual reality of my small minded thinking.

There is a shift happening. This is the time where all of Mans attachments to life as a definition will be broken apart and the power and greater frequency of Consciousness will offer freedom from our paradigms of fear and belief. It sure is going to be interesting to live this transition.That is our call. There will be no not participating…we will either move with the coming awakening or live in our own terror of it.

How attached are you to your world? Like the followers of the Christ who walked away from everything they had known in life to follow the light within, we are all being offered the invitation to let go and walk into the light of life beyond the limitations of our beliefs.It is a good day to die as the old warriors would call riding into battle…Ahieeeeee

WARRIORS CALL

Spirit Recovery — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:19:37 +0000

A Warriors Call

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CONSCIOUS CONTACT

Spirit Recovery — Fri, 22 May 2009 15:57:52 +0000

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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