White Christmas

My father and I had opened our presents and were standing in the kitchen as I was preparing to go play with my toys and then travel to my grandpa's house for dinner. I looked out the window and said "is that drizzle or snow?" "I don't think it's quite cold enough for that," my dad said with a chuckle. I think I actually heard his jaw drop as he walked to the window.

It's Christmas and it's snowing...

There's something about this sort of blessing, an untouchable magic that seems able only to be felt by all the senses in unison.

There's a quiet in snowfall, plapable. It's as though our soul reaches out and feels the landscape as itself, breathing as the wind, thoughts flying through the sky from beyond reckoning and melting on the ground into nothing. True sight.

I stood watching my cat, elated that I left the door open so he could run in and out freely. The same perfect oddity of it all consumed me as well, and so I stayed with him as the snowflakes collected on our fur. A memory of last night came to me then, one where I was petting my little friend...

This memory reached yet further into my past, to the time I first got him. Recently divorced, my heart was a tattered mess. I had been without a cat for two years, the first time since I was born. Ehm was certainly a godsend. He would ride on my shoulders, draped over my neck like a fur on the long commute from school to home. White with a raccoon's tail, he was the most loving cat I had (and have) ever known. I poured the love I had stirred for my wife into him. To love is an action in part, an activity complete with a muscle group. I had learned what it was to trust absolutely; only with complete faith can we love totally. By this I mean a release of all thoughts of how something can go wrong. This is pure dedication, to resolve to entertain no notion of life going askew. Dangerous? Quite. Rationality is abandoned for hope and relentless faith. There is no stopping to assess; there is only the stalwart walk to the driving, beating drums within. Our voice becomes the Valkyrie's song and our strength becomes that of the army of heaven. I have gone from personal love to spiritual, but I assure you they are one and the same. To learn to fully love a person is to do the same for Love itself, for God, for devotion. The most blissful space for lovers is the air between them, and to reach it, each lover must let go of her self, of her body, of her mind, and in this know heaven on earth. It is the same with God.

So petting my cat last night I remembered the love I once poured into him, my heart wide open though bleeding. I didn't have a care if he understood my love for him, I just poured because it was all I could do. I realized last night that I have become more reserved, cautious, and silently hoping with a small voice in my heart that he understood my love for him. How did this fear enter? Is this fear not spoken with my love as it comes, does it not become the very hesitancy and misunderstanding that it feared to be in the first place! I see that it does, and in this my love is reinforced by my logic. Today the only thing that makes sense is love, unbridled, supremely vibrant and unstoppably intelligent. I heard a voice as the snow fell on my face... "today you are born unto me."

It just started snowing again. I have one last thought. As I stood in the soft falling crystals, I sensed my father in the house next door. I felt him crying, crying wholesome tears over the letter I wrote him for Christmas. I told him how much he means to me, how much I appreciated everything, how I acknowledge his dreams for me and have found a truth between his own values and mine. There is a land that each of us share in the space between our bodies, and somewhere there is a center, the sum of all hearts and minds, and there we find purpose; there we find meaning, and there we find Love.

Merry Christmas

Self Forgiveness

I was sitting on my porch, smoking, talking with God. Many times, it's a speech of surreal emotion, like the feeling you get when the faint blue hue of the stars soaks into your chest and elevates your mind. I then had the thought "and I do this with a cigarette in my hand." It was a self-beratement and my head hung in defeat as the ethereal feeling faded. And in this came the message...

Such thoughts of condemnation are like sitting in a glass temple, looking out the pinnacled roof, admiring the sky and myriad prisms and suddenly deciding to kick the cat. Suddenly the mind is consumed and the heavenly vision lost. We forget we're even in a temple, and kicking the cat never has a good outcome. Then we feel guilty for kicking the cat and a complex ensues. Quickly does that first glimpse away from heaven come, and even quicker the second, and deeper into darkness we go. Subtle are the thoughts that draw us away, and those of self-beratement tear us away from the knowledge that will keep us in harmony within. The Song of Angels, the Rhythm of the Tao, the Breath of Brahman is always there, and we can hear it, sense it when we aren't looking at the floor in remorse for our cat kicking.

Forgiveness can in an instant dismiss all shadow from the mind. Social constructs enforce a certain style of judgment, yet our culture is not known for its widespread love and well-being. As a country, we rank quite low on our self-reported happiness, so it is absolutely rediculous to base our own worth on a sad man's concepts. Take on such a man's philosophy, and rest assured you will take on his outlook. We create eating disorders and social anxiety, so it's time to take a drink from another fountain.

The world outside is wondrous. If nothing else, a silent time of enclave is as an oasis in a hellish desert. Love is born in such ways, and this can be a source of life-giving water for all. Worthy is the time spent in contemplation and realization, in prayer and solitude. Give time for setting name-calling aside. Let the ruckus within fade into the forest, and drink in the blue light of night. Our hearts are calling.

It occurs to me that the house in which we live our lives is made up of the thoughts we think each day. They frame the windows we stare from and the yard in which we play. They form the substance of what we remember and color every breath and deed. We rarely remodel. We may move furniture or occasionally paint, but very slowly does the herd of thoughts transform. They are mostly the same as yesterday, again, again, again. What is the resultant life? Happy? Inspired? Sad? Addicted?

Contemplate the source of the tree rather than the same leaves and branches. Follow its lifeblood from the sun to the water to the earth. Feel photosynthesis going on within you. Synthesis. Breathe the free air and smell the subtle smells. See the green color, letting your eyes relax a second time to draw in its depths...

This sort of looking inspires a different kind of thought, does it not? While there may be a house in your mind at current, there can be a temple. Glass walls cut into prisms at every join, bending light into brilliant luminance and awakening our perception when we enter. Spinning chimes take breezes and sunbeams, synesthesia of touch, light and sound. Flowers bloom, vines roll, birds sing. It is obvious the source of things here. Light, earth, wind, water, everything pointing your senses back to something pure.

The house of the mind gets cluttered with trinkets and dirty clothes, dust and grime. Within are idols to cultural ideals, trends, what it takes to get a mate or whatever is desired from other people. This is a worthwhile endeavor, but know that there are people whose mind and life are focused on these sources of things, and their life grows from them. Clear become the motives of people to one who sees these sources, and quickly does the tolerance for impure intention fade. Into sharp focus become our own intentions as well, and quickly also do we see the result of a mind built with beams of wood and social etiquette rather than beams of light and self-awareness.

To know thyself is to know all others.

To then forgive is to dry the kindling for love.

Love is clear excitement and joy for the life you live.

Love is to be accepting of all on their path, wherever it may be.

I never knew...

I'm not sure how to begin this, perhaps, "I had a dream last night..."

I had a dream last night I was at an amusement park, up early and taking in my last waterslide before work. It was 8:30 am before I got on the slide. I somehow met an older couple and materialized into their large cadillac. The woman was driving, and boy could she drive! She was hardly looking at the road! I yipped and pointed at a car in the other lane which I thought she was drifting into , but with a little tire screech she pulled the caddy tightly into the inside lane. The conversation somehow turned to God, but it was with laughter. She looked at me, which she was either looking at her husband or me and glancing at the road like it was an egg boiling. She said "I remember when I used to think of God as slavery, doing this, doing that, actions, actions, actions." The look in her eyes was alive and in them was the subtle focus I'm trying to get across to you. I recite in words what I saw in that moment's glimpse:

are you wanting? are you missing? have you found a piece of something that gives you joy and milk it for everything it's worth? is there no new? is there not new around always, alive. is there not found here always. is there not knowing...

is there not life in your hands? is there not time before you? is there not a spark in your heart, beating, pulsing as a star? is there not wisdom there? is it not enough to live your life? is there not enough to trust?

is it not torture to live your life guessing? is it not odd you have not looked and not found? is it odd that you have not looked enough to find.

is it not odd that looking is a tie that binds? is it too not odd that you are breathing as everything you need to be at this moment?

the mind has built a house of stones from another age. why not use some concrete? destroy the old stones and mix their powder into mortar. erect a temple for your new mind where love is first and anger and judgement are last. build every block with soft heart, and give every stir with calm acceptance of all that is. emotions rise, labels fall. you are as perfect as the leaf upon the tree. caterpillars will eat holes and wither. disease will turn black your edges. yet winter comes and destroys you totally, returning you to the earth where you might rediscover your life as all things. again a tree draws you in, decomposes you and turns half of you into bark, another half into limb, another into sugar and is eaten again. a bird eats the caterpillar that contains a piece of you. a child sees the bird and you become a dream.

release your burden... it is time to embrace life with love.

Who's pushing your oxcart?

What I mean is what is inspiring your actions. I've had the opportunity lately, with being off work and out of a relationship, to pay very close attention to the energies and thoughts emanating from my body. I've noticed my actions be colored by old emotions, such as being around my father and the way he subtly demanded to be in total control. I catch myself going back into the mode where I listen very hard for what he would like for me to do and then simply do it, mindlessly, for his benefit. We get caught up in such traps. Not only are there these old patterns of action with those we grew up around, there are other pillars in our courtyards. Many are simply of fear.

I want to assault fear because of a realization just after sunrise. I sensed my body as I thought about a project I wanted to do. I can't even remember the project because what was important was how I felt little particles of fear in me. Each time a fear is truly entertained as possible, there is a particle in you that goes along with it. As energy flows from our body, as we send our will through it or through our mind, these particles create resistance. You aren't at your full capacity when you have these things in you. It truly makes no sense whatsoever. Afraid of what? Failure? Bad performance? Bad performance. I think that covers it. Whether it's talking to a girl or guy you like, going for a job interview or heading to your family's for the holidays, fear causes bad performance.

I hope more than anything this stirs something in you. I hope this prompts you to see the sheer ridiculousness of housing these little fears in your body. Do see for yourself! They make no sense! Wouldn't it be better to steer the car without someone constantly saying "you might run off the road, you might hit a car, you might get a ticket, you might you might you might!" That's what these fears we house are like. Address this issue with calm mind and it will unfold before you.

Further, there are others besides fear. These are simply the motivations for action and are usually a little more consciously accessible. What do we want from a situation? Are we there just to make money? Is there any joy otherwise in the matter? Who does this force you to be? There is always a landscape to observe while you drive the cattle, my fellow range riders, whether it's in the people or the mountains or the coffee room, there's something, and far wiser it would be to look for that landscape than to drive oneself insane with a decision that your environment sucks and there's nothing you can do. The former is fine without the latter, such things inspire change, but the latter is damnation to any who think it, really.

So what force is moving your oxcart? Are you pushing it? Hard with the ox up there, isn't it? Feels like that sometimes doesn't it? The mind and body and life moving along, all the while it feels like you're screaming through a soundproof glass and making no difference whatsoever. Yes, I know. This is when the mind is completely out of wack with the true needs of the body. We learn ways to be that are necessary for social survival, and an identity develops. This identity has certain needs, and sometimes those needs are contrary to a healthy physiology and mind. Little drives are setup within based upon needs. Are we acting out of the need to be appreciated and accepted? Whose opinion will be the final say so you can finally actually BE worth appreciation and acceptance?

It could be yours! Yes, today, we're running a special and that opinion could be yours today for FREE! AND, if you take advantage of this special offer right now, we'll throw in a bonus bag full of peace of mind, raging surplus energy and feeling like you can move mountains! All yours, but it's best to order now! These deals last forever, but after you're convinced it's not really free and available, it's not ::splat!::

Know in love that you are loved.

Always.

Angels Among & Within

A Fox News poll said 79% of people believe in angels. I'm not one to argue as I've had direct experience with things I cannot explain any other way. Moreover, these encounters have included sensing a sentience and a communication of it. They speak in colors that become words, truths expressed in expulsions of resonance in light. Beyond this, on several, SEVERAL occasions, I have felt physical interaction. One in particular was when I was falling from a tree, 25 feet up, toward a sidewalk far below. I was headed for certain injury. As I shouted at the top of my lungs "NOOOOOO!", I felt something hit the back of my heel which turned me so my head was situated slightly below my feet in a flat-out, frantic sprawl. After a split second of sheer terror, I found myself wedged in between two limbs, caught perfectly in a large fork, each underneath my arms. I didn't have a scratch. There was nothing there for me to have hit my foot on, and I wasn't even moving at the right speed or angle to have something smack the back of my heel so hard...

There's a subtle scent that goes along with these interactions, one your heart can smell. It makes it want to sing upon smelling it, shine upon hearing it. Angels wear a cloak of assurance. They glow with what we perceive as faith, and our bodies, spirits and minds receive it, are warmed and influenced by it. I have had so many such encounters, I know them to be always present. Sometimes they urge me not to forget something important, scatterbrained as I am, and just as often urge me to speak certain words or to speak at all, pushing me out of complacency and imploring me to believe and act in that belief.

Perhaps your mind is calculating a reasonable response. Understandable, as mine did the same for years, even after I had been guided to the side of a one-lane road just before a car came around the corner, even after I had been pushed into a situation with x in-laws that involved a drug-soaked brother and the power-crazed aunt he slighted. A jail sentence was inevitable. I had no experience dealing with all this, I was 22, yet that same urging, all under the banner of what I had come to know as God, was there. I was told I would know what to say, to fly out to New Mexico and handle the situation. A force beyond me was guiding me, and to keep this from you would be to withhold a knowing of potentials that have been the most exciting in my life.

Have you had something urge you on to be what you can be? Perhaps a parent did, perhaps their way of encouraging left something lacking. Perhaps they didn't recognize the best in you and wanted something else, thus letting gifts wither for the tending of their own pastures. I tell you now that the way of your talents and dreams are available. It will test your laziness and your belief in yourself. It will develop resolve and confidence. It will show you that within is a power magnified by faith and invulnerable to fear. All you have to do is ask.

I hope this has shown some sunlight into your heart. So few realize how much help is at hand. You want to do something meaningful? Realize what you are, thereby what you are here for, and be fulfilled. I speak not of a God on a throne with a list of laws. I speak of the very force of Life which urges us to live a life of fulfillment. I speak of a Creator that loves all of life, its challenges, heartaches and victories. Those things that move us in great novels or movies are there for all of us to experience in our own lives, if we only choose to. Will you write a story for the ages with your will and blood? Or will you die with the pen in your hand?

The last line was a bit frightening, and hopefully strikes you with the urge to do. The villain of procrastination seizes us all at times, I fear, especially when it comes to doing something truly remarkable and fundamentally worthwhile. I am led to give you these questions that may be answered in the quiet of your mind:

1. Why me, why here, why now?

2. Show me the gifts I have, please.

3. What are the questions in my heart that act as pits for every morsel of inspiration before they can take seed and sprout into dreams realized?

Take these to the bank. Love to you from everywhere.

Snowy Morning

I was awakened before dawn by my furry little live-ins for their ceremonial can of tuna, as usual. I saw that I had left the front outside light on and noticed it was raining -- wait a minute, that's too slow for rain! YIPPIE!

Many thoughts this morning. I looked at a hickory tree in my yard the other day and all the dead leaves yet fallen caught my eye. It was as if the dilapidated thoughts brought into full bloom were those clinging leaves, and behind them I could see the frame of the tree itself. Winter does this I think, tears away the unnecessary, shocks the frivolous and brings an awareness of our bones. In this moment I wish for a deep, cold winter, one that draws me close to people when they're there and closer to myself when they're not. It tempts me to say "may all the dead fall away and leave only the Truth behind!" And perhaps I'll say just that, yet it begs me recognize the gift of it all, the entire year of seasons.

We all have a bit of this restlessness, I think. We've been told for so long "more more more, the more you have the better you are," it stirs up a race within us that is ran like greyhounds on crack. With one step back, however, we see that they're just going in circles and getting nowhere... and that's not even a real rabbit!

I was reading last night in a book called "Learning from Light," written by a hospice doctor John Lerma. He was attending to one of the Roswell insiders, Colonel Marshall Bradfield, was dying. What I expected was some never-heard-before revelation -- which it probably had for most people but I've looked deeply into the topic -- and actually that's exactly what I got. It wasn't the secret of anti-gravity or verification of X-flies lore, it was rather an insight from the edge of death. The great majority of people dying experience interaction with angels, dead relatives and other spirits in the weeks approaching their transition. Many have a life review where they see all they have done with perfect clarity and new reason. A book is opened within the person and spiritual truths are read from their hearts, as plainly as from some sacred page.

What I gleaned from this has been one of the most impacting pieces of knowledge I've ever come across. Here are some excerpts in hopes that they will elicit the same in you. It is important to preface this with some knowledge about how this person sees God. Though this Overseer has some resemblance to the one in the Bible, a conversation I will omit for length reveals that there is no such thing as eternal damnation. It's been absolutely ridiculous to me for some time, an all-knowing being would have the devil's guest list already made out before the PLANET was even created, much less our birth, so to breathe life into existence would be to sentence some of your beloved creations to certain eternal suffering. Ridiculous. Anyway, the colonel, Marsh, said it this way:

"Fortunately, God has a plan for even those lost souls. He will never forget anyone. There is something sad about choice though. While someone is lost in their created hell, the same rules apply. In other words, if these people choose to experience anger, hatred, or sadness, they will fall deeper and deeper into their own snare. The only way out is to feel some bit of compassion or love for someone else. Since nothing stays the same, one will continuously be maturing in whatever emotion they opt
for."

So clear, and for once something meshes nicely with the Bible tales of crazy hater -- should I capitalize that? I'll probably be sent to hell if I don't! ::insert hysterical laughter here::

So here's the excerpt:

Several days before his departure from this world, Marsh began to discuss how
the angels were guiding him toward closure. Marsh explained that his compulsive
personality made it difficult to accept his disease process. He wanted to know
how and why it happened and what he needed to claim victory. As a soldier, Marsh
viewed every obstacle in life as a battle. He had it in his mind to be
victorious once more. He told me the following day he had learned his victory
was beyond this world and, had he known what was shown to him by the angels, he
would have lived his life
less compulsive and anxious.

"Will you tell me more about your life review?" [the author speaking]

"Dr. Lerma, had I truly believed where I was going after this
world, I would have lived a life less compulsive and anxious. I would have lived
it more fully and with
less worry."

"Why would you worry less?"

"Because God and his angels are continuously, and I mean
continuously, watching out for us. I never knew how intricately balanced and
cared for our lives are. When I was shown the multiple times God saved me from
sure death throughout my life, I knew my cancer was his way of bringing me back
home. I finally understood that we were just passing through this world and on
our way toward a place that dreams are made of. The angels told me that free,
secure, and ecstatic feelings our flying dreams leave us with are very similar
to what it feels like in heaven."

As I thought about what Marsh said, I felt an incredible sadness for God. I wanted so much to make things better. The reality was that I could not force people to change their dark and somber ways. Marsh said the only way to effectively change someone toward love and light was through prayer. Marsh said that God depends highly on our selfless petitions to help our fellow man and his lost souls. I would never view prayer the same.

And neither will I.

One last addition, and I didn't even realize this wasn't mentioned in the book until after it happened. I thought, so why do I not pray for this guy who causes problems at work? And I thought, I should. And so I did. And the floodgates opened. My heart was cleared. I saw that I had an interest in his not getting better, for if he got fired, I would make more money. All of this reasoning became clear as glass as did my mind. So foolish to rely on reasoning when I have seen the results of relying on Power itself, Virtue itself, God even. Then I read this line: "The only way out is to feel some bit of compassion or love for someone else," and realized that's what I had done, only completely this time and with action.

Compress :: Expand :: Temper

Sitting on my front walk this morning, I noticed the pile of three table tops sitting in the yard. I thought of how I had let them sit for far too long, especially those on top, for the rain and sun had soaked and dried them, expanded and shrank them, loosened and cracked them. They should've rather been treated and sealed, protecting them from the elements and allowing strength & structure to be maintained. They weren't, however, and so were weakened, their integrity lost.

We are the same. We have these tabletops within, vulnerable to the earth and rain lest they be treated and sealed. It is a double-edged decision that tempers the identity, confidence on one side, arrogance on the other. There is always the question of what is worth believing, what is actually true and what we are to begin with. With these questions we contemplate temperance. Yet questions give not stability. So there must be a comfort from here to knowing, and a satisfaction from the fact that we seek it.

The contemplation of virtue will lend this to you. The mind is a house of common thoughts, built with mortar of emotion. New additions are constantly made, and this mortar is not yet dry. There must be a portion of this house, however, where the mortar is completely seasoned, where the emotions and concepts are solid and resistant to change. This comes with observation and contemplation of that which arises. Until we take honest measure of the emotions and thoughts we have, they can still surprise us and hijack our awareness. As you watch the crashing waves within you roll, think on the virtues: beauty, mercy, wholesomeneses, tenacity, fortitude, any you choose, and sense them working within you already.

Social thought has grown into a kind of virus, a cult of cool that has seized onto a belief and holds it as prime law. Appearance is paramount, money its dead sister, and this cult worships them as its patron saints. Think on that which is valuable to you long enough so that it truly becomes what is valuable to you. Compassion will prove itself to you if given the chance. A wholesome, healthy body will as well. Any direction that calls, that rings with a lasting resonance, could very well be your direction whispering its way to you now.