The Integral Mind Pligrim's Journal

10 Excellent Meditation tips from Goodlifezen.com

2011-02-22T06:48:00.000-08:00

Why meditate? On one level, meditation is a tool. It can help combat stress, fosters physical health, helps with chronic pain, can make you sleep better, feel happier, be more peaceful, as well as be present. But on a deeper level, meditation is a doorway into the unknown. It can help us get a sense of the mystery of who we are.

When you start meditating, you will notice how unruly the mind is. I remember being quite shocked by this! I noticed that my mind was all over the place. Profound thoughts about my past or future jostled with mundane thought clips about what groceries I needed to buy. Some time afterwards I would come too and notice that I had spend 15 minutes running a painful memory over and over. It was like sitting in a crazy cinema!

So, if you’re starting out with meditation, please don’t beat yourself up about your wild mind. It is a natural condition. In time you will learn to work kindly with the barrage of thoughts and you will some clarity and peacefulness.

Here are some simple tips on how to start meditating. Maybe those of you who already practise meditation could please add your comments of what has worked for you.
.

1. posture

Whether you sit on a chair or cross-legged on the floor, make sure that your spine is upright with head up. If you are slumped your mind will drift. Mind and body are intertwined. If your body is well-balanced, your mind will also be in balance. To straighten up, imagine that your head is touching the sky.

2. eyes

Try and keep you eyes open. Open eyes allow you to be more present. Just lower your eyes and let your gaze be sort. If you close your eyes you will be more likely to drift away on thoughts and stories. However, it’s important to do what is comfortable for you. Some people find closing their eyes much more effective. It’s good to experiment and see what feels best for you.

2. focus

In ordinary consciousness we are hardly ever present. For example, sometimes we drive the car on autopilot while being preoccupied with thoughts. Suddenly we arrive at our destination and don’t remember anything about the drive!

So, meditation is a wonderful way of waking up to our life. Otherwise we miss most of our experiences because we are somewhere else in our mind! Let’s take a look at what focus is. In ordinary life, we tend to equate focus with concentration. That’s like using the mind like a concentrated beam of light. But in meditation, that kind of mind isn’t helpful. It’s too sharp and edgy. To focus in meditation means to pay soft attention to whatever you place in the centre of awareness. I suggest using the breath as a focus. It’s like a natural door that connects ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. Zen Master Toni Packer says:

Attention comes from nowhere. It has no cause. It belongs to no one

3. the breath

Paying attention to the breath is a great way to anchor yourself in the present moment.
Notice your breath streaming in and out. There’s no need to regulate the breath – just let it be natural.

4. counting you breath

If you are having difficulties settling, you can try counting the breath – which is an ancient meditation practice. On your outbreath, silently count “one”, then “two”, and up to “four”. Then return to “one”. Whenever you notice your thoughts have strayed far away or you find yourself counting “thirtythree”, simply return to “one”. In this way, “one” is like coming home to the present moment. It’s good to return without a backward glance.

5. thoughts

When you notice thoughts, gently let them go by returning yous focus to the breath. Don’t try and stop thoughts; this will just make you feel agitated. Imagine that they are unwelcome visitors at your door: acknowledge their presence and politely ask them to leave. Then shine the soft light of your attention on your breath.

6. emotions

It’s difficult to settle into meditation if you are struggling with strong emotions. This is because some emotions tend to breed stories in the mind. Especially anger, shame and fear create stories that repeat over and over in the mind. Anger and shame make us keep looking at past events of the past. Fear looks at the future with stories that start with, “What if…”

The way to deal with strong emotions in meditation is to focus on the body feelings that accompany the emotion. For example, this could be the tight band of fear around the chest or the hot roiling of anger in the belly. Let go of the stories and refocus on your body. In this way you are honouring your emotions but not becoming entangled in stories.

7. silence

Silence is healing. I know that there are is a lot of ‘meditation music’ around, but nothing beats simple silence. Otherwise the music or sounds on the tape just drown out the chatter in your mind. When we sit in silence we actually get to experience what our mind is doing. There is steadiness and calmness that comes from sitting in silence. In time outer and inner silence meet and you come to rest in the moment.

8. length

Start with 10 minutes and only sit longer if you feel that that is too short. Don’t force yourself to meditate longer if you are not ready to do that. In time you might like to extend your meditation to 25 minutes. That’s a length that allows you to settle your mind without causing too much stress on your body. Most importantly, shrug off any ‘shoulds’. Some people enjoy sitting for an hour at a time. Others find that they can’t sit longer than 10 minutes. Do what feels right for you!

9. place

It’s lovely to create a special place to sit. You can even make a shrine or an altar that you can face when you sit in meditation. You might like to place a candle on your altar and objects that have meaning to you. It’s lovely to find objects for your altar as you walk. Maybe you find stones, or seashells, or flowers that speak to you.

10. enjoyment

Most of all it’s important to enjoy meditation. You might like to try sitting with a hint of a smile. Be kind to yourself. Start sitting just a little each day. It’s helpful to establish a daily habit.

great song

2011-02-21T18:26:00.000-08:00

Eddie Vedder Jack Johnson Constellations by Eddie Vedder & Jack Johnson

More Eddie Vedder & Jack Johnson music on iLike

Translations of Godly Experiences

2011-02-11T20:07:00.000-08:00

And so it seems that a good many feel they understand their experiences, that these things are not themselves but instead gifts from outside of themselves. And I would say that this is a simple matter to clarify. We are all looking through binoculars fashioned from social and cultural ideas and influences. And even though our direct experiences are the exact same, archetypically, as those of all other cultures, we all translate these experiences through the filter of whatever cultural stories and beliefs exist in our immediate social and cultural environment that are there prior to our own birth or entry into these environments. This is how we know these ideas are false, because they did not originate from the kingdome of heaven which is within. We are used to accepting ideas from without, but that is all illusion. There is nothing you can perceive that isn't translated into your own individual understanding and turned into a personal picture of "what it means." Therefore, it's all you anyhow, so why not forget the cultural ideas of divinity, faith, love, evil, etc, and look at that which looks?

Rarely do we look at that which is doing the looking? Can you even claim such a job? Are YOU the looker? Are YOU the knower? Well, if YOU are so smart and all-knowing, then explain to me how all of your trillions of cells and atoms and molecules are communicating and functioning and regenerating and forming the breathing lungs or the filtering liver or the cleansing bladder, or the electrically communicating nervous system. If you are the knower, then please, explaine how all of this works, how it developed, and how it harmoniously perpetuates.

The ego is a sometimes subtle arising factor. but if you ask the ego an intelligent question like, "How did the body develop and create an eyeball that can take in and translate to the brain not only light but also distance and color and texture and depth," your small self will be as stumped as it eternally and naturally is if you ask it, "Who or what am I really?"

feelings and inclinations

2011-02-11T19:33:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I pop out of human life and become all life, or rather I recognize the already present underlying reality, and by recognize I mean I simply am it. And then there are times when I am fully in body and become an individual ready and desiring to share and connect. The latter is rarer for me. I have people I don't know email me sometimes, and I don't respond because I've never met them. Not to mention, the majority of these people are still attached to ideas and beliefs, in some way, that did not originate within their own experience. Thus, they are not Christ or Buddha-like, and therefore not free and have nothing to do with me. I am love, or freedom, or what have you. Best to say, I AM THAT? This is the best way to assert the final, beginning, and all-time truth, it appears. THAT is what is beyond all ideas and thoughts and stories and stupid creations of minds. Nothing is a big deal. In order for something to be a big deal there would have to be something else to compare it to. But, alas, there is only one. So how can anything be a big deal when there is no small deal? There is only THE deal, nothing possibly more. And the Self is this deal.

It's not a bad deal. It's not a good deal either. It's the only deal because it IS, and there is nothing else.

Yet, there is evolution. This means that the deal evolves. it goes from a Berlin, Germany as a headquarters for mass murder to an epicenter of fine art and modern creation. And whereas to evolve from a fish to a human may take approximately a couple billion years, to evolve from an ignorant mass murdering people to an artistically creative and peaceful people appears to only take 30 to 40 years. So, like an acquaintance once said, "Things are speeding up." At least when it comes to the only deal's evolution, anyhow. And we can wonder if moving toward greater peace and relative safety and creativity is considered an upward and more beneficial movement. And I would say yes because the individual who has evolved can disappear any moment in place of becoming the all. and therefore this individual is aligned with what benefits the whole and what insures survival for the many rather than simply focusing on the small and insignificant self.

The Way Toward Freedom

2011-02-02T20:35:00.000-08:00

Let the thunder echo and the heavy beads fall. This Universe is, and what small part cannot accept it all?

Total acceptance of what arises is a practice for those working toward enlightened realization.

Now, the habit is to define and point out what is "bad," which is not only always an opinion, but truly always a way for ego to assert itself. and since ego is an illusion and not the real self, then all action stems from insecurity at the innate understanding that the true self is not really known, and identification has directed itself toward a false and unstable idea rather than the truth. And a cornered tiger will bite your ass!

They say our generation has lost the tendency to question. But even if we questioned the inequalities and misuse of power like the greats who came before us, we would still be counted as the rarest if we questioned to the core, if we questioned who or what the questioner is. Is there even such a thing? Who among us is willing to ask such a thing. "I think, therefore I am." This is the current general maxim. But what is this "I" we seem to know that we are? I say it's flat out bullshit. Complete illusion. At least the way we are seeing it. In my opinion, as much as the universe works for diversity, that which is the totality is one and undifferentiated, and therefore pure awareness, which is behind all eyes and ideas, is one current, one force, one in general. You are me and I am you, like the Beatles were saying. Duh!

We are beyond what is happening or what actions are occurring. We are not the body or its actions. How strange of a thought. But where is this eternal freedom that Jesus and Buddha and all enlightened beings spoke of? All I'm saying is simply this, that all life is impermanent. But the only thing that can see impermanence is an eternal presence that is beyond the opposites and therefore able to see and perceive these opposites. The sky is untouched by the clouds. Space untouched by swinging planets.

There is only one current flowing through the colorful Christmas tree lights. And even though there appears to be many differing colors of light bulbs, in truth there is only one current of life. We call it life. And as Nisargadatta said, "Thou art That."

Dreams and reflections

2011-01-26T21:57:00.000-08:00

How can the eyeball see itself? How can the tooth bite itself? How can the hand grasp itself?

How can the hand own a finger? How can the finger own a nail? How can my one-self own any body?

Who is it that has claimed these thoughts? Who claims to be the claimer? And who claims to be the claimer of claims?

Like infinity in two facing mirrors, my mind is infinite illusion. Illusion arises within space. Pure awareness is who I am. Pure awareness is all there ever really is. Everything else is merely its reflection. Emptiness is form, form is emptiness.

The play of Lila is a dance which dances upon itself. There truly is only one. And in the end, our stories were only dreams.

Been on a whirlwind

2010-12-14T23:41:00.000-08:00

An achieved balance of being in the varying changes that is the very surrounding condition of stillness and non-judging. Been totally present and observing and true and detached. Content lick a cat on a window sill.

I write insights and appreciative observations when I'm alone. Usually in my notebook. I'd like to write them here someday, but the task is challenging due to my only having computer access with an iPad, and the keyboard is difficult for typing.

Been practicing accepting everyone. And that includes accepting myself when I'm not being accepting. Sometimes our aversions are protective instincts that keep us away from the wrong people. That's a fact. So even non-acceptance has it's place. It's not acceptable to rape children. Total acceptance is big enough to accept non-acceptance and see where it in fact does have its place. If someone's around and they are behaving with little conscious grounding, move away from them, if you feel the inclination. You needn't waste time in the center of war. Let these over thinkers and overly emotional to themselves, for solitude only holds the answer to what ails them.

Most important is total acceptance. Moving away is not a judgment. It is a right discernment. I think so many people misunderstand the wisdom teachings and attempt to hang around "the least of us." But we are more effective when we become still and a force to be gravitated around. This force can never be cultivated by attempting to blend in with the selfish or the highly ego-centered. We do not judge others for being at a level of development we ourselves passed through in some way earlier in our lives. but we do not decide to attach to these people. We all seek like-minded individuals to spend our time with and relate to. And this does not contradict the statement that we are all one.

I think right now that this is all just me wanting to write, with nothing really needing to be said. Rambling, really. Peace

?

2010-11-07T07:23:00.000-08:00

do not hold on to this world. It will only be more sad if you do. It's all here inside. The game of Self-forgetting is over. When you are nothing, you have found nothing. You have everything as always. You are everything for the whole world. the saint. the sage. Always will there be a home for you. For you are a home to all. Not knowing is.

People are inherently good...

2010-11-03T16:20:00.000-07:00

People are inherently good. We are beyond good and evil. You can only express your true nature when you become identified with it.

It isn't a matter of TRYING to be good. Trying to be something is a game of pretend. We are after reality, not fakery. Observation of the inner world, this is being the true self. The true self is akin to silence, to stillness. All that dances on that stage could never be real, only pretend. The stage remains after each performance has past. Be the stage.

Observation is the opposite of things observed. When you listen, you are the listening. The thoughts being listened to are therefore not you. When you see without judgment or labeling, you are the seeing, and the negatives and positives are simply phenomenon squinted at through the telescope of peaceful ever-present awareness. The more this practice occurs, the more powerful the telescope becomes. And the further away the phenomenon obseved becomes.

Alone in that isolation, a star is born. Too close to the phenomenon, and the flame is never lit. Awakening is forgetting. Enlightenment is a retreat into the darkness. When all that remains is awareness, there is only light.

Our journeys are for ourselves only. Yet we are the world. Let others make their choices. Choose practice......awareness practice. It is best for everyone. When you come to see this as true, you have reached the other side of the mountain, and there is no turning back.

Wisdom cannot be unlearned. Even repeated mistakes are achieved by a much wiser person. And to the degree we can accept our mistakes without judgment or mental unforgetting clinging, we find they occur less and less frequently.

We are flawed from the outset. But perfection is made-up of mistakes. One who sees misfortune as the greatest blessing is standing on the edge of eternal bliss.

Were we to forget the university degrees, the fame, the fortune, just this wisdom insures inevitable success and happiness. Life isn't easy or hard. It is the mind that is easy and hard. Life flows effortlessly, with or without opinions.

Egos and Loops

2010-11-01T18:11:00.000-07:00

Man my ego throws me for a loop sometimes. We ask, "Why can't life be easier?" But life is life with no complaints when thinking isn't a part of the picture. No matter how hard I think about an ideal life scene for my future, my understanding is that it will never bring anything remotely close to an ultimate satisfaction.

What is lasting happiness really like? Buddhists all agree it's a worthwhile subject for consideration. Maybe you simply can't imagine it. maybe it's nothing more than experience that can never be echoed in a thought. Maybe lasting happiness is not what life is about. If life ever found contentment in the past, however could we and all the flowers and dolphins have evolved into what we are now? maybe discontent insures continuous change, continuous growth and more and more creative and genius expression of life's biological and intelligent possibilities.

No matter what we love in this life, it will all die. No getting around that. I cannot think of one thing that I love that will not eventually disappear from this Universe forever.

Days and days later

2010-10-27T15:02:00.000-07:00

I'm in Wickenburg, Arizona, practicing awareness. I haven't done sitting meditation in awhile. It's necessary.

The INS and outs of our experience, the retreating inward and the relaxing outward, it's a delicate balance requiring a listening to my own body. It knows when solitude is best. And I've learned to listen.

Lots of neat people here at the ranch this year. All of them perfect.

Goals: the goalless goal, of course. But my aging body-mind settles and desires secure sanctuary. Property. I've found several affordable options for owning property in Alaska, Canada, Missouri and Oregon. Alaska and Canada for the more remote and deeper inward exploration. I've also considered a work exchange at a Buddhist center in trade for stay in a secluded hermitage and periodic guidance from an experienced teacher.

Central America taught me a lot. It was a great centering experience. I'm far more conscious of the feelings of others, and I work with peace in mind and heart.

Considering future plans and remaining present is a delicate balance. Still unlearning, as always.

The Current Revolution

2010-09-12T21:59:00.000-07:00

I am astounded! the more research I do on robotics for my current writing project, the more astounded I become. People have no idea what is on the way when it comes to robotic technolegy and even wirelessly transported electricity. Holy shit!

In my understanding, the greatest gift toward the peace countless individuals have prayed and yearned for for the last few thousand years has been the idea of aliens coming to Earth to offer us a higher and more developed perspective of understanding of the existential predicament. This idea is only about fifty or so years-old. But since we have no control over whether or not that happens, it's quite perfect, in my opinion, that we instead move toward the creation of robots and robotics as a way of gaining an objective outside perspective of what it is exactly that we in fact ARE. Imagine being able to ask an autonomous being endowed with self-awareness on par and even exceeding that of human intelligence, "What is existence?" Even the scientists focused on creating touch sensitive skin for the coming robots are really having a gander at the innate abilities of the human being and other wonderously designed animals. But "designed" is merely another way of saying 'the way things are,' as I speak the term. I do not believe in a God like the ancients invented. I believe they were on to something, but the tendency was to externalize rather than awaken to existence as the very oneness and "God" imagined and projected. And, by the way, there are the few who will fear such things like robotic creation. But There really is no need. Fear has never been useful, ideologically speaking. How much benefit did fear give in terms of SARS, Y2K, The Red Scare of Communism, etc?

Either way, this research is having a massive impact on me and I know that my trilogy will be a beacon as well as an historically significant introduction to the implications of the coming robotic age following quite quickly this information age. Thankfully, the information age and the robotic age benefit organic life and the sustainability of our planet more so than the destruction, as well as serving spiritual enlightenment and the awakening of the masses. we can count ourselves quite fortunate that optimism, as it turns out, is more of a realist position of thought than pessimism. People rarely realize that the Earth heals itself like the human body. Whatever damage we worker ants can do to this mound, it will long out-last our species. We cannot rid the Earth of water. We can merely pollute it. But all of nature showers itself constantly like a self-licking cat. This oil spill in the gulf will clean itself up in less than a decade. That's just how nature rolls.

I think there is value in the thought, concept, and idea that we as humans are destroying the planet beyond repair. But for those who truly suffer at the realization of the destruction, thankfully, there is some respite, if one would wish for it, in the noticing of the inevitable healing of the planet and the insignificance of the human species in its ability to destroy.

We really do face a coming world that ensures world peace and the guidance toward world and internal peace. Even the flaws of capitalism with it's lack of consideration for others as ends in themselves will be revealed for what it is in the coming peaceful and gradual revolution. There will not be a war fought for this development. This current evolutionary movement is as we all would have wished: completely peaceful. I'm so excited for the world, for all of us. To be able to experience and see world peace within our lifetime, what a gift indeed. And I do consider myself fortunate to have seen the inevitability of this reality for the last few years. It's been the kind of gift that makes bodily death no big deal. Loving the children always....

Living and Dying

2010-09-08T19:31:00.000-07:00

Infinite forms arising and fading,
Diving into death purposefully,
True spirituality is suicidal,
The illusion of togetherness supporting the false ego replaced with true aloneness as the one Self behind all eyes,
Breaking the rules with knowledge of rulelessness,
A complete conundrum to the illusions who have not committed suicide yet on this spiritual realization ride,
Who knew,that complete transcendence wasn't a climb or a movement but a stillness and a release, a remaining, an abiding,
The true sage is wiling to leave it all behind, to sit or stand alone,
Only ego, illusion itself, craves.

Trouble Always comes in groups

2010-09-07T19:04:00.000-07:00

It's apparent from history's examples that trouble and conflict stems from the attempt to put many onto a single path, rather than realizing that there are infinite paths. Look at western religion in general. Christianity, Islamic religion, Judaism, these are simply manifestations at attempted cultural ethnocentric glueing, rather than encouragement for the individual to seek within fore the key to the door of true freedom, liberation, and eternal life.

A guru or teacher is simply there to awaken the teacher within, and nothing more. this shouldn't take too much time. It can be summed-up in a few days or even hours at times. To attempt to make more of it by the establishment of a religion or system of belief is to forget what true liberation and the essence of spirituality or realization is all about in the first place. This is the irony of religion.

Never trust seminars and harems of group leaders and their groups. The bravest thing you can ever do is stand on your own. Therefore, this is the true path, for we die alone, and to stand alone is to face and trancpscend death while living, which is the true salvation and liberation spoken of before Buddha and Jesus were made into "religious figures" as interpreted by the majority who were unenlightened.

This Romantic Life

2010-09-07T15:57:00.000-07:00

The romantic scenario of the artist and his adventures in day to day living and creation, this has appealed to me for quite some time. Particularly the beatnik and, more so, the lost generation of writers. Hemingway in a far away continent, a different culture, a zest for adventure and experiencing the new and novel. The days spent in many a cafe writing, and taking time for meals and drink. What's the writer trying to say by showing not telling?

My current schedule is as follows:
1. Wake, stretch, shower, eat a local Costa Rican banana, and throw away last night's garbage.

2. Head out for coffee or tea at a cafe where 4 hours or so are spent on practicing and learning more about the art of fiction writing, as well as working primarily on the construction of my novel, graphic novel, film, Star Wars-like enterprise.

3. Around 5pm or so, my stomach reminds me of food, and I relocate to a restaurant bar that provides wifi. Instead of eating, I drink 3 or 4 beers, usually a Costa Rican brew called 'Bavaria Dark.'

NOTE: My Internet research and info gathering has to do with 4 predominant subjects:
#1- travel info for hotels, transportation, and costs for my next movement within Costa Rica and the planning of my overland journey north through Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvadore, Guatemala, Mexico, and to Arizona, where I'll be spending October thru early May working as a waiter/bartender for another season with Rancho de Los Caballeros, a ranch resort I worked for last spring.
#2- (and these are in no particular order by the way) Guitar scales, strumming and finger picking techniques, and guitar theory.
#3- Nonduality and enlightenment, especially that propounded by Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta.
#4- Writing and storytelling technique and structure.

4. Eventually the hunger gets to me and I order a meal, usually to go. I head home to the hotel and eat while watching films, documentaries, shows, or whatever on my netflix account on my iPad.

The rest of the day is filled up with guitar playing, exercise, meditation, and insight gathering thru contemplation and deep existential consideration.

I call all of this my romantic life.

Today I woke-up and thought, "I've been alive for 33 years now. I'll spend the next 33 years focussing on guitar, realization, and writing. There's a lot you can learn in 33 years. A university degree is earned in 4 years, 2 of which are spent predominantly on the subject of specialty. So if two years is enough for learning a subject, then 33 years is plenty of time to master 3 subjects.

The way I have it figured is as such: I want to experience ego death. I also want to be a vehicle for the dharma and create well- told stories for the dissemination of wisdom for my human family and our collective evolution, as well as the assistance in the spiritual quest of the lone seeker of truh and liberation. And lastly, I enjoy greatly the transcendent rapture of being lost in the jamming of a song with my guitar, especially when singing. So these three subjects of focus for the next 33 years cater to my fundamental natural interests most. Seems like a wise plan.

Feels good to lay it out in my journal and leave it here out of mind.

Six countries late....

2010-09-04T18:30:00.000-07:00

Chilling in Costa Rica for the last month or so. Went to Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvadore, Honduras, Nicaragua, and am now here in Costa Rica. I've been redefining the term "taking it easy."

I've had some deep spiritual insights, as well as having glimsed where my future lay. I will be ending up in a monk's life. The realization is that there is no self. Life is inherently disatisfactory. The search for satisfaction is always led on by the illusion of self, the individual idea of a separately existing entity that doesn't really exist upon the deepest and most honest investigation. If there is a dream of what will bring happiness, there is the illusion doing the claiming of the dream. To say, "This will make me happy," is to say "There is a 'me.'"

When we think about the origin of the existential vehicle of this current body, we see only a universe that forms itself varryingly in harmony with itself as part and simultaneous whole. That which would claim existence has no memory of these origins spoken of herein. True Nature is prior to the I thought and it's problematic reflections called 'psychology.'

There really is no self. The most ridiculous thing in all the universe is attempting to satisfy a body-mind. It is merely a way of strengthening the apparent existence of what has absolutely none. This is why selfless serves is a prescription for the malady of illusory hijacking. One asks, then, "who is it that decides to stop this madness and practice awakening?" And the answer is, it is both the illusion and the totality at once in agreement. How can this be? Give it sime focus and a try and find out.

.........

It rains every single day here in Monteverde, Costa Rica. This rainforest is also called a "cloud forest," for this monkey, sloth, and jaguar filled jungle resides in and above the clouds, making it a very special place. tonight's lightning was very loud and close. Regea music plays in this local bar as the disco light sprinkles the bar, walls, and all directions.

People smoke in these central American bars. But it doesn't bother me. I hypnotized myself out of being a smoker a few months back. Spent four one hour hypo-therapy sessions getting to the heart of the habit and replacing the habit with a dofferent and healthier image. It showed me the power of the uninhibited and direct sub-conscious. It speaks truth and wisdom without trouble. relaxation is the way toward the uninhibited and wise. I'm afraid the writing is destined to be boring at present.

on an individual's note

2010-07-28T22:49:00.002-07:00

so, I'm doing a double team of therapy. As much as the months alone in meditation for the last 5 years has been, the psychology is still there. so I decided to get with two therapists at once. Which has been way cool.

One is a hypnotherapist, which is nothing like what we usually think about when it comes to hypnotism. It's someone helping you to relax into the same deep state as meditation, and you are completely conscious of the whole process. They lead you into a deep state of relaxation that is the same as that achieved or relaxed into as meditation. In this place all of your truths are available and spoken without the inhibition of the conscious mind, which sometimes is defensive and protective of your truth. The cool thing about getting into relaxation of the conscious mind is that all that you need to work on, all that you are really concerned about and all that is needing to be dealt with and talked about comes out freely without a second thought or confusion. It's pretty neat.

This therapist i work with deals with the hardwiring of the brain and the repetitive tapes or recordings that play again and again within the mind, based on ideas that are simply ideas about life, self, and reality, that may not be absolutely true. We go in, find the tapes, and change them. We make new ones that are powerful, new, healthy, successful, harmonious, beneficial for all life.

I won't say what the zen guy and I actually talk about. But it's deep and accessible by meditation alone. He validates my knowingness. We all need that. The combination is superb.

Mostly, with this therapy I don't feel so alone.

My mother and father both committed suicide. My mother was a prostitute and drug dealer and addict. My step father and mother beat me daily and called me stupid and other degrading things my whole upbringing until I was thirteen, then she kicked me out of the house. This all was a challenge for me, and it stuck with me in many ways. But I'm freeing myself of this individual psychology stuff. It's neat.

on an individual's note

2010-07-28T22:49:00.001-07:00

started it...

2010-07-28T22:06:00.000-07:00

started working on the robot story, the one that's been in development for about 7 years or so. This story is the shit! I've been just doing journal entries from the robot, the lead character. But it's been good and deep. And it's all most likely not going into the book/script, but it's a good start for the actual writing. I think the therapy has allowed for this next step to occur. It's helped facilitate it.

Today I made over 400 dollars at work. It was a regular day, not much extra work put out, but the guests seem to love me and want to give me money. I'm not arguing, and I'm definitely not expecting, but it's nice.

Money is no big deal. And because I know that, it flows to me easily. And everyone has this gift. Perhaps it's way more difficult for people in countries that are starving. I can't explain that. They say we have other lives before coming here and that some learn and create more comfortable lives. But in my opinion the difficulty and suffering teaches you more, so maybe the starving are the wisest. Either way, this is all based on ideas from ancient societies, and it's probably incorrect or incomplete. There is definitely and awareness in me that is quite aware of how to survive and live the life of luxury and comfort and plentitude without much actual stress, but it took awhile to get here, a lot of learning. And I am in a country in which all of this is possible. I work half the year and take the other half off to travel, write, center, and grow. But the growing happens all year long. Nothing special. All of us have this opportunity to grow, which is greater than making 400 dollars a day, if you ask me.

Growth and development is way more of value than a bazillion diamonds.

But I'm still astounded sometimes, that I'm making as much as a lawyer who has spent his life in school. My school is the school of life, and it has taught me where to go, and also where to follow, which is of course the intuition, which when following is like not knowing a single thing about where you are going. And you just follow it, this inclination, having know idea where it will lead. And where you are is always perfect. It's neat. And I've been giving back, because I feel so blessed and confused at why most others can't always find such luck and destiny in their lives. so I've been donating a lot lately, more than ever, to differing charities and fundraisers for the building of hospitals that donate instead of charge, and the like. It's nice knowing that your work and funds are going into established places that help save lives. How great such a knowingness is. Who needs the approval of others? I haven't told a soul about all of the philanthropy, but I know, and it's way cool. I dig it.

My zen training has been predominantly a readying for death, which is a dying while alive, a letting go of the idea of self. And with it comes a greater and greater willingness to share and give. If there is no real me, as defined by my own ideas of me and other people's ideas of me, then there is only this lovely Universe and the only thing I am left with to say that I am is life itself, which isn't confined to any individual or small organism. It permeates the entirety of this vast Universe. Therefore, I am released from death. I am free. I am life's expression, in every organism, on every planet, all around this Universe. I am the Universe, and it is learning more about itself more and more with time.

It's weird having so much access to the deeper truth constantly. I find myself alone. There are few on this Earth who see. Actually, there are millions, but for some reason the Universe has dispersed us in such a way that we rarely meet each other unless we are specifically working toward change. If that is the case, then we meet. But some of us are existing among the regulars in order to open them up to their own knowingness, which is ever present minus the ideas.

The thing is, I'm not special. How can anything be a big deal when there is really only one deal? Nobody is above or below. But there is a harmony more accessible by those who realize the truth. And I'm not talking about the relative truth of cultures and individuals. I'm talking about the experience of knowing yourself as life, the life that is the very same as all the Universe. That's the real truth, the only truth. The rest is a shifting pulsation of this truth. But the core truth is eternal, our actual essence, and the eternity we've all been seeking all along.

I've met and been acquainted with a lot of people lately that have no idea about the experiential 100% knowledge of this. And they are mythic, they are dogmatic in their ideas, ideas gained or picked up from others. And they really think they know, and they try and teach as though they know, try to make themselves appear as teachers. And this is really only for the benefit of their own egos. They are trying to paint a picture of themselves as knowing in order to feel not so unknowing. It's an insecurity issue. It's a competition issue stemming from insecurity. But they will learn, so long as they continue to wonder and question and honestly challenge themselves. If they do not, then they might as well be evangelical christians or mormons, both deserving no capitalization.

It seems imperative....

2010-07-21T21:15:00.000-07:00

It seems imperative to note that there is only one self. There has been the misinformation, the idea that there was an individual doing, working, living, experiencing. But there is really just one Universe. This Universe has a lot of life expression going on, on this Earth and the countless other life-supporting planets around the trillions of stars, within the billions of galaxies. But the many legs of the octopus are really just the octopus, Each leg of the giraffe is really the giraffe. Just because we cannot see the connection, does not mean that the evolved life that has uprooted from the Earth to roam about is separate from existence as the Universe.

We are coming out of and into the Universe. Are we not the Universe? We come out of the Universe like a leaf on a tree, relying on the same laws of physics, constructed of the very same atoms as the sun, moon, Earth, and all the Universe. How can we say we are any different? Isn't this obviously a game of existence itself, this realization of existing that human beings seem to do so well?

There is a thing called "Enlightenment." And this thing, this word, refers to the experience of remembering, awakening to the truths spoken herein and above. To even hear of such a thing insures the quickening of such a thing. It is an inevitability for all life to realize its oneself as this one Universe, experiencing itself from multiple perspectives. What we want is freedom from fear. And the only real fear, all fears being an extension of it, is of death. so let's admit right away that we have created the idea of that which dies and that we might be in essence more and greater than anything that could ever die. We have a tool called the mind, and we can use it to bring us to the freedom of mind, which would be the freedom from all fears.

This is a compassionate Universe that doesn't let you skip a grade in the school of life. If you have an issue that is unresolved, you will attract around you the same types of circumstances and people that will be the best for helping you resolve your issue. This is why some women attract the same type of abusive men sometimes. Or why men attract the same type of women unconsciously looking for abusive men. Both have their issues to look deeper into and learn from on their way toward peace. All patterns, all re-occurrences of troubling things in our lives, as well as positive things, leads us on a journey toward self-realization and the middle-way. That is a magical process. That is how things work. We eventually inquire deeply into such experiences and wonder why these things keep happening as they do, and we realize and grow. This is the mystical nature of existence. And the weird and funny thing about all of this is that existence is already pretty mystical and amazing, but it's even more so with the realization of how it all works.

Remembering Perfection by Forgetting it All

2010-07-21T07:59:00.000-07:00

Do you ever wake-up without a single thought of your life and who or what you are? Isn't it sometimes like you're an innocent little child, stretching, squirming around in your blankets, shuffling your head back and forth on your soft pillow as the blue sky softly touches your skin?

You know those times in life when you have been in the perfect place? When life was just right, and love was there all around and within? I remember being young and innocent, even at age 19, walking on a lightly breezy spring day around a neighborhood with old and well-kept houses. There was a light presence of possibility in the air. A happy inspiration. Not a worry or care in the Universe. Not a fear to be found.

Today is like that. This morning is just like that. And I've realized a way to maintain it. I've realized not only a method of maintaining this light, natural bliss of being, no matter the weather. And more importantly, I realize the utter importance for such a thing, for my own happiness. Happiness is next to Godliness. My own happiness is the greatest gift I can give to the world, be for the world.

since it is the mind that is the cause and root of all suffering, there is a way to undermine the mind. They say expectation is the mother of disappointment. I like this statement because it allows for all misery we experience to be taken immediately responsibility for. It all starts with our own ideas that we carry. WE create a way of thinking the world or circumstances should be. And then our worry, fear, expectations, all of it causes us inward turmoil. Weather or not we get what we want, when we are focused on wanting we are focusing on something other than being. The moment is put out into the future like a carrot on a stick.

But you can play with this. You don't have to be a mere passive player in this game of self-liberation. For instance, when I was in Europe back in 2002, I had a Eurorail pass good for two months of travel on any of the European trains, with the possibility of going to any of the 17 (at the time) European countries at any time I wanted, 24 hours of the day. I had a tentative travel plan, with no set number of days to remain in each city. I met people from all over the world who had ideas about what to do. I went with them to museums, different cities, historical places, etc. I walked and found a park where the Eiffel Tower was, and feeling a bit tired, I laid down and took a nap in the grass where so many others were doing the same. In other words, I freely abandoned my plans by going with the moment, which is far easier to do when you travel, when you wander, whether it be in your own country or around the world.

The cool thing about travel is that no matter how much you read about the places you're going to visit, you will never know a thing about these places really, not until you're there. There is an infinite opportunity to be free of yourself, to let go, to ride the wave of the Universe and be this moment to the fullest. When we are old and dying, it will always be these moments we cherish the most, the moments when we were free of ourselves, free of our idea of ourselves, free of ideas, free of thinking and the stresses of trying to stick to a plan.

In my opinion, all of us want deeply to be free of who we think we are and what we think the world is. some mistakenly call it the death wish, but I call it the ego death wish. We wish to be free of the mind, free of our psychology, free of our personality, free of the stuckness we all feel when we are in the same place, same job, same way of thinking, around the same people, the same culture. We want liberation in the same way that a baby wants to bust out of the womb, or a flower wants to burst out of its seed and fight its way through the dirt and bloom. And the unknown is scary. We sometimes choose temporal distractions and some form of medication rather than setting forth on our journey.

Practice makes perfect. Perfection is made-up of mistakes. A chef practices cooking meals. A marathon runner practices running. And one who would be free of their own suffering, caused by their own thinking mind, would do well to practice throwing themselves into situations where the mind has absolutely no clue about the environment and what is going to happen. This makes traveling to other cultures and lands the most beneficial form of practicing for ego death. Combine it with observation of thoughts, rather than reactions to them, which is what meditation really is, and you've got the makings of an olympic career as a present person living in continual bliss and freedom from unnecessary suffering.

I've noticed how happy others around me are when I'm happy. When I'm not happy, others are denied my happiness, and their own happiness is depleted. The best thing that I can do for al people is be happy, not give them something, or teach them something, but simply be happy and present and free of the habits of reacting to thoughts and frustrating myself over the thoughts of plans and expectations. This method is what works. And from now on, it is my practice.

Confessions

2010-07-18T21:05:00.000-07:00

I psychologically abused my first two girlfriends. I had a meth habit for about 6 months back in 2000. I used my father's side of the family by thinking of them for loans and gifts of money before I recognized their real worth. I held a grudge against my mother until her suicide a few years back. I broke into two houses when I was nineteen and stole some stuff and pawned it to make cash when I was homeless during a Minnesota winter. I faked insanity to get out of the Army back in 1995. I kidnapped a rabbit when I was 8 and took him into the bushes with some other kids and hacked its head off with a hatchet to see what its brain looked like.

I'm a selfish bastard sometimes, which keeps me alone. I've chosen alone to be my lot because I don't want to hurt anyone ever again. I spend most of my free time considering where I'll be or where I will travel, and only sometimes do I do good things like donate to charity or other such things. I am an asshole to the ignorant, pretentious people I meet, rather than understanding them and turning the other cheek. I have it out for the cook at the mansion I work at because he yells at the staff and is an ignorant egomaniac, which is just an excuse for me to attack something, to be in battle, to feel like I'm protecting the weak, to feel like I'm righteous and better then such a "lowly" individual. In truth, he reminds me of my step-dad, and he probably had a hard upbringing.

As wise as I feel myself to be much of the time, truth is I'm an ignorant, egocentric asshole.

I won't mention the good stuff, because that's mine. I don't have to share that stuff. To speak of it would be to muddy it. I like those clear waters. I've saved lives. I've changed them. I've been a mentor. And I like keeping all of these particular instances and memories and exact instances to myself. They allow me to walk through the world with my head held middle. And middle seems to be the place to be. Goldilocks knew what she was doing, as did Buddha. At least I think they did.

I have seen a chinese man

2010-07-11T22:21:00.000-07:00

And this man was old. He sat in deep consideration, pondering the growth of rice and when would be a good time to plant. He sat smoking his pipe, and as the smoke flew past his wrinkled, downward gaze, I realized that "gaze" was too strong of a word to use to refer to such a man who effortlessly lived as he did. We always scoff at the older generations for looking down upon the youth for their foibles and their ignorance. But the truth is that the wise do know much more, they have experienced much more. But the wisest of us are also aware that we may be wrong, even the wisest of us. And therefore, it is easy to tell the difference between a wise person and just simply an old person. And that is whether or not they can accept fully and without judgment or condemnation the younger.

They say a true master is he or she that can easily learn as much from their students and realize their own ignorance repetitively again and again, more and more, forever and ever. This is the definition of being humble. This is the meaning of humility. The weak overcome the hard and strong, so they say. Those who put forth their chests in order to prove their toughness are really the weak. Those who needn't put on such a display are really the strong. This is a universe where everything that seems one way is really the opposite. And therefore, all is actually both. All gives birth to both. All engenders both. All is already unified and one. Tough love is actually gentle. suffering is actually the blessing. Those who look upon their own misfortunes as blessings are actually the wisest among us.

so few will put much thought into all of this "nonsense." But those who do are the top of the one flower that is the totality of the body that is humanity and all of life. The dirt, the stem, the leaves, the space, the air, the water, all are those who never questioned because they were not meant to. The blooming flower at the top is the questioner. And only he or she was meant to shine and display the flowers private parts proudly. It is all one body. But those who sit atop the world's confusion are few and the very goal of all confusion. In other words, it's all meant to be exactly as it is. Those who see that, the only ones who see that, are the blooming flowers of the one-body of existence. They are the only ones endowed with this capability and perspective. And the only requirement for being the bloom of the flower rather than the dirt or the stem is simply wonder.

What a weird day....

2010-07-10T20:19:00.000-07:00

Weird's a weird word to use here. But I woke up after sleeping too long, went to bed at 4AMish, and woke at about noon. My day was completely off. And my tips were less than a hundred bucks because of it. I would look guests in the eyes and try to shine them some happiness, but I could see instantly in their eyes that they weren't buying it, and that they weren't going to stick around and enjoy the atmosphere. It was all because I wasn't on my game. From now on I'll give myself the usual 6 hours of sleep and wake at 9AM. That's when the day goes swimmingly. I do love these people. But when I'm off it is difficult to really shine that truth.

Charlie Zinc has inspired me. He's the vice president of the PGA Golf Tour, and he's really cool. He and his wife are fantastic, loving, giving, and honest. she gave me a printout of a model of human consciousness from a guy I read a long time ago, whom she goes to see speak now and again. They are coming back in september, and I can't wait. Charlie tips me 10 dollars a beer. But I love the two of them for who they are. And the tips thing is really just a reflection of how they are all around.

But what is interesting are the billionaires staying here right now in room 208 and 209 who only tip me a dollar a beer. They have rented rooms here for 45 days straight at a rate of $445 dollars a night. And yet they tip like ghetto trash. It's kind of funny. I'm sure they don't represent all billionaires. In fact, the head shiekh of Dubai stayed here with his entourage last year and his assistant tipped Aaron the general manager, who happened to be sitting at the front desk at the time, $500. so some billionaires are cheap, some giving. Isn't it the same with people from all financial class levels?

Why do I keep meeting women that I would love to be with that happened to be married with kids? They are always conscious chicks with a really stable and centered life. I'm glad I've never slept with someone else's gal. That would be pretty sissy. I already am a sissy in that I am scared to meet someone and fall in love and commit. But I'm not going to totally puss out and sleep with a woman who has a family. Not happenin'. What is it with these hormones and waking up with horniness? What is it with these cuddly initial feelings upon rising in the morning, where I cling to my blanket like a sexy goddess from another world? Wow, being human is weird.

so I'm booked to go to the far east for the winter. 6 months of travel in this appealing region. I'm not really looking for anything. Which means I'll find quite a bit. And this finding will be more of a letting go than a finding. That's how the store goes for we who crave liberation more than anything else, which is another way of saying "We who desire most simply to reconnect with the already present awareness of all that is." It's the greatest gift you can give to the world, letting go of it all and adventuring forth in order to let it all go. To obliterate all previously held onto ideas. This is the greatest gift for a world that is ailing. That's the facts. And to let go of even that idea is possibly the very last thing to let go of.

A sexually romantic relationship

2010-07-08T21:16:00.000-07:00

I've craved. I've yearned. I've hoped. I've attempted to love, but my love is in question. How greatly I've wondered and appreciated existence and this Universe and all that is within it. But can I say I've loved? Why is love so important to the human animal? It doesn't seem to be of concern to a fly or a fish. They rarely dwell on the fact that their mother's weren't there for them when they were young. How real is love beyond our human/animal nature and concerns? Perhaps there is a love higher than that of the animal kingdom. Perhaps there is love and it is this Universe in general. The sun gives us free energy and has done so for almost 5 billion years. The planet gives gravity for all life to remain. space allows us to fill it.

What is love? Beyond the sexual need that propagates our species. What is love? Minus the human species, what is love?

I crave to be known, to be heard, to hear, to stare into deep and longing, beautiful eyes. I ache for human touch. But these longings are products of the mind. Are they really as important as I make them out to be? If I never put my mind on such things, wouldn't I be content without them? I enjoy the taste and smell of good food. I enjoy the scene of a beautiful flower in its surroundings. But do I have to long for these things. Or can I not wait until they come into my world? Can I not be enraptured by my world all the time, without the distraction of thinking there is something more that I would appreciate?

My hormones and chemical make-up strongly attract me to the opposite sex. But my experience and my wisdom attract me to people who are deep and loving. so they both work together to dictate where my love will eventually and essentially go. I will love a woman sexually. But she will be developed and to a level that is wise and challenging and higher. It can't just be any. It has to be that one, that one special someone. And to grow old with someone is definitely an experience not to be taken for granted. Momentary lust is quite blissful. But in the end, it's just as memorable as taking a splinter out of your finger. True love, in the human realm, romantically speaking, is a blessing not to be taken for granted too many times. We all take it for granted in the beginning in some way. But old age insures experiential wisdom. And even if we have to become 40, 50, or 60 and beyond, we can still enjoy a loving sexually romantic relationship with someone, someday, somewhere. I believe that.

But what is love?

Le Existence

2010-06-25T21:50:00.000-07:00

We’re all in weird situations, if you ask me. We all exist. And it’s so very taken for granted. When you really put your mind on it, when you ponder the nature of it all, when you gather your senses and focus your attention, curiosity, and wonder on the fact that YOU exist, that you are here now, reading these words, sitting, laying, breathing, taking in light and viewing with very sensitive eyeballs that secrete salt water to keep them from drying and being harmed by the elements in the air, which also make up your very own body, all of this is astoundingly miraculous.

We are sometimes in a daydream. In fact, most of the time. And this is the predicament of the majority of our contemporaries. How solid is your understanding of the current matter, of the actuality of right now and your place in it? That is the only question. And the happiness we all seek is increased an infinite fold the more we become realized in this particular sense. To put your mind on reality is to make all reality more aware of itself. This increases the happiness factor for the whole Universe, for you are the Universe.

Our individual psychologies are there. And we must arm ourselves, as violent and aggressive as that may sound, with knowledge gained from inward exploration. We must simply wonder, is all. We must wonder about the nature of reality and what is actually going on beyond the genetics we inherited and the cultural and familial indoctrination we’ve received and taken part in. “Beyond the beyond,” as the ancient masters have always described it. Beyond being a male or female. Beyond being an American or an African. Beyond being white, black, pink, grey….. Beyond the small-minded division of Democrat or Republican, Christian or Muslim, Gay or Hetero. What is aware of all of these categorizations? And wouldn’t this “what” be the you that is the essence of all life in general?

It’s weird that the dramas and personal pitfalls of life lead one almost directly to these deeper, truer realizations about the nature and reality of all of this more and more if you make yourself equipped with the digging tool known as curiosity or wonder. Child-like wonder is the saving grace and magic elixir of the soon to be, or quite already, realized human being. And the realized human being is literally the greatest gift to the world that has ever been. It is the magic prayer that has always been prayed for and to, for it is the realization that YOU are God. And therefore, YOU are what the entirety of the planet has prayed to and for since time began. We are all already it. But only the realized can be the change that prayers have always begged and yearned for.

Existence and shit like that.....

2010-06-24T21:34:00.000-07:00

There is the unique self. And his/her goal is the realization that such is not the suchness. The actual essence is only life. Only life lives through this body. That’s the facts. And our ideas of ourselves, our fears of dying, both being locked into each other and the very same, are all the only real struggle in this life. There is the truth, and the non-truth. And one offers enslavement, whereas the other is already present and offers only what has always been there, which is “no loss,” or rather, salvation, or enlightenment. How can you lose what you never had? How can you own what has never had an owner to claim it? Life is existence. And Existence as such, has always existed. God has always been. Or Goddess, if that makes you more comfortable. Either way, the ‘g’ and the ‘o’ and the ‘d’ and the ‘e’ and the ‘s’ have only been around for a couple thousand years at most. They are merely letters. And the ability for the tongue to speak these sounds, for which the letters are meant to symbolically convey, has only been able to do so in the current fashion, for about a hundred thousand years or so, as far as we are currently aware. The writing of which is quite new.

Our ideas of God, Goddess, the meaning of existence, are as new and invented as the story of ‘The matrix,’ by the Watchowski Brothers. Just invented. Seriously, here. That’s the case. But our experience of self and spiritual matters are experienced by all and only expressed by whatever means are culturally available. And we say, “Oh, they are wrong, those Muslims, those Christians, those Maori, those Jewish, those Taoists, those Zen Buddhists,” but we are actually all experiencing the very same thing, which is life. And therefore we are all translating experience differently, is all. And the most ridiculous and tragic and somewhat comedic fact about this whole thing is that we war against each other for the idea that we are the right ones translating and that the other cultures translating are wrong. And the most saddest portion of this reality is that governments and corporations use this misunderstanding of cultural translation by the masses as a way to manipulate the people toward supporting their financial wills and whims.

This is the reality today. But underneath it all is the primary reality, which is that life lives. And it isn’t an individual. It is a force that can never be known to be separate and multitudinous in essence. It is one life. And it is existence, nothing more. So do you see how ridiculous all of these wars today are? And do you also see what an opportunity we have now that life has become aware of this fact through the vehicle that is the human species? I find that particularly amazing and promising as well.

Film shooting

2010-06-20T10:00:00.000-07:00

Been shooting film all day with Mike and Leo. Mike has over a hundred thousand dollars worth of film gear. It's pretty awesome. We worked all day yesterday and today getting shots of the Balance Rock Inn. We laid out a curved track and pushed a dolly with a 30 foot jib mounted on it as we craned up and down like the shot in the beginning of Forest Gump where we follow the feather throughout the scene from above to below. Mike is a big kid, and so is Leo. And come to think about it, so am I.

Mike is an eccentric fellow. He owns this inn and also one down in Florida. And he plays with film as a hobby, but he's very good at it. He went to film school long ago. He's 69 years old and smokes cigars like a chimney and takes about 30 or so different vitamins a day. He likes me a lot, and I like him too. I helped out yesterday on the shoot for only like 4 hours, and I did it just for the fun of it, and he came up to me while I was bar tending last night and threw me a hundred dollar bill. That was an awesome surprise. I made about three hundred and thirty dollars yesterday, all together. since I don't have the money worries at all it's kind of nice and relaxing. I could go out and do whatever, eat wherever, etc. But I like going to the farmers market once a week and spending about ten bucks or so. And it's way healthier. Plus, I don't like getting served food by people. It's weird.

Things that I love: V8 juice, kale, swiss chard, carrots, tomatoes, raw organic egg yolks, tuna, blue-green algae, Life Force multi-vitamins, shrimp scampi, and clam chowder.

Here's a picture of Mike:

Incredible Attractions and safety

2010-06-15T04:54:00.000-07:00

My new keyboard and guitar will be here today and tomorrow. The keyboard first. It's a midi keyboard that works with my software instruments. My music is about to go off the handle!

Met two couples in three days whom I spent two evenings with. Both were fantastic people all around. Both of the women exhibited qualities I would want in a lover/life-mate. And now that I think about it, both of the men exhibited qualities I engender as well, such as being a fighter/protector and a saint. The odd thing is that neither of these couples met each other. They were all guests here at the Inn. Both men work in the medical field involving MRI machines. One works in the science of producing them and the other administers them to kids in a children's hospital. One in Boston, the other in Tampa, Florida.

I saw the sunrise with the younger couple three nights ago. It was gorgeous. We all stayed around the fire pit on the deck talking philosophy and drinking with a couple from Maine, a couple from New Jersey, and each other. The sun rise on the ocean was so romantic. I'm preparing, it would seem, for a relationship. I've definitely not met her yet. Not a soul on this Earth so far has matched me the way it will be, so I know I've not met her yet. But the universe is making it bluntly obvious what's going on right now. I had to spend a few years working out all of my anger and rage first.

speaking of anger and rage, Jessica Gauvreau backed out of her commitment here at the Inn at the last minute a few weeks back after giving her word several times. I was furious because I believe in integrity and hold all people to this level in my circle. Yesterday, however, she showed-up unannounced in my apartment here in Maine after driving 3500 miles or so from san Francisco. I didn't have a clue how to respond. I told her to go and send me an email, which would have been the proper thing to do in the first place, but she's never been that considerate of others. she lives in her own bubble of focus. I'd pretty much written her off because I don't have time to harbor friendships with self-centered people who don't consider others. Like attracts like, and I'm not attracted to her in any way. I wish her the best, but I don't remain in the company of people who let others down and go back on their word. I'm not like those abused girls who hold on to abusers and perpetually date the same type of asshole men again and again. And I'm not like those pussy men who date nothing but bitches who treat them like shit. I have no concern in the world for the thoughts and opinions of others when it comes to loving myself and surrounding myself with top notch people.

Today is sunny and I'm up at 7AM. I usually wake 3 hours later or so. But it's my day off and I'm excited. Yesterday was my day off as well, but it was cloudy and rainy. I rented two films that were weird. One called 'Legion" and the other 'Tenderness.' Tenderness was about a serial killer young man and this girl who wanted him to kill her. The other was a film about God (the outdated mythological Christian idea of God as and angry, jealous dude who sees human beings as his personal play things) getting pissed off at humans and sending his angel to kill a human baby so that the whole world could be destroyed. But another angel rebels and goes to protect the baby so that humanity can have one more chance. They made God look like a complete angry idiot in this film, which could be useful for those still wrestling with the fear of hell and unable to question these ridiculous notions of "God." But it would appear that this will only be understood on that level by the more intellectual people, people who would never watch this film in the first place. I just rented it to see what the world is into these days in the field of apocalypse and mythic religious ideas in film. Not an ounce of this writing was concerned with the ultimate truth of God being simply the manifestation itself, the entirety of all that is and the awareness of its own self behind all life cells and eye balls. But hey, it's Hollywood. And every now and then you get a 'Matrix' or 'I Heart Huckabees.'

Existence has to have an opposite in order for there to be a dance of two as one. This is how things work in the entire manifest universe. And this "something we call nothing," as my Vietnamese friend Quinn Vo called it, is literally the actual essence of our very own one-self. some people become bitter and hang on to pain from the past. "Pain makes you uglier and uglier," as Ken Wilber said, the longer you hold on. But others inquire deeply into it and let it all go, and what remains is a bliss, a bliss that could never have been known without it's initially experienced opposite. When Neo watched the bullets flying toward him in the midst of his enlightenment/self-realization/rebirth/resurrection, he responded without an emotional reaction by lightly lifting his hand and peacefully stopping the bullets as he inquisitively cocked his head and reached out and took one of the still bullets. After meditating and observing and wondering for awhile, this is how one responds to all conditions and occurrences.

Drama, Comedy, Refrigerators, and Bikes

2010-06-11T20:46:00.000-07:00

Listening to Enya's 'A Day Without Rain' right now. I've got all of her stuff. And it's all pretty awesome. scientists have revealed that lesbians have eardrums shaped like a man's. And so they are attracted to a higher pitched human voice, like men. To have a woman sing to you is one of the most blissful experiences for men and lesbians. A lot of gay fearing heterosexual men hate lesbians, and it's probably at least partially because they are so similar to men. You are what you hate, so they say.

There was a report of domestic violence last night. I was working the bar and a lady from room 114 in the carriage house came to the bar and said, "Excuse me, I hate to bother you, but there is a domestic dispute going on right now in the room above ours. I heard them fighting and objects being thrown." And I'm thinking, "Wait a second, I live above 114." so I excused myself from my swiss guests and began walking to the carriage house with the lady. I said, "Don't worry, Miss, I'll talk to the guests," even though I new that they weren't guests and that they were my roommates, two men named Dale and Caesar. "I think it was two men," she warned.

so I got to the apartment upstairs and the two of them were awake and fuming. I'd not seen anger like that since I lived at home with my mother and stepfather back in 1989. Dale was pissed because the phone in his room rang at 1130PM, long after he was asleep for work the next day. But Caesar doesn't go to sleep that early because he works another shift. He and Dale have phones in their rooms that are both hooked-up to the same line. so I was like, "Dale, just unplug your phone when you go to sleep." And I wanted to say, "Caesar, join the twenty-first century and fucking get a cellphone!" But instead I told Caesar that he shouldn't of thrown his phone and that Dale and he need to not get into fights at this place where guests are spending like 500 bucks a night to stay here on the ocean.

It was fucking ridiculous because they are both in their mid-forties. I'm barely to my mid-thirties and I haven't acted like that in ten years. Either way, Aaron, the general manager and son of the owner and really awesome guy said, "I almost fired both of them today." He was serious too. These guys don't have a clue how close they were to being fired today. Claire, Aaron's girlfriend and fellow manager said, "I'm just going to cancel their phone service." I thought that was smart.

I handle my drama differently. For instance, Dale's been eating all my food, thinking it was Caesar's food because he hates him and has no real respect for people in general. And today he used my shower towel. Now, did I go and talk to Dale about it? Did I call him names, piss on his food, or punch him in the face? No. I called the local appliance store and ordered a small fridge for my room and I'm going to go buy a new door lock tomorrow to keep my towel and food from being tampered with. Problem solved, no one hurt, and all is well. It's that easy. Not everyone is conscious. And to expect to be able to communicate with unconscious people is as ridiculous as the behaviors of unconscious people in general.

I also purchased a nice bike today. It will be ready for me to pick-up tomorrow after lunch. I can't wait to bike all over this island starting on Monday when my days off begin. I wonder if the essence of all that is laughs and is aware of how stupid its manifestations act sometimes? Conversely, I wonder if it cries. It must because I AM THAT.

saving squirrels, making money, living well, loving deep

2010-06-09T10:09:00.000-07:00

It's been a few weeks since my last confession. I spilled water on my macbook pro keyboard and now the 's' key and the left shift key do not work. I have to paste and 's' whenever I use a word with 's,' which I'm getting fast at.

I've now moved above into the carriage house above the gym, so I have no excuse to not be working out at least a few times a week. My room is super sweet. I've been pulling down about 4000 bucks a month, free rent, and so I splurged a little and purchased a 32 inch flat screen TV used for 300 bucks, so now I can watch films in style.

The maintenance guy, Ralph, was catching squirrels in order to kill them. so I released every squirrel I saw in the cage each time. He didn't know it was me. Then he cornered a squirrel in the kitchen at the Inn. I walked in and saw him trying to catch it and kill it and so I opened the kitchen door to the outside. He came over to me as if he was about to hit me, and I witnessed myself become very animal like as I threw up my arms, stuck out my chest, and said loudly, "What are you going to do? NOTHING!!!" He became frightened and he backed down. The next day he was very nice to me, which had never been the case before. He told me that he would take the squirrels two miles from the property and release them from now on. I felt this to be a fair deal for the squirrels. I now have great squirrel karma.

Mike, the owner of this inn, is also a filmmaker. He has over 40 thousand dollars worth of filmmaking equipment, and he is going to let me shoot with him in a week. He also said he'd loan me his equipment in Florida, when he returns there to run his in down in st. Augustine for the winter. I had cocktails with him the other night and we talked about old films and the ins and outs of filmmaking. He's one of the nicest, most laid-back people I've ever worked for.

I met two men named Gary and Jin, who have invited me to their home in Boston when the season ends here in October. They both stayed here at the inn. Truly kind and loving individuals. We need more like them on the planet.

I was paying almost four dollars a bundle for kale and chard at the natural foods store. The bundles were small, wilted, and covered in caterpillar poop. However, I went to the farmer's market on sunday morning, which is all organic, and I bought huge fresh bundles of kale and chard for only 2 bucks a bundle, which made me very happy. I went back to the natural foods store and found the guy who buys the vegetables there to tell him about the great kale and chard available for half the price at the farmer's market so that he would have the chance to provide us local shoppers with far better vegetables, and he didn't seem to even care to talk about it. so I'll never buy vegetables from his store again. I will only go there for Annie's Organic Goddess Dressing, which is my absolute favorite, and probably vitamins and the like.

I go to my bank about three times a week to make deposits because of all of this money I'm making. It's nice. I've never been into money. And I'm still not. I think this is why I've never had a problem making it. But my plan is to travel half the year and simply work here running the veranda bar during the summers. The people who drink here never get drunk because they all have class. They simply have a cocktail or two before heading out for dinner. And that's it. so I find this job to be ethical as well as lucrative and fulfilling. For the next five years I'll work half the year and travel the other half, which will be a great education and mind-opening way of life for me. Having lived in 4 countries and traveled to over a dozen has opened me up in ways that words would do little to convey.

All I'm wanting now is a new guitar, a bike, and a midi musical keyboard. That will be the end of my spending. And I'll just keep my things here in my apartment over the winter, thus making summers my art making time.

I watched 'The Painted Veil,' a film based on the book by somerset Maugham, last night, and the line that stuck out the most for me was this: "As if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue." What an epic line!

My cousin Monica is into the whole conspiracy theory, fight the Us government, take down the system, the world is ending stuff right now, which is a precursor to coming to the understanding that it is really self knowledge that is what she wants. We all go through this stuff in one way or another. It's like dancing around the true treasure blindfolded and salivating. But it's interesting to watch. I went through the exact same phase a few years back. And there is a lot of truth to the corporate greed and the power and control game. But you can never change another human being. You can only go within and watch your own blooming.

I'm about to shower and begin a new week of work. should be busy from here on out.

Amazing Life

2010-05-16T20:37:00.000-07:00

It keeps astounding me. Just when you think you're pretty sure about what life is going to be like next, you get blindsided with awesomeness, and I think it has to be in part because of your own attitude toward life.

I'm living in a 400 dollar a night suite on the third floor of the mansion known as the Balance Rock Inn. My view from my window and deck is the Atlantic Ocean. I have a sauna, a massive jacuzzi tub, and a beautiful fireplace with a painting of a sail ship hanging above the mantle. Life is pretty rad!!!

Aaron and Claire, my bosses, are awesome and they love me so much that they stayed at my bar the latest this evening as we all got to know each other. They saw my service with all of the customers today during my first day of work and they both offered me a job this winter season at an inn they both run down in St. Augustine, Florida, one of the most beautiful places on Earth. I love St. Augustine! The two of them are really sweet and were complimenting me so greatly. It's nice to be appreciated.

I asked Aaron if he would hire my friend Jessica Gauvreau because her bosses in California suck and are really mean to her. He said, "Sure and I'll give her free housing." So I told her today and she said she could be out here by next Tuesday. She's going to drive all alone the whole way, more than 3000 miles. And we're both going to be living in the same place. The suite I'm in is only mine for a week or so until the employee house is finished being renovated. It's a three bedroom apartment above the gym here on the property of the Balance Rock Inn. I hope I get to use the gym. So Jess, myself, and one of the cooks will be sharing a kitchen and a bathroom. I'm going to make my room an art space and paint the walls multiple colors and even maybe hire a mural painter. My room will be THE chill art making spot.

Dude, I'm telling you, Aaron and Claire are not my bosses. They are more like my buddies. It's so awesome. And because I have such integrity and workmanship there is no need for them to have to step into the boss role at all, which I think we all prefer. Aaron told me that the house I'm moving into used to be lived in by one of the cooks a few years ago who secretly ran a brothel out of it. That means that some dirty sexual shit happened all over that place. Hilarious. How am I to top that?

Mike, the owner, is fond of smoking cigars constantly all day, while he's watering the lawns, doing construction projects, having drinks at cocktail hour. And so he leaves these humungous cigar butts everywhere. Aaron told me that they had to pull a wall out of an old bathroom to do some pipe work and they found an old cigar butt behind the wall. He said they find them everywhere. I think Mike is Aaron's dad. This whole place it too chill. It's fucking amazing!

Now, Bar Harbor, now that's a whole other story. This place is like Disney Land for adults. It's fucking awesome!!!!!!! I'm in heaven. The girls are all hot and some are from exotic places. Everyone is kind. The restaurants are so amazing. There's Route 66, which has a big yellow car protruding from its roof. They play a lot of Johnny Cash there. I had the lobster feast the other night at Poor Boy's, an old local favorite. I hung out with a lot of beautiful women last night, all from different places. And for some reason, they like me. I was able to get rid of this annoying guy that was bothering them. He couldn't take a hint from these girls. And I met the most beautiful girl from Ireland. She reminded me of a young Meg Ryan. So cute. She said all the Irish guys are dicks and not good to date. I didn't tell her that I'm part Irish.

Anyways, Jessica is on her way out and this is going to be the funnest summer ever! We who work on the island get to kayak for free, we get to go sailing on the sail ships for free, we're in heaven, I'm telling you.

I'll post photos and video once I'm a bit more settled. I have to go buy a bike and a photo camera. Life is just plain old sweet!

Bus from Boston to Bangor

2010-05-14T07:06:00.001-07:00

This bus is awesome. The bus has internet and power for the computer cord. I composed a new song with vocals distributed by my friend, CatSkills: http://www.garageband.com/song?|pe1|S8LTM0LdsaShY1m2a28

I'm pretty stoked on this one. All of my tunes are pretty preliminary. I'm going to do about 20 to 30 total by the end of the summer, and weed them down to about 12 or so for my first real CD. I hope to meet a few other talented artists in Bar Harbor to work with on album art and CD label art and stuff, as well as for collaborations for my music. I'd like to get some live violin and perhaps some cello involved.

It's weird that only a couple of months ago I was living on the Pacific ocean and now I'm living on the Atlantic three thousand miles away after spending two months in the desert. For some reason I avoided traveling the USA because I thought I knew it all, knew enough about it all, etc. Truth is that all places and all people are different, thankfully.

I've thought about the job on the tall ship HMS Bounty, and I'm just not sure I can do 6 months in close quarters with people. That sounds challenging to say the least. Either way, I'm taking a boat to either Europe or the far east, depending on where the tide of Now takes me at the time. I'm probably going to do another season at Rancho de los Caballeros. My room there was perfect for recording live vocals and live guitar. The acoustics were supremely perfect, even with all of the outside noise from others.

It was great seeing all of my aunts and relatives and a few cousins in Phoenix. I wish happiness for all of them. I found out that my sister has been having a difficult time, but nobody knows the details. She stole from me a few months back and I cut off communication for awhile. I don't really care about the money. But the girl is stuck in idealism. She tries to be ghetto gangster and she's got two kids and no business smoking weed all day and night non-stop, all year, all decade. It's ridiculous and the kids deserve better. But I have to accept her as she is. That doesn't mean I have to be dishonest and act as though I approve of her immaturity and lack of integrity. I've spent the last 4 months trying to figure out how to go about contacting her again. I think I'll write a letter. I'll focus on telling her that she is a beautiful being and that we had it rough growing up. I'll tell her that I'll be here for her to talk to, but that she'll need to write me when she's ready. I'll never give her money or deal with her with any sort of financial stuff after the theft. I've given her so much money my whole life, and I'm not here for that. She needs to buck up and take care of herself as a perfectly capable human being, an adult. I can understand this tough love idea, which my Aunt Teresa had to do with me when I was living in Turkey and broke. I was in a difficult spot and my aunt denied me a loan. But I made it. My sister tries to use others, and that's not allowable with me. I won't enable that sort of behavior.

I do miss my nieces though. And I'm going to write my sister and tell her that I would prefer she never let anything come between me and them. She's got a sort of angry mean streak, my sister. It comes from my mom and stepdad. That's Missy's real dad. He's a complete loser asshole who was massively abused when he was young. He's a pervert. But beneath it all he's an innocent beautiful kid, a glorious being, like us all.

I hope to be in a good place inwardly and outwardly for solid filmmaking in the future, not sure when. But my mind is always on stories and images and shots and ways to say things artistically with imagery and dialogue.

I plan on doing some dating this summer. I've come in to myself so much and have a pretty unwavering confidence at this point. But I was thinking about all of this last night and I believe I'll be keeping my eye out for a liberated female who is loving, creative, and has a high ethical quality. A good compliment. I'll probably meet her in the next couple of months. I'm going to start taking yoga again in Bar Harbor. Also going to start jogging and working out again. Ocean air is inspiring.

I still get sad seeing sad people. But it's weird because nobody really has to be sad. That's the weird part. It's their own framework, their own ideas that make them sad. It's so easy to not be sad. You just drop all of your ideas. The sad part is that nobody even has to be sad but they aren't aware of that fact, perhaps. But we all must pass through the dark night to reach the morning light. I suppose that's the case, maybe. Maybe we all carry the heavy load so that we can experience the relief of letting it all go when we've gotten to that destination. Who knows?

Boston, Television, and Spielberg

2010-05-13T14:55:00.000-07:00

I'm in Braintree, a burb outside of Boston. I love the name.

The whole day, pretty much spent watching TV for the first time in literally years. The news is absolutely saturated with terror tactics to keep the American people shaking in fear. It's really obvious and weird. The birds outside are gliding and chirping and I find it all way more interesting that the 3 terror suspects arrested today in Massachusetts, Jersey, and New York. But this one tiny and insignificant story has been literally all that has been focussed on by the news channels. I hope their not gearing the Unites States people up for some other kind of invasion or incursion on our freedom laws again.

I watched the film 'AI" again. I love that film. Spielberg has his freakin' eye on the pulse. He dealt with so many specifically male son and female mother dynamics in this film. I think it's been a great healer for a lot of men, watching it.

I'm about to go to a brewery a few blocks from my hotel for local beers and dinner. Then tomorrow I'll be taking a bus at 10Am from South Station in Boston to Bangor, Maine. I called the lady who runs the shuttle and got her to offer me a ride to Bar Harbor for 25 bucks rather than the usual 45 in exchange for me promoting her services to my clientele this summer. I should arrive in Bar Harbor around 230PM and then I'll be staying the day and night at the hostel there, which is pretty vacant right now since the season is just barely beginning. I'm going to explore the island for a day before going to begin work and moving into my apartment the company is providing on Saturday. I can't wait to paint the walls of my room multi-colored and inspirational.

This summer I plan to create music specifically designed to support revolution and higher thinking/feeling.

There are certain people on Earth who can see, and certain people who cannot. The ones who cannot are limited by themselves without even knowing it. The ones who can see are free and able to do whatever whenever. No limits. Absolutely none. I met a guy on the train who was from this area who wanted to talk to me, but all he could talk about was how to avoid danger and dying. It was weird, so I stopped talking to him. I've never thought like that. I think about how to live, not how not to die. I saw a documentary earlier about the beginning of the existence of the Philadelphia Fliers ice hockey team. One of the players, now old and retired, said, "I always believed that if you keep yourself happy then good and happy things will happen in your life." I think he's right.

Chicago

2010-05-11T17:51:00.000-07:00

Here it is, here I am. Right here in Chicago at Dylan's Tavern and Grill, awaiting my train which leaves from Union Station across the street at 930PM. I have about an hour before I really have to leave. I'm drinking a fine pale ale from Chico, California called Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. I lived in Chico for about 6 years and it's by far my favorite beer. I'm glad they serve it here.

I went to a film, a documentary called 'Babies.' It was fantastic. Babies being born and raised all over the globe in Mongolia, Nambia, San Francisco, and Tokyo. It was cool to see all of this being juxtaposed.

I bought my grandparents a copy of the film 'Avatar.' I think they'll love it.

The eastern side of the United States is so different. I love the difference. It's like going to a whole other country. People aren't as careful around each other here. They are more willing to snap or say whatever, even if it comes from a place of perturbance. I like the honesty.

So I'm off to Boston in an hour. And I'll hang there for a couple of days. Can't wait. I also bought myself a copy of all of the 'Matrix' films and the 'Animatrix.' Sometimes you just gotta treat yourself. Whether it's chocolate, books, or 'The Matrix' films, you just gotta treat yourself.

Travel, be free, it is possible, it is only you holding you back, that's the facts. Two months ago I was in the woods broke. But I never had a single thought that said travel and saving lots of money was impossible. I don't have thoughts like that, never have. And I can't scientifically and matter of factly say that the two, thoughts and reality, are connected, but it truly does appear so. Plus I care not an ounce what others think, since thoughts are nothing but mere clouds and the people who generate them are generally not very inquisitive in the first place. Liberation for all! That's what I say. But do not let a soul try and hinder your freedom.

Train Travelin' the @hole United States

2010-05-10T10:51:00.000-07:00

Sitting here at the Village Coffee Roasters in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This place is a huge brick-walled art gallery with a coffee girl up front who practices the Ukulele when she has no customers. I'm all alone in the gallery part, with silence, peace, warmth, good lighting, and spectacular works lining the walls all around me. I have less than 20 minutes before I'm supposed to head back to the train for departure. We got here about 50 minutes ago. Left yesterday from Rancho de los Cabelleros in Wickenberg after working my last shift as the season ended. Barry gave me a lift to Phoenix and I hungout with my Aunts Monica, Margie, and Mo, and Uncle Wayne, and cousins Monica and Johnny and her husband and child. The child's name is Jackie and she's wonderful. Her husband's name escapes me. But he's Hawaiian. I believe Hawaii will be a stop for me soon enough.

The landscape from Arizona to New Mexico is fucking fantastic. I've seen ancient indian ruins and a gorgeous desert sunrise this morning. This 2,500 mile journey will be taking me through Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Chicago illinois, Indiana, New York, Ohio, and then to Massachusetts where I'll be staying in Boston for a couple of days. I can't wait to see Boston for the first time. Then I'm taking a bus to Bangor, Maine, then a shuttle to Bar Harbor island, where I'll be working until October 31st. My apartment is waiting for me, and I can't wait to turn it into a studio. I'm going to paint the walls of my room and have fun with color.

There's nothing like being free and having tons of money saved. A part of me wants to spend the seven months between October and May traveling, but I may do another season at Ranch de los Caballeros because I was able to save 2 thousand dollars a month working there with free rent and meals. After a year and a half of work I could take three years off to travel. That would be pretty rad!

Well, I must be off. I love being alone with the Universe.

All this Stuff.....

2010-05-04T23:45:00.000-07:00

There's all this stuff that's been going on lately. I dreamt tonight of Christy, my first love. We had a tumultuous relationship. I treated her badly. I wish I could time travel. I watched a video with Stephen Hawking talking about time travel and worm holes. I think that time traveling happens for us all when we are still---an access point to eternity. A reason for the smiling Buddha.

She was painting in the dream. It was a field, a festival. Karisha, a musician I used to know, was there, sitting in the grass, facing Christy as she painted at the center of a watching crowd. She saw me, packed up her paints and photos and left. I ran to find her. She was gone but left the photos she was painting on a table outside the festival. The photos were of she and I making faces that were frustrated and some sexual. I went back to see the painting she was working on. There was an access that I walked through, into the painting. It was a closet. Inside were chalked lines making the room ready for painting, but they were bare and hadn't been painted yet.

My Aunt Teresa, my father's sister, whom I hadn't seen in 11 years or so, came to visit with her new husband, Rich. I met them both for the first time. It was good to meet them. My aunt has trouble letting go of the past. She's still majorly affected by my father's suicide and her entire history. Her own father was abusive and ditched the family when she was young. I found out my mother was a prostitute. I found out that my father had told Teresa that he would take his life, that he was ready to leave the world, and Teresa didn't understand and didn't think anything of it. But when it happened she understood what he was getting at. That whole thing must have been hard. I didn't know him so I can't have the same feeling of loss she and my family must have felt.

Teresa brought photos from my childhood, and photos of my dad. It was as if, for awhile there, that I had no past. And the photos reminded me of a life that was lived, of a child that was always artistic and individual.

There are bugs that come into my room through a tiny hole in the window screen at night. They like to land on my left shoulder and crawl around on my arm and pillow under this light above my head. I let them land in my hand and I throw them up and away and they always fly back. And I find myself just accepting them and being with them, sort of like a family. One is a fluorescent green.

I've been making music. I've been lost in a world of sound and style. I've lived in so many places, countries, states, and cities. And the influence has been filtered into this amalgam of a symphony I hear in my heart and head constantly. I had a clairvoyant teaching me and a few other students in a 6 week course on clairvoyance once stop the class and say, "Look closely at Billy, his soul sings constantly. If you listen closely, look closely at his spirit, you will hear a continuous stream of music." I never put much into it, but the music world I've immersed myself within over the last two weeks has revealed to me his correctness at this pointing out he did with the students.

I collaborated with three artists here at the ranch. The first song was with KC Kiley, the bar manager here at the ranch. He plays an excellent guitar and he dropped by with his new super expensive acoustic he'd just bought. I had the mic set-up and told him to lay down something. Then I had him lay down a lead guitar track over what he'd played. I put it to music, to beats and percussion.

The next song was with a girl here named Cat. She and I had almost had drama with each other. I felt it arising. She had told me on the first day of her working here a few weeks ago that Rui, the general manager, had sexually harassed her. I asked her what he had done and she said something like: "He looked at me weird." I told her that it wasn't sexual harassment. We all know Rui and such things are impossible with him. He's more of a geek. Not that geeks are bad. But the nice guy never gets the girl. Rarely at least. Most guys spend half their lives trying not to treat women like objects and consequently have to treat objects like women, if you get my drift.

So this put me on guard right away with Cat. I though, "Well, since she is always in my space and gets a little tipsy and comes to my room and blurts things out about her falling head over heels for me, this means I must give it space because I'd put out so many blatant signs of not being interested. She would grab my sleeve at work and pull me toward her in order to make me pay attention and lock myself in on her while she was talking. It was a violation of space. So I ignored her for a week and a half. Each time she would come up to me I would walk away. Eventually she got the picture. Three nights ago I went up to her and asked if she would like to talk. She said yes and we went outside to a private location. She said, "I want to thank you. You taught me something without even saying anything. You taught me how to give space." It was really weird. I told her that I felt like a dick but that I refused to get involved in drama, which I felt had the possibility of arising with her. She said that normally she would have gotten into drama with me, but that I made it impossible for her. The right out honesty that we both shared in this conversation was amazing.

So she came by my room that night and I set up the mic and I asked her to lay down some wisdom, because her voice is raspy and semi-sexy, and I knew I could work with it creatively. She read two poems that she had written. I laid the two tracks of her two poems over each other, and the next day I had Charlie, the young busser that works here, say a phrase in Spanish. I told him to say something wise and awesome. He said, "La Viva La Rasa," which means something like "Celebrate life, celebrate the people." I had Cat say a Hawaiian phrase she knew, "Aloha Mahalo." I think it means hello and goodbye and something a bit more that I'm not aware of. I took all of it and put it to new beats and sounds I created with her poetry.

Then KC Kiley dropped by last night and we did a completely different sounding track. I'm still working on this one.

So I finished five songs total, two with Cat, Charlie and KC. The other three are called Revelations 2, Rebelling Against Love, and Lila the Divine Play. I'm fairly satisfied with them. I was lost in musical madness with my synthesizers and software instruments. It was weird being able to hear how all of this music goes together, all of these different styles, these different genres, these different world instruments.

Last night when KC was here, he and his girlfriend were bickering in my room and communicating in a way that was really hard to be around. They have a verbally and sometimes physically abusive relationship. But Erica, KC's girlfriend, is my supervisor, and nobody has ever said anything to either of them about the unhealthy nature of their communication because she, Erica, has a position of power over them. They both say mean things, she especially. And she is super controlling. She showed up drunk last night in my room while KC and I were trying to make art. She came right in and said, "I don't like it. I hate it," referring to the track we'd just created. I ignored her and kept focused on creating music around his guitar tracks. In the background I heard the two of them bickering and talking in a way that reminded me of how mean and low conscious the communication was with my mother and step father when I was a kid. So finally I turned around, stood up, and said, "Listen, I like both of you, I really do, but you both need to get the fuck out of my room. I don't like the way you both communicate with each other. It's mean and unhealthy, lacking in respect and dignity and an appreciation of each other, which is fine, but do it somewhere else. This is my space and you need to get the fuck out now."

They were both utterly shocked. Neither of them could see what I was talking about. They both slowly gathered their things and left. It appears that I was the first to ever bring any of this to their attention directly like that. But I have worked so hard all my life to free myself from abuse and to earn my way in life, to earn a living and have my own space of peace and love, and there is no way I will silently let abuse occur in my presence, especially in my own room.

When I woke up this morning I had a sense that I may have made a mistake, because Erica is my supervisor. A part of me was thinking she would try and be a bit mean to me at work now. I was sitting alone with the general manager, Rui, and I said, "Hey, if I told you something would you promise not to tell anyone." He said "Of course." So I brought up the situation and my slight fear of Erica treating me differently based on what happened the night before. He told me I did the right thing. He said that those two have had so many fights, so many scratches on their faces, so many breakups and get back togethers, and that he was completely aware of it and that I did the right thing because it was my space. He told me not to worry and that if she treats me in any different way that is negative to come to him and he'll take care of it. And just knowing that the head of the company is aware of this and behind me makes me not really worry about such things.

My inner core child self was very happy that I removed the abuse from my room. It was a symbol of a new level of freedom and trust and integrity that I showed to myself by my actions that night. I'm satisfied.

I leave for Bar Harbor, Maine in five days, the 9th of May, Mother's Day. I was going to stop by and see my grandparents, Bob and Sally, in Syracuse, New York on the way. But I decided not too. I want some space and I want to get to Bar Harbor and acclimate before beginning work on the 15th for the summer. My grandmother understood. I told her I wasn't in the mood to come to Syracuse right now, but that I would have way more time after October 31st when the season ends and the Balance Rock Inn closes for the winter. At that point there won't be such a tight timeline. I may go to Thailand after that, thought this company has offered me a guaranteed position here next season. So I may come back because the rent and food are free and I've saved a ton here. I had though that I was only going to make a certain amount of money coming to work here. But it turns out I've made a lot more. So I told Tirsta, the hospitality manager, that I would like to maybe come back, but that I would like to only work for half a season, which she said is okay. I do want to travel and work and do all kinds of stuff. I look forward to taking another yoga class and Spanish lessons in Bar Harbor over the summer. I've felt very handicapped in my communication with the Mexican people here at the ranch who don't speak English. There are so many beautiful, loving, kind, wonderful people here who I've only been able to communicate with with smiles and eyes and only a mild bit of basic Spanish. That won't be the case after my lessons. I may even just buy a series of 'Teach Yourself Spanish' CD's. I learned a lot of Spanish living in the Dominican Republic. But it was only the kind of stuff that's good for survival, not for telling jokes or going deeper in connection with other human beings.

I bought a new video camera. I plan to make some creative visual art soon. Most likely once I'm settled in Bar Harbor. For now, my only productions have been musical. I'm putting together a new album, which I'm going to release at the end of the summer. I've connected with a company that does the printing and duplication and barcoding for store sales. I've also connected with a company that does distribution for independent artists. So I've decided to produce my own album and put it out professionally. I just posted the five songs I completed here in the last couple of weeks: http://www.garageband.com/artist/kudosforchaos

I chose the name 'Kudos for Chaos." Because as scary as most people find the term 'Chaos,' it is responsible for all that we have ever held dear. And 'kudos' means something like 'give praise to.'

It's been an interesting few weeks.

I'm an Ignorant Shit.....

2010-04-27T00:32:00.001-07:00

I don't know nothing;;;;;;;;;;; facts./
;po;

Epic Adventures

2010-04-21T15:43:00.000-07:00

I've fallen in love with several women in the last few weeks. Yesterday I met an artist from Ecuador. She's beautiful. Her and her friend both have crushes on me. And neither seems to be jealous or in competition with the other. Sexual attraction is a very powerful thing. And in the end, it's no big deal.

I saw my Uncle Wayne, Aunt Monica, and Aunt Margie yesterday. We all had dinner in Phoenix and went back to Margie's to talk philosophy for several hours. It was nice seeing all of my family and learning of how conscious they've all gone. I hadn't seen or spoken with any of them in about 10 years; not for any other reason but the fact that none of us kept in touch, we had our lives to live. I wasn't planning to see them all yesterday. I arrived in Phoenix and they all came to mind. So I looked them up and gave a call and asked them all out to dinner. None of them mentioned how all of the sudden me coming and calling and deciding to meet with them was. And the reason is because they know this is how I roll. My uncle Wayne is now retired and he is loving it. He said he will never work for another human being ever again. He always did the factory type of work. I think it always sapped him of spirit, so to speak. But he is free now, and I'm happy for him.

Had a fantastic lunch at the Sheraton Hotel yesterday, a lunch that reminded me that I'll always love being alone. Whomever I dive into a relation ship in the future will have to be healthy enough to be completely okay alone. The rampant neediness I see in the relationship world is immature and destructive. But I was a part of it all when I was 19.

I bought a nice video camera. I also purchased a fine tripod, a new audio recording mic, a couple of different lenses (telephoto and fisheye), and a few books by Wilber, Emerson, Chabon, Crichton, and Eggers.

I'm going to film the employees at the Ranch I work at. They are all characters, complete originals. I'll write a quick controversial short script and see about filming the story before leaving in three weeks. I filmed a chinese girl I met yesterday, and she kept saying, "Stop filming me." But she was so cute and different that I couldn't help it. I compromised and filmed her hands as she played me a song on the piano. I like bright, shinny, moving things, just like any baby.

Why Are We Here?

2010-04-13T22:36:00.000-07:00

What will you answer to this? And what will be the "correct" answer? It appears that a toaster is here to toast. And a table is there to hold things atop it. What are WE doing here? Well, if a toaster is here to toast, and a table is here to hold things atop it, then it's obvious that you are here to do whatever it is that you do. What are you doing? Living is the obvious answer. And wow, could that be all there is to it? That is an interesting question.

But we aren't just living, we're doing something all the time. And I believe that whatever we are doing, besides living, is the purpose of our very existence. Even if what you are doing is the most disharmonious act imaginable, it is your purpose, otherwise it wouldn't be happening. Is there a portion of the Universe that shouldn't be? That's a ridiculous imaginative speculation, in my opinion. As sad as it is that it occurred, Hitler and Nazi Germany were meant to be. Otherwise they wouldn't have been. Serial killers were meant to be, otherwise they wouldn't have been. Do these statements bother you? Well then that is your purpose right at this particular moment, to be bothered. It's all perfection. Nobody wants to be duct taped, tortured, slashed, choked, killed. That would be a terrible and traumatic and truly fucked way to go. But when we who are still alive see or hear about such things, we have the opportunity to become enlightened. That's the weird thing, the fact that the most horrific and terrible truths of life can bring us the Great Realization. But only if we are willing to look into it deeply and not turn away in disgust. What a weird Universe it is indeed.

What are you avoiding most? What do you want most? Do you want sex? Do you want love? Do you want appreciation? Do you want a nice car? Do you want to be respected and loved? Do you want to know the answers to all of the deeper questions? Do you want to have fun and experience as much adventure in life as possible before you up and die, which can happen right now, or a week or year from now? What do you want?

What is your purpose, is a more accurate question. Not what is the purpose of human existence. What are you doing? And what do you want? These will reveal to you your purpose. And if you are not satisfied with the answers, then change the things you want and do. It's that simple. Happiness is recognizing this power you have. It's looking at Earth from the moon's perspective and seeing how small you are and how small all of your imagined problems are. And then you also see your power to change the two fundamentals for happiness, what you do and what you want. Change them and see what happens.

WE are lucky to even exist. And we are very lucky to see that we exist and see that we choose what we do and what we want. WE have always been in complete control this way. And it is really the life force that is in control, the force that causes all flowers to seed, stem, bloom, and wilt. That is the life force, our true nature, and it can choose anytime whatever it decides. So where is the victim here? Where is the victim that countless others always try and show me? Why are you a victim? Do you not have this moment? Are you not the life force, free of a small idea of a past that you carry and assume yourself to be? What do you want? What are you doing right now? This is your purpose. And if you are moving along with wonder, then you are following an endless purpose with a continual propulsion. This can bring a sense of happiness. Are you willing to let go of it all? Are you willing to die right now? Are you willing to give everything up? Are you wiling to leave all of your family, friends, job, school, environment, etc, all behind and move somewhere completely new and start over? Because if you say yes to this question, then you are ready to die. And if you are ready to die, then you are ready to start over. And if you are ready to begin anew in every moment, then you are enlightened and you are guaranteed happiness always, no matter what.

Who Holds their Tongue?

2010-04-12T15:18:00.000-07:00

It's interesting watching myself and others pretending niceness. Nobody wants to be disliked. And in reality it's nice to be nice, even when you don't feel like it. Every moment is gone once it's occurred. How many of us can let it go?

My best moments are usually spent alone. Because people tend to want to talk. Whereas when I'm alone I'm with the Universe, and it's always great. the breeze is now blowing through the tops of the swaying trees, the birds are swinging through the scene, the blue sky has blanketed us all. Nora Jones is singing about a sunrise in a soft, sexy voice. And my head rests on a soft pillow. This moment is perfect. It took fourteen billion years to make it possible. So I feel quite honored as well as obliged to enjoy it.

Here comes Radio Head's song 'Nude,' one of the best songs ever created. My orange towel hangs from a ceiling plant hook in the middle of the room, making you bob and weave as you move about. Deirdra returned my Ken Wilber book, 'Sex, Ecology, Spirituality.' I was going to see about giving it to Paul to read, my boss' boyfriend. He's a cook. He likes philosophy and is willing to admit that he doesn't know shit.

I'm sad that a lot of the young men who work here have planned to join the Marines and Army when they graduate high school. They don't even know anything about what's beyond this tiny town of Wickenburg, Arizona. But in their minds, it's the only way to pay for a college education in America. And it's the only way they know how to transcend from boy to man.

There was a negative energy wave that swept through the ranch I work at for a couple of days. And it was nice to see myself responding in a peaceful enough manner to attract apologies from those who did the yelling and snapping. Had I joined them at that lower level, I may not have kept my job. And surely there would never have come the apologies. I think we all go through times where we take out frustrations on each other. We all have bad days. We all get cranky. We all get ornery. None of us are perfect. But what I noticed when I was yelled at for two small mistakes last night was that my own inward response was to be hard on myself. And so I thought about the fact that perfection is made up of mistakes; that everything we see and enjoy around us, our vehicles, the internet, radio, our relationships, our clothing, everything, they are all the results of a series of mistakes that taught us how to do it better: "Oh, that didn't work. Well, let's try it this way." And that's about as much that needs to be said about any matter of mistake making. Guilt and punishment are as useful as concrete toilet paper.

We are all already free. The Shins song 'New Slang' plays and makes me want to weep and dance together. This moment. And it's mine. Because it is who I am. This body will drop. And it has only just arisen recently. But this moment is mine. It's all that I've ever been. And I love myself. And this is egocentric. But this ego knows itself to be the totality of the Universe. And therefore I love all. All is myself. And I love myself. If you don't love yourself, then it's not you doing the not loving. It's some impostor.

What will life be like in two hundred years? What other cool inventions will make life as enjoyable as the Ipod, the Internet, Jet travel, the light bulb, and velcro?

TRUTH

2010-04-08T23:57:00.000-07:00

If you've got a truth that you're believing in, and it's exclusionary, then my job in this life is to point it out to you. Because the care is for all life. And we are life. Flowers bloom on every continent. And who are we? Who are we to say that there are better flowers than others? And I'm not saying that your exclusionary flower is less important, but I'm saying that it is an illusion. There is a beautiful flower that you ARE, but it isn't that exclusionary flower you imagine yourself to be. That's just an illusion. And I speak this to the most fundamentalist divisionary people I meet. And they leave me with a sour taste in their throat. But I do it anyways, knowing that this is a possibility.

Change happens in many different forms. But I like radical honesty. And it sometimes leaves me alone. Sometimes, like tonight. People walk out. Because they are used to people dancing around the subject for their own happiness. But this happiness isn't real in the first place, it's a happiness based on ideas and outdated modes of thought from back when it was cool to hang people and torture then for their ideas. What a weird concept. I don't think we should treat the dogmatically religious like handicapped children and hide the truth from them and not speak our truth, we who know a bit more from experience. If you know someone And these seeds do eventually grow because here's what happens: at first people get pissed off. And they may go away. But now you've laid a seed. And their own unconscious selves begin to get curious eventually. And they end up attracting more and more people around them that speak the same truth. And they end up getting curious and diving in eventually, when they are ready. It's a service to them, this honesty. It is. It is hard sometimes, because you may lose friends. But it will eventually benefit them. That's a fact.

Always, I'm led on this journey of discovery. And I see that there is no one right way for a monk to be, or there is no right way for a true being to be. They are the same, a monk and a true being. A monk is only trying to learn how to be true. And true is the goal. That's the facts. You don't have to go to a monastery or a church to learn how to be true. You can just call yourself on your bullshit. The words from the cake song: "There is no such thing as you. It doesn't matter what you do. The more you try and qualify, the more it all will pass you by. Some people try and make life a little tougher than it is."

I love that song. Who cares what others think? Give me a break. We are obviously not our thoughts. Who is willing to admit that and live up to that truth? Who care's what people think? All I hear from thoughts is "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." It's all ridiculous. How many ants take their sounds they make, their vibrational tones so seriously? It's an absolutely ridiculous predicament. People have the tendency to eat the menu instead of the dinner. Life is teaching us by these lessons right here. That's it. We don't need to step on eggshells any longer. We don't need to. Why would we, when we see that the result of stepping on eggshells for centuries is what we are experiencing today. It is all of the bullshit, all of the abuse and suffering existing today. All of it is the result of so few stepping up to the plate and saying, "This is bullshit! I'm not going to pretend this is true and okay when it is obviously the cause of so much disharmony." We have an obligation, if we belong to the truth. If we belong to the truth, then it is our goal and job to point it out, to be it, to speak from it all the time and be creative as we help the world progress. This is all my opinion, but seems to be one shared by every great philosopher who has ever lived, people whose minds were above and beyond ours or that of anyone in their generations. And we so ignore them. And it's kind of funny and sad at the same time. Life can be a powerful wind of self flowing into every situation. How powerful are you going to let yourself be, that's the question.

Let it all lose! The world is fucking screaming for it right now. So many suffer in so many places because of our silence and inhibition. Because of it!!!! That's the facts. We are responsible. Let's step up to the plate. Let's take responsibility, all of us. We have work to do. And it won't end until we are free of mass starvation and genocide. Until we are free of all abuses. We are trying to heal the thousands of years old abuses being passed down right now to the next generation. Truth is literally the only thing that will set us free. As uncomfortable as this may make us, this has been spoken by thousands, and perhaps even millions, and only written down by a few, and be a student of these speakers and doers.

We're all still learning. And in my opinion, we're still in the dark ages. And we must always be working toward the evolution of our species and our future generations. So many have focused this way in the past. And this is why we enjoy these freedoms we enjoy today. To give up and not do a thing is to fuck the future generations. It's to leave them with shit and to hate ourselves for it in old age. I will fucking love my old age because I know that I will always be working toward the freedom of the future generations. As the majority of my countrymen and countrywomen focus on their retirement funds, I've spoken only the truth in the hopes of liberating more and more our future generations, which means I'll be happy with myself, no matter what happens, even if I have nothing and live toothless on the street when I'm old and dying. That, my friends, is the fucking facts! Enjoy that, or hate it, I don't care either way.

A Little Solidity

2010-04-07T12:46:00.000-07:00

I'm solid on my working situation this summer. I was invited to work as the bartender/butler for a place in Bar Harbor, Maine called Balance Rock Inn. During my phone conversation/interview with Aaron, the General Manager, he described all of the types of services I'd be offering, and I said, "That sounds kind of Buddhist," and he said, "Exactly." So I knew then that it was the right decision for me. The place has a lot of history, built back in 1903. I didn't make this decision based on money. Maine is old America, and I've wanted to go there for awhile now. But the money is good and I project having between 10 and 15 thousand saved by the end of October. I'll be living with 2 other workers in a three bedroom apartment on property, and I believe my meals are provided, which all makes saving quite easy. I'll be the only bartender, and I may even be doing some administrative stuff like ordering and taking stock, etc.

Peter, the 1st Mate of the HMS Bounty tall ship called the same day as Claire from Balance Rock Inn called to let me know of their interest in me. Peter was going to hire me. But I told him that I needed to save some money for travel. He understood and said that I may be able to get aboard for the winter season after I finish with Balance Rock Inn. The Bounty is setting sail for Europe next year, and I think it would be really great to be aboard.

I ended up taking Paul's shift on Easter, so I didn't get to have a day off. However, today is my first day off since I've been here, in like 12 days. The internet is actually working, which is awesome. It normally only works during the early afternoon hours when I have to work. I think it's because so many people are on the internet in the evening. But it's good that it's working now so I can do research and check emails and stuff. A lot of us have been doing a lot of research and communications online for jobs for the upcoming season, and it's been a bit frustrating for a lot of us not being able to use the internet.

I don't like to fly. I prefer land and sea travel. So I'm taking a Greyhound bus again from Phoenix, Arizona, to Bangor, Maine, a 3 day journey. That will give me about a day and a half off when I get to Bar Harbor, before I begin work. I think I'm going to rent a nice room for a day or so in Bar Harbor and do some exploring and eat in some nice restaurants. That sounds like fun.

Today I plan to do laundry and nap. And maybe read a bit. Kat, this girl who just started here after working in Lake Tahoe, wanted to go on a hike. But I'm really feeling the need for solitude today. I don't think that I lead women on. But for some reason I think that a lot of women get the wrong message and want or expect more from me than I'm feeling like engaging in. I will open my heart and share my body with a beautiful woman who matches me correctly and harmoniously in the future. But I'm not in any hurry and I think whoever she is, she's worth the wait. Sexuality is intense and there is a natural build of energy in this department. I think most people want to release it and just be with SOMEONE. But relationships are worth the wait, especially the most loving and mutually beneficial ones.

There are about 32 days left before we finish the season here on the ranch. It should go by quickly, because we're always busy. I had a couple leave a guest comment card with something quick cool on it. There's a question, "What was the best part of your stay with us here at Rancho de los Caballeros?" And one couple put "Billy." I thought that was nice. The front desk girl told me about it. I found out that this is a 5 diamond resort, where I work. This is supposed to be good. I'm not sure about the stars and the diamonds. But It's good to know that this place will always be a good reference.

Here are some photos of Bar Harbor, Balance Rock, and Balance Rock Inn:

A Piece of Interesting Mysticalness

2010-04-02T10:25:00.001-07:00

This lady comes to me three times in a row each morning to ask if I would help her by blending up some fruit and some of the chinese herbs she takes. I like doing it for her. Today she told me that she has been on this fruit smoothy diet for awhile now because her health isn't so good. As I was in the back behind the bar blending the drink I had this inclination to ask her if she's read 'Grace and Grit' by the amazing Ken Wilber. I said, "Have you by chance ever read a book called 'Grace and Grit?" and she looked at me a bit startled and said, "Yes, I knew Treya, I was with her when she died." I was shocked. "You knew Treya? That means you know Ken Wilber." She said, "Yup, we hang out a lot. I live in Boulder." I said, "He's my hero!" She said, "Well, if you're ever in Boulder, I'll introduce you." Amazing!

How do these things keep happening? It's as if I'm destined to meet Ken. Mokie works with him directly. It's just plain weird.

I'm still up in the air about what to do this Summer. I was going to work a job at this camp for underprivileged boys in New Hampshire, running their art program. But I just spoke with the owner of the property who runs the camp and I could hear in his voice that he isn't the most kind fellow. So I won't be working there. Bert, from King's Canyon National Forest in California seems to be the nicest fellow of them all. A guy who teaches tennis here at the Ranch told me about a place in Cape Cod and said I could use him as a reference. It would be a bar tending job, which would be a lot of money. But bars are always weird.

Sunday is my first day off in 9 days. I'm looking forward to cleaning my room and resting a bit. The name tag they made for me says "Billy from Santa Cruz, California." But I only lived in Santa Cruz for about two months. And I've really never lived anywhere for a very long time. So I went to the front desk today and asked for a name tag that says, "Billy from The Universe," which will be ready for me to pick up tomorrow morning.

Saturn Cafe in Santa Cruz, California

2010-04-01T15:01:00.000-07:00

Jessica Gauvreau and Billy Guilfoyle

Blogs are Weird

2010-04-01T02:37:00.000-07:00

Isn't it true? I mean, I'm trying to have a journal that will not be heavy in my traveling bags. I could go through a notebook a day. There's no stop to this writing compulsion. So to keep an online journal is serving two purposes: 1. To journal. and 2. to share with the world, my people, my family, my fellow houses of awareness beyond compare. When I'm walking and dancing alone in the night on the sidewalk or street, knowing I'm alone on this ranch and that everyone is to bed, I think two thoughts: 1. How would others see this? 2. Isn't it cool to not think about what anyone would think about this?

It's amazing this Thisness.... to include a conundrum such as this in it's organic make-up. WE have all the same predicament going on. WE exist! So fucking weird! It's true. And we've all had weird moments when we have truly pondered what's going on here. How do you begin to describe this Thisness. How do you describe the fact of life in this dark and desolate, cold space centered world? A Sun that this million times smaller planet revolves around. At the perfect distance. Just enough to not be too close and fry it all, AND not too far so that all freezes over and in fact never develops.

Anyhow. there is a tendency to always punctuAte, AAAAAAAAACecptabtaBly, trying to BE what is Acceptable. But this is also an inward focus, an inward IDEA OF what others would accept or what others think is okay and thus acceptable. Never is there an inward PERSON that has an opinion about what is acceptable. When we look at it closely enough, we see that: It's always about our idea of what OTHERS would think. And this is a sure sign that we are lost in a little simple game. We have forgotten the truth, but we are the truth, and like a fish doesn't know what water is because it's never experienced another environment, we're all forgetting the fact that we exist. It's so already here that we have no other reference to compare it too. This is difficult, I think, for most..... this realization. A realization that isn't requiring a capital 'R.'

Be in the moment, always, because that's what you already are. Duh! This is the fact of peace. Be what you are, which is the moment. There is always a maluability to this whole thing: like every flower that grew and evolved to bend with the wind so that it wouldn't snap or be knocked over. If you are stuck, and you can see that you are stuck, then you are no longer stuck. And that's the facts. And therefore we are already free. Therefore we are already the same genius that moved beyond all obstacles in the evolution of the Universe itself, and the life that is its greatest expression. And therefore we are the creators/perceivers of all beauty.

Best Day Ever, Started a Little Crappy

2010-03-29T21:49:00.000-07:00

So, it turned out to be a fantastic night. I worked lunch and wasn't feeling it. It's interesting how when you're sensitive you sometimes take things personally and even see "attack" when others are simply stressed or busy or something. So you get defensive and you react by feeling negatively toward them. All of this used to happen to me often before I took up meditation. These days I see all of it arise and pay attention to the breath and the rising and falling of the belly. And then the Universe comes along and says, "Guess what: you're wrong again. Nobody is trying to hurt you. And anyone who is hurtful to others are really just hurting themselves, they hurt inside, and they are expressing it, but not toward you. Nobody even knows YOU. YOU are so much more than any person could ever know. And so are others. And there is no small self, only a shared big SELF, so get used to it." That's a pretty freakin' smart Universe. Smart enough to give us a Sun that kicks out 4 billion tons of itself per second in free energy for all of life to flourish, all without asking for a single thing in return, not even a thank you.

The staff loves me, and I love them. The bussers are all high school kids and they love my hip hop music. Two of the guys have a rap group called '602' and they asked if I would create some beats for them and collaborate by laying down some flows on a track with them. That sounds pretty cool

Deirdre is an artist. She studied art in Italy and just finished her first nonfiction book on European art and oil painting. I gave her Ken Wilber's 'Sex, Ecology, Spirituality,' that 800 page mammoth philosophy book that blows minds like a tornado. And she gave me a book called 'Dark Nature: A Natural History of Evil' by a biologist named Lyall Watson. He is a big picture thinker, a guy who synthesizes psychology, physics, biology, and mathematics just like Ken Wilber and all of the newly evolved of us in this generation. The big picture thinkers are brand new on the scene. Society's move toward specialization of the professions and sciences was good for individuals to focus on one topic of study and give us our deep and comprehensive knowledge. But now we have millions of people like me all over the globe who want to take it all in because there's this natural ability and inclination toward pattern recognition and understanding the context in the greater picture. So it's cool to meet someone like Deirdre here.

Another one of the waitresses, Kelsey, has a phenomenal voice, perfect for cartoon voices and also samples for hip hop songs and comedy tracks. I think I'm going to have to go buy another microphone. But alas, I just found out she's leaving. Going to go to Hawaii for school. Too bad because she's highly attractive and likes to play, which is a sign of true wisdom.

Alex, the main cook, really likes me for some reason. We haven't even talked much. But he made sure and made me some food tonight even when I was a little late asking for dinner. People just seem to want to be really nice to me. It's been awhile since I've worked for other human beings. For the last 6 or 7 years I've worked soley for myself. I've been paid big money to make documentaries for non-profits and to bar tend weddings and stuff like that. I worked on a friend's farm for 2 summers. But I haven't worked for a company or with a bunch of strangers in a very long time. And I never thought I'd do it again. But I remember everyone being cranky and mean to each other in the past. This job is different. It's like a family. I'm pretty happy and I think I'm going to take Trista, the hospitality manager, up on her offer to come back next season in October. Free housing and 3 free meals a day equals a lot of savings. Might as well go only where the love is.

When I revise my book I think I'm going to do the rewrite in a more friendly and down to Earth voice. I always write like Ken Wilber or all of the great philosophers. But I'd rather go mainstream. This particular book is a mainstream book.

My great friend Ani has gotten our site www.worldpeaceisinevitable.com and also .com.uk, which means we're ready to go once we find a good designer. We're going to sell stickers and t-shirts that say "World Peace Is Inevitable." And we're also going to ask people to post the stickers in public in their towns all over the world an send us photos of them so we can post the photos on our website, preferably with local landmarks in the background like the Eiffel Tower, etc.

I've got a lot of writing to do over this next year or so. I'm pretty sure I'm going to take this dishwashing job for the Summer season in King's Canyon National Forest because, firstly I get free rent and free meals, and secondly I get time to think since dishwashing is such a mindless job. I need that kind of mindlessness in order to think out my writing prior to setting it down on the page or the laptop.

Tomorrow I'm working breakfast, lunch and dinner, so I'm going to do some reading and crash. Much love to the Universe, and thank you very much, Sun.

Unconditional Love

2010-03-29T10:17:00.000-07:00

When you tell me what you dream of,
I hear you and I support you fully,
When you tell me what you plan to do,
I hear you and I support you fully,
"Nothing is either bad nor good but thinking makes it so,"
Oh, runaway monkey mind,
How you squirm with no leash,
How you run the show and show others my own weakness.

Cacti are beautiful. Beauty is the signal from Self to Self that there is a game of hide and go seek going on here. This isn't just an accident like the prevailing scientific world view says. And this isn't some magical fairyland full of nature spirits like the prerational New Agers and ancients have said. To see this existence clearly is to never need another story or belief or myth about it ever again. Our myths and ideas ABOUT reality stand in the way of our directly experiencing this reality. How can the door of direct Realization ever be opened-up with grace when we are leaning against it saying, "I already know"? This faith idea, this mythologizing, this is prerational behavior and belongs to a psychological stage of growth experienced by children between the ages of 4 and 8 years-old. Then comes rational, which is new on the scene, having arrived out of the evolving human consciousness in the last couple hundred years or so on a mass scale. Before that there were few people who had reached the rational stage of development and beyond, such as Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Newton, Descartes, and many others.

However, the masses always take a lot of time to catch up with the forerunners of the newer higher developments in human psychology and consciousness potential. Now that we've moved into the information age and the new integral-aperspectival stage (as Gene Gebser called it over 60 years ago) is becoming more widespread, we see a huge clash between differing levels of psychological development that never occurred throughout history back when there were only one or two stages, initially archaic, then magic, later followed by mythic. Now we have rational and then synthesized integral big picture perspective, intermixed with archaic, magic, mythic, as well as the minor few who have moved beyond integral. This is all quite new, and happening at a time when humanity literally has the ability to destroy the entire biosphere, leaving the Earth as a vast wasteland unable to house life for millions of years to come. Kind of interesting and weird at the same time.

All the top developmental psychologists for the last 80 years have agreed on the basic stages of pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional development within the human mind, and how these stages are seen cross-culturally. To ignore them is to avoid looking into your own self. It is to avoid your own growth as a human being, and also it is to avoid any potential of understanding others and our world from the biggest and most effective perspective possible, so that we can become a light unto the darkness and assist in the healing of our world for the thousands of future generations of children yet to be born. I am a bit disgusted sometimes with the pre-conventional mythic thinkers who reside so low on the developmental totem pole and act from the same low and tiny corresponding moral world view of ethnocentricity. It's like these people are on the 2nd or 3rd floor of a skyscraper and they are looking out the window and yelling up the stairwell to we who exist on the top floors as they describe the world they see and say "This is reality. Listen to me! There are buildings and streets and cars. That's all there is to reality." And we're up here enjoying the view of the entire city and beyond learning how to be patient with these people and wondering how it's possible that almost every president we elect is only living on the 3rd floor. Talk about ironic. In Zen terms, this is good practice, this humility. We have very low developed people running the world and voting for them. And the most evolutionarily advanced leading edge humans on Earth have to learn to be patient and simply be with it all.

We must be a light for the masses. 70% of the people in America are in dogmatic mythic structures of psychological development. And this includes a majority of the New Agers. And this stage is passed through by a healthy human between the ages of 4 and 8 years-old. And it is only traumatization and cultural conditioning that keeps people stuck in these lower stages. And, like the Catholic church, the mythic stage dwellers use rational argument to support their prerational ideas, rather than moving upward they try to bring the rest of the world downward. Ken explains this much better. I just find it all ironic sometimes. But whatever bothers you outwardly is a sure sign that something huge is being avoided inwardly. So be grateful to the ignorance and violence and war and molestation and serial killing, I say. Be grateful at the chance to meet ignorance in the world and therefore have it directly pointed out to you within. Isn't this the one chance we get to love it unconditionally and accept it all fully? Isn't this the chance to liberate ourselves from our own imprisoning nonacceptance of our own selves?

Arizona, Desert Beauty, Fluffy Pillows (and I don't mean breasts)

2010-03-25T20:12:00.000-07:00

I arrived in phoenix after 17 hours of bus travel on the Greyhound. The Greyhound from Santa Cruz to LA was great. But after LA it was a bit ghetto. It's the cheapest mass transit way to travel in the USA, and so it will inevitably attract ghetto people. The reason why this sucks is because I grew up in the ghetto in Vallejo, California near San Francisco until I was 13 and my mom abandoned me. That was the last time I lived in a ghetto. When I say "ghetto," what I'm meaning is this: a place where you find dead bodies in the bushes while you play hide and go seek with your friends. A place where your downstairs apartment neighbors wake in the middle of the night, look out their window, see a guy breaking in to their car, yell at them, and have them come over and shoot you through the window. This happened to my friend Javel's dad.

I believe world peace is inevitable. But witnessing ghetto people, just like witnessing super snobby rich people, reminds me how far we have to go. And it makes me sad. I see that it is virtually impossible to show unconditional love in a ghetto. They will eat you alive. The men HAVE TO appear tough, or they will be beaten and killed. The women are all about survival too. Many have 3 to 5 kids, are on welfare, and are very overweight because all they do is watch TV all day and night and eat the corporate, processed foods they are advertised. They were metaphorically abandoned in youth, not given unconditional love, not shown respect for self and other, and consequently this is what their own children are experiencing now. The education is the worst in the nation. There is no semester abroad programs or anything that gets these kids out of the box so they can see the world and know that there is something else available to them besides drug dealing and gangs. If anything, they have music and sports. But the music is surface, derogatory toward both men and women (painting women as just there to be fucked, and men as just there to do the fucking), and the sports are all about making money and being perceived as corporate sponsored heroes.

I watched a little of the television at the bus stations. I hadn't seen TV in a very very very long time. And it was what I always remembered it to be, exceedingly surface, shallow, and geared toward retards. I saw more murders in a fifteen minute segment of TV than there have been school shootings in real life. And the way these murders are shown is not about art, it's about shock and awe, it's about gore and fear, it's about forgetting all about life or the fact that we are on the leading edge of evolution and that we have places to go beyond the Dark Ages.

I don't mean to be negative. But all of this brings up a lot of deep feeling and thought for me. It's all very very sad. In the early 80's when Neuroscience was just discovering neurotransmitters and receptors, when molecular brain chemistry was just beginning to hit its stride, the main neurotransmitter of the mammalian brain called GABA, which stands for Gamma-aminobutyric acid, was discovered to be the brain's inhibitor. This means that it controls the levels of all other neurotransmitters in the brain, keeping the brain in balance, keeping people from going crazy or being too overly emotional, etc. They did a study with rats where they had two groups of rat: 1. rats with normal GABA levels and 2. rats with deficient GABA levels. The rats with deficient GABA levels were very violent prone. They took one of the violent prone rats and put it in a cage with all of the normal GABA level rats and right away it ended up killing one of the rats. The other rats, just by witnessing this event, had their own GABA levels drop, thus making them violent prone. So, in essence, what I realized was that awareness is the a priori cause of all brain states and neurotransmitter levels. A traumatic experience such as witnessing violence or being a victim of violence alters the brain's neurotransmitter production and output. So, knowing this, having proved is all to be an undeniable scientific fact, we still have artists and billion dollar television and media corporations kicking out all of this mindless and purely sensational violence in mass media. It doesn't really desensitize so much as throw off neurotransmitter balance by freezing production of GABA. With less inhibition comes more spending as well as more violence. Combine that with our leaders leading by example and showing that the way to solve international disputes with middle-eastern countries is to invade them and bomb them, and what you get is school shootings. We are all leading by example, and the ghettos are getting the worst of it since they are given the worst of possible educations. They have their hands and feet tied and aren't given the proper mental clarity and big picture understanding of the universe necessary to be able to put all of this into context. They are so far down inside the box that they have no idea what reality is, nor how astoundingly miraculous life is.

If our education system was focused on teaching that awareness is the first cause of all brain states, if we were all taught the scientific truth of traumatization and how witnessed experiences effect biological processes within the body, we would then be armed with a knowledge that truly sets us free as well as allows us to be responsible for what we choose to put ourselves around. We would then be able to immediately recognize that our own disharmonious behavior is the result of awareness' witnessing of some violent or disharmonious act in the past at some time. And then we would be able to allow the witness to observe in greater clarity our own behavior patterns, thus allowing awareness to effortlessly transform us, heal us, and change our behaviors into more harmonious actions. This is the magic of consciousness. And yet one so ignored by science that it's no wonder the world seems to have gone to Hell in a hand basket.

On another note, I have a fluffy pillow! I live in a room now. I've been in a forest for two months and now I have a nice soft bed, my own room, and a really fluffy pillow. As soon as I got here at about 2PM I went to sleep and woke up just now at 8PM. I needed it because it was very challenging sleeping on the bus sitting up. Everyone I've met here is really cool. This place is beautiful, full of cacti and beautiful geological formations. The stars and moon are shining unhindered by city lights. I get to drink all of the free tomato juice I want. Work seems pretty easy, even though I haven't started yet. I start tomorrow on the dinner shift. But I'm going to go in at breakfast and learn the ropes to prepare myself. That's one thing I've learned from all of my heroes throughout life: always be the most prepared you can be. And the reason why is because then when you get to the film shoot or to whatever job you are at, so long as you are prepared you can simply forget it all and improvise. You can enjoy yourself and be free to have fun with the whole thing. But only if you've done the preparation, only if you're prepared. This is when the best art comes out, if you ask me.

So that's the scoop. My current boss here is from Michigan and she worked on Mackinac Island for several summers. I may try and use her as a reference to get a job there this summer. It would be excellent money. I'd be able to save about 10 to 15 thousand in 4 or 5 months. I've also been looking into sailing jobs and I think I'm going to try to sail to either Thailand or New Zealand after the seasons are over. Once on that side of the world air fare would be cheap and quick. From here to Thailand it would be about an 18 hour flight. I don't wish to be in a plane that long. Jessica Gauvreau has here pilots license and has skydived on every continent. She's done the most amazing adventures, and yet she told me that she is seriously afraid of death and avoids the subject at all costs. What a walking contradiction. And isn't life basically a contradiction? If you're alive, then you certainly have a lot of contradictions about you. We all have a light and a dark side. That's what makes us all unique. That's what gives us our color. And I believe the late Alan Watts said it best when he said, "I do not trust people who say they are good. We all have an irreducible element of rascality."

World Peace Is Inevitable

2010-03-23T10:13:00.000-07:00

Again, the world continues to please. This guy, Phil, was inspired to post this on his blog: http://aboutphiljackson.com/
It's a bit of an endorsement for the 'World Peace Is Inevitable' movement.

But that's not the most exciting thing, if you ask me. The most exciting thing is the brilliant idea my great friend in the UK, Ani Kowal, had, which was to create a website we would both run called www.worldpeaceisinevitable.com. On this site the two of us will be able to write, post cool conscious stuff, and sell t-shirts that say..... you guessed it, "World Peace Is Inevitable!" Yeah!

I'm very excited about this collaboration. This is why I enjoyed being a theater playwright and director, as well as being a filmmaker. I was able to collaborate with cast and crews sometimes totaling in the dozens, and Shawn Dyer, Quinn Vo, and I would each bring our skills together to create some pretty awesome art. I've collaborated with Chikoko and fashion designer and performance artist, Muir Hughes, on many of her projects as well as my own. Here are some of Muir's sites http://www.etsy.com/shop/muirhughes and http://chikoko.com/
I hosted the first two Chikoko Fashion Shows and became good friends with Muir. She starred in my films 'Embryo' and 'Serenity,' as well as acted in many of my performance plays. Art has brought me so many friends, and the collaborations have always been the most enjoyable. I did my album 'Sonic Light' all alone, and it was great fun. But it could have been soooooooo much better. Collaborations make projects so much better. That's just how it goes.

I just sold my little buggy cart thingy that I used to hike down the coast to get here and do my healing/meditation retreat in the forest for the last couple months. Here's a picture:
I was nervous that the guy wouldn't buy it, which would have made me have to leave it behind. But he did. And he bought if for $80, which is super sweet! Tonight I'm going to stay at the Santa Cruz Hostel and take a series of baths and get cleaned up and do laundry and cook a hot meal. That sounds like a pretty good wrap-up of this journey.

It was so weird waking up today and leaving the woods. I bowed in all directions at my family, the forest. I thanked the surrounding trees for spending time with me and keeping me safe. I'm going to miss this forest. The profound healing and transformation that has occurred here is unparalleled. I could never put it into words, not even if I were Shakespeare. Did you know that Shakespeare used over 25,000 different words in his entire body of work? The average person only has an a vocabulary of about 4,000 words. Amazing!

Here's the Scoop....

2010-03-22T18:31:00.001-07:00

So here's the tentative scoop: I've been hired to help finish out the season until May 9th working for a horse ranch as a server in Wichenburg, Arizona called Rancho de Los Caballeros http://sunc.com/ranch/
I've applied for several other jobs in Alaska, in Mackinac Island Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, and many more for the upcoming Summer season. I was already offered a part time job for the Summer in New York for the Omega Institute, however I'm turning it down because the pay sucks. It's more of a work exchange program where you get to go to the conferences and see people like Deepak Chopra and stuff. But I'm looking to save some scrill (money in ghetto talk).

After the Summer season is complete I plan on (at this point anyway) flying to Phuket, Thailand to take the one month long TESL training course and do some teaching in Thailand for awhile. I've checked out some cool sites for people who want to travel by sailing: http://sailingpoint.com/cc.shtml and also http://www.floatplan.com/crew.htm which would be a spectacular to get around for awhile. The site for the Thailand TESL training school is http://www.ebc-tefl-course.com/timetable/dates.htm for those who are interested.

The cost of a flight to Phuket (pronounced pū'kĭt, and I wish it sounded like 'fuck it'), at least the cheapest I could find so far is like $650. The cost of the TESL certificate program is about $1600. I should have between 5 and 10 thousand by the end of the Summer season. That's plenty to live on for awhile in Thailand and cover all costs of the program and flight. If I end up sailing there, all the better.

I was planning on selling my laptop and my ipod, which would have sucked. But I decided to keep my Macbook Pro and my Ipod because I love them almost as much as I love children. I need the laptop for writing and publishing. I'm thinking about publishing on Lulu.com. They let you choose how your book looks, the price you want to sell for, and they print as needed by online orders, so there's no high initial costs or anything. A published author in New Zealand contacted me and he loves what I'm doing with the 'World Peace Is Inevitable' movement and he has an internet following email list of about 25,000 and there are plenty of other people around the world with this type of hook-up. So promotion and sales won't be an issue. His site is http://insearchofsimplicity.com/2010/03/22/world-peace-is-inevitable/ and his name is John Haines, author of In Search of Simplicity. He's a far out dude and I like his focus and his individuality.

My Grandfather, Bob, and my Grandmother, Sally, both phoned me at separate times today to tell me how blown away they are after seeing my latest feature film 'Embryo.' It's my only feature, actually. I sent them a copy and they were floored. Bob was like, "How did you come up with that?" And I told him that I had originally written it as a theater play while I was teaching English in Istanbul, Turkey. It was going to star two actors on stage, a psychiatrist and a patient. The patient was going to lay on the couch and there was going to be a movie up above the couch, and whenever the psychiatrist asked him to describe his dreams or memories or inner world, the lights would come down and we would project film segments to show this inner reality going on, etc. However, I told the idea to a filmmaking partner of mine and fantastic graphics designer, Ty Gorton (http://www.tygorton.com/), and he said, "Let's shoot this as a film." So we did. Here's a photo from the film:

Anyways, it was a real compliment to have such an artistic impact on my Grandparents. We premiered the film at the 1078 Art Gallery in Chico, California http://www.1078gallery.org/ and it was an honor walking through Chico for the next year or so having strangers stop me and tell me how much the film impacted them. That was kind of cool and weird at the same time.

So, I'm off to do some writing, working, traveling, adventuring, etc. I leave on Wednesday. I'm taking a Greyhound bus, which is the worse way you can possibly travel in the United States of America. That's why it's the cheapest. I'll be spending 17 hours on this tight and confined-seated bus. I'll be arriving the next morning at 7AM in Phoenix, Arizona. I've arranged a ride from a guy named Cord who is heading from Phoenix all the way to Seattle, Washington and I told him I'd give him a little gas money. Wickenburg is only an hour north of Phoenix. They have wifi on the ranch and I'll make use of it as well as the horse riding privileges. I'll write more soon. That's the scoop.

Life as usual, or as always new......

2010-03-20T11:19:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I phoned an old filmmaking partner of mine, Quinn Vo (http://www.quinnvo.com/) and I we had a long conversation about future projects. Quinn and I have worked together on several films along with the great cinematographer and director Shawn Dyer (http://www.nqh1.com/), we've probably worked on about 20 projects together total. We were "The Chico Filmmaking Gang," So to speak. Anyways, Quinn decided to venture out to San Francisco before Shawn or myself, knowing full well that SF is the place where things are happening. Better access to more talented actors and actresses, more connections and better gear available, more talented and experienced crews, etc. So he's now working with guys who are using a $30,000 camera known as "The Red." This camera is fucking phenomenal! Sodergergh's 'Che,' Opaloch's 'District 9,' Sodergergh's "The Informant,' all shot with this kickass camera!

So Quinn's got the connect, and he's always lived a charmed life. He grew-up in Vietnam and his family never thought highly of art. They're more upper-class, and so he was encouraged to study architecture, which he did get his degree in. But at one point in his life he decided to leave Vietnam and follow his dream of being an artist. He came to California and began studying filmmaking and digital media arts. He became a skilled special effects artist and filmmaker.

So yesterday he says to me, "Hey, you know that robot scifi film you wrote awhile back? You should finish it and get the script ready, because I think we should shoot it." And I agree. The story is pretty kickass. I'm not worried about people stealing the idea because I put seven solid years on developing the concept, so good luck to them if they try. The story, in short, is as follows:

In the year 2060 there are Artificially Intelligent robots as an integral part of society. They roam the cities, doing work and filling in to do jobs needed by society, etc. However, as far as humankind has come technologically, their still moral midgets and fighting over oil, etc. All of the sudden there is an escalation of conflict between China, USA, and other countries fighting over the last known oil reserves, and it all comes to a head with a nuclear holocaust that destroys all life on Earth.

The A.I. robots are the only survivors. Three hundred thousand years go by and they end up going to this old science lap in Sweden where humans had collected frozen biological samples of the dozens of millions of species of life on Earth and stored their DNA in cryogenic freeze. The robots take the DNA and spend the next hundred thousand years repopulating the entire planet with all forms of life, guiding life back into balance, bringing back all of the trees, plants, animals, insects, etc. They bring back all life except for humanity. They have one rule, "No humans." Because in their minds, humans destroyed the world, they are dangerous to life, and do not deserve to exist.

Our main character is enamored with humanity. He reads old books, watches old films, listens to old music, loves our art, and more importantly, he wants to know why he exists and he feels like the only way to find out is to bring back his maker, the humans. So he goes before the robot tribunal and lobbies for the future re-induction of humanity on Earth again. Of course they say "no" and that the humans would destroy everything again. So his task is to convince robot society that humans are innately good and he works to show where the humans went wrong in their development and ideas, etc. Meanwhile, without anyone knowing about it, he has taken a sample of human DNA from the science lab and is now growing a human being. The tribunal finds out and sends out the exterminator robots to destroy the growing embryo, which is now growing inside of a protector robot that the main robot built to protect the human.

I could go on, but the story is cool. And Quinn has inspired me to finish developing it and work on a shooting script. This is what I'll be doing while finishing my book and heading out on whatever adventure I'm heading on next. And last night I went and saw the worst film ever made called "Repo Men." It was so terrible that I was convinced to actually go ahead and complete the screenplay for the robot film. Those two events, talking with Quinn and seeing the worst Hollywood film ever made, have convinced me to go ahead on this. It's utterly shocking to me to see millions and millions of dollars poured into Hollywood films that turn out to be absolute crap, that lack any sort of depth, that touch on nothing important, that in fact do not even deserve to be called art. This is my personal opinion, anyway. I've been thoroughly disappointed with American cinema for a long time now. Every now and then a great film is made, like 'Avatar,' 'Forest Gump,' 'The Matrix,' 'Fight Club,' 'Good Will Hunting,' etc. By the way, "etc." is what I say when I don't have anything else to say. Ha ha!

Anyhow, I'm glad Quinn is paving the way for us. I emailed Shawn yesterday in order to convince him to move to San Francisco where all the actions at. He'll most likely listen and move when he's ready. It may take awhile, but he'll move down there. Quinn, Shawn, and I were an unstoppable force in making our projects. We work so well together and we each bring different talents, ideas, and viewpoints to the circle, which makes for better art, if you ask me. And I really do think a story like the robot story is applicable today. It's essentially a story where objective observers who are not human get to look at humans and decide whether or not we deserve to exist, whether or not we are good for existence or if we are a virus that only works to selfishly destroy the world. It's a writer's paradise working with this type of a story. You get the best of both worlds. You get to say all of the things that make humans fucked-up, and also what makes them the most beautiful beings in the universe.

Life is truly always new.....

And so tonight.....

2010-03-18T22:05:00.000-07:00

And so tonight I met up with a young friend who happened to be here a 'Britania Arms,' a local pub in Aptos. I happened to have met him a few weeks ago, last time I was here. He's 21 and one of the most innocent, open-hearted, loving human beings I've ever met. He's so pure, and he's a walking World Peace.

So we talked a bit and hung out and played some pool, had a few beers and chilled. And then he walked away and showed up with a flower, a long stemmed, beautiful flower. And he says, "I really think that girl is beautiful," pointing to one of the waitresses. "And so I bought her a flower." And he was waaaaaaaaaaaaaay nervous about presenting her with the flower. And I said, "Listen man, what's the truth?" And he said, "What do you mean?" And I said, "Well, what's the truth? Do you think she's special?" And he said, "Yes, definitely, I've thought she was the most beautiful thing for so long." And I said, "Well, then tell her that." And he said, "What do you mean?" And I said, "Well, tell her you think she's beautiful and that you saw this flower being sold by the passing flower lady and you wanted her to have it because, in your opinion, she deserves it." And he said, "That's pretty wise man, thank you." And yet he stood there nervous and waiting. And I said to him, "Look, my good friend, you gotta make it like it's no big deal. You remember losing your virginity right?" And he said, "Yeah." And I continued, "Well, did you make it a big deal or did you just go through with the experiencing of it?" And he answered, "I just did it." And I said, "Well, this is how things work. If you make it a big deal, it will never happen. So you might as well just focus on your truth. Do you think she is beautiful?" And he said, "Yes." And I said, "Well, do you think she deserves a flower?" And he said, "Definitely. I've thought so for a long, long time, since I first saw her long ago." And I said, "Well then, forget about everything else but your truth. Tell her that 'I think you're beautiful and I saw this beautiful flower and I think you deserve it.'" And he went ahead and did a variation of that. And we went outside to talk afterward, and she came out with a free mug and free t-shirt and offered it to him and said, "My next day of work here is Saturday, if you want to come and see me." And she walked away. And I saw the most beautiful, shining, wonderfully innocent and excited light shine through this young and pure man! It was so wonderful to see. And he IS truly a wonderful being. The world is lucky to have him. And if she chooses to love him, she's made a great decision, that's for sure.

He was very grateful to me. And I did have a moment when I thought, "I've heard there is a life review when you die, and that this is when you experience your life again and see your greatest and most terrible moments like a film." And I thought, "Well this will surely be one of my best." Because I told him to trust himself, to be in the moment, to do what felt right, and to above all be true. And that's what I wish I was told my whole life. Society rarely tells us this. Yet this is what I respect most. This deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, in my opinion. It's rare, and holy, in my opinion.

But then I recognized that which feels its already not already perfect and acceptable and I said, "Thank you, ignorant society that still sometimes shines through me as my conditioning, but I am perfect enough to let this go and forget it, thank you."

Anyways, I think Austin and the waitress will work out famously. And no matter what, Austin will work out famously, because he's true, he's pure, he admits his fears, and he rises to the occasion.

Hilarious!

2010-03-18T15:11:00.001-07:00

I posted an ad yesterday to sell my double child jogger stroller thingy that I used for transporting my camping gear on my walk down the coast. I got this reply:

"from	sam.jackson03
to		everyoneisgoingconscious@gmail.com
date		Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 8:23 PM
subject		Double Jogger Stroller/ bike trailer - $120

Let me know if the item is still available,and why you want to sell it?"

To which I resonded: "Hey my friend, I bought the double jogger biketrailer/ stroller for a hike and used it to carry and store water and camping gear. The hike was a hundred mile hike and I'm now finished with it. It's in perfect shape and it's less than 3 months old. So let me know if you're interested by calling me back at (530)566-2579 or email me back. Thanks friend, Billy" To which he responded: "I really appreciate your response to my email. I want you to consider it sold, Pls do withdraw the advert from CL to avoid disturbance,anyway I don't have time to come over to take a look because of my Business but you don't need to bother yourself with the shipment, I'll take care of that by engaging the services of a shipper, hence I'll be sending a Certified check and it will be delivered to you via United Parcel Service (UPS), so I'll need you to provide me with the following information to facilitate the mailing of the check. Full name on the check. Full Physical address to post the checkCity, State and Zip Code Home & Cell Phone to contact you.Note that the payment will be shipped to your address via UPS NEXT DAY AIR SERVICE and I will like you to know that you will not be responsible for shipping i will have my shipper to come over as soon as you have cashed the check* N.B UPS does not deliver to a P.O box address. To which I just responded: "Oh yes, I forgot to mention in my reply to your email: I'm a police officer with the Santa Cruz Police Department, and we've just run a diametric internet scan and are still awaiting the results. But know this: We're coming for you. Under section 3652 or the United States Internet Users Protection Law of 2006 you will be hereby charged and tried by a jury for presenting false information and attempting to scam internet users. For more questions, call my office or the Department at (831) 459-2231. Otherwise, you'll be visited by officers in your area quite soon. Have a nice day,

Sgt. William Guilfoyle, Police Officer"

HILARIOUS!!!!! Ha! Ha! I hope he's sweatin' his balls off! Ha! Ha!

A Fairly Strange Thing....

2010-03-18T08:09:00.000-07:00

A fairly strange and wonderful, gradual, and even semi-sudden thing has occurred. In all my writing on unconditional love, in all of this time alone in the woods, in saying my truth to my Grandmother, Sally, and my Aunt, Teresa, in doing shadow work, and in having that epic dream with my mother and the subsequent realizations and monstrous succeeding cry, all of it has made me begin walking the talk like never before. I'm actually finding myself strong and accepting of people just as they are. I even complimented Teresa for telling me she is a conformist and I actually do admire her survival capabilities in that fashion. I think it's okay that her development and moral position is less than world-centric and Universal. How could it ever be otherwise? People don't simply leap up in levels of development. She is completely unaware that such a thing even exists.

I admire Jessica Gauvreau for her impeccable class and supreme patience in dealing with her low conscious, mean, demon-like, insect-like, fighting bosses. I admire her adventurous spirit. She does whatever she wants and truly lives life to the fullest. She's inspired me to grab life by the balls and leap into the adventure of it all without being stifled by fear, worry, or limited thinking.

Ananda taught me unconditional love by his patience and lack of small-selfness in dating and living with Leanna, who is a bit over-emotional and anger-ridden. He showed me that to try and change the world or others with an attachment to outcome is less than Realized behavior.

Krishna and Jaya taught me that it's okay to be older and to travel around pilgrimaging as if you're touring with great rock bands.

Kira Slade taught me that you can still be nice and genuine and at the same time dedicate yourself to healing the world and helping everyone go more conscious.

Moki taught me that I'm a pretty impressive dude by giving me a deep look in my eyes and a hug.

John Wheeler taught me that I'm already there (here......pointing to Self) in many ways and that my own Realization was and is real and that it all happened in a similar manner to the great sage Sri Ramana Maharshi.

Chris Emerson taught me humility and how to encourage youth to be their own light and follow their own path.

This two month long Santa Cruz trip, this pilgrimage, this retreat into nature, into the redwoods, into the healing Forest of Nisene Marks, it's all changed me; I've transformed here and it hasn't even been a whole two months yet. I realize that practice is life and for life. Ken Wilber made me realize that evolution and transformation never ends, and I wouldn't ever have it any other way.

Ani Kowal taught me how to be a supportive and encouraging friend by here own example.

And the juxtoposition and entire coming together of all of these experiences with all of these people in the last two months has made me understand clearly for the first time in my life that when it comes to my own life and path, my own decisions, feelings, opinions, and ideas are the only important things. This level of okayness and strength is unparalleled; I've never experienced this in this lifetime. I always operated in an unsure fashion, sort of like with a half-a-glass of guilt and even unhealthy selfishness. Now I see myself, as all people are, as a gift to the world, to be shared in every portion and place there is. this world is my home and I commune with all people in all places as though they are my immediate family.

My childhood experiences have made it clear to me that I am now utterly free and that whatever I decide to do in life is okay and fucking well-deserved. I am no longer needy or controlling. i move away from people who act in unconscious manners with anger or whatever. I have no attachments to anything. I look forward to serving those who wish to advance and heal in this life, and grow and learn. But I will never waste time and energy pushing growth and healing onto those who do not wish for such things. Nor will I have expectations THAT THEY wish for such things. I am a veritable feather in the wind, with great compassion and wisdom as my guide.

It's all been a massive and completely graceful, grace-filled experience. And all it took was for me to become absolutely fed-up with myself, a willingness to be as genuine as possible with myself, and the courage to wonder and then leap into the unknown without being attached to any destination in mind or expected outcome. The world does not need to change in order for me to be happy. My own transformations make me happier and much more capable. This is all that is required. And this is truly all I have.

And Godhead, the Higher Self, my larger and complete Self, forever remains silent, humble, and fully responsible for it all, all of the magic, all of the chance meetings, all of the insights that arose; my small self can claim credit for none of it. And the awareness and willingness to admit and see clearly this truth unites small and big self and Self through this silencing, humility-producing recognition.

Oh Boy, A Big Decision

2010-03-16T14:27:00.000-07:00

I guess it's all no big deal, really. No matter what happens, happening is happening. But I've been tossing the idea around for awhile now, and I have just gone through with making the first step in moving into the kind of adventure that one could never possibly regret.

I'd been considering going back to school, thinking that I would pursue psychology. And this may still happen someday. But I am so free and able-bodied right now, that I feel I might as well do something extraordinarily adventurous.

So, I went ahead and applied today for a position aboard the HMS Bounty, which is a tall ship that I might be working on as a deckhand for the next 6 months or so. My friend, Jessica Gauvreau, inspired me to see that life is really about the adventure. And I'll still be completing revisions and the shaping of the book I'm writing for at least the next 6 months anyway. So I figured, why not?

I just told Tracie, the woman in charge of hiring, in an email that I would be willing to tie-up all loose ends here in the Santa Cruz area and be on the East Coast within the next 2 weeks, if that's what she'd prefer. The kind of experience and training I'd receive would make it possible to obtain a crew position on one of the tall ships sailing around the world. To see hundreds of countries, to really enter into the mystery of the planet, especially in these uncertain times, it's all very appealing to me.

So, again, it's all no big deal. If it happens, it happens. I was originally planning to work on another tall ship, but that wouldn't have worked out. And it really is no big deal what happens. Either way, I'll be doing some kind of adventurous seasonal work this spring, summer, and fall, that's a given. There are so many opportunities in so many various places.

So that's the update, my lovely journal. I'll keep you posted.

To Love, or Not to Love?

2010-03-16T01:30:00.000-07:00

In my opinion, love is an expression of suchness. It is the gravity within all, which is indiscriminate, all accepting, all embracing, all attracting, without preference or aversion. This is the very state that my friend, Andanda, was trying to point out to me as maybe being a simple witnessing without acting, without reaching in and tweaking, without, essentially, doing a single solitary thing to change a single solitary thing. And I see now that we are both talking about the very same thing here. It's just that the natural expression for the witness who has let go is action-filled love. And he doesn't seem to agree. But I walk past the spider and see it stuck on the sidewalk on its back, legs kicking, and I reach down and help him flip himself over, because that's me. He is me. And I would want some help.

It's so funny that we spent about 5 hours straight discussing this particular subject after I've just come out of a real stuckness, a real long blockage and confusion as to what to do with this life. And I listened to the old paradigm, the old idea: To try and change something means you yourself are not whole and "enlightened." Whatever, dude. The old path was to hide in the cave. But here we are in this now. And for the first time in the history of the universe evolution and novel emergence has become aware of itself as process. And so, if there is nothing but loving action coming out of all of this after this Realization, then what could ever be the mistake or hindrance in bending down and spending a good portion of life helping spiders flip over?

Most Non-Dual schools say: Yeah, go into Nirvana, and pass through it as quickly as you can, so as to come to this world and assist all beings in easing their suffering. And then, even as I write these words, new thoughts come. And I say: "Well, how the heck did I even get this Realization in the first place? Was it not through intense suffering?" Isn't odd that we are trying to ease the or put an end to the very thing responsible for bringing us our Realization? And are we not robbing others of that very impetus by ridding the world of suffering? What a weird conundrum. Weird. What a weird mind fuck of a thought.

I love mind fuck thoughts. They are so fucking humbling. We need them. Just when you think you got it all figured out: BAM! you're slapped in the face with another mystery. And so it goes.

Last Night Was Quite the Evening.....

2010-03-15T12:38:00.000-07:00

I started laughing at about 2AM, and the laughter kept going and going. And it was for no particular reason except for the clarity of the Great Realization. But as I was enjoying watching, being this laughter, the mind began to swing out thoughts of things that "should be focused on that are sad," like women getting kidnapped, perpetually drugged, and sold into the sex trade to remain there for life. And I saw this thought and laughed at it. I laughed at the tendency to not allow joy. And it was hilarious. I laughed for an hour and I laughed so hard I cried. And I kept saying, "It has been a long journey. 14 billion years it has taken to awaken to this True Nature in human form. So much struggle and strife, so much pain and suffering, so many millions and billions of years struggling out of the mud, crawling through the dirt, running from lions and saber tooth tigers, so many wars, so many rapes and tortures, so many myths, so many scientific refutations of a higher Spirit. All quite laughable.

And I noticed that beauty is within me. It is not an outer object. The two are one and can only be recognized through human form. A dog or gazelle never stops to notice the beautiful sunrise. this evolution had to wait for the human form to develop, and then the mind, and then the Spirit remembering Spirit in every pause and recognition of beauty. This beauty comes from within human form, nothing more nothing less. The end is never, for there is always a new day, always a new and novel way, always an emerging newness to arrive on the scene.

I wrote a quote down awhile ago from Ken Wilber's Sex, Ecology, Spirituality book:

"And thus the lingering suspicion that soaks these approaches (the idealism of enlightenment): if you really care about the world, or worry about he world, then you can't actually be contacting the Higher Self (because the Higher Self would take care of that: your 'concern' or 'worry' for the world shows you haven't found the true Self). Whereas in fact, it is just the opposite: the more you contact the Higher Self, the more you worry about the world, as a component of your Very Self, the Self of each and all. Emptiness is Form. Brahman is the World. To finally contact Brahman is to ultimately engage the World."

Ken Wilber, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality

The quote says it all.

So, I phoned Virgil Robinson, AKA the wigman, back and he and I are going to collaborate on filming his event at the end of the month, The World's Largest Afro Wig Photo Shoot. I'm meeting him this week to discuss this and a few other things. He's a promotions expert and he's helping me set-up a website for the "World Peace Is Inevitable" movement, which will allow us to sell T-shirts and other things with "World Peace Is Inevitable" printed on them, and a portion of the proceeds gets collected and built-up and then eventually there will be a drawing where the entire amount gets donated to one of the people or organizations that are doing the most work today specifically for bringing about world peace in our lifetime. Virgil is an abolute inspiration, and I see this all going somewhere fantastic and quite exciting. The world is definitely ready for this.

I'm feeling like I'm finally ready to step-up to the plate and play ball now. There is little doubt in these bones. It's time. And that's that.

A Solid Inner Self

2010-03-13T10:45:00.000-08:00

I took the last day and a half to remain alone in the woods, in my tent, meditating, writing, reading the amazing and loving Ken Wilber. I've began to notice something arising that seems quite new in my life. I'm feeling a real solid sense of okayness. I feel like I don't really care any longer what others think about me. It's kind of hard to describe, but I think that quote by Jung says it all: "I'd rather be whole than good." I found that quote in a book Ani Kowal recommended I read called 'The Dark Side of the Light Chasers,' which is a book about discovering the shadow elements residing beneath the surface of our conscious and a bit deeper into the unconscious and bringing light or awareness to them in order to reintegrate ourselves. I've realized that I could remain alone in the woods for the rest of my life and not feel alone in the least. I probably would have a little loneliness arise, come to think about it. But I think what has changed is my own sense of acceptance for myself and whatever it is I choose to do in life. I was searching for this acceptance from the 'outer world,' from family, etc. And I've been a bit surprised in the last few days to find that this search is no longer occurring. It's a still silence. It's a sitting in the center and watching the tornados go round and round without much care or concern.

I've been putting myself in the shoes of women who have been kidnapped and sold into the sex trade industry. I've been putting myself in the shoes of poor American men recruited for war because they have no other choices in life, and then made to die for a corporate and empire expanding agenda. I've been putting myself into the shoes of even the wealthy who are scared of losing what they have and project that fear in the form of hatred toward any homeless people or free thinkers who represent the absence of this wealth they cling to as though their lives depended upon it. I've felt the immense loneliness they all feel, probably going their whole lives without ever experiencing any kind of love or depth. And it's sad, but a relief. A relief because I can understand it all. There's no more confusion as to why all of this is happening. I still don't personally believe in karma. I don't believe it is a young lady's karma to be kidnapped and made to work the rest of her short life in the sex trade. I don't believe it is the karma of 30,000 children underneath the ages of five years old to starve to death each day. I think karma, like a judging male God in the sky, were easy answers for the confused coming into a mythic world ideology. The truth is, we are all responsible. And we are not here for to be served by the children, we are here to serve them. I wrote a poem yesterday, and here it is:

There are infinite paths, only one source and goal,

All life is the Self meeting the Self,

We must eventually give-up what we have given-up,

All portions of the body deserve love and attention,

Your very life is the result of the sperm and egg meeting,

How often do you love your sperm or eggs,

Capitalism is new and makes love appear for the getting,

Our shame in sex is only in forgetting,

Despite our minds, our own existence is the result of sharing and giving,

The tree has no resistance to standing tall in the living,

The scholar who asked for the secret teaching,

Was asked to allow children to throw objects at him,

He readily admitted he could not,

And by this very honesty received the teaching,

Those who focus on what they have not,

Attract to them nothing but not having,

Those who focus on what can I give,

Will be grateful for what they have,

And always share the abundance they attract,

We are here for the children,

They, not for us,

And in this realization we have gained from them.

Much love to the world,

Billy

World peace is inevitable

Everyone is going conscious

One of the most amazing, magical evening.....

2010-03-11T11:41:00.001-08:00

God, where do I begin? It started with a bus trip from Aptos to Santa Cruz to meet my good friend Jessica Gauvreau for a day of hanging out and enjoying life to the fullest. We began with a search for lunch. We ended up at the best restaurant in the nation called The Saturn Cafe, where all of the employees are free thinkers, where heterosexuals, homosexuals, and the infinite spectrum of sexual preferences come together in openness and lacking all judgment or separative boundary, where the entire menu is vegan, where the bathrooms are labeled "Robots" and "Aliens," and you have a choice whichever one you wish to be. Jessica and I decided that we are both aliens, rather than robots, because aliens are the archetype of the great adventurer, one who has left the relative safety of the known world in complete embrace of the mystery beyond. Such is life.

Then we went to have tea. Then we went and saw Alice In Wonderland, Tim Burton's new film, which was spectacular and, like Avatar, has one of the best message laden stories I've seen on the big screen in awhile. It broke all records for international opening box office weekends, meaning that a good portion of the Earth enjoyed a story filled with the teaching: "Wonder is the light that guides you home; wonder is the beginning of finding the truth; and believing in possibility is the first step in creating actuality.

After the film, we were walking down the street and saw a huge sign for an event called "The World's Largest Afro Wig Photo Shoot," which had a photo of a person with a massive afro wig on it. I remember thinking: "This is really funny and cool!"

Later, Jess and I were at our favorite pub called 'Motiv,' and in walks this man full of light, and wearing a massive afro wig, dressed like an old Englishman, like Austin Powers, with that old English coat and the ruffled cuffed shirt. And I said to myself, "This guy is the coolest guy ever!" Thankfully, we met. His name is Virgil, and he began 'The World's Largest Afro Wig Photo Shoot,' and this is going to be the second year. hundreds of people of all ages, all races, all walks of life, come together wearing massive afro wigs, and then there is a photo taken. I'm looking at last year's photo right now, and it just makes you smile.

So, anways, Virgil and I became good friends almost instantly. He said that he felt something deep and profound that told him that the Universe was definitely meaning for the two of us to meet, and I agree. I've been looking for genuine friends and people I can work with on a creative level with my film shoots. Virgil has been wanting to do more in the creative art of acting. He runs a website called http://possibilityadvocate.ning.com/ where he advocates possibility and encourages bold action. Here is a photo of the man we are talking about:

The funny thing was the Jess and I were just talking about how I was wanting to meet more people who are genuine, who love unconditionally, and who are free and creative, all of this right before Virgil walked in. We also met a dancer at the swing dancing event that 'Motiv' was putting on, and she was just going through a divorce and I talked with her for awhile and listened and helped her to see a bit of the bigger picture, which I think helped her out immensely. She told Jessica and I where she does her dance classes and I think that we will be talking swing dancing classes together. The style of dance is so fun and so natural. It's a balance between masculine and feminine energy. The dance embodies integration and a peaceful coming together of woman and man, or masculine and feminine. (side note: earlier I bought my tea with a couple of love dollars that I created:

So anyways, I just overheard a lady taking at the register after she got her change and she said, "Everyone is going conscious?" and she asked the person at the register if she had written on those dollars, and the girls said, "No." and the lady said, "Well, this reminds me of the 60s when people would draw or write about love on the money." I thought that was pretty neat because I had no idea people ever did that in the 60s. I think it's time for another revolution.)

So, anyways, I stayed at the Santa Cruz Hostel last night and took the most glorious bath, and had another bath this morning before embarking on my journey to 'The Kind Grind,' a tea house here on the beach in Santa Cruz. The view is spectacular.

It's nice to be able to have an office on the beach for my work. I'm still transferring my book from notebooks to laptop, as well as adding a lot of new passages and writings. This is the ideal place to work, that's for sure. I think people are in for a huge surprise as we move rapidly into the mass awakening occurring on this global scale, and as world peace falls into place over the next few years. I just wish others could see what I see. I hope my book might help that to happen.

I'm so grateful to meeting Virgil and Kirstin last night, as well as for my friend, Jessica. She inspires me greatly. I love the world. World peace is Inevitable. And everyone IS going conscious.

World Peace Is Inevitable

2010-03-09T19:20:00.001-08:00

I have seen the clear eyes and the innate knowingness of the arising generation and generations. And I can adequately report that in fact world peace is inevitable. This is an undeniable world fact. My only loneliness stems from the fact that so few can see so realistically this truth I now report. I met Austin tonight, who perfectly fell into the seat next to myself at this restaurant bar I'm sitting at. He is an integral thinker, and integral be'er. An embodiment of world peace. And I was floored and at the same time quite at home talking with him. He is not limited in any way. And I pointed out to him the fact of his worth; the fact that he is literally the embodiment of the future, and that every moment he lives is literally enlightenment for the masses.

I will never be able to point out in words the truth of Austin's essence, who he is, or what I have just witnessed and taken part in communicating with. But let me say this: The poverty of imagination that plagues our current generation is lacking in the Totality that is the one and only Reality that I have been aware of for oh so long, and which Austin has just enforced in my awareness. He is a walking mushroom cloud of unconditional love. And he is only 21. My God! My God!

Yup, all my dreams are coming true

2010-03-09T16:40:00.000-08:00

So all my dreams are coming true. My Aunt Teresa totally accepts my choice to be on this monk journey into the woods for healing and grounding in the Great Realization. My Grandmother Sally is loving me and really impressed with my film, 'Embryo,' which I just sent her. She was so loving just now on the phone. And Bob (Sally's boyfriend who I call my Grandfather, and who also introduced me to the Tao Te Ching when I was twelve ( I always thought I was 8, but Bob just told me I was a 12) and I just had the most awesome philosophical discussion imaginable where we came to a fully shared and deeply ONE understanding about what it is this whole shabang is all about. I wish I could have recorded it! My God, things are perfect. Ever since I began the shadow work and had that deep healing dream about my mother a few days ago, things have rapidly been expanding and becoming the "ideal situation." I'm so glad. And I feel so semi-guilty now for having come so close to abandoning my whole family in exchange for following my own truth and path. I see that patience and understanding goes so much further than giving-up on everything ever could.

So, and interesting synchronicity: My aunt had sent me a package via Fedex, which was to be sent to the post office for me as General Delivery. However, I got to the post office yesterday, while the package was still in route and found out that they cannot accept packages from Fedex. So I called Teresa, and she calleed Fedex and had them instead reroute it to their nearest Fedex location in Soquel. Today I walked to Soquel to pick up the package. I got the wonderful package and went to catch the bus back. I was on entered the bus, walked toward the back, and decided not to take a seat and to instead stand in the doorway in the middle of the bus. All of the sudden, as I faced forward, a hand reached out from the seat right behind me and grabbed my right shoulder. I was instantly thinking: "Who is this stranger grabbing my shoulder?" I turned around and it took me a moment, but it was Weston from Chico, a great and way conscious young man who I met at this film festival that my friend Ty and I put together at the Crux Artist Collective a couple of years back. Weston and his friends had entered a film that ended up winning 2nd place. This kid is brilliant! And it was so shocking that we both didn't know what to say. It turns out that he lives in a nearby city called Scotts Valley and he is going to school at Cabrillo College, studying art and stuff. I just got that job working at the same college as a model for a figure drawing class. He and some friends from Chico are sharing a house and I think I'll be able to ask for showers every now and then in exchange for doing their dishes and stuff like that. But the funny thing is that I would have never even seen Weston on this particular bus, at this particular time of day, had the package not been denied by the post office. I would have not seen him, had I not had to go to Soquel instead to pick up the package. So, I have a huge feeling that this was all quite meant to be, and that I will be turning some of these younger people on to some Ken Wilber and some deeper understanding of the deeper and bigger picture going on here with the human predicament in this today we are all sharing. I feel deeply that this is the case. And I know I'll be learning from Weston and friends as well. It always works this way, period.

So all is quite perfect. It's the only deal. Nothing to compare it to. That's the facts. May all children be freed from the ravages of dogmatic religious indoctrination!

Much LOVE

Tired, Full of Love, and Quite Happy

2010-03-09T10:06:00.000-08:00

It's just plain beautiful out today. I'm still highly looking forward to the flute my aunt has sent from Florida, which may or may not arrive today. It was only two or three weeks ago when Ananda just showed up out of no where while I played an acoustic song I wrote called 'Lightning and Daffodils,' and all of the sudden I hear flute, beautiful, beautiful flute playing, as I opened my eyes to see Ananda playing the most perfect high and mid-toned notes, perfectly dancing in the nothingness with the sound of guitar strings being plucked. It was at that moment that I thought, "Boy I would love to play the flute." And wouldn't you know it, my aunt surprised me by sending me one, which was really perfect timing in that I had just sold my guitar to a man named Michael Rose on the Craigslist. When she told me a few days ago that she had sent me a flute, I hadn't put two and two together. I had forgotten about that beautiful flute experience with Ananda. I only just put tow and two together just now while writing this first paragraph, just after the 'beautiful day' line.

So, last night I was listening to a few Tami Simon interviews from Soundstrue.com, which I highly recommend to anyone who likes listening to nice people who all appear to be quite talented in the art of unconditional love, and I had my ipod going in my ears as I faded to sleep while some Buddhist guy was talking. When I woke-up a few hours later there was this very pure and wonderful and all out TRUE voice going in my ears. I looked at my ipod and Tami was in the middle of interviewing Mariana Caplan, a woman I'd never heard of. But everything she said was fantastic! She spoke so openly and honestly, and the way she described this one true Saint she had met and spent 9 months with made me really happy. It made me happy to hear that there really are examples of human beings in the world who are living up to the full potential that is the human being. I've always known that we could be so much more, and I trust this woman more than I've ever trusted anyone in my life. And I believed her, I have an excellent discriminating mind, and I believed every word she said about everything she and Tami talked about. I was so inspired that I emailed her today and asked her to tea. She lives in the Bay area, and I want to be her friend. She'll probably think I'm some weirdo or something. But I think she has a pretty decent discriminating mind as well, and I told her that I really want to have tea and converse with her. She is exactly the type of friend that I want. It is so rare to meet genuine people, truly genuine people. And I've spent a long time working to become the most genuine I can be, really being honest first and foremost with myself. And I want to be friends with others like me. We shall see what becomes.

I've been transferring away, moving the handwritten words from notebook to laptop. I did almost ten pages today and have given myself a break.

I'm really quite tired of going to Satsang. I haven't been in a couple of weeks. I only went twice in the first place. I don't feel like a seeker. I feel like having fun and laughing and giving love. But it seems like most of the people I meet, even at Mokie's Satsangs, and especially at John Wheeler's group, hardly anyone likes to laugh, to let go, to goof off, to not take themselves or life too seriously. But I'm going on Sunday to Mokie's. I told Chris Emerson I would. I really love that guy. He's amazing. And he has some of the most far out synchronicities happen. One of them happened last week and had to do with myself. I posted a music video I shot for a Cake song called 'Tougher Than it Is,' and youtube automatically sends my videos over to facebook as well and Chris's sister saw the video at the same time she was listening to the very same Cake song, which is a song put out in the early 90's. I can understand something like this happening. But for the news of it to get back to me is really cool. I love these high-fives from the Universe. They tell us that it's all cool, it's all happening and it's not so terrible. It's actually quite magical, etc. In the end, it's no big deal. But at the same time, this only deal is such a freaking awesome deal! That's my personal opinion, anyway.

I start modeling for the Cabrillo College figure drawing class next week. A woman named Debora emailed me back. She's a local artist who also teaches a private figure drawing class and she wanted to hire me as well. So that's two jobs, which totally is perfect timing. They both pay like 15 bucks an hour for three hour gigs. But that is so much to me, compared to the 25 cents I have left in my pocket. My aunt sent money as well with the flute, which I'll get today or tomorrow. I'm very grateful. I never asked her for any of those things or even told her that I was broke. Again, perfect timing. Mostly I like to have 2 dollars a day for tea. I love tea. And I love this sunny weather.

I Love

The Lone Marathon

2010-03-08T09:33:00.000-08:00

It was a pretty eventful weekend. Doing the math, between Saturday night and last night (Sunday) I wrote about 55 pages, finishing my book SWSW, which leaves me plenty of time to work on the newer one, which is a Socratic Dialogue through email exchange between a wise man and a confused but curious young man suffering suicidal thoughts.

As for the the first book, now begins the arduous parts: 1. Transferring the whole thing from notebook to laptop, and 2. The rewrite. That's right, the ever-dreaded rewrite. I've never in my life done a rewrite. All of my plays, films, and even my recently finished music Album were all stream of consciousness, laid down the way they came, spontaneous gifts from the cosmos. And perhaps they all could have been improved upon. But who am I to argue with the highest Self?

As I was falling asleep last night the only thought that came was 'which definitive article to use in the title of the book,' and I laughed that this was my biggest concern. Ha! Ha! Ha!

I'm seriously dreading the transfer from notebook to laptop. I wonder who my publisher will be. I've had some pretty creative ideas pop into my mind about how do nab a publisher. They remind me of the sly way Spielberg became a part of the studio system when he was just a teenager-- dressing in a suit and carrying a briefcase and walking onto the lot as if he belonged there, putting a nameplate on an empty office door with his own name on it, and then just hanging out and asking questions to all the right people. What a guy!

I missed Svargo's art show. I'm sure he's cool with it. I will send him an email. The writing this weekend consumed me. What a fucking experience! I went through three pens and have never had my hand cramp up as badly as it did yesterday. I only wrote about 7 pages Saturday night. The rest was done last night. Over forty pages, and boy was my right hand hurting! It was the sweetest pain I'd ever felt, next the some recent cries, that is.

Wonderful, Beautiful

2010-03-06T07:52:00.000-08:00

So the wonderful and Beautiful Ani Kowal has sent a package, which has arrived, and it contains.....drum roll........CHOCOLATE!!!! That's right. And I'm just about to post the video of me tasting this orgasmic chocolate on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/user/IntegralMind

The chocolate was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO gooooooooooooood! My God, the woman knows chocolate. Thank you, Ani!

My beautiful and adventurous Aunt Teresa has sent me a loving little care package as well, which I'm very excited about picking-up from the post office later today. It might not arrive till Monday, though. But inside is a priceless possession she's gifted to me, a flute, made by a real life American Indian. Nice! I can't wait to play a little music. I may even record some, once I teach myself how to play it. I taught myself piano and guitar quite quickly and don't see a problem with learning the flute, especially with such beautiful sounds issuing forth.

Tomorrow is my friend Zvargo's art event. He's an elder Zen teacher and artist/painter in the Zen tradition. And he told me he'd have his paints set-up at the event and that I get to try my hand at Zen painting. I cannot wait! I love art so much.

I am the space in which all things arise. And what pours forth unobstructed is limitless compassion. The book I'm writing is coming from the most pure place of love imaginable. It's beyond imagination. And it's been coming out quite flowingly, I must say. I won't say anything about it. But it is truly my greatest gift to the world thus far. And this, my loving journal, is what makes me happiest.

Love to Sally, Bob, Teresa, Missy, Angel, Alena, Michael, Ani, and all of my great friends and family! May we all be free and completely awakened to our eternal nature,

Billy

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, Jonathan Gustin, the guy that started the Integral Awakening Center in San Francisco, California emailed me and said he loves my CD. And I love you Jonathan, for doing such big-time work in helping along this world peace movement. (He especially liked 'Channel 11 News' and my 'Subliminal Message' tracks, Yes!) www.integralawakeningcenter.com

It bums me out

2010-03-05T13:33:00.000-08:00

It bums me out a little bit, hearing of abuses and traumas going on all over the world. I'm a volunteer for a suicide help forum, and I've been chatting back and forth with a woman from the UK who is a college student who has experienced sexual abuse, and I don't know much about the topic. But I'm just trying to be encouraging. I'm trying to validate her experience and her feelings about it. She's having difficulty with projecting her anger onto friends, and she's seen this man who's hurt her over and over again and it's so difficult for her.

I really think that the bigger picture perspective is important. The education system is so lacking because it never paints the bigger picture so that people can see their own lives in the context of the universal predicament. The abuses and traumas that are occurring today are echoes of thousands of years of abuse and trauma handed down from inquisitions, holocausts, genocides, raping and pillaging, oppressive dogmatic religions, and so much more. The abuse we experience is never entirely personal because it stems back to our ancient ancestors. To understand this, and to see that we are in this now with a decision to make on how we will proceed with all of this, this is important. It is only in the last hundred years that we have become intimately acquainted with the fact that evolution has just become aware of itself. This is the greatest discovery in the history of the universe. And knowing this empowers us by letting us realize that our choices and responses today are what will affect our progenitors for the many generations that follow us.

But it bums me out. And I'm willing to be bummed out. I breathe in the worlds suffering, I breathe out my own blessings to all the world, including back to myself. And may we all heal and be free. May we all!

I've made a new friend, Ani Kowal

2010-03-05T08:53:00.000-08:00

Ani Kowal lives in the UK and she emailed me after listening to my CD, which I posed online for free on a website called ilike.com. This particular blog doesn't let you post links. But I can post the url for those interested, if anyone ever even reads this stuff: http://www.ilike.com/artist/Billy++Guilfoyle/album/Sonic+Light

But Ani and I have become really close friends. We write emails to each other daily and share the deep stuff, the past, the present, the future, the abuses, the traumas, the healing, the artwork, the frustrations, and the bliss. She's just sent me a package so that I might taste what she deems to be some of the best chocolate imaginable. And I can't wait.

Ani is wonderful. We've flirted a bit, but beyond the flirting is a genuine care that has developed between us. And, as she says, we've both become each other's 'cheerleaders' when it comes to our writing projects. Sometimes you need this. The funny thing that I've noticed is that you can become completely aware of your big self as the universe experiencing itself beyond this tiny little ego, but you still have to deal with integrating your own psychology. There are still things to heal, let go of, and heal from. And I had a dream the other night that made all of this well understood. I found that understanding supersedes forgiveness. Forgiveness without any sort of contextual understanding of the bigger picture is flat, weak, and void of any substance. That's what I've found, anyhow.

I've had officially three sales from my CD now, which I did post for free, but people have emailed me and asked where to donate 7 bucks to my journey, to support this pilgrimage and integral healing mission I've been on in the woods. Ani originally contacted me for this purpose and we became friends so quickly that I decided to tell her not to send the money because I wanted her to enjoy the music as a gift. Giving is so much better than getting. This is why capitalism has felt so empty for so many people. Rarely do we ever see a commercial on television that says, "You know what, you don't have to buy our product. Instead, we suggest you give something to someone and feel good." The day that happens is the day I do my first successful backflip.

For now, I'm off to work. I've been avoiding writing this book for a long time. But it is time. And boy do I have something to give this world. Boy do I!

LOVE

John Wheeler, the Validator

2010-02-26T15:21:00.000-08:00

That's a Terminator reference.

So, anyways, last night was phenomenal. Hung out with my new friends, Michael the bike rider, Ananda the Flute player, and John Wheeler the Pointing Validator. We went to a place called PF Changs, I think it's called. Ate rice bowls and discussed the ultimate nature of the universe.

John did something that I think I really needed. I told him how I discovered that Awareness is the True Nature and the very same behind all eyes and within all life and existence, and that this discovery happened in Turkey like 6 years ago. But I dropped the realization in exchange for what was more socially acceptable because there wasn't anyone around to validate it. I wrote volumes about it, but nobody really cared. So I assumed that it must have been lacking.

When he asked what was going on, I said I was reading Emerson and a whole host of differing western philosophers and that the relativity of all of these perspectives and the experience of a new culture with so many cultural differences made it all fall away when I asked "Who am I?" And really I was asking "What am I?" because it just seemed like awareness was the answer. It seemed like this This was what was holding all appearances within It. And I hesitate to capitalize these things, because in reality it's all no big deal.

Also, I told him how my father had committed suicide before I was born and how it had made me wonder at a young age about what life was all about and what death really was, etc. I also told him how Grandpa Bob had sent me the Tao Te Ching when I was a kid and how it had helped me make sense of things (I think I was like 8 years-old). And then he said, "Well, you know Ramana Maharshi had lost his dad when he was young" and how this caused him to wonder about it all as well. And so I realized that John Wheeler was simply validating my own experience, which is that I am the space in which all things arise; that this awareness is aware OF what is born and dies, and like a movie screen it must be blank and free of all the projected colors, it must be blank and untouched because only the unborn can be aware of the temporal. The funny thing is that I had this realization 6 or 7 years ago and let it go in exchange for the I-concept, which continued to be identified with this imagined history and child abuse and all that jazz. But now I'm free. I was always free. And so is everyone. We are all THAT!

So what more ever need be said or done? And who is the doer? The truth is that there is no personal doer. There is only what is arising continuously and forever, and it is never separate. We come out of the universe like a leaf on a tree. Who can say the leaf is not the tree? And who can say that the very human curiosity to discover the mysteries of the universe, either inwardly or scientifically outwardly, is not really the universe becoming aware of itself. It is simply studying itself. Nothing more.

And the question of "Now what?" is really erroneous because WHO is asking? Like Yoda said, "There is no try, only do or do not." And there is no doer, only the universe expressing itself in the color of every flower.

And here it sits, at this computer, in this cafe. And where is home sweet home other than here? Where else could it be? Can you even imagine a second awareness?

The funny thing about last night

2010-02-25T12:24:00.001-08:00

So, it's not quite as funny as the other night when four cars and trucks came at separate times while I was walking my daily walk an hour into the woods. You see, there are usually no cars at night, and thus no sightings of little old me. But these vehicles would come and I would turn off my headlamp and run and dive into the bushes and each time I would land in thorny darkness. I just got the last of the thorns out of my body yesterday, I believe. The scene is too comical to reproduce in journal writing. But let's just say I was laughing at the whole thing the whole time. Lost my Klean Kanteen somewhere in those woods upon hitting the deck in the thorny bushes. No big deal. Nothing's ever a big deal.

But last night I was thoroughly and deeply feeling this aching Aloneness with a capital 'A.' And so I went to a local pub and talked with this awesome guy, Joe, who says he's an atheist, though I've met few who have been as loving as he. His depth and love for his dogs are unparalleled. And it makes you think: What is spirituality, really?

So, I'm walking home and it's majorly dark. I mean pitch black in most parts, because the forest is so thick, even though there was a partial moon. And I got to the entrance of the State Park and found that I had forgotten my only light, my headlamp. And so I'm thinking, well, I can't get home to my tent because it's an hour into the woods and there is no way to see. And so I considered going to an all night cafe and sleeping in today. But then I had this sense of calm, and there was this realization that there was no fear and that all is well. So I began walking. And I walked into the darkness alone with no light source external to my awareness. And to my surprise my eyes adjusted just enough to see my way down the trail. And once I got to the point where I had to leave the trail and walk up two ridges and along a narrow path with downed trees and branches and danger, this was the darkest and most difficult area to be in the middle of the night with no light. And I walked and climbed, and did a little stumbling, and the way kept being revealed to me over and over and over again until my tent suddenly jumped out at me, almost glowing, and then I was home. And this situation was so surreal and so perfect and so magical and yet no big deal.

They say that enlightenment is no big deal. I would assume it's because it's already present for everyone.

So, this morning Michael Ananda, or Ananda Michael, or simply Ananda, called and left me a beautiful message saying how he wanted to hangout after John Wheeler's group tonight and drink tea and talk. He also said he enjoyed the long Ken Wilber quote I wrote out for him from A Simple Feeling of Being. And he also said he enjoyed the CD I gave him. And it felt so good to have a friend want to hangout with me, especially in light of yesterdays intense Aloneness feeling. And so I'm stoked. He offered to let me stay at his place tonight.

So, I've listened to all of John Wheelers audio from his website, about 9 hours, three times now. And I think I'm pretty prepared and well enough understood about what we are doing here with the pointing out instructions. So tonight will be amazing, sitting with John and the group. I think Ananda might be there too. He came to Mokie's last Sunday, but we didn't hangout much cuz of all of the people that were there socializing. But I'm looking forward to tonight. And I'm going to request a one on one consultation with John. This is the most important thing in the universe for me and the universe. Just This. Just That. I cannot deny that there is an existence. And what am I? Who am I? Who or what am I?

Love

Sailor Bob Adamson's Introduction to Non-Duality, or Your True and Only Nature

2010-02-22T16:32:00.000-08:00

Visit http://members.iinet.net.au/~adamson7/index.html for more information

If you are seeking truth, reality, God or whatever you like to call it, I suggest that you start with the only reality you are absolutely certain of—that is the fact of your own being. There is no one sitting here who can say 'I am not'. Each one of us knows 'I am'. But that thought 'I am' is not the reality. It is the closest you will ever get to it with the mind. That 'I am' is just a translation by the mind of that sense of presence, the awareness of presence or the presence of that awareness. That is the only reality we are absolutely certain of. Nobody under any circumstances can say 'I am not'. That knowing is constantly and ever with us. And that is why we say that what you are seeking you already are.

We base what we talk about here on what the ancient traditions tell us. In Advaita, for instance, they call it non-dual—one-without-a-second. The one-without-a-second part means that even one could imply that there is something other than one. In the Dzogchen scriptures they call it non-conceptual, ever-fresh, self-shining, presence awareness, just this and nothing else. And if you look at that, that is describing you, me and everything else. That presence of awareness is non-conceptual. You don't have to hold a concept about it. It's ever fresh because it has no beginning and no end. It is self-shining like the sun. It shines of itself. It doesn't need a light to say 'I am shining'. And that is what it is, just that which you cannot escape from, which you cannot get away from-presence-awareness.

All the traditions will tell you that it is omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence. That is all presence, all power and all knowing. It is constantly being pointed out down through the ages. It is nothing new, and it is obvious and evident and simplicity itself. There can be nothing simpler than one. And yet we miss it. We miss it, purely and simply, because we look for an answer in the mind. If you question the mind, you will see that mind is time, and time can never be omnipresence. Even the concept 'presence' is not what the isness or the actuality is because presence (as a concept) is a part of time: past, present and future.

The very idea there is something to seek and someone to seek implies time, and time is mind. That is why you will never find the answer in the mind. To the mind, presence-awareness is no-thing. It hasn't got any shape, it hasn't got any form, hasn't got any time, hasn't got any space, hasn't got any beginning or any end. So it is no-thing. They call it 'emptiness'. The mind can't grasp no-thing. It doesn't like no-thing. The mind, being a thing itself, is dualistic. It is always dividing into the pairs of opposites, into things. It cannot know or grasp or understand no-thing. All this points to the fact that you may have been looking in the wrong direction. You are all intelligent people. Some of you may have been seeking for years. You have worked out so many things in the mind, but yet you can't find this because you believe it's some sensation or concept or idea in the mind that we have read about in books or people have talked about. We look for something similar, and so we miss the 'no-thingness' of it.

You have got to look at these things. They need to be looked at and understood. Am I this body, for instance? What is this body made up of? We investigate it, have a look and we see it is nothing but the elements. It is 80% water. Then there is air, space, matter, fire. It is only the elements. The elements can be broken down into subatomic particles, into no-thing. Look at that again and also see that you can't be separate from the elements. This body is the elements. It is not separate from the elements. See how far you can go without air! See where you get to without water, space, bodily heat (the fire) or matter.

I don't like to use the word 'God' or 'the Supreme' purely and simply for the reason that each of us will probably have a different concept of what we have come to believe God to be or not be. If we are agnostic or atheist, we will have a concept about that also. I use the term 'intelligence-energy'. But I'm not speaking about your intellects because there are many different degrees of intellects.

What I'm talking about is that same intelligence that functions the universe. The very fact that the stars can orbit or the planets can orbit around the earth and form out of the gases into the particular shape and form and hold that form implies an intelligence. That which keeps the seasons coming and going implies an intelligence. The tides coming in and out implies an intelligence. Look at it closely. It is beating your heart right now. It is growing your hair and your fingernails. It is digesting your food. It is replacing the cells in your body. The patterning and functioning of this body implies that there is a wonderful intelligence expressing through it, as it. And that is actually what you are—that intelligence-energy. It formed you, grew you and is continuing to grow you. It is replacing the cells in your body and doing other things naturally, the same as it is in the universe. But that natural state has seemingly been clouded over by the reasoning or the functioning of the mind. Look at the body and break it down. There is no center here in this body that I can say 'This is what I am'. It started with the sperm and the ovum coming together. If the body had any center it would be that original cell. But that is long since gone. There are many cells dying in this body right now and being replaced.

Another question is 'Am I this mind?', 'Am I this primary thought "I am"?' That sense of presence expresses through the mind as that thought 'I am'. Look at thought. Is there such a thing, really, as mind, apart from thinking? I cannot grasp anything that I can call mind. What is thinking? Thinking at the subtle level is a very, very subtle vibration. At the spoken word level it is a sound. Sound is a vibration, and a vibration is a movement of energy. So it's the same. You still have not separated that intelligence-energy. If you look at your mind again, you will see it is always vibrating in the interrelated opposites. If it is not past, which is memory, it is anticipation and imagination, which is future. And within that range, it is constantly vibrating as the interrelated pairs of opposites. It is either good or bad, pleasant or painful, happy or sad, loving or hating or whatever.

Have a look at your mind. It is constantly vibrating in those patterns. See if it is doing anything other than that. So you see, though it is a wonderful instrument when utilized, it's activity is very mechanical. A little child, when he is born, has not left that natural state. He is still functioning in that natural state. If he is hungry he will cry. If he is happy he will gurgle. He defecates and urinates without any sense of concern. It just happens, just the same as his food is digested. He is doing activities, moving his hands, moving his arms, all sorts of activities are going on. At that stage he is not attributing these things to a me ('I am doing this' or 'I am doing that'). He doesn't know. Reasoning hasn't started. As the body grows, that line of reasoning begins to function also. His parents tell him, 'Your name is Johnny. You're a good little boy. You're a bad little boy. You are this. You are that'. He hears this, and it starts to impinge on him. He learns what this word means or what this thought is. He translates it into labels which he is being taught. Then sooner or later he comes to realize that this is me that they're talking about ('This is me. I am Johnny'.). Whereas before it was just 'little Johnny'. When that idea of an 'I' or a 'me' comes upon him, naturally the mind, functioning in the opposite, asks, 'What is the opposite of I or me? Isn't it other than me or not-I?' Now he is seeing things which he previously did not have any discrimination about at all. It was just the seeing. It was just the hearing. Now that sense of 'me' or 'I' has come upon him. He is seeing these things as 'not me' or 'not I' (or other than I), and feels separate from them.

With a sense of separation there comes insecurity and vulnerability. That is when our search actually starts because insecurity and vulnerability is not happiness. It is not completeness. It is not wholeness. The search starts to try and make ourselves whole or complete or more secure and less vulnerable. And naturally, because our parents have not looked at it or understood it, our society and nations have not looked at it or understood it, the search starts 'out there'. Nobody ever says to him 'Look back' or 'Stay with that essence that you are, that natural state that you were and still are, before those clouds of thought began to form'.

You see that all our problems arise from that insecurity and vulnerability. The little child, before he saw his separation or realized that he was separate or believed that he was separate, didn't feel that insecurity or vulnerability. Now he senses it and he likes a warm, loving family around him. He feels more secure and less vulnerable if he has got a warm and loving family. And in the old days families would form into tribes. The bigger and stronger my tribe is, the more secure, less vulnerable I am. Today nations go to war with nations purely and simply because of that insecurity, fearful that the nation next door will take me over, take away my wealth or whatever. Or 'I'll get him first because I am insecure and vulnerable and make myself stronger by taking them over'. This is all based on that self-centeredness.

But there is no self center. The self center or the ego, which is the cause of all our problems, is a fiction. The little child adds to that 'I' thought all the events, experiences and conditioning, which are mental concepts, and forms a picture about himself based on those concepts. He thinks 'I am little Johnny, and I have been a good boy or a bad boy, or somebody said something to me and I feel ashamed or guilty or fearful or whatever'. All of these concepts seem to be concretized. They seem to become real and become a reference point (the 'me' or the ego, to which everything is related). Something hits that reference point, that image he has about himself, and it doesn't fit that image. He doesn't like it. If something else hits that image and it does fit the image, and he likes it and wants more of it. The thing he doesn't like he resists and wants to get away from. And so he is in conflict. All of our problems arise from that belief in the self center. Everything is relative to that fictitious image we have come to believe is real. The energy of belief has gone into it and made it seemingly real and strong through that habitual belief. But it's not real and it has no power, so it has no strength. Look at that and see that there is no spot in this body that I can say, 'This is me'. See that this image that I have got about myself has no substance. It is nothing solid, though it is seemingly concretized. You can never grasp hold of it. Try and grasp hold of a thought! And above all, and this is very important, it has no independent nature.

That thought or image could not even be there if it were not for that intelligence-energy or presence of awareness. We call it intelligence-energy, awareness, consciousness or spirit. That is the label we put on it. But the label is not it. We have many different names or labels for it but none of them really fit. You cannot have a single thought without that functioning intelligence. So the thought is not independent and has no power of itself. This is the thing we have been in bondage to (that erroneous belief in a substantial, independent center or ego). It is a phantom, something that does not exist. All it takes is an investigation into what is being pointed out. See it for yourself by questioning and having a look. Have a look into it and see if anything can be found there that has any substance or independent nature. And it is realized that it is not going to take 20 years, 10 years or 5 years. It's not going to take any time at all. Seeing is right now. It is immediate. It always has been immediate and always will be. Purely and simply because it is timeless.

See that the search itself is a trap, because the search implies that there is an entity needing to become something. And becoming implies some future time. It is not being. Becoming can never be being. What we are talking about is being. We call ourselves 'human beings' and we call God the 'Supreme Being'. Take those two labels off (human and Supreme) and try to separate the beingness. I might call this being here Bob, and that being there I might call Joan. The chair we are sitting on we call a chair. But take away all those labels and what's left? The substratum or the base, the beingness, the pattern and form they are taking the shape of or appearing as. But the pattern and form are appearance only. Their essence is still that energy (pure being) vibrating into those patterns. So there is really nowhere to go and there is no one to go there. And there is nothing to get and no one to get it.

If you look at that, the first question that will come up is 'Well, how do I live my life?' You live your life the same way you have always lived it. If you see that there is no 'me' here with any substance or independent nature now, when could there ever have been one? You see it has got no substance or independent nature now. The thing we believed in for so long, could that ever have had any substance or independent nature?

So you can go back again to the sperm and the ovum. You can go back before that to the essence of the food of your father and the essence of the food of your mother. You can go back to the thing that that essence of food lived on before that. You can see that it has no beginning. That sperm and ovum came together. The cell doubled and redoubled and grew this little embryo and little fetus and little child. There was no entity doing any of that. There was no entity when it was born and took its first breath. There was no entity as such before the reasoning came on. And when the reasoning came on, there could still be no entity. If you look at it and see it is a fiction now, it must have been a fiction then.

You see, life has been lived. It is that presence-awareness expressing through these patterns of energy. They are that presence-awareness, in essence, in all its diversity. In each and every one of our lives, there has been no one who has ever lived a life. Life is living and expressing itself as itself. It might seemingly take us away in expression into that erroneous belief. But just as easily as it got us into it, again it can take us out of it by seeing it was a false belief. We are mistaking the shadow for the substance or the essence, whatever you like to call it. And that is basically what it is all about.

Because of that erroneous belief (in a 'me') there is this so-called human suffering. It is only a 'me' that can be fearful. It is only a 'me' that can be anxious. It is only this 'me' that can be angry or full of self-pity or anxiety or stressed out. The constant belief in that builds it up and snowballs it until it seemingly becomes overwhelming. But it is not necessary for that suffering to be there. See that the 'me' is the cause of all my problems. The effects are the stress, the anxiety, the fear, the self-pity, the remorse, the guilt, the shame. And we try for years to overcome them, to do something about them, to get rid of them some way or another. But if you just realize that the cause is a fiction—and there cannot be an effect without a cause—then the energy of belief can no longer go into it as being real or having any substance or any independent nature. If all of this manifestation is energy and the energy is no longer going into some pattern, what must happen to the pattern? Must not the pattern drop off by itself?

The experience here is that this is so. I was in those self-centered, emotional, psychological fears, anxieties and stresses. But today, and for quite some time now, quite a few years, they haven't been there. That doesn't mean to say that I am an emotionless, thoughtless zombie. It means to say that all the activity, the functioning still goes on—the seeing, the hearing, the tasting, the touching, the smelling, the thinking, the feeling, the positive and negative thoughts functioning in all their opposites. Emotions and things are there, but they are not fixated on. They don't hang around. They come up, play their part and disappear, just like the cloud is not attached to the sky. The cloud comes into the sky, plays its part and disappears. The cloud not attached to the sky, the sun can never fall out of the sky. It is always and ever self-shining. And you realize that the sun itself causes the cloud, and the sun itself blows the cloud away. So you see that these thoughts coming up are nothing but the activity of that intelligence-energy. They are not attached anywhere. Knowing the truth about them, they'll move on. Life continues to function without that self-centered activity.

Visit http://members.iinet.net.au/~adamson7/index.html for more

Meeting John Wheeler, and Wow!!!!!

2010-02-19T17:22:00.000-08:00

So I went to Mokshananda's satsang, met wonderful peeps, especially the amazing and beautiful Kira Slade
Kira was like, "You gotta meet Michael." So I went to Krishna's satsang three days later at Michael-Ananda's house in Aptos. And Michael and Krishna stayed up till 2AM with me alone trying to point out my True Nature. Michael goes "So you should go check out John Wheeler tomorrow in Santa Cruz." So I did. And life will never be the same. He points out the conceptual dualisms you're trapped in. And it is so simple and he really is direct, more so than anyone I've ever seen. So, I think I've officially found my teacher. I'm still going to go to Mokie's satsangs on Sunday evenings, if not for the meditation and the community and the teacher, then definitely for the chance meetings of people like Kira Slade, which has led to finding John Wheeler

This shit is real! I used to think all this spirituality stuff was crap, and probably because I was seeing the mess of the New Age stuff. New Agers are all over the place, and believe stuff as equally ridiculous as believing that God is a grandfather who raped Marry against her will and without her permission so she would birth "His" son so we humans could murder him so that we never had to kill or sacrifice animals to save our souls ever again. Absolutely ridiculous. What the fuck does this have to do with love? What does it have to do with our True Nature? And who are all of these spirits and alien energies that the New Agers are "channeling?" Fucking ridiculous. But I could always be wrong, as usual.

Anyways, for now, I'm so blissed and happy. Thank you, God (not the biblical God who condones selling your daughters into slavery, but the One, and I Am That!)

Ananda means Bliss

2010-02-18T16:36:00.000-08:00

Happiness is the state today, and seems to be what underlies everything, especially as everything fades or falls away from conscious attention, when consciousness turns back on itself. "It is impossible to even imagine a 2nd awareness." Ha! Ha! that's all from some conversations and poems last night. Hung out with Michael and Krishna till 2AM as we all tried to talk about non-dual awareness. These two are so freaking amazing! I love them!

Jammed with them as well. Played Lighning and Daffodils, which Michael really liked and he just joined in. He heard me asking questions during satsang about if there are practices to help the false self fall away, and he said that I would love to meet John Wheeler because he's quite skilled at this kind of tricky stuff having to do with language and the like. He's simple. So, I'm going to help John set up chairs tonight before his talk at the Pacific Cultural Center here in Santa Cruz. I'm going to listen and see what happens. Michael's girlfriend lost her dog last night and I helped look for the dog (Madeline) for awhile with her, missing a bit of the satsang. But something said that she needed someone with her because she was a little emotional about it. This morning she called animal control and found out that they have her dog and that Madeline is doing just fine. No worries, all is well.

A cat slept on my stomach all night long, for 6 hours straight, mostly purring the whole time, and I wonder if I was petting her in my sleep. It was nice to have company. I was on Michael's couch. What's really weird is that last night was the first time in my life when I had two guys like Krishna and Michael relating to me and talking with me as though I were already enlightened. And it was so cool. It's all so cool and yet no big deal.

So, I went to Cabrillo College today, answering an ad that was offering $200 for "test dummies" for their dental program to give teeth cleanings to. They wanted someone who hadn't had a professional cleaning in at least five years. I haven't been to a dentist since 1995. But they checked my teeth and said that they were too clean and said I wouldn't be a good "test dummy." So, I was thinking, what can I do for money, because sometimes you need some. And so I remembered that I modeled for the last couple of years for figure drawing classes in Chico, California. So I walked to the Cabrillo College art department where Andree, the sweet young lady in charge of hiring models, was working. And she signed me up for my first gig, which will be on March 17th at like 11:15Am. It pays 15 bucks an hour for nude modeling for three hours. And I think I'll be doing it about once a month. This is by far the closest I've ever been to prostitution. But who knows what will happen in my future. Wink, wink!

I emailed Kira Slade, the amazing young lady who I met at Mokshananda's satsang last Sunday from Santa Barbara. She and I fell in love with each other instantly, and she is the one who told me I had to meet her friend, Michael, who I met last night. But her email was returned and says she doesn't exist. So, I hope we can figure this one out because I wanted to give her my new Album, which I just finished mastering and arranging. I haven't let anyone hear it yet. I wanted her to be the first. It's filled with a bit of activism, comedy, folk music, and hip hop.

That's all for now, may all beings be free, world peace is inevitable, we already are that!

Meeting Mokshananda (how a monk in the woods stays clean)

2010-02-15T14:03:00.001-08:00

Today has been beautiful and I am still beaming after going to my first satsang last night with Mokshananda. The man is a true living guru, a Self Realized Master, an embodiment of God in first person, to which we can commune with in 2nd person in order to awaken our own True Nature in our own 1st person.

I met a lot of really great people last night at the Free Water Sangha. I feel like I've found a home, a place to commune with like-minded peeps, and a teacher who can help me transcend ego. Mokie (Mokshanda's nickname given to him by Adyashanti (another Realized Master) let it be known that he himself, as well as many of the other Sangha members, are fans of Ken Wilber's work and have been hugely influenced by him. You will never know the joy I feel at meeting Mokshananda, not just because he is Realized and ever-present, but also because he knows Ken Wilber personally and has taught at Ken's Integral Spiritual Center in Colorado. I was greatly surprised to find out that I already had a two hour conversation between Ken and Mokie on my Ipod, which I was able to listen to prior to going to his Sangha for Satsang.

What is Satsang? It's a forty minute silent meditation, and then a talk by the teacher, Mokshananda, in which we all can ask questions and share. It's light and fun. And afterwards we get to hangout in his kitchen and drink tea and eat chips with guacamoli, yummy!

I spent the majority of the tea time talking with Kira Slade from Santa Barbara. She's a really sweet and genuine woman, and she and I talked extensively about Ken Wilber, about the new spirituality that is replacing the purely ascending model from the last few thousand years with a more integrated model of ascension and descension (both masculine and feminine) meaning it isn't about saying the world is bad, but it is about saying that emptiness and form are not two. So, therefore, we are to go up for Divine light and knowledge, and come down to bring it into the world fully embodied. Kira is also a health specialist focusing on nutrition and I can't wait to learn more from her when I see her on Wednesday for another satsang at a guy named Michael's house in Aptos. I've not met Michael yet, but he's 'sposed to be really cool. He's friends with Krishna and Jaya, who I just met as well, and who came up from Santa Barbara with Kira.

Get this, one of the guys at the Sangha found Mokie the same way I did, by hearing him converse with Ken Wilber on the two our audio talk, the same one I listened to. Though I was recommended Mokshananda's satsang by a guy living in Canada who heard me lightly bitching about not being able to find an open-minded teacher who is both traditional and open to the latest scientific findings in psychology and all other sciences. He said, "Mokshananda lives in Santa Cruz!" I love that!

I woke up today and decided to take a shower. I had been sponge-bathing it for a week and really wanted a shower. So I decided I'd walk to the community college nearby and use their men's locker room shower. On the way there I said to myself, "I wonder if today is a holiday and they're closed?" And then I thought, "Well, no big deal, I'll just go anyways and at least find out where the gym and the locker room is." Then I put in my headphones and turned on my ipod and was listening to a talk with Ken Wilber and Larry Dossey on the massive amounts of scientific evidence and proof of premonitions, which is funny because I had just had my premonition about the school being closed. Then I get there and in fact the school is closed! It's a holiday, though I'm not sure which one. It's February 15th. So it might be President's day. (just looked it up, and it is President's Day).

So I'm walking toward the gym, and just then a young man who obviously works for one of the sports teams was unlocking the gym and went inside. It was the only door unlocked, so I just walked in after him. He was around the corner in a coach's office having a conversation. I walked right past them, into the darkness of the gym, and searched for the men's locker room. I found the women's locker room, and something said to shower there. But I didn't listen, I went into the Men's and showered there. It was awesome! Great shower!

Then I heard someone. Someone had come in and turned the lights on. I wasn't scared. I figured "No big deal. If I'm caught, I'm caught." When I was done and dressed, I was walking out when I saw the same young fellow. He had been turning on all the lights in the place, preparing for a game or something. I was walking to through the gym to leave when I saw him and he said, "What's up man?" to which I responded, "Got you working on a day off, eh?" and he said, "Yup, we got a practice." Then I walked out and that was it. It was supremely perfect.

Next, I walked to the Pacific Coffee Roasters to get a green tea and do some computer work, which is where I'm at right now. I woke up today and thought, I should play my guitar in downtown Santa Cruz and sell copies of my CD. So I went to Rite Aid earlier and bought ten blank CDs for 11 bucks with tax. I figure I'll sell each of them for 5 to 7 dollars. I'll just put out a sign that says something like, "Support a monk, buy a CD," or something like that. I haven't really thought about it, but I titled all ten CDs that I just burned "Sonic Light." I like the sound of it because it incorporates sound and light. So, I guess that's the title of my first album. Sonic Light. I like that.

Tomorrow I wake early to go downtown to begin my new job as a street musician. I hope people like my music. It's a mix between folk, hip hop, and comedy.

So, Mokshananda was difficult for me to look into his eyes. That's how I know that I should go back there. It's a challenge, and therefore it's perfect for my ego. Let's transcend that shit! I'm going to ask him more questions and see if I'm doing everything I can to help along this process. All is perfect and well.

Much love and world peace is inevitable,

Billy Guilfoyle, Integral Mind

http://www.youtube.com/user/IntegralMind

Santa Cruz, Heaven, Forest, Home, Mokshananda

2010-02-13T13:20:00.000-08:00

Here I am in a nearby town of Santa Cruz, which shall remain nameless for reasons quite obvious in the coming paragraphs. I'm living illegally in a state park redwood forest, and I don't want anyone to be on the lookout for me.

Jessica gave me a ride from Half Moon Bay to Santa Cruz about 5 or 6 days ago. I stayed at the hostel a couple of days, and now I'm living in a nearby state park. I looked for a Zen center online that was of the White Plum Lineage, the same lineage as Zen Master Genpo Roshi, but there were none. However, I bitched about this fact on integrallife.com in a blog I wrote called "Moving into the Woods, Looking for a Teacher," and a guy from Canada commented and said, "Mokshananda lives in Santa Cruz." Mokshananda is friends with Ken Wilber and is a part of the Integral Institute in Colorado. In other words, all of my dreams are coming true. His bio says that he has studied extensively the sciences, and is himself a psychologist, meaning that he is open-minded and also trained in Zen, which is all I've been looking for. I love when ancient tradition and modern science and understanding can merge. I would have it no other way.

So, tomorrow I'll be seeing Mokshananda at his Sangha, called Free Water Sangha, in Santa Cruz. He does Satsang ever Sunday from 7 to 9PM. I'm so there. This has turned out to be a fantastic journey. At the Santa Cruz Hostel I met a guy who is friends with a friend of mine living in Iowa named Roy. Roy goes to the Maharishi school and studies meditation. And this kid I met named Thomas from Florida totally knows him, and in fact showed me pictures of the two of them together at a birthday party. So trippy.

My home in the woods is sweet. With my military training from the mid-nineties, and from my already present intuition, I was able to find the perfect camp spot. It's on a ridge above another ridge, which is on the other side of a creek, giving me the high ground, plenty of surrounding plant life for remaining hidden, and the water from the creek blocks the sound of my tent zippers and acoustic guitar. Thus I am adequately hidden, and will most likely remain so indefinitely. If ever I am discovered, there is supposed to be a fine and/or jail, which is fine. No big deal. It's all worth it since all I'm really doing is meditation, exercise, yoga, eating right, doing art, communing with nature, doing shadow work (psychological projection and integration work) and reading huge books by my favorite spiritualist and philosopher, Ken Wilber. I brought Integral Life Practice, and also Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality, as well as Integral Psychology. the other two books I have are Peace Pilgrim's book and a book on Happiness by Alan Watts.

So that's it for now. Life is amazing! Everyone is going conscious, and world peace is inevitable.

The Verge of Tears

2010-02-07T14:29:00.000-08:00

I always try to focus on the positive. Yet, the negative shouldn't be ignored. Today was an experience of a lot of negative.

I'm shocked to discover what the rich have done to themselves and this community, here in Half Moon Bay. I'll go into more of that in a second. But what began to upset me (and it's totally a great thing to see where I'm still in need of spiritual strengthening) was how I've been looked at and treated by the wealthy people here. I now know what it must have been like to be black in a white town in the thirties. Because I'm pushing around my little cart with all of my camping and documentary film gear, the locals have looked at me like I'm a vagrant. And I feel really bad for the vagrants. I don't think the people here have ever seen a real homeless person before, because they seemed to want to avoid me and at the same time stare at me like a lion licking his chops while staring at antelope. It's hard to describe the level of snobbery.

So, I stopped in to a small local farm's produce shop called Androtti Family Farm, a family farm operating here for over 80 years. They are on 80 acres right near the coast. The lady who now operates the farm told me so many stories about how the wealthy are pushing out the small farmers and how the environmentalists at the Peninsula Open Space Trust (www.openspacetrust.org) are buying up all of the coastal land. They have tried to push out Androtti family Farm for a long time now. The lady also told me how her small farm was forced to avoid organic certification because in order to be certified organic you have to give the certification company a percentage of your profits, and also your insurance goes way up from like 20,000 dollars a year to 40,000 a year if you are certified organic. And I was shocked because it appears that there is little support for organic farming because of this. Androtti Family Farm is organic. They do not spray their produce. They are on the coast where the chilly weather and winds keep the bug population very low. However, the larger farmers from hundreds of miles away in the valley are taking over all of the local farmer's markets as well as taking over distribution to the grocers, leaving the smaller farms high and dry. And all of the laws and costs are on their side.

She said that she's seen their produce and all of it is weak, lacking nutrition, and as a farmer she can tell that they are not organic. They spray because they have to with all of the bugs in the valley. Yet they are still certified organic! I may have to do a bit of documentary work on this situation, or pass it off to one of my humanitarian artist friends, because the situation here is well worth exposing. The two kids working at this coffee shop here in Half Moon Bay brought up P.O.S.T.'s abuse of the people of the area and it took me a second to realize that they were talking about he same company as Androtti Family Farms. The company is making tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars under the false banner of caring about the environment, all the while favoring the rich (friends of theirs) over the average Joes of the area. Apparently, the head of the organization has her own helicopter and is quite wealthy.

Now there is nothing wrong with wealth. But when you are blessed to have so much material wealth without an ounce of inherent depth or true and pure care for your globe and its people, then "Huston, we have a problem." The snobby people I've seen in this area are like 3 year-olds as far as their development are concerned. They are selfish, greedy, tight, and totally self-absorbed. On a deeper lever, they are poor children who were brought up and conditioned that way. I had insight after insight pouring in today as I pondered their predicament. I realized they were kids who just wanted to be loved and accepted. However, their parents and their parents friends would only accept them on terms that excluded a lot of inner freedom and self-acceptance. So, looking at me and judging me and staring at me and gawking at me as I walked with my gear was an expression of this and this alone. To simply accept me without throwing the "vagrant" judgment on me would mean accepting what they were always taught was unacceptable, thus making them unacceptable as well in their minds. They think their entire social circle would judge and not accept them if they accept anything that their social circle doesn't. And that's what all of this boils down to. Everyone is afraid of not being accepted. And so they unconsciously do not accept much of themselves and then throw that projection onto the rest of the world. And so, the herd-mind tendency to seek acceptance simply begets copious amounts of non-acceptance.

So much affluence in this area, but little depth and love. Little care for humanity. Essentially, this type of waste is a stain on humanity. I can feel and see the waves of negativity produced here spreading throughout the world and adding to the genocides and abuses of people all over the world. Yet, I also see that these are nothing but three year-olds who simply do not know any better. They were robbed of unconditional love in youth, and their inner children are all but dead. How is this situation solvable? It's just so sad, because there are over a million humanitarian aid organizations on Earth now, and something like 90 percent of those didn't even exist 20 years ago. So there are millions if not hundreds of millions of people around the world working for peace and the betterment of our world, and yet seeing all of this ignorance here makes one think twice about optimism. Working to change the world needs to be within, of course. But when we do our good works in the world, I think it's important to consider strategies for working with the ignorant who happen to be wealthy as well. We are all connected, and these people have the resources to do so much good in the world. It's sad to see so much waste.

So, I walked from Montara to Half Moon Bay and my front wheel had a bolt that became bent. It would have been very difficult to walk all the way up and down the many hilly areas from here to Santa Cruz. And the intuition hit me to call my friend, Jessica Gauvreau and request a ride to Santa Cruz. She, of course, said "yes." And when I say, of course, you have to know her. She's one of the kindest and most loving people on Earth. She's spent years working with troubled youth in 6 month long wilderness survival camps. Not to mention, I think she was very glad we became friends because she doesn't really fit in with all of these people here. She told me that she's been looked at with snobbery the whole time she's been here, and yet she coes from an exceedingly affluent family herself. But Jessica accepts herself as she is and doesn't feel the need to boast of her background. In fact, it appears she would prefer not to share her family history because she would prefer to be seen for her own accomplishments, not her family's. Again, her father is the Attorney General of the state of Maine. Yet, Jessica stands out to me as her completely own person. She has accomplished so much, and in many ways has overshadowed her parents success.

So, Jessica is picking me up here in less than an hour. And it promises to be an enjoyable ride down to santa Cruz. And I look forward to being away from the peering and judgmental eyes of this area. And my compassionate sadness at this whole thing is not for me or even the many others who have had to deal with all of this. Instead, my heart goes out to the people here who have no idea about life or their own existence in this grand universe. In a way, these people were abused worse than any physical abuse in the nation. And the odds of them healing and awakening in this lifetime are so low. And this is so sad. I hope it doesn't take them too many lifetimes. Because they would love to be part of love.

"May all beings be free."

Stuart Davis, Integral Artist and Zen student of Genpo Roshi, lineage holder of the White Plum Lineage.

Amazing Adventure

2010-02-06T12:29:00.000-08:00

Day 3 of the journey:

I'm in a coffee shop called Caffe Lucca in Montara. I was planning to leave sooner, but I was able to score an interview with the amazing adventurer, Jessica Gauvreau, who works at the Montara Lighthouse Hostel in Montara, California. Jessica is 29 years-old and has gone on such adventures as walking from Mexico to Alaska (4,600 miles), was on a sailing crew that went around the world for 11 months, sea kayaked across the Bering Sea, and has circumnavigated all of Australia in a sea Kayak. Jessica and I became good friends and she drove me to Half Moon Bay for a personal tour, some window shopping, cannoli, and dinner by the sea.

Her story is inspiring. Her walk from Mexico to Alaska was done alone, and I really think she inspires women in particular to break out of limits and adventure through the world. Her father is the Attorney General of Maine, and her mother is the head of the library system in Maine. Her family has always been afraid and worried about her as she's embarked on her amazing adventures, but she says they're getting used to it.

I also interviewed brain scientist, psychologist, and humanitarian Anne Voyd. Anne is an American living in Romania working to help heal the traumas of the Romanian people experienced in times of communism in the past. She was very sweet and loving, and she always returns to Romania from America with stuffed animals for children who have never had toys. She also works with adults and gives them stuffed animals as well to help them bring out their inner children for deep healing purposes. We talked a lot about psychology and the many developments in understanding psychological growth within the human being.

I told Anne about Ken Wilber's work and she was very excited. She's going to get his books A Brief History of Everything and Integral Life Practice, which I believe will be exceedingly helpful for the work she's doing. It's absolutely wonderful to meet such wonderful people in the world dedicated entirely to service and selflessness.

I also visited a bookstore in Sacramento a few days back and had a great conversation with the owner. We talked about Wilber's work and he was excited as well. Right there in front of me, he went online and ordered a series of Ken's books for his store. He had read Grace and Grit long ago, and wasn't familiar with any other works of Ken Wilber. It feels soooooooooooo good to spread the word about something as liberating and loving as Ken Wilber's work. I just can't put it into words.

So, tomorrow I traverse a thirty mile stretch of walking along the coast from Montara to Half Moon Bay and as close to Santa Cruz as I can get before darkness and setting up camp. Then I'm off southward to walk to Monterey, Carmel by the Sea, and south to the Los Padres National Forrest area, where I'll remain for a month or two before beginning the warmer weather walk up north to who knows where. I might go into Oregon, Washington, and even Canada and Alaska. But we shall have to see.

World Peace Is Inevitable,

Billy Guilfoyle

The Journey Begins

2010-02-04T20:57:00.000-08:00

Yup, that's right, it has begun. I was picked-up at 7:15 AM this morning in Sacramento by a guy named Kelly, who commutes to San Francisco about once a week or so. He offers rides for cheap on craigslist.org. I payed 15 bucks, and we picked-up another guy from Davis who is a student and on his way to talk to some venture capitalists for a start-up business. Kelly works in investments as well. It was very interesting listening to them talk about business. It sounds very exciting, just like catching a big fish.

Kelly must have had a way better idea of the sheer size of San Francisco's bay area, because he looked at me funny when I told him he could just drop me off anywhere. He decided to talk me to the top of the hill in Pacifica, so that meant only walking down hill with my little buggy filled with about a hundred pounds worth of stuff. Going down hill was a bitch! And then when I ended my walk in Pacifica, I had to go up hill all the way to Montara Lighthouse, where I'm staying in a Hosteling International Hostel right now. The walk uphill was bad. But it wasn't nearly as bad as the very little room on Highway 1 for walkers or bike riders. A Sheriff came and stopped and I said, "Is it illegal to walk on the Highway? And he said, "Nope. Just dangerous." He offered to throw my stuff in his trunk but it wouldn't fit. He was driving the standard cop style vehicle. So, we wished each other well and he was on his way. But I kept saying to myself, "Man, I should have taken that ride!" Just when I thought all hope was lost, body bruised and battered from this horrible stretch of highway, the sheriff returns with an SUV. We tie up my buggy, which falls off immediately upon departure, thankfully all electronics are still working fine. Then we retied it and were off. He drove me the next four miles to the lighthouse. My God, my body hurts. I'm so lucky the Sheriff was such a nice fellow. I was very grateful.

Then I helped a who was trying to tie stuff onto her car in the rain and wind. She was very grateful for my help. When I asked her where she was going, she said, "I don't know." And I told her, "I don't know where I'm going either," which made us both laugh. It's neat to see that I'm not alone in listening to intuition without intellectually understanding a bit of it. But my intellect knows the past and how things work, so it's cool stepping aside and allowing adventures into the Great Mystery to unfold. I may die on this trip. I may not. But I'd rather die on this journey than die living a life I can't stand or a life that is boring and devoted to money-making, etc.

So the girl who checked me into the hostel asked what I was doing, and I told her I was going down south as far as San Luis Obispo and then heading north to maybe Canada. She said, "I did that last year." She walked from Mexico to Alaska in 7 months. She showed me an article about her journey on a website I've been going to for maps of the California Coastal Trail. I'm fortunate to talk to her and learn what to avoid (like that last stretch of Highway 1. Apparently, it doesn't get like that again until you get to Big Sur. So I might just go as far as Big Sur, who knows?

Then I met a guy in my room named Blair, who is from Santa Cruz and just rode his bike to Point Reyes. We know some of the same people in Chico at the non-profit GRUB. He's 25 and his parents are in their mid 60s. He's an only child. He's reading The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse. Studying mechanical engineering in Santa Cruz. We just smoked a little weed outside. Afgani Goo. Talked about Ken Wilber, Integral Theory, and differing techniques for dealing with shadow and childhood tramas, etc. He told me about looking at the memory from a third person perspective and rewinding it, and rewinding it faster and faster each time. This makes sense to me, in that looking at anything rather than being in the actual terrifying moment in body is good for perspective, for loosening attachments, etc. However, the potential that is lost or repressed can be integrated using the 3-2-1 process where we start looking at it from third person, then we bring it into second person and talk to it like it's in a chair in front of us, and, lastly, we become it; we totally embody the "scary thing." This seems to me to be the most affective and most available, since anyone can do it all alone. Which is another major reason for my trip into the woods on the coast of California. I want to do some of the deepest and most profound work on my shadow as well as my body, mind, and spirit. I would like to become intimately acquainted with all of these. Let's see what kind of transformation this will produce.

Thank you, Ken Wilber, for all of your amazing work and for your amazing heart.

Crying, Preparing, on the Way.

2010-02-02T19:17:00.000-08:00

(Above is the Vehicle I'll be storing all of my gear in)

I'll be leaving civilization as I've known it in two days. First I'm heading to San Francisco, then walking the entire coastline down to Half Moon Bay, then down to Santa Cruz, to Monterey, to Carmel, to the Los Padres National Forrest where I'll remain for the rest of the winter. Once April comes I'll begin the trek up north to Washington and into Canada.

I'll be continuing my intergral life practice, which has been aimed at spirit, body, mind, and shadow. Twice daily or more meditation, daily exercise, daily yoga, daily organic diet, daily shadow work using the 3, 2, 1 shadow process and other forms of shadow work. I'll also be continuing to film this journey as a documentary, and I've also brought my guitar, so those two things will be geared toward my creative aspects. With all aspects included and given their respective daily practices, the scientific studies that have been done on integral practice shows that all aspects benefit far more because the total being is being taken into account and nurtured with daily practice.

The goal: To become more loving.

(the crying in the title refers to It's a Beautiful Life, which I just watched and cried to. I'm happy to have the ability to cry, as well as artistic tools to help assist in these types of endeavors, because each cry I do while watching a film is like 3 years of therapy wrapped up in a couple of hours. Anyone who wants freedom will do well to laugh and cry as much as you possibly can. And then sit in the middle of nothing and say the name that can't be named)

Why the Integral Approach is a Gift: How We Transform

2010-01-01T17:57:00.000-08:00

I don't know what it is, exactly, within me that MUST create, MUST share, MUST help my human family evolve. There's this tendency to want to expunge all of the concepts and practices that have helped me transcend and transform and understand the universal predicament we life forms find ourselves within here today on the Earth in this Universe. How does one elucidate these things into a cohesive whole, into a satisfying structure that pleases the artist, that pleases the humanitarian within?

I must say that it's sometimes frustrating because we are dealing with a world where everyone is operating on a different plane of reality in the sense that we all have our complex psychological structures, which we tend to see through like differing colored sets of glasses. So our experiences with the world end up becoming translated completely differently. Some see a red world, some see blue, some see green. Some see more than just one color. So how do you create a dispensation of ideas that can help people see a bigger picture (which I believe seeing a bigger picture would help people consciously join in on the move of our societies toward balance and harmony)? How can you do this when there are so many differing perspectives and translations of reality going on at once?

I think the most important thing to do is practice some form of meditation, and the formless form seems to be the best. It would appear that to simply observe, to simply sit and watch what arises, and to notice what happens, this practice is essential for the individual who has had their ego humbled enough to see that growth is needed and that transformation is even a possibility that is desirable. Essentially, to sit silently and simply notice allows for the tendencies that exist in our thought processes to become obvious to us in an objective fashion, meaning that our subjective and more essential "I" can disidentify with these tendencies and, instead of "being it," can simply be the observer of it. When this practice is done over a bit of time the benefits are staggering.

The second more important thing, in my opinion, is to learn a new kind of "radical acceptance." This means noticing how we treat ourselves and our world. Do we accept what is arising within our noticing mind as we sit and meditate and observe our tendencies and as we observe what is occurring in the "outer world" and in the behaviors of "others?" Language is a slippery slope here. Because there really essentially is not-two. The inner subjective "I" and the outer objective world is really one. And yet this doesn't jive with the previous statement that we can be and simply identify with the observer of things, rather than being involved with identifying with those things observed. But I'll say it like this: The human head has no problem accepting that it is connected to the foot in that this is one whole body. But, the head is not unhealthy enough (which means living in illusion) to identify with the foot and forget itself as that which pilots where the foot will go. The head is not identified with the foot, even though the foot and head are one.

So we can see that there is a slippery slope going on here with language in that there is an absolute oneness in reality, and yet there is also at the same time a relativistic world of multiplicity. Essentially, both are correct. But one is made up of many. Many particles make up one atom. And many atoms make up one molecule. And many molecules make up one cell. Many cells make up one organism. Many organisms make up one species. Many species make up one web of life. And we can say that many webs of life make up the entire Kosmos.

So, many trees make up a forest. There are individual trees, and each one is complete and in fact ONE. Yet, together they form a larger structure of complexity that in turn has a larger connection and impact in the world, as seen in the benefits of rain forests on earth for climate control, oxygenation, and providing a home for literally millions of species. So there are two in the sense that there is a reality of relativity and multiplicity, and there is at the same time a reality of oneness or subjectivity. But every oneness is made up by many, which in turn is made up by many singular parts that are actually wholes in and of themselves. But the complexity increases as we move beyond the immediate and tiniest order of magnitudes and see the larger picture consisting of so many parts and smaller order of magnitudes.

Anyways, the main focus for me is doing my own individual part to help usher in a more peaceful and harmonious world for myself and my human family. And i realize that radical acceptance works on two levels, the outer and the inner, because the two are actually one. We come into or out of this universe like a leaf on a tree. Therefore, we are not separate, we are simply the fruit of a process which continues in evolution, just like a tree fruits and the the fruits leave seeds which then become trees which then fruit and bring forth seeds which then become trees, ad infinitum.

So as within, so as without. This is the natural and only reality for the subjective self. We see this in virtually every experience because we can only know it through experience, which is always subjective. A cluttered bedroom is indicative of a cluttered mind. The most healthiest person can witness chaos and madness and violence, but can only really understand these things as a result of having those tendencies and impulses within, as well as perhaps already experiencing these states in the past.

Another example of the inner and outer being the exact same is the simple observation of the universe itself. All space is that which pervades, as well as holds within it, many material objects. In the same sense, mind is that which holds and pervades all thoughts. We can say the same thing about water, which has been equated with emotion, which is definitely equated with thoughts. For there to be a strong emotional response to something, there first has to be cognition of a truthful or conceptual piece of information, such as "My dad just died." Someone can call you and tell you "Your dad just died." And only then, after this cognition has occurred, do emotions arise. And so we see that emotion is simply an extension of thought, and that the two are actually differing aspects of the very same process. So water is then seen to be mind, and the objects in the water, ocean, lake, river, or stream are seen to be thoughts, or the content that goes with emotion, or, in other words, the objects that go with the space. We cannot have space without object. There could not be a universe with only space and no material, and there cannot be material without space. The two are actually one and arise together simultaneously and forever this way and always have been this way. It is the same with our direct experience of the world. For our direct experience is OF things both in the world and in our minds. And the two are arising simultaneously. Mind and object. This is how the game is played.

This leads me to why Ken Wilber's work is most beneficial. (And we may say that there are most likely many flaws to be worked out in his synthesis and in his theories and perhaps even in his personality and ego. But this can only be known by Ken Wilber, those who are in dialogue with Ken Wilber, and experts in the fields of integral study. So for all intents and purposes I will only state what I feel to be the positives of Wilber's work and leave criticisms to the critics, and right discrimination to all those practicing such a critical piloting of their own lives.)

so, continuing, Ken Wilber points to our innate move toward transcendence, which is what Emerson was all about and which is why Emerson became my favorite person a little less than a decade ago. Anyone who has lived (therefore, everyone) has experienced growing from a needy little child to a sexually developing and independent teenager, to a self-reliant adult. Now we have all been stuck in certain degrees of this development, but we can all agree that we have experienced transcending our earlier developmental stages. So Ken's work is important because it is primarily focused on transcendence, which takes place at any level of development we happen to be at. So if we are no looking at the mind and the object and saying "Well, the two are here before me being witnessed as I discuss this" then this makes the identity "not mind and not object." In other words, we cannot be what is being observed, just as the eyeball can never be what it is seeing, and the hand can never be what it is grabbing.

This is a tricky little path of inquiry because the hand not only is not what it grabs, but cannot grasp itself, just as the eye cannot see itself, just as the "pure witness" beyond all objects perceived cannot see itself. Therefore, we can see the fundamental truth in Sri Ramana Maharshi's statement: "Knowing is being." The only way to know the true identity is to be it. So as we develop and witness objects and even mind itself we then allow them to fall away because we are no longer relying on them to give us our identity. Eventually we are left with nothing, which means that we have no more objects to cling to for the safety of feeling we have a solid grasp of who we think we are at each of the developmental stages.

Now it is completely natural to identify with objects. It is natural to identify with your family, then your school and church, then your city and state, then your country, then your entire species, then even the planet and perhaps the universe at large. And then after having done this natural progression of transcendence it is totally natural to identify with the states of consciousness being translated from whatever point of psychological development we happen to be at. But eventually comes a time when there is nothing beyond the mind-body to cling to as a security blanket of identity except for the pure witness. And from this place there comes what has been called "Enlightenment." This is when even the pure witness drops away and there is only the non-dual state. And that is what all of us are in the deepest level of our being. And that is the very same and only essential Self behind all eyes, behind all identifications, and behind all body-minds. Relativity has just led us to the absolute. And this is the course of evolution.

So, knowing these things is vital to anyone who wishes to have some sort of an idea what the hell is going on here in this life, on this planet, and in these times. Everyone is at a different point of development. So for some it seems that the whole world is going mad. These people are seeing a crazy world with crazy people who hurt each other and kill each other and exploit each other, and it seems like the whole world is truly insane. But what is not realized is that this observation in itself merely points to the transcendence OF that level of development that most of the world is operating at. It is precisely because we see it that we can know ourselves to be free of it and not actually be it. However, a fish doesn't know what water is because it hasn't experienced another environment. Therefore, the people living in the egocentric "me and mine" world of selfishness, violence, capitalization, and competition have no idea what this level really looks like. They do not see the insanity for what it is. They have no accurate perspective on this matter because they are too closely embedded in it. In fact, the only way to objectively view egocentricity, or, in other words, look at it and thus not be it and thus transcend it, is to become world centric, or rather to be able to take the positions of differing perspectives into true consideration, which, by definition, is the opposite of egocentricity. So the only way to know egocentricity is to transcend it and move beyond it. Otherwise, the world is an illusion in that it is being translated on a level of ego, which in and of itself has no room for the other 6 billion perspectives existing in reality.

So radical acceptance means looking at our own resistance inside to what appears to not be allowable or to what we deem should not exist in the world. We can ask questions like, "When did I pick up the idea that there are portions of reality that should or shouldn't exist?" We can ask questions like, "What is it in myself that is coming from the assumption that it is mythic-God-like and can have absolute knowledge of what portions of the universe are acceptable and non-acceptable?" And the reason why this line of inquiry is so important is because we eventually come to see that what we are projecting onto the world and deeming unacceptable is actually stemming form a portion of our own psyche that we have pushed out of our conscious waking states due to a complex psychological defense mechanism that formulates through societal conditioning so that each member of society can know how to operate and be in an acceptable fashion knowing full well that to behave otherwise would mean banishment, becoming an outcast, and thus certain death due to lack of resources obtained and shared within the group. Restating that last sentence: Our resistance is the finger pointing to our disowned parts, and we have unconsciously disowned these parts in order to remain loved and accepted by the group, which on a purely biological level means we can have access to life sustaining resources controlled by the group; and on a psychological level means we can have a group to belong to and experience connection with.

So our non-acceptance actually stems from our own inward need to be accepted. Society has little room for healthy and natural expressions of anger and rage, so these things end up being repressed and projected onto others unconsciously and perhaps passive aggressively. So radical acceptance of self and world both lend to peace within and without. To clean one's bedroom is to clean ones mind. To accept what is arising within our awareness is to accept whatever arises within the world. And it works vice versa as well, for the two are one and arise simultaneously always.

The fun part of all this, for those who are transformation addicts like myself, is that we can now have an accurate tool for gauging where we are at in our development, where our blocks reside, and what processes are going on as we deal with the unconscious and as we come across these resistances and transcend them. Anytime there is resistance or aversion, this can be considered a gift from the Divine, for it is only these things that can point the way toward our own freedom.

Okay, I'm really stoked...

2009-12-29T22:46:00.000-08:00

I'm really stoked about this journey. In the past I've made journeys that have been super fun, cross country trips, driving to Mexico and Lake Tahoe, traveling Europe and portions of Asia, living in Turkey, Serbia and Montenegro, and the Dominican Republic, hitching a ride form Minnesota to Colorado with my friend Eric Nixon.....it's all been a blast.

You know why i like Ken Wilber so much? Because he gives you a certain sense of permission to accept aspects of life that would normally be deemed "bad" or "sinful" or "to be avoided." For instance, it is okay to be who and what you are. Yet many have problems accepting themselves, or portions of themselves and others. In a world so very skilled in non-acceptance, Ken is a breath of fresh air, a man saying to the world: Guess what, it's okay to have fun, it's okay to love, it's okay to have ego and to simply observe it and try to integrate it rather than judge it and repress it. I love that.

There have been times in reading Ken Wilber's work and listening to his audio when I've felt major resistance to some of the things he has said are okay to accept. But then I ask myself, "Where did this thought or idea or belief begin? When did I take on the belief that there are portions of the universe that I shouldn't accept? Who am I to argue with the universe?"

I had a teacher long ago who taught aspects of different lineages, one being Tibetan Buddhism. I felt like he wasn't a very advanced person, so I moved away from him as my teacher. However, I thought he was an okay fellow so I sent him a link to a comedy music video I directed called "Small Penis Blues." He HATED it!!! He wrote me back in a snide manner that said, "What happened to you, Billy? I thought you were going Conscious." Then I became defensive and wrote him "Hey, I was only trying to spread awareness about male body image and consumerism and do it all with a bit of humor," etc. He responded with, "Thanks for the lesson, son." At this point I realized who I was dealing with and simply sent along one last word: "Love." There wasn't another response.

The point is, if we cannot laugh, we are certainly not enlightened. Now, this teacher did have useful things to teach, like mantras and the like. But I don't think he can offer much more than mantras. Which is probably a good thing.

When I was first in London, right off the plane at Heathrow Airport, heading to the Underground, a man stopped me and said, "Hey, are you going to the Underground?" I said, "Yeah." "Well, I have this ticket that's good for one ride for three pounds, I'm about to catch a plane, do you want to buy it off of me?" I said, "Sure." When I got to the ticket lady to give her my ticket she said, "This is a used stub. It can't be used again."

At that moment I knew that I had been swindled. I wanted to go back and find the guy and stop him from swindling others. But then I thought about it for a minute and realized he was doing a service. He was scamming people right off the plane for a measly three pounds. Not a bad price to pay for learning to be more cautious in this new country. So I bought another ticket and got on the Underground.

The same is true with a lot of spiritual teachers. Ken Wilber and others have made it abundantly clear that we all could use a teacher to help us transcend the ego, because doing so alone is next to impossible. And many teachers have NOT transcended their own egos. Therefore, they are NOT real teachers who can help in any fashion with ego transcendence. BUT.......they are doing a service by showing us what to be on the lookout for and what to avoid as we move toward the kind of teacher who can help us in this most critical department of ego transcendence. Everything has a purpose under the sun.

Most important, in my book, is to laugh. Tell jokes. Laugh at everything. There's already enough pain and suffering going on. We don't have to limit ourselves and each other with this whole PC movement and the self-mortification of no sense of humor. In fact, to do so would be quite egocentric indeed.

12-27-09 1st Journal Entry

2009-12-27T13:24:00.000-08:00

Gearing up for a spectacular leap into a lifestyle of nomadic living, selfless service, love, adventure, meditation, travel, pilgrimage, and much, much more! This is by far the most adventurous thing I've done. In 34 days I will be leaving Chico, California, where I've lived for the last 4 years, and embarking on a journey of self-discovery, healing, integration, and love.

I'll be walking. Where, you ask?.......... Who knows?............. Better yet, who's asking? I am aware that this which sees out of these eyes is the universe itself and is the same behind all eyes. There is simply awareness. And for awareness there are no rules.

Simple awareness strives only to love. It IS love. It can be trusted to lead the show. In other words, we all should learn to let go of our limiting identities, because with this letting go of identity comes also the dropping of all fears. At that point there is nothing to do but adventure in love.

And so I'll be roaming on foot across this great land, for who knows how long, continuing my daily routine of twice daily Zen meditation, Yoga, exercise, healthy eating, and psychological healing and integration.

This lifestyle I lead can be called "integral." It is a matter of doing healthy things on every level of my being: the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. Such a method of care for the vehicle that houses universal awareness is actually called "worshipping the Divine." To "worship" means to "love and adore." This is what it means to be loving.

It all starts with the body-mind. We go the "middle-way," as Buddha put it, which means, simply put, being nice to yourself.

Believe me when I tell you that being nice to yourself only insures that genuine compassion and kindness toward others will naturally and most effortlessly follow.

We cannot freeze our deeds in the world simply to remain inward and be meditated-out. When we lay in our bed at night, don't we arrange ourselves and our pillow and blanket into a more comfortable position? Is it not the same when we consciously begin to join all humanitarians across the globe in arranging our evolving societies into more peaceful, equal, and loving environments with higher awareness and safety for the new beings being born here every second of every single day? Essentially, it becomes a duty as the small self is forgotten. It becomes the only life's work, loving others.

I'll be shooting documentary footage on the journey as I am a filmmaker with an insatiable curiosity like that of a scientist. I want people to see that there are alternatives to living the life expected of you by the outside world. Henry David Thoreau, Gandhi, and all great people who have lived the adventurous life did so by listening to the truth WITHIN and not following the dictates of the outward world. Within is where it's at.

Most people are absolutely terrified to do anything that the crowd doesn't do. This is called "the herd- mind mentality." But we are not cattle, despite our education, conditioning, and indoctrination into otherwise.

35,000 people in the United States commit suicide every year. we all feel greatly saddened by this, because we know that in the mind of a person moving toward suicide there is only a perspective of terror, depression, hell, and no end in sight. We ourselves have felt this sense of "no end in sight" when we've been in depression or in deep cries of emotional pain.

It feels like the pain and the way we are seeing things will last forever, literally. And the saddest thing in the world is that rarely if ever does anyone realize that this sense of forever is actually our true identity, for how else could we even know what forever feels like? It turns out that we are eternity and that all emotional states are very temporary. But a person experiencing depression tends to project their eternal nature on the outwardly arising object of temporal states of emotion. Thus the misery seems eternal, and it appears there is no way out. But the human being has the capacity for a radical shift in consciousness and in life circumstances.

My real hope for this documentary and youtube broadcast is to inspire the generations to do something different and see beyond the limits of habitual living. Instead of suicide, let's consider allowing the past to die and radically changing something in our lives. Let's be willing to admit that there is a lot that we do not know, and so how can we trust any view we carry that would keep us in a perpetual view of sadness?

With all my love and admiration for human potential, now begins the pilgrimage of Integral Mind.

World Peace Is Inevitable,

Billy Guilfoyle