Being Home

Every once in a while, many of us experience a "lifting of the veil," where for a moment we experience the world as One. We feel ourselves as the world, and for an instant get a glimpse of the Grand Creation and our indispensible part in it.

These moments have been coming on more frequently as I move along the timeline of my life, tantalizing me to investigate just what it is that causes me to suddenly and unexpectedly end up fully in the Now. I know certain practices that encourage this, and perhaps because I am doing them more, then that explains it. But, to put words to it, I'd say it's about duality vs. oneness.

We live in a dualistic world, a world of polarities: dark-light, good-bad, good-evil, virtuousness-sinfulness, fear-love, etc., etc., etc. Yet, in those those "oneness" episodes there is no "other" out there that is opposite or even different than me, and because this state feels so much like home, it really points up how illusionary this duality certainly must be.

We are all exploring the edges of this Creation we are participating in. Some of us are "dark workers"--who inflict pain and suffering on others, or experience extreme emotional states, or some physical malady or malformation. These dark workers are showing us where we do not have to go--they are already there. They are pioneers at the edges of reality, showing us how vast the possibilities and potentials of this world can be.

The "light workers" on the other hand, explore and demonstrate the realms of contentment, ecstasy and love, and yet, these states cannot be truly known or appreciated without their opposites.

It all gets down to the Grand Experiment of Separation. By separating ourselves from the Creator God Self in order to see who we are, we created a dualistic world: a world where we are, and are not. And the extreme sense of disconnection had us losing our way, as we felt along the edges of this new dualistic world in an attempt to get back Home.

And that's what my occasional bouts of oneness feel like: coming home. All my experience sensually, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually is showing me the Way back Home. If it weren't for the darkness, I could not see the light, and in darkness the light shows us the way. It is only judgment that cements us into the polarities of this dualistic world. We judge something to be not a part of us, and that solidifies our disconnectedness, adding yet another barrier to our journey Home. We fear the dark, and death the most because we mistakenly judge those things to be disconnections. But it is not the darkness or death that is the disconnection, it is our act of judgment that disconnects us.

Acceptance of this world and an embracing of both sides of the duality is the only way Home. Let me meet you There.

A Progressive's Lament

I'm not by nature a political person. The closest I've come to being classified pretty accurately by someone it was by a channeled entity, Anttarr, through the late Levi Longfellow. Anttarr delivered a long diatribe about how I was a "Psycho-Social Naturalist."

I've mulled that over for years, and have finally come to a definition that relaxes me. Although I consider myself pretty much a social hermit, when I am out "in the world," I enjoy just letting people be who and what they are. I've never felt it was my place to judge or want to change someone. I may have a response to a person's behavior, but I would much rather have them continue to be themselves, despite my responses.

It's because of this view, I think some political analyst somewhere would say I was a "progressive"; perhaps interpreting my "liberal social tolerance" as such. Of course, metaphysically speaking, everyone is really a projection of my own mind, so to judge or criticize somebody else, is just me talking to myself. And that is what becomes what I call the Progressive's Lament. Isn't it just human nature to have a helpful, caring, loving society?

I'm a fan of John Perkins, a lecturer and activist shaman, who now and then presents workshops and seminars. His banner is "Shapeshifting Strategies for Positive Change." Anyone familiar with shamanistic practicies is familiar with shapeshifting. It's where you simply change your shape to change the world. This can mean anything from changing a thought form, to literally changing the body's appearance.

One of Perkin's associates is a fellow named David Korten, who has a very interesting take on global politics. His book list reveals some of his ideology: Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, and When Corporations Rule the World.

Korten's whole approach is presenting a worldview where shamanic wisdom of ancient cultures is applied to economics. What he comes to is a world where wealth is shared, and where values of increased awareness, shared consciousness, and earth rituals have trumped corporate acquisition and individual power mongering. In a cooperative village setting, no one owns more than anyone else, and everyone's needs are met.

Obviously, this is an old Utopian idea shared by such ignominious visionaries as Marx or Mao, and by the way, by most children. It isn't until direct attempts to manifest these high ideals that modern societal programming ultimately leads to Utopian failure.

This isn't to say it can't be done, it's just that, as Korten would say, because corporations own most of the humanity's resources (including mass media, the educational system and health care), there can be no such thing as "sharing everything with everybody." And it's why I believe corporations were invented in the first place.

No one human being could betray their own natures as completely as a corporation can. A corporation can only expand, otherwise it ceases to exist since the stockholders would no longer be getting returns on their "investments." Corporations are a way of dodging social responsibility under the "moral" banner of "shared profits" for the stockholders.

And this is where it all goes off track. Sure corporations share, but only amongst their stockholders, which is why governments have to intervene on behalf of the rest of us. Of course, the people in government are stockholders, too, so that neutralizes much of the "push back" from the government.

What Perkins, Korten, and crowds of others are saying, basically, is that because earth is made up of finite resources, there can be no such thing as an "ever-expanding" corporation. And, by allowing human nature to re-express itself without corporations will ultimately lead to a cooperative, sharing society.

In her book, The Bond, Lynne McTaggart proves that "hard-wired" into the DNA of all humans is the impulse to share, the impulse to help (without reward), and the impulse to take turns. These are not learned behaviors. These are behaviors we are born with. Exhaustive studies over many decades have proven this, and dis-proven the long-held belief that the best life strategy is a self-serving one--that competition is good for society in general, and that progress would never happen otherwise. This sounds like a corporation talking, doesn't it? The truth is, the corporate premise is diametrically opposed to basic human nature.

This is not only true of humans. Many species from chimpanzees to elephants to birds exhibit similar cooperative social behaviors. I see it in my cat, Ralph, and dog, Wookie. Ralph never eats all his food, because he wants to share it with Wookie. After Wookie eats, Ralph is back at it, schmoozing me for more food for him.

When political Progressives talk about change, what they are basically wanting to change is the fundamental economic basis of society--corporate power. This is a futile exercise, because it doesn't get to the true root of social problems. I would venture to guess that society exists at all only because of caring, helpful people, and despite the greed and inherent corruption of inhuman corporations, or as Korten calls it, The Empire. Because The Empire is not a person, it doesn't care about people, only itself. Sure, people own parts of it, and run most of it, but they are operating on only one premise: monetary profit--a narrow and dangerous premise indeed.

What is it within ourselves that disconnects us from our family, our community, our nation, our world--the earth itself? That disconnected thing within us is what allows all manner of behaviors and outcomes betraying our basic natures. This betrayal is where we lose our faith, where we begin to fear life, harbor suspicions of our fellow humans, and maintain that tried and truly cynical "dog-eat-dog" world view.

When in fact, we are hard-wired to be selfless, to share, even to experience others as ourselves. We all fundamentally embrace the Golden Rule, and automatically want to help others. What if The Empire did that? What a different world that would be!

The next time you hear that old cynic's saw, "The more things change, the more they stay the same," just remember to re-connect to your true nature, and through that re-connection, the world can become one again.

My Altercation with Food

The five other members of my immediate family were or are all obese. I escaped that fate for a few reasons, the least of which was my chronic ambivalence around food.

Don't get me wrong. I love food and love to eat, but if someone told me there was no more of the food I liked, or I could only eat potatoes for the rest of my life, I could live with it.

My family did with food what most post-Depression Era families did: Teach the children to eat three "square" (big) meals a day; always, always finish your plate; and, of course, consider all the starving children in Africa (or China, or Harlem--whatever provided the most wanton image). This last one usually made me laugh even as a child. In fact, I can remember when my mom first said that in all seriousness, and I laughed out loud. I'm not sure why I laughed at the time--probably because of the incredible disconnect that my parents were directly feeding the hungry children of the world, and because I wasn't starving, I must eat more for those children? Didn't make sense.

My friend, Gary, said he used to tell his parents, "Well, then why don't we mail these poor children this food I'm not going to eat." That made more sense!

The combination of childhood food ambivalence, an ongoing spiritual quest, and the deep inner belief in what I called "radical self-reliance," led me to discover Breatharianism. It is pretty much what it sounds like--the practice of discovering the human body's innate ability to survive without the intake of solid food, and in some cases without the drinking of liquids.

Google Breatharianism and you'll find many example of famous breatharians throughout history, including many yogis and monks who eschewed (pun intended) food in favor of prana or "life force".The practice is centered around using the life force within and around us as food, or as a superior form of food--whichever works for you.

There are many techniques to turn on the "prana food" switch in the body, but it takes practice, time and, well, effort. Needless to say, the number of people even interested in this is small, but they do exist, and new breatharians create themselves every day.

No discussion about breatharianism is complete without bringing in the work of Jasmuheen from Australia. She is one of the most high profile and controversial of the breatharians alive today. In her pre-Jasmuheen life she was Ellen Greve, a financier. (As with most pioneers in any given area, Wikipedia has an annoying snarkiness in their "objective" analysis of her work).

Anywho, she wrote a book back in the 80s called "Living on Air: A 21-Day Program of Freedom", or something like that. I ate it up (heh heh). But after reading the book and very seriously considering doing the program, I was faced with a real dilemma. What am I actually considering doing here? Giving up food for the rest of my life? (I was 30-something at the time). What would be the social consequences (of which there are a LOT)? I ended up realizing that, 1. I really do love to eat and I thought I'd really miss it; and 2. My wife, friends, and other family would just not understand what the hell I was doing. I mean, I was already considered weird enough...

Instead, I decided to try the next best thing: fasting. I read all about fasting; talked with people who had done a lot of it, and started doing it myself. I tried a week, then two weeks, then a month. I tried water-only fasts, juice fasts, and even a spirulina fast.

I explored my body states as I subjected it to food deprivation--at least that's what I thought I was doing--long meditations, and solitary retreats. There is a certain purity about fasting that goes beyond the body's detoxing and cleaning routines. It's a mental clearing, a spiritual douche, and an emotional catharsis all at once. It's not for everyone. But it seemed to be for me. I liked it.

As I continued to do longer and longer fasts, and longer and longer re-entries back to eating (which is a program all its own--after my first fast of seven days, I broke it with a giant hamburger. That burger is with me today, I swear), I was on a rollercoaster of feeling energized and fresh while fasting, and then heavied out and dull during eating phases. In the very back of my mind that alarmed me, because it meant that maybe my body had already adapted to no food, and maybe I was in some way injuring it by eating. I shoved such thoughts back down and pasted them over with a basic disbelief that something like that might actually be true of my own body.

At my peak, I fasted on water for 54 days straight. In medical literature they say 33 days is the absolute maximum before you starve to death. I was fine. I felt pretty lightheaded toward the end of the fast, and then on the 54th day, I just decided to end it with an apple. I think I got bored in a weird way, or maybe lonely--since I wasn't eating with my spouse, and although she was pretty tolerant, I could tell she was worried about me, and that bothered me, too.

I did a couple of other 10 and 21 day fasts and several 2-3 day fasts until I was around 50. My thinking had changed over the years, and I came to believe that long fasts were not necessarily good for the body. Meanwhile, I was able to consume vast quantities of food without gaining huge amounts of weight--I yoyo'd between 190 and 230 pounds most years. At 6'1" tall, 230 puts me at about 30% body fat, which is the technical definition of obese, and I just couldn't go beyond that. It was not just because I didn't want to suffer the same fates as both my deceased parents who died of obesity-related illnesses. It was more about how my body felt--not being able to bend over to tie my shoes was one red flag, or having to buy bigger clothes--another red flag.

At the risk of making a short story long, I must veer off into my intimate relationships here because it explains or at least sets the stage for what happened during my 60th year with food and pain.

My relationship with women has always been more about "partnering" than role playing. This is an important distinction. Since I was a child I've been acutely aware that I have a feminine side, and although culturally boys are taught to deny that side, I never really bought into that party line. Instead, I liked to experience myself as both feminine and masculine--feminine in the sense that I could sensualize the world, and be a nurturer of it in a way that's harder to explain than I thought right here.

That said, I mostly enjoy my masculine side, and enjoy being a man in this infamously man's world. The thing is, when it came to a relationship with a woman, I have always been attracted to masculine, or strong women; women who were outspoken, and kind of wild. They inspired my own feminine side to sort of come out of the closet so to speak, and to run with them as wolves. I would use my masculinity to be strong, but in a feminine way.

The reason this is relevant to the whole eating food thing became clear (at last) after my most recent relationship ended in the death of my partner. Medically, she died of breast cancer at 54, but spiritually she died because she just didn't want to be in this world very long. She told me this repeatedly throughout our 12-year relationship.

She was an angry person with a very sweet and sensitive side, and I found myself completely entranced with that contradiction. She had a way of kicking my ass and then schmoozing me back that completely mystified me. I was completely being controlled, and with my full permission.

During our time together, she got me into Bikram Yoga (hot yoga), which cured my compressed lumbar discs over an 8-year practice, and she was very supportive of my musician side, when I was gigging 4-5 nights a week and touring 2-3 months out of the year.

We were business partners as well as housemates, with a small online health products company that she had hired me to build the website for, and how we ended up as intimates. I spent all my time on the company and playing music, and life was pretty good. The thing was, I was hypnotized by her. I was just following her around doing her bidding non-stop, and being able to take a break to do a gig was really the only thing keeping me sane and engaged with the relationship. The thing is, those years spent with her were the healthiest physically I'd ever been in my entire life.

Unsurprisingly, my previous marriage of 17 years had the exact same dynamic to it. I would follow her around doing her bidding instead of simply living my own life. When I finally crawled out of the emotional abuse, I had awful problems with my lower back--I couldn't stand up on my own symbolically.

As the cancer took hold in my partner, I found myself more and more in a caregiver situation, either single-handing the business and the house while she pursued her treatments in Southern California; or in the final days when she needed care 24-7. I found myself collapsing into her relationship with her disease, and lost all self-interest. Not a good thing.

After a 4-month final battle of a mastectomy, pneumonia, and another bacterial infection, she made it over to the other side. I was a wreck. I had no life. I had been running on adrenaline and fixated attention for longer than I realized at the time, and it had changed my body chemistry.

A month or so after her passing I became aware of a huge reservoir of relief that began washing over me. I was on my own now. No more collapsing in, no more ass-kickings, no more emotional abuses. I was free of all that and could now spread my wings and get on with all the things I'd ever imagined I would do if I were independent. I took my RV to Burning Man with my nextdoor neighbor, an internet porn star and 30 years my junior; I dove into comedy improv classes; I took voice lessons; and just did whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. I ate whatever and wherever I wanted, and drank a good amount of wine, and in short, I started having a really good time.

Then the pain came. It started as both shoulders aching at night, and at its peak I was barely able to get out of bed to go pee at night. Pain was excruciating and all pervasive. Aspirin would help, but not much. Before the syndrome got debilitating, I was doing yoga at the local yoga studio, but the pain started giving me problems. I thought maybe I just needed some strength training, so I did Pilates. That led to a knee and hip injury and severe sciatica, so I stopped that. I tried Egoscue, and although I got some relief, there came a time when I could not get down on my knees without extreme crying-out pain. I was miserable and felt like a 120 year old, or something maybe like 180...

One of my other deep interests is in mind-body medicine. This field has always been near and dear to me, because I had experienced first hand many times the profound healing potentials of the human body, and the equally profound and potent effects that the mind can have on the body. In this culture, we are taught that we ARE bodies, so if there is disease, then there is something wrong with us, and we need to be "fixed" by trained professionals. I never fully bought into this model, and as a result rarely consulted an MD, and only occasionally a naturopath. I didn't like what diagnoses do--they solidify a condition, or a false "truth", so that this truth becomes your belief, and that belief prevents the body from healing.

I conjectured that the pain may be some sort of rheumatic arthritis, maybe brought on by candida overgrowth, or maybe I had picked up some parasite when I was in Mexico where we were seeking non-FDA treatments for my partner's breast cancer. But I didn't want to get too much into self-diagnosis because that creates basically the same situation as an official medical diagnosis mind-body-wise.

I had some breakthroughs in understanding from reading up about German New Medicine. My friend and consultant, Dr. Carolyn Dean, had turned me on to it. This modality says that the body is in a constant state of repair and healing. It is traumatic events that stick the mind's attention in the moment of the trauma, and the body doesn't know the difference between a past injury carried forward by the mind and a current trauma taking place now. This is also reminiscent of Dianetics, and several other modalities, but it made a great deal of sense to me. The body was just dealing with so many unresolved traumas that eventually they just added up, and the passing over experience of my partner was a sort of last straw cascading into this pain syndrome.

Then I ran into Access Consciousness, and it all fell together for both me and my body. Founded by Gary Douglas about 20 years ago, Access Consciousness posits that the universe is responding to everything you are thinking. The body is responding to everything you're thinking, especially judgments and conclusions you've made about it.

One of the Access Body processes is to ask the body what it wants and needs. This takes a little practice (or a lot depending on where you're at), but it is possible to ask the body, for example, what it would like to look like, or what it would like to eat or drink, or what kind of exercise it would like. The answers are not usually in words--it's more about letting the body direct your attention, and being mindful of the present and where your attention is being directed.

Of course, when I really got this, I started asking it everything and was getting some very clear answers in most cases, and if it was confusing, I would muscle-test by checking if the body moved toward a thing, or away from it, or I ask "Is this light or heavy", going with "light" as the truth.

When it came to asking about this pain syndrome, the body seemed confused. It did tell me it needed more water, and it told me it did NOT like the Paleo diet I was on, and to give it some sugar and carbs once in awhile. It also said it wanted to sleep a LOT, and do some walking every day. I would ask it what food to buy at the store and it would come up with stuff I never would have bought. But when we ate it, it tasted fantastic.

I started feeling better, and I actually had some days that were virtually pain free (still on the 2-3 grams of Aspirin I was taking daily). Yet some days I would just crash and be back where I started. It was confusing and upsetting.

Finally, I asked myself in Access style, "What am I not aware of that if I was aware of it would resolve this pain?" I kept asking that question for several days. One morning at daybreak I woke up with the awareness that my body is saying it does not like FOOD, and as a result has been trying to explain that to me by making my arms and hands hurt, and swelling up my knees and feet (the things I use to procure and ingest food). The body wanted to go back to the fasting days where it was free of having to process all that plant and animal material.

This shocked me somehow, yet was a totally new awareness that explained why this syndrome appeared after my partner's death. The body was holding off with this message while I was in adrenal fight or flight mode--and was chronically in that mode while in relationship with these fierce women. It tried to tell me when I left the marriage with the lower lumbar pain, but I couldn't hear it. When the source of the fight or flight went away upon my partner's death, the body saw an opportunity to tell me what it really needed. After all, I was feeling free, relaxed and comfortably self-contained--a perfect time for a heart to heart with the host... well, if it could get my goddamned attention!

I had been getting some help from Access facilitators, and texted the talented Cory Michelle that my body had indicated that it was resisting food and creating the pain as a way to communicate that message, but I didn't want to give up eating. Hence my conundrum. She smartly asked, "What are you resisting about that awareness?"

I replied, "It's like I'm giving up something I love."

"Do you love food more than your body?"

"LOL. I have been!" -- and that started a cascade of extreme relief and visions of freedom that were clearly coming from the body.

Cory and I also came up with a technique where I chew and hold a bite in my mouth for a minute or so. This helps all the biochemical signals to register with me as well as provides better enzymatic action.

Another Access process is called "Living in 10 second increments" where you choose what you prefer every 10 seconds. This is useful during eating where I choose to ask the body if it wants the next bite or not, or something different.

In his book, "The Right Body For You", Gary Douglas (Access founder) talks about the illusion of eating food, and that the body doesn't really need it to live. I, of course, was fully aware of that from all my past inquiry into breatharianism. He also said that at some point in his own development, he was able to go to a health food store and just look at the supplements, and his body would indicate it had gotten the energy vibration from the supplement bottles on the shelf, so not to buy any. Further, he said that often times it's just the taste of food that the body is looking for, rather than cramming a whole lot of it down its throat. In fact, in breatharianism, one of the techniques is to smell food and draw off the pranic energy of it to nourish the body. In old school Ayurvedic medicine, the scent of an herb is considered the most important part of taking the herb.

Wow. I had some changing to do! The next day, I was super aware of what the body was now telling me. I had already told it that I was willing to do whatever it wanted me to do to help it to feel and be the way it wanted to feel and be. At first I thought I would be back to water fasting, but it instead was giving me different signals. It wanted to eat a little bit (like a spoonful of peanut butter and cottage cheese or yogurt) in the morning, and then not eat again until 4-5 pm, and then nothing until morning. The first meal was about 4 oz. of carrots with butter and some coconut water. Then it had me getting some turkey slices and making an open faced sandwich with peanut butter. It really likes peanut butter.

I started to see that its solid food nutritional requirements are minimal--not necessarily non-existent, and that I could still get "my food" and not have to give anything up, other than the huge portions.

Before this latest awareness and after I had discovered body communication, one time my body was giving me a strong request for pizza, so what did I do? I ate a whole 12-inch pizza that stuffed me out. The next day was a bad pain day. I was confused because I was eating what the body wanted me to give it, but I was just going overboard on the amount--an old habit fostered by my obese family history, thanks to the Great Depression.

As I ate in this new way, I started feeling lighter, freer. The pain levels went way down and I felt strength returning to my arms and legs. The swelling in my wrists and ankles went away, and my shoulders have started to unfreeze. I'm happy because I'm not making any "sacrifices", and I'm demonstrating love and gratitude for this incredibly talented body of mine.

My whole worldview about what bodies actually are and how we incarnate into them has changed. I gained the deep awareness that these bodies are designed to self-repair--they are self-repairing organisms. It is what they do. And, they are designed to live as long as their hosts require or prefer. Think about that.

That means that bodies "get sick and die" as a result of the desires of their hosts, and that "disease" is the body trying to communicate (or yelling) to its host its needs and wants.

The body is capable of so much more than we give it credit for. Look what we do to it. We treat it like it was a piece of meat--a meat machine that things just go wrong with, but with medical science we can put it back into "working order," or at least mask and delay its messages. It is all ass-backwards.

Gary Douglas tells us to stop judging our body, and start asking it what it wants, and then be totally unconditionally willing to do whatever it asks of us. It will become a radiantly healthy, beautiful and vibrant organic specimen that will faithfully and joyously serve us for as long as we desire to live on this splendid blue planet.

Confessions of a Universal Surrogate

In the Access Consciousness modality, there is a thing called a "Universal Surrogate", which is someone who takes on the pain and suffering of the world with the intent that by so doing, they are bringing relief to the afflicted.  I found out that I had an unconscious habit of automatically internalizing not only the miseries of other people, but also Planet Earth itself.  

After 60 years, it finally caught up with me.  I actually attribute this relatively sudden onset of physical pain symptoms to a kind of awakening upon the passing over of my twin flame in January 2012.  Shortly after her passing I began to get intermittent muscle and joint pain unrelated to my physical activities. I believe that my heart was somehow "broken open" during the dying ordeal triggering the expression of all this stored-up pain and suffering I'd accumulated since childhood.

By using the Access Consciousness question of "What percentage of this (pain) is yours?" I discovered that nearly 100% of it was NOT mine.  I then began to systematically ask about every ache and pain, "Whose is this?"  

At first, I got pictures and sometimes verbal information about individual people whose pain I had taken in.  After several hours of questioning, I began to get pictures of mountains, forests, oceans, underground water caves, crystals and rivers.  This was because I had taken on the pain of the Earth at these locations.  After a couple of days of pretty much asking this question constantly, I started getting pictures of past pets, other animals, insects, plants and even movies and TV shows. I got pictures of books and magazines. 

I realized the extreme nature of my automatic "surrogating" for all manner of pain and suffering I observed regardless of the source.

Oh, yes, and pains are reducing or going away, strength is returning, skin is clearing up, range of motion is improving.  

A friend of mine asked today in a Facebook post: "What if pain is really memories of   collective experiences that took root in your body? And, you hold onto the memory root through the illusion of control?"

This brings up the possibility that part of the human experience of consciousness includes some degree or another of this special type of empathy defined within the concept of the Universal Surrogate.  

Perhaps we could carry the idea farther. What if all non-optimum conditions of the human body have as their root cause the erroneous belief that by making the pains and sufferings of others your own (empathy) it ameliorates that pain and suffering in the other person (or even in the world).  

Isn't socialization all about the belief that you can control pain and suffering in your experience?   Isn't part of "caring" about another's pain a cherished value in most cultures? 

In fact, isn't it possible that such accepted distortions and permutations as aging or "incurable diseases" are actually a sort of empathetic resonance with others who in turn have resonated with others who are dying?  

My shaman/coach recently pointed out to me:  "You know, it looks to me like you're dying. You're following Shay (my partner) into death. You need to look at that, and make a decision about whether or not you really want to be here"  (see previous post). 

I had been so busy taking on Shay's pain and suffering, I had forgotten to connect it to what was going on in my own body.  Quite often as I continue the Questioning, I'll see that a certain pain twinge, ache or stiffness was Shay's.

The second part of the process is to send the energy back from whence it came.  At first, I was reluctant to do so, thinking it was sending the pain  back to the source. This is a misnomer--pain is merely energy.  Whether or not it arrives back at its source 
as pain would be up to recipient.

If we continue following this magic carpet down the rabbit hole, it becomes possible to see how the "Powers That Be" in the world could quite easily control their masses by making empathetic surrogacy a moral imperative, such as in most religions.  

Is it then possible or necessary to "care for others"?  Well, perhaps shockingly, the answer is NO.  In fact, all that happens is that one person's pain migrates out to everyone in their vicinity, who then take it in as their own and in turn broadcast that further out into the society and planet.  That's propagation, not caring...

So what is a poor surrogate to do?  The very best thing to do when confronted with pain and suffering of any kind is to maintain awareness.  By this I mean to become very mindful of your own emotional state, and observe the mind and nervous system.  Empathizing or, worse, sympathizing with another person opens the doors wide to surrogacy.  

I'm not saying to not have compassion. In fact, compassion is probably the most mindful thing to do when suffering and pain come into your awareness.  Compassion is a certain stillness and an abiding in empowerment for another.  Yes, that person is hurting now, but I know, one way or another they are experiencing what they are experiencing as a completely unique imprint with special meaning just for them. For me to judge the situation to mean they need some sort of emotional support or surrogacy on my part is the height of egoistic control fantasies.  Instead, we must truly appreciate and respect another's process.  

Perhaps taking on another's pain is actually complicating and maybe neutralizing their process. You've made it about YOU now, when it's actually about them.

This is not to say that if you are present, say, at a car wreck, do nothing.  Preventing suffering or pain is not same as taking it on as your own. 

Is it possible that ALL conditions that are NOT joyful, empowered and pure bliss are created due to empathetic surrogacy?   Try this thought experiment:  Imagine if everyone you see who is in pain suddenly stops their own surrogacy?  What if pain and suffering is the result of a sort of cultural dissonance created by the mis-absorption of other's pain on a mass scale?  Maybe that's what causes aging.  Maybe that's why we die.  We're just all trying to control each other's pain.  

Considering recent research in the field of epigenetics, where our environment, including thoughts, feelings and intentions, affect gene expression--it's not too far a jump to see how pain surrogacy could easily create disease and even death.   

A dear friend of mine, who was a trance channel, once said, "Aging and death is really just a cultural habit."  Perhaps how we achieve this sort of "population purging" is by rampant pain surrogacy, which is fully supported and further propagated via social and mass media. 

Science has already defined the human body as a self-repairing organism. As Lissa Rankin, M.D. has proven in her book, "Mind Over Medicine", remove the stress response from the human body, and there is nothing it cannot repair or heal.  When she says "remove stress" she's talking about completely removing it, as in a radical state of relaxation--a state few of us ever get to, creating a "repair deficit", which could be another word for aging.

The stress of pain surrogacy is most certainly included in this sort of radical relaxation, yet most of us are completely unaware that we are doing this surrogacy.  Ask the questions. Keep asking the questions until things start to change, and continue asking the questions.  Within the question lies the energy of freedom, the energy of liberation, the energy of the eternal. 

What if the whole deal about YOU is your uniqueness?  What if all of Nature and all of Universal creation is about uniqueness?  What if the reason you die is due to a denial of that uniqueness?  Isn't pain surrogacy the height of non-uniqueness?  It hurts us because we are giving away a part of ourselves, a part of our uniqueness.  The Universe just wants YOU to be YOU.

Deep down the rabbit hole of my life...

When Michelle told me that I was dying because I hadn't recommitted to this life after the passing of my life partner, my mind was blown.  You see, the alternative to dying is to fully commit to the incarnation.

Of course when it comes to commitment, I feel I've mainly been committing to a spiritual life, or at the very least in that general trajectory throughout my life.  And that, to me, is what's most important.  Yes, it's unfortunate I ended both my marriages, but that oxymoronically wasn't about commitment...

Taking over full accountability for everything that happens ANYWHERE in my life has its own Pandora's Box of goodies to test and torture. It is simultaneously lonely and empowering.  Lonely in the sense that as full accountability is approached, there's that stretch of emotional landscape where co-dependencies are made obvious as well as the necessity to jettison those dependencies. That is a particular kind of loneliness.

So, this brings us back to my little bungalow in South Park, San Diego.  This is where I have had to readjust to the death of my best friend and lover, restructure nearly completely my social circles, and acclimate to a life without Portland, Oregon, where I spent 25 years.

Perhaps it is all the above that has me navigating this rabbit hole of a life like Jada Pinkett Smith's ship pilot in the Matrix Revolutions as she whizzed through narrow tunnels and pipes at full speed, escaping from the robot sentries programmed to eradicate all human life that was out of the Matrix..

Weird physical symptoms began shortly after returning from Burning Man in 2012 (I don't believe there's a connection there, other than having my creative impulses overwhelmed by sheer, towering artistic talents on display in Black Rock City). Symptoms progressed along until about a month later, I could barely get up out of bed to go pee at night, my arms and legs were hurting so much. 

It was as if I had taken a full-on weight lifting class, or something--every single muscle in my shoulders, arms, hands, legs, knees, and feet hurt.  The less I did, the better the symptoms were. But, at its height, before I finally started taking aspirin, I was pretty much at a 7 or 8 on the 10-point pain scale (8 is when you make a sound in response to the pain) all the time.

As I was still in the mindset of external solutions, I stayed on the assumption that something in my environment, or body was causing the pain.  Thousands of dollars of supplements, therapies, retreats, meditations, etc. have to this day gotten me to a fair degree of pain management.  Most days I never approach 8, hanging around a 5 or 6, occasionally going down to 2 or 3, with even rare times when there is no pain for a couple of hours. 

And... the pain is still the thing that has been running my life.  Since Michelle's session, I came to realize that, as the great poet Rumi, said, "The cure for the pain is in the pain".  This gave me a way in.  I also realized that I was the only one who could do this.  No medicines, treatments, or supplements were going to take the pain away for me.  This is all my deal.

I started to see that of all the substances I could bring into the body, pure light energy is the highest quality nourishment.  Not only that, but to follow the light where it goes in the body, and use the very real amplifier of the imagination to increase the light seems to help a lot, too.  I've fully embraced the scientific fact that human bodies are self-repairing--it's just that most Matrix-driven subjugants don't have the patience or the faith to accept this biological fact. 

This approach had immediate effects on the muscles in my arms and legs, bringing the pain down from 7 or 8, to 5 or 6.  Eureka!  I have continued like this for the past 2-3 weeks, and the body seems to be processing very deeply.  My sleep has improved and instead of symptoms being the worst in the morning, they no longer are.  Both shoulders are still frozen, and my knees still make it clumsy and difficult to sit down and get up from a toilet, or get in and out of a car.  But nothing usually rises to an 8 or 9.

So here is a shambles of a life, though, when I take stock from this Accountability view.  I'm spending 11-12 hours in bed daily, sleeping, reading, surfing, napping.  I'm into a habit now of what I call keeping "musicians' hours":  Get up at noon (or later), and go to bed at 3 AM. 

During the day, I do the absolute minimum to keep my little online health products company going--doing shipping and accounting, and occasional promotion.  By the time 8 PM comes around I'm looking at my TV Guide app, to see what's on the HD 39" boob tube.  I've got at least one show a day I want to watch, but some nights it's solid TV viewing from 7 PM  (NPR news, of course) to 2:30 AM.  As a result of too much sedentariness (I assume), the body has packed on 20 lbs. and lost muscle mass.

Wookie the Clown Dog...

I do also take care of my little buddy, Wookie, a 9-year old Lahsa Apso doggie.  She is, I believe, completely pampered, with visits to the groomers every Friday, and fed with the most expensive pure food for her, not to mention all the treats.  She gets her walk every day, sometimes twice, and is utterly entertaining. I call her the Clown Dog.

I do manage to make my bed every  day, do my laundry about every 2 weeks, and keep up my personal hygiene. 

So, in my defense of the particular brand of "lazy" that has informed my life for the past couple of years, I am effectively handling just enough to keep me alive and active in the world without causing anyone concern, albeit along an uneventful and uncreative trajectory.

Now here is my current conundrum:  My overall strategy has been to "follow the light" with it expanded into the "follow what feels light" .  In so doing, when I consider cleaning the apartment, it seems very heavy to me, where going to Starbucks to get an Americano, then going to some fun place for lunch, feels very light to me.  So, I've been following that.  In fact, the description of my activities above is just about all that feels light. Oddly, I actually feel light about doing the dishes, and feel light about sweeping the kitchen floor every once in a while, so I guess I'm not a complete slob of lightness...

I've got backlogged filing, backlogged warehousing, backlogged accounting (how many extensions can you get from the IRS?). Then there's the MUSIC.  I have an idle Alesis M8 electronic drumkit beside my bed, a nice Roland keyboard, and a full acoustic drumkit in my garage.  I've got excellent production software on high powered computers, and several music/video applications and programs.  I've got mikes, stands and studio monitors. I've got a library of nearly 100,000 songs, and even bought a DJ mixer last year that is still lying unopened on top of the keyboards.

Nothing is happening.

I ended up getting my Google account hacked last week, which called for a complete survey of everything I've posted in various applications across the vast Google platform over about 9 years.   Rather than attempting to save anything, or even back it up, I just deleted the Google account, and set up a new one.  I did notice that the last personal blog entry was in May of  last year.  Yikes.  Plus, I stopped publishing the company newsletter--the last issue I believe was November of last year.  Double yikes.

Why?

No inspiration.  Nuttin'.  In fact, it seems very heavy to me to do the newsletter, or anything else semi-creative.  I did suddenly decide to set up a new blog with this as the first entry, so everyone can see what a certain type of spiritual transparency looks like... I guess.

Now I'm beginning to wonder if by following the direction of "doing what feels light", it will eventually get me doing what I think are my art forms.  Or, maybe that's just what I think are my art forms.  Maybe music isn't one of them (even though I've toured nationally and internationally with two bands, recorded on over a dozen albums, and played pretty much 5 nights a week for the 25 years I lived in Portland). Well, "not music" feels heavy.  Music IS one of my art forms...

By re-locating to sunny San Diego (who has a great music scene, BTW), I left  my 25 years of music momentum. The pain issues have taken away most of the joy of even considering hauling a drum kit around to gigs, to then use the painful arms and legs to perform with.  Doesn't seem like much fun; doesn't feel light.

It seems like my creative process has stalled out somehow, or perhaps all that energy I used to have for making music and good writing, has all been commandeered for pain management.  I really don't know about that.  I keep asking that question every day.

Bottom line:  If it doesn't absolutely, definitely HAVE to be done I don't seem to want to do it--or more accurately--it just doesn't feel light. 

So I guess my question is... well... maybe it's not so much a question as a statement of faith.  By following light and lightness, should this not in turn create more light and lightness, ultimately arriving at a full expression of my individual divinity at some point?  It would seem so, by any reckoning of metaphysical precepts. 

I guess I'm worried. Worried that the pain won't ever stop; worried that the music I feel and hear within me will never come out, worried that my business will continue loping along at its current feeble pace, and worried I'm going to run out of IRA money, with nothing to replace it now that I'm in my 60s.

But, aren't worries heavy in and of themselves?  Yes!  So, stop worrying, I reckon. Eh?