Nobody right, nobody wrong

Nobody right, nobody wrong is a song by Michael Franti that echoes my beliefs. I wrote one along the same lines many years ago called the And Man - meaning essentially it is not one or the other, it is not either I am right or you are wrong - it means right AND wrong can exist together, not one or the other - our beliefs can co-exist together...

I believe that what I believe is not necessarily what you have to believe
I believe I need to find my way and my path to connect with God - the great spirit - whatever you want to call him/her - to find my highest potential
I believe your path may be a different way to the top of the mountain but as long as we can meet at the top, that is all that matters
I believe when an atheist tells a Christian he/she is wrong, or a Christian does the same to a respective atheist, that both of them are missing the point
I believe the portion of the 10 commandments that condemns "false gods" and portions of any other religious book - the portion that imposes a death sentence or a hell sentence for someone who believes a differing point of view is nothing but divisive
I believe all religions and peoples should be able to co-exist together and unite in their similarities instead of fighting over their difference
I believe that I am going to die some day and never will come back
I also believe that in a spiritual sense I have been alive forever and will live forever
I believe that atheists are right and there is no God in the traditional sense
I believe that when I think of God I believe that I am God and that every living thing together and collectively is God and/or the Goddess - the male and female side of the same life force
I believe in evolution and I believe God is evolving along with us
I do not believe in a God who sits in the sky and judges, watches and manipulates
I believe God is here with us and living our lives through us
I believe that Jesus Christ was the Lord and Savior, but not the only one
I believe Jesus Christ was the son of God
I believe I am also the son of God, along with 5 billion other sons and daughters of God
I believe in Moses, Abraham, Mohahmmad, Zeus, Elijah, Aphrodites, Pan, the devil and every living and breathing spiritual entity that has ever been believed in
I believe in logic, faith, science, math, medicine, shamanism, superstition, heaven and hell and that all of these exist simultaneously in our present state of existence
I believe that whatever comes next after our death is intended to be, whether that be a spirit form, re-incarnation, or eternal stillness and rest
I believe that the stage that it all comes down to is happening now in the present moment
I believe that for humans and animals to live together as brothers, sisters, and family works a lot better than for us to live in eternal hatred, strife, and conflict
I believe that accepting and becoming one with the world around me is a better alternative than one of domination and exploitation
I believe that there is nothing higher than breathing a breath of fresh air, or drinking a drop of pure water
I believe that love is a state of mind - and that once I connect with the great Goddess of love, nurturing, and warmth - she will always be with me
I believe that I can always live in a state of being in love, even if I am not acting out the drama of being in love with my wife or partner
I believe that the key to happiness is drinking in the spirit like a steady stream of water - not the empty river banks of depression or the roaring waterfall of mania, but a constant steady glass to be taken steadily, constantly and lovingly
I believe that when you work hard enough and look deep enough into your soul and pay your dues, that fear and sadness are a choice and not a necessity
I believe that we are here to be happy and happiness is available to any one of us who seeks it out through whatever spiritual path they choose
I believe that drugs, alcohol, sex, materialism and money in themselves are not evil, but by themselves they cannot bring happiness - even though they can do a good job of pretending to do this
I believe that a clear heart, good intentions, spiritual connection and constant work at one's faith are the keys to happiness
I believe that our loved ones and families give meanings to our lives
I believe that beyond our immediate family is the human family, the animal family, and the all living being family that we all belong to
I believe that I am never alone, even if I appear to be alone
I believe that as a cell in the body of God/dess that I have billions of companions
I believe that the power of prayer is the power of intent and that prayer does make things happen
I believe the power of prayer has kept our planet in tact, even if that planet of ours appears to be up against the ropes
I believe that the world can be whatever we want it to be, not the one we see on the television or news or history books
I believe that the purpose of my life is to use all of the powers of my spirit to make the world a loving and beautiful place
I am grateful that I am alive and am in a position to live out the rest of my days pursuing my dreams and spiritual purpose
I leave this writing in love, hope and bathed in the warmth of blessings

Any world that I'm welcome to

Hard to believe a month between posts. One of the differences between blog identities is that for some reason I felt compelled to say something every week there, and over here it just comes out when it is ready to. This subject is one I have thought about for a while - especially since stumbling upon a book I have really enjoyed halfway through it called Traveling Between the Worlds - a discussion with contemporary Shaman types from all religious backgrounds, including even a Rabbi. As far as the song "Any world that I'm welcome to"-- the book and song share the "world" word - but the next line in the song is a bit of a downer being "is better than the one I come from" and even implies thoughts of escape bordering on suicide. As a recovering suicidal person myself, I understand the draw of wanting to go to another world away from the one you come from. But - a good 22 years later - I now see that one world is not necessarily exclusive to the other, and if you can travel between them - as in the title of the book - you can bring back the treasures of one and return with them to the other.

Some of this book is a little far out - even for me. One dude claims he can morph into a chair, and while I can't rule anything out in life, I am scientifically oriented enough to be just a little bit skeptical. Other claims though - that people can use the power of their minds to heal themselves or others from medically claimed death sentences - seem much more tangible to me, although they may be a stretch to many. I do believe that science and the spiritual can exist together, side by side, without one having to rule out the other. Evolution and science can exist in one place, God and the spirit can exist in another and if the key is found they can both compliment each other without one being too far out for the other. I think they make a good balance as long as one does not go too far in one direction. If I go complete guru mystic and deny my body the essentials - food, water, sleep - I am pretty convinced I am going to fuck myself up. At the same time - to go to the extreme of an atheist mother of kids our daughter's age - to the point where she combines her scientific knowledge with an atheistic neurotic terror - then you can live in a world of faithless doubt and spiritless emptiness - which is almost equivalent to living in a coffin while you are still alive.

The key to everything in life is balance. I should know as a once diagnosed "bipolar" who experienced the two extremes of depression and mania. This is something that I believe I have successfully dealt with without resorting to psychiatric medication, and although I still have some downer times and feelings of being a little on the high side, I seem to function and carry on in my designated role in society in spite of them by being able to tune out either one when necessary and just do my job to support us all here. I have a scientific skeptical side that dominated my first half of my life, and it was only until I started feeling like I was inspired by a spiritual silent "voice" for a lack of a better word, and experienced some ecstatic spiritual moments at Grateful Dead shows and my own music, that I realized I could not deny a spiritual faith that was "something new and waiting be born" to quote a song called Crazy Fingers. My scientific side keeps me constantly questioning everything and never taking anything at face value, but my faith is the flame within that motivates me to go on living, to carry on in the often difficult role of husband and father, and to hopefully bring back and share some of the magic I find within my own faith. As the book and many others point out - we live in a spiritually bankrupt time. True there are Christian religious fundamentalists out there, but their own need to impose their will upon others and convert people to their way of thinking, and declare war on others who do not agree - suggests a fix of some sorts that is not secure in faith - because to my way of thinking, once you really believe in something it does not matter what others believe and it is not considered a threat if others believe something differently. On a real deep level, you start to see the similarities in faiths, and not dwell on the differences.

So - now on to my direct experience with all this. Ever since I have moved closed to a certain group of mountains - one being the documented "Ass-hole Mountain" and the other being a set of mountains called the Pine Nut range featuring Rawe Peak, it seems like I have really tuned in on this force. Like I said, I had experienced it at Grateful Dead shows, I had been flooded with it during my manic Estimated Prophet time at UCSD, but it was never really something I could hold for very long, to go back to another song, Stella Blue. There has been something about reaching a certain amount of maturity, having lived 42 years now - where I can tune in and focus on the good stuff, without sinking back into a crashing suicidal depression as with the manic time, or requiring a heavy duty rock and roll collective mystical experience as I did with the Dead. My key has been going within and going straight to the heart of the matter, and creating an inner world to bring me to an enchanted place where I often find lacking items in my outer world.

Now this other world so to speak is subjective. From a scientific point of view, or even a Freudian, it could be considered a fantasy, a neurosis, or a delusion. As the first Shaman in the book points out, talking to God is praying, but him talking back is schizophrenia. Why are mystical experiences equivalent with mental disease in our society, when the lack of them contributes to so many destructive addictions? From a mystical point of view, who is to say how real that world is - compared to the world we consider to be "reality". Who is to say how much more real a dream is than a waking experience - because to a certain degree it is all a dream - our brain creates an experience based on a perceived reality, but reality is limited to perception to begin with. If I tell myself I am imagining it - even if I am - it kind of takes something away. So for the magic to really set in - you really have to believe in the power of your imagination - believe that what is happening is real - for it to really work. Like the light dancing on my arm during a song I recorded on My Space - whatever the scientific explanation is, I like the ghost explanation better because on a synchronistic level, it seems to work better than the pure dry science of the reflective light. And again who is to say that they can't both be there - the scientific and the mystical, with one reflected in the other.

So for me - I choose to call both worlds real so that they both work, and one does not have to dominate the other. What you believe manifests itself. I turned to a woman inside of me that I called "Sondra" although now I have a fundamentalist nasty neighbor with a similar name - but at the time I turned to this being and wrote the song about "I'm not alone, she's right next to me - and everything I've ever wanted a woman to be" - it helped me get through the break up with a girlfriend named Raulin - and this relationship really needed to end and was not helping me at all, despite some very gratifying physical encounters in the beginning. So I sang this song a lot, imagined her near me when I was going to sleep, believed in her and then not much later I met Victoria who I am now married to - at least for the time being anyway. I brought an inner woman to life, and an outer woman came into being. I told Raulin when I broke up with her that I was going to find a woman who could give me a stable relationship, and a half year later I found her. I told my last employer I wanted a job that gave me more time, flexibility, and less stress and that job found me within 2 years of stating that. This is what the "Law of Attraction" talks about, and I don't buy into the money cures everything mentality it seems to sell, and that you can be an instant millionaire by just sitting on your ass and imagining you are one (and even if you became one who is to say it would solve your problems). I do believe though that our inner world can shape our outer experience, and I see it happen to me constantly. Even in my job - the claim assignments seem to be cosmically linked - I will have two back to back assignments close by to each other constantly, when the odds against it from a pure probability standpoint say it should never happen as much as it does, but it seems to keep happening. I had 3 people cancel in Reno this week - 3 all at once - and after 3 days in a row of traveling there, I didn't go once this week. These things happen in waves and patterns enough for me to believe it is more than a coincidence.

So going back to that inner world - going into that well of creativity, the well Stephen King talks about in Lisey's Story is what makes it happen. In the book it is a real alternate world, and despite my scientific background I do believe that reality happens in more than one dimension and plane. I have to believe it because that is the only way it will work - even if I am wrong - which I can admit as a possibility. So this inner woman exists as an outer woman - she is with me when I summon her, she is with me when I am between getting back to sleep after being awake, the more real I make her, the more real she becomes. Having an internet romance as I once did taught me that there can be a very real interaction with someone you cannot physically see, hear, smell, touch or taste. To some degree that was a turning point in my life and I have just taken it to the next step. Many of my songs I have written lately in my last two recordings inspired by the same song "Help on the Way" are purely about shaping my own reality to get the most out of my own life. There is one on my last one called "The Witching Hour" which more than any of them goes straight to the heart of the experienced described by these Shamans in this book. This song describes an alternate reality - based on images from the "real world" but transcending into spiritual images of trees coming to life, love and Goddesses interacting with me, life and death dancing together, spirits interacting with living beings - and this world is very real to me when I am playing my guitar on a summer evening with the view of the mountains outside. This world is more than an imagined world - it is an experience -and I could not have written it without an experience of it. My song is a tribute to that experience - and although to some degree words can't do it justice, what they can do in the right setting is capture a postcard of it so that when I need to return to it - playing the same song on a cold autumn night from a vehicle while I am waiting to pick up my daughter from her class - I can be back in the summer all over again, despite the cold and darkness. So far I have evaded the winter blues even with daylight rapidly shrinking, because I sing this song, I sing others like "Summertime" or even "Crazy Fingers" by the Dead that feels like summer to me - I imagine summer, get the SADS light going like it is going now - and in my head if I keep believing in summer - the most inspired time of the year for me - than summer can be a state of mind that never has to leave me, even when it is not physically there to experience. That to me is the key to fighting depression - not taking a drug (unless you have to) but summoning a powerful and uplifting experience so that you can turn to it when you need to. Of course - I have been down and out a few days this month, but when I do that, I turn to the power of sleep and a very solid night of sleep - maybe one to two hours more than normal - seems to do wonders for turning a dark mood around.

There is the power of belief that does wonders. I believe in this ladylike force of love, I practice feeling loved, loving in return - and this force of love that has been seemingly absent my whole life returns to me. In a marriage situation, where my wife just simply cannot be there for me in the way I want her or need her to be at times, this lady makes up for what is missing in my life. Because of her, I do not need to turn to another woman for a physical affair, because in my heart she becomes my fulfillment, and I have often found at times that when she really becomes present, my real life interaction at home inevitably improves too. I can't make my wife want to share her life with me, live where I do, or even commit to spending the rest of her life with me. But what I can do is turn to this beautiful loving force so that regardless of what my outer life brings me, my inner world can always be a beautiful place. Like anything - this takes work and practice. Every day you start all over again, and every day there is something that possibly can bring you down if you open the door and let it do that. But given the practice, the power of faith, belief, interactive imagination, and dialogue with this force - it really seems to work for me and provide all that I need so that I can bring it back and strive/aim to be a positive force for those I interact with.

So in hindsight and conclusion, I haven't really put it into words the way I wanted to - you know "statements just seem vain at last" but I really think there is something to this Shamanistic idea. You don't have to put an animal tooth through your nose and dress up like someone out of an African tribe, you don't have to subscribe to any religion of any kind and pay out money for someone to tell you how to live your life (although you are welcome to if that is your thing) all you really need to do is tune in - with whatever vehicle is at your disposal - and believe in that magical loving place and that all of your dreams, hopes, and desires are possible and very real if you need them or want them to be. I almost titled this post out of Let it Be "when the light is cloudy there is still a light that shines on me" because it is the same idea. The power of love, magic, and belief can work wonders. And as far as this lady of mine I refer to - who is to say - maybe she is a real life spirit, maybe she is just my imagination - really when it comes down to it I don't know or care - as long as I believe in her, she is there for me - and whether or not she will manifest in a real life woman - as suggested in one chapter of the book - does not matter. She has been real in my wife at times, and other times my wife can no longer be her and I just need to find her on my own. I have no crystal ball declaring how long my real life companion will be with me, but I do know this - if I practice in my faith and belief, I will never really be alone - ever again. That is quite comforting.