Facts just twist the truth around

Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are lazy and facts are late
Facts all come with points of view
Facts don't do what I want them to
Facts just twist the truth around
Facts are living turned inside out
Facts are getting the best of them
Facts are nothing on the face of things
Facts don't stain the furniture
Facts go out and slam the door
Facts are written all over your face
Facts continue to change their shape

David Byrne said it right there - and now I expand upon his words. I expand because as an NPR listener I have heard several people come on and discuss the subject of God. Richard Dawkins speaks of The God Delusion, there is God's Problem by a Christian converted to an agnostic, advising how the Bible fails to answer our most important questions, and then Sam Harris in his Letter to a Christian Nation mocks the bible point for point and questions how any kind of supreme being could create a life that allows for swollen prostate glands. I personally like God Laughs and Plays because it falls more within my beliefs.

I think that a subject as personal and subjective as a supreme being can be argued any way one happens to feel about it, quite convincingly. An atheist/agnostic can disprove God's existence, a religious being can turn around and prove it - and who is going to be convinced who does not already happen to side with that one perspective to begin with? Is someone actually going to be swayed by these arguments?

I think anything can be argued very well and given the arguments, logic, facts, and point of views anyone can prove just about anything. Adolf Hitler proved to all of Europe that the Jews were the cause of the world's problems, enough proof to actually result in their mass murder and destruction. Today Nazis around the world still carry the torch and still believe that. To these people this is not a point of view, it is THE truth. It is not a truth I happen to agree with, but I am sure Hitler's arguments were quite convincing. To his believers they probably even seemed logical. To many of us now, especially us Jews, they are horrifying, but the reason I even mention this is that it is to show that with enough convincing just about anything can be argued.

So where I am going with all of this is I will listen to any point of view, regarding whether God does or does not exist and each may be convincing in its own way, but when it comes down to it I am going to believe what I believe regardless of the arguments. The fact that God cannot scientifically be proven to exist does not prove God does not exist. There are horrible things that happen in the world - constant starvation, murders, rapes, injustices. From a personal point of view, I don't like these things happening. On a larger scale destruction and creation go hand in hand. Ideally speaking, and some day given enough evolution, we will live in a world where there will no longer be a need for starvation, rape, and violence to exist. But as it stands, because the world is not perfect, because these things happen more than I want them to, does not prove anything one way or the other. There is always the argument what kind of God would allow these things to happen? Good question. Answer - the jury is out.

To become inevitably selfish though, even though I know I am not the only living being, I am definitely the only one living my life. I have to start by looking at my own life. In some ways I have been fortunate - blessed - I realize that. I have never had to go hungry or sleep out in the cold. I have been exposed to a minimum of violence, I have never been shot at, I don't get into many fights - I realize - I am lucky. I can also look at the down side, I have been through a horrible depression that had the ability to take my own life if I had let it, I grew up feeling depressed in a spiritual void where nothing had any meaning, I have spent many years feeling alone, angry, disconnected from the society around me, jealous and envious of those who had friends and lovers while I felt shut out. These things were truly trying and difficult times, and to a certain degree - it never entirely leaves you. Still - looking at how it has turned out - how I am blessed to have a beautiful family, animals I love surrounding me, living in a place that makes me feel at home where the doors are open to experience my vision of God - an interactive and mysterious but beautiful God nevertheless - I am lucky to feel that connection. Speaking to a person last week telling me how completely bored he or she was - my answer was boredom is the same as spiritual disconnectedness. I know that from my experience - my first part of my life was filled with boredom, the last few years where I am starting to feel like I am part of something powerful and spiritual, boredom just doesn't seem to be there the way it once did.

So I go back to my life "life is just a dream" and the Don Miguel Ruiz books talk about life being a dream, then there it is - "it seems like all this life was just a dream". I look at my dream and my experience and that is really all I have to go on. Sometimes - like today - I was out with my daughter on a hill around the corner from us - the sky was blue, we had just had a half foot of snow - we were sharing a sled going down the hill, both enjoying the moment of fun together - and this thought comes to me. This same thought was there when the blowing snow in Washoe Valley kept me from seeing the road 5 feet in front of me. Here it is - the thought that life is kind of like a long movie - a movie in 3-D, with senses included - in the movie you get a hell of a visual looking up at the sky, it seems so real. The smell of the fresh snow, the feel and taste of it as it gets in your mouth - it all seems very convincing. My senses are the gateway to the "world" around me, and as What the Bleep do we Know points out, our senses not only interpret the world around us, but even shape it. It seems to me at times that the movie does not seem real, that I am sitting in a Matrix somewhere and someone is programming it out for me. Who knows how real any of it is - who is to say how real or unreal it may be? And really when it comes down to it - there is only one thing I know - and that is that the dream in my head, the thoughts in my head, are the ones I am having. I really don't know for certain anything else. I know there are consistencies in the dream - I can't seem to walk through walls, if I try to fly I will fall, in the dream the physical world seems to have some properties that are consistent with the scientific laws that have been "proven" in laboratories. But how do I know one day I won't be able to walk through a wall, or fly, or do something I have never done before. All I know is so far I haven't been able to.

Looking at my life, I can all of a sudden turn on my TV and see that other people are living their lives too. In just a half hour, I can read about suicide bombings, murder, destruction, the burial of beloved Brianna Dennison in our community, the family sickened. I can put myself in their shoes - or try to anyways - I can try to imagine what it would be like to experience that, and I can interpret it through my own life. But until these things happen to me, I can never really know. Going back to the movie, it is kind of like glimpsing into someone else's without seeing the whole thing. I know this local co-ed was raped and strangled, I know she will soon be buried - I can imagine the horror of experiencing my life ending like that, or knowing that it happened to someone I loved - how I would react. But other than that, I can't really know someone else's experience. Most importantly - I don't know what it is like to die or be dead. I can't conceptualize the scientific notion that my life stops suddenly, that I no longer have any experience of sense, smell, or being alive any more. Yet if life is how I suspect it to be - a continuous experience of my spirit, than I can't even begin to perceive the notion of what an after life may be. If upon death, we find out that life here is just one chapter in an infinite realm of experience, than maybe the notion of death is different. Maybe the idea of a tragic death changes its meaning if instead of it being the end it just means shifting dimensions when we are done with what we need to do here on the earth plane, and going onto the next chapter. My own belief is I am here as long as I need to be. If that was the fate and karma of Brianna for example, who in her own way through her passing has brought thousands of people here together here, than maybe it just took her 19 years to accomplish what I have been unable to do in 42. In that case, is it really a tragedy, or do we just see it that way?

I have to go back to my own life, my life here and now, because when it comes down to it - it is the most direct experience I have. My movie, my life, my experiences are all I have to go on. From my own experience, the more connected I am to the notion of the spirit - whether it was through going to my hundreds of musical concerts - mainly but not limited to the Grateful Dead - often re-lived in dreams, to my more recent ability to create my own "concert" on my own, today even doing this walking with my dog through the snow, chanting some of my own compositions, without a guitar, just singing into the wind and feeling very connected and inspired - the more I feel in touch with this spirit, the happier I am. All of the people on NPR can tell me that this is my delusion. My answer to their statement is that I am the one living my life, not them. They can tell me how they view the spirit, how a world without God is the only one that makes sense. My answer is that in their experience that is the most valid conclusion that they can make, and it would not be my place to call them wrong or misguided, or even counterattack that they are the ones who are delusional. It is not my place to tell anyone what they should be experiencing for that matter. But - what I can say - for my own life - is that the notion of a spirit, God, Goddess, spiritual entity, force, mysterious presence - whatever you want to call it - that this presence is just as real to me as the world I take in with my senses. If I accept on faith that the world I live in - is real - and not just some twisted figment of my imagination - and I do accept that on faith, than I must also accept on faith that regardless of what other people may say, think, argue, or logically prove or disprove - my experience is that this spiritual presence is as real as the ground I walk upon. I feel it now, as I am writing this. I trust my own feelings. And I also know that my experience of a world where this presence exists, makes much more sense than a world where we are nothing but blank chemical reactions sitting in a petri dish as some of our scientist portray it. To me that world is part of the picture, but the spirit is the other equally meaningful part of it. Those people I know who have the misfortune of not having this presence in their life - and don't get me wrong - I believe agnostics and atheists can experience fulfillment and magic in their own way - but those who do not feel any presence of any kind, and we know two of them who live in the "Lakeview" area, I truly feel sorry for. I have lived this disconnection myself, it almost killed me - and to feel separate from it to some degree is hell on earth.

I can and will not prove to you which point of view is right or wrong. All of the different religions are like 31 Flavors - they may be slightly different, but when it comes down to it they are all still ice cream. To mock one or the other for believing in the wrong God seems ludicrous. And even for the atheists and agnostics - if you are that certain of your point of view, why do you have the need to try to prove it? For what reason and what is the point? I contend that to anyone who really believes in their experience, there is no reason to impose it upon another - it can't be done and nobody's experience is any more or less valid than another's. From my perspective, the Bible was the best attempt at the time - 2,000 years ago, to translate a mystical experience based on the time it was written. Now there are so many books that also capture this and to say that any one of them is the one and only - from my perspective - is nothing but shutting the door to a number of possibilities. It feels secure to think one has the answer, but I believe all of them have only part of it, the rest of it cannot come from any book of any kind, but has to be lived out and experienced by each and every person living.

So in conclusion - there is no conclusion, except my own conclusion and experience, and that experience is mine and mine alone. Maybe it makes sense to you to a degree, maybe it is a heap of bullshit - but to me after all of my time living here - a world with a magical presence and mysterious spirit makes all the sense in the world to me. I will not try to put it in a laboratory, or prove it to anyone - I don't need to really - I have already proven it to myself. I do not know what will happen today or tomorrow, and I certainly have no idea really what may happen when I will be destined to experience my passing - either onto the next plan, or possibly no plane at all. Whatever that may be, I surrender to the faith that it will be the best thing that can happen. My suspicion is I have only just begun.

Dream

What the hell - how many people actually read this thing anyways.

I had a dream that echoes reality to an extent - I am the initiator of sex here when it does happen - about once or twice a month - less than I want, more than she wants - lately I am the only one who enjoys it - so it is a compromise we both live with. So I was doing the normal pleading in the dream - and there were obstacles - the typical one being my daughter hanging around, but somehow my father was lurking in the background and at one point I think we were even in their room at the house I grew up in. Somehow we ended up in the backseat of a car - a place I have never claimed for that activity in real life. Somehow we got my daughter to go somewhere else to play and it was just us. At some point the real thing happened. My wife had lost a lot of weight and I was complimenting her. She looked very good and I was very attracted. It has been a while since we both enjoyed the intimacy together, but in this dream it was really happening for each of us. We were doing things it has been ages since have really happened - passionate kissing, oral sex - and somehow or another someone was driving the car - because the car was moving, but I never knew who the driver was - all I know was the car was moving. My wife was singing and clearly enjoying what was happening. Finally the real penetration took place and she was really into it - as I could tell by the wetness down there, but as the dream approached my recent wake-up at 6:30 I remember something - I couldn't reach a climax. I am pretty sure she did reach heres, and at one point I remember feeling like I needed to - wanted to - was even feeling pressure to, but I couldn't reach it. As we drove by some people were watching us and it was uncomfortable. She had on a white dress, some like she wore when I first met her. Some times I remember her singing pleasantly. At the end she was loudly speaking, almost shrieking a bunch of stuff that didn't make sense. That is when I woke up and took care of what I could not make happen at the end of the dream.

Knockin on Heaven's Door

I briefly mentioned in my last post the local case of a 19 year old kid named Brianna Denison. She was in the local news every night for the last month, and she had been abducted from a friend's home near the University of Nevada, Reno and had gone missing. A serial rapist was suspected, they found a spot of blood on her pillow from the scene of the crime. It felt ominous and I suspected the worst, but night after night we saw search parties on TV going through remote parts of the area, looking in near blizard conditions at times in Washoe Valley and other spots, a whole community captivated by this woman. I know it is easy to be cynical. OJ Simpson once uttered the great quote that people die every day when asked how he felt about Ron Goldman's murder. Yes - people do - and we can't see the faces of the countless hundreds of thousands who die in wars, of hunger, of violence in the inner cities. These faces do not make it into the papers. Yes - it is somewhat biased that the beautiful women who are tragic victims are the ones people pay attention to.

Even so - when I found out yesterday that they had found her body - so decomposed it could not immediately be identified - and then they confirmed it was in fact her - I felt a loss as if I knew her, when I never met her or saw her until I found out about this. I know everyone always sounds great after they die, but according to this article she brought people together, put other people ahead of her, and was looking forward to studying to be a child counselor. Based on what everyone had to say about her, she was well loved and admired in this community. Even local Latina activist writer Emma Sepulveda who normally focuses on issues such as South American politics and immigration laws, took the opportunity in her Sunday column to focus on her, sayng that she had been in her home and knew her and felt the sense of tragedy upon interviewing her friends who were coping with the possibility of her death, before the reality of it was confirmed by an autopsy yesterday afternoon.

I agree she is pretty based on her pictures. If I was in her class, maybe I would have been one of several drawn to her, who even possibly had a crush on her. Unfortunately attractive women can be targets. Sexual predators are drawn to them and if they spot a chance of vulnerability they will seize on it like lions zooming on unsuspecting prey. My wife knows this first hand, in her own way. This may be one of the many reasons why we have our daughter in Tae Kwan Do - although it cannot guarantee a defense against a predator who is relying on the element of deadly surprise for an attack, it certainly can't hurt either.

For whatever reason - I can't exactly explain - I was tossing and turning last night, images of the field in the South area of Reno (not far from where my buddy Youndy stayed when he visited me this summer) stuck in my head. I know some who read my posts may see me as an unrealistic, idealistic hippie type - muttering my love mantras in a world where terrible acts of violence are happening all the time. I realize the cheesy cliche Bush utters about the terrorists kind of applies here - as this is an act of terror in itself - one that has terrorized the community anyway - but as he says (or one of his high paid speech writers anyways) , if you let these acts defeat you, throw you into a resigned state of pessimistic fear and let it trample on your faith, they have won. Despite the intentions of the rhetoric used - maybe to add in more funds to this stupid fucking war in Iraq (GO OBAMA!!!) - excuse me - but anyways - there is something to be said. All the same, at moments like last night, where I think one twisted act that ended in a disturbed mind's temporary satisfaction - possibly even an orgasm - one moment where the demons running around in his head let him rest for a moment - one where he felt a calm peace after reaching his climax - at what price did this reward come? He felt good for a second, but now he is going to spend the rest of his life on the run, looking over his shoulder, plagued by nightmares of his own. I don't entirely blame him - his demons got the better of him - I don't even necessarily know if lethal injection or execution is necessarily the answer here - although I definitely want him off the streets so that this doesn't happen again. There is good and evil in every one of us - my own demons once told me to hurt myself and cut myself, sometimes they still come back, but I have enough of a foundation to hold my ground against them. Obviously this man does not have that and he has lost, they have won. But for him the rest of his life is either a sentence - on the run for the law - or finally when he is caught (if not killed) waiting for the justice system to decide his fate.

As for her - this is it - one horrific instance where she was beaten, raped, and strangled - and there is no more of her life for her. It is over. She had her whole life ahead of her in one moment, and now she is done. Hopefully her spirit lives on - she is in heaven or some place like it, she is at rest and now the nightmare is over. But think - what her life could have been if she had gone on to become a child counselor. In some ways it is easier for her, it is all over now. But as a fellow parent, the people I really feel for are her parents - the people who invested day after day, maybe sleepless nights - difficult times - working hard, sacrificing themselves to raise her and provide her so that she could make something of herself - they appeared to be doing a pretty good job based on how she turned out - all that effort and toil for this, the opportunity to see her in an early funeral that was never planned for or ever thought of in their wildest dreams. The shock, the disbelief, the realization that they will never see her again and the image of this tragedy haunting them night after night, for the rest of their lives, as they are powerless to go back in time and turn back the clock for even one more chance to see her again, hold her again, talk to her again - the shocking and absolute finality - this is it - never more.

What brings it home to a person who has never met this young woman, is seeing my daughter at age 9 - knowing how much I love her - my only child - the child who is my future - and I cannot even begin to comprehend what it would be like to go through that experience. At 42, I am old enough to be Brianna's father and somehow I feel like she is - as she has now become a daughter of the entire community according to the family's statement released to the press. It is one thing to die in the later part of life, in your 50's, 60's, or later when you at least have lived a certain part of your life already. At 42 I am now approaching the age where diseases are more likely to come into play. But at 19 - with it all in front of you - as the way it is for young soldiers who never come back home - something about it seems unfair. Nobody ever said life is fair, and this is the part where the cynical atheists can come out with where was their God to protect them when they died. What is the answer to why this happens? The only honest answer - is there is no way to explain it. It is a helpless I don't know because there is no G0d-damn answer. These things just happen. Where is God where they happen? I don't know. How can God exist in a place where these things happen all the time? I don't know. What kind of a world is it we live in where these things do happen, where a crazy man bursts into gunfire at an Illinois college and all we can think of is - oh no - not this again..what kind of world is that?

Again - maybe somebody out there has the answer to this. I don't. I do know this - these tragedies must be remembered - just like every genocide present and ongoing - has to be remembered. Like I wrote last week, if humanity can evolve from its present state to a place where these acts are a rarity, or don't even happen at all - maybe there is hope for humanity. Evolution of consciousness is our only hope, without it we are doomed. We have evolved to a point, but mentally and spiritually we are still living in the caves to a certain degree. All I know - despite my heavy heart and exhausted head-ache filled head - in feeling these things is hope must remain - even in the face of apparent hopelessness - hope is all we have. My thoughts and prayers go out to the family, to all of us - for experiencing what appears to be such a pointless and senseless tragedy.

I can only be who I am

I can only be who I am
I can’t be anyone else
Can only experience my pleasures
Can only suffer through my hells

Sometimes I long in envy
To have all that you do
But no matter how much I want to
I just cannot ever be you


Yes - no picture to paste in today as these are my own words - although I may not have been the only one to think them, or even say them necessarily, or maybe somebody else has said them not quite in that order or in that way - but as they came to me and I did not copy them word for word I can call them mine. I think of ideas floating around in a collective pool and in that pool they are there for the taking to be borrowed and re-stated, but nobody is the one sole author of them.

I held out okay in the later part of the fall - normally a difficult time for me - I was quite creative in doing so - imagining the light when the light was not there, feeding off the lights of the Christmas holiday that I normally find offensive - I did pretty well. January essentially kicked my ass - but that is nothing new - January always seems to do that. I concede losing January - which has carried inevitably over to February, but I'll be back to pick up my momentum. I haven't hit the gym in over two weeks and my ability to tap into the pool through my music has been somewhat restricted these days as this ugly cold I am fighting - now in lethargic cough your brains out mode - has been lingering over two weeks now. The snow has just kept coming and coming - up until now anyways - and the one month when sunlight has been in short supply has finally kicked me down somewhat, but knowing it is temporary seems to at least diminish the suicidal thoughts, or at least let me push them away when they inevitably come back for a re-visit. I will know I have won when they are gone altogether, but the fact that they don't stick around too long any more when they do come is a victory I will claim for now.

I acknolwedge the duality between the world I want to believe in - and the "real world" which inevitably is out there - the world I find out about when reading about a pretty 19 year old somewhat local college student - Briana Dennison - (plenty out there on line if you don't already know the story) - who appartently was a great kid - a beautiful girl - who was grabbed away from the house she was in at 4 AM near the Univeristy of Nevada Reno, raped and most likely murdered - and the whole community is searching for her - almost 3 weeks later when hope is looking pretty bleak. Her mother or relative asks how can such a horrible thing happen to a girl who has brought so much good into the world. This is the same world where you read about ethnic cleansing involving the use of machete attacks, systematic rape and genital mutilations in parts of South Africa, brutal suicide bombings, the same world where millions of people are being beaten, starved, tortured and abused in prisons and camps in North Korea and China, the same world where the Holocaust took place 60 years ago and the images still live on in my mind - reading on Wikipedia that before the gas chamber, when the Jews came off the trains after being starved and deprived of food/water for countless horrific hours on a cattle train- hungry and thirsty - would ask for something to drink and were told in response a nice hot cup of coffee was waiting fot them as soon as they came out of the gas chamber disguised as shower. Greed and overconsumption continue to take place, global warming is inevitably leading to changes in the weather, droughts, famines and floods. Our culture's infatuation with material possession is now biting us on the ass as the cost of obtaining these possessions - through an infinite loop of borrowing - is now becoming evident that we are all in tons of fucking debt and nobody actually has any money. I am only just getting started on all this shit - but what I am getting at is there is plenty to get down and out about on the collective level - this is the world I live in - I don't like any of these things - and yet they can and will continue to happen.

So how can I be optimistic knowing this is the world I live in? And look at my personal world - the out of pocket medical bills keep piling up in a never-ending heap. Just when I think I have paid off a batch, a new pile arrives. I work hard but have nothing to show for it. The house which at once had made money, now thanks to the housing market plunge - I would be lucky to even break even if I sold it. The carpet is shot, the cabinets are falling apart, the house can easily use a 20,000 dollar face lift but the money can't be found for it to happen - every day I am greeted to the new spot that the dog puked on or had an accident on, so much needs to be done - our home is a wreck, my wife is a constant overpressured, depressed and resentful insomniac who doesn't want to be where she lives, who is not happy with her life - including my part in it. Even the friends of my wife - whose United States residency - let's just say - is a little bit in question - have nicer shit and a neater home than we do. Everybody seems to be achieving something, my little brother has a higher degree than I do and his first book is due to hit the printing press soon, and probably make him a household name - as my wife states last night - he has the "spark" that none of us have to drive himself to higher education, fame, fortune, and artistic recognition - the same spark that drives my brother in law to be approaching his Phd.

So with all that said - the answer to all this is to be like the cornerback who just got burned for a touchdown by a faster wide receiver and forget it all and put it all behind him and start over again. In other words - FUCK ALL THAT! I am not saying none of it is true - I am not denying all these things are happening - but the question I ask myself - kind of a continuation of my last post showing Mavis Staples to a certain degree - is - do I identify myself by my level of status, by my chain on the pecking order, the trophy wife, the trophy house, the trophy educational level, the trophy job, the trophy bank account - once I have this great big hard-on I can show off to the world - does that define and justify my life? Absolutely not. How about all those horrible violent events that happen - and one of them any day and time could happen to me - how can I be optimistic living in that world. Well - going back to a lecture I saw by one of my heroes - Ram Dass (who by the way became the great spirtual being he was after he walked away from the tenured professor trip and gave up all of that status shit) - he talked about the duality of accetping the world and the karma and fate of one's place in the world, even when certain aspects of it - such as ethnic cleansing - purely suck. I don't like all these thing happening, I don't like hearing about them on the news, I can't deny they are happening - but if I am going to let it pull me down into defeated cynicism than what will I be able to do to put forth the energy that will possibly and hopefully change that world?

I see the world as a collective pool of "Every Single Soul". It is all energy and consciousness, and I admit a lof the energy is negative - hence the violence, pain, and hurt that takes place around us. But there is the flip side argument as well. What keeps the world from being a universal mayhem of war, chaos, starvation and violence? I know it happens - but if we are purely dark creatures - why isn't it happening everywhere? Why have we not nuked ourselves into oblivion already? See - for all the darkness taking place in the world, there is a lot of lightness balancing it out. I think all of the prayers for peace, enlightenment, the folks who walk the "higher path" so to speak of love, tolerance, and compassion - my heroes - heroes who do this regardless of their educational accomplishments, I think we are the ones holding it together and keeping it from being a helluva lot worse than it is. Every one of our souls makes up every cell of the human race - and you put all the cells together and we are one. And then - when you realize we are all tied in it together, "I am he as you are me as you are we and we are altogether" as John Lennon said in I am The Walrus - then individual accomplishments and places in society - ego level stuff - doesn't really mean that much in perspective. Than it is not a matter of how big your dick is, how big your ego is, and what can be listed on the back of your resume and more a matter of what kind of energy are you putting out there to make the world better than it is now for all of us. Money has not a fucking thing to do with it - I mean I need to eat and give my body what it needs, but having a three story custom house up at Lake Tahoe as a second home - means that place is just another place - and if the entire world is my home, than I own that house as a visitor just as much as I own the house which is listed on the title with my name on it that I may payoff in the course of my lifetime should I be so lucky.

I know when I am really getting off on my spiritual trip - when I am out there playing my notes and every note is just ringing out and regardless of mistakes of the voice or guitar, it is perfect, even if faulty - when I feel like some beautiful spiritual entity is right there with me - I can feel her - she is alive - she is with me - embracing me - she is the great creator Mother Earth manifest to me as an individual spirit form - and even though a rigid logical scientist will never see her in a laboratory, and can probably logically proove that she does not exist - and whether or not she does exist in the "real world" at some point almost becomes a moot point - and yes this is a FUCKING run-on sentence - but don't worry - the end of it is approaching - what I am saying is at these moments I realize that is not about me as much as it is about my place in the world surrounding me - one small but beautiful part of it - and me as this one cell - my purpose is to lift it higher and do my part in counteracting the events that happen as the result of the more primitive, violent, hateful consciousness. See - I told you that sentence would end.

So I cannot claim anything as my own, but it is all our own and I am a part of it. Congratultions on your PHD - except it is not yours - it is ours - I am sharing it with you. If not for the collective world of ideas - that I am a part of and you are as well - that I contribute to, you couldn't have obtained it. So give me why 1/5,000,0000,0000,000th share of it that I am entitled to while you are at it. People tell me I should write a book. Thanks for the compliment - but why and for what? Do I want or need name recognition? No. I am already writing now - isn't that good enough? It is for me. Do I need to write to eat? Thankfully no - it actually gives me a lot of freedom not to have to do that. Although I appreciate the positive feedback, do I really need 100's of thousands of people to acknowledge me? At one point I thought I did, but now - no - hey I know I write, sing and play beautiful stuff - it is beautiful to me - and that is good enough for me. If I am not my biggest fan already, than thousands of fans will mean nothing, but once I am, I don't really need thousands of fans. As far as needing to get "the message" out there, there are already plenty of people out there who are doing a pretty good job of it and are commercially successful, that is good enough for me.

I remember once coming down from a pretty heavy feel good psychedlic trip at a Grateful Dead show I came up with thought "it is and it is becoming". What I think I meant by that - as it still - of all of my thoughts I have once written from way back when - still rings out now - is that collective consciousness, along with the humans who think the collective thoughts, continues to evolve. I am not necessarily referring to Darwin evolution - survival of the fittest - dog eat dog competition - although it could fit to a point, but more the evolution of the human mind to realize that love, compassion, tolerance, and seeing one's place in the world surrounding is more important than the one individual alone. To be part of the world is higher than to conquer the world. To love your neighbor is better than beating his or her head with a machete, or raping a female that appears desirable to satisfy an urge. It is better and higher to sacrifice your own immediate wishes or desires if the effects of those are going to hurt another. On a bigger challenge, the burning shadow hate and anger that leads to murder, brutalization, even genocide - is a personal battle to be overcome within the walls of one's consciousness, and has no solution with the brutal murder of hundreds of thousands of people who happen to be a part of the demonized race or group of people. In other words, to re-claim your shadow and to pull out from that hate is to own your demons for yourself, rather than place them onto another so that the only apparent solution is to kill them, or a group of them, to feel peace. The peace must happen from within, and peace is no peace when murder of another entity appears to be the only way to claim it. These are the collective lessons that we are learning, that we continue to need to learn, and unfortunately many hundreds, thousands, of millions have died brutally in the evolutionary process, but in my mind the light at the end of the tunnel is they will not have died in vain if the high consciousness finally wins out over the lower consciousness, and the human consciousness evolves to the point where these things no longer have to happen any more. To me that is real evolution, when the mind collectively can realize what I am realizing individually, that to live life in love and harmony with the world around is so much better than to live in complete hatred of those that appear to be in the way of perceived love and happiness. I am working my way toward this - I admit I am not completely successful, but still further along than I once was - so I have to pat myself on the back for what I have done.

If I can do it alone - with all the adversity that has come my way, than it is my hope and desire that there are more like me who can do it now - and who knows - maybe this world can start evolving and changing into a better place - and maybe I will even have the miraculous fortune to see it happen while I am alive. Maybe it is even happening now, in a subtle way, while I am still alive and my own one in 5-6 billion human consciousnesses is making it happen, in my own small and large way simultaneously. I have to keep on encouraging myself and those around me - keep on believing in myself. I laughed when my wife said my brother was the only one with the spark in the family - maybe she meant the drive to accomplish higher education to be equated with the spark - but still the use of the word "spark" and saying he was the only one that had it made me laugh - because I know for a fact there is a burning spark and spirit within me. It is there even when I am feeling sick, tired, grouchy, and just want to lie down after a day filled with exhaustion and no sunlight to lift me. It is burning up within me on a beautiful summer evening in the mountains when everything around me is alive and seems to be speaking to me in its own magical language. It is the miracle that this once self-proclaimed cynic who thought it was all hopeless for many years, is one who is now an optimist in the face of overwhelming odds. I believe in myself, even though I have hated myself for years and still do from time to time inevitably. I have to keep on working at it, practicing affirmations of love, even at times when the tendency is to revert back to the familiar self-hate. I believe in who I am, what I am, what I have done and continue to do and if in spite of all odds I can do that, I can believe in the world around me as well, and believe that she can accomplish collectively what I have done within the walls of my own soul. She, like me, is evolving, she is beautiful - and yes she is becoming.