A Scientist in a Spiritual World

It's Like Magic!

2010-02-08T07:36:00.002-07:00

Last week, a service technician from a local heating company came to my house to look at our twelve year old heat pump and furnace. The heat pump was running most of the time and making a strange sound, as though it were trying to start up but kept quitting, instead. Anyway, my wife and I wanted the serviceman to look at our system and repair anything that wasn't working correctly.

The serviceman listened to the sounds coming from the heat pump and told us that it indicated that the heat pump was no longer functioning, it had burned out, so to speak and would probably have to be replaced. He also said that the heat pumps being installed about 12 years ago used a type of refrigerant that is no longer made, so it would probably not be repairable. He wanted to look at the system, though, to see whether the furnace would also have to be replaced since it worked together with the old heat pump. His estimate for all that was $8,000 - $10,000 to replace the heating system.

When he went outside to check the heat pump, I did a Matrix Energetics exercise in which I entered a reality in which the heat pump just had some simple, fixable problem that he could repair and that the heating system was otherwise sound.

Guess what! The serviceman came back into the house and told us that a wire had burned out so he would replace the wire to see how the heat pump would perform with the current flowing properly. It worked perfectly and the heating system works very well. The cost of the servicing of the furnace and the heat pump was $220 and our heating system should work fine for a good while.

I continue to be astounded by the results of doing these simple Matrix exercises in which I let the universe know my preferences for reality. I always hoped the universe was listening to my preferences but I never imagined that my reality was so fluid and responsive to them. It's like magic!

Knowing God

2010-01-28T07:37:00.003-07:00

I've been reading Carl Jung's Answer to Job with a group of people while simultaneously reading Edward Edinger's commentary on Jung's Answer to Job. The most recent sections that I read in Jung's book have to do with God's answer to the question raised in the book of Job, which was how can God be moral or conscious if God treats just, good and obedient men like Job so harshly while sometimes rewarding people who are selfish and don't follow God's commandments at all. The answer has to do with God transforming from imperial, unconscious and all-powerful deity into human form, the image of the incarnation of God.

It came to me this morning that the image of the incarnation of God suggests that God is now to be found within human consciousness, the humanization of God. The Catholic Church teaches people to worship the incarnated God and experience God through the Holy Spirit. The institutional Church, however, is uncomfortable with the notion of its members actually experiencing the Holy Spirit for themselves, afraid perhaps of the anarchy or chaos it images would ensue. The Church therefore teaches that the Holy Spirit communicates through the Pope, the hierarchy and the religious in the Church rather than individuals, although it does make concession for the mystics and honors them with sainthood after they've died.

In other words, Jung is saying that for people in the modern world, God is to be found within human consciousness because the God archetype has transformed into a human form. I read this book over 40 years ago and certainly would have read this section. I remember being excited by the notion that God is alive as an archetype in consciousness. I don't know how deeply I was aware that he was saying that God is located within my consciousness.

It's exciting, none the less, to realize that no less an authority than Carl Jung confirms the teachings of Hinduism, Buddhism, Kabbalah and mystical Christianity.

Rain Blessings

2010-01-11T07:31:00.003-07:00

Rain has returned to the Olympic Peninsula, so it rained through the night last night. It didn't rain hard, though. The rain fell like a light mist during the night and I could only hear it landing on the roof when I walked under one of the skylights in my house. I used to refer to rain like this as drizzle growing up in northeast Ohio where the rain fell much harder, creating puddles and runoff everywhere. The rain doesn't penetrate the ground as well when it falls so hard, the ground gets saturated quickly so the water that falls stays on the surface and runs down whatever inclines there are toward lower ground. In Ohio, water often ran down the sides of the streets toward the sewers and drains located at low spots on the pavements or streets. Water ran off the lawns and out of the woods as well, creating streams, brooks and small lakes everywhere. It rained faster than the ground could absorb water.

Here, in the Northwest, the rain falls so gently that it's absorbed right away. When I moved here, I thought I would need heavy duty rain gear to be able to go outside when it rains. As it turns out, though, I often go outside with just a jacket or sweatshirt when it's raining because the moisture falls in such small droplets. It's more like a mist than what I used to associate with rain. It's more like being out in a snowfall, where the flakes dust the clothing but don't make it very wet unless I remain outside in the snow for too long. It's the same with the rain, here. It's usually gentle, soft and caressing, like having very moist air surrounding me.

It does rain hard occasionally and then I do need to cover myself with rain gear and waterproof shoes. This seldom happens, though, and I find myself surprised again and again by the lightness of the rain.

So, when the showers necessary for life come to the area, I experience them as bringing a blessing of moisture and nurturing me and everything else here with life-giving watery abundance.

Soul Talk: Coming Alive

2010-01-10T07:30:00.002-07:00

This universe, the world and all the life that surrounds you is for you. How would you like to engage and interact with life? What do you enjoy doing? Is there something you'd like to learn or contribute while you're alive? Is there something you'd like to do?

These questions represent an interesting approach to being alive. Notice that they are not commandments or even suggestions. They are questions that only you can answer for yourself. And you can change your answers as often as you like. Some activities that bring pleasure to you for a while become boring or dull through repetition. You are not forced to continue doing something that is not interesting or enjoyable. That's the whole point of being alive, becoming more aware of yourself and bringing more of yourself into consciousness.

You were raised in a particular hierarchical reality that gave you an experience of being separate and limited. You did not enjoy that experience and became determined to find or invent a way of being that was more nourishing and enjoyable. And you're still discovering ways in which you are controlled or limited by the low expectations implanted in you by your family, religion and culture when you were a child. Expectation is a powerful force in consciousness and each time you expand yours, you allow your unlimited essential being to become ever more present.

You are coming alive with life, being and fullness.

Simple And Not Easy

2010-01-09T07:31:00.003-07:00

I still have this moment in which to create and express. It seems simple enough, although I often slip into some other place where I lose sight of what I want. My morning meditations are a useful analogy for my experiences with being present in the moment. In meditation, I simply presence myself and focus on being aware. I often think about things, instead, remembering things that happened, going over the experiences of characters in stories that I've read or movies that I've watched, planning events, trying to remember the lyrics to a song, imagining what my son or daughter is experiencing, etc. You get the idea.

Even though the purpose and practice of meditation is simple, it's not easy to actually focus and be present in this moment because I slip into thinking about things. It's like that the rest of the day, too, in terms of being present in each moment and reacting, responding and creatively engaging with what is. It's simple enough to describe that I want to be present and creative and not so easy to accomplish. At least, that's the way I've experienced it so far. I feel like I've shifted gears, though, and see this opportunity in a new way. I understand this process very well from my experiences in meditation and attempting to bring my consciousness into the present for some years, now. I am more conscious and aware than ever, which has brought me into a new experience of meditation, where I can quiet my mind and be present for a while. I am beginning to see a similar shift in my experience of being present in each moment during the day, being myself engaging with what is.

I am more present than ever, so I expect my experience will change, too.

Rain In My World

2010-01-08T07:37:00.002-07:00

I like the rain. When I awoke this morning I could hear rain falling on the roof and skylights. I felt happy at the sound and nourished by the moisture and the rain.

I am surprised at my response to the rain. I moved to Port Townsend from Santa Fe. I wasn't sure how I'd respond to all the clouds and rain here after all that time in the desert. I was concerned I would miss the sunlight and feel limited by the darkness of cloudy rainy days. That has not been a concern at all since I came here. Instead, I feel like I haven't had my fill of rain and feel disappointed when a storm passes us by or the rain stops, like it did about an hour ago. I feel happy when it's rains and I love looking out over the water toward the islands across the sea to watch the mist play and dance while the rain or the mist fills the air in between.

I thought I might feel limited by the rain in terms of taking walks, going on hikes or generally doing things outdoors. Actually, the rainfall tends to be very gentle here, so being outside in the rain is like being in a mist. The only limitation I have felt from the rain is concerned with the fact that I haven't found a comfortable pair of waterproof walking/hiking shoes to keep my feet dry. I have rain coats of different weights, a great rain hat and I love being outside in the rain. All I need is to find comfortable, waterproof shoes and I'll be all set to enjoy the experience of the rain.

When I sat at the computer this morning to write, I checked the weather forecast for today to see what might be happening today now that the rain has stopped. I was pleased to see that the weather forecast projects a high probability for steady rain this afternoon and through the night. I'm delighted.

I love the rain.

A Magical Time In The Morning

2010-01-07T07:35:00.002-07:00

I awakened this morning at 4:22 am, a little surprised that I slept later than usual. I went to bed early last evening and was asleep by about 9:30 pm, and I usually sleep for about 6 hours, so I figured that I must have been really tired. I went into the bathroom and washed my face to get ready for my meditation time. I cleaned myself, then went into the kitchen to get a drink of water. At least 7 or 8 minutes had passed since I got out of bed, so I was surprised to see the kitchen clock read 4:09 am. I was puzzled by the discrepancy in the times, then laughed at the apparent contradiction. I certainly could have read the clock in the bedroom incorrectly. It's also possible that the time changed so that I would have longer to meditate. I couldn't go back into the bedroom to check the clock in there because my wife was still sleeping, although I don't expect to find that clock twenty minutes fast. I've had that clock for over ten years and it runs like, well, clockwork. I just love physical reality conundrums like this because they keep me awake, so to speak, to the limitless possibilities available in this world. Who knows what happened with the apparent contradiction in my perception of time this morning!

I was reminded two days ago of an experience I had about a month ago. The computer wasn't working so I did a Matrix Energetics twinkle to allow the computer to return to normal functioning easily and simply. The computer started up with a blank screen and didn't respond to any prompts or entries on the keyboard. A technician with whom I spoke on the phone suggested that I had fried the hard drive by not paying attention to the instructions for a system software update and told me to bring it into the store. Instead, I did the Matrix with the intention that the problem be something simple that could be corrected immediately.

I then discovered that the Apple Care for this computer, which I was sure I had purchased over three years before, was still in effect. In fact, the Apple Care people told me that I had purchased it less than a year and a half previously!!!! They told me I had purchased the computer the previous year. My wife also was convinced that the Apple Care would have expired because we had the computer so long. How was that possible?

In any case, the Apple Care person proceeded to tell me to press a button and everything came back, the computer functions perfectly and all is well. How's that for conundrums!

Inner Guidance: The Divine Indwelling Presence

2010-01-06T07:33:00.003-07:00

Yesterday, in my journal, I spoke of the allegory of the horse-drawn coach from the Upanishads to discuss where I am in my inner process. I have had time to reflect on the metaphor so that I feel ready to consider the ramifications of this development in my life. Yes, I, the driver, am ready to ask the one inside the coach for direction in my life to make use of the metaphor. What does this mean?

I used to think that I would eventually make contact with the Divine within me, only my sense of the Divine at that time was something-other-than-me. I had this sense that I was defective and limited so that contacting the Divine was like communicating with an extraterrestrial being, a being completely different and separate from me. The challenge was to make contact with this other worldly presence. Once the contact was made, I would ask questions and seek guidance directly from the source of Being and font of Wisdom so I would know what to do and understand what's taking place in my life. I would be a servant of the Divine and do what I was told with gratitude and relief. I believed that this would make me happy.

However, that's not how I understand making contact with the Divine within me, now. When I connect with the Divine, it's more like an experience of God dwelling within me as me. As it turns out, I'm not defective or broken. I was confused and misunderstood my relationship with life. It's a little like asking God what to do with my life only to find that God turns around and asks me what I'd like to do with my life. For example, the realization that I love creating music is the same as the Divine Indwelling Presence inspiring me to create music. Creating music requires a lot of knowledge, skill, inspiration, training and technical ability, all of which I have. What a coincidence!

When I turn around and ask the Divine Indwelling Presence where to go, I hear a laugh and a sweet voice asking me where I'd like to go that would be the most fun. I think I'll go there!

The One Who Lives Within

2010-01-05T07:31:00.003-07:00

In the Upanishads, a human being is described as a horse-drawn chariot. The horses are the senses, the driver is the mind and the purpose of life is for the driver to learn to train the horses so that they will follow directions and go where the driver directs them. At some point in life, the driver may succeed with the training and realize that the horses will follow directions and do what they are directed to do. It dawns on the driver that it's possible to go wherever he or she wants to go. The Upanishads say that when that point is reached, the driver turns to the one riding within the chariot and asks where to go.

Using that story for discussion purposes, I have focused mostly on training so that I can go wherever I want in life. I recently realized that I was not even aware of what I wanted in life because I had never been asked what I wanted as a child and I had become convinced that I could not have what I wanted anyway. Now that I have accomplished much of the training required to keep my chariot on the road, according to the story, I can go wherever I want. I now can direct the chariot consciously.

What does it mean to ask the one sitting within the chariot where he wants to go? In the Upanishads, the story references the Atman, the Divine within consciousness. I have discovered the Divinity within myself and I would love to have this divine consciousness direct my life. I have been so focused on getting the senses and the mental clutter out of the way so that I can operate the chariot effectively that I actually haven't given this aspect of life much practical consideration. I have operated the chariot anyway but I now have the opportunity to clarify the process and make this operation more efficient and more effective. How amazing is that!

I Wonder What I'm Doing

2010-01-03T07:39:00.005-07:00

I realized something this morning. I notice that the thoughts that run through my mind are often reminders or memories of items on my "to do" list that I've not done, yet. Often, they are simple things that I have forgotten, like buying some enchalada sauce or checking the oil on my car. My reaction is to dismiss these thoughts are not useful in the present moment, so I let them go. They tend to come back in moments when I'm not fully focused on the present, though.

This morning, I wonder about these reminders that pop into my awareness time and again. What if I were to take a moment and write them down so I can attend to them? I would assume that the thought that I haven't checked the oil in my car recently would not come to mind if I had checked the oil recently. The same with reminders about items that I want to purchase at the store but have forgotten.

I also realize that I don't take time out of the day to consider what I want to do with my time. I act as if I value going along with whatever comes up on a given day and responding to it. I certainly was able to avoid conflict by living that way when I was growing up or working for money. I don't think this is how I want to live each moment. I like completing projects and having time to invent and create.

At the same time, when I am fully present, I have access to what I really want and follow my inspiration. Well, that is the rationalization for approaching each moment the way I have. I would like to consider how I behave in those moments when I'm not fully present or inspired. This is very interesting.

Present In This Day

2010-01-02T07:32:00.003-07:00

I would like to be present in the experience of each moment, present to what is. I say that so easily and slip from the awareness of this moment's experience so easily.

Essentially, I slip into habitual ways of interacting and being almost immediately after saying that I want to be present in the moment. It's the way I learned to survive as I developed awareness as a child. And I slip into this habitual perspective as easily as I breathe. I run thoughts in my mind which serves as a running conversation that goes on and on, deliberating, reflecting, imagining, worrying, planning and dreaming. You'd think that I would be bored by this commentary by now because it's endless and does not achieve resolution. And yet I run thoughts and deliberate all manner of things in my mind almost without noticing, I've become so adept at it.

When I meditate, I am often able to stop the running commentary and experience being present in the moment, fully aware. At those times, it seems like it would be easy to extend this experience of being into the rest of my day and I do sometimes achieve such presence during experiences in my day. It's fleeting, though. I seem to quickly slip into letting my familiar inner dialogue and commentary run, again, hardly noticing the shift.

I am currently present as I sit at my keyboard, typing these words, aware of my breathing, aware of my posture. I feel blessed and wonderful present in this moment, so I'd like to make this note of how I feel when I'm being present. I like this feeling and I enjoy being this way. Let's see how much I enjoy being present throughout this day.

My Experiment For This New Year

2010-01-01T07:38:00.003-07:00

A new year begins today. I feel ready to experience life for myself, now. It's a new day, a new dawn, a new era for me.

This morning, during meditation, I realized that I want to mindfully attend to the details of living and being, so the experience of calming and stilling the mind that I've practiced diligently in meditation becomes very relevant for being aware as I do. I can empty the mind and focus my attention on what I experience now without all the chatter of thoughts and I'd like to explore being that way during my daily activities. I can imagine doing what I do with awareness and attention but I usually don't stay focused on being present. I tend to slip into unconscious responses when I perform familiar activities or go about my daily routines. I seem to respond more to the circumstances or recall past experiences I haven't digested when I'm active, but that's just the way I learned to be as I grew up. I want to explore how I might be present and still all the time rather than just during my meditation.

For the first time, I can imagine this as possible and feel like it could be fun. How about that!

Interference and Mental Agitation

2009-12-21T07:34:00.003-07:00

My mind is active this morning. Thoughts keep coming to mind as though there were something important I need to understand, figure out or decide, even though the topic of my thoughts keeps shifting and changing moment to moment. I am able to step back from these thoughts and be present in the experience of this moment, rather than get caught up in thinking about the various things that arise. It's interesting to notice that my awareness has this distracting stream of thoughts running this morning. If there were a particular content to these thoughts, I might be able to determine the source of this aggitation, but the content is fluid and changing. My mind is like a choppy sea this morning, the waves roiling and breaking chaotically rather than with purpose. It seems like there must be some kind of wind blowing that generates this disturbance.

When I drew three Tarot cards this morning as a window into my inner life, today, I came up with the Valor card, The Hermit and Interference. The Interference card is a good description of this mental agitation that I feel. The mental agitation arose this morning when I gave thought to my daughter's request for something I would like her to give me as a gift, in other words, something I want. I thought about a few books and CDs I might like and then my mental interference began, other ideas, doubts, thoughts, judgments arose almost immediately. I did not experience this intense mental agitation until I started "thinking about" what I wanted.

Historically, the question of what I want has been difficult for me to answer because of my childhood experience and programming. I was convinced there was something wrong with me so that I became more interested in learning to like what other people liked than looking to see what I wanted. It's interesting to notice that such a simple exercise as giving thought to what I might want can arouse such agitation and panic in my inner child. I imagine that this awareness will settle my mind, now.

Awake In The Morning

2009-12-18T07:30:00.003-07:00

A moment of reflection.

I stand on a high ridge, looking eastward toward the sunrise, as the sky brightens and a new day begins. I feel renewed, reborn and alive with enthusiasm and joy. I am here and the situations and circumstances that arise today are perfect opportunities with which I can engage. The Earth refreshes itself and flourishes each day just as I do. I feel alive with possibilities and ready to dance.

Consciousness emerges within me and I am grateful to have this opportunity to be here in this world. Everything is alive and dancing with joy, changing and transforming in the most interesting ways. And I used to think this was a material world of objects which I was learning to navigate. The truth is that these shapes and forms I see are convenient interpretations that we place upon the patterns of energy around me, and we may change the way we interpret or see them. For the moment, though, they bless me with their familiarity and solidity. How fun is that!

I feel new, today, as though I just arrived here in this room and house, in Port Townsend, Washington, North America, Earth. I imagine I might feel the same, tomorrow. I love being here with my family and my friends.

And The Lights Came On

2009-12-16T07:38:00.003-07:00

I hung strings of icycle lights at the roof line of our house in the front, but the string of lights hanging in front of the garage had a large section in which the lights did not work. I went to two different holiday decoration stores to find similar icycle lights to replace the faulty ones and perhaps purchase an additional string of lights, but I was not able to find strings of light remotely similar to the ones I'm using. Either technology has moved onto LED lights and phased out the old styles, or the Port Townsend stores were just too small to carry these particular lights. I decided that I didn't want to purchase all new lights, so I thought of ways to make due with the current strings of lights by adding some small strings that I already have into the malfunctioning string.

When I arrived home from my trip to town, I surveyed the lights as I drove into my driveway and was surprised to find that the malfunctioning string of lights had changed to fully functioning. All the lights were brightly shining and lit the front of the garage beautifully. And I didn't have to do anything to make that happen...

When I first noticed that some of the lights were not working in that string, I had the thought that the lights would eventually come on and waited for that to happen. They didn't light the first night, so I figured that they were not going to light up, after all. Fortunately, I was not able to replace them immediately and they lit up a few days later. Had I found a suitable replacement string of lights, I would not have noticed that the lights did work. How wonderful, then, that I was not able to find replacement lights for the delinquent lights. It's fun to play with reality!

Reflections On Jung's Answer To Job

2009-12-11T07:30:00.003-07:00

I'm reading Carl Jung's book, Answer to Job, again after almost 40 years since I first read it. I liked the book when I read it, then, and I like it even more, now. I have much more life experience and read the book with greater insight and understanding that was possible for me when I was in my early 20s.

I am particularly struck by his discussion of God, and Yahweh, throughout the book. I am also reading Edward Edinger's commentary on Answer To Job, Transformation of the God-image, along with Jung's book. Edinger suggests that Jung is talking about the unconscious and unconsciousness when he discusses Yahweh and God, so that he focuses his discussions on the Psyche, the Unconscious and the process of Jungian Analysis to elucidate the concepts that Jung discusses in Answer To Job. Noticing that difference, I wondered why Jung keeps his discussion focused on God and Yahweh, rather than using the psychological terminology that Edinger favors.

When I read Jung's discussions about God and Yahweh, the effect that conscious interaction has on these images, the relative unconsciousness of God/Yahweh, the non-human qualities, etc., I feel a deep stirring and big energy in the discussion. When Edinger describes what he believes Jung is saying in psychological terminology, it comes across in a more abstract manner and I can think about it somewhat objectively. Edinger makes the concepts he notices in each chapter very clear and describes them well. When I read Jung's chapters, I feel the power and wander in supernatural realms, being moved and swayed by his descriptions and observations about these deep layers of myself. It's like exploring the depths of my being and getting better acquainted with my Soul.

I imagine that Jung purposely kept his discussion focused on Yahweh/God to introduce his readers to the depths and power that God/Yahweh has on them. It certainly makes the power of this archetype transparent to me. Unlike Edinger, Jung does not suggest God/Yahweh is a symbol or archetype, only. He does not discuss the reality of God/Yahweh in the book. He elucidates what we can know about the nature of God/Yahweh as it is revealed through the book of Job in the Bible. He leaves the question of the nature of God/Yahweh's Being to the reader, thereby allowing for a numinous experience of the enlightening discussion. I am impressed.

External Blessings, Internal Blessings

2009-12-10T07:38:00.004-07:00

It is cold this morning in Port Townsend. The temperature has barely risen above freezing for the last four days, although today promises to be a little warmer, 38º to be exact. The sky has been unusually clear during this time, I suppose this is due to unusually low humidity for this area. The sea is beautiful when the sky is clear. The water reflects blue from the sky and appears to be a deep, teal color. The tide has been low during the afternoons, so I've enjoyed a beautiful sandy beach during my walks along the water this week. The cold brings a blessing of beauty, clarity and wide sandy beaches this week.

The weather changes rapidly, here on the Olympic Peninsula. Warmer weather moves in, starting today, and the temperatures will rise into the 40s this weekend. Along with the warmer weather comes moisture and clouds, so rain is predicted early next week for several days, again. It's only been about a weeks since the last rain or snow fell yet I already miss the clouds, the mists and the rain. I was not aware of how natural the cycles of rain and clouds feel to me when I lived in Santa Fe. There was not enough moisture, clouds or rain for me to notice how I react to the ebb and flow of rainy weather. In Santa Fe, I usually felt dry and longed for the clouds and rain, so I could not know how I'd feel during times of abundant rain and cloudy days. I love the rain and the clouds. I feel nourished by the cocoon created by the clouds that keep the Earth's warmth close to the surface while keeping it moist with rainfall. I feel blessed when the clouds arrive.

I think of my emotions in a similar way. When I feel emotional, I am not able to think clearly because the emotions influence my thinking. When I was a math and physics student, that seemed like a distraction from pure logic, a loss of clarity. I discover that I like the experience of my emotions. Of course, they influence me, which is as I want it to be. I don't want my emotions to control me, as might happen were I to go unconscious and identify with my feelings. I want to experience and be aware of them so that I can allow my responses to what happens in my life influence how I live and what I choose. My emotions are like the clouds, mists and rain; they're blessings when I'm open to receive them.

Matrix Energetics Experience With My Computer

2009-12-09T07:36:00.003-07:00

Yesterday, I set up email accounts on a laptop for my wife, so she would have a computer to use while her computer was being repaired. A system update for the computer became available while I was working at the computer, a formware update or some such thing, so I clicked the continue button to have it restart the computer and upgrade the system firmware. Well, that's what I thought I was doing.

However, the computer shut itself down and just sat there, silent. That was not the behavior I expected, so I started up the computer to see what was going on. The computer started up, but nothing loaded and the screen remained empty of content, just a lighted screen. Nothing happened and it would not respond to anything I did. This did not look good to me, so I shut it down again to see if I could get it to start one more time. This time, when I started it, I did a Matrix Energetics exercise to choose a reality in which the computer is fine and actually felt as though I had entered a reality in which the computer was fine.

However, the computer was still not responding, so I called the computer repair place where my wife was dropping off the computer and asked them about the laptop and its weird behavior. The person with whom I spoke told me that if I did not do the order of commands in the exact order that was suggested to me on the window that I simply dismissed by clicking the "Continue" button, I could well have "fried" the hard drive of the computer. He told me to bring the computer into the store so they could see what's going on.

As I was considering the possibility of expensive repairs for the computer or having to purchase a new one to replace it, I thought about the fact that I must have purchased an Apple Care extended warranty for the laptop and wondered whether it had expired. For some reason, I couldn't remember when we purchased the computer but it seemed like we had it for at least three years, the usual length of an extended warranty. I thought I'd find the paper work for the extended warranty and call Apple to see if it might still be in effect.

I called Apple and they told me that I had not registered the computer or the extended warranty, so they took care of doing that with me. I was mystified, because I have always registered my computers and warranties religiously when I first purchased them and I couldn't imagine not doing that with this one. When the technician asked me when I purchased it, I told him I couldn't remember and looked for a receipt. Again, I couldn't find anything, which does not seem unusual
given the fact that we moved from New Mexico to Washington just last year and still haven't sorted or found some of our things from before the move. To my delight, the computer and the warranty were estimated by the Apple experts to have been purchased in April of last year, still under warranty.

That means that the technician could help me solve the problem and it turned out to be a simple mistake. I needed to do one more step in the update process for it to complete and it was waiting for me to give it the signal. When I did, it completed the update and all is well with the computer.

I asked my wife when we purchased the computer, and she can't remember either. We were both convinced we had the computer for more than three years and the warranty was expired, yet the current story is that we bought it in the Spring of 2008 and the warranty still has another year and a half. It's like reality changed and our "memories" have not yet caught up to the shift in reality.

Talk about an effective Matrix Energetics shift into a new reality!

First Snow

2009-12-06T07:35:00.002-07:00

I was surprised to see a blanket of snow covering the ground this morning when I awakened. Snow was not in the weather forecast for our area, although snow was expected on the northern slopes of the Olympic Mountains, not too far from here. What a delightful surprise!

The snowfall was less than half an inch, judging by the amount that I can still see on the ground, so it will disappear soon enough. The snow here doesn't last very long because it's not cold enough. The next few days will be cold for Port Townsend, with high temperatures in the mid 30s and low temperatures in the mid 20s, and the weather is expected to grow warmer by the end of the week. I like a little bit of snow now and then, especially if the temperature remains warm enough to melt it rather quickly. I like the blessing of moisture to come as snowflakes. Snowflakes are beautiful, delicate and impermanent. Snow appears to be a solid substance covering the ground and plants but melts quickly and disperses as water.

Snow reminds me that all matter is beautiful, delicate and impermanent. It's really energy dressed up for the material universe ball and when spirit removes itself, matter disperses into pure energy once again.

I'm, basically, a snowman (actually, a matter_man) here myself. Perhaps that's part of the magic of seeing snow on the ground once again.

Peace On Earth

2009-12-05T07:32:00.003-07:00

Last evening, the Port Townsend Community Chorus premiered my peace meditation for chorus, "Peace On Earth," at its annual winter concert. I have been so focused on making the music accessible to the singers so that it could be performed well that I hadn't noticed how well the music sounds when sung by the chorus. I stand in the back of the chorus, singing with the tenors, so I am not able to hear the full sound emanating from the chorus as they sing the piece. I was not sure how it would sound to an audience since I stand in the back of the group surrounded by the bass, alto and tenor sections, hearing any hesitations in voices of the singers or notes that are not quite on pitch. These are little details so I know that I am standing in the middle of the singers, unable to see the forest for the trees.

Last evening, quite a few of the choral members told me how much they love singing the choral piece and a movement to record the song at one of the Sunday concerts has emerged from the group. Several people in the audience told me how much they were moved by the music and asked if it could be recorded because they would like to listen to it again and again. I am not able to hear the piece as a whole standing in the middle of the chorus but I get a sense of the way the music sounds to some people who hear it.

I have a history of being disappointed by the response to my creative endeavors throughout my life, so I feel surprised and awed by the response to my musical composition. I am having a new experience in my life. I feel like I'm in new territory and am unsure of my footing because it feels unfamiliar and new to me. I loved the music since I created it. I had no idea whether anyone else would respond to it the way I do. I felt cautious about sharing it with others, and first played it for a few close friends to see what their response would be. When they responded positively, I became curious about how others might respond, not knowing until just last evening how strongly and positively the other singers feel about the piece.

I feel grateful for the gift of this music in my life and I would love to see my music might bring a gift of peace to even more people.

Carl Jung's God-image and Self

2009-12-03T07:40:00.004-07:00

In reading "Answer to Job" by Carl Jung, I noticed another informative idea about God and the Unconscious that I discussed yesterday. Jung says that when considering God as the Unconscious, it is clear that the disruption and interruption that the Unconscious causes to a person means to bring its content into consciousness. This interaction between conscious and unconscious causes both to change. The consciousness expands as it incorporates aspects of the psyche that were previously unconscious and the Unconscious changes as it becomes more conscious. This is what Jung meant when he discussed the God-image being effected by its interaction with human consciousness and the human consciousness being impacted by its encounter with God.

It's interesting for me to read these ideas because I tend to think of God and the God-image more like symbols of the Soul, voices of wisdom available to my consciousness that I can access for understanding my nature and my choices in life. Jung is more inclined to consider the God-image as a disruptive force in life whose intent is to make itself known. I know that Jung also has postulated the archetype of the Self, which is the intuitive guide and representative of the Whole Being, or Soul. I had not differentiated these concepts before and mostly assumed that God-image and Self were the same in my previous readings of Jung. It will be interesting to see what he does say about the Self, the inner guide and Individuation now that I realize they are not the same.

The Unconscious And Yahweh

2009-12-02T07:31:00.002-07:00

I read the beginning of Carl Jung's "Answer to Job" last evening and the corresponding chapter in Edinger's commentary on the book. Edinger makes the statement that Jung is saying that the archetype of Yahweh is the Unconscious. I am delighted by the simplicity and straightforwardness of his assessment, because Jung did not actually come out and say that directly. As I think about Jung's description of the Yahweh image described in the Torah and the Old Testament, I see that it fits quite well.

In the movies, when someone has a revelation of this magnitude, the background music usually swells with appropriate expansive beauty to help the viewers realize the magnitude of this realization. I wish you could hear the music in my heart crescendo as I reflect upon this awareness.

It makes sense to me. Jung takes pain to discuss his perception that the image of God in a person is expanded with each conscious encounter between the person and the God image. His analysis made sense to me and I agree that an archetype changes with each encounter with consciousness, but I had not realized that he was suggesting that the Yahweh image in the Book of Job is a representation of the Unconscious. In this case, it would represent the collective Unconscious of the Jewish people of that era, circa 500 BCE. The anger, manipulation, demand for praise, devotion, worship and obedience, commands, power, majesty, as well as the punishment, rewards and safety Yahweh offers to His people makes sense when seen as their Collective Unconscious. Wow!

I feel like equating Yahweh with the Unconscious contains much information for me, particularly regarding the teachings and programming I received about God in my childhood from my parents and the Catholic Church. This metaphor gives easy entrance to a deep mine which I can explore to understand the psychological and spiritual impact that God image has in my psyche. I imagine that I will enjoy exploring "God" from this new perspective.

Dream: Basketball On The Field

2009-12-01T07:31:00.003-07:00

Last night, I dreamt that I apparently was a senior in high school, deciding to play on the basketball team. Interestingly, when I looked for my shoes to attend practice, I discovered that I didn't have basketball shoes, only running shoes, which I wasn't able to find. Although I started out in a gym, gathering my things for the practice, when I started playing with the team, we were outside on a field that looked like a soccer or football field. And the team members were throwing around a ping pong ball, which was being blown about by the wind and often going over a steep embankment where the leveling process done when the field was created ended and the ground dropped down to the lower level it originally had. Since the ball kept going over the side, I was trying to get to the ball before it went over the edge to return it to the other team members. I wasn't moving very fast, noticing that my quickness was compromised and the ball kept going down the embankment. I retrieved it from below once or twice, but I was moving slowly enough that the team members started running down the hill themselves to get it.

I am interested in the way the sports images in my dream were mixed up; playing basketball with a ping pong ball on a football field that does not have basketball hoops. The team members were all young men, and the lack of quickness I displayed in my response to the ball going toward the steep embankment would indicate that I am experiencing the effects of aging, unlike my experience of being a senior in high school. The running around on the field and the way the ball tended to roll off the playing field seemed more like soccer than any of the other sports I mention, although I've never played soccer. And I felt fatigue when I chased after the ball, like my body did not respond very quickly to my impulse to chase after the ball. I hesitated to run up and down the embankment because it seemed physically taxing, which is not the way I played sports when I was 18 years old.

My dream shows me trying to play a game that I don't understand with young men with whom I identify as peers. It makes me think of the kind of situations I face in my life when I unconsciously let my inner child awareness come to the foreground of my consciousness. I tend to experience confusion and fear when that happens because that is my inner child's experience of life. It seems that my dream is an exploration of the experience of going unconscious and trying to live as if I were a child again. It doesn't work very well, because I start to notice that I feel confused and I am not able to sustain the illusion for very long. I get tired or bored of the game, then wake up to my adult consciousness. That's good news, all around.

The Blessing Of Rain

2009-11-30T07:28:00.003-07:00

After weeks of overcast, misty, rainy weather, the weather is forecast to change over the next several days, revealing more sunshine and partly cloudy skies. I marvel at my love of the misty, wet weather that has predominated recently, given how much I was drawn to the Southwest sunshine previously.

My love of the rain and mists makes sense to me, though. I grew up in Northeast Ohio, where cloudy days and rain were so common that it was unusual to see anyone with a suntan. When I first went to New Mexico, I couldn't get enough sunlight, and spent as many waking hours in the sunshine as possible, hiking in the wilderness or doing my work outdoors whenever possible. The altitude and dryness in Santa Fe contributed to incredible clarity, where it was easy to see a mountain that was 100 miles away if nothing blocked the line of sight. I needed that clarity, at least, metaphorically, for my inner spiritual process during those years. In the desert, everything is exposed to the sunlight; inside myself, it was somehow easier to notice the hidden impulses and programmed responses in the light of my consciousness.

After 33 years of relentless internal exploration, though, I felt drawn to water and moisture, again. In that sense, it's not a surprise that I still feel a little disappointed when the skies clear and the misty clouds evaporate for a while. I haven't gotten my fill of rain and high humidity, yet. I love seeing the water all around me, and I like being outside in the rain. I enjoy hearing the steady drone of rain falling onto the roof of my house. The sound of the rain is such a comforting feeling to me. I feel like I'm being nourished and blessed by the rain, the wind and mist. All I have to do is look around me and notice how the trees and plants respond to the rain to see that this is true.

I do love sunlight and sunny days, but I'm obviously still balancing out my years in the desert with the abundant blessings of moisture available here on the Olympic Peninsula.

Joy In The Morning

2009-11-29T07:38:00.003-07:00

This morning during meditation, I took a while to calm my mind and presence myself. My mind remained sufficiently calm for me to experience joy in just being present in my body on the couch, alert, awake and aware. I felt very well, like effervescent energy bubbling and flowing. I simply enjoyed being in this state of awareness. I experienced pleasure and felt comfortable, as though this experience were most familiar. It was like coming home and being myself.

It came to me during this experience that I don't have to strive to communicate spiritual awakening to others. I see that I have carried a notion that my life is centered around understanding consciousness, the spiritual experience, and helping others to value it and experience it for themselves. I have learned, though, that people are different and value different experiences in incarnating into human form. I am not obligated or required to make others value this awareness and state of being in order to give my life value or meaning. In the experience of being this morning, I somehow came to realize that being is sufficient. My impulse to work hard to make something available to others who may or may not be interested in alternative models for living their lives is something I was trained and programmed to feel. I can choose to share this experience or not.

In any case, I can enjoy being as much as I like.

Consciously Being Present

2009-11-27T07:33:00.003-07:00

Awareness has no content. When I am aware rather than thinking, I am alert, witnessing, present, engaged, responsive, open, alert, relaxed and peaceful. Being present and aware, I don't have an identity and I have no idea of how I will respond or react to the experience of this moment. I don't carry my identity with me when I am present and aware. I have to be thinking to remind myself who I am and remember my history of responses as well as my plans for how I'd like to respond or engage with situations and events. Without the steady flow of reminders that come to my awareness through my thoughts, I am free to react and respond anew, as though for the first time, to events, situations and experiences as they occur. That contrasts with the way I usually engage with life, keeping a running commentary going in my mind that reminds me of past successes, warns me of possible errors or mistakes and offers suggestions as to how I might do it better.

Perhaps this is why this meditative state of awareness, being present and aware without thinking, is often said to be emptiness or a void. I find the experience to be exhilarating and intoxicating, sensing a release of all the pressure I usually feel to live up to my standards, to be a good person, to be responsible, to be kind, to be loving, to be strong, to be acceptable, to be appreciated, to be successful and be holy. These various standards to which I compare myself often conflict with each other in any given situation, making the choice of how I react and behave a matter of compromise and evaluation. Being present and aware without thinking is trusting myself, the whole being that integrates all the different aspects of my being into a spontaneous and sensitive presence, and engaging freely without the intermediary of censorship and judgment, without the hesitation and deliberation I usually use to monitor myself.

In the world in which I grew up and was trained, I was taught that I am a beast by nature. As a result, I learned to control myself and deliberately choose my responses and behaviors to protect myself and others from unbridled instincts and aggression. As it turns out, that is not who I am, so all the restraints and controls I learned are unnecessary.

I'd like to develop this idea better on a future blog, particularly the qualifications of this state of being that I am describing to better differentiate it from the normal waking consciousness that has proven to be untrustworthy.

An Expression of Thanksgiving

2009-11-26T07:33:00.003-07:00

Thanksgiving is expressing gratitude and I have much for which I am grateful.

I am grateful for the Earth and the abundant life it supports. I am grateful for the sunlight and the rain, the clouds and wind, the rain forests, the forests, the woods, the meadows, the fields, the rivers, streams, oceans, seas and mountains. I am grateful for my life and all the experiences I am having here in this physical dimension. I am grateful for my family, friends and acquaintances. I am grateful to all my teachers, mentors, authors of the many books I've read, literature, art and music. I am grateful for my health, my mind, my emotions and my senses, which inform me of my inner experiences. I am grateful for intuition, insights, inspiration, creativity, dreams, hunches, synchronicities, callings, longings and attractions. I am grateful for my age, having enough time to learn who I am and what I want to do in my life. I am grateful for spirit, Soul, wisdom, intelligence, divinity, god, goddess, life force, Self, wholeness, holiness and the One. I am grateful for all the hierarchical games being played on the planet and I am grateful for the Transition, which has helped me to discover who I am and who I'm not so that I can be more of who I am and less of who I'm not. I am grateful for the birds, the mammals, the insects and the creatures living in the waters of the Earth. I am grateful for consciousness.

I feel awe at the wonders available to me just by being alive, incarnated in physical form. What fun!

The Dance Of Staying Conscious

2009-11-25T07:33:00.003-07:00

I've reached a new awareness in my life. I am awake and creative, I enjoy my life and experience fulfillment in my life. I am conscious of much more of myself and my life experiences than ever before, becoming more conscious all the time. I enjoy meditation, yoga, reading, discussions, conversations, relationships, time to myself, Sudoku puzzles, creating music, playing music, designing, building websites, doing household repairs, cooking, hiking in the wilderness, walking on beaches and expanding consciousness. Yikes, I could continue this list for a while.

Sometimes, my awareness dims and my inner child consciousness comes more to the foreground, at which times I experience fear, a general anxiety that something is wrong with me, my life, humanity, divinity or the world. These are moments worth noting because my consciousness feels restricted and I don't enjoy feeling that way. These moments of limitation are opportunities for expanding my consciousness. I can free myself from those limiting perspectives by becoming aware of them, noticing their source in my inner child's fear factory, much of it resulting from programming I received in my formative years. When I identify the anxiety and fear as being my inner child's experience, I am able to detach from it and return to my adult consciousness.

There's more to say about this, so I will continue exploring these thoughts when I have time.

Blessings.

Tarot Meditations In The Mornings

2009-11-24T07:35:00.002-07:00

I awakened this morning with a feeling of wholeness, a sense that everything is unfolding appropriately. Nonetheless, my emotions seem to be stirring, today. I was not able to identify the feelings moving in me until I used the Tarot to draw a picture of what's moving in me. The picture that came from the cards displays self-attack, fear of failure and a sense of success based on being practical and grounded. It's interesting to use the cards in this way, because I have not noticed any self-attack tendencies or feelings of failure, today.

From experience, I really can't tell how these feelings or energies might manifest in my consciousness, today. Sometimes, like yesterday, the Tarot picture that I draw upon in the morning is helpful for identifying feelings and energies that arise during the day. Other days, I do not notice the energies depicted in the morning Tarot meditation at any time during the day. I usually assume that those energies were tendencies moving out or releasing from me so that they do not impact my consciousness during that day.

So, I don't know what it means, yet, to have created this picture of the energies moving in me, today. However, it does seem to create an opportunity for me to be more aware of myself as I observe the feelings and energies moving in me each day, comparing to the picture drawn from the Tarot meditation in the morning. I can only know this present moment and observe what I experience being here, now.

Reservations About Recording My Song

2009-11-23T07:42:00.002-07:00

After rehearsal, last evening, I decided to cancel plans to record the chorus singing my piece. I believe it was the director's struggle to get the singers on pitch in the song and the constant background chatter among the singers in spite of constant requests for them to be quiet that made trying to record the song seem like more trouble than I wish to embrace. It may be that the singers would all agree to show up at a recording location after the concerts to help me record the song, but it seemed like it would require a lot of effort to get a good recording, at least that's how it felt last evening.

I drew the Disappointment card and the Ruin card this morning as part of my daily reflection, so I'm aware that my inner child is stirred up with memories of his disappointments about putting forth creative efforts in the past and his fear that I can be hurt by being so public with something as personal as a song. I write this because I want to bring these programmed responses and childish fears into consciousness to observe whether my reservations about attempting to record the song are adult.

Futility On The Morning After

2009-11-22T07:41:00.002-07:00

I mostly slept during my meditation, this morning. It's a surprise when that happens because on most mornings when it occurs, I'm not aware that I'm sleepy when I begin meditating. I do my breathing excercises and repeat my mantra for a while, getting my mind focused so that I'm ready to presence myself in the moment. I gradually calm my thoughts and become more present, then suddenly wake up to find that I was sitting with my head hanging down, oblivious to everything. I can only conclude that more sleep was somehow needed because, I usually try several times to presence my awareness in the moment even though I fall back to sleep as soon as I quiet my thoughts.

Yesterday, I discussed the idea of helping people become more conscious by having them tell the stories that they use to define their lives, their personal myths. Today, I notice that I feel like there's no point bothering people with my ideas and approaches, as though it's already a foregone conclusion that it would never work and I would only embarrass myself if I attempted anything like that. I was able to identify this feeling so clearly because I pulled the Futility card from my Tarot deck this morning when I used the Tarot to look at the energy moving in me today. When the Futility card came up, I immediately recognized the feeling in myself. My inner child is afraid that things will turn out badly if I make my ideas public or make myself available for criticism. It's an interesting process to observe in myself.

Personal Mythology: The Story of Our Life

2009-11-21T07:30:00.003-07:00

I am having thoughts and images about consciousness sessions that could be made available to interested people. The sessions that I'm thinking about would have some similarity to past life sessions and, yet, would emphasize the mythical and symbolic nature of the stories that arise. It would be like combining Jungian Analysis with Past Life Regressions, using the best of both modalities. I like the idea of increasing consciousness through exploring a person's personal mythology, which is expressed through the stories that a person tells to himself or herself all the time. These stories are sometimes communicated through dreams and can be accessed through that medium.

One approach to accessing such stories consciously is to use hypnosis or some such means to suggest people enter an altered state of consciousness. As they relax and observe their inner world, temporarily suspended in an altered state from their normal focus on external reality, they have the opportunity to let their Soul speak to them and through them. By telling their story, they have the opportunity to consciously observe their personal myth, the story that they unconsciously or consciously use to govern their lives. Bringing such a story into consciousness allows a person to engage with their personal mythology with greater awareness. Does this story represent them as they want to be or even as they see themselves? Who are the important characters in their story and how do they interact with them now?

Past Life sessions have the advantage of lending the stories that arise an aura of reality and sometimes come forth with great intensity and emotion. I'm not sure that focusing on one's personal mythology would generate the same amount of intensity or feeling in people. But maybe that would make it easier to apprehend the stories and let the Soul express them, since a person might not have as great an attachment or identification with them as they do when they try to remember their past lives.

Soul Talk: A Transition Into The Present

2009-11-20T07:35:00.002-07:00

It has been a while since I asked my Soul to speak.

So much energy, life and creativity bubble into your consciousness every day, that it's almost like having a birthday every day. A celebration of joy is a fair description of your experience each day, although you don't always feel that way as you live the day. And you find yourself in a most unusual community, where your wisdom and knowledge are greatly appreciated and even sometimes solicited. In this new reality, where you experience yourself as whole and live in a community where others appreciate you for who you are, you are adjusting to a new sense of yourself. Whereas you have memories of challenges experienced in relationships, creative endeavors, studies and friendships, you experience all of it differently, now. Even your studies and research over many years, which seemed to come across as esoteric or perhaps mad to many people that you've known, currently all that information and knowledge, as well as the wisdom you've gained over the years of Transition process with the Guys, is suddenly enlightening and useful in your current reality.

What a change this new reality is for you! No wonder you feel discombobulated at times. And yet, you feel the joy and appreciation bubbling in your heart every day as you marvel at the experience of being alive. Take life easy, though and choose a peaceful experience. It's tempting to ride the creative energy and engage in more and more activities since it's so much fun. Let love, ease and peace be your guides so you don't overextend yourself. Take time to enjoy what you do and rest in being in the present. It's not about producing or creating, it's really about experiencing yourself being in the present, enjoying your life.

An Answer To Job, Again

2009-11-19T07:35:00.005-07:00

I am rereading Answer to Job, by Carl Jung, and this time, I'm also reading the Edinger Commentary on the book and discussing the readings with a reading group. I find this reading to be wonderfully evocative because it gives me an incredible sense of my own development since the last time I read Answer to Job, almost 40 years ago.

I want to write out a few ideas that have surfaced this morning, while I still have them in mind. The initial jotting down of these ideas will be somewhat sketchy so that I can get them out and remember them. Hopefully, I will return to this post and develop each of these ideas more.

Jung's sense that Job's questioning God and affirming his own innocence regarding all the calamities that occurred in his life brought new awareness to the lack of moral justice in God. It also makes it clear that God, as depicted by Yahweh, is not conscious and is jealous, in some ways, of man's consciousness. I feel that Jung is talking about a rational morality here, one that makes sense to the logical mind. I respond to Jung's description of the justice issue differently than I did when I first read this. At that time, I imagined that Jung was saying that the way that events in life happen to us is not always reasonable or moralistic, in a rational sense. I wasn't differentiating between the God-image and the Self at that time, so I still held onto the notion that there was purpose in all that happens, anyway, even if I couldn't see it. In fact, I still believe that my life experiences are orchestrated by the divine, the Soul, or the Self, even though it often goes contrary to my expectations and my wishes.

Edinger is concerned about when to apply an archetypal interpretation rather than a personal interpretation to someone's experiences in life, as though there are different types of analysis that apply to different situations. I don't see it that way. It seems to me a simple matter of noting that we only sometimes grasp the purpose and meaning in our lives' developments, and often only through hindsight. We may intuit what direction our lives are taking us, but we generally don't understand until we develop enough consciousness to see it from a larger perspective. It's like climbing a mountain and reaching an opening from where we get a view of the forest in which we were wandering. Our path is clear from above in a way that was not possible while stumbling around among the trees and underbrush. I say that the spiritual perspective is always applicable and sometimes the focus is on personal neurosis while at other times it's archetypal. When I became a father and the father archetype emerged so strongly in my psyche, I was also still neurotic in a very personal way. It seems clear to me that my life experiences were bringing both types of unconsciousness to the foreground to help me become conscious of all that I am.

I wonder about Jung's statement that God is the unconscious. I wonder whether Jung would say that about the God-image in himself, as he became more conscious. When Jung said, "I don't believe in God, I know God," I always thought he was talking about the Self rather than the Unconscious. I would imagine that he would equate the God-image with the Self for people who are sufficiently differentiated. Perhaps this is what Edinger meant to say in his blunt statement that I report in the next paragraph.

Edinger interprets Jung differently than I do. He says that very few people ever realize the reality of the psyche because it requires such a high level of consciousness. In fact, he claims that only after many years of analysis do a few people even get a glimpse of it. Psyche is the Latin word for Soul, so I know that he means to suggest that few people achieve wholeness and are able to live in conscious relationship with their Soul, but his statement reveals his own state of development toward consciousness. It's an important point, because it reveals that his interpretation of Jung is defined by his limited perception. It's useful to compare his "Jungian" interpretation to what Jung writes and keep in mind that his point of view represents the hierarchical Jungian context.

List of Magic and Miracles I

2009-02-13T07:41:00.002-07:00

1. Two days ago, I discovered that my computer was not able to access the Internet even though my wife's computer was. I did some tests to determine whether the cable was malfunctioning, but the cable seemed to be fine. The problem seemed to be the computer's ability to access the Internet even though it was available. So I did a Matrix Energetics visualization with my computer, imagining the atoms reconfiguring in such a way that the Internet channel was open and accessible, then put the computer to sleep and went into town for a few hours. When I returned and awakened my computer, it easily accessed the Internet and the email program was able to send and receive emails.

2. I have accidentally touched hot stoves, pipes and ovens in a way that is usually associated with severe burns. However, when I do make contact with hot objects, I remind myself that my body knows perfectly well how to heal itself. I suggest that the healing mechanism respond fully and completely, and note that the heat has been removed so the healing can take place immediately. I relax the effected area and allow it to heal, acknowledging that complete healing will take place and that complete health and functionality are already returned. I then just relax and forget about it, knowing that my body knows exactly how to accomplish this. A few hours or days later, when I remember that I made contact with a hot surface, I notice that the area is perfectly healthy and whole with no signs of any injury. Once in a while, I may notice a blister on the effected spot, but I generally do not have any discomfort after letting the whole process go.

Soul Talk: Choosing Your Way

2009-01-21T07:31:00.005-07:00

You tend to wait for guidance or inspiration to drive you through life, as though your vision comes from a source that is outside your consciousness. You have all the information you need to choose what you want and you are sufficiently creative to solve problems and refine your direction as you engage with your reality. So, you do not need to wait for God to tell you what to do. Essentially, you decided to incarnate into physical reality to see what you would do and what your experience is like. How do you like your experience of being incarnated in physical reality?

Your tendency to wait for instructions and guidance is based on your mastery of hierarchical perception, believing that you can't possibly know enough to choose for yourself. However, you can choose to play a transitional game and be the one who decides what you do. As you know, inspiration and guidance may give the appearance of coming from outside consciousness within a hierarchical perspective, but they can just as easily be seen as intuitive aspects of consciousness within a transitional perspective. In other words, even someone who channels an entity may be telepathically or creatively putting information together without the aid of a being in another dimension. It all depends how you understand consciousness and its interaction with other peoples' and beings consciousness.

Don't wait for the voice of God to speak or divine inspiration to awaken you in the night. Make conscious choices and decisions about what you want to do each day and each moment, taking all of your wisdom, dreams, experience, awareness, compassion, dreams and knowledge into account. And see what happens.

Dancing In The Light

2008-12-03T07:42:00.003-07:00

I am starting a new phase of my life in Port Townsend, today. I have settled into my new home, so I am applying my creative talent to living my life and being happy. I realize that I was programmed with so many different attitudes toward work and play, health and happiness, that I carry conflicting ideas about all of them. I carry the same conflicting ideas about myself and my value.

The truth is that these ideas and attitudes are not mine but the conflicting values of society at large. For example, Catholic Religion claims to value love and good deeds above all else while simultaneously trying to maintain its powerful position in world politics, global affairs and the lives of its members. As long as I rely on some sort of creed or formula in the way I live my life, I am equally subject to the opposite attitude through some other institution or agency that promotes it. If I rely on others to determine the value of my life and who I am, I remain conflicted and confused as my beliefs and loyalties shift day to day.

I am present in this moment as spirit alive in a material world, exploring, learning, playing and expanding. I have learned so much about myself by observing myself in action throughout my life. I noticed this morning, while dancing for my aerobic exercise, that I completely enjoy the dance when I am fully present in the moment, being in my body, moving it around and exploring the possibilities. At other times, my mind wanders and I think about the day and all I hope to accomplish. When I slip into planning mode, or some other thinking state, I am not present in my movements and the dancing feels perfunctory and boring. I basically watch the clock waiting for the time to elapse so I can go onto other things. That is not the way I like to live.

I want to experience each moment today being fully present in the moment. I am present now, so I'd like to continue living consciously and enjoying what I do just like I enjoyed dancing when I was present doing it. I don't have to wait until the end of the day to enjoy myself. The truth is that I enjoy engaging with all these wonderful activities, having the opportunity to contribute creatively while fully engaged. The key is being conscious and awake at all times so I can presence myself and be present in what I'm doing. I don't want to slip into old patterns of behavior or go through the motions of doing the projects unconsciously while I think of something else. I want to be fully present in what I do. I want to be happy and fulfilled in all that I am and do.

Such A Tiny Baby To Be Sent To Save Us All

2008-12-01T07:36:00.004-07:00

"But he seems like such a tiny baby to be sent to save us all"

This quote from a choral piece, Glory Hallelu! by Don Besig, has generated my deep reflections on what it means to be awake and present in my life. I was raised Catholic, so I was programmed with the whole Jesus myth that is the Catholic reality. I don't believe that Jesus Christ was a historical person but I do believe that the Christian story does tap into deep, mythological roots so it does communicate spiritual reality, although not in the way that the Catholic Church generally interprets it.

I think of the tiny baby in the Christmas story as the awareness I have when I am being present in the moment, awake and conscious to whatever is happening. Being awake seems like such a tiny shift in consciousness from thinking and planning, worrying and striving to reach my goals in life. Nonetheless, being is the opportunity to presence myself, my spirit, my soul, my intelligence, my creativity, my inspiration and my love in the world rather than trying to act or work in ways that are recommended, taught and promoted by societies, religions, philosophies and families throughout the ages. It's like trusting that I am taking all those considerations into account by being myself honestly, fully and happily.

As I said at the beginning of this entry, this awareness doesn't seem like much in contrast to all the problems and challenges confronting me in the world. Yet, I've concluded that this is the point of my life, presencing myself in reality and having the opportunity to experience whatever happens. That certainly doesn't seem like much and yet that is what it means to me to be spiritually alive. I'm curious to see what I make of all this, now.

Awakening Creativity

2008-11-28T07:38:00.004-07:00

I feel a creative-intuitive surge within myself this morning. I feel ready to break free from the disappointments and struggles in my history as I consider myself complete with the move into my new home as well as finishing the CSS inspired website for my daughter. It was only a year or so ago that I let go of my website design business, thinking I didn't have time to keep up with the evolving design software and innovations in the field to create just a few websites each year. I thought I could spend my time more productively and happily making music. In our current financial situation, however, we are stretched to pay two mortgages, a bridge loan and a home equity loan with our income. Suddenly, having the opportunity to learn CSS and create designs for the Internet is exciting again.

My inner child is convinced that this latest shift won't work well for me, which of course is the way he feels about just about anything I do. He is afraid that I won't be able to juggle web design with creating music, but I feel like I can. I actually enjoy playing around with software and computer programs, tinkering with websites and engaging with technological innovation. I am excited by the vast potential for communication through the Internet and am delighted to have the opportunity to help recreate our business' online presence with all the new technology in mind.

At the same time, I am excited about music and want to create, compose, arrange and communicate the music that fills my heart. This promises to be really fun and fully engaging. In fact, I feel like I've just awakened from a long dream in which I struggled to express my creative self and was consumed by a day-to-day work reality that consumed all my energy. It's a wonder that I awakened at all.

I feel ready to play.

Having An Influence On The World Around Us

2008-11-24T07:23:00.004-07:00

I just read about experiments done to determine whether people can influence random events. It turns out that they can. Under strict scientific protocols, the experiments show that ordinary people's intentions affect whether tossed coins land showing heads or tails and other such events governed by probabilities. It's not a huge effect. Under normal conditions, tossed coins show their heads or tails 50% of the time. When people are trying to influence the outcome, the coins show heads or tails in a split more like 52% to 48% when the experiments are carried out over a great number of trials. Some people can influence the coins to show heads more often than tails when they try, while others influence the coins to show tails more often when they try to make them show heads. In either case, the influence is statistically significant.

I used tossing coins as a simple example of a random event, but scientists have performed experiments using all manner of random event generators, often digitally produced, to show that people have this effect when they try to influence the outcome. People influence the world around them, even when the outcome is not important to them.

I always believed that this was true so the results do not surprise me. However, I am delighted to know that even science now admits that consciousness and intention significantly effect reality. Now that consciousness has to be incorporated into scientific theories, science gets to reformulate its understanding of the universe and life in a more inclusive, spiritual way. I was not aware of these experimental results until two days ago, so I was operating under the assumption that science and spirituality were still antithetical. However, this is no longer the case.

I used to conduct these kinds of experiments with my ninth grade science students. I had them toss coins and try to make the coins show heads. I had 60 or 70 students in my classes and each one of them did at least a hundred tosses of their coin. That created something like 7,000 events in one day and the results demonstrated the effect, although it was difficult to draw conclusions with so few trials under consideration. In the modern experiments, the scientists easily generated millions of events for analysis, which made it possible to draw conclusions. A slight difference from the expected 50-50 split for such an event is not significant for only a few thousand cases. However, when this same split shows over millions and millions of cases, it becomes statistically significant. In my experiments, I did not account for the fact that some students might have influenced the coins to turn up more tails than heads when they tried to get more heads to show. But I did notice that some students consistently produced results that were dramatically different from the 50-50 split, while others didn't. Of course, counting everyone's results together could have balanced and canceled the effect for the overall group, but it didn't. Apparently, the same also happens with even the largest scientific studies.

Even though I believed this was true, I find it exciting to have science verify it. We all influence the world around us.

Clarity In The Moonlight

2008-11-17T07:24:00.004-07:00

This morning, the fog gathered over the water and covered the Navy ship docked at the shipyard on Indian Island across the bay from my house. When a ship rests at the harbor, the entire waterfront is lit with bright lights that shine out over the water to make any approaching vessels clearly visible from shore. These bright lights shine directly toward my house and illuminate the rooms with windows facing northeast toward the bay so I always know when a ship is there. When I got up this morning, I didn't see any lights and thought at first that the ship had left. When I looked out the window, though, I didn't see any lights at all so I knew that the Navy shipyard was covered with fog, instead. The shipyard has lights glowing even when no ship rests there.

When I went outside to run, I was surprised to see the waning moon floating high above the trees brightly illuminating my yard and the roads on which I ran. I expected the fog to be thick in the sky above my house as it was over the water, but it was rather patchy and only sent a few silver ribbons to play with the moon. I continue to be surprised by the environment and weather in Port Townsend. I was delighted to be able to run in soft moonlight this morning, especially since I went outside wondering whether I'd have enough light in the fog to be able to run at all. And watching the moon dance with the slivers of fog in the silvery light as I ran was truly a beautiful experience.

I realize that the moon shining high in the sky while the fingers of fog reach out to it is a reminder of how my being illuminates my consciousness even when my mind's chatter distracts me from its quiet radiance. My mind has been very active for the past few days, making it difficult for me to quiet it and contemplate being. I keep thinking of things I want to do or solving web design problems that surfaced in my work on my daughter's website rather than simply being present and aware. It's distracting and I don't enjoy thinking so much of the time. The moonlight this morning reminds me that my being illuminates my life and my awareness continues unabated even when those fingers of fog apparently cover the moon and seemingly block its light. I've noticed before that the moonlight does manage to filter through the fog and illuminate the ground even when the moon disappears. So does my conscious awareness illuminate my every experience regardless of whether I quietly appreciate it or am distracted by thinking and planning.

It's just more enjoyable when the moonlight breaks through and I am fully aware of it. That's when I can be in the moment without sending tendrils of my awareness out toward the past and the future. I especially appreciate moments of clarity when I experience a time when my mind is so distracting. And this morning's run through the moonlit forest was one of them.

Dream: Flying With Infinite Energy

2008-11-13T07:32:00.004-07:00

Last night, I dreamt that could fly. I was standing inside a large warehouse kind of space that had a high ceiling and I would let myself float upward until my head touched the ceiling. I would then let myself float back to the floor. It was fun! I was with several younger people who seemed like students and I showed them what I could do. There were places in the ceiling where the plaster was missing, leaving open holes through which I could see the beams supporting the roof. The holes were perfectly rectangular or square, so it didn't look decrepit like it might sound. I sometimes floated up through the openings so my head touched the beams.

While demonstrating how I could levitate, I focused on moving through the room and I floated along hovering just a foot or so below the ceiling. I extended my arms and my body stretched out horizontally while I moved along, so I was actually flying in the position that Superman and other comic book heroes are depicted when they fly through the air. I felt elated and happy as I floated through the air. I felt comfortable flying as though it were the most natural and easy thing to do.

I relate this dream to the feelings of comfort, ease and happiness I feel in my new life on the Olympic Peninsula. I am comfortable being myself and expressing myself creatively in all aspects of my life. I do feel like I'm flying these days.

I also want to mention a book that I'm reading because I feel like it's related to this dream as well. I'm reading "The Field" by Lynne McTaggart. I read it last night before going to sleep and had difficulty putting it down even though I felt sleepy. She's describing zero point energy that resides in space and seems to be an unlimited supply of energy available all the time. I am excited to learn about an infinite source of energy that science describes because metaphysical descriptions of infinite energy sources are rather vague. Just reading two chapters of the book helps me realize that I operate as though there is infinite energy supporting me but I don't have a sense of where it is or how I can engage with it. The descriptions I've read are not specific and do not locate that energy in the time-space continuum with which I'm familiar while embodied here on earth. Just having her describe this source of energy as being associated with space gives me a way to think about it and locate it in my world, at least in my imagination.

I want to say that my dream of flying is also associated with this field of energy. The yogis have mantras that they repeat as they focus on light filling all the cells in their bodies. This is how they levitate, so they say. And to learn that experiments with DNA show that they actually store photons of light absorbed by plants from the sun during photosynthesis is a validation of an ancient method for levitation devised several thousand years ago. I am interested to learn more about this field and the zero point energy. It sure seems to help me fly and levitate in my dreams, at least.

Writing When My Inner Child Is Afraid

2008-11-12T07:22:00.005-07:00

When I was a Catholic as a young man, I studied many other religions, in particular, Hinduism and Buddhism. The more I learned about the other approaches to spirituality, the more embarrassed I felt about Catholicism's parochial and literal interpretation of spirituality and spiritual life. Even though the basic tenets of the religion resembled parallel beliefs in the others, I didn't like the focus on the life of Jesus Christ that the Church emphasized. In my experience, the emphasis was on obeying rules and not sinning, which weren't conducive to my spiritual development.

I left the Church to experience spirit, God and reality for myself and discover who I am along the way. And now...

Wow, I am writing about Christianity very stiffly and vaguely, much like the way I wrote when I tried to write a book about Catholicism many years ago. I imagine that I'm writing for someone else besides me, as I did back then. My inner child is terrified that I might say something that would offend someone who reads what I write and would attack me in response, so he's hovering around monitoring what I say. It's like having a two-year-old editor in my head. No wonder my writing is coming out muddled.

All I wanted to say was how my anger at the Catholic Church for the negative programming I received, as a child, seems to have abated. The Church feels more like an old friend of the family than a powerful force from which I have to defend myself. I understand a lot about the history and origins of the Church from the research that I've done, so I don't feel personally associated with it the way I did when I left the Church.

This morning, then, I am all about noticing how much my inner child is stirred by my writing about Catholicism. How wonderful that I noticed him lurking about and didn't waste time writing vague nonsense about the Church. I want to try this topic again on another day and see if I can write clearly from my adult self, instead.

Keystone Being

2008-11-10T07:27:00.003-07:00

I am. That's the miracle I've discovered about myself and about life in a physical body. If I'm not thinking about what I need to do or how I should have responded or some such interior planning, revising, worrying and self-attacking process, I am free to be as I am. I am content and present when I am being, contrasting sharply with the stress I feel when I'm trying to meet expectations, accomplish something, hide my true feelings, prove myself and the like. I am relaxed and comfortable when I am being rather than striving.

I can remember being myself as a child, playing sports or doing homework, taking out the garbage or arguing with my siblings over a game. I was spontaneous and authentic but had difficulty in my relationships with friends and peers. I felt alone and rejected a lot because I didn't fit the model most kids had in mind and I noticed that I was different, somehow. That made me uncomfortable with being myself so I guess I tried being someone else.

I keep coming back to this simple idea of being myself because I don't believe that I've succeeded in my attempts to describe it and communicate it. It's the most amazing and wonderful realization that I've experienced in my life, yet I can't seem to say anything about it that doesn't sound simplistic and obvious. It's incredible that I have spent most of my life searching for something that I can't describe very well. Maybe part of the mystery involved in waking up and being alive is that it is so simple and obvious that it doesn't sound significant or important at all when I talk about it. In the New Testament, Jesus describes the Kingdom of Heaven as a stone that the builders rejected that turns out to be the keystone for the construction of an archway. In my experience, that's just the way I feel about this awareness. It's commonplace like an ordinary rock so seems unimportant yet serves as the foundation for being who I am. It's incredible.

Being At Ease

2008-11-06T07:35:00.003-07:00

I am present this morning. I have a lot of exciting opportunities opening in my life right now and spend each day exploring, reacting, creating and enjoying each one. For example, just living on the Olympic Peninsula is an exciting opportunity and I take great pleasure in experiencing all the wonderful environments all around me. I am fascinated with the weather since I moved here. Having lived in a desert for the last 33 years, I find the abundance of water, the moisture in the air and the storms that bring the rain thrilling. It rained during the night and I felt happy hearing the raindrops landing on the roof and skylights when I awakened. I longed for such steady, abundant rainfall when I lived in the desert and now I almost expect it. I feel astounded just hearing the rain fall for hours at a time. I didn't know until I moved here how much I love the rain.

I am blessed to have many ways to express my creativity in the course of my everyday life. At the same time, I notice that my creativity has become such a natural aspect of who I am that I seem to creatively engage with almost everything I do. I used to wish I could tap into my creativity when I was more self-conscious and afraid to let others know who I am, but all that self-denial and self-attack have disappeared as I've become comfortable being myself. It's amazing to consider that I once found it difficult to express myself clearly. I was searching for some kind of help or cure that would make me okay and prove that my thoughts, ideas and insights were trustworthy and valuable. I certainly feel that way now, but it isn't because I found that help or a cure for my self-doubt.

Instead, I went through a process of learning who I am and who I'm not, so I was able to quit comparing myself to others and become involved with being myself. I can be present because I am not fighting to be other than I am. I can be at ease all the time.

Reflections On Barack Obama's Presidency

2008-11-05T07:31:00.005-07:00

US society changed, yesterday. I expected Obama to win the election but I didn't think about what it would mean to me to have him be president of the United States. I believe that the US has become part of world society, again, after eight years of promoting the self-interests of a certain corporate American team. Even though I anticipated Obama's victory, I didn't allow myself the luxury of imagining what a huge shift is taking place in the structure of power in this country. The vision of corporate America has been replaced by conscious choice, people of the nation having more power than the special interest groups that have been running the government so poorly these past eight years. It's a veritable revolution that took place peacefully by ballot, in spite of the fears expressed for the past few months that the vote was compromised by insecure voting procedures. A new reality dawns this morning as the US and the world adjust to the change.

I feel positively excited about this change and look forward to learning which people Obama selects as his cabinet members and other leaders in his White House staff. I learned that the Democrats extended their majorities in both houses of Congress but still did not secure sufficient majorities to insure passage of Obama's programs. His success will require negotiation and bipartisan cooperation, which seems somehow appropriate for the healing needed in America today. Our country is split into factions that have not cooperated in many years, which has crippled the ability of government to legislate and keep abreast of changes in the world landscape. I don't think that simply passing the Democratic platform reforms will heal the nation so this bipartisan cooperation Obama has promoted will still be needed for America to move forward.

I feel grateful that voters throughout America came forward to choose their new world so clearly and powerfully, making a strong statement that we want change. I am inspired by the way so many young people turned out to make a difference in this election. I pray that everyone will work together now to build a new peaceful, prosperous, safe and healthy society in which all citizens have the opportunity to thrive.

Blessed By The Rain; Blessed By The Water

2008-11-04T07:19:00.004-07:00

It rained all night last night. I know because the sound of the rain on the roof and sometimes blowing against the window next to my bed awakened me periodically throughout the night. It was a lovely awakening, though. I just moved to Port Townsend after living in the desert near Santa Fe, New Mexico, for 33 years. It rarely rained like this in the desert. After living for such a long time in a dry, high-altitude climate, I experience rain as a magnificent blessing. The rain waters the trees and plants growing all around the Olympic Peninsula and blesses my soul at the same time.

I didn't know how deeply connected I am to rain and water before living in the desert. I grew up in northeast Ohio where the gray skies and rain are common just like they are in the Northwest. I once read in a local newspaper from that region of Ohio that northeast Ohio is second only to Seattle in the number of rainy days in a year. I didn't feel like I had enough sunshine in my life where I grew up, so I just soaked up the sunlight when I first moved to the desert. I couldn't get enough of it and spent as much time in the sunlight as possible. While the sunlight felt so important, the desert climate suited me perfectly and I spent hours every week exploring the wilderness areas that abound in New Mexico.

Eventually, I became saturated with sunshine and began to notice how dry the land in that area tends to be and how difficult an environment it is for plants. I began feeling dry and parched myself during a drought that lasted almost six years. I started to long for the rain along with most of the desert plants that thrive there. Once I got my fill of sunlight and sunshine, I felt out of balance and felt drawn to areas, like the Northwest, where water, rather than sunshine, abounds.

I feel deeply nourished when the rain falls, now. There's something about the moisture that soothes and nourishes a deep place in me. I guess I had to live away from the water for a while to discover how much I love it. When I lived in Santa Fe, I felt drawn to the high mountains and loved to wander the verdant forests on the slopes and the flowery meadows that surround the peaks of the high mountains. I must have liked being as close to the sun as possible back then. But now I feel drawn to the water, particularly the deep, dark waters of Puget Sound, part of which is visible from my house. I associate a profound spiritual energy with these deep waters and can't seem to get enough of them. I love being out on the water, hiking near the water, driving on bridges over the water and even just living near it. I feel it calling me home, as though I have been away a long time. And the call I feel is a call to be my healthy, whole self.

What is it in me that is stirred so deeply by the presence of these deep waters? I think it's my soul getting comfortable expressing itself in a body that has finally come to a place of balance and harmony with nature. In this healthy climate in which life thrives, I feel comfortable being alive and being myself. I feel like I can express myself and share my soul with life, now. I don't know whether it's the presence of the water or the balance I've achieved by being here, but I can't imagine ever wanting to leave this holy place.

Writing Through Time

2008-11-03T07:23:00.004-07:00

I enjoy writing. This is quite a change from my student years when I felt only dread when a professor assigned a paper in one of my classes. I was not a good writer back then and I had difficulty expressing my thoughts clearly when I wrote a paper.

About 18 years ago, I wrote an article on Catholicism that I unsuccessfully submitted for publication in several magazines. I even attempted to write a book on inner guidance and another on healing psychological, emotional and spiritual wounds inflicted by Catholicism. In the process of writing my ideas and thoughts about these topics, though, I noticed that I was not able to communicate clearly. I edited my writing for clarity but I wasn't able to make it any clearer. I discovered that when I wrote things that mattered to me, I had some need to keep my communication vague, as though I would be punished or hurt if I expressed myself clearly.

That realization motivated me to delve deeply into my inner process to learn what ran me and why I couldn't break free of my communication fears. When I did, I also discovered that part of the problem was that I really wasn't clear about most of these ideas and concepts. In fact, I really didn't know myself very well. I didn't know who I am nor did I know what I wanted. I found a huge jumble of concepts, ideals and possibilities but I didn't know which ones were expressions of me. I knew which ones were esteemed by my family, valued by society and honored by religions, but I hadn't factored myself into my own equation.

It took a long time for me to unravel this jumble and find where I fit in my own world. However, now that I am aware of myself and know who I am, I am able to write with clarity and conviction. Basically, I write with a perspective now and I express my own point of view as best I can. That gives my writing both clarity and purpose. Eighteen years ago, when I attempted to write a book, I wrote what I thought my readers wanted and were able to hear. In other words, I made up stories about who I thought would read what I wrote and when I edited my writing, I simply changed my ideas about what my readers wanted to hear. How could my writing be clear when I didn't have a stable point of view from which I wrote?

I feel curious about my writing, again. I wonder if I would enjoy writing about a topic that has significance and meaning to me, now?

This Love

2008-11-02T07:24:00.004-07:00

I listened to Marabai's CD, This Love, yesterday while driving around town. I haven't heard her songs in several years, so I heard them more clearly than I have in a while. She based her songs on the mystical poetry of Rumi and other Middle Eastern mystics, and I was moved deeply once again by the imagery and the passion with which she sings.

What struck me the most about the songs, however, was the way the simple imagery of the poems tries to illustrate the structure of spiritual consciousness. I felt like I heard and understood these poems more clearly than ever before. I believe it has to do with the fact that I've grown and matured in my own consciousness and have become comfortable with being who I am. As I listened to her songs, I realized that the poems describe the state of being present in the moment and fully conscious, equating this awareness with completion and wholeness. Actually, as I try to write words that communicate what the poems are saying, I find myself stumbling with the clumsiness of English words for describing this intimate, mystical awareness. My point is that the poetic imagery of the songs did a fantastic job of describing and suggesting the nature of spiritual awareness, which I struggle to describe in words.

Listening to the songs, I settled into being aware and awake, present in the act of driving my car without thought, just attentive listening to the beautiful music. What a gift it is to be awake while performing such a mundane task as driving along a road! It's nice to know that her music can trigger my conscious awareness.

For the past couple of weeks, I listened to the music of Arvo Part while driving and found that his music also helps me come into the present moment. His music is spare and beautiful, leaving space open around the chords he plays. I seem to relax and breathe deeply when I hear it, my mind settles into quietness as I listen, and I become aware of listening in the moment. I enjoy being present and having beautiful music to accompany my experience is wonderful.

What a gift it is to have music that stimulates me to wake up in the moment, quiet my mind and be present in the experience. It's like having my heart gently touched to wake me, and I open my eyes without thinking, responding to life from my heart rather than from my mind. I feel sure that Rumi and the other mystical poets would be happy to know that their words touch me so deeply.

The Divine Presence

2008-10-29T07:28:00.004-06:00

Yesterday, I wrote in my journal that I felt as though I had awakened from some sort of unconscious tendency. I realized I could stay present throughout the day and choose how I spent each moment from my adult, conscious perspective rather than drift into patterns of behavior I habitually followed. Even as I wrote my insight, yesterday morning, I wondered whether I would actually change the way I choose to spend my time. Incredibly, I did.

Yesterday went very well. I remained conscious throughout the day and was aware of each decision I made during the day. I felt like I expressed myself well throughout the day, whether collaborating with my wife to place the remaining artwork around the house, working on the design of a website for my daughter, meeting with a web designer we're hiring to redesign the business website or playing the piano, I felt like I was present throughout the day. The amazing part of this transformation, though, is that it doesn't feel like much of a change to me. In fact, it seems more of a subtle shift inside me.

Like a continuation of the experience of being present in my choices and actions, yesterday, my meditation this morning went very well. I was able to drop out of my thoughts and be present just repeating my mantra or sitting in a chair, breathing. While repeating my mantra, my thoughts stopped for a while and I was fully present in the action of repeating the mantra. I felt a wonderful sensation in my head, which I would describe as a humming if I were a machine in stand-by mode. I felt something similar when I was sitting quietly in my chair and my thoughts stopped again, so I imagine that it's associated with being present, available and ready without thinking about anything. I really like the way I feel when my mind is focused like that. I also enjoy thinking when that's what I'm doing, like when I solve problems. Being focused on thinking when I choose to think about something is also being present in the moment and I feel full, whole and content in that experience, too. I feel that way right now as I write.

I am beginning to understand how I can be present during the day in the same way that I can be present during meditation. As it turns out, it's the experience of being present that I enjoy so much. When I am focused on what I am doing and how I am being in the moment, I feel wonderful. It's how I presence the Divine in my life.

Taking Charge of the Present

2008-10-28T07:18:00.003-06:00

I awoke this morning. I don't mean that I awoke from sleeping. I actually am conscious and present as I write this journal entry this morning. I realize that I may be speaking prematurely about my state of consciousness, but I figure I have nothing to lose by talking about being awake. It's not so much that I have awakened to a new state of awareness that is different than the way I've been aware on previous days. I am applying my conscious awareness differently, today.

I want to consciously choose how I will spend each moment, today, rather than allow circumstances, events and feelings govern the way I spend my time. It came clear to me during meditation this morning that I usually get entangled in thinking about unimportant details as I go through my email each morning. The flood of information regarding the upcoming presidential election and attendant local elections, advertisements for various products, newsletters from NASA, AARP, Environmental Groups, requests for responses from environmental and political action groups and the update emails from the various technical associates with whom I do business gets my mind going and distracts me from my conscious purpose. Somehow, during that flood of information gathering, I loose my sense of self as I absorb an enormous amount of data regarding the state of affairs in my business, in the economy, in the country and in the world.

As I become confused and overwhelmed with all the daily data, it seems that my inner child takes over my choices in some form or other. I become susceptible to doing what I usually do in the morning, checking the online sports pages, reading more about developing news stories and playing a few games of solitaire, rather than starting my business projects or creating some music. I am aware of what I want to do but allow my consciousness to drift into a more passive awareness in which I do what I always do. I can't both create a new experience in the present and do what I have always done at the same time. It strikes me that this is where I want to assert myself and take control of what I actually do in each moment. I allow myself far too much unconsciousness in the course of my day.

I begin an experiment to see what effect making conscious deliberations throughout the day will have on my ability to let my adult self control the direction of my day. I have focused on moving for seven months, now, so I've become accustomed to engaging with my household, packing and sorting, or unpacking and settling my environment. I am ready to make whatever remains to be done in that regard secondary to the business of my soul. I am curious to see whether I can assert my adult consciousness into my life by bringing my awareness into the present.

Leo Ascending

2008-10-27T07:33:00.003-06:00

I stepped outside in the dark, this morning, and looked up into a clear, autumn sky. The number of stars visible and the deep, black sky in which they floated amazed me. Orion stood sentinel in the clearing overhead with Leo climbing upward from the eastern horizon. I have seen that kind of clarity in the skies above Santa Fe much of the time I lived there, but I didn't expect to see that well in the Northwest. I continue to be surprised by the climate and the conditions, here. My expectations were exceeded yet again.

I couldn't help but think about the constellation, Leo, ascending the heavens in the early morning when I run. Since my birthday falls in early August, my sun sign is Leo and I can't help but take the appearance of the constellation in the morning sky personally. I ran each morning when I lived in Santa Fe and would have noticed the stars and constellations in the sky in autumn because the skies are so clear. However, the sun rises earlier at this time of year in Santa Fe because it's located much farther south, so there's a very good chance that there was just too much light in the sky when I ran for me to see it in the Fall. By moving to the Northwest, I have discovered that Leo dominates the eastern sky early in the mornings in late October and I feel like I am discovering my Leo nature at the same time.

I seem to be more comfortable being myself and sharing who I am with people that I meet, here. I experience my creativity more strongly because I am not afraid to share myself openly, now. I haven't had the opportunity to create web designs or write music since I've moved here, but I have put together furniture and handled a number of home decoration projects as we've settled into our new house. I am amazed at how comfortable I've become with my handyman skills and the confidence I have in my own ability to assess and solve problems. I creatively solve problems and choose ways of building that avoid potential problems. Until I did all this creative fabrication in the new house, I didn't think of myself as creative in the physical realm at all.

So, with Leo ascending the heavens in the early morning sky, I look forward to applying my creativity to music and web design. I can happily say that it sounds like fun!

Creative Emergence

2008-10-26T07:38:00.004-06:00

This morning, I was able to silence my mind once again. I feel much more present and clear than I have for a while as a result. I'm not sure why it has been difficult for me to focus in the present lately, but I'm grateful to have the option of being present more of the time.

I reflected on the idea that I am in the presence of God or divinity when I am fully present in the moment. I like the feeling of that. I like being with God and living gratefully in expectation of inspiration. My inner child lives in fear and is afraid to try new methods or create anything because he's afraid that he will be criticized or hurt because he is not good enough to successfully come up with something on his own. He relies on proven formulas for successful living and coping with reality. He never wants to risk his security by revealing his ideas, solutions and creations. He'd rather be invisible and secure. His reality is the opposite of the experience of being present and conscious that I so enjoy. I like being creative and enjoy inspiration and creative problem solving. I like being in the presence of God.

Now that I'm close to being settled into my new home, I feel ready to explore my creativity and problem solving once again. I want to start with creating my daughter's website, a simple way to delve back into creating web designs, although this time I'm using CSS in the implementation. I feel clumsy with this approach, but delighted to have an opportunity to get a feeling for how to work with it in a practical situation. This will get me focused again on Internet matters so that I can begin creating a new shopping cart and navigation plan for our business' website. Although I also feel clumsy as I feel my way into the modern shopping cart world, I am well equipped to understand and choose an efficient and reliable engine that will handle our needs economically.

I am also starting to feel excited about getting back to recording and creating music. The move to Port Townsend has required most of my energy and focus for the past seven months and I'm just about ready to initiate the music making in our new home and studio. I feel happy about all these opportunities and grateful that I have the equipment and skills to play at this level. I feel myself opening without knowing what form any of this will take. I don't feel like the same person that began this odyssey of change back in the spring. I have changed just about everything in my life and consider this new environment where I find myself to be a perfect opportunity in which to let myself emerge, perhaps for the first time.

What kind of websites might I create now? What wonderful music will I be inspired to create in the magical world by the sea? How will my relationships, partnerships and friendships evolve in this new world as I emerge fully as myself?

Soul Talk: Comfortable Being Myself

2008-10-25T07:30:00.004-06:00

You are doing very well. The stock market has fallen dramatically, the worldwide economy is apparently in recession and you haven't sold the Santa Fe house, yet, so your debt is high. Nonetheless, you are present and content, finishing the furnishing and setup of your new house and offices. You are living frugally and well, happy to be living near the water and enjoying excursions to beautiful, natural settings along the ocean and in the mountains. And you're gradually working your way back to playing with websites and recording music.

This is a good time for you, as you awaken to who you are in a new environment. Your new friends don't have preconceived notions about who you are and you, in turn, have not established any limitations on how much of yourself you can share with the people that you meet.

In Santa Fe, you have history and developed a certain way of being there that grew out of the different roles you played over the years. As a teacher, both in schools and during sessions with clients, you were reserved with people. There were reasons to hold back from sharing yourself openly with others in those contexts, and you learned to be reserved with everyone there. It was rare for you to share your thoughts and ideas about books you read or experiences you had. You processed most things without involving anyone other than your wife and the guys who coach you.

In Port Townsend, you haven't developed the same constraints that you had on your relationships in Santa Fe. You toss your thoughts, feelings and ideas inspirations into conversations as though you've been doing this all your life. You wanted to have more friendships in which you could be yourself and now you're being yourself as you meet people, making that old dream of yours a reality. You cleared a lot of history before you moved here, recycling papers and books that were no longer useful. You came here without a lot of the baggage that you carried in Santa Fe and you're beginning to notice the difference.

Just yesterday, you tossed metaphysics, research into the truth of Christianity and consciousness into a conversation about favorite books and music. In the past, you would have waited to be asked about Christianity or consciousness before addressing it. You are willing to share yourself openly now because you are getting accustomed to just being yourself. You are not searching for yourself or trying to discover who you are and whom you're not so much as living in the present and being comfortable as yourself. Enjoy yourself!

Meteors, Falling Stars and Cosmic Signs

2008-10-24T07:37:00.005-06:00

I saw another shooting star this morning right after meditation. I love seeing the brief streak of light across the sky that a meteor leaves as its wake. It surprises and delights me when the universe shows one of its rare dance steps like that. A little piece of dust, a speck of cosmic debris, is drawn toward earth and splashes headlong into the atmosphere. The collision with millions of air molecules heats it up rapidly because its moving so fast, and it burns up in a scintillating second or two, vaporizing in a hot flash as it goes. This goes on all the time but I rarely see it happen. I have to be looking in the right direction at the moment it burns and the sky has to be dark enough to make it visible from the ground. It's pretty miraculous!

Meteors are often called shooting stars because people used to believe that those brilliant vapor trails were showing the line where a star broke loose from its designated place in the heavens and fell to earth. I don't know why they were called shooting stars rather than falling stars, escaping stars or moving stars. When I was a child, I didn't think of them as stars that were shooting some light at each other, which the term could imply. I thought of them as falling stars shooting across the sky. I guess even children know that the flashes of brilliant light mean that something is falling to earth rather than flying off into space. As a child, I felt privileged and inspired each time I saw one light up the sky. I didn't see them often, so I always considered it a special event when I did.

I still react that way to seeing a meteor. It feels like an omen to me; a special wink that comes from the universe to tell me whatever is happening is beneficial and auspicious. I feel uplifted whenever I see one of those tiny lines of brilliance across the sky. I feel as though the universe is talking to me, telling me something important. I feel connected to my environment and to all life in that moment. As a child, I thought God was communicating to me through a natural sign, and I still feel that way now.

So, is the meteor just a random cosmic dust particle crashing into the atmosphere at a high speed or is it a communication from my soul? I choose the latter interpretation because that's the way it feels to me. I don't know, yet, to what exactly the meteor is supplying an exclamation point, but I do know that whatever is happening today is going well for me. And really, what could be more useful and relevant to know about this day!

The Northern Heavens

2008-10-22T07:34:00.003-06:00

I saw a meteor streak in the sky when I opened my eyes after meditation. It reminded me that I also saw a meteor in the sky over my home yesterday morning when I was returning from running. I am delighted to know that the stars and the heavens still speak to me here in the Northwest. Coming from New Mexico, I didn't think I would see stars, constellations, the moon and meteors very often because I thought the skies would be mostly overcast. I am delighted to discover that the heavens are often clear and I have watched the moon change her phases even though I can't see her every day.

It is interesting that I observed two meteors during the last 24 hours, given that I hadn't previously seen one here, in the Northwest, before. It's like two quotation marks encompassing the last day. And this second meteor came almost immediately after I thought of a Church, basically Gnostic Christian, that communicates two main themes: Know Thyself and Love Thy Neighbor As Thyself. That idea just popped into my consciousness while I was being present in the moment, open and awake. I could see how easy it would be to translate the ideas of the Transition, Spirituality, Health, Fitness, Consciousness, Self-Awareness, Inspiration and Gnostic Christianity into simple suggestions for living life consciously, lovingly and happily. When I opened my eyes from this meditation, the meteor jumped out at me as it flashed in a line across the sky.

I felt blessed this morning as I stepped outside to run my aerobic trail through the neighborhood. I particularly enjoy seeing the stars and constellations of the northern heavens shining brightly above me as I run out onto the road, lighting my way through the trees. The moon is a waning crescent, now, but still reflects enough sunlight down to earth to light the road sufficiently to make my way visible. I had forgotten how high the North Star rides in the heavens at this latitude, with Cassiopeia and the dippers so high in the sky that they almost reach the zenith. I feel like I'm living among old friends, again. Orion is visible here and Sirius shines brightly, but the entire zodiac rides lower in the heavens, barely visible above the trees when I look to the south. The Zodiac rose much higher in the sky in the Southwest so I became familiar with all its faces. But here, the northern stars are high overhead, reminding me that I'm living in a different world.

All these signs tell me that I live in a blessed world and that I have a blessed life.

Being In Charge Of My Day

2008-10-18T07:21:00.004-06:00

In the stillness of the moment, I am present. When I quiet my mind long enough to be fully aware and focused in this present experience, I am conscious, awake, happy, creative and content.

I feel like I've been waiting for permission to be myself and have held back from being. Actually, that was the way I learned to approach life as a child. In reality, I waited until I knew who I am before deciding that I trusted myself to handle the experiences of life. I tend to surrender to habit and comfort when I go through the experience of my day, though. I don't usually take the time to presence myself enough to actually choose how I spend the day.

In any given moment, I could choose what I want to do but I usually fall back on the pattern of living I've established yesterday and the day before. If I always use yesterday's behavior as a template for today's activities, it's difficult to imagine how I might be creative and inventive, today. It seems to me that the message of this morning is allowing myself some moments during the day when I presence myself sufficiently to make certain that I am the one who lives and determines how the day unfolds. I have slipped into comfortable patterns and followed familiar templates most of the time, but I see how I can infuse my spirit into the daily experience.

I believe the reason I haven't done this very often is an expression of my inner child's fear of failure that was an expression of how convinced he is that something's wrong with him. I have allowed his hesitation to guide me rather than bringing forth my adult consciousness into the flow of the day. It's kind of exciting to consciously take this step, now. It will be interesting to see if my experience of life changes as a result. I do believe that I've acted out of fear and hesitation more than I've been present as myself and incorporated inspiration and creativity into my days. This will be interesting.

Understanding The Agitation I Feel

2008-10-17T07:31:00.003-06:00

This morning, I notice that my mind is very active. During meditation, I was not able to focus, nor was I really able to quiet my mind and be present in the moment. My inner child is running scared this morning for some reason and trying to get my attention, which I experience this morning as an agitated mind. I feel like my mind wants to solve some important problem in my life even though I don't have a big problem that needs solving. However, my inner child believes that I do. I think I know what it is.

On Wednesday, I checked the Classified Ads in the local newspaper and noticed that the public high school needs a part-time math teacher. I called the personnel office and discovered that I don't qualify for the position because I am not a licensed and certified secondary teacher for the state of Washington. I even went to the website and read the requirements for certification to understand what I would have to do to get licensed but it didn't really address my situation. I was also told that almost all of my teaching experience would not qualify for increased pay because private school teaching doesn't count. The more I thought about the red tape and the bureaucracy involved, the less inclined I was to pursue the teaching position. Earlier in the week, I sent a resume to a local newsletter looking for an editor and proofreader. They sent an editing test to me without giving me any information about the position, so I wrote back to them asking for a description and the compensation package. The editor in chief still hasn't replied.

My inner child wants me to get a job and earn some money right now and he is afraid that I'm wasting these opportunities. I can sense his upset and fear. This is an opportunity for me to distance myself from his concerns, though. During meditation, I was surprised at the agitation I experienced. However, it makes sense when I realize that he has an agenda for me. I am not in the same place that he is, though. I am researching opportunities to see if I feel compelled by any of them. So far, I feel compelled to continue working on my projects at home and to see what happens. I am curious about the fact that the editor of the newsletter didn't reply to my request for information, though. My inner child is afraid that I blew by asking for information before taking the test so I won't get the job because I did something wrong. That's silly, of course. If I were disqualified for asking for information, then I wouldn't want to work for him, anyway.

It helps to identify this underlying feeling of upset and realize that it has nothing to do with my conscious, adult self. Now that I know what the source of the agitation is, I can let my inner child know that he doesn't need to worry about finances and work. I can take care of that. I would like him to relax, play and be happy, again.

Finding Nourishment In The Present

2008-10-16T07:18:00.005-06:00

In the present, I am well. In order to live in the present, though, I must constantly die to the past. It's an interesting paradox to live and die simultaneously, but I can't be present in the experience of this moment if I cling to the experiences I had a few moments ago. No matter how wonderful, I have to allow each experience to evolve. I can't freeze time and sustain a particular kind of experience over a lifetime. I know because I've tried.

When I am present, I am open to possibilities and I experience life as a creative adventure. As simple as it sounds, I find it difficult to actually be fully present in this moment. My mind tends to add commentary and suggestions to the experience, trying to influence what I do and how I respond to whatever happens. Right now, the thoughts going through my head are musical, repeating passages from a Clemente piano piece that I'm learning. It's innocuous enough and quite pleasant as background music. If I decide to go into the music, though, I most likely will be taken for a ride.

I can just imagine what would happen if I closed my eyes and listened to the piano music play. The music would play in my mind until I don't remember the next part of the piece. I might have the impulse to look at the music to see what's next, along with the concern that my memory faulty. As I look at the piano music, I might start thinking about how long I've played the piano and how few people have ever heard me play. I suspect that I might feel frustrated, at that point, because my hours of piano practice have not produced any tangible results in my life. I can play a few pieces but I still can't improvise or make up music on the spot like my wife and daughter can. I can imagine that I would feel pretty discouraged and self-critical by then, so my mind would launch into suggestions about what kind of job I could get to at least earn some money like other people do.

Of course, I don't know what direction my thoughts would actually take, but the little journey I took in the previous paragraph is representative of what it would be like for me. The approach of passively listening to my thoughts sets up a dynamic where my inner child takes control of the mind and feelings to try to get me to behave in ways that make sense to him. His reality is limited and he lives in fear of all that can go wrong, so he wants me to live defensively and conservatively. With people that would look like not hurting or upsetting them more than it would look like being their friend. In business, he wants me to get a secure job and do whatever is expected of me very well so I will be rewarded with financial security and respect. He does not want me to be creative or offer my opinions because that might upset the apple cart, so to speak, so that I would incur the wrath of others.

I prefer to quiet my mind and engage with the present moment with full attention. I like to monitor my thoughts in the background in case something useful comes up, but most of the time I ignore them because they are irrelevant to the present experience. The fact that my creativity and any inspiration I receive also seems to come through my mind is an interesting conundrum. Since the good stuff comes on the same channel as my inner child's disruptive and distracting thoughts, I don't want to fully ignore my thoughts. I monitor the thoughts and discern the helpful ones. Sometimes I'm not sure whether an idea is a distraction or an inspiration, so I take some time with it to get a sense of where it's going. It's like separating grains of wheat from sand particles because there's nourishment to be had after the sorting is done.

A Gift From The Darkness

2008-10-15T07:23:00.004-06:00

The full moon riding high in the sky lit my way this morning as I ran along roads through the woods in my new neighborhood. A year ago, I lived in Santa Fe and similarly ran in the desert on the mornings of the Harvest Moon, not knowing that I would be running in such a different environment one year later. Back then, I dreamt of moving to the Northwest, not really knowing where I might land. But I imagined running in wooded areas in the rain and thought about the clouds, fog and misty mornings that would be my constant companions. In contrast, these last two mornings have been clear and crisp, the moonlight filtering through the leaves and the trees in the woods, so the road was dappled with light. In all my thoughts about what it would be like to live in the Northwest, I didn't imagine crystal clear mornings and brilliant moonlight. I thought I left the stars and the brilliant shining light of the moon behind when I left New Mexico.

The moon rose over the bay last night and I watched it climb higher into the sky trailing light across the bay in a path of moonlight both bright and broad. I love seeing moonlight reflected on the ocean like that. It's one of my favorite sights in the world! In the previous two and a half months that I've lived here, I didn't see the moon rise over the water like that. I believe it has to do with the shortening of the days at this time of year. Last month, I watched the full moon rise over the Cascade Mountains while it was still light outside. It was beautiful seeing the glowing moon rise over the mountains lit dramatically by the sunlight. As the moon climbed higher in the sky, twilight kept the heavens glowing for some of its journey upward. By the time it was dark, the moon was quite high in the sky.

Last night, the moon rose over the mountains after sunset because the sun is quite a bit farther south, now. The dark waters of Puget Sound were ready to reflect the moonlight as soon as the moon appeared. This blessing of moonlight reflecting in a pathway of light across the bay is the first gift I've received from the growing darkness at this northern exposure. I am not sure how I'll like the long nights of winter on the Olympic Peninsula but I feel grateful at the moment that the nights are long enough already to capture pathways of moonlight on the deep, still waters of the bay. I can only wonder what other gifts the long nights of winter will bring.

Cutting Down Trees

2008-10-14T07:32:00.004-06:00

I cut down two trees, yesterday. I never imagined I would do such a thing, but I did. Life here on the Olympic Peninsula is different than it is in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Things grow easily and abundantly because of the ideal climate. If I don't remove the little blackberry plants that sprout up everywhere, they grow into huge brambles with thorns that choke the other plants and make passage around the property impossible. So many plants sprout up and grow everywhere that I have to choose which ones I want to encourage and which ones I want to remove or the land becomes choked with a tangle of plants, shrubs and trees as dense as a rainforest's. By removing some of the plants, the others flourish and grow, and my land remains hospitable to our dwelling here.

The trees are an interesting challenge because it was so difficult for trees to get established and grow in Santa Fe's desert environment. Here they grow quickly and abundantly. If I don't remove them when they appear as young sprouts, they take over the land and make a forest. My property lies in view of Port Townsend Bay and Puget Sound. I want to keep the property open to these magnificent views even though the trees, themselves, are magnificent as well. In fact, my property lies in a community with covenants that even forbids growing trees into the view line of my neighbors. Neither of these trees had reached enough height to be a problem for my neighbors, yet, but they would when they grew taller and filled out. Of course, at that time, they would be difficult and expensive to remove, so I removed them while they were still reasonably small.

Nonetheless, the pine tree was already 20 feet tall, strong, healthy and beautiful so I felt sad about cutting it down. It would likely have grown to be 100 feet tall if I let it, but I stopped it while it was still young. I asked my soul whether to remove this tree in case there might be some reason to preserve it for a while. I intuitively felt my soul blessing this action. I find it interesting that killing a tree can be a blessed action. I was adamantly opposed to any killing for years and would not have done this back then. I would have let the forest grow, I guess.

I talked to the tree and told the devas and nature spirits supporting it what I was doing. I invited them to inhabit any of the other trees or shrubs around the tree in hopes that they choose to stay and continue to nourish and bless the life here. They did not resist me or oppose my action, as far as I could tell.

I am learning to cultivate this land and taking responsibility for what I will allow to grow here is new for me. I am still trying to learn about the plants that are here so I can make informed choices about whether to support them. I would like to more consciously cooperate with the devas and nature spirits as I learn what plants to allow here. I don't want stinging nettles or blackberry brambles growing here but it may be that there are some plants that aren't here that would really enhance the life force. I am open for suggestions and inspiration.

Dream: Finding Jung and Testing

2008-10-10T07:42:00.004-06:00

Two nights ago, I dreamt that I found my compact collection of Carl Jung's collected writings. The books were incredibly compact, which delighted me in the dream. The collection was in a small box, like the box sets that enclose large CD collections. In fact, I found several CDs in the box along with the compact books. I imagined that they were either CDs of Jung's lectures or DVDs of films of some of his presentations.

Last night, I dreamt that I was in a large classroom in an older building, sitting at a desk among approximately 100 other people, who seemed to be students. A few men were standing in front of the room talking very fast, the way college professors talk when they're trying to cover a large number of topics in a short amount of time. I was taking notes as fast as I could, even though the material wasn't interesting. They were giving notes, basically, and expected us to be able to give it back to them. In fact, they announced a test, telling us to take out some paper and a pencil so we could write the answers to their questions. They asked each question once and started asking the next question before I was finished writing the answer to the first question. I began feeling stressed trying to write an intelligent answer and listen to the next question. When they asked for as many names of something or other that they had mentioned earlier, I couldn't remember any of them but I recalled writing them on my notes, which were in my drawer. I opened the drawer and positioned my notes so I could read the names without them seeing that I was looking at my notes. The whole test seemed stupid and the lessons were basically facts that I was expected to repeat back to them. One of the men looked at me and saw that I was upset by the test and said something mocking the fact that I cared so much about how I was doing.

The day after I had the dream about rediscovering my collection of Jung's writings, a friend who is very much involved with studying Jung and learning about his teachings called. During our phone conversation, he mentioned that he was starting some new Jung study group and wondered whether I might be interested in joining as well. I thought the synchronicity of these two Jung events was fun, especially given how much importance Jung placed on such "coincidences" in his work with people. I feel like my dream is a reminder of how much I learned from Jung and applied it to my life. The collection in my dream symbolized the way I have synthesized the material so that I carry it around with me in a very compact form. As I thought about it during the day, I realized how complete I feel with Jungian thought. I found it helpful on my journey to wholeness. Now, I feel I am whole and so Jung's thought fits into a compact form in my consciousness, since I see it from the perspective of being myself and wholeness, rather than from the point of view of a seeker for knowledge and wisdom.

The testing dream is an inner child anxiety dream. I see that my inner child experiences all the changes in the economy and the culture as a test of my ability to be present. His basic fear is that if I were really together and whole, none of this would be happening so I must be doing something wrong and its all my fault. It's just another expression of his anxiety and fear. It's important to recognize that his fear mirrors the fear that seems to be running in the hierarchy right now, which helps me locate myself in the present as curious, compassionate, create, responsive and safe. I suspect that my soul wants to help me identify any fear I feel so that I don't have to take it personally.

Tweaking The Democracy

2008-10-08T07:37:00.004-06:00

I watched Obama and McCain debate last evening in the second meeting between the two candidates for president on national television. I don't find it very interesting to hear the candidates give two-minute responses to questions that actually involve complex issues. It's interesting to watch them engage with the issues and with each other, although there is really limited interaction between them. They refer to each other in the third person, as though the other person were not there. I like Barack Obama and his ideas of uniting the country to work together to resolve issues and solve problems facing the nation. I don't like John McCain and his tough guy politics that promotes war. I want my government to promote peace and cooperation in the world, taking care of business at home with compassion and intelligence. During the debate, though, I felt frustrated about the petty bickering that characterized much of the discussion and the tendency to try to convince people to blame current problems on the other candidate.

What would happen if the US were really a democracy? Leaders would not make decisions for the people but would have to get approval from the voters for all policy decisions. The president and Congress would have to educate the voters about the issues while the proponents and opponents of new policies would argue their positions. The voters would then decide by casting their votes. It would not be any easier to actually pass bills but it would make everything that happens transparent to the public. That seems to me to be the essence of democracy. Currently, in our republic, representatives are elected who make these decisions for the people they represent, without any sort of requirement either that their decision represents the will of the voters in their districts or that they understand the issue and its ramifications for the country as a whole.

If the voters were the ones who decided, then the issues would have to be discussed and debates publicly. Politicians still could rely on lobbyists and special interest groups to determine their position on issues, but the opposite points of view would also be publicly aired. The voters could still be swayed by faulty logic and prejudice, but at least the issues involved would have to be made public in the process. I am tired of having important issues decided by politically maneuvering rather than conscious determination. I would like the inner workings of government to be made transparent to the citizens of the country so that options can be discussed and the best course of action determined by a 60% majority vote, or something like that.

Dream: Losing The Key?

2008-10-07T06:23:00.000-06:00

I dreamt that I was visiting a college and was hosted by four women. I don’t remember much about that part of the dream except that I felt a connection with three of them but not with the fourth woman. I was apparently invited there to make some sort of presentation, like the Star Logo presentations I used to make for the Santa Fe Institute. After the presentation, I couldn’t find my jacket. I had something important in my jacket pocket, like car keys or cell phone, so I told the women that it was missing.

Some young men took me around the school property in a car. I rode in the front of the car, as though it was a safari jeep, with me on the front hood. I didn’t like being on the front like that because I was concerned the driver would stop too fast and I would be thrown off the front. I didn’t seem concerned about his ability to see with me riding up there, though. I kept thinking about my missing jacket, hoping I would find it along the way.

In my dream, I lose my jacket and want to find it because it has something important in the pocket. I didn’t seem concerned about the temperature of the value of the jacket, just the pocket contents. What comes to mind is the shifting sense of who I am in my new Northwest environment. I express different aspects of myself with people I meet but they haven’t known me long enough to see a larger picture of who I am. It’s like I’m trying out different identities as I respond and interact with my new environment. For one thing, I’ve become quite good at fixing and building things around the house. I would say I’m even creative and inventive doing it and enjoy the challenge. I like engaging physically with my surroundings in that way. It’s really new for me to experience myself as competent as a handyman.

Yesterday, I began constructing a website for my daughter and enjoyed the challenge of trying to create her site using CSS and a fluid box design rather than the old approach I learned using HTML built around tables. It’s exciting to discover that I am curious and interested in new approaches and more efficient designs. Again, I feel competent and creative in the web design realm, again.

In the dream, I am invited to make a presentation at a college, which kind of represents this new way I feel about myself that I just described in the two examples. And yet I’ve lost my jacket. It’s not the jacket that I miss, though. I am concerned that I left my car keys in the pocket. It’s like I’ve misplaced my identity since I’ve come here and I would like to find it.

Riding around on the front of the car with the young men reminds me of the endless riding around in cars with male friends in high school. I liked being with them and doing something but felt bored when we just rode around like that. If I don’t have my own car, my identity, then it’s like I’m stuck riding around with others and being impacted by their agendas. At least that seems to be the fear that is being expressed in the dream. I guess my inner child is afraid that I am lost and going through without a direction since my identity is changing.

I am not afraid of change. It’s good to notice that my inner child is upset about the changes, though. I’ll just let him know how wonderful I feel being creative in so many ways. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so competent, creative and alive before.

Responding To My Inner Child's Fear

2008-10-03T07:18:00.004-06:00

All is well. I ran in the dark again this morning, but this time I tamed my inner child's fear of being attacked by a cougar. Along the way, I noticed something about his fear that I haven't thought about in a while. I realized that it's more a fear of being surprised and startled than it is a fear of meeting a cougar along the road. He wants to monitor every creak of a tree branch or crackle of leaves falling in the forest to identify the sound, mostly to avoid being startled. Now that I know that cougars are shy and tend to run away from people rather than attack, unless a person is moving fast, like riding a bicycle, or running away, I notice that he isn't so much afraid of actually encountering a cougar. He's afraid of being taken by surprise by a cougar.

When I was a child, my siblings and I would hide in dark corners and rooms, waiting to jump out in front of a sibling and scare them. It worked and we did it to each other all the time. I imagine we were playing around with that fear when we did that, wanting to explore it a little in a safe context. I didn't like the feeling of being startled and frightened like that, but it wasn't painful or harmful in any physical sense. If one of my siblings did an especially good job of surprising me, my adrenalin would start pumping and my heart rate would increase for sure. However, I didn't worry about being startled or scared like that. I think we were trying to handle some adult fears that were bigger than our consciousness could grasp when we were children. For example, my siblings and I were all convinced that something huge and terrifying lived in our basement at night, and that some terrible monster lurked under our beds while we slept. No wonder we practiced scaring each other. It's like we wanted to prepare ourselves for the moment when one of these monsters revealed itself, which we assumed would be a startling experience.

So, I noticed that my inner child was monitoring sounds and shadows to detect movement so that he could identify what was happening around me. It was like he wanted to be prepared by knowing what was happening. He didn't seem bothered by the possibility of encountering a cougar so much as the possibility of being scared and startled by something unexpected happening.

I was able to presence myself along the way as I ran through the neighborhood, noticing that my inner child was monitoring all the sounds and movements in the trees. I was aware that everything along the way seemed much lighter this morning, as though dawn were close. In fact, I ran earlier this morning but the clouds were much higher in the sky, so perhaps it was lighter outside. On the other hand, it may be that I ran without feeling immersed in his fear, so I felt a lot lighter and the running also felt easier. I imagine that low dense clouds that tend to darken the sky must have been more prevalent yesterday, although I can't say for sure.

I want to acknowledge how different I felt running today, how much lighter, quicker and comfortable I felt. Getting information about cougars and the relative risk of encountering one in the dark when I run did communicate to my inner child and greatly lessened the amount of fear and discomfort he felt along the way this morning. I can address his concerns and make myself more comfortable at the same time.

Addressing My Inner Child's Concerns

2008-10-02T07:23:00.004-06:00

I read an article in the Port Townsend newspaper, yesterday, that a woman saw a cougar at about 1:00 am on the street where she lives. So, this morning when I went running in the dark, my inner child watched for cougars the whole time I ran along the roads near my house. It's interesting to notice how different the neighborhood appeared with the fear of encountering a cougar running adrenalin through my body. I've run along the same streets almost every morning for the last two months and this morning was the first time I felt fear along the way. I didn't particularly enjoy my run this morning, although I did get the adrenalin pumping and I feel pretty awake and alert by now.

I realized as I ran through my fears that I don't know very much about cougars. I don't know how big they are. I don't know how likely it is for a cougar to show up in my neighborhood. I read that cougars are shy but I don't know how that shyness in their natural habitat translates into behavior when they wander out of their natural environment and encounter a human. I don't know whether they are more likely to attack or to run away from a person they encounter in the forest or near my house. I want to research cougars to gather information about the risks involved so I can make an informed choice about my activities.

My current practice when my inner child brings up a fear like this is to consider its merit. Unless I am knowledgeable about cougars, the likelihood of actually encountering one and how dangerous such an encounter might be for me, I cannot determine whether my inner child's fear is warranted. I didn't realize that I could encounter a cougar in the dark in my own neighborhood before reading that article yesterday. In truth, I didn't even think about it after reading the article. I didn't even read the entire article because it wasn't that interesting to me.

When I got ready to go outside this morning, I thought I was going to run just like I have every other morning. Instead, as soon as the road became dark with shadows, I started to feel fear instead of the usual exhilaration. I was surprised at my nervousness as I approached the shadows but didn't think much of it. I just ran like I usually do.

By the time I turned the corner to run up Foxfield Road, I felt almost afraid of the dark shadows under the trees lining the road and the thought that a cougar could be hiding there started running in my mind. I had to assess whether I was picking up something about the presence of a cougar intuitively or whether my inner child was freaking out because of the article I read, yesterday. I decided it was my inner child's fear that was running through me but it didn't help me feel any better about running along the road in the darkness. I could see the road as well as I usually do but my inner child's fear colored my experience with skittishness and tension.

Now that I'm back in my house, I realize that I need some information to assess my safety under the circumstances. Just noticing that the fear is coming from my inner child is not enough to release it. It is possible that I really am putting myself at risk by running alone in the dark like this. My inner child is basically concerned about my safety and wellbeing in this situation, so I want to address his concern by gathering information and assessing the actual risk I take when I run alone in the dark on the roads in my neighborhood like this. I am grateful that he brought this concern to my attention because I hadn't thought about being at risk myself when I read the article about the woman in Port Townsend. My inner child can still make important contributions to my life.

Flashing The Light To See My Way Clearly

2008-10-01T07:23:00.004-06:00

The fog was so thick over the bay this morning that I couldn't see the lights of the naval base on Indian Island across the water. There's even a naval ship docked at the pier for which they have all their floodlights shining out over the water to prevent any vessels from getting too close without being detected. The floods lights are so bright that I find them annoying shining out over the water, but this morning I couldn't even see any indication of light coming from that direction. I even wondered if the electricity had gone out on the island because I have never seen the water so dark and invisible at night before. The lights from Port Townsend were also invisible in the fog so I reasoned that it was probably a very thick fog. I liked the way that the fog seemingly isolated me from the rest of the world, making my home and community feel cozy and comfortable.

When I was ready to go running outside, it was still dark and foggy, so I thought I might have difficulty seeing. I decided to try to run anyway and brought a flashlight just in case I needed it to see the road along the way. To my surprise, I was able to see the road just fine. I was puzzled about the amount of light on the road because it appeared to be about the same as it was yesterday when the sky was clear. When I looked upwards, I didn't see stars at first, but eventually I did see the constellations through the trees. It wasn't very foggy around my house, apparently, even though the fog on the water was very thick.

I did use my flashlight once when I ran through an area under a stand of trees that was particularly dark. I only flashed it for a second to see the edges of the road and discovered I could see them even after the flashlight was off again. I was happy to have the flashlight with me for such times, although I didn't need it again.

I thought about the fact that I brought my own light when there wasn't enough light to see my way. To continue the metaphor of light from yesterday, I bring the light of my being and the light of my consciousness to all situations, so I am not dependent on there being enough light shining around me in order to see my way. This morning, there actually was enough light in the environment to see my path along the road but I flashed my light in the one situation where I didn't see the way clearly. This doesn't contradict yesterday's statement that there's enough light to see even when it's dark. It clarifies the fact that I also bring light to the situations I experience, as well. I bring consciousness to the experience when I pay attention and am fully present in the moment.

Just yesterday, my wife and I were working together, balancing the checking accounts for our business and discovered a discrepancy when we compared the totals in the checking accounts to the totals in the accounting software. We have had discrepancies before but haven't been able to resolve them. But this time, the amount of the discrepancy was close to the discount fees for the month. I was puzzled about the discrepancy and kept noticing the amount of the discount fee that I had written on the statement. It stood out as though someone were shining a light on it. After noticing it in this way three or four times, I finally picked up the statement and told my wife that I had a hunch that this number was the key to resolving it. It took a while to figure out how it was relevant, but it turned out to be exactly the number that had been misappropriated when entered into the software. In addition, I discovered the source of some discrepancies that occurred in the past that we hadn't been able to resolve.

All this resulted from following a hunch that the number that stood out for me was standing out for a reason. I was able to intuitively solve the problem because I trusted my consciousness enough to explore the fact that one number kept jumping out at me. It was my awareness that was making it stand out, not some physical light shining on the number. Fortunately, I had my flashlight with me just in case I couldn't see my way clearly.

The Metaphor Of Running In The Dark

2008-09-30T07:18:00.005-06:00

Yesterday, I changed my routine and wrote in my online journal immediately after finishing yoga. I went running after I wrote in my journal to give the sky time to grow lighter so I could see. I didn't really like the way I felt when I went running after writing at my desk for 45 minutes. I felt stiff and it took me quite a while to warm up as I ran. I felt sluggish and stiff, so I didn't really enjoy the run as much as I usually do.

This morning, I reverted back to the original order of my morning routine, running immediately after finishing yoga and writing in my journal after the run. I have to say I felt much better during the run and I feel great right now. The main reason that I changed the order was to compensate for the fact that it is dark outside at 5:40 am and I was concerned about how little I can see when I run at that time. The sky was clear this morning and the horizon still dark when I left the house to run, but I was able to clearly discern the road the whole way, even when I ran under a canopy of trees. Admittedly, I didn't see very well in the shadow of the trees but I watched carefully to see just how much I could see at that time.

Some houses along the route that I run keep their outside lights lit during the night and that helps me see along the way. In particular, there's one 100 m stretch on Foxfield Road where the canopy of trees is thick and the road very dark but a house located right in the middle has two lights at the end of the driveway lit through the night. It lights that dark stretch sufficiently for me and I had no difficulty seeing the road. There were a few other dark areas where the trees were thick enough to cast a deep shadow on the road but I was still able to make out the sides of the road clearly enough to feel confident of where I was going.

I forgot how much light is available in the night, at least on a clear night like this one. Cloudy, rainy weather is forecast for later in the week, so I'll have the opportunity to "see" how much light is available outside when the sky is overcast. If I can see my way even when it's cloudy, I can just continue running like I did this morning all through the winter months.

The fact that I can see well enough to run in the dark is a great metaphor for me this morning. I'm reminded that I have sufficient light, even in the dark of night, to see my way. The financial picture for the US and world economy appears gloomy at the present time. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell a record number of points yesterday as a bailout program for the financial industry failed in the House of Representatives. My retirement portfolio reduced about 10% yesterday and the prospects for selling our house seem to diminish as the economy falters. Using the metaphor of light from this morning, I can see well enough to know that I'm fine and that I am supported by these latest developments. I can see enough to know where I'm going and what I want to do in response.

The world in which I live is changing just as I do. I have the opportunity to creatively engage with the world and with the other people in my world as these changes unfold. The changes are not happening because some malevolent force is trying to hurt me. My soul embraces and welcomes these changes. In fact, my soul has helped bring about these changes in my world to support my growth, my happiness and my peace. I don't see well enough in the darkness of my understanding to grasp the purpose of these changes but I trust that they are what winning the lottery looks like today. I have no control over the events taking place in the world around me but I can respond with knowledge, wisdom and love as I adapt to this new reality.

My life is an experiment in adaptation, learning how to be myself and experience the joy in each moment, regardless of how much light there appears to be.

A New Order

2008-09-29T06:47:00.003-06:00

This morning, I changed my routine. Usually, I go running immediately after I finish meditation and Hatha Yoga. This morning, I decided to write my journal entry after I finished doing yoga. I will run after I finish writing.

I wanted to try this order of doing things because it is still dark when I finish yoga, now. During the summer, when I first arrived in Port Townsend, sunrise came early so that the sky was bright at 5:30 am and I could easily run along the roads through my neighborhood. Now that autumn is here and the days grow shorter, it is still dark at this time and it is difficult to see my way through the neighborhood without any light.

When I lived in Santa Fe, I could go running at this time, even in the middle of winter because the sky was bright enough with the stars and ambient light from Santa Fe street lights so that I could see, even on cloudy days. That is not the case here at Kala Point near Port Townsend. The trees are tall and close together in the forests around my house so the streets are dark in the shadow of these giants. I can't even see a branch or pinecone lying in the middle of the road, although I know they're there when I step on them. In general, I can see well enough when the sky is open above the road but when I run under a covering of tree branches and leaves, I cannot see the street or much else, for that matter. I don't enjoy running in such darkness.

I have written for about fifteen minutes, now, and the sky is still dark. I don't even see a patch of light on the horizon, yet, although I know it will grow light, soon. Actually, it's 6:00 am and the line of the horizon is visible over the bay. I wasn't able to see it until I turned out my desk lamp and let my eyes adjust to the darkness. It's not very light, yet, but the light will soon be enough to enable me to run comfortably outside. I wanted to begin my experimentation with a new routine now, while it still grows light enough in the morning for me to run. As winter approaches, I know that it won't get light until around 8:00 am, or even later, so I want to find options for aerobic exercise in the mornings that I can enjoy even during the dark days of winter.

When I thought of living in Port Townsend, I imagined what it would be like to have more clouds, less light, more rain and more trees. I even imagined what I would do for aerobics in the winter when it was raining a lot. However, I didn't consider how the trees and forests would effect my ability to run in the mornings before dawn since I was able to see okay when I ran in the mornings in Santa Fe. It's an interesting opportunity for me to reconsider my routine and bring it up to date for my new environment.

I have maintained this morning routine for so many years that I can't even remember when I began it. I started meditating and doing yoga in the mornings over 38 years ago, then added the running at some later date when I felt the need for more aerobic exercise in my daily routine. I like doing all the exercise in the mornings because I can shower after breakfast and am fresh for the day. If I were to go running in the afternoons, I would want to shower after I ran and that take even longer. I want to complete my physical routines in the morning before breakfast.

Soul Talk: A Conscious Goodbye

2008-09-28T07:19:00.003-06:00

Don't be afraid to experience what's real. In each moment, you have opportunities to presence your feelings, engage with others who are there and creatively interact with the situation, making it a personal experience. You skipped over most moments when you were younger. You were heading somewhere in the future and didn't see the point of engaging with the present.

Your daughter's visit has been wonderful and yet she is leaving this morning. Each moment has been full and you've enjoyed sharing your home with her again, but now that she's leaving it seems like her visit was brief. There is an opportunity to stay open to your experiences this morning and notice how you feel as you say goodbye. You don't usually stay present for goodbyes. There's a way in which you jump into the future rather than experience the feelings you have during separation. In this situation, you might imagine what life will be like after your daughter has left and dwell in that energy so that you don't have to experience the feelings that arise saying goodbye.

Your inner child is afraid that the sadness and grief that you might experience saying goodbye to her and being present to her feelings of sadness at leaving would overwhelm you. He's afraid that such feelings are so painful for you that they will be incapacitating. It's as if such strong feelings of loss will destroy you. So, you tend to move ahead rather than experience loss in the present.

You can give yourself and your daughter a gift, today, by staying present with your emotions and staying open with her while you say goodbye. For you, it's an opportunity to witness and experience your feelings firsthand. In doing this, you will gift her because you will be handling your feelings so she can be present with her feelings. In the past, both she and your wife tended to process the emotional energy that comes up for you since you didn't. By being present to your experience with her, you free her from an unconscious codependent bond that required her to process your emotions for you. The truth is that you don't really know what you will experience saying goodbye because you haven't been very available in the past.

It's a small step toward being more conscious but offers gifts all around. Stay present and experience what comes up for you.

A Calm Center In the Storm

2008-09-25T07:27:00.004-06:00

Today, the weather forecast calls for showers and wind. However, this morning I went running under clear skies with a crescent moon hanging over the eastern horizon and stars scattered about the heavens as the sky began to lighten with the approach of dawn. It's amazing how the weather forecast created a mental picture for me of what this morning would be like. I expected the roads to be wet while rain and mist swirled about the trees under which I run. Instead, I experienced a clear, crisp autumn morning with a beautiful moon standing sentinel over the bay basking in the glow gradually filling the eastern horizon.

As I write this, I notice low clouds moving quickly to cover the heavens, extending out over the bay from the peninsula. It's almost like the universe is listening to my report of the weather forecast and making a correction before anyone else awakens to the unexpectedly still, clear morning. I like the idea that the universe plays while I'm asleep, trying out all kinds of wonderful surprises to spring on its human child. I know I was delightfully surprised by the beautiful clear, moonlit morning today.

I just moved to Port Townsend from Santa Fe, so I still experience moisture and rain deprivation here, even though I have a lovely view of the bay from my house. I feel disappointed when it doesn't rain enough, even though everyone assures me that the rains will come as the winter moves into the area, soaking everything under continuous heavy dark clouds. I have only experienced sporadic rainfall in the seven weeks I've lived here, so my psyche is still reacting as though I live in the desert. For example, this morning I enjoyed my run under clear skies and stillness, but felt disappointed that the forecast may have been incorrect. Now that the clouds are rolling in and the sky growing light, I can see cloudbanks and fog covering Whidbey Island across the bay.

I also consulted the online radar map of the area and found that rain surrounds Port Townsend this morning, so the clear skies are a localized effect of the Olympic Mountain's rain shadow. That makes this morning's clear stillness even more dazzling, knowing that I the clear skies were an opening in the clouds that otherwise covered the Olympic Peninsula, dropping heavy rains near Port Angeles, which is just 50 miles west. It's like being in the eye of a storm where all is calm and I can enjoy running outside in the dry morning light before the rest of the clouds make their way here. So, the universe blesses me with a morning perfectly suited to running, illuminating my path through the forest with moonlight and a glowing sky, and I feel concerned that the rain might not come.

I loved running in the beautiful, crisp autumn air this morning. I am blessed with beautiful weather to support and nourish me. I am healthy and happy. I feel creative energy stirring in me as I welcome the day, whatever the weather may be.

A Meditation on Curves

2008-09-24T07:34:00.004-06:00

I am learning to be more present in the moment when I drive my car. If I don't think about what I'm doing but simply observe what's before me and respond, the driving goes very well and I feel relaxed, present and happy. On the other hand, if I follow my thoughts while I drive, I don't notice much about where I am or what the environment is like. I get distracted by whatever I'm thinking about or I start making up stories about the other drivers on the road and reacting to my stories about why they're doing what they do. I don't feel happy, present or relaxed when I drive that way.

I am particularly aware of the difference between these two approaches to driving when I am rounding a curve. When I'm present, I simply look down the road and around the curve, trusting that my steering skills will bring me around the curve in the center of my lane. I stay relaxed, happy and present all the way around the curve without thinking about what I'm doing. It doesn't matter how many cars and trucks are on the road or what the traffic is like going in either direction. I stay in my lane and I feel as though the car is doing the driving.

On the other hand, when I think about driving around the curve, trying to stay in my lane and avoid all the trucks and cars coming the other way, I feel anxious, I worry and I get tense. I'm aware of all the dangers and every possible catastrophe as I watch cars and trucks coming toward me and rushing past me, narrowly avoiding a collision with every single one of them. This is no fun at all and my car tends to weave in my lane as I go around the curve.

I have difficulty describing the difference between the two approaches because I am driving the car in both of them. However, the experience of driving in these two cases couldn't be more different.

When I'm being present, trusting and not thinking, I feel free and light. I actually drive better and feel happy, content and whole. I really don't need to tell myself all the things I must do to successfully navigate a curve with cars and trucks flying toward me in the opposing lane of the two-lane road. By looking around the curve as far ahead as I can see, then driving as I watch the lane around the curve up ahead, I let my autonomic system handle the driving, taking advantage of all my training and driving experience. I don't need to tell myself to adjust the wheels to keep in the lane because I automatically do it when I look ahead. If potholes or a narrow bridge come along, I automatically steer around or through it without even thinking about it.

If I look down at the road and watch for potholes and other potential hazards, I don't drive as well. I constantly and consciously adjust the steering wheel to stay in my lane and swerve to miss hazards in the road because I can't track the big picture when I'm focusing on the road just ahead of the car. I get tense going around curves or through narrow bridges with trucks coming the other way. I drive in a shortsighted way and don't have much fun or relax, either.

Just being present and looking ahead as I drive is fulfilling and enjoyable in some inexplicable way. I find that I want to drive this way all the time.

Spirit Talk: Symtoms of Change

2008-09-22T07:20:00.004-06:00

You have had a lot of stress in your life for the past six months. Although you managed it well, you can see an effect on your body. Trying to process through your body is an unconscious, habitual way that you handled stress throughout your life. You eliminated most stressful situations from your life over the years, but these past six months have been challenging to you.

You wanted the changes and did everything you could to make the move easy, but you confronted a huge chunk of unconsciousness when you sorted and got rid of old papers, books and documents from your past. With all that behind you, you moved to a new location where nothing is familiar and you are adapting to a new life. In addition, the fact that your old house hasn't sold yet remains a source of concern for you. Even though you are doing what there is to do and let it go from your conscious mind, you still have a tendency to run the energy through your body.

Your elimination system is sluggish in spite of all the fiber, excellent diet and care that you administer. Your body cannot eliminate these stresses for you. That's not its job. You are also experiencing symptoms of an enlarged prostate again. The prostate is another area where you unconsciously try to release emotional stress, but your body can't handle it for you.

You, the adult consciousness, are not feeling stressed but the inner child is really afraid right now. He does not trust. His approach is to generate fear sufficient to get your attention to make sure you do what he thinks is necessary to handle the crisis. He needs assurance and comforting right now. This is an opportunity to communicate with him from your adult consciousness and spiritual perspective. Let him know that you are fine and that you are taking care of everything for him. He sees only the fear in the culture at large and worries that you are in danger of ruin on many levels, so he can use some help right now.

Speak to him like a parent to a child. Keep the explanations to yourself and focus on assurance and comfort. He doesn't understand the markets, the politics and the economy, but he does know when you tell him the truth. You believe all is well so let him know and feel that he's taken care of. That's all he needs to know.

Changes In My Relationship With My Dog, Rafi

2008-09-21T07:35:00.003-06:00

My dog, Rafi, came on a walk with me yesterday. This is the first time that he walked with me since we moved to Port Townsend. He usually only walks with my wife because he's very attached to her so when she leaves town, he often stays in his bed and hides from me the entire time she's gone, except at meal times. My wife left town on Thursday, the first time she's been away since we moved here, and Rafi is behaving differently than he did when alone with me in our Santa Fe house. He even skipped meals the last two days, something he's never done before.

I invite him to walk with me several times a day to let him know that I would like to take him out. His usual response is to hide from me. Yesterday, though, I was sitting at the piano downstairs practicing the tenor part for a choral piece, when Rafi came down the steps and looked around. I was surprised because he mostly avoided me for the past two days. I somehow got the distinct impression that he wanted to go for a walk with me. So, I got up and went upstairs telling him we would go for a walk. He moved away from me and watched me as I came up the stairs, then came to the front hallway with me. I got out the leash and invited him to walk with me, but he backed away, and then hesitated. I waited and invited him to walk with me again.

If I were to make up a story to describe his behavior, I would say that there were two distinct responses moving in him at the same time. One part of him wanted to walk with me and another part wanted to run away from me. He didn't run nor did he come any closer to me. He sat down on the floor, so I walked to him and connected the leash to his harness. When I opened the door, he burst out with great energy and enthusiasm, walking fast up the driveway. I was delighted to have the opportunity to share his breakthrough moment with him.

At first, he walked with energy and determination, but he eventually slowed down and started dragging behind me. When I looked at him, he seemed uncertain and somewhat afraid. I know that I'm ascribing human emotions to him, but I don't have any other way to describe my impressions. I don't know if he was reacting to a sound or a smell, but I did notice there were some people walking on the road behind us. I've noticed that he is often wary of strangers approaching even when walking with both my wife and me. In a way, I felt like the fearful part of him was emerging again, causing him to hesitate. It was almost like the fearful part of him was suddenly in control saying "Whoa! What am I doing out here with this human?"

I urged him along by saying, "We're walking, Rafi," which is what my wife and I say when he slows to sniff something or tries to head off in another direction than we want to go. I pulled on the leash to make sure he continued walking with me. Right at that point in the road, I could hear several dogs barking near their houses although I didn't see any. He may have smelled the dogs and hesitated for that reason. Once we made it past that point in the road, our walk resumed normally. Occasionally, he would hesitate but responded to my "We're walking" and would pick up his pace.

The day before, I had the impression that he wanted to go for a walk when we were near the front door but our attempts to communicate were clumsy and he eventually went back to his bed. This is a new development in our relationship. What fun!

After we returned from the walk, he clearly wanted to play with me. So, I danced around and acted as though I were chasing him, which caused him to run all around the house like he sometimes does with my wife or with me when I'm with her. This is also a new development for us.

After all that, I went outside and got his food bowl, so I could put dinner in it and feed him. He didn't run along with me and go outside to eat it like he does when my wife is here, but he did eat it after I went downstairs, again. I'm surprised that our relationship around food has changed. He doesn't act the way he has for the past year and a half when I take the food outside. On the other hand, our relationship is also changing, so change seems to be the order of the day. Who knows what today will bring.

On the Trail to Marmot Pass in the Olympic Mountains

2008-09-17T07:42:00.003-06:00

I hiked with a group, yesterday. We drove to Quilcene, and then hiked a 10.5 miles on a trail to Marmot Pass and back. The views were spectacular and the group congenial. It was my first hike into the Olympic Mountains and I was delighted to find the energy in the wilderness compatible with my being.

I loved being in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains above Santa Fe, NM, because of the lovely nourishing and nurturing energy in the wilderness there. I felt like I could be myself, there. I can commune with life, spirit and my being there, too. And yesterday, I found that I felt a similar way in the Olympic Mountains. We hiked along a stream for at least a mile, although I have to chuckle to myself at calling it a stream. In Santa Fe, anything that flowed with water in that desert environment was called a river and my favorite hiking trail followed the Big Tesuque River up the mountainside. That river was three or four feet wide and just a few inches deep. I don't know the name of the stream or river we trailed, yesterday, but it was magnificent. It must have been twenty feet wide and a few feet deep. The descent was fairly steep, so any logs or rocks in its path became waterfalls. I saw several cascades of streams down the sides of the mountain and I heard a large waterfall through the forest when we were making a steep ascent on our path. We never saw the waterfall, though, but I'm sure it is spectacular, wherever it is.

It was the moss-covered rocks and trees through which the river flowed in its wider stages that appealed to me the most. The view of the Olympic Mountains from Marmot Pass was spectacular but barren. I was more drawn to the flatter areas through which the river flowed, widened over centuries, overgrown with moss and greens, rocks smoothed and softened, perfect places for fairies and water sprites to dance and celebrate. I felt at home in the mountains and look forward to spending more time, there, to become better acquainted with the spirit of the mountains and with myself.

Port Townsend Farmer's Market

2008-09-15T07:15:00.003-06:00

Saturday morning, I went to the Port Townsend Farmer's Market. It's more like a street fair than a market, with open-sided white canvas tents lining the road on both sides, musician's performing in the middle, art and craft booths interspersed among the food vendors and people milling about, crowding to see the colorful fruits, vegetables and flowers so proudly displayed. I find it charming and fun.

I have gone to farmer's markets in other cities but none of the others were so inviting. The canvas tents match each other, lending an air of orderliness and cooperation, as though the fair is an important part of the town's life. It's held uptown on a side street just off the Lawrence Street, the main street through uptown, right at the center of town. The gleaming waters of Port Townsend Bay are visible down the side streets and the feeling of the crowd is festive. It's more a community celebration than a marketing opportunity and I feel like a child at a festival, peering into each booth to see what wonders awaits me there.

The farmer's market in Santa Fe, New Mexico, was held in a field of dust, with the merchants holding forth behind tables, under canopies or sitting on blankets on the ground. It felt like a big garage sale and the produce available was not very appealing. It's difficult growing fruit and vegetables in the high desert climate surrounding Santa Fe.

In Port Townsend, the Farmer's Market is well organized and the merchants obviously cooperate to stage it each week. I am enthralled with the quality of the produce, having just moved here from Santa Fe. The greens are so full and vibrant that I enjoy picking out a bunch or two, as though I were selecting flowers. I have fun finding new delights, like the organic rainbow carrots and the beautiful squash of various shapes and sizes. The purple carrots are extraordinary. They are crisp and sweet, with an orange center, so slices of purple carrot add beauty and taste to my salads. I didn't know such exquisite varieties of carrots were available when I lived in Santa Fe.

I can get most of these items in grocery stores around the peninsula but it's not nearly as much fun. At the Farmer's market, I talk with the people who grow the food and learn about their families and their farms. They all live very near Port Townsend, so the food is grown within a few miles of where I live. They seem so proud of their offerings and display them with such elegance and style. At this market, it feels right to have art and produce offered in canvas booths next to each other because the quality of both is so high. Actually, I find the produce more compelling and gorgeous than the arts and crafts presented all around. They have raised their profession to the level of an art form and their booths display their art.

I'm new in town so I don't know many people, but I notice how many people stop and chat with friends as they wander around the street fair. As I live here, I will make friends and meet them at the Saturday Farmer's Market, too. We'll greet each other warmly and share a few pleasantries in full view of the ocean while we gather nourishing, beautiful produce for the week. I already feel at home here and the Farmer's Market is one of the things I like best about my new home.

Dream: Taking a Stance of Power

2008-09-13T07:20:00.003-06:00

I dreamt that I was waiting in an auditorium with a number of people, as though some kind of performance was about to begin. In particular, I was waiting for the door beside the stage to open for some ghosts and spirits to flood outward into the room. The room had wooden floors, worn from years of service, and wood panels on the walls. The ceiling was high and there were tall windows along the wall on my left. The room was familiar, as though I've been there often, but I don't recognize it as one that I've actually visited.

In the dream, I have a memory of what happened before that lets me know what's going to happen now. As expected, the side door opens and there seem to be a crowd of spirits and ghosts filling the doorway, ready to zoom out into the room. I put my hand up and command the spirits to go away at the same time as many other audience members do something similar, in their own ways, to get rid of the spirits. I am amazed to see the spirits and ghosts disappear by shooting backward, away from the room, getting smaller and smaller as they seemingly are forced away by our collective force. I feel a thrill of power, wondering if my hand and my command were the cause of this force.

I then remember that Silar, the character from the TV show, "Heroes," who scalps people and eats their brains, will soon be coming down the stairs behind the stage. In my memory, the last time this happened, we were not able to stop him. That was apparently a bad thing, so this time I'm determined to stop him before he hurts anyone. For some reason, I feel that this is my responsibility and my duty, so I am resigned to it. I walk through the door and wait at the bottom of the stairs for him to come down. I pull a high-caliber handgun from my pocket and wait. I plan to shoot all the bullets into him when he appears to make sure that he won't survive. I seem resigned to this course of action, even though I've never shot a handgun before. I am determined to do this right, though.

As I wrote the dream, I noticed my use of phrases like, "do this right" and "this was a bad thing." It's apparent that my inner child's fears were being expressed in the dream. It's interesting that the audience members, along with me, are able to force the ghosts and spirits away but I don't consider a similar tactic with Silar . I don't seek help from the audience and I plan to kill someone, even though I've never done anything like that before. Apparently, the fear of ghosts and spirits does not compare to the fear my inner child feels towards this character, Silar, who is powerful, murderous and insane.

It's also interesting that I am taking a stance of power in this dream. I do not cower or tremble with the knowledge that Silar is coming. I have had many dreams exactly like that in the past. Instead, I arm myself with a high-caliber weapon and intend to kill him so he doesn't hurt me or anyone else.

For some reason, I associate this powerful stance with a shift in consciousness I made yesterday regarding the sale of our house in Santa Fe. We have a contract with a Realtor but are not satisfied with the results. Not only has our house not sold, but also there have not been any showings since July. We recently discovered that the sale of homes in the area where our house is located has been slow, but a number of homes in our price range did sell over the summer. Hardly any of those buyers even saw our house! We decided to list with a realtor in a large agency who can give more visibility to the house than our previous realtor did. Taking power in this situation, even though both my wife and I didn't want to disappoint or upset the old realtor whom we liked, felt like a breakthrough. In terms of this dream, I did not let my fear paralyze me and took strong measures to make sure I was okay. In other words, I put myself first in the dream, regardless of whatever judgments I may carry about hurting, harming or killing someone else, defending myself from someone who would not hesitate to harm or kill me.

Another image that comes to mind is the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer's attempt to assassinate Adolph Hitler, even though he was basically against violence and promoted the notion of turning the other cheek. He believed that killing the source of evil in his nation could save many lives and prevent tremendous suffering in thousands of people. He didn't succeed, of course, and was executed as an assassin.

In my dream, I seem to be working out the notion of being strong, defending myself and putting my needs and myself first. This seems like a healthy development.

A Set Up For Delays

2008-09-12T07:15:00.004-06:00

I began putting the recording studio together, yesterday. I had no difficulty setting up the computer, so I found the sound card for the computer to connect it as well, so everything would be ready to go. However, I found that the cart we use to hold the Firepod sound card and other devices was wobbly. It must have been damaged during the move. I will need a few braces for the sides to make sure that it is steady enough to hold the electronics before I am willing to attach the Firepod and the tape deck to it. I then unpacked the keyboard and sat it on its stand. I wanted to get it powered and attached to the computer to input MIDI tracks when we record, but I couldn't find the power wire.

I can't really connect the computer to the monitors or attach the microphones to the system without the sound card, so I had to stop my project, yesterday. I hadn't anticipated having problems just setting up the system, but I plan to fix that, today. It's interesting that I ran into problems just trying to connect the system. I know that my inner child has great resistance to my creative expression in almost any form. He's always afraid that I will offend someone or others will think poorly of me if my music, for example, is not to their liking. He would rather appreciate or criticize the music that others create than have me risk good will by publishing my own work. I'm amazed, though, that his resistance is strong enough to manifest actual physical blocks, like missing power cords and wobbly component stands.

I prefer having a few simple problems arise in setting up the system than having some kind of strong resistance or some associated physical system arise inside me that would prevent me from making music. These problems are a nuisance, but they have simple solutions. What I'd really like is for my reality to shift this morning so that I find the power cord and am able to repair the wobbly stand easily so I can finish setting up the system and start playing with the music. I am letting my inner child and my subconscious mind know that I am determined to get the system working regardless of delays or problems, so it's just a matter of time. By cooperating with me, we will have the opportunity to actually play with some music much faster and have some fun with the equipment, rather than futzing around finding a power cord to replace the missing one. Let's have the power cord just show up this morning and have some fun!

This is a spiritual universe and spirit rules. I will find a way to get the system to work so I can continue with my music. Since these challenges have arisen, I want to acknowledge that there could be something I want to consider before I get the system connected.

When I contemplate what might be the message in these delays, I recall the movie, A Beautiful Mind, and the imaginary characters the schizophrenic mathematician created to survive in his world. I have discussed this movie in depth, making comparisons between the imaginary characters that the schizophrenic learned to ignore and my own inner child and other tendencies that I am learning to ignore. I get the sense that these speed bumps to setting up the recording system are opportunities to consider how I might proceed once I get everything connected. I don't have to run with my inner child's resistance or fears, nor do I have to consider what others might think of what I create. I have these tendencies but I can ignore them, not make them real, and proceed with my creative play. That's what I sense these delays are all about.

It will be interesting to see how quickly things resolve with this new piece of information.

Organizing My New World

2008-09-11T07:23:00.005-06:00

I have lived in my new house for a little over five weeks and don't feel settled into my office, yet. I accumulate items on my desk because I have not organized my shelves and drawers, yet. Having things accumulate on my desk is not conducive to working at my desk, so I still feel unsettled.

Here's an opportunity for me to make the best of my current situation. I don't have bookshelves where I can put my books and binders but I do have shelves in the closet where I can put things. I want to designate a shelf or two for the binders that hold the historical data and records for Art Matters, as well as the manuals for the online shopping cart and the software I use. That will give me a place to put the things I use often so I can decide how I want to use the drawers on my desks. I didn't use the drawers very efficiently on my old desk. They were mostly filled with papers and items I stuffed into them sometime when I wanted to clear my desktop. I did know what was in the drawers but I didn't use them well. Most of those things could have been placed in files or simply discarded.

I want to move forward and get organized so I can return to making music and completing the makeover of our business' website. The future of sharing music seems to involve downloading digital music files rather than selling CD's so I do want to set up a shopping cart for the business that will enable music downloads. I also want to learn to produce podcasts for the website, short talks and music that we share with our visitors to inform them about our current projects and let them know who we are and what we offer. I was surprised at how long that last sentence took to write. I clearly haven't given much thought to this aspect of our online presence because I've been so focused on the small details of how I can set all this up. I am going to take this as a good sign that I can begin to imagine the process of doing a podcast, now.

Perhaps, setting up the recording studio equipment and getting everything working again will help create a sense of order to my recording studio/office. I don't really like having boxes stacked all around the room with contents spilled out over the floor in a chaotic manner. I'd like to find a place for everything so that the room can be orderly and aesthetically pleasing to me while I work and play with the music and website changes. I also notice that I can think about changing the website without feeling overwhelmed as I have in the past. I guess I am almost ready to begin that work because I can now think about it. In the past, I couldn't even think about it clearly because there were just too many other things I had to accomplish before I could begin.

The sun is just rising over the Sound and the morning begins. I'd like to start setting up the recording studio and get my office organized, even as I finish organizing the tools and implements for my workbench area. Day is dawning and life can return to being productive.

Soul Talk: Being Present With Selling Your House

2008-09-10T07:24:00.004-06:00

Times of change suggest that you remain in touch with yourself. What is in your heart this morning?

You do not owe allegiance to someone with whom you have a business arrangement. You gift her with your wisdom and your love, but you don't gift her if you conceal your feelings and thoughts that depart from what you think she wants to hear. What if she wanted to leave the Real Estate business now but stays with it because she likes you and wants to help you sell your house? She might feel obligated to honor the contract you signed out of regard for you, thinking you really want her to handle the sale for you. There's no way to know what's best for others or how you can best help another achieve her soul's wishes, but you can get in touch with what's in your own heart and trust that expressing that will serve everyone involved.

You haven't looked to see what you want in this situation with the sale of your house. You want it to sell and you also suspect that your agent is not doing enough because she doesn't list the house in the Sunday paper. On the other hand, you believe that the universe handles such matters and that you can trust that the buyer will find the house listed on the Internet or visit the house during an open house. Herein lies a conflict for you. In a spiritual universe, to what extent is advertising necessary to let people know that the house is available?

Some people and some Real Estate agents look at the listings on the Internet and have mastered the Google Search, so it's reasonable to assume that they can find your house if it happens to be in the price range and location that they seek. For those agents and buyers who are not Internet savvy, the other venues are more important, including word of mouth and recommendations from other Agents. Under these conditions, a larger Real Estate agency has the advantage of connecting clients and agents around the country, advertising in the papers and publishing Real Estate booklets and Internet listings for different parts of the country.

In a spiritual world, all happens as it should, including feelings and reactions to experiences. The opportunity of the house not selling, yet, is having responses that you mostly ignore because you believe you "should' trust what you set in motion. At this point, take the time to be aware of what you feel and what you want. Discern whether your feelings are fear based or represent some sort of inspiration for this situation, so you can decide what you want to do. There's room for all of you in a spiritual universe.

Transition Services

2008-09-09T07:12:00.004-06:00

I realized during meditation this morning that I want to teach/coach spirituality, the Transition, parenting, relationships, creativity, being present, trust, imagery, the Matrix and being oneself. I would like my wife and I to be a coaching team. We work well together and each has complimentary skills that we can offer to students/clients. Rather than using a therapeutic model, we can provide assistance with most aspects of life, from both male and female perspectives. I have the feeling I would enjoy teaching/coaching as a team rather than individually.

I like the idea of adopting an educational or consulting model rather than a therapeutic one. I don't believe that someone drawn to consult with coaches and teachers is broken or defective, so there's no reason to adopt a hierarchical model for operation. I have eschewed models and systems, even though I've studied and mastered quite a few of them in the course of my life. I didn't like having to follow a model of progress when I worked as a past life facilitator. Individual sessions did not follow the pattern described during my training, so I improvised and followed my clients on their journeys.

Something I've learned in working with the Guys over the years is how useful information and interpretation was in my own process. Even though I basically understood the metaphysics and psychology of life, with their help I was able to see how confused I was in the way I applied these principles to my own life. I discovered I was living a fantasy life that was not supportive of my own happiness and wellbeing. They showed me how my childhood programming and training was interfering with my ability to be present in my current experience. I projected so much history on the experience that I was not present to creatively engage with it. They taught me a simple way to think about the operation of my inner being so I could observe what takes place inside me and learn about myself. They taught me and helped me apply these simple principles to my own inner process, enabling me to learn and grow on my own.

I don't think of my work with them as therapy. I felt like they have been coaches and mentors for my spiritual life. That's the kind of coaching and mentoring I would like to provide for anyone interested in being creative, being themselves, deepening interpersonal relationships, being parents, getting to know themselves, finding their intuitive voice, being happy, quieting their minds, relaxing, being present, overcoming fears and being free. When I think of all the different tools that my wife and I can use to assist another, I feel excited about the possibilities. It seems to me that I would enjoy being useful and it is this process to which I've been devoted most of my life. I love talking and sharing about these things, particularly when I feel connected and engaged with another. I know more about this realm than I do about physics and mathematics, the subjects that schools would readily hire me to teach. This is where my creative energy flows and I can be myself with my students/clients.

Well, this is my inspiration this morning. Let's see how it develops over time.

Chorus Rehearsal

2008-09-08T07:28:00.003-06:00

I went to a chorus rehearsal last evening, basically researching whether I want to join the chorus for the season. I enjoyed singing the music and found the music easy enough to follow. If I decide to join the chorus, I will have to learn the tenor part for the pieces that we rehearsed last night because I didn't quite get them, yet. I enjoyed singing harmonies with the other singers and talked with several people in the course of the evening. I learned that I was one of only two new faces in the group, so I was clearly recognizable as a newcomer to most people there. I certainly felt warmly welcomed by everyone around me but I didn't feel immediately drawn to anyone in the group. That could change as I get to know people, I suppose.

One of the other tenors is also named Richard. Since he sings the higher tenor parts and I sing the lower tenor parts, he proposed we be known as Richard I and Richard II, which I though was cute. He seemed like a bright and interesting person.

I talked with Kitty during break, a woman who was on the board for six years and feels drawn to making new people feel welcome. She is very excited about music and seems to particularly enjoy Opera. She told me about the Seattle Opera and how she likes to see as many of their productions as she can. She likes to go to Seattle for matinees since it doesn't require staying out so late. She also mentioned there being two opera companies in Seattle, one that performs on Wednesdays and matinees only, a company comprised of little known and developing singers. Apparently, these performances are less expensive, although she didn't actually say that.

I liked the relaxed attitude of the director, giving us ample instructions to sing well together but not stressing or pressuring the singers to get everything just right. She implied that we would manage to create a beautiful sound together as we went over the pieces in rehearsal. I liked the way various singers would ask for the director to go over particular sections that they found difficult. Unlike the singers in Coro de Camara, I didn't feel the singers being competitive or trying to impress with their musical ability or knowledge. It felt like a group of people who like to sing who want to perform the music as well as they can.

I came home from the rehearsal with the chords of the last piece that we rehearsed in my mind. It was composed by John Rutter and used modern chords in a particularly beautiful way. I liked it, even though I had some difficulty finding my notes in the harmonies. I will want to go over them at home so I can hear my part, better.

I didn't feel deeply connected to the group, although I can't imagine why I would feel that way the first time I meet them. I was comfortable with the people that were there and understand that they expect about 20 more people to attend next time. The average age in the group was about 55, so the people are mostly older. The youngest singers are probably in their forties, while the oldest might be in their late sixties or early seventies. In that regard, I fit right in.

All in all, I would say that my experience was positive and I will attend the next rehearsal to see how I like it when it's not all so new. It was interesting to experience a new community in my new home.

Being On The Road

2008-09-07T07:25:00.003-06:00

Walking along the roads near my house, this morning, I realized that I am who I am. Ah, I can see this is not easy to communicate because I had to struggle just to create that first descriptive sentence. As I walked, I was able to quiet my mind and be fully present as I walked, observing the world around me without internally talking to myself. I was aware of being full and happy, but as soon as I thought about it, a mental monologue would begin and I would fall into thinking about my experience rather than continuing to have an experience of the world. Eventually, I would notice that I was focused on thinking and would stop it, returning to an experience of walking and witnessing.

Mostly, the thoughts that arose were related to the experience of being present. For example, I would think about how being present in my experiences is an experience of health, imagining that any maladies or injuries would heal as I stayed present in the experience without distracting the life force through thoughts, worries, concerns and plans. I would eventually notice that I was thinking about being present in my experience and how healthy it is rather than actually being present in my experience of walking along the road. Such thoughts are so perfectly attuned to what I was doing that I easily considered them and slipped into thinking, again.

It's clear that some part of me feels that thinking is necessary for my safety and wellbeing. I refer to that part of me that is totally focused on my safety, security and survival my inner child, so I imagine that my inner child stirs up my mind to draw me into my thoughts. He is convinced that I must constantly consider all the things that make me who I am, my history, my aspirations and everything that can go wrong or I will lose track of something crucial to my survival. It's like living in a primitive world in which I have to monitor where the large predators are, all the time, so they can't sneak up on me and kill me for food. My inner child basically equates something as insignificant as remembering to pay the water bill with a tiger lurking in the dark. He wants me to keep it in mind so I can't forget to pay it, thereby avoiding disastrous consequences.

My inner child lacks perspective and proportion, so that the fact I've never missed paying a bill does not qualify me for a dispensation from his insistence on constant vigilance. He imagines that I've never missed a payment because of it. Therefore, he believes that worries and concern about missing a payment are required to keep me this way. Hence, he constantly stirs the pot of my mind to keep a constant stream of commentary, notices and reminders in my awareness. That's exactly the stream of consciousness that I stop when I can, freeing myself into the experience of the present rather than having to vigilantly monitor everything in my world.

When I do stop this mental chatter, I am free and experience fully. I feel happy, content and open, as though anything and everything is possible. It's like waking up and feeling whole. Then, I seem to start thinking about what I'm experiencing so that they cycle begins again. I feel wonderful when I'm just being in the moment, though.

The Morning Mist

2008-09-06T07:16:00.004-06:00

The Sound is covered with mist this morning. For a moment, the mists parted and allowed a bit of the eastern sky to show, pink, violet and blue pastel colors suddenly reflected in the water along a path toward the east. Sunrise announces herself surreptitiously and beautifully today.

I seldom experienced mist and fog during the years I lived in Santa Fe. There was rarely enough humidity to fill the air with those tiny droplets of water dancing freely. In Port Townsend, the fog and mist can roll over the Sound and onto the landscape almost at any time. The sky was clear this morning when I awakened. The number of stars I could see out over the Bay delighted me. And yet the fog rolled in and everything is hidden in mystery and with moisture, now.

I experience myself in a similar way. I sometimes get clear and my mind settles so that I am present to whatever is happening in this moment and how I respond or interact with it. Invariably, though, my thoughts roll into my consciousness and the present gets covered over with whatever content my mind conjures. Just like the mist covers the stars and the trees, my experience of the present is colored by the thoughts that I allow to take over my awareness. Instead of being, I am thinking about what I will say to the Tree Committee or how I was disappointed by the concert last night.

Even though the mist expands and hides everything around me, I don't have to be cut off from all that is here. I can see whatever is close to me even when the fog is thick. I still stand on the ground at my feet and see the trees, smell the flowers and touch whatever is close to me. In a way, nothing has changed but my perception with the addition of a lot of silver-gray in the air.

When my thoughts take over my awareness, nothing has really changed for me, either. It's just a shift in my focus, giving attention to whatever thoughts are playing out in my mind while losing sight of the experiences of the present moment. Yes, the thoughts are like those experiences of the moment but they are more like a movie and a story that I follow that overlay my experience of the present with information and interpretations that are not necessarily present in this moment. It's like making up a story about the present experience that I tell myself to make sense of what's happening or being so concerned about a story I am developing for a past experience that I am not aware of what's happening now. In either case, the story making distracts from the experience available in the present and tends to reinforce old patterns and tendencies. It also feels disruptive inside.

I prefer to quietly engage with the experience of the moment, absorbing and interacting with full attention. I don't like having my history dictate what the current experience means because it feels small and narrow; it's a fearful interpretation that my inner child gives it. I like being present and engaging with the experience fully so my creative adult self can play with the possibilities.

I still inevitably allow the mists of thought to roll in and take over my perception and experience, even though I don't like getting lost in my foggy thinking. It happens anyway. What I'd like to do, though, is stay present with whatever part of my current experience remains available to me even under the onslaught of old stories and fear-based interpretations of what's happening. If I don't get lost in the mists, I might notice how beautiful it is and appreciate the way the sunlight shines through and illuminates it, anyway.

Relating and Creating

2008-09-05T07:17:00.003-06:00

I have focused on moving to Port Townsend, Washington, for the past six months, completely uprooting my life in Santa Fe to begin a new life in the Northwest. I have handled so many details required by this move (buying a house, clearing out clutter, packing, moving, unpacking, mortgages, changing my address, opening new bank accounts, starting utilities, stopping some of the services for the Santa Fe house and getting new licenses, registering to vote and getting insurance) in moving to this new area that I am preoccupied with my the details of my own life right now. I have not given much thought to others because of all the demands on my own time right now and am aware of how this affects me.

I am an idealist and value love highly. In the midst of all this activity, I have not interacted with many people. My wife and I have a very loving relationship but I have not extended much outside this small circle of ours. I am starting to feel like I'm ready to reach out a little at this point. I noticed in the local newspaper that the community chorus is starting their rehearsals this weekend and is inviting new members to join them. I haven't heard them sing and I know nothing about their repertoire, but I feel drawn to at least the idea of participating. I have been so busy with getting our new house organized and functional that I have hardly taken any time to sing during the month we've been here. I am beginning to miss being social and I also miss creating music.

I sang in a community college chorus when I lived in Santa Fe and even joined a professional chorus for a short while. I quit the professional group because, for one thing, the music was consistently out of my vocal range and I became tired of struggling to hit the notes. More importantly, the musicians were very serious about the music and I didn't enjoy singing such difficult music with them. I focused, instead, on singing and recording in the studio, which was a very different experience and genre of music, which I entirely enjoyed.

Before committing myself to membership in a chorus that I haven't heard and about which I know very little, I want to inquiry about the kind of music they sing and the approach that they take to creating music together. I am close to setting up the recording studio in my home and could conceivably begin singing here and creating music with my wife. I do have a desire to establish social relationships with people here but I don't want to join a chorus for that reason unless I would actually enjoy the experience.

In the past, I had a tendency to fill my time with responsibilities that kept me from being creative. My fearful inner child didn't want me to risk ridicule and criticism by expressing my creativity, so he kept me busy with mundane tasks. I want to be sure that I am actually interested in joining the chorus before committing myself to months of rehearsals. It's possible that I am just getting settled enough to want to be social and creative again, so a little research and reflection are in order. I am feeling a little bit isolated from being so intensely focused on resettling into my new home. I will see what I actually want to do about this and about expressing myself creatively and making music. How fun!

Soul Talk: Settling Into Self

2008-09-04T07:09:00.004-06:00

It has been a while since you let me speak through you. And what an incredible journey you have taken since then. You cleared away many anchors to your past that kept you identified with who you were then and you've moved to an entirely new environment, with water and trees all around. It's like you've turned everything over and are exploring who you are in your new world.

It's quite efficient for your process of renewal that you are still hanging art and organizing your office and living spaces in your house. This has kept you occupied with concrete, physical work requiring focus and creativity while your psyche adjusts to the changes you've experienced. In many ways, you are still building your new world with each work of art that you hang and each time you build a desk or find an appropriate place for the tools and supplies you brought with you. Rather than surreptitiously dropping things onto shelves and stuffing them into closets, you are consciously finding places for the supplies and instruments you want to use for living. You aren't leaving areas for unconsciousness in your new house where you can stash things without conscious deliberation. Every room, even the closets, have designated purposes, you know what you want to store there, so you are creating a conscious household.

Think of your new house as a symbolic representation of your Psyche. You are exploring each of the spaces and organizing the contents of your life by locating them into the available spaces. The windows facing the water represent the inflow of information that is creativity, inspiration and aspiration, while all that you are and have is consciously located somewhere in your home. How different this is from the way you lived in your last house, with closets, garage areas and storage sheds cluttered with forgotten and unconscious things, covered with dust and cobwebs, being slowly destroyed by the local mice and other creatures of the dark. You've imagined you would enjoy the change of environment and you've transitioned into a new way of being in the world.

Since you are still settling into the house, you haven't experienced the changes in yourself. You haven't interacted with many people or related much with old friends, so you don't yet perceive how you've changed. I would be more correct to say how you are changing. You are not settled and are still finding or choosing who you are in this world without strong ties or definitions from the past. You are freer to be yourself since you left so much of your history behind. Let this awareness nourish you as you continue sorting and settling into your home, which is the same as finding a comfortable way to relax and be yourself here. Happy homecoming!

Settling III

2008-09-03T07:16:00.004-06:00

This morning, I awakened just before 4 am feeling rested and excited about starting a new day. Since I was awake a little earlier than usual, I thought I would be able to meditate a little longer this morning before doing hatha yoga. I did my breathing exercises and settled comfortably on a chair, ready to focus and relax into a deep place. I fell asleep almost immediately.

I was surprised and a little disappointed that I didn't have a conscious experience of meditation. I have slept deeply at night and take a half-hour nap almost every afternoon, so I didn't realize that I was still tired. I started packing, clearing and organizing my things in March in preparation for this move to the Northwest and have hardly had a break since then, so I understand that I'm just beginning to recover from a long stretch of intense focus and effort. I have also made a major transition in my life, moving from a familiar life in the desert around Santa Fe to Washington State where I am still unpacking and organizing my new house. I feel like I'm beginning a new life and still feel unsettled. I love being here and I'm just beginning to discover how I want to be, here.

I mostly think about getting the house in order. I don't particularly like having my things scattered about the house in various boxes. I imagine, though, that as I build the shelves and storage areas for my house that will provide a place to put my things, I will settle into my house better. I remember where I stored most things at my old house but I don't have places to put them here, yet. On the other hand, I haven't become accustomed to filing and sorting the papers that I am using right now, so that the statements for my paid bills still sit in a pile on my desk. I believe it will help me feel more at home and organized if I make a point of filing away these papers so my desk is at least organized. I believe that my inner child is confused about these changes and wants things to be as they always were, hence I feel somewhat discombobulated and confused about where things go. This will change as I become familiar with my new organization and grow familiar with it, but I realize that I allow my inner child's confusion and discomfort to color my experience of living here by not consciously recognizing his discomfort and fear about these changes.

I haven't taken the time before to analyze what I've been feeling since moving here, so I'm delighted to realize that I can alter my conscious experience now that I know what my inner child is feeling. The adult in me is very happy about these changes and thrilled to be living in Port Townsend but I've allowed the child's confusion and fear to color my experience, making it more difficult to unpack and become comfortable in my new home. However, my wife and I are making great progress in creating a comfortable home for us here. I can enjoy that!

Settling II

2008-09-02T07:21:00.004-06:00

The sky is clear this morning and a silhouette of the Cascade Mountains defines the horizon to the east as dawn approaches. The colors this morning are all pastels. Soft pinks, violet hues, baby blue and scattered purples make up the palette for this wonderful new day.

I feel excited to be in my new home, today. I've been here a month and I am just beginning to settle into my new environment and my new life. I thought the unpacking would be easy and efficient compared to the months of clearing, packing and arranging required to move out of Santa Fe. However, that has not been my experience. I have felt unsettled and uncertain about where to put things and how to organize and arrange my office space. It's almost as if I don't have a clear sense of myself at this moment, so I haven't been able to imagine where I might want my supplies and my artwork to be. Finally, something changed just yesterday.

I decided to finish a few projects, like putting the smoke detector back together and hanging an oil painting in our new living room. The challenge was to hang it over the stairwell, even though the wall was impossible to reach from the floor and a ladder couldn't be placed on the stairs to reach it either. So, the painting has leaned against a wall, waiting for us to hang it. I considered the problem for several days and finally thought of a way to lay an extension ladder across the landing and out over the stairwell, so I would be able to walk out onto it and reach the wall to place nails to hang the painting. I wanted to pound the nails into studs for security but there didn't seem to be any studs in this wall. I even found a piece of plywood that I could place on the side of the ladder to make standing on it safe. So, I hung the painting and it looks great there.

However, the previous owner left many markings on the white wall, so I decided to touch up the paint while I had the ladder in place to make the wall accessible. I found a can of paint in the basement that matched the white color of the wall and covered over the markings so the wall looks beautiful around the painting. I then went around the house and touched up the white walls in other places that needed paint.

Something shifted in me by touching up the paint, myself. Since my wife and I moved into the house, we've hired painters, plumbers, electricians and landscapers to help us make the house ready. I realize that I was feeling as though the house were too special for me to fix and recreate myself. Getting involved with fixing and repairing the house suddenly makes it feel like mine and I feel more at home. I didn't realize that my sense of home involves my being able to repair and maintain it myself, at least some parts of it. By having only professionals handle the house, I felt somewhat uncomfortable here, as though the house was too beautiful or too fragile for me to own and care for. I changed that yesterday by doing the work, myself. I didn't know how important that is before yesterday.

Now that the dawn has passed and the sun is shining in the sky, the Cascade Mountains have mostly disappeared into the morning haze, their silhouette blending into the hazy colors in the sky. However, I can still see their outline and know that they're there, waiting for the afternoon sunlight to light their western faces so they stand tall later in the day. And so it is with this new information about myself, which reveals my hands-on connection to home. It may not always be visible but I know it's a part of me and I can use it to my advantage in adjusting to my new world. It is a wonderful day to settle into my new life.

Settling Into A New Home

2008-09-01T07:32:00.003-06:00

I am living beside Puget Sound, Admiralty Inlet and Port Townsend Bay, which together stretch toward the horizon outside my windows. Even though I've lived here for almost a month, now, I still don't register that this is home. My wife and I ate dinner on our deck last evening, watching the sailboats and the water currents in the Bay as we ate black bean burritos and salad. I love the view from our deck and our house. We're high above the water so we see quite a ways looking down at the sea. There are a number of tall trees in our view line but they've been trimmed so only the tops of the trees contain branches and pine needles. It is actually lovely having the trees around the house because I feel like I'm viewing the ocean from the woods or from a forest.

In fact, our neighborhood is actually quite forested, with lots of old majestic trees and thick undergrowth on the ground. When I go running in the mornings, I run along roads winding through forests interrupted by the landscaping surrounding each house in the development. After 33 years of running and walking in desert landscapes, just having dense forests around me as I run is quite a treat. Of course, when I return to my house after running through the forested neighborhood, I am welcomed home by the sea expanding northward and eastward beyond my house. I feel so blessed by both environments and enjoy the wealth of experiences that come with so much moisture all around.

I am surprised at how long it is taking me to settle into my new house. Most times I've moved into a new dwelling, it was rather easy to unpack and settle into the new space. I would unpack the kitchen, put my clothes in place, put my books on the shelves, put my office supplies in my desk, set up the electronic media and that would be that. However, this time I don't have bookshelves in the house and just put up some shelves in the basement to hold supplies. I have left the book boxes unopened in the closets, but realize that I put many little things in empty spaces in those boxes when I packed them. I still haven't found a number of things that I packed, so I feel unsettled in my office space. At the same time, though, I suspect that this feeling and the slowness of my settling process are symptomatic of something changing and moving within me.

As I put things into my desks, I feel as though they don't really belong there. It's as though I resist putting them into the desk drawer because I will eventually have to pack them again. It may be a reaction to the huge changes that I've undergone in order to move here. I went through all my possessions and got rid of so many things that I didn't want any longer. However, I seem to be somewhat discombobulated as a result and don't have my old certainties or convictions about what I need or want in this new environment. It's an interesting process and I will explore it more in my journal.

LIfe in the Northwest I

2008-08-31T07:38:00.004-06:00

I quit writing entries for my online journal a few months ago to devote my time to organizing, preparing and packing for my move from New Mexico to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. I am now living in Washington and slowly putting my new home together as I unpack and organize my personal stuff anew.

I am content living in my new home. I had grown tired of living in the desert. I feel deeply nourished and comfortable in the lush green neighborhood where I live. I don't think that I ever felt this way in Santa Fe. It's difficult to compare my experience living here with my experience living in Santa Fe because the environments are so different. I feel like my time in Santa Fe had a different purpose than my time has living here, so there's probably no reason to even compare the two.

I love being surrounded with abundant green life and trees that reach high into the heavens. I did not realize how much I missed living with trees around me until I moved here. I love hearing the wind whispering through the trees. I love having the beautiful trees around my house as emissaries to the heavens for me. They engage with the wind and rain directly, so that my experience of them is more gentle and soft.

I love the way the rain often comes as a gentle mist that softly wraps around everything and gently moistens it. I also enjoy running or walking along the road under the trees while it's raining because the trees protect me from the falling rain as they gather the moisture on their leaves and branches to gently disperse below them as they become saturated with moisture. Sometimes, after it rains, drops of water keep falling beneath the trees as they continue dispersing their moisture long after the raindrops quit falling from the sky.

I feel like I can breathe freely here at sea level with moisture in the air. The dry air in the desert around Santa Fe did not contain nearly as much oxygen and dried my lungs with each breath. Here among the trees along the shore of Puget Sound, I feel myself getting saturated with moisture and energized with oxygen with each breath. It's so relaxing to have these elements in such abundance. I don't have to struggle to receive the necessities of life, here.

I will continue my reflections on life in the Northwest in future postings.

Becoming Someone!

2008-08-30T07:28:00.006-06:00

When I was a junior and senior in high school, my father was recovering from major surgery and wasn't very strong or healthy. As a result, he wasn't able to do much around the house and he didn't have the energy to drive his children to their music lessons, baseball games or school functions. Since I was the only other person in our household that had a driver's license, I did most of the driving for the family, including driving my mother to the hospital to visit him while he was recovering there and taking her to the grocery store or to town if she needed to go to the bank, the doctor's office or the shopping mall. In fact, my father postponed his surgery until I was 16 years old and had my driver's license to make sure that his family would have a way to get around while he was recovering.

I didn't know until years later that my father was given a one-in-a-thousand chance of even surviving the operation, so in reality he postponed the operation until I could drive because he thought he was going to die and wanted us to be able to get around without him. My mother did not drive, so the driving would be my contribution to the family. Fortunately, my father did survive the surgery and recovered fairly well, so my responsibility for driving the family around on their errands was temporary.

During the later part of my senior year in high school, my father's recovery was going so well that he was able to go back to work. It turned out to be premature for him to be working, but he didn't feel that he had a choice after having had sick leave for over a year. As a result, he was very tired when he came home and mostly rested. The family still needed to get around, though, and my mother, brothers and sisters would ask him whether he could drive them on some errand or other. When they needed to go to the doctor's office, a football game, baseball practice or shopping, they would ask him to drive them there. He would invariably answer, "Someone will take you."

I know my father would have liked to do the driving for his family and didn't want to burden me with too much driving since I was still a student and had a lot of homework and other responsibilities, like applying to colleges and music rehearsals. I think he was offering to do the driving unless he was too tired or didn't have the energy to do it. As it turned out, by the time my mother or one of my siblings needed to leave, he felt tired and really didn't have the energy to do the driving. In any case, he would usually ask me to do the driving at the last minute. I didn't feel like I could refuse because I was the only other driver in the house and I did want to help out, so I did it.

This gradually became a family joke. Whenever my father would say that "someone" would do something, we all took this to mean that I would do it. We bantered about it and joked about it with each other, having some fun with the new family tradition.

The evening before I was to leave for college to begin my freshman year, we sat around the dinner table for our last meal together before I left. As we bantered and joked during dinner, we started talking about who would be driving everyone around after I left home. My younger brother, entering his sophomore year of high school, wryly observed that now that I was going away, he would now be "Someone."

King In My Own Realm

2008-07-15T06:15:00.004-06:00

I am the center of my reality, the one who experiences what is real, responds to what happens and interacts with the people involved, while engaging with the events and situations that arise. In other words, I rule my subjective reality. I decide what to do and I determine what is valuable and meaningful in my experience. I tried to give this responsibility to others I met along the way, but I found that I didn't really want someone other than me telling me what is real and what I should do.

Now that I know that I'm okay just the way that I am, I am not afraid to take a stand and make my own choices in life. I feel dizzy sometimes that there are so many options from which to choose, but I settle back into my comfort zone and remember what I enjoy and how I like to live. That makes choosing easy.

My reality is undergoing a great change right now. It's as if I decreed that I want to live by the ocean and enjoy a nurturing, green environment for a while, so my world is changing day by day. I am letting go of old possibilities as I clear the closets and storage sheds of old programs and experiments that helped me learn who I am and who I'm not. These papers and tapes were anchors to the past, ways that I kept old dreams and ambitions alive, even though they are no longer relevant in my life. I'm clearing them out so I can be present by the ocean and be who I am rather than who I thought I was or who my parents wanted me to be. I am king in this experience of reality, so I decree that these changes be easy and I can let go of unnecessary anchors to my past.

My wife is my consort in this work, queen of her own experience and of her reality. She's my friend and advisor, who rules her world as I rule mine. It's fun to share experiences and insights so we gain perspective on who we are and what we are doing. Our life is a creative sharing and open communication.

I wanted God to tell me what to do because I was taught to obey and follow orders. Instead, god dwells in everyone and everything, encouraging awareness, self-reliance and creative participation. I guess that's why I was not satisfied when others told me what to do. How could they know who I am and what I want better than I do?

Soul Talk: Being Yourself

2008-07-13T06:39:00.004-06:00

Let's reflect on this morning's rain. Just two weeks ago, the ground was dry and the plant life around Santa Fe was parched. The grasses were brown and dry; the earth was dust. In the last week, however, significant rain has fallen, mostly in two thunderstorms that centered over Santa Fe. As a result, the ground is moist, the grasses are green and the plant life is abundant and growing wildly. This morning, you walked in the rain instead of your usual run, breathed the moist air and enjoyed the cool breeze. What a change!

Your life is changing like that, too. When you recognize how quickly the facts of life evolve into something else, like the sudden green fields around your home, you will appreciate how you can blossom as the conditions within you change. Just the fact that you can focus your attention on repetitive sounds and empty your mind of all thought so you can presence yourself are huge changes for you. You have spent almost 40 years trying to bring yourself into the foreground of your life so that you can be the master in your own realm, and now you've mostly accomplished it. So, you're leaving the desert where you've learned to focus and detach because you are ready to play, now.

When you pay attention and presence yourself, you depend on yourself, your inspiration, your creativity and your soul. You were programmed to depend on external authorities, bosses, teachers, experts and a god who is separate from you. You needed all these years to break free of those constraints in order to learn to depend on what's inside of you, so you are in-dependent, now. It's not like being dependent on your inner child's fearful interpretation of reality or having faith in something you've been taught. This is a basic shift from dependence to self-acceptance and self-reliance. You are being yourself at last.

Soaring Eagle

2008-07-12T06:09:00.004-06:00

This morning, I decided to ask my soul for an image to guide me during this time of transition as I prepare to move to the Olympic Peninsula. I immediately felt my heart open as I spread my wings to soar off into the air, as though I were an eagle taking to the air from a high perch. I used to say that if I were to choose a Native American name for myself, my name would be Soaring Eagle, so the image is familiar.

When an eagle soars, it uses its extremely sharp vision to observe the landscape from above, watching for movement that could be its next meal. I gather that my Soul wants me to keep perspective on my activities these days. I notice how easy it is for me to loose sight of what the point is to all the clearing, organizing and packing that I'm doing every day. I sometimes feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of details that I must handle and forget that this process is finite with the purpose of moving to an area that I love. That's the role of my Soaring Eagle self, to take flight from the jagged cliffs of my history so I can see far, remembering the joyous purpose behind all these activities. I don't need to get lost in the details of the clearing, organizing, address changes and packing because I can let my heart be filled with the wonder of this miraculous flight on which I'm embarking.

I found myself in the present this morning during my meditation. Often, my mind is too active for me to just presence myself in the moment and experience myself as whole, soulful, creative and content. I believe that this experience of being myself, content and free from the critical chatter and fearful planning that often takes place in my thoughts, is another aspect of being the Soaring Eagle. The eagle soars in the heavens watching for movement and directing its flight toward a potential meal scurrying on the ground. The eagle does not question its existence, wonder why it feels drawn to the movement on the ground or doubt its ability to fly. The eagle is present in what it is doing and lives without worry or regret. I imagine that my Soul also wants me to be aware of how free and alive I am when I live in the moment and presence myself in the world.

So, I let myself take flight this morning, lifting off from the hold that my lineage and my history has had, leaving all these irrelevant anchors behind, as I feel myself rising lightly into the sky, looking over the panorama of this moment with understanding about what I am doing here. It doesn't change my behavior because I still have a lot of details to handle as I prepare for the move, but I feel like myself again and experience the joy of soaring in the heavens as I play.

Dream: Being The Star Of My Own Story

2008-07-11T06:12:00.004-06:00

My son and I were in Chicago and met Gwyneth Paltrow. It seems like our meeting with her was arranged ahead of time, so we met her at the designated location. She invited us into the dining room where we sat in a large cafeteria with long tables that seat eight people. Looking around the room, I noticed that the people in the room were elderly, as though we were in the dining hall of a nursing home.

Although I sat at a dining table with my son and Gwyneth, actually sitting between them, we did not eat or order food. Mostly, Gwyneth talked in a disconnected monologue without engaging me or anyone else around us. I looked around the room to see if she was being filmed, wondering if this monologue was part of the dialogue for a movie but I didn't see cameras, film crews or anyone paying particular attention to her. I didn't really listen to her, either, so I don't know what she said.

I sat quietly even though I got bored until she quit speaking. She seemed to be finished with her meeting with us and rose to say goodbye to us. I thought, perhaps, I had missed an opportunity to connect and engage with her because something else was going on, so I suggested that my son and I might look her up again the next time we came to Chicago. She did not like the idea and said that would not be possible.

Gwyneth Paltrow represents youth, beauty, fame and fortune to me, yet in the dream I meet her in what appears to be the cafeteria of a nursing home. She yammers on and on without connecting with me or engaging with me, yet I politely sit beside her as though I had some sort of relationship with her. Even though I sit and wait for her monologue to finish so we might talk, after which she dismisses us, I still hold out the hope that I might connect with her at some time in the future.

This scene reminds me of my relationship with so many things in my life. I have kept books for thirty years after reading them, hoping to somehow get something more from them. Gwyneth is a movie star, someone that the culture deems significant and important, so I spend time with her even though I don't know her and she obviously is not interested in me. She talks incessantly without connecting to anyone else and yet I treat her with great respect and deference. This is an example of being focused on her and what she wants rather than focusing on what I want.

It's interesting to juxtapose the young actress and the nursing home, my 19-year-old son and my 63-year-old self. In the dream, the actress is not interested in meeting us again, but in fact, I would not be interested in her after this meeting that demonstrated what she's like. The dream seems to be reminding me to get behind my own eyes, as the Guys like to say, to decide what I want rather than focus on what matters to others or focus on what they want from me.

The fact that my son and I went to Chicago in the dream seems connected to the time he and I went to Chicago to visit with my siblings, a family reunion of sorts. This tells me that my tendency to focus on what others want from me has roots in my family lineage, the way I was raised, where I was convinced that I didn't matter. This is the heritage that I am releasing as I clear old stuff and tendencies form my life in preparation for my impending move to the Olympic Peninsula. In this phase of my life, I get to be the star of my own story.

Soul Talk: Clearing The Present

2008-07-04T06:18:00.004-06:00

You are doing well. For the past two months, you have gone through many old papers, books and files, clearing away the clutter in preparation for moving. This week, for example, you got rid of papers, notes and journal entries from your hypnotherapy training, the Transpersonal Psychology program as well as training notes, session notes and writings from the Light Institute years. That's a lot of history to clear in one week. Those files and papers were anchors to the past, links to other possible realities that kept part of you connected to those realities. Of course, all this clearing creates more space in your consciousness and allows you to be more present in the moment, similar to the results of clearing out the teaching notes and paraphernalia a few weeks ago. However, these latest anchors were deeper because you connected more strongly with them, which is why it took more effort to break into the files and get rid of them.

Each cluster of papers and files held hopes and dreams with which you infused them in the past. You abandoned those aspirations after you experienced each of those possibilities but you kept the records and notes in case you might want to go back. That was your anchor to the past, the way you might reclaim those pursuits if your present occupations don't work out. That's how they keep you connected to your past and not fully present in current time.

In four weeks, you will be driving to Port Townsend, leaving Santa Fe to begin a new life near the water. All this clearing is making this move much more significant than it would be if you had just packed everything and moved it up there. The fact that you got rid of so much history and so many anchors makes this a real transition into the present, an improvisation on living life in the moment. It's interesting that you finally watched the Flash Piano video after clearing out Light Institute, Hypnotherapy and Transpersonal Psychology, the systems that gave you such hope and direction for so many years. It's not easy to improvise when you have so many rules and systems from the past that you must follow.

You've stopped the clearing when you found your old writing files, including all the chapters to the book you tried to write. This is appropriate because these pages represent the best attempt at improvisation you were able to muster about 16 years ago. The truth of the matter is that there are some gems buried in those pages that you might enjoy reading, along with pages of rambling that don't really have direction. Look it over when you feel like it. It will help you decide whether you'd enjoy writing again. You enjoy writing and do consider sharing your writing with others from time to time. This will remind you of the process and also give you a sense of how far you've developed since then, both as a writer and in consciousness. You were still playing the Hierarchical Game when you wrote those chapters, so you've come a long way.

Have some fun, now that the difficult clearing process is mostly over.

Let There Be Peace In My World

2008-06-18T06:14:00.004-06:00

I bring peace to my world when I'm peaceful. I experience love in my reality by giving loving and receiving love. I don't have control over the lives of nations, peoples and neighbors but I can influence them. At the same time, the nations and powers in the world don't have control over me, either, so I'm capable of having my own experience of the events taking place in my world.

Let me start over because the three sentences in the first paragraph did not communicate what I was thinking.

The song title, "Let There Be Peace On Earth And Let It Begin With Me," came to mind this morning as I began writing. I realized that I don't know the lyrics to this song other than the words that make up the title. Nonetheless, the words stirred me as I reflected on my experience of peace in life. I can effect how I experience life and have cultivated peace for many years. I have a peaceful life, most of the time.

In contrast, my inner child is not peaceful. He is afraid and promotes strife as the only way to survive in the world. Peace is a luxury to him, one that he doesn't feel he can afford until he has millions of dollars, excellent health, millions of friends and fans along with an unquestionably secure source of income. Until he has those things, he strives to get them. Of course, that doesn't leave much room for peace, satisfaction, pleasure, happiness or fulfillment because those feelings promote contentment more than striving to achieve something better. He believes that he must pretend to be someone he's not in order to convince others to like him, pay him and support him, so he doesn't want to relax or enjoy the present moment. He's all about making the future better and more secure, which is about sacrificing the present for a future reward. It's difficult to experience peace in his drama.

I think of the Catholic image of the crucifixion of Christ as a symbol of this daily sacrifice required to secure a rewarding future. The Church projects the rewarding future into the afterlife, Heaven and all that, since the early Church's predictions of Christ's imminent second coming proved to be incorrect. So, the sacrifice each day is meant to secure a rewarding afterlife since it does not guarantee health, wealth, success, love or happiness in the current life. My inner child was indoctrinated by the Catholic Church and believes that he must sacrifice himself because he is defective somehow and that's the only way God will reward him with a good life and a good afterlife.

I prefer to experience peace, happiness and fulfillment in being who I am in the present moment. I don't know how much impact I have on the world around me but I get to have peace as part of my experience of life.

Marking Independence And A Move To The Water

2008-06-17T06:08:00.004-06:00

I purchased a house in Port Townsend, Washington, and am in the process of closing the deal with the seller. Everything is in place for my wife and I to take possession of the house next Monday, June 23. I thought I would be happy when I reached this point in the sale because I want to live there so much, but I haven't settled into the reality of the purchase, yet. For the past two months, I have focused on getting my current house ready to sell by repairing things, finishing landscaping, clearing clutter, giving away items we don't want to move and packing winter clothes and other things we won't need until we get there. We have also been working hard to keep all the parties involved in this sale communicating with each other and with us so that we close the sale on time. In addition, both our children have been home the past two weeks and we've had a wonderful time being a family again, but all this adds up to a tremendous amount of focused activity. So, I haven't caught up with the fact that I'm just days away from taking possession of the house in Port Townsend and we will likely move there around August 1.

Now that I think about it, I realize that I am happy about the purchase and I am excited to have the opportunity to move there later this summer. In the hustle of activities, I lost sight of what I'm actually accomplishing with all the busy work I'm doing. I still have some boxes to go through and some things I want to give away or trash before we move there, but I'm almost finished with the clearing and cleaning stage of the move.

Today, I go with my daughter to the Motor Vehicle Division of New Mexico State Government to transfer the title of her car to her so she can register it in California as she establishes her home there. I also will help her sign up for her own health insurance plan and automobile insurance policy, marking her transition to being an adult, now. This is actually a significant moment in our lives even though I haven't really taken notice until right now. She's really been living on her own for the past two years but these little changes mark a change in our relationship. She is independent, now, and taking responsibility for her own life. However, there are these steps we must take to enable her. I have been too busy to notice what this means up until now.

I am grateful that I took time to write this morning. I have brought into the forefront of my consciousness the point of all the activities with which I've been so fully engaged these last few months. My daughter is an independent adult starting out on her career path and we're moving to Port Townsend, Washington, to live by the ocean and enjoy living on the temperate, moist, green Olympic Peninsula.

Waiting For The Rain

2008-06-14T06:21:00.004-06:00

This morning, the sky is clear and the sun is shining. That simple sentence would have been a prescription for a happy day when I was a child in Ohio. After living in the desert for 33 years, though, the description is not enticing. I look for clouds, now, hoping to feel moisture in the air and be comforted and nourished by the rain. It's amazing how differently I feel about the clear, dry air in the desert after living here for all these years. I used to think of clear sunny days as the most beautiful weather but have grown to appreciate how lovely and nourishing cloudy, rainy days actually are.

I'm moving the Port Townsend, Washington, where clouds are commonplace and rainy days are normal. I look forward to feeling the nurturing rain and becoming acquainted with cloudy weather again. I may eventually come to the place where I think of clear, sunny days as beautiful weather, again.

I notice in the ten-day weather forecast for Santa Fe that thunderstorms are forecast for next weekend. I look forward to the clouds, the moisture in the air and the chance that it will rain on the dry, dusty landscape I still call home. Just knowing that there's a chance of rain next weekend makes these bone-dry days tolerable. Just this morning, while I was running in the greenbelt, I thought how wonderful it would be if it would rain during our open house next Sunday. I like the idea of people, who are looking at the house, seeing it when the skies are filled with clouds and the air is cool with the possibility of rain. What fun that the forecast matches my wish.

I have a busy week ahead that no longer seems daunting because there's a chance it will rain at the week's end. I will be busy while I wait for the rain.

Spirit Talk: A Home By The Water

2008-06-11T06:13:00.004-06:00

You will have a home by the water. I never dreamed of living by the water when I was alive. I wanted a bigger house and a newer house in a nicer part of town, but I didn't dream of having a home by the water. I don't think anyone in my family's lineage had a home with a water view like you will have. As you know, your mother and I never learned to swim as children. We weren't connected to the water the way you are.

I keep track of you and your family as much as possible. It's interesting to see how far you've grown from the small world that your mother and I shared. You always seemed intent upon pushing beyond the boundaries that we kept so religiously and I am amazed at the difference between your current world and the one we shared when you were a child. Oh, I was concerned about you all right. I didn't understand how you'd survive in the workforce with such curiosity and idealism. I felt sure that you would not be able to work at a secure job for a company and I was right. However, I didn't see the possibilities that you saw or notice that many people thrived living a creative life, exploring art, music, spirituality and communication. I saw only limited opportunities for making money in my world, where others had the money and I had to do what they wanted to get some of that money from them. I didn't see the symbiotic relationship between employer and employee or the creative possibilities that you did.

I am impressed by how hard you've worked to break free of the world we showed you. It almost seemed as though you knew there was a bigger world out there that you wanted to explore, so you didn't want to be constrained by the limitations of our world. There were so many places you could have stopped to rest along the way, like settling into academia as you first thought you might, teaching high school students physics and science for another decade or so, building a practice in hypnotherapy and past life sessions, or even designing websites for a while longer. You weren't satisfied, though, that you had really discovered who you are or knew what you wanted when you explored these activities, so you moved on.

For the moment, your life is almost entirely centered on moving, as you take care of all the details of buying a house, selling your current house, arranging for the move to Washington, clearing out clutter and getting rid of things you no longer need or want and packing the things you're taking with you. It must seem natural to you to have this focus on moving because you've been moving all your life.

However, this move is different. You know yourself and are clear that you want to create music, among other things. This move is your opportunity to leave many of the old dreams behind so you are free to create. And you want to explore this new world in view of the water. Port Townsend is not a factory town and there are few jobs to be had there. But there's plenty of room for creative exploration and an entire community of people who are exploring that world, too. I am happy that you and your family found ways to explore and be yourselves. All this packing and preparation for the move is like your graduation exercise, but this time you're graduating from the hierarchical world of becoming into a transitional way of being; being by the water.