A PRAYER ON THE WALK BACK HOME

I am just here with you creator , I am just here in you...

First thing this morning I went over to the gate one of Teotihuacan. Whenever I arrive back in Teo I like to go walk through my life there as soon as I can, alone, with myself and my relationship with all that exists there. Today felt interesting as though I am now seeing this place of my awakening from a greater perspective, a less personal more expansive view. As always being in Teotihuacan is more a feeling than a physical experience.

So I walked across the Avenue of the Dead and climbed the steps to the Plaza of Quetzelquatal. Connections come easy here. After some time I said thank you to all that might be listening and moved on up the Avenue of the Dead.

Some hour or so later I arrived at the Alter in front of the Pyramid of the Moon.Itis on this alter that so many have offered back to life all the energies that have been held onto over a life time not realizing that it is our clinging that traps us in our mind and feeds our suffering. Of course we have no idea until we wake up to what we are doing and then it is still a great leap to be willing to let go of all that we define ourselves and our world by.

Sitting on the alter I heard my mantra, one that I picked up in the Catholic Church and have always loved to say to myself and all that listens within me,"Lamb of God take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us, Lamb of God take away the sins of the world, grant us Peace".I was slowly saying my mantra over and over when I was moved to take some Coca leaves from Peru from my bag and hold them with a great open and loving heart sending my prayers into the light that falls on the Peruvian world.Sitting with my eyes closed I heard someone walking up beside me and a gruff almost angry voice said, "Jesus Christ is the way son, Jesus Christ is the only way". Opening my eyes there was a 60 something year old American guy looking down at me like I was da Devil. I guess he couldn't hear my mantra or if he could he wasn't to hot on Catholic prayers..whatever. I just looked at him, there was nothing to say.Evidently he believed we lived in the same world and the truth is we don't.

I closed my eyes and rejoined the love that moves through me wondering if the man would have even cared to know what it was I was praying. I don't think so, who knows, who cares.

Once again I got up and continued my walk through the magical world of Teo eventually ending up in front of the pyramid of the Sun. Climbing the steps to the Alter in front of the Sun I put my attention on the doorway to the ancient cave that rests beneath the Pyramid. Last winter I had the opportunity to spend some time in the cave and that experience shifted my relationship with the Pyramid to something very etheric.

Taking out my bells I gently let the wind ring the bells and dreamed back through the 10 years of personal growth and evolution that I've lived with the Sun as my witness. Opening my eyes I sat and watched people climb and desend the steps to the top, listening to the conversations of the people coming and going.Looking up I saw the man that offered Jesus as the way coming down the steps and right behind him was a Fransiscan Monk and some Nuns, their robes flowing with the breeze. As I looked around there was a Mexican man dressed all in white that was saying prayers to the four directions and the spirits of his world, offering his hands up toward the Pyramid. Many paths, many masters. I just sat and watched.

A few minutes later I realized I was hungry and our Dreaming House has the best food this side of all our little heavens so again I got up and started walking home. On the way the words..."I am just here with you father, I am just here with you, I am just here in you Creator, I am just here in you....and that is the truth.

Vaya Con Dios.......

PUTTING TWO AND TWO TOGETHER

Many of you have seen this video of Jill Bolte Taylor, some may have read her book. I did. What I find interesting here is when you overlay her experiences of consciousness on top of the "recovery" process.
We have multi-dimensional realities and perceptions within us. The traditional recovery process gives only surface level attention to the deeper aspects of our consciousness. What we suffer from is our loss of awareness and conscious connection with our greater Consciousness. We are huge creative beings that have been born into a "reality" that is very small minded and literal in interpretation interaction. Living disconnected from our right brain consciousness is certainly enough of a loss of true reality to cause great discomfort and even more disturbing a very skewed perception of our self, the world , others, potential, etc.... Reality is not literal , reality is more dream like than reasonable.
We speak of evidenced based and research proven when all those two terms imply is that someone watched and measured the cause and effect of a particular interaction in a particular set up. The results are specific to the test and we have been taught to place studies done by institutions or Corporations ahead of the opportunities presented by living day to day experience with people in their own personal process. I believe what I see and feel not what I am told by so called experts or University/ Big Pharma Studies. I am completely responsible for what I choose to believe and how I allow my beliefs to limit or expand my awareness and also how I apply my craft in working with others.
Dr. Taylor's experience is so beautiful in that we hear the experience and see the awareness of one who has bridged the two aspects of her one mind into a whole. Unless you have a balanced connection between the two you will miss out on at least half of what Life is offering. When we live disconnected from great aspects of our consciousness we will live out of balance and when we live out of balance long enough we settle into that condition as though it were "normal". Living out of balance will also cause discomfort and suffering that we;ll then only be able to identify from our distorted left brained perspective. You see the choices we perceive are limited by the awareness we live from. Small awareness small choices, greater awareness greater choices.
We can not offer what we do not have. As professionals in the healing arts we are subject to the same limited ways of thinking, perceiving and living as our clients and the culture as a whole. If we are to be more than a band aid to the issues then we must be willing to stretch beyond the limitations of left Brain knowledge. We must be the Change we want to see in our clients and the world and live it or we aren't offering anything but a better version of the same ol' hell. This is our opportunity to not be satisfied with what has become acceptable as a profession and go for the freedom that is so clearly what Dr. Taylor found, within herself , as a result of her experience. Maybe you'll watch this video and consider what are you living as reality and how much of your time and attention do you give to the greater aspects of your consciousness. We have settled long enough, now is the opportunity to live from our greater awareness.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyyjU8fzEYU

Seeing Through the Shadows

My wife tells me I am never home, I'm always going somewhere. Yes, I am going somewhere a lot. Twice this year to Peru, three times to Teotihuacan, Mexico, a couple times to New York City. Sometimes I feel like I am gone from home and sometimes I feel more at home in the places of great mystery than I do in the world that is so familiar and set in it's ways. What I miss are my girls and my wife not the structure, rigid reality and supposed security of the United States.

I have found what I'll call levels in experience and reality through my living so many journeys and opportunities to expand and challenge myself and my perceptions. In this world there are great shadows cast across the landscapes that we have been taught to perceive as reality. Shadows like Cultural dynamics and religious attachments, definitions, titles,Power and self importance. Shadows like the projections of our beliefs onto the worlds stage which we then seek to either have validated or we respond in judgement needing to defend our having given precious faith to those beliefs when beliefs are never truth in the absolute sense. Truth does not need our distorted beliefs to be present and alive in our lives.Our beliefs are very small, thin, desperate attempts to feel secure. Truth is what we are ,we are life's' expression as human with all that Human entails.Beliefs are generated from our need to "know", our need to believe we are "safe" and that the next move can be predictable. We believe out of fear because we have no real relationship with the freedom that Faith in Life, faith in ourselves, offers.

I get frustrated with all the resistance of moving though the quagmire of beliefs that suffocate this world.Must be my Scottish blood and the past generations of Warriors with all their lust for battle when anyone came to squelch their personal freedom with some doctrine of irrelevant beliefs that were offered as an option to the freedom of spirit that they lived for.

The Humanity has traded Spiritual freedom for the weak association of like minded "Spiritual" beliefs. Beyond our attachment to belief is that no mans land of learning to live the tight rope of just being in life without attachment. Freedom can only be found through faith in life before faith in Belief. It is tricky to take the power of faith away from the mind which has for so long been the moderator of fear and our defender of the unknown.When we fall into automatically believing our minds thoughts we will soon be lost in the traps of self importance, self doubt, fear and the need to defend our attachments to our beliefs.Before we know it we are living in our head rather than in the flow of the true reality that surrounds us.

As an aspect of a journey to New York City last year we went to see THE LION KING on Broadway. The participants were a bit skeptical, after all, LION KING is supposed to be a kids show. By the end of that evening they got it. The Shadow lands of that beautiful show were our inheritance if we should lose our connection to our own Divinity and the mystery of consciousness. Life is a great mystery. The Native Americans knew that and so lived in relation with all living things not as the separate and self righteous manipulators of all that surrounds us as modern man has done.We are not separate and apart and will now and for years to come pay the price of our self indulgent ignorance. Cause and effect...Life is as simple as cause and effect.Life is not personal as our victim minded cultures would have us believe. There is no true judgement from God or life merely simple cause and effect and life's own unique flow. To take life personally requires we see ourselves and separate and apart rather than a simple aspect of the whole.

As I live my journeys I experience greater and greater expansion of perception and the melting away of beliefs as my guide. In the moment there is my awareness and Life as it moves through me. I have no need to know, as I am there in it , with it, I am free...knowing takes me from that awareness, from that freedom, into the virtual reality of my small minded thinking.

There is a shift happening. This is the time where all of Mans attachments to life as a definition will be broken apart and the power and greater frequency of Consciousness will offer freedom from our paradigms of fear and belief. It sure is going to be interesting to live this transition.That is our call. There will be no not participating...we will either move with the coming awakening or live in our own terror of it.

How attached are you to your world? Like the followers of the Christ who walked away from everything they had known in life to follow the light within, we are all being offered the invitation to let go and walk into the light of life beyond the limitations of our beliefs.It is a good day to die as the old warriors would call riding into battle...Ahieeeeee

LIGHTNING DREAMS

I was sleeping, dreaming away into the night. The thunder called me back into this world. Lightning, thunder, raindrops hitting the roof and the windows trying to find a way through to the earth below.

With each bolt of lightning I was seeing the temple of the Lightning Priestess in Machu Pichu. She was standing, a silhouette, reaching out to me through the layers of consciousness that separate our worlds. My body was vibrating to the lightning energy that sparkled in the air, electricity connecting the worlds through light and awareness, her calling and my feeling the call, wanting to go and afraid to let go.

As suddenly as she was there she was gone, my mind had stepped back in between the space of the worlds and I was a once again a body on Earth, separate and apart from the connection to the infinite worlds of the dreamers.

I visited Machu Pichu for the second time last March. My first night in the Sacred Valley of the Incas, I had dreamed of a great lightning storm moving across the horizon, moving towards me. I was not alone. There was a barn with several horses directly in front of me. As dream worlds go the separation of depth, land, structures animals was not as limited by definition or perception as this world of every day Human life. The lightning was first white, spider webbing across the sky, filling the distance with it’s eerie light. As I watched the lightning moved toward me.slowly, creeping across the landscape. Then it shifted to a soft yellow color, still spider webbing, filling the sky with light. Suddenly, I realized the lightning was coming to me, I could hear it’s voice; feel it’s watching me. The horses began to whinny and get nervous so I ran to turn them out before the storm came over us, this was not a safe place for them, I thought, for some reason though I new I was supposed to be there. The horses were my old friends, the ones I had been close to when my life had been so sad and lost. They had been my companions and in a lot of ways my guardians. They had done their calling and it was time for them to go. Opening the gates they took off, I always-loved turning out the horses and watching them run for the hills.

As they disappeared into the night the lightning cracked again filling the sky with its webs of light. This time the lightning was blue, a beautiful soft blue and it covered the sky above my head. I was suddenly afraid so I got down on the ground and curled up in a ball as the space around me was electrified by the energy of the living lightning. I could feel the rain falling over me in a blessing way and then I woke up. I was in my bed in the Sacred Urubamba Valley, the mirror of the Milky Way. This was Peru and the lightning had just welcomed me, an initiation according to my Peruano friend Jorge Luis Delgado.

On my first journey to Peru the previous February I had visited the temple of the lightning Priestess in Machu Pichu and felt embraced and welcomed in much the same way as I feel the Love of the Mother at the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City. This was a bit different though this was sensual and male to female with the female having the power of the lightning running through her veins. After that journey, whenever I thought of Peru I could feel myself still sitting before the great rock face of the Lightning Priestess temple.

Here she had come to me again, reaching out through the dimensions to my little trailer at The Ranch in Tennessee. On a warm July night she had come with her light and mystery to call on me. I am returning to Peru the end of September, just 6 weeks away, and once again I’ll go to her temple and sit giving my attention and love to that place and the magical Mountains surrounding Machu Pichu.

The Peruvian Shaman say she was the most powerful witch in all of Machu Pichu, that her body was found buried standing up looking out over the Sacred City and all it’s mystery.

In a few days I’ll return home to Teotihuacan and Mexico. I’ll be back where my great awakening came through the unconditional Love of the City of The Gods and the warm hearts of the Mexican people. Living between the worlds has become my way. I can honestly say the world I was raised to be a part of was never very interesting to me so it’s only fitting that I found a separate reality to walk through. I don’t know that one is better or worse than the other, but I find one to be much more interesting than the other and both come together to offer such opportunity and Sweetness. Maybe we are, as many of the Indigenous cultures say, a bridge between the worlds. That works for me. So the next time you see a great lightning storm stop and sit with all your attention turned toward the life that’s there in the storm. You might get a glimpse of the one that lives there.

No Matter What Anybody Says

No Matter what anybody says the whole deal comes down to my relationship with my heart. If I give my power away to anything else before the integrity of my heart I will be moving away from my center.

Lately I am feeling everything around and in me with a new freshness. Like the frequency of clarity of the Heart has come into a higher vibration.

I was sitting out on our front porch this morning, on Estes Road in Nashville, feeling like my Love for Mexico was swallowing me up when a gust of wind blew through the Elm trees and a Mockingbird landed on the power line above my head. She had a fat bug in her beak and sat for a minute looking right at me. I heard her, "nothing to miss, we are all coming back together now...keep feeling it and follow your feeling...the worlds great separation is burning away in the new light of the Sun." She then resumed her bird life and flew away. Consciousness speaking as consciousness does through any form that's available til we don't need a form to get us to listen.

I have fallen in Love so many times in my life and more times than not I've fallen in Love with places, Oceans, Beaches, Mountains, Horses, People, Mysteries, feelings, a touch, a hug, a little girls laugh.

For many years falling in Love was a sideline to my "real" life. Something that spiced up the situation then I'd get back to re'al'i'ty...I never had a clue I could just follow the falling in love and live a life from that calling. That's the deal today. I can't seem to stick with anything that's not from my numerous love affairs. Mexico, Ceremony, my family, best friends, inspirations all leave my cellular structure dancing like a bug on a light bulb.

Something is happening here, what is is ain't exactly clear and that's the coolest part...we have to have faith in our calling and our ability to bring what we love to Earth with us. That is the rebirth of Heaven on Earth and that's the Deal...BOOGIE ONWARD...Lee

Two Dog Night- An Evening With Eddie George and Jeff Obafemi Carr

We are not what we believe we are. We are not what we do in this world. Our lives appear to be happening in the physical sense and are certainly experienced in a physical sense and we are so much more than our physical manifestation of form, we are the one experiencing that form.

Eddie George is an amazing athlete, a damn good actor, and much more than that. Jeff Obafemi Carr is a cool, gifted, actor, artist and he is much more than that.We are not the roles we play in life and we bring those roles too life like magic. We live our roles with such passion and feeling that we fall under our own spell, believing that we have become the role. This is the basis of theater being believable,the passion and life force of the actor living the role , being the role, expressing the character with heart and soul.Believing the role is the foundation of that suspension of belief that brings the audience into the dream of the actor.

Being human is a grand form of theatrical staging. We are born into the world and are not of the world. We inherit a legacy specific to our place , time and circumstance of birth. That legacy is then carried forward through life, developed , evolved, lived,healed, perpetrated, transformed all depending on what we as individuals bring to our characters development. We inherit a role and then we choose how that role will evolve or not.

The true experience of life happens within us. The interactions from the outside are interfaced with the presence on the inside. We are all actors and most of us don't have a clue. We take this world and our physicality so seriously that we lose our connection to the truth that is our presence within, our spirit our life force our consciousness. The Love that we are is abandoned for the sake of what we have been told and have come to believe about ourselves based on what the world outside of us holds as truth and experience.

There is an old Native American tale about the two wolves that dwell within each of us and how the one we choose to feed is the one that prospers.We take on the characteristics of what we "believe " about ourselves. Once we attach to a belief we then see the world according to that belief and seek out support to make our belief the truth. Problem is that our need to be "right" distorts our perception to the point that we no longer see clearly, rather, we see through our own investment in the belief we have attached to.We are the ultimate expression of the character actors art.We create our role, step into it, and then forget that we are acting.

As talented as Jeff and Eddie are they both know when they walk off the stage it takes a few minutes to de-role from their art and ground themselves in their inner spirit.If they were to continue to play out their characters in the world people would say they were nuts, crazy, eccentric...they know the difference and so when they are in character they are 100% there, believable, dynamic. When they go home they are the light within living as Human.

Seeing Two Dog Night was reality check in dedication and art form. Great actors know they are not just the role they play and they have the ability to be that role 100% for the sake of their art, like a special forces solider giving 100% to the mission.The ego is set aside and the expression is spirit on stage. They are actors and they are much more. They are men and they are much more. We are Humans and we are much more.

These are very interesting times. The roles many of us have lived, believing that's what we are, are being rewritten while we are still learning our original lines. We can't count on what we were told as kids being there as rock solid base lines to live by. The nature of the game is changing. The reality we demand be safe and sound is becoming liquid and slippery. Fear says "better find something to hold on to" and life says "better get comfortable with letting go".Faith is recreating itself from being where we go out of fear and need for security to the living expression of not needing to "know" before we say yes to life's opportunities.

If you are ever in Nashville you might check out the Amun Ra Theater and it's offerings of life lived creatively.The roles you'll see acted out there are directed by the heart and the spirit, that's an example we can all learn from. Check them out at http://web.mac.com/jeffocarr/iWeb/amunratheatre/Welcome.html

Now, Sayulita

Mee is at don Pedros hanging with the MANGO MAMA'S. I'm sitting at the bar in Lalo and ginas playing with the computer and listening to the sounds of our world. Little girls playing in the pool , trucks on the dirt road outside the walls, and birds and waves breaking.

Everything about what I've called cool in life is offering me an engraved invitation to finish my work in Tennessee and come back home to Mexico and get busy here with what I love doing. I told my friend Dana Walden today that there are opportunities coming from 12 different directions , none of which you can see, and I'm so on it to follow my faith into the sunset.

Maybe what I've considered at times is going to be real, that is ...thru healing ways we humans will finally let go of our differences being the basis of perception and live with sharing experiences being the foundation. Good set up for an American guy to come to Mexico and streach his world to allow SPIRIT to create with him in a new reality. You can take TV's from culture to culture but healing ways are pretty sacred and we aren't very open to healing anyway unless we have had a taste.

So, Lalo sends me pics of an old Hacienda some where in Old Mexico. This after, yesterday, seeing the most beautiful compound here in Puerto Vallarta that for sure we want to create an Integrative Healing/ Recovery Center at.

What is so cool is that we humans are close to realizing that we can recreate our world any way we choose and we can make that choosing a rockin deal.All of that is coming and the admission price is we have to undo our attachment to being ..in reaction, the victum, less than, pissed off, drama queens...etc...we must get over the ourselves we've created for ourselves and come to believe we are and we aren't.

We are such suckers we really should not be allowed to believe anything for a time out. Ok wn't happen...but....So hey, whats coming to you that you won't get out of the way for? The only one keeps us from doing what we want is us. Vaya con dios.....

Key One#1. give More attention to where you are going than to where you have been.

Practice Key one for a while and lets see what happens.....

ETERNAL NOW-ADYASHANTI

***** My friend Maru sent this poem and all the words needed are set in perfect place and time...enjoy the gift of a master....

Eternal Now



Take a moment

to check and see if you are actually here.



Before there is right and wrong

we are just here.

Before there is good or bad, or unworthy,

and before there is the sinner or saint,

we are just here.

Just meet here, where silence is-

where the stillness inside dances.

Just here, before knowing something, or not knowing.

Just meet here where all points of view merge into one point,

And the one point disappears.



Just see if you can meet right now

where you touch the eternal,

and feel the eternal living and dying at each moment.

Just meet here-

before you were an expert,

before you were a beginner.



To just be here,

where you are what you always will be,

where you will add anything to this,

or subtract anything.



Meet here, where you want nothing,

and where you are nothing.

The here that is unspeakable.

Where we meet only mystery to mystery,

or we don´t meet at all.

Meet here where you find yourself

by not finding yourself.

In this place where quietness is deafening,

and the stillness moves to fast to catch it.



Meet here where you are what you want

and you want what you are

and everything falls away into radiant emptiness.

ADYASHANTI

A Warriors Call

We were awake at 3am. Plan was to get to the Nashville airport by 7:30 to make a flight to Palm Beach , a little work and a little beach time. I could feel Lola's feet on my back in the night and knew she was hot, another fever, another cold. Laying awake in bed before sunrise I went through the possibilities of what we might do rearranging our June schedule to fit it all in. No worries, all the choices were great so what does the order matter.

Being a Dad is my closest connection to God. I can't imagine loving more than I love these little girls...all my girls, from 26 to 2. Lola, Bella, Ana , Alexis and now two granddaughters, Sydney and Avery.Unconditional love is always with me just under the surface of my relationship to the world I live in outside of me.

Feeling Lola's feet didn't make for an Oh No , We can't go reaction...in fact I just felt how much I love having this little character for a daughter and her Mom for my wife.

My main reason in flying to Palm Beach was to see a man I respect and feel a connection to cuse we have both done our best to create a doorway for those trying to undo their addictions and suffering for the sake of living a life they love. Call it recovery if you want..I'm not sure that word is accurate..doesn't really matter, it is the evolution of our human legacy and Don Mullaney and I have very different looking approaches to our work while both work from that place within us that is so grateful for our life and transformation that we had to share that gratitude the best way we know how. Really very simple and sometimes very challenging when you can't settle for less than what you feel is the best for your people, the ones we serve in our work.

From the outside we don't appear to have much at all in common but I would bet you through the eyes of God we look like two brothers who have their own style and way of getting the job done.One thing I have come to see and know about the truth of life, looks don't have anything to do with substance and real truth brings great respect and honor with it. Among warriors there is always a mutual respect that will come forward at some point, whether in victory or defeat, in argument or agreement, true warriors live for the closeness to life's integrity, a closeness that being the warrior brings.Going with the flow is usually just an annoyance to a warrior. We do it to get in position to act sometimes but I don't think we ever like it.

Being a warrior is sure not a popularity contest either. Popularity is another one of those social conventions that seems to breed soft, lazy actors rather than solid courageous Characters, warriors. I've become such a jackass these days that I almost don't trust anybody who is too popular in any field, recovery,politics, film, music, doesn't matter, authenticity brings uniqueness and social compliance as a culture has a hard time with unique.It also has a hard time with the truth.

When I realized we couldn't make the flight this morning I came down stairs and got online cancelling the flight and re-booking the Singer Island Hilton for the end of June. I'm going to see Don Mullaney, the exact day is not the point.

Many times in my life I have had powerful feelings that I needed to do something and wouldn't "understand " why..today I know that is God directing me and I don't need to understand why. Actually it's more fun not knowing, I get to figure it out as I move forward, with faith, rather than believing a head full of bullshit thinking I know something.

Palm Beach will be there and I'll play on that sugar white sand beach with my girls and visit my warrior compadre...sometimes we need to check in with each other because we are here to learn and share who we are with each other as individuals not as business people or friends or any other roles we have given so much value to. We need to check in Man to man, human to human..life to life.

Today I'm going to The Ranch and work with some wild two year old colts of ours...Now that's a mirror of Spirit for you, a two year old colt all fat and wide eyed.

To all the warriors out there I salute you and look forward to meeting you along the way...we do recognize each other and there aren't that many of us in circulation these days. To death I say "I see you and when the time comes we'll dance and sing an old Sweatlodge song to the Great Mystery" Weyah hey hey Weyah Hey......

Conscious Contact

Who am I listening to in my life? So many voices so little attention.The world around us looks more like a world in need of treatment than a world we might aspire to be loyal subscribers to. On one hand our culture and our world is not responsible for us as individuals, we are, and at the same time we are the children of this world and all its conflicts, insecurities, insanity and lies.Attempting to sort the truth out of the agenda is , well, more trouble than it's worth. I may be powerless over the world outside of myself but I am not powerless over myself ,what I believe about me, agree to concerning me, or choose to act on in relation to me.Bringing my attention back to myself keeps me from getting all caught up in all the stuff that in truth does not matter anyway.

My world exists within me. My world is a perception, a matrix of beliefs and stories. In my world there are continuously changing weather patterns of emotion, hunger, thought, sensation and experience.

In the world outside of me there are also constantly changing aspects of life, weather, belief, reaction. We are caught up in a whirlwind of economic, energetic, environmental, political and religious turmoil. What we were taught as kids as the "right" way to live has turned out to have been a very short sighted, unsustainable, addicted, demanding, borderline behaving quagmire of cultural mess. Everybody seems to be lying to everybody about almost everything and all we know for sure is that we can't count on the politicos or the systems as they exist today to save us from ourselves. See what I mean by our World being in need of treatment....

In the midst of all this, change keeps happening and with that change, opportunity comes forward...So, where is our attention? Are we seeing the opportunities or are we fighting to keep up our attachment to what has been familiar to us.

Like an individual in need of treatment, when what you have lived as "reality" stops working, there can be a real sense of the whole house of cards coming down. We are the culture of the world and the culture of the world is us. The rethinking of how we live one day to the next as a society, is , if it's going to evolve toward Happy, Joyous, and Free, going to be a leap of faith into the unknown. My point of view about Recovery has shifted from the goal being to become a "happy, productive member of society" to being re-connected to the truth of who I am underneath all the beliefs , baggage, stories and imbalances that had become my perception of myself. That perception of myself was born of my relationship with this Society and how I saw me, judged me, defined me according to societies rules. I really tried to fit in..sort of...that's funny now..but it sure as hell wasn't funny when I believed Society knew something I didn't.

Where do we go now, people of recovery, society of the USA...where do we go now Humans? Our world has hit the fan and most of our all powerful systems have shown themselves to be incapable of changing toward the opportunity of a new Paradigm.Our systems are reflections of ourselves. We are so attached and addicted to suffering as a measure of accomplishment we seem to be indulging into suffering rather than stepping back with a broad, open minded point of view and being honest about how Huge our collective and individual challenges and opportunities are.

In the USA if you work, work, work then you might believe you are ok and accomplished and headed for some promised land...good luck with that one.Life is changing the stakes to not being about how hard we work and suffer for our causes but how smart we live and how much love and joy we express, minute to minute, day by day.

Some where in the mix of our beliefs we bought into being small and imperfect as the foundation of our experience.We have no idea if we are perfect or not, we have no idea the intentions of the one that created us so who are we to even have an opinion of what we are. We've even been told we were born in Sin and must earn Gods love. So many of our beliefs have been passed on from generation to generation and regardless of how much suffering and fear those beliefs create we stay loyal to them or at best go into a like minded reaction to them. All aspects of the same way of thinking.

There is nothing sacred here but life itself...our beliefs are not sacred,our educations are not sacred...our sobriety is not sacred...the religions are not sacred..the cows may be, at least they were, like us, created by Life, not the minds of men.

What we are being shown today is the truth that our interpretations of ourselves are simply opinions and always removed from the truth, as truth exists within us as Spirit.We are that Spirit not what we have projected into the world as identity and called it "me". We recover from our identity as "Me" or we live as "me" better or less than, in recovery, small and imperfect, same ol' same ol' , Again, same way of thinking that created the problem in the first place.

All of this point of view applies to our societies and our cultures...all of this applies to our Human world as we create it and then live in it.If we want to change the world we must come to terms with the foundation of our personal beliefs. The world is a projector screen for our beliefs, we act according to our beliefs, we experience based on beliefs and we perceive through the filters of our beliefs...no way of getting around dealing with our beliefs if anything is going to change beyond cosmetics and affiliations.

In my life there is, today, a conscious contact with a presence within me. A presence that is always there and always holding me in unconditional Love and awareness. I feel from that presence that everything is and has always been ok...There is a conscious contact that exists within all of us that when we have brought our attention back to ourselves will reveal to us the thread of life that connects us all.Until we have brought our attention back to ourselves we will continue to live from the insanity of our own projections. We will continue to live from the world around us rather than from the world within us. Bringing our attention back to ourselves will require a great leap of faith. We will have to believe we are worth it and let go of the grand excuses that we are small and imperfect, that there is a measure called Normal, that has some relevance to anything. We will have to let go of our Gods and projections, our agendas and affiliations..our diagnosis and cool cards. We will have to be willing to be happy, joyous and Free...all for the sake of a conscious contact.

Spinning Wheel.

Wednesday evening 7:15 p.m....The orbit of star-ship Lee took an elliptical variance today. Shifts come and we go..onward, choosing, feeling, wondering. I'm wondering , again, what really matters here as I dream my life on Earth? It is so easy to believe so many of the things I've been taught matter, matter, but sometimes, like right now, I KNOW most all those cultural teachings are not the point to this life.There is this place between stepping into a life of absolute faith in what I feel, and I feel deep and still,and that fear that I better be reasonable cuse I have a family and all this stuff that I once thought I owned but now know full well the stuff owns me.

Wouldn't life be amazing if ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE was what we chose to live..it would sure be a HUGE leap of faith from what we are told to live for. See, the feeling of letting go of all this structure of success and responsible American stuff seems to be following me like my shadow. What was real is not anymore and what might be is a giant step from where I sit now and I'm a guy who has lived on the edge all my life so I should be much closer to jumping into the paradigm shift than a lot of others and here I am still sitting talking, or writing, about it.

The ground IS MOVING UNDER OUR FEET. That sensation is real, it's not just you. Paradigm shift is the reality that nothing outside of our center will be familiar as we move into a greater vibration. Life is a band width of frequencies and we are familiar with only a couple variations of those infinite frequencies. Today was a validation for me that the shift is not about the world around us but what we are capable of perceiving that has always been around us, we just were too stuck on what we think we know to see past all our Knowing.If you don't live from your center then good luck cuse chasing the shadows is going to be a black comedy of errors.

Anyhow...what was I saying??? Do you feel what I'm talking about?? Ummm Hummm...We are in for a Ride folks...Safety is no longer going to be a hole card..faith is the ticket now..so get you some..and let go of that life raft...lets rock this Dream....

Soft Green World

I spent the last week in Santa Fe, New Mexico. There were 400 or so people gathered for a Mental Health / Addictions conference and several of them are good friends.Santa Fe is a beautiful place with a history of Deep faith and mystery as well as a true melting pot of cultures and social classes.

Every morning I'd awaken to the sunrise bringing light back into the world. My room had a great view looking North over the roof tops of the old Pueblo toward the Sangre de Cristo Mountains that run from Southern Colorado down into New Mexico.

It is early Spring in the Rockies. There is still a blanket of white spread over the land and Mountains. Some of the trees had begun to bud, almost blooming into the Light of Spring. On my last day we had a Spring Snow, like a mini white out, big wet heavy flakes drifting down to cover the street signs and roof tops.As I watched and walked through the crystal Snow flakes I was touched deep inside by my connection to the soft green hills and pastures of Tennessee. I could sense the way my foot steps fall on the thick green grass that covers so much of The Ranch, my spirit place in Tennessee. Immediately I was aware that behind my thoughts , beliefs and agendas there is a connection to Spirit, to life, that has grown from the deep soil and soft contours of the Tennessee hills.

My attention would shift back and forth from the scene of Santa Fe to my bodies memories of the feeling of being on the land at home, at The Ranch. We have an awareness in the Toltec work of our human ability to be in two places at once. We can be standing in a Plaza in New Mexico and be listening to the sounds of a River in Tennessee both simultaneously. For sure this is one of those experiences you have to have to understand what I'm talking about. Truth is those experiences are not as far fetched as we might want to believe.

My awareness was that a great aspect of my heart is very connected to the soft green landscape of the Tennessee hills and although my personality would like to be lots of other places my heart keeps bringing me back to those hills.

The day before the Snow I was talking with Laurie Ann Levin, a mystical being herself when I mentioned how much Mee and I love Los Angeles and Malibu and she looked me in the eye and said " Yes, but you are very connected to the animals, the horses, and in a deeper way than most. You do your work in Tennessee by a greater calling."
I had no reply to her statement, actually, she didn't say it with any need of a reply, it was what it was and it was the truth.

Flash back to a couple weeks back when I was with Meg Blackburn Losey, a gifted and successful writer, "THE CHILDREN OF NOW" among her credits. Meg is also a channel...to me a channel is a Human who can also be the facilitator for consciousness that's not in a body. Not all that strange really. Meg was channeling and I asked her or her Spirit's " Why am I back in Tennessee?"....she turned staring at me like I'm dumb or something and said " well my dearest, you picked it and now you have a role to complete before you will move on". Of course when Meg channels it is not her personality that is speaking and I knew that. I had been told again, contrary to my personalities confusion, that there is a greater unfolding at work here.

Yesterday I flew home after spending the morning horse back riding over the Pinion and Juniper Hills south of Santa Fe. The snow was still heavy and soft on the ground and I was feeling deep inside a longing to get back to my esposa and little girls and these Tennessee hills.

This morning that same front that brought the snow to New Mexico was pouring rain on Nashville. I've been looking through the stack of business cards collected at the conference and I feel grateful for the true friends and co-creators that I got to share time with in Santa Fe. They all have their unique offerings of spirit into this world of the minds of men and together I expect we shall continue to create greater opportunities for Healing and authenticity in the lives of those seeking such support.

So thanks for the truth Laurie and Meg and to all of you who have found that underneath all our layers there is a most amazing ability to love and be grateful for where we are, where ever we are I hope our paths are not long in crossing again.....Peace Be With You....

Peace- As has Always Been....

More knowledge is not going to bring more peace into our lives. Another teaching, another training, another degree, more initials, none of that is going to bring Peace into our lives. Peace dwells within us like the space between the clouds. We have given so much attention and value to the amount of information or knowledge we hold in our mind while we move through life measuring and judging based on our inventory of knowledge and opinion and the whole time the peace within us goes without our attention or awareness. This is the way of the world today, the way of the world for a long time now.

Until I was offered a point of view that questioned all of my blind faith acceptance of what I had been taught as truth I had no idea that in truth I didn't really believe much of what I was demanding the truth be.I tried to make what I was told right and the whole time , deep inside , I knew something was not ok. This happened with me and religion, with me and recovery, with me and politics with me and my teachers.

In congruent, that's the best way to describe the feeling of what I was trying to believe and what was happening with the energy of those beliefs in my body. Like eating bad food, the stories, "facts", Gospels, and suggestions all felt like a bad case of indigestion. Of course the ones who perpetuated these beliefs and opinions believed what they were offering was "the truth" or did they really? The truth doesn't demand or need defending or require indignant posturing and there was and is a lot of both that goes on with those who have given their faith to their beliefs.

Beyond belief there is the reality of consciousness. The presence of life, the duality of creation, the awareness of experience, the formless mystery of life itself. All of these aspects of existence are of consciousness and we are of consciousness not of form or belief or measure..we do all these things as human and we are not these things.Fear as faith demands something to hold onto , something to carry into the world as proof that we are ok and have "it " figured out. Fear measures against itself and we give our self to fear and ask "Am I good enough now". There is no peace in the faith of fear or the reality of fear as an advisor. Hell is not waiting for us, we are creating hell desperately trying to make our insane beliefs truth.

If God is Love then there is no judgement...there is no less than, there are no victims...there is life and Love and the living of life is not personal, the experiences of life are not personal. Consciousness has no report card beyond the cause and effect of experience as we create experience.No one but us is doing anything to us.

Truth can not be bound by definition, opinion or demand to know. Truth is there with us or without us. We are not the key to truths existence.

Free will has allowed for a lot of weird action on the part of us humans. We are so self important and arrogant in our desperation to rationalize our lives based in fear and need.We live almost completely outside of our center and look in all directions for answers that can not be found anywhere but with in.Interestingly enough we are here now at the time when the way we have been taught to live is coming apart at the seems, that way of living was never anything but story and the story has run it's course.

So if all that you believe was to fall apart around you where would you turn for help? Would you go back to the bank, or your attorney, or your church...would you ever consider sitting and asking within yourself what would Love do here? What would true faith ,which is faith in the mystery not the knowing or believing, what would true faith feel like as the world melts down around you?

Having been sold so many lies in the name of truth and reality...the arrival of the truth in this world will for most appear to be the end of times and for those who awaken to the mystery within the arrival of truth will be the gateway to Heaven on Earth..."the kingdom of Heaven will not be found over there, or behind some special door, the kingdom is not above you or outside of you but the Kingdom of Heaven is, as has always been, within you." It is time..let go.... and Dream from that most amazing Heart of yours....

Time line Peru

After arriving in Lima, a seven hour flight from Atlanta, Georgia, USA, I met up with Meg and Patricia, my co-leaders on this Journey into Peru. I use the word "into" intentionally..we were doing much more than being "in " Peru we were going "into" the heart of this beautiful place of light and dimensions of the mind and spirit.

Our first afternoon we all went down to the beach, La Playa, in Mira Flores. The Ocean in Lima is great, dark and mysterious. There were some 4-6 foot waves so of course I had to rent a surfboard and a wet suit and paddle out. What a great metaphor for my life these days.Paddling out into a new Ocean for the first time is moving into the unknown. Of course all Oceans are related but each has it's own unique feel and energy.There is always a touch of anticipation and anxiety entering a new break for the first time. As I made my way through the white water and out toward the break I was back home once again with the Mother, the Sea. I stayed out for a couple hours playing with the waves and taking in the stark beauty and contrasts of the Lima shore line. There are no beaches there, at least not sandy ones. The Beaches were all cobble stones with tall stone and dirt cliffs rising above the coastal hiway across from the beach. The water was like a warm summer afternoon in California..maybe 65 degrees.

While I was surfing my friend Iva Peele and her cousin were taking pictures of the local surfers with Iva's pin hole camera. You see Iva has this cool camera and a get up of Angel wings, real ones ,feathers and all and a stark white mask that she travels with taking a series of Angels on the edge all over the world.Surfers are always into the unique and creative so there was no shortage of volunteers to don the angel garb and pose on that rocky beach. When I came in from the waves there were great stories of the whole production and a cast of characters hanging out with the Angel women.

The next day was the opening of our Journey into the mystery of Peru, past , present and future. With no idea of what lie ahead I said lets go to the Cathedral in Old Lima. The Cathedral of San Fransisco is a beacon of light on top and hell below. There are 500 year old Catacombs beneath this beautiful Church that hold the bones of 25 to 50 thousand native Peruvians from the time of the Inquisitions.Before we ever saw the remains Iva stopped and asked me if I felt odd here, yes, I did and the feeling was not one of light and beauty. She immediately got a terrible head ache and wanted to leave but I was interested to find out what was beneath this Cathedral that felt so heavy and suffer able.The further we walked the more amazed and intrigued I was with the great adobe wells filled with thousands of bones all stacked and organized like a proud display of the old Catholic Church. It was sick, twisted, sad and insane all at the same time. This was a mirror of human darkness. To make it even stranger as we walked around we ran into a Cardinal with his entourage of Priests all taking in the history and glory of the Church. God from God , Light from Light , True God From True God. This was the underworld, for real, and we were walking through the history of the humanity with all our suffering, fear and insanity displayed out for all to see.

At one particularly beautiful display of skulls I stopped, took a braid of Sweet grass out of my medicine bag, lit it and gave all my love and light to these beings who became subjects to the legacy of Human meanness and power gone mad.That was enough, we had to get out of there and again on our way out we walked into the Cardinal and his crew as they prayed for the souls of their Church's victims.I needed Sunlight, air and the blue sky to cleanse me of the feelings of hopelessness and Hell that welled out from those Catacombs.

We stopped outside and I took out my sweet grass again with some Agua de Florida and we all said prayers into the light and cleansed our selves.

Walking away I knew this journey into Peru was going to be a great opportunity for me to let go of my personal Hell and my own connection to the Inquisitions that I have waged against myself and my life.There was nothing in those dark corridors that has not been present in my life by my own doing. I have judged with out compassion, I have feared from ignorance, and I have moved with those in power when I knew that their ways were not ok but went along anyway.I accept my inheritance of Human suffering and blindness and I will not be defined by it or settle for it. Through out the last 12 years I have unraveled my attachments and relationships to the world I was born into. Life has so much greater love and opportunity for us than our minds ability to understand or control.

That was just the beginning of my twelve day initiation of spirit with the Spirit Of the Lightning and Apus of the Inca world. The rest of the story will come later...for now I need to remember that accepting what is with out question is the way of a world gone mad, the truth is within us and it is from with in that the dream of Heaven will be reborn on Earth. Peace be with you all..Vaya con Dios, Lee

Sunday Morning Ease

Yesterday was our second "First Saturday Medicine Wheel and Sweat Lodge Ceremony" at The Ranch. That makes today Sunday.Being a Southern Man , no relation to Neil Young's' Southern Man, Sunday has always held a softness that I wished would flow through to the rest of the week, but never did. At least not til now.

As a child I lived the reality I was born into. I lived under the veils and direction of a way of seeing the world that was in full motion before I arrived. Being one who has "inherited" many things over the course of my life I'm just now realizing the original inheritance was what people called "reality" at the time of my birth. I was born into the great dramatic production of life that the world around me deemed REAL.For most people that version of REAL or it's evolution is what they still live today as "REAL".

In my life I grew up with cattle and horses as well as Oceans and Beaches. Those are still the scenes that call me home from my wanderings.I can remember the perspective that I held based on my inheritance, of a love of the Cattle biz, and I can feel how that inherited perspective has evolved to the relationship I live with the cattle, horses and goats today. The present, evolved from the past.For a long time I lived always trying to live up to what I thought my Dad or Step-Dad would have approved of. I wanted to make them proud. To be a "good" son was to do what was expected of me as though I actually knew what that expectation was or that those expectations were set and not continuously shifting according to the moods or feelings of the one having them.I couldn't possibly know what my Dad or Step dad were thinking , not really, I'm not them. That awareness has only come over the last few years though so I did my best to be good enough in their eyes. That was then, a lot of years and a lot of fears later I'm living my relationship with what would appear to be the same world they lived in and is not the same at all.

The world I live in is my creation just as they lived theirs. I don't live according to expectations any longer I live according to how I feel in the moment and according to what feels to be in the best interest of the integrity that is inherent in my spirit.What we did yesterday at The Ranch with the Medicine Wheel and Sweat lodge Ceremony would have been quite a streach for my parents to understand or appreciate. Yesterdays experience was something that is very REAL for me, in fact more REAL than the business I do or the rest of the world I spend my life engaged with. I have evolved from how I might live as a good American citizen to how I might live should I serve the presence of life that flows through me moment by moment.The constructs of culture and society are merely , there, not really important or sacred just "a" way of organizing peoples so that the system operates smoothly. Well, not so smooth these days..maybe because so many saw our systems as all powerful or sacred and beyond question for way too long.
Doesn't really matter now, why, the fact is, the system is caving in under it's own weight of empty integrity. Lies can't hold off the truth forever.Fear is not much of a foundation for anything, except suffering.

This morning the birds woke me up. The morning bird songs are already my favorite piece of our little Nashville home. Laying in bed at 5:30 they sound like thousands of happy beings calling out through the trees, "Hey Man, life is good, get your ass up and go make some coffee...come sit on the porch with us" I'll literally chuckle to myself while Mee and Lola sleep away next to me.

As I poured the water in yesterdays Sweat lodge I gently slipped into that same space where all creation is aware , alive and flowing through this world like a great river of life. There were 20 of us sitting in the circle of life yesterday. Twenty people from twenty different directions , different stories , different "realities", all sitting around a glowing pile of stones in the blue black darkness of the Sweat Lodge.Sitting in that circle is a reconnection of the truth of what we are and a re framing of the Belief of what we are. Everyone there left feeling different about them self and their "reality". Most said that and the others , you could see it plain as the wind in the trees.

My world is softer this morning and will be softer tomorrow and all the rest of the week because I am aware today that how my world feels is my doing not the worlds doing. Ease comes to those who allow ease to be with them.Free will is a matter of choice, practice it with intention or get drug along behind the wagon of the world. That's our option.
Crazy as I may get I always remember ease is with me. Sometimes turning inward is the only way to move forward.That Sweat Lodge is one of the finest turning inward places there is. For now life is ease and I'm going to play with my two littlest daughters..maybe we'll see if we can understand what the birds are talking about....Peace be with you and come join us the first Saturday of any month...we'll be here.

A QUESTION OF SPIRITUALITY-Mystery and Recovery

My name is Lee and I'm a ...human being. My being human comes with a lot of information, coding, traits, definitions, stories and most of all Mystery. Working and creating within the paradigm of what is called the "recovery" world is a great format for witnessing how being human interacts with all the constructs that surround us as life and culture in this world.

"Recovery" as we refer to it was born of the experiences of Bill W. and the subsequent evolution of the 12 steps as, first, a fellowship, and then a format for conducting the business of recovery known as "treatment". In my personal experience I found a great deal of mystery in the BIG BOOK of A.A., mystery that seemed to be lost to the literal translations of those that I connected with during my time of attending meetings and seeking support as I "recovered" my life. When I read "and we do recover" I believed it and so I have.
You see what I have learned over the years is that our human mind seeks the validation to support what that mind has come to believe the truth to be. The mind believes itself. When we live our lives following the peculiarities of our mind we will seek to associate with people that support or agree with what we have accepted as "truth". Truth in this instance is merely what we have chosen to believe. Believing our self or anyone else does not truth make.Belief is belief, truth exists whether we believe in it or not.

Truth is the presence of Mystery that fills in all the spaces between what we think we know and all the rest of creation.Our mind demands to "know". Our mind has no real concept of that Mystery that surrounds all of us, all the time. We attempt to live as though we have life all figured out and all the answers are contained in our vast wealth of information and knowledge.I was not taught as a child to live a relationship with the Mystery as well as the world. My awareness has grown from my restless natural tendency to not accept what should be good enough as an answer. I became my own guinea pig in search of a true, authentic Spiritual connection.The rest is my experience and has led me to the freedom I was seeking all those years of living unhappy, scared and crazy.

In our culture we are taught that we are only as "good" or valuable as is our contribution to society. We must fit in and be a part of the system to have real value. From how much money we make to how "good" we look, to the number of initials we attach to the end of our name, Americans are taught that self worth is a measurable commodity and by following the rules set for us we can and should achieve happiness. If we don't choose to follow the rules, well, then your on your own.If you follow the rules and don't make it to happy and satisfied then either you are ungrateful or you just need to keep chasing the shadow of success. These same rules have been attached to spirituality as organized religion. Play by the rules of your chosen religion or? Even in "recovery" we are taught that we should follow the "program" or go it alone with some associated label like non-compliant or seeking an easier softer way. There is not much room for our unique Spiritual nature in these structures. Comply or be an outcast.

Addressing that Mystery as the greatest aspect of our true nature is not usually acknowledged in the process of healing and Recovery. Spirituality has become reduced down to a definition or lesser aspect of a process that gives greater importance to how we measure up in the eyes of our therapists, if your a client or our colleagues, if a professional, whichever fits.We have given such power to the medical aspects of Recovery, medications and diagnosis, that symptom management has taken the place of getting to the source of the dis-ease, our disconnect from the Mystery within.Certainly Medicine is an important aspect of Recovery and it is just an aspect. As long as we live with fear of the unknown, Mystery,we will never "know" the truth that can only be found within.Connecting to the Truth within opens us up to all that life holds as possibility and frees us from our addiction to need and judgment as a measure of happiness and success.

There is nothing new about my point of view. You can read it in Eckharts Tolle's work or A COURSE IN MIRACLES or the teachings of don Miguel Ruiz or the Kaballah or any one of the many mystery schools that have been sources of expansive consciousness for thousands of years.

Those mystery schools were the living of what we call spirituality and have survived by requiring their participants to live their own unique creative relationship with the cause and effect of the respective schools practices and teachings. The mystery school is not a literal, tells you what to think or do process.
A mystery school is alive, spontaneous, creative and demanding that to participate you must let go of what you think you know or your experience will be limited by your attachment to that knowing.

As one who lives a relationship with the mystery and also with the world of recovery I believe it is time we examined all these things that we say we believe or know and hold sacred as though to question them would somehow be disrespectful.What are we afraid of , really? We certainly have not achieved a level of success with what we offer our clients that would allow us the privilege of being beyond question. We're just not that good.

There can be no happy, joyous and free without the integration of Spirit and mystery, with knowledge, science, belief and faith.

This is an amazing time in the history of this world. There are no aspects of what we humans have accepted as truth or fact that are not going to be challenged. This is the time to let go and let that God within merge with our having lived for what the world would offer us as good enough. Maybe, as many of the ancient prophecies have proclaimed, Heaven is returning to Earth...maybe Hell...For me the less I hang onto the easier it is to rise to the surface.

How about you, what are you hanging onto that may be in need of questioning? How much of an awareness do you live with the Mystery? Have you recovered? Will we allow Heaven or demand hell? It's all a matter of courage and choice, just like we tell our clients...

Whirlwind

It is Friday morning, Febuary 13th, the day before Valentines day.I'm sitting in the basement of our newly leased home in Nashville. This is my space, the "man cave" as Mee, my esposa, tagged it. These last few weeks of moving , shifting, driving back and forth to the Ranch, have been a whirl wind of feeling, inspiration, sadness and creativity. I left Tennessee 7 years ago when Mee and I hooked up. I left for the west coast, Malibu and the waves of my childhood dreams. All through those seven years I felt a thread of connection that kept pulling my attention and heart to look back toward Tennessee but not enough of a pull to come back to stay.
My m.o. has been to create and move on, while looking for another or other home base. Tennessee will always be a home base but like leaving your parents house as a kid it's not where I want to settle down.Working in Malibu with three different recovery programs was a good experience and a frustrating one..frustrating cuse what I would see as vision seemed to be lost to the people I worked for or with. When it comes to creating doorways back to integrity I won't compromise for the sake of fear or maximizing profits. Staying with my vision has been a big part of The Ranch, here in Tennessee, evolving into a most spectacular offering to those willing to recreate their lives away from suffering toward what they are inspired to live as happy, joyous and free individuals.
Over time people have come to refer to what I do as "Spiritual" work or spiritual recovery. With my friend Gary Seidlers encouragement I started SPIRIT RECOVERY as a brand name to use for what would be created in addition to the treatment center work. Spirit recovery is an accurate label...that is what we are offered should we decide to really undo our attachments to how we were taught, as children, to see and live in this world.Our Spirit is our truth, our essence. Our spirit is born into this world and is not of this world. When our physical body dies our spirit is free to return to source should we die with the awareness that we are not "of this world".
Working in the treatment business leaves very little room for a practice of Spirit as the truth of who or what we are and who or what we might recover. When recovery is all about measuring up, then fitting in and following rules is more important than authenticity and connection to that Great Mystery that is the truth of life.We throw around the term Spirituality as a component of recovery as though it is a separate external part of us, something we aspire to that's out on the horizon with our higher power or God..somewhere "out there".
There is no out there. There is no separation between recovery, spirituality, clean days, peace, freedom or suffering. Those are all just words that all have a different exact meaning depending on who you might be talking to at the time. Even the word spirituality will morph and shift as we move through life, if we are paying attention to anything beyond what we believe.
My relationship with myself is my relationship with God or Spirit. I can't possibly treat God or spirit any better than I treat myself. I am an aspect of the one that created me so my closest relationship with God or spirit is me. If I would honor God then I must honor myself , if I would love God then I must love myself. When I've had this conversation with others, many times I'm told that I have a selfish point of view...I don't think so. Me being less than is a self important, excuse for not having the willingness to accept the truth within me as my guiding light. There is no program or Church or book of prophecy that can even begin to touch the living presence that animates this form of mine.Unless creation is an inconsistent factory of life then there is perfection within each creation and how that perfection is expressed is Creators business, not mine. My role is to love it all and have faith in that mystery that I'll never "understand" ,and, will always live in closest relationship with.That mystery is the truth, how we define and measure that mystery is our folly and choice. So what, big deal...
With all that said, my return to Tennessee is my honoring that calling from within that I just can't ignore today. I tried, even when I'd be surfing in my beloved Mexico I'd hear that voice within say.."it's time to go back to The Ranch for a while", "oh come on". I'd plead, "this is where I belong, we love it here, this is our mothers land and I'm being good"...no reply, just that feeling that, damn it, I gotta go back.You see I love that voice and the feeling that comes with it even when I don't like what it's saying. I honor that voice because I honor myself and that voice comes from the deepest aspect of myself.My personality won't be happy, not at first anyway, and my physical body still feels sad about leaving Mexico but I am not bound by the yearnings of my physical body.I take care of my physical body but my body does not own me.
I learn from life as I live my life and I pay attention as well as I can to all the aspects of my being human. I am Human and through that relationship I gain experience and wisdom and that's between me and life not me and the World. There are very few institutions in this world that I choose to give power to. As I have learned that peace can only be found within I have let go of needing the world to validate my insecurities. I have methodically taken my power back from all those places, people and things that I had given power to prior to my waking up.There is no judgement involved only an exercising of responsibility. I am completely responsible for what I empower in my life.
As my whirlwind of movement settles back down this heartland of America will be our home again....until the next mission or adventure or "spiritual" calling. Meanwhile , back at The Ranch.....it's time to go to work.

And The World goes Around.....

I'm sitting at my kitchen table in my Casa Azul, The Dreaming House, Teotihuacan , Mexico. On the stero is a mix cd I made last January before we moved out of our Seaboard Road home in Malibu and made the journey to our little beach house on the warm, wet, west coast of Mexico. The music from one frame of life bridging the scenes of two more recent frames...there's Krishna Das...ommmmm ahhh...he's not a human, he's Gods soundtrack appearing as man and his chants are vibrating through this little blue house in one of the worlds most amazing sacred places where somehow I found a door way to the heaven that lives in me.

My flight from Nashville to Mexico City left at 5:30 this morning so I've been up since 2:30 and the spacey perspective I'm in right now is perfect.In the distance there are giant fireworks going off all around the Pueblo, this is fiesta week for the Pueblo of San Sebastian Xolapa, Teotihuacan.When it's the Fiesta for your Patron Saint the whole Pueblo get's in the street , goes to mass , shoots off fireworks, drinks great quantities of tequila and gorges on killer fresh tamales. My timing is perfect.

Walking outside at 3:30 this morning was the beggining of a reality bending day in the life of reality spinning me.Everything was covered in frost. There was no moon or stars just a flat midnight blue sky hanging heavy with cold artic air. Artic air that had drifted all the way from, the arctic, to freeze the world of middle Tennessee in place.

Climbing in my pickup was a cold on the ass wake-up call. Quick, turn on that seat heater, I remember thinking it was a stupid accessory in a pick-up when I bought the truck but right then it was great.

At Nashville International Airport I went through the security line as usual til the Security lady said she needed to search my carry-on bag. No problemo, two pillows,some books,my day timer,and a Huichol shoulder bag that I use on Journeys to carry my tools.The security lady thought the Huichol bag was suspect so she reached in an pulled out a bag of tobacco I carry for ceremony, she smelled it and looked at me like..strange. Next she reached in and pulled out a Cheynne Peyote Rattle with my favorite old horses tail hair hanging from the handle. This time she shook her head in disbelief, again looking at me but not saying anything. Next, a beaded turkey bone whistle that comes in handy calling to the spirits and allies of the other dimensions. I was all ready to tell her just that when she just grunted and placed it on the table.One more reach into the bag and she found a brass tibetan bell that I picked up at a great shop on Bermuda and learned to use to tune up the space your in from my friend Frank "Rico" Hayhurst in Peru.Next was a small bag of sage from Malibu and a little Christmas ornament that Lola put in my bag the night before.
"So just what do you do with this stuff?", the officer asked with a disturbed glare. "Their just tools", I replied as I put everything back in the baq and sat down to put my shoes back on. "Hummm" she grunted and went back to task keeping America safe from people stranger than me.

Creedence Clearwater Revival is now running through "Suzie Q" like it was 1972, fireworks in the background and here I sit blogging on life as Lee.It's all so bizzare and interesting. This must be the work of the Gods to jump dimensions, soundtracks, realities and lingos with just a little love and attention.

Tomorrow a group of courageous characters will join me here at The Dreaming House for a journey through the Dreaming mind of Quetzelquatal, the avatar of Teotihuacan. While I'm leading their journey there will be empty waves breaking in front of our Sayulita beach house and below freezing temps at The Ranch in Tennessee.We'll all be one day closer to December 13, 2012 and maybe one more human somewhere out there will wake up to the power that they hold to live and love life without conditions.Oh yeah and our furniture will be on it's way from Malibu to the Ranch. Easy does it...keep your tools handy and be polite to the Homeland security officers,they are doing their best.
Sing it Elton, "And now I know Spanish Harlem are not just pretty words to say, and I thank the lord for the people I have found...while Mona Lisa's and Mad Hatters sons of bankers, sons of Lawyers turn around and say good morning to the light....VAYA CON DIOS

Way too Much Thinking

WHAT WERE YOU THINKING! Heard that before, right? I've said it to myself a million times, what were you thinking....

Thinking is the problem here, not the solution. I think because I've been taught, programmed, demanded of and supported in thinking being the way to live my life.As long as I'm thinking I'm pretty much out of range for any other source of inspiration or source of wisdom. In my working with people that are in "recovery", italicized because I don't care for that label being an identity as though people in recovery are separate from all the other people walking around on the planet.Once again, recovery people have been taught to "think" they are different, not normal, as though there is a normal, not.In my work I've asked many times "If you have a problem what do you do about coming up with a solution?" You think about it, right.

Thinking seems to mostly come from old experiences, thoughts, ideas, info, etc...from stuff we've ingested over the course of our lives.All that knowledge is fuel for our minds machinations about who we are, where we are, why we are, are we this, are we that, how do we fit in, how can we be better...Lets go one more step..the mind says, " Is that reasonable?" and we answer our mind, that's what we do, we answer our own mind as though our mind were in charge..is it? Is your mind in charge of your life? Have you ever asked your other self, not the mind self but the one that listens to the mind self, have you ever asked, " Am I my mind", Of course unless you have some awareness beyond the tyranny of your mind you won't get an answer that the mind doesn't craft to fit into it's familiar program. That process alone distorts any new sources of perspective from getting through unscathed.

Beyond all the chatter of mind voices there is a presence that speaks from a deeper, softer, place. Listening to the presence touches feeling and our body. We literally feel the words within. This presence is of the Heart, the sacred heart, eternal heart, the heart of the Mother, Creator, Dreamer. The voice of the heart will not compete with the voices of the mind. Truth has no sense of competition and no need to be right. Truth as brought forward through the voice of the heart is the Divine speaking as Human.

The challenge for all of us who live with "reasonable" as our guide is the challenge to take attention away from the relentless chatter of mind blabber and shift that attention to the feeling and presence of heart language. Living loyal to the mind is living with reaction as the great decider, no W jokes intended but it fits. Our world is the result of how we humans have reacted to our experiences in this world. There wasn't much choice involved, not really. The choices were all limited to the reasons list of options.While we create all this history the Heart goes along for the ride waiting , waiting, for our attention to return to that space within us that has never forgotten what the voice of truth sounds like.That space within us that has been the witness to all the insanity of how we've come to live life in this world.

In my recovery work I've seen over and over people trying to "get it" when getting it is just another aspect of the mind ruling it's domain, you, me, them. We already have "it" we just don't know how to listen and feel with "it"."It" is the presence, truth, Love of life speaking through us and too us. No amount of thinking can make that connection, no amount of figuring it out or being good enough or doing it right can make that connection. That connection has never gone anywhere. That connection is what we are.

Thinking is great as a tool to work through this matrix of life on Earth. Thinking is a great gift when used responsibly. Funny thing is the humans have become thinking junkies and the thinking has lost it's connection to the source that gave it a home in the first place.

My last year living in the Heart of Mexico has brought my attention back to that presence within me and now I see that presence as my guiding light and greatest companion. I'll still think too much but not for nearly as long a time. Ok..time to go...I love you life...Thanks for the little things...Lee

2009 Earth Log- Deep in the Milky Way

The morning came soft and quiet. Middle Tennessee, January, Sunrise.
It's cold outside, white frost blankets the pastures around our double wide. I gotta get up and turn on the heater, the electric heat is too much to sleep well ,so one of us turns it up to 70 degrees when we wake up.
The cows are in the pasture across the road, too far to hear them from inside the house, it's Silent except for the sounds of Bella Lola and Mee sleeping.
Memories flash, I still visit my Dad in the early morning memories that float around my consciousness, he loved Ranch life, cattle, early morning and cold clear air. The storm door on our trailer lets me open the main door and let the light in without freezing us out.
There is a fresh buzz in my body. A new vibe for what I've connected to in my dreaming what my returning to The Ranch will bring. I feel alive and excited and, flash, I'm back in our little beach house in Sayulita looking at the waves, sad creeps into my feelings, sad to be moving on and excited to be coming back to home , Tennessee.
Over the last year I've lived a fantasy and a reality. I've tried to soak up as much of my being in Mexico as I could and know completely that She, The Mother, the heart of Mexico and her people, now beats in my body, in my cells and will do so until I've moved on from being the me in this body. She is only as distant as my attention is turned away from her place within me.

2009 the day of the Lord, When the divinity returns to us....That's Miguel's "Circle of Fire Prayer", I send you my love and respect don Miguel, and thank you for showing up for the children of San Pauncho last October.Dreaming Heaven is our business and what a great business it is.This is the day that I make the commitment to The Mother, La Virgincita, Tonantzin,Maya..our Divine Mother embodied in this Earth and in our form, I make the commitment that for me this is her year and I will carry within me her presence and compassion stopping to remember that she is with me always.

One of my creations will be here at The Ranch where we have an old well that's waited for me to hear her voice..."remember me?", she asks, " I am the well of the Place of the Women in Teotihuacan, I am the heart of the world and I am here within you and around you. Bring me your love and your wounded and we will heal their sadness and fears. Build me a Capilla and decorate me with beauty and dreams and a great light will shine from this place." She called me back from my beach in Mexico to be her helper, of course I say yes,,,although I did ask more than once "are you sure, you know I love my spot in Sayulita and I'll be good"..That's what faith is for me, the willingness to do what needs doing before I let my personality limit me to what is known.

Deep in the Milky Way there is a beautiful green and blue planet that is inhabited by a species of amazing Dreamers who are coming closer to awakening to the truth of their Dreaming. 2009 is here, we are here, the truth is here..all of creation is supporting our coming to the light. That calling has been building for years and all we need do is let go and Dream from Faith.

In the background Mee is running the vacuum cleaner, Bella is decorating a New Years cake for the Laughing Winds Party later and Lola just dumped a whole bottle of chocolate chips on the floor. Thank you Creator for Loving me like this..I am so grateful for it all....Feliz Ano Nuevo...Listen! ....Our Mother is calling you too and she's so happy to have you listen.
Peace Be With You....Lee