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.