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.