HICKORY WIND

Life’s mostly been either a matter of principal to me or a free for all. There’s never been a lot of room in between. Seems I have a propensity for passion and going against the stream. Living inspires me. After trying as hard as I could to live according to how I was raised, and I’m not saying I was ever very good at that one, I decided to take the outside edge of the main stream. That outside edge where there is no guardrail.
At 14 my mom bought me a guitar and sent me to lessons. The guitar was a hit. I loved it. I’d sit in my room and hold it like a sweet, blue eyed, girl friend, trying to find the chords to make the music play. The lessons didn’t get far. As soon as I had a few chords down I was off on my own. That’s a pattern I’ve lived my whole life. All I need is just enough guidance to feel my way along and I’ll take it from there. That won’t make a disciplined artist but it sure sets you up to live it your own way and learn from falling rather than wearing out the training wheels. Somewhere early on I was turned on to Gram Parsons and a song called Hickory Wind. Being a real live Southern boy Grams lonesome soul matched my way of looking at the world and I was determined to sing my way into the sunset. I fell in love with the passions of the heart and that longing to be free and lonely. Life was the great mystery and I was out to find my share of the shadows and the clouds.

As the years have passed that longing to be lonely gave way to loving life. Attachments came and went with the years. After falling off a few of those no guard rail edges I realized having a soft place to fall was a good thing so I worked my way into the Ranch life, cattle, horses, open sky and still waters. Seemed the seasons of the heart had more bearing on my way of life than the seasons from spring to fall. Somehow by a most amazing grace I made a full circle and the scene of the crime became my saving grace. A Ranch was transformed to a healing place where the Spirit of the land held the key to the awakening that was so desperately needed by all of us that made our way there. Even with that I was out on the edge but I’d had enough experience to slow down a bit on the curves.

Then one day a friend gave me a CD of some old Gram Parsons songs and Hickory Wind brought me back to a time when the whole world looked to be the greatest adventure waiting to be told. As I listened I felt a river of feelings and memories that old hook of Spanish moss and Hickory Trees was still alive deep inside. My soul is still southern born, in fact, the southern extended all the way to central Mexico.

As I travel between the worlds of my dreams I now can say a prayer in Spanish and Dream with the Pyramids of the old Sorcerers. As far as I may go, a few chords of Hickory Wind will bring me right back home again.
I still love life and passion still drives the wheels on my truck. Realizing that being me was what I was really missing during the crazy years, I don’t waste time trying to be anything else, and that’s freedom and that’s all I ever asked for really. So here’s to you Gram…”In South Carolina, there’s many tall Pines…. I remember the Oak trees, we used to climb and it makes me feel better, each time it begins, calling me home…Hickory Wind”.

Director of Reality

In my life I have always lived a dual relationship with the world around me. While it would seem our point in being human is to be Human, in a body, with emotions, passion, desires, accomplishments, I have always been more comfortable with imagination and the mysterious world of nature, space, spirit and the felt but unseen.

When I found my-self to great a mess to keep on living the way I had come to live as a man in the world I was almost immediately offered reminders that there is a much greater reality interwoven into and beyond the forms of the world. I had to get outside of my reality to find a connection to what would inspire me to keep moving forward on my path of transformation and recovery.I had to wake up.
That crossroads in my life was a big one, one of those no turning back kind of decisions. Jump in the river and you get wet. Let go of your hold on the throat of life and you may just realize how great it feels to breathe. There is no one-way of living life that is “it”. “Life” is it and however you choose to live, it is the living that is the point. The nature of our experiences is cause and effect, action reaction, legacy in motion.

There is a very interesting dance between the experience of what we have chosen and what comes our way as the world turns around us. To become a master of the choosing is a great accomplishment and a sure way to become a Director of Reality, as you know it. That has been my mission for some time, to become The Director of Reality as Lee lives it. The learning curve is a long one and the rewards so far are absolutely worth the investment. What better use is there of time than to develop life as an Art, as the Toltec’s referred to our Life on Earth. I have learned some practices that seem to be valid on the journey so far.

1. Find a way to enjoy what you are doing until you can be doing what you enjoy. Living with passion for the day to day-in life is one of the best gifts you can give yourself and the world.

2. Develop real staying power. Have guts enough to keep showing up even when you are bored, tired, uninspired. Until a person learns staying power they will never get far with their life’s art.

3. Life is extremely multi-dimensional, pay attention to all the subtleties. If you are only working for one aspect of your experience i.e. a paycheck, or winning the game, then know you are totally dumbing down what is a huge expansive offering from life. As Socrates said in “Way of The Peaceful Warrior”, there is never nothing going on.

4. Listen with your heart. Use your reasoning mind as a second opinion not the primary voice in your life.

5. Do what is necessary to learn the distinction between the Physical body, the emotional body and the Spiritual body, which are not separate at all but we have been taught to see them as such and there is great power in learning the unique traits of each and then integrating them together again. We are taught nothing of the Art of Being Human and that leads to insanity.

6. Be very mindful of what you put into your physical body as food, drink, drugs, etc..The physical body has a frequency to it. Like a tuning fork if you fill it with garbage it will not stay in tune. To grow energetically we must care for the instrument we experience this world through or we will bleed energy that is necessary to fulfill our dreams.

7. Walk a lot. Park far from where you are going and walk through the world with your eyes up and open to the life around you. Breathe deep and feel the weather, the ground under your feet, say hello to people. Be Alive.

8. You have no real idea of who or what you are and that is actually not important at all. Be alive and follow your heart. Pay attention to the reality you are dwelling in, you have created it through your choices, karma, and exchanges of energy with Life. You are completely responsible for your life, no one else is, so use that power to choose and live and do not get stuck in your own limiting stories and narrow interpretations of reality. We will never figure reality out as Humans so enjoy it and lighten up. There are no definitions that can contain what you really are, watch it with definitions and knowledge, knowledge is way over rated on the happy life scale.

So many aspects of my life today are directly the result of what I have dreamed of, asked for and intended to be, that when I take it all in I am humbled and in great gratitude to Life and creation for allowing me to be me and to my self for having courage enough to not settle for what I’ve been offered as good enough. I appreciate and see the flow of it with eyes wide open.
What have you learned from your living life that you can identify as your principals? Not what you have been told to live as principals but what have you experienced as real, in action principals? There is no substitute for being authentic, that is what you are if you would be true to yourself and to the one that created you. How authentic are you? Really? This is an amazing life. See you around….

Vaya Con Dios, Lee

Feeling my Way Back

I have to stop to write. Seems like since my last post I haven't stopped til last weekend at CIRCLES OF LIGHT. This is Sunday Morning and Waylon is singing in the kitchen downstairs, i-pod style, man I first met Waylon Jennings in 1978 in Nashville. I had just moved to Nashville to be a singer, to follow my dreams. There weren't any i-pods in 1978 but by God there were some real heavyhearted soulful singers around Nashville. I miss how authentic the music was back then.
Like the rest of the culture of the USA authenticity is dying like the Bee's.

My Princes Know it All cooked eggs and miso soup for breakfast, a healing your soul kind of mix that is our life today. When Mee and I met we lived on different planets. Her's was Los Angeles, the City of the Angels and mine was Piney River Cattle Co. , Tennessee, land of the family legacy and my waking up place. From the outside you'd have never given us a snowballs chance in Bermuda of becoming a family. Just goes to show you how off our perception is when it comes to really seeing who we are underneath the trappings of surviving in this culture. We stuck, together, and grew in all directions like light spreading from a star. These days she listens to Marty Robbins and Loretta Lynn as much as Lady Gaga or Juanes. We fell in love with life together. California, Mexico, Tennessee, dreaming our dreams, together and now with Isabella Lee and Lola LillyAna Pauline, we meet in bed at night and talk about how we are and what we want together.We miss Mexico, the Heart of that beautiful Country and her people. I miss the ocean, where I was born, by the great waters of this Earth.

Then there is Tennessee, Tennessee has become a portal all it's own. From the floods came a deep lasting journey into the Underworld. I was there a long time. Reconnecting with why I was here in the first place and why was it that I was working so hard to keep this relationship alive and growing. The Ranch with all it's beauty, healing magic and soul almost fell into that great void of the underworld and was lost. Just in time a new relationship came to bring a new aspect of integrity to The Ranch and our families relationship to Tennessee, the Ranch, Life and creation. You see Mee and I live to be creative, that's a big part of what connects us. Creativity is life and life is light and that light has to flow for us. So we fit together bringing our visions to life.

The Ranch brought a group of guys from the West coast, California, another love of our families, to the rescue. As one Ranch relationship was dying hard another was born of that light.
Today we have torn down the old commissary building at The Ranch. It was built in 1836 and it was time. I saved most all the materials and they will be resurrected in their own time. We also took down the medical house to make way for a new structure, new life, new dreams. That's how it is for us. Dreaming means not knowing exactly and trusting with Faith to go for it anyway. Feel your way into the next day, the next choice the next opportunity.
My teacher don Miguel Ruiz just had a new Heart transplanted in his chest. A miracle of modern medicine. As I give gratitude for Miguels life I give gratitude for all life, for so many opportunities and so much love and laughter.Miguel will now bring a new light to his gifts to this world as will The Ranch as will each of us that awakens to the greatest gift of all, the moment and all that fills that moment with life and wonder. Somethings coming and we are it..May Peace be with you all..Ometeotl

RISING WATERS- PART 2

RISING WATERS- PART 2…..

When I got to The Ranch I had to see my Spirit House. I had Spirit House created as the centerpiece for the community of The Ranch. I wanted a special place to honor the courage and intent that reclaiming our lives from the insanity of this world requires. The watermark was about 4.5 feet up on the outside wall. I knew the floor had cracked, Rusty the manager of my Cattle company had gone inside in the middle of the night on Saturday when the water receded and had called me to tell me it was really bad. I was not looking forward to seeing the damage. Inside were three Incan quipoos, the string books that the people of the Incan world used to record information and send messages to one another. Quipoo’s are multi- dimensional communication tools, for real. My good friend Jorge Luis Delgado had given me five quipoos when I was in Peru on my first trip and had told me they were to be brought back to the Ranch and I would know what to do with them. He said they were a bridge between the worlds and I was a bridge person and was supposed to have these keys to the Andean world. When we finished the Spirit House I had the quipos framed in shadow boxes and hung them in the entrance foyer. You could feel them when you walked in the door.

In the back room, the big meeting room, there were also large oil paintings of the four Arch Angels, Miguel, Raphael, Gabriel, and Uriel that I’d bought from a great street artist in Cuzco. On another wall was a golden mask of the Buddha and across form him was an original oil of the Christ painted by the pastor of the Pinewood Baptist Church, which he had given the Ranch as a gift. On the table beneath the Christ was a statue of Tonantzin, The Virgin of Guadalupe that had been in our home when we were living in Mexico. She had traveled from the beaches of Sayulita, Nayarit, Mexico to Tennessee to bless our Spirit House.

As I walked in the door I was numb, like I was watching me walk in through a scene in a Movie. Straight ahead were the 500-year-old quipo’s hanging like nothing had happened. They were not touched, not wet, nothing. Immediately I looked through the doorway to the back wall of the meeting room and the paintings of the angels were also on the wall, perfect. I was standing in the midst of a building of wrecked furniture covered in mud 6 inches deep and these two sets of art were hanging in their places by grace. Walking through the door into the meeting room on my right the Buddha mask was also in place untouched as was the painting of Jesus and still standing on the table beneath the Christ was the statue of Guadalupe Tonantzin, the Mother. The floor beneath my feet was blown up, cracked and lifted 7 or 8 inches from the pressure of the waters that blew through the concrete slab to get into the building. Everything was a total wreck and these symbols of faith and consciousness were all still holding their places in our Spirit House. My deep sadness was overwhelmed by the sense of a greater knowing that our Dreaming Heaven on Earth will be held above the rising water, faith is not a belief but a relationship with the mystery, the Unknown and this was how the mystery works. I smiled and knew this was something more than I would understand anytime soon.

My next stop was our little house in the back of the property. It was just a double wide, a double wide that Mee and I had moved into 8 years ago when I decided to turn our beautiful Ranch home into an eating disorders program house. We were living in L.A. half the time anyway and the women that came to The Ranch suffering from Eating Disorders needed their own space and program for healing so the decision was an easy one. The double wide was the last house on The Ranch available and it wasn’t big or nice enough for a client house so we hooked it up with oriental rugs and antiques and my favorite western art. For sure we had the coolest double wide in Hickman County. I used to kid Mee about her moving from Hollywood to a trailer in the Holler…That little house had been home though. Bella had known it all her 7 years and Lola loved her “ranch house” as she called it. Their room had been hand painted with Buddha’s and butterflies, fairies and sunflowers. It was a little girl’s wonderland. My greatest sadness was my girls losing their “ranch house”. I had lost my farm home when I was a kid and never realized that that sadness was still there deep inside and now it was coming to visit my girls.

The water had been to the ridge cap on the roof of the Double wide, 7 ft. of water twice in 24 hours. Trailers don’t mix well with floods. It was totally trashed. Again as I climbed over the wreckage I made my way into our bedroom and was stopped dead in my tracks. Our big king sized bed was sitting in the middle of wrecked furniture perfect like nothing had happened. The white bedspread was perfect, the pillows all still in place and not a speck of mud or water showing. It was spooky weird. There was also a Native American Church prayer fan hanging over the bed that was not even wet and it was below the water line, which was a 6’6”. Climbing out of our room I went to the girls room and Bella’s bed was the same, perfect. Her stuffed animals were all in place on her bed. I lost it. It felt like this mess was saying, “don’t worry, this is your home, this land, this dream and you are fine”. I made my way back outside and sat down on the twisted deck and looked up at the clear blue sky and felt like I was surrounded by light and life and the truth that for all our best attempts to hold onto the things of this world we really hold only what we give that comes through us and all the rest is the sweetness of living and loving being human.

Some where during this time of entering the spaces washed through by the flood I fell through the floor of this world into the under world, a place deep inside our selves that is where all our legacies and human history, our unresolved issues and attachments and also the place where the masters of the Underworld offer the greatest lessons of awareness and truth. I fell deep and only yesterday felt myself moving back into this plane of being. For two weeks I wandered through the depths of the underworld as I went to work and talked with my wife, told friends what was going on and directed the clean up and reconnections that would keep The Ranch program operating. All that time I was fully aware I was dwelling in that space of darkness and deep reflection. Interesting enough my x-wife called and we talked for the first time in several years and my old high school girl friend found me on facebook. Then another friend told me she had just spoken to another very close friend from high school days that I had lost contact with. It was like old passions of my heart had been shook loose and floated up to the surface. As the volunteers came out to help and the amazing people who make up the staff of The Ranch all came together to lift the work and the Dream of The Ranch above the mess I was moving through this world but dwelling deep in a space that I can’t really explain.

This is a brief reflection of living this last two weeks and today I saw clearly that by the 4th of July we will have a RE-CREATION PARTY for our little magical world on the edge of the Piney River in the middle of the Tennessee Hills…so stay tuned and come join us…Blessings to you all and may Peace be With You…

Rising Water- part 1

I flew home from Vegas on Friday evening. The weekend before I led a workshop with my friend Dawn Zurlinden for 18 therapists at The Ranch.We closed on Saturday evening after walking the labriynth in the pouring rain. Then Sunday evening I flew to L.A. to work on our documentary DREAMING HEAVEN on Monday and Tuesday then an evening flight to Vegas for a conference which got me home on Friday night.

When I woke up Saturday morning I was tired, it was the first Saturday in May and the Kentucky Derby was happening that afternoon, so, after winning money on my friend Gary Seidlers horse in the Oaks race the day before I thought I'd relax and see what the Derby brought. Of course I had put my winnings on a hot prospect in the derby. That's when the rain started. This was rain like the sky was pouring out all the waters of an eternity of watching the Earth live in drought. It poured and poured and I sat looking out the window , tired and glad to be home with my family.

At 1pm I got a call that the river was up and the workshop that was on that weekend at The Ranch had been called off due to the weather. No big deal...ok..rain is normal...rain is normal.At 5pm I got a call that the water was up to the offices and close to our little house. I knew something was coming then..another hour passed and the next call was that our house and all the buildings at The Ranch compound were standing in 6 feet of water. The River had merged with the creek and all our buildings and equipment at the Cattle company were also under water, none of these places had ever been flooded before. I wanted to drive out but couldn't get there, the roads were under water. The next twenty four hours were all about the water.

It rose, flooded, dropped and then rose again on Sunday afternoon higher than before. I was still stuck in Nashville , at home, feeling like I was losing the place I had lived to create for the last 20 years. One moment I would be sad, then detached, then amused at the power and surprise of the Mother and her weather, then sad. I wanted to be there and couldn't get there so I would close my eyes and dream myself above those waters looking down on the roof tops.

On Tuesday I made it to The Ranch and my heart broke. The Dream that had been so sweet and alive for eleven years of healing and recovery had been ripped open by the waters. The Spirit House , the Shed offices and the old Ranch managers home that had become the medical offices were blown open by 6 feet of flowing tides of fresh water. Everything was covered in mud and silt. Our little double wide home was destroyed. As I sat feeling like a child who had lost their comfort and safe place I looked up into a beautiful blue sky and felt all the reality of how we own nothing in this world beyond our experience here.I didn't love the river any less, or the Ranch or the presence that life fills all this world with and yes I was very sad.There was work to do, where to start was a challenge, everything was a wreck. Looking out across the river bottom I said to the spirit world , to the river, to the Mother, I love you and my heart is broken and we must recreate our Dream now and I know you will be with me as you have been always and I cried.......to be continued

Listening to Thoughts

Listening to thoughts, they feel alive, these thoughts that follow me into this world from where ever it is we are actually Dreaming this realty. To be able to listen to my own thoughts is evidence to me that the frequency of life I’m living has shifted from the experience I lived for many years as the one in reaction to my thoughts, never realizing that listening was even an option. Lately, as the thoughts arrive I’m listening to the feelings conveyed through the thoughts. Listening to a feeling sounds weird but that’s what it feels like, listening, hearing the thought, hearing the feeling. As feelings are sensed in the body there is also awareness of information or thought in the sensing, in the feeling. These aspects of my being human are all merging with each other, swirling around and through one another like the clouds in the eye of a hurricane, travelling through space and time, always bleeding through the barriers of realms unseen, connecting the energies of the worlds behind the world.

I wonder if, as I breath, in and out, in this world, if my breath might be connected to a breath, or sense, or awareness, in some other frequency by some other conscious one living their experience of a reality.

God from God, light from Light, true God from True God, begotten not made. If we are eternal how could we be “made”, to be made we would have to have not existed before our being made. Begotten seems to me to be with out beginning or end, begotten from source, an aspect of source originating from beyond our understanding, free from needing to understand yet obsessed with what is none of our business.

Creating the aspects of reality that my intentions are directed toward is an extension of being begotten not made. Are our creations without beginning or end? Is form an image that reflects light and sound yet only exists in truth in the quality of intent and awareness that bore form into this world? What are our relationships really? Do we relate from love and faith in our self or do we relate from lack of love and faith in our self? Until we are Love and faith in our self there can’t be a real relationship with someone else.

I miss home when I am away and deep inside I know I have never been away from my home, from the place of my begetting. This world of ours has all the aspects we have brought into being from our living as though the beginning and end were truth and yet if we really believed that death was an end, I mean really believed that, then why would we live using that death as a threat against life.

I don’t believe we know what we believe. To “know” what we believe on a soul level requires way more introspection and listening than this culture lives, way more than our shallow belief systems are interested in seeking out. Coming into awareness of what we really believe brings a huge awareness and responsibility for holding those beliefs and we are just not that responsible or aware. Maybe that’s what we are looking at as the great 2012 prophecy comes to bear light on our modern age. Maybe by Grace we will be made aware of the suffering we live as a legacy of life. Suffering that has been “made” as the result of our living blind and completely irresponsible for our unquestioned blind beliefs.

The truth never needs defending, beliefs demand defending. Beliefs are not Truth. The light of the World is within all of us and we choose to live by beliefs and legacies born to us by the world around us. We give faith to shadows while all the time we are the light.

Begotten not made…sit with that one for while and see what your thoughts feel like. Listen and if you don’t get an answer be grateful that the answers will come from where your listening mind least expects it and maybe, just maybe, a deeper eternal voice, a long forsaken aspect of your own self will answer on its own time, in it’s own way.
Awakening will not come by expectation. We are all in this together, begotten not made, life from life, God from God….Ometeotl

ANOTHER FLIGHT

TRYING TO GET THERE FROM HERE


Another flight, from Manchester, New Hampshire to Nashville by way of Tampa, It’s the route that got me thinking. To get to Nashville by way of Tampa doesn’t make much sense until you realize that’s the way it is, and so it is. My life has been that way, not a straight line. Truth is, reason would have a challenge making sense of my life’s path and I am totally cool with the path not being reasonable. Reason has damn near wrecked the culture of the USA and the magical nature of our being human. You can have reason as your guide, I don’t trust it. I am fifty-four years old/young with a barely controllable continuous urge to sell everything, move back to a beach somewhere and spend my time surfing and doing whatever life offers as a work/lifestyle. I have four daughters 26, 21,7 and the youngest being 3 ½. Reason would ask “why would you want two more kids when you were done with all that, why, you had your life back?” Reason has never held it’s own babies and been overwhelmed with Gods presence flowing through with all the love life has to offer. Reason doesn’t play on the beach or teach a little girl how to brush a pony or make snow angels on a December morning.
As a kid I was taught this straight-line attitude toward life. You go to school, get good grades, choose a profession, go to college, get a good job, find a nice girl, get married have babies, save your money, buy a house, get to be a boss, save more money, buy a fat car, become important, be responsible, play golf, retire, and wait to die satisfied that you did it all “right”. That whole set up scared the shit out me, no way; I just don’t trust that bullshit at all. So I did what I wanted, really wanted. I played music in honky tonks and bars, lifeguarded, learned to be a decent hand with horses and cattle, played more music,moved to Nashville, got lost in the shadows of the seductive world of strippers, drugs and banditos, tried to be a husband and father while living like a fool on a mission, broke the hearts of the ones I loved most and crashed into the desert outside of Tucson trying to find a handle on a life gone crazy. That’s where I was introduced to “recovery”. The funny thing for me was “recovery” was focused on that original idea that to be happy we should be happy, productive members of society and do the American Dream thing, which had no appeal to me still, even after all my insanity. The straight and narrow looked like a socially acceptable hell. My path was more like getting to Nashville from New Hampshire by way of Tampa than a non-stop reasonable route.

All my life there has been a presence that seemed to call me out from the accept things the way they are world and inspired me to see things the way it might be if we were all allowed to be FREE, free to be who we are underneath the story of what we should do as life if we would be safe and reasonable.

I am a bit crazy, that I know, but that’s just the way it is and I am fine with that. What I realized while doing the recovery work was that there was no way I could live happy and healthy unless I was as authentic as I could possibly be reguardless of what those who were there to show me the “way” might suggest. I do appreciate the help and suggestions and I will have to go my own way.
This whole idea of “recovery” is still an interesting concept to me. After 12 years in the business and before that 6 or 7 years of referring to myself as in the process of recovery I continue to feel like recovery is not as authentic a journey as people seeking it are deserving of if they are to get beyond the haunting that they are recovering from and actually RECOVER. Just saying “I am recovered”, freaks most recovery people out. What’s up with that? If you went to a Doctor and the Doc told you you’d be sick forever wouldn’t you go looking for a second opinion? I did.

It takes a huge amount of courage and will to choose to recover our authenticity from the ways in which this world hijacks us. Of course we get lost in mind numbing behaviours. We live lives that are only sort of authentic. Living only sort of authentic is phony and phony is never fulfilling. It is a weird perfect storm. The culture of the USA is all about more, stuff, information, degrees, money, power…we need more because living as less than authentic leaves our human longing for wholeness and peace. Living a lie is a drag and our culture tells us that being what is expected of us is what responcibleity and service look like so , not knowing any better we go for it. Then we have the monster in the room, the USA’a sick fascination with the pharmaceutical industries offer to provide a pill to make every ailment easier to live with, live with, not recover from, as in heal the reason for all the symptoms in the first place. So we fly from New Hampshire to Tampa to get to Nashville.

Authenticity is a place within us, not a job description or career. To live authentic is to get to know your self as human. Growing up I wasn’t taught anything about being human. I was given a bunch of scientific info on the human body and psychology and blah, blah, blah and that had nothing to do with BEING HUMAN. So my “recovery” process became a journey into the awareness of that greatest of experiences, being human. What I know today is there is no true definition for living the being human. There is no step-by-step path to achieving being human, you have to live it, paying attention and practicing, one day at a time. We are, each of us, greater than all the sums of all the parts of this matrix of a world. We are, our consciousness, our spirit, Real .We are eternal, the light of the world, Children of the Sun. The matrix of the “reality” of being American, or Buddhist, or Republican or recovering or any of the zillions of labels that are applied in an attempt to appease the minds need to know “who” we are, are not “real” they are masks, applications, applied to the business of being human. Reality “is”,whether we believe it or not, see it or not, understand it or not. Reality is what is still with you when you take your last breath, all the rest is matrix.

I’m now on the last leg of my return from New Hampshire to Nashville. Tampa is fading into the distance and Tennessee is somewhere north of the Palm trees that remind me of all my years calling Florida home. I grew up in Florida and man did I love it. Seems like another lifetime ago…and it was. In New Hampshire I spent 4 days leading an awareness experience for a group of High school students at a prestigious Prep school. The kids were amazing. They we intuitive, bright, clever, they were also sad and disenchanted and on all kinds of meds because they were kids and that is, these days, too inconvenient for parents to have to deal with so they are kept stoned on prescription drugs and told smoking grass is bad. Yes they know hypocrisy when they are fed it. So we built a great stone spiral in the woods and walked in meditation. We held two Sweat lodge ceremonies and sat in Dreaming practice in the evenings. We cooked and ate together, washed dishes and talked about life and dreams and their stories. Most of them “forgot” to take their meds and remarked how clear and calm and focused they were. Their eyes lit up and they smiled as they shared their dreams and visions from the ceremonies and meditations. I was and am humbled by their spirit and honesty and am saddened and angered at the way they are treated by our culture.

I read a book recently by Michael Ortiz Hill and his African brother Mandazza that portrays the culture of the USA as a culture of black magic witches that place all the people, even children, under a spell and then cast the people into servitude to a dream and system that sucks the soul and life out of you all to feed the powerful and wealthy. I swear I see what they say. I see it on the news and on the street. I see it in the schools and from the preachers on TV. No thanks…not my Dream. I’ll keep living out here on the edge. Questioning everything and giving more time to my kids and my dreaming than I do to business or the system. I’ll keep bringing freedom into the recovery work I do, freedom to be true to our self first and this matrix of a world later. Maybe we’ll cross paths in an airport somewhere trying to get from one place to the next in one of these most reasonable straight lines. Vaya Con Dios….

The Long and Winding Road

The long and Winding road…….

Clouds hang beneath me. I still see them through the eyes that as a 10 year old wondered why couldn’t we walk through the clouds. Clouds are more real than thoughts. Thoughts can’t be seen. You cannot measure the height of a thought. You can’t block out the sunlight with a thought. Thoughts don’t bring rain and cannot be carried by the wind. These days there are spaces between my thoughts, spaces that are filled with stillness and silence. Between the clouds there are spaces. Spaces filled with light and wind, spaces that frame the world of the clouds as the thoughts once framed the world of my mind.

Living my long and winding road has allowed me a great and varied relationship with the thoughts that fill the worlds of my mind like the clouds fill the sky around me. If my thoughts were all so important and real then where did they all go. How can a thought create such response, reaction, belief and passion and then be gone with the next arriving thought.
My thoughts come and go and like some ghost in the night they sometimes haunt me till I find a way to banish them by the light of day. I have had thoughts, memories, haunt me and when I tried to hide they seemed to wait just beyond my awareness till I was not looking only to come flying back into my minds eye demanding attention and belief.” Here we are asshole, what, did you really believe we would leave you alone? Why we belong to you, you created us. There is nowhere else for us to go. You brought us into being, gave us a home and then dropped us into the well of your life’s story where we wait for the next opportunity to rise from the ashes of times gone by. All of us thoughts are related like a clan of Italian mobsters we have loyalty and our own code of ethics and we never give up our story till the don tells us to go.”
How do you tell a thought to go? Whats it take to get an audience with the don of your own mind?
How do you know which thoughts are real or true or necessary? Where do all these thoughts come from? Really…they seem to be eternal and never ending. So there must be a source, a source beyond the brain. How did it come to pass that a Human being could be controlled by the unreality of a thought? Something less tangible than a cloud has come to rule the worlds of men. We must be insane.
Our thinking is born of some Shrouded aspect of our being and we just volunteer to be in service to that thinking.
I don’t believe my thoughts much these days. There are long lines of unemployed thoughts that once had full time jobs keeping track of my beliefs, beliefs that I have since let go to the river of days. Stack a few thoughts together and you’ll come up with a framework for belief. Beliefs are not true or real either, that’s why they are called beliefs not truths.

….That leads me to your door, will never disappear. I’ve seen that road before…..

It may have been turning 50 a couple years back, can’t say for sure but I have lost interest in my thoughts having lots of supporting cast from friends and family. That was not always the case. There is a real freedom in not having thoughts as my guide in this world. Thoughts as a supporting cast is cool and close enough. There are other voices these days. Voices that come as feelings or senses, they then morph into thought form but only in so far as is necessary.

Looking out the window of this flight back home to Nashville I still believe there must be a way to walk on the clouds. Maybe if I keep dreaming into it I’ll find a way. Now that’s a thought I’ll check back in on. If I find a way I’ll let you know, maybe…

…It always leads me here. Lead me to your door…The Wild and windy night…that the rain washed away…..

Vaya con Dios….

Return to Life

’m on a flight from L.A. to Guadalajara. Tonight I’ll sleep in my little blue house in Teotihuacan. The last few days I have been shifting my attention between the main aspects of my life, from my family, to The Ranch, from the Ocean and waves of Malibu to the music and creation of our Documentary DREAMING HEAVEN. One conversation I’m talking about cattle and the future of the cattle business as we shift from a life time of commercial beef cattle production to the organic grass fed business, and the next I’m working on the creation of the Integrative Life Centers, a new format for Recovery and Integrative wellness in an out patient setting allowing more people to come to terms with all that they live, believe, choose and give their faith to. Recovery is becoming about our Integrity as human beings, a much greater picture than what I experienced 11 years ago when I was first introduced to the term Recovery as a way of life. Eleven years ago “recovery” was about being sober from drugs and alcohol, that is still a very important, yet narrow beginning point leading to the opportunities to live life Free, creative, authentic and aware.

As all the pieces of my world orbit through me and around me I feel a little crazy, like the threads are coming unraveled faster than I expected, like the ground under my feet is not solid at all but a fluid almost wave like place where I stand in consciousness not in a solid reality. This is the awareness of Dreaming Life, a term I’ve used for several years and still one that my mind argues with. To say life is a dream sounds to my mind like it’s not serious enough, the mind needs to believe that it has life figured out or it wants to freak. So I let my mind freak cuse when I let my mind run my life my life got to be a mess, my mind freaking is a breeze compared to my mind calling the shots.
The dreaming is awareness that the creation of my life is an act of intent and opportunity mixed with free will and awareness. Sounds more like a sorcerers recipe than a serious drama and it is and I am so grateful.

The fabric or this world of ours has hit the great cosmic hyperspace warp drive and what we have been taught to give faith too is becoming more and more not real or true. Where to now? The new security is faith in you, first, and then when we give faith to anything else that faith has real value. Until then we give faith out of a need to believe that something outside of us can save us. That’s a lie. Too bad for our worlds great religions and the American Dream that money, power, stuff and good looks will get you to the promised land It won’t. It will get you to the lost center of the universe with out a map.

I know I have said this before but it keeps coming back around, if you do not have faith in yourself you can not have real faith in God, or Spirit or anything else out there. If God is unconditional Love and we are the creation of God then we are an extension of the one that created us and to not care for our self or do the work, internally, to claim true faith in our self we are saying by action that God makes messes with us humans and we are the result of that mess. I don’t think so. To take care of our self first is to care for Gods creation. When we are living from our integrity, as a result of having cared for our self, then we are a gift to the world. Our choices, actions, presence are all clean and clear and aligned with the intent of our creator.
Of course our world is coming apart it is based in small minded, fear based, lies and distortions perpetrated by those in power and accepted by people not interested in taking responsibility or even a good look at themselves. Sure we can save the whales or the birds or something else out there but if we do not wake up in consciousness all those creatures we have been saving will come to the same demise as the humans with no good planet to survive on. More Wal marts or better health care or another political party is not going to get that job done for us. We have to do this individually, one person at a time, one day at a time and by sharing our increased awareness and perspectives we will create new communities of awakened people who are living from integrity rather than from beliefs.

Today I led a ceremony on a 1500 year old alter in central Mexico with a group of 25 very accomplished professionals from all walks of American Life. Most of the group was new to ceremony and had never been to an ancient ceremonial center like Teotihuacan. After we were finished they all had a new and greater awareness of what Life, light, awareness and possibility mean to them. Each living their own unique and personal experience, this is one path back to our center, our integrity our freedom and our worlds salvation. This is our mess; Jesus is not going to come flying down out of the clouds to rescue this lazy mess of humanity. We are doing this to our selves and when we decide to stop it we will and not before then. The group on the Alter today has a greater perspective to base their next decision on. That is progress.

Where ever you are, whatever flavor of evolution you might choose for yourself I hope for all of us that you have a path on evolution that you are living. I hope for you that your path holds you accountable for your own salvation. You are the only one that can get you to the dance of the cosmos and what a dance it can be whenever we decide to stop ignoring the calling of the truth to look at how we are all creating this world we live in. Life is as life has always been 100% on our side and all we need to is take that next step toward the unknown. Ready…1, 2, 3, go….

Marmalade Skies

Picture yourself in a boat on a river,,,,,with tangerine trees and marmalade skies,,,,,,

Looking out the window of this 737 I watch the maze of Mexico City fade into the distance. The sky is blue today, rare in this place of 26million humans. Seems these days wherever the humanity masses the Earth pays a terrible price.

Over the last 12 days I have led a beautiful group of people into and out of the Dreams of a world created over 2000 years ago to serve all of us in awakening to the truth of Divinity as a way of life on Earth. Sounds like some big mystical deal when all it’s about is being what you are really rather than trying to be what you believe you are. The latter takes years of programming and conditioning while the other requires believing nothing.

Imagine there’s no Heaven, it’s easy if you try….no Hell below us, above us only sky…imagine all the people living for today….ah ahhh….

To dare to awaken today from our inherited slumber with its matrix of shadows, false Gods, lies and manipulations is a daunting task and the task we are created for. The truth lives with in, you, me them, us. The truth is in each breath taken, in each thought passing thru from there to hear. We breathe, we feel, we laugh, we cry…we dream and we follow the leader straight into the colorful palaces of Hell. “Come to me”, the painted characters beckon us with promises of security, wealth, pride and accomplishment. We go. Of course we go, it is the dance of the world and the dance must be played out if we are to rewrite it’s riffs and refrains, redirecting the players to a greater dynamic of Magical, mystical, three quarter time, waltzes and rumbas.
“Off with their heads”, the red Queen demands… “Take mine first my Lady, this head of mine has only gotten me deeper and deeper into nowhere”.

All things must pass….George knows. All things must pass away.
Twelve days in the heart of the world according to me. After all we each have our own heart of the world or if we do not then certainly we must rediscover it if we are to remember.

My Sweet Lord, ummm my Lord, ummm my Lord, I really want to see you, really want to be with you.
I hear you today with out even listening, I feel you always without even knowing. I don’t have to look cuse you’ve never not been here. I have remembered with no story to tell.
Stories are great but the truth doesn’t need one, in fact THE TRUTH can’t be found in one, still our stories paint the canvass, connecting the matrix of dreams from day to day, person to person, thought to thought.

The last three days in Mexico I worked with an idea shared by myself and a Producer from L.A. that I met trying to bring a REaliy show to the USA on what real Healing and Recovery can look like. That idea scared people, they couldn’t seem to get their head around it. Go figure, we are in love with the excuses to suffer. It would be against our cultural vows to question the boundaries of what we might be if we dropped ALL the Bull shit.

Our new idea is to create a TV show that follows yours truly around the planet connecting with the Ancient Sacred knowledge and mysteries of the peoples who have never stopped dreaming reality from the depths of their Divinity. To bring the story and beauty of this world’s mystery tradition into Americas living rooms might just fill a void we have suffered from for a long, long time. The culture of the USA has no conscious relationship with Creation or the world that was born of the Mother Earth. We’d rather control and manipulate to maintain our lifestyle and twisted sense of security.
I want to believe that with the great shifts we are living in there would be some awareness and, if only on the deepest level, recognition of the presence of the Creator in the stories and ceremonies reveled through this show. Why not? If we can get as disconnected and insane as we are now surely we can see the opportunity to do something else, if only virtually, sitting in the comfort of our own home.

I was told 12 years ago I could never make my ideas of a treatment center work…and we did. Now I don’t bother to ask for validation, I have too great a faith in where these compelling feelings that morph into ideas come from and I just do it. If God had wanted us to ask each other for permission to follow our own Divinity we would never have been given free will.

Tonight my Mee, Bella, Lola and myself will sleep in our beds in Nashville. We will all Dream with our Mexico and soon, before this year ends, we will travel once again to the next landing zone for the McCormick family Dreams. Maybe L.A., maybe Manhattan, maybe back to Mexico…that will be revealed, no worries.

By now we must be over south Texas, welcome to Gringo Landia. There’s a cloud outside my window that looks like Jim Morrison. “ Before you slip into unconsciousness, I’d love to have another kiss…….” See you in the Dreamtime….