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….