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.

Back Home

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I just got back home, hot , humid, green, Pacific in the front yard home. Another journey to the Dreaming capital of the West Coast, Los Angeles. I had a meeting with an all-time great film producer, Jon Peters and my friend Bob Waldman. Dreaming up new deals, I love it.

While I was there, I got to stop by the Interventionists Conference at The Lowes Hotel in Santa Monica. I know the Lowes well. We hosted our SPIRIT RECOVERY Conference there a couple years back and it's also where our family holed up during last year's Malibu fires. Half of Malibu seemed to be living at The Lowes for a few days during those fires. High-end refugees for sure.

While I was at The Lowes this time, I got to see a bunch of people I hadn't seen for over a year. The conference was a gathering of the business people of the Mental Health Addictions treatment world. World-class characters who'd found a day job helping others help themselves. I've lived the last 10 years close to that world and that community of people. The Ranch's CEO, Miles Adcox, was there with Ryan Martin, our master intake director.

Walking in the exhibit hall felt like a new experience. With hundreds of people all talking, either to each other or on their cell phones or both, there was a dull roar ringing through the building. As I looked around I realized I was completely detached. It was great seeing The Ranch exhibit and Miles and Ryan but for the first time in my 12 year relationship with whatever the word Recovery means I was not affected by the scene at all.

This was cool, to be walking through a situation that for years would get me all jacked up and to have no reaction at all was freedom. Saying hello to people I've known or worked with over the last few years in California was great and I had no agenda or need for anything from anyone. I talked to who I wanted, not to who I felt like I should talk to. It didn't matter who they worked for, or how much business they were doing with us, or anything else. I didn't care, it was just good to see some of the faces.

After an hour I met up with Keith Arnold, an old friend that dedicated many years to Sierra Tucson the treatment program in Arizona that I had checked myself into 11 years before. I always respected Keith and on several occasions tried to figure out how I might get him to go to work with The Ranch. He's a good guy and a smart operator.

Keith and I walked outside and sat on the boardwalk that runs from Venice Beach to Pacific Palisades and talked about the reality of the Recovery world, and what we'd seen over the years and what we were seeing now as opportunities to create a better opportunity for the people trying to help themselves, and how we could contribute to that. This was not a conversation based on bottom line or business deals...none of that stuff. This was two men who know that reality is really just beyond what we call home here on Earth and that doing our best is what we live for today.

Several years before, on one of my visits back to Tucson, I had invited Keith to a Sweat Lodge Ceremony and he'd accepted with great enthusiasm. That was his first sweat and the beginning of his relationship with the Great Mystery of Life's magic. Before we headed back up to the bustle of the conference he said he was going to be with our old friend Albert Sombrero, a Dine' healer and an all around funny human on Saturday at a Ceremony.

So there it was, one of those big circles in life passing through the two of us on the beach in Santa Monica. What had been set in motion in the Sweat lodge in Tucson years before, was still evolving and coming back around through us and we were checking in between rounds. If you know what I'm talking about, that great circle of integrity that flows around and through us all the time but only gets snapshots of recognition in this world today, then you must smile at it all like I'm doing now.

It was great to check in Bob, Keith, Miles and Ryan and all the rest...we are doing it.

In a few minutes my little girls' friends and their families are coming over to our house so we can walk down the beach and watch a big hatch of baby sea turtles set free in the surf for the first time. I'm gonna take my long board so we can paddle out as they swim for the horizon. All of us and those little turtles making another one of those great circles of life that when you catch them in motion makes everything around you feel like magic. It is good to be back home, in this body, in this world , in this life. Peace be with you , Lee