WORDS

The first thing I learned when I realized I was insane is I HAVE TO STOP PERPETUATING MY INSANITY..the USA is moving from frenzy to frenzy..believing that something is being accomplished. Until we can collectively stop, stop believing ourselves and our minds rants, our stories and all our greatest versions of how progress will look,,until we stop the frenzy we will only go round in circles, spiraling down deeper into the chaos of our minds,,The Nature of this reality is going to stop us humans if we do not find the inate internal integrity we all have with in us to do this great act of Life for our selves..it has to begin one person at a time,,and spread one person at a time,,grounding the light back into our realities and world..all our external communication is feeding the insanity ,,God I wish we had guts enough to turn it all off and go sit still.
What we are missing is already here in each of us,,and we do not know ourselves. We believe what we see and hear,,we believe our own distorted versions of life and experience. None of that aspect of our self is real or alive. All that lives is in each moment and passes with each moment,,,living for the past has been an experience of life on Earth and as of this Shift in frequency will no longer be a way of LIFE in this world but rather a path to death, the Death of the old Dream. We are Eternal..if we can re-connect to our centers then we might live as though we had the faith of the eternal , with Respect and compassion and awareness..all moving, living , breathing from the light of our center.
We are addicted to talking about nothing, believing that our beliefs are true and real,,Beliefs are not true, have never been and will never be,,real is un touchable,,and is what we are, real is completely knowable and unexpressable all at the same time,,Eternal is real...Light is real..this moment is real..none of the stories of the world are real..stop giving your faith to stories.
Tragedy is going to become the way of the world ..and all we have to know about that is that it is us doing to ourselves..How much pain and redundant insanity will it take before we let all of our demands of reality go?
Be Still and Know that I am God...We have been told!!!

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