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

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.

Whirlwind

It is Friday morning, Febuary 13th, the day before Valentines day.I'm sitting in the basement of our newly leased home in Nashville. This is my space, the "man cave" as Mee, my esposa, tagged it. These last few weeks of moving , shifting, driving back and forth to the Ranch, have been a whirl wind of feeling, inspiration, sadness and creativity. I left Tennessee 7 years ago when Mee and I hooked up. I left for the west coast, Malibu and the waves of my childhood dreams. All through those seven years I felt a thread of connection that kept pulling my attention and heart to look back toward Tennessee but not enough of a pull to come back to stay.
My m.o. has been to create and move on, while looking for another or other home base. Tennessee will always be a home base but like leaving your parents house as a kid it's not where I want to settle down.Working in Malibu with three different recovery programs was a good experience and a frustrating one..frustrating cuse what I would see as vision seemed to be lost to the people I worked for or with. When it comes to creating doorways back to integrity I won't compromise for the sake of fear or maximizing profits. Staying with my vision has been a big part of The Ranch, here in Tennessee, evolving into a most spectacular offering to those willing to recreate their lives away from suffering toward what they are inspired to live as happy, joyous and free individuals.
Over time people have come to refer to what I do as "Spiritual" work or spiritual recovery. With my friend Gary Seidlers encouragement I started SPIRIT RECOVERY as a brand name to use for what would be created in addition to the treatment center work. Spirit recovery is an accurate label...that is what we are offered should we decide to really undo our attachments to how we were taught, as children, to see and live in this world.Our Spirit is our truth, our essence. Our spirit is born into this world and is not of this world. When our physical body dies our spirit is free to return to source should we die with the awareness that we are not "of this world".
Working in the treatment business leaves very little room for a practice of Spirit as the truth of who or what we are and who or what we might recover. When recovery is all about measuring up, then fitting in and following rules is more important than authenticity and connection to that Great Mystery that is the truth of life.We throw around the term Spirituality as a component of recovery as though it is a separate external part of us, something we aspire to that's out on the horizon with our higher power or God..somewhere "out there".
There is no out there. There is no separation between recovery, spirituality, clean days, peace, freedom or suffering. Those are all just words that all have a different exact meaning depending on who you might be talking to at the time. Even the word spirituality will morph and shift as we move through life, if we are paying attention to anything beyond what we believe.
My relationship with myself is my relationship with God or Spirit. I can't possibly treat God or spirit any better than I treat myself. I am an aspect of the one that created me so my closest relationship with God or spirit is me. If I would honor God then I must honor myself , if I would love God then I must love myself. When I've had this conversation with others, many times I'm told that I have a selfish point of view...I don't think so. Me being less than is a self important, excuse for not having the willingness to accept the truth within me as my guiding light. There is no program or Church or book of prophecy that can even begin to touch the living presence that animates this form of mine.Unless creation is an inconsistent factory of life then there is perfection within each creation and how that perfection is expressed is Creators business, not mine. My role is to love it all and have faith in that mystery that I'll never "understand" ,and, will always live in closest relationship with.That mystery is the truth, how we define and measure that mystery is our folly and choice. So what, big deal...
With all that said, my return to Tennessee is my honoring that calling from within that I just can't ignore today. I tried, even when I'd be surfing in my beloved Mexico I'd hear that voice within say.."it's time to go back to The Ranch for a while", "oh come on". I'd plead, "this is where I belong, we love it here, this is our mothers land and I'm being good"...no reply, just that feeling that, damn it, I gotta go back.You see I love that voice and the feeling that comes with it even when I don't like what it's saying. I honor that voice because I honor myself and that voice comes from the deepest aspect of myself.My personality won't be happy, not at first anyway, and my physical body still feels sad about leaving Mexico but I am not bound by the yearnings of my physical body.I take care of my physical body but my body does not own me.
I learn from life as I live my life and I pay attention as well as I can to all the aspects of my being human. I am Human and through that relationship I gain experience and wisdom and that's between me and life not me and the World. There are very few institutions in this world that I choose to give power to. As I have learned that peace can only be found within I have let go of needing the world to validate my insecurities. I have methodically taken my power back from all those places, people and things that I had given power to prior to my waking up.There is no judgement involved only an exercising of responsibility. I am completely responsible for what I empower in my life.
As my whirlwind of movement settles back down this heartland of America will be our home again....until the next mission or adventure or "spiritual" calling. Meanwhile , back at The Ranch.....it's time to go to work.

2009 Earth Log- Deep in the Milky Way

The morning came soft and quiet. Middle Tennessee, January, Sunrise.
It's cold outside, white frost blankets the pastures around our double wide. I gotta get up and turn on the heater, the electric heat is too much to sleep well ,so one of us turns it up to 70 degrees when we wake up.
The cows are in the pasture across the road, too far to hear them from inside the house, it's Silent except for the sounds of Bella Lola and Mee sleeping.
Memories flash, I still visit my Dad in the early morning memories that float around my consciousness, he loved Ranch life, cattle, early morning and cold clear air. The storm door on our trailer lets me open the main door and let the light in without freezing us out.
There is a fresh buzz in my body. A new vibe for what I've connected to in my dreaming what my returning to The Ranch will bring. I feel alive and excited and, flash, I'm back in our little beach house in Sayulita looking at the waves, sad creeps into my feelings, sad to be moving on and excited to be coming back to home , Tennessee.
Over the last year I've lived a fantasy and a reality. I've tried to soak up as much of my being in Mexico as I could and know completely that She, The Mother, the heart of Mexico and her people, now beats in my body, in my cells and will do so until I've moved on from being the me in this body. She is only as distant as my attention is turned away from her place within me.

2009 the day of the Lord, When the divinity returns to us....That's Miguel's "Circle of Fire Prayer", I send you my love and respect don Miguel, and thank you for showing up for the children of San Pauncho last October.Dreaming Heaven is our business and what a great business it is.This is the day that I make the commitment to The Mother, La Virgincita, Tonantzin,Maya..our Divine Mother embodied in this Earth and in our form, I make the commitment that for me this is her year and I will carry within me her presence and compassion stopping to remember that she is with me always.

One of my creations will be here at The Ranch where we have an old well that's waited for me to hear her voice..."remember me?", she asks, " I am the well of the Place of the Women in Teotihuacan, I am the heart of the world and I am here within you and around you. Bring me your love and your wounded and we will heal their sadness and fears. Build me a Capilla and decorate me with beauty and dreams and a great light will shine from this place." She called me back from my beach in Mexico to be her helper, of course I say yes,,,although I did ask more than once "are you sure, you know I love my spot in Sayulita and I'll be good"..That's what faith is for me, the willingness to do what needs doing before I let my personality limit me to what is known.

Deep in the Milky Way there is a beautiful green and blue planet that is inhabited by a species of amazing Dreamers who are coming closer to awakening to the truth of their Dreaming. 2009 is here, we are here, the truth is here..all of creation is supporting our coming to the light. That calling has been building for years and all we need do is let go and Dream from Faith.

In the background Mee is running the vacuum cleaner, Bella is decorating a New Years cake for the Laughing Winds Party later and Lola just dumped a whole bottle of chocolate chips on the floor. Thank you Creator for Loving me like this..I am so grateful for it all....Feliz Ano Nuevo...Listen! ....Our Mother is calling you too and she's so happy to have you listen.
Peace Be With You....Lee

Simply Aware

It's Wednesday afternoon. Yesterday evening I returned home from another Spirit Recovery Journey to Teotihuacan, Mexico. Entering into the body of Teo, as we call our home there, is always a walk into the truth of life and that truth is a great mystery.This was a special journey that brought together a group of people who all connected like the spokes on a wheel, all pointing to the center. This was the first Buddhist/Toltec Journey I'm aware of, ever , in the ancient history of Teotihuacan.My friend Kevin Griffin brought years of practice and perspective to our adventure leading us all in meditation and Buddhist teaching then shifting to a student on his first journey to Teo.

The blending of meditation with the Buddhist energies and the power of the Toltec mysticism opened a great spectrum of possibilities for all of us involved.

Ok, so I was just writing away when my daughter called me" Daddy, there are whales in the front of our house", Bella was jumping up and down on the front porch and pointing to the great white plumes of spray coming from the family of whales passing by, headed south.From Teotihuacan to the present in a flash, from writing my memory and story to seeing these great creatures of the sea, traveling the coast of Mexico.Life flashes and with it my attention shifts to the horizon and the whales.

Living these days is a mastery of shifting attention. I have a lot of choices , everyday, as we all do. After years of working, living and playing with my self and how I move through time and space as a human being , I have actually become grounded in the choices and the living as a projection and reaction to my choosing.
Standing on the porch with the energy of Teotihuacan buzzing through my veins I'm completely in tune with the Whales, the sound of the waves, my Bella's excitement..and that's it...I don't have so much to say now, so I won't...in fact I want to go for a body surf and get smashed on the sand bar....

Next Saturday we all fly back to Tennessee and The Ranch for Christmas. Like changing channels life keeps moving ..Onward...Here comes Santa Claus...Vaya Con Dios...Lee

Thanksgiving Journey

It's Wednesday Morning, the day before Thanksgiving in the U.S.A.. I'm sitting in my office in the back room of our little Mexican jungle home listening to the sound of Bella,6, and Lola,2, and their cartoons on T.V. Thank You life for those sounds..I love them now more than ever and I've been listening to my babies cartoons for 25 years, my oldest daughter is 25, almost 26.

Just behind the sound of the T.V. I hear the waves breaking on the beach in front of our home..Thank you MaMa Ocean...I have loved you all my life and you have Loved me back in so many ways.

From the kitchen I smell corn meal and Banana pancakes cooking on the grill, that's my Mee, Bella and Lola's Mama, cooking breakfast. Thank you life for setting us up to meet, of course we took it from there and what a trip we are sharing together.

My thanksgiving is all around me, everyday. It's not some far away sentiment for the past or hope for the future. I have no qualifications that must be fullfilled or pieces missing. My life is what it is and I have learned through trial and the art of paying attention that loving life happens right now just the way it is. Thank you life for offering me the opportunity to wake up to my life being my choice and your gift.

First thing this morning I opened my e-mails and had an e-mail from Miles Adcox, our C.E.O. at The Ranch. He was sharing some of what happens at The Ranch on a daily basis and it felt so close and so far away at the same time. Miles has brought 100% of himself to what my partner Julie Norton and I set in motion 10 years ago and he has connected how life works through all of us connected to The Ranch with the rest of the Recovery business with such style and integrity, thank you life for keeping our dream alive and prosperous and always moving forward with you.

As I'm writing this our beloved Nanny {Peggy} and Bubba,{Ted}, Raess have let go of 30+ years in their little magical kingdom on Holmby Ave. in Los Angeles and are moving north to a new magical kingdom in Sonoma County, Ca. Ted and Peggy are the vehicle life used to connect Me and Mee seven years ago. They were my first Toltec teachers and are Bella and Lola's Grand Parents because that's how life connected us. After all Grand Parents are one part blood and three parts love and they got the Love part down like a rug. Thank you life for finding so many cool ways to have our lives interconnected, all we had to do was let it happen.

In a while we'll load up our 98' Suburban Mexi Rig and drive to Guadalajara to spend Thanksgiving with our great friends Lalo and Gina Portillo. Sometimes, the greatest friendships just happen and we didn't have to do anything more than be good and honest with each other and life takes care of the rest. That's exactly what happened between our family and the Portillo family. Thank you life for life being so easy when we stop complicating it.

So to all of us living in this world and all the other worlds that touch ours, Happy Thanks giving.. Humm..by separating the words I just realized that Thanks Giving is like Love or Gratitude, we feel the energy of our offering moving through us into the world and Thanks Giving just feels good moving through. For sure the future will continue to be the result of how we choose, one person at a time, to live and be with and in Life. That's our free will in action and once again, thank you life for allowing us to co-create as we go and hopefully to learn from our creation. We humans have been a bit stuck for a lot of years now but with all the chaos we face today I'm sure we'll wake up to the amazing array of choices that life offers us in every moment and every day.

Finally, to my personal family, I love you all whether we're in this world or wherever we go from here, a big hug to you all. Vaya Con Dios, Lee

WHERE TO NOW St. PETER

My last Blog was written sitting in the kitchen of Ardsheal house in Bermuda. Time line wise that would be six weeks ago, not a great deal of time and at this moment it seems like a memory from another world.

From Bermuda we traveled back to The Ranch in Tennessee for a couple weeks, then on to New York City and my wife's Italian family reunion. What a trip,I mean not for nuthin', they are all so warm and crazy. I got to meet my Mee's legacy and it was a great gift. I'd only been to New York once before so the experience of the city was new and surreal. I do spend time in Mexico City with all the coming and going to Teotihuacan. Mexico City is a world unto itself with 20 million plus residents. New York on the other hand, felt so livable and eclectic. We were staying in our friends, Iva and Jerry Peele's, apartment in Greenwich Village, the west Village to be exact. I love the feeling of walking out of the apartment building and into the street. There's so much life happening in New York. So many little realities all converging in the same place at the same time.

For years the idea of New York seemed unattractive to me, so I never went. That's how I made a lot of decisions, by how something I'd never experienced, felt or sounded, rather than by having an open mind and finding out for real. I lived a lot of my life based on assumptions and then would go one step further and create stories from those assumptions which I plugged into my perspective as though those stories came from actual experience. I was not doing that this time. This time I was walking down Greenwich Street in the warm August air looking for a diner to have breakfast with my family and friends. There was life going on everywhere. On the street, in the shops, at the park—movement and color, talk and laughter. We found our Diner and they even had Grits. What a trip, eating grits in a little Diner in the west village. You gotta love it.

After breakfast we walked to the Bleeker Street park and let Bella and Lola be kids for a while. I immediately noticed the great mix of color and language that blended into the swirl of children. They all played , laughed, ran and negotiated their sharing together with only an occasional whine, and that never lasted more than a second or two. Kids don't fall into dark holes of argument and anger cus their attention doesn't seem to stay hooked by those temptations. They have better things to do, like enjoy the moment. I actually saw this happening while I looked on and something about the simple truth of putting my attention into what I enjoy came clear to me.That's how I want to live my life.

Sure, as adults we have responsibilities that aren't fun or exciting, but neither are they painful or terrible unless we make them so. I may not want to do something and I don't have to make the experience miserable just to prove to myself I don't like it. So what, big deal, who cares, life moves on. It's us humans that decide to stay stuck on the things we don't like or we don't agree with. That's not life doing anything to us that's us doing it to us.

We spent five days in the great city of New York, saw THE LITTLE MERMAID on Broadway, ate, drank, walked and then took the train upstate to Iva and Jerry's farm, Herondale, in Ancramdale, N.Y.[ herondalefarm.com] Man, it's really beautiful in the Hudson River Valley in August. After a couple nights on the farm we headed back to the city and our flight home to Mexico.

Tennessee, Bermuda, New York City, Herondale Farm, Mexico City, Teotihuacan, Sayulita......exhale.........

As I feel my way back through the great summer journey, I realize it may take a day or two for all of me to regroup here on the west coast of Mexico in our little Village of Sayulita. All the energy and happenings in the U.S. are a great temptation to go back and do more, and right now we're considering lots of options that may just take us back North to GringoLandia. What I know is that the longer I stay here living on the wild jungle coast of Mexico the less chance that busy world of American opportunity has of reeling me back in. Either way, it is for real,and all good.

So for all the uncertainty that freedom offers, I look out to sea and hear Sir Elton John in the background...SO, WHERE TO NOW ST. PETER, IF IT'S TRUE I'M IN YOUR HANDS..........Peace Be With You, Lee

Theme Park America

The last two weeks have taken me from Mexico, to Tennessee and The Ranch, then on to Jacksonville, Fla. my old home town where I met up with my beautiful wife and our daughters, then down to Orlando and theme Park Landia, back to Jacksonville, and finally the long flight from the east coast of the U.S. to the west coast of Mexico. 

While we were in Orlando I had a most interesting dream...Dream Time U.S.A. Standing on a street corner in a typical American town looking around at all the busy people...everything seemed so familiar. Fast pace, overweight, staring straight ahead, the people moved like they were on a conveyor belt. When I looked down I could see that they all appeared to have their own unique path, but underneath the level they perceived themselves on, there was a greater escalator that allowed a perception of individuality, and that perception was an illusion. 

In my dream there was a hummm that resonated through the reality of Dream Time America. I could not hear it as much as I could feel the vibration. When I would put my attention on the vibration the entire visual of the world around me would begin to distort, like having interference on your television screen. A couple times I would make eye contact with someone and just as I would ask them a question or simply say “Hi,” they'd look away and redirect their attention to the dream or life they were living in. 

I say “living in” because by now I was completely aware that each individual was living a reality unique to them, while at the same time believing that everyone was seeing and feeling the same way they did. My being in their reality was a disturbance to how their attention was locked into their bubble of reality. Talking to me would open the door for them to see through the illusion of where and how they had defined their world. 

From down the street I saw a bus coming. It rolled to a stop and a few people got off appearing to be more awake than those walking through the dream world. I watched as they looked around making small talk. A larger group got on the bus, as the door closed and the bus pulled into traffic I saw a sign that read “THEME PARK AMERICA.” 

Wow, Dude. Turning back to the people who'd just gotten off the bus I realized they were from another country. Their language wasn't familiar. This was a trip. When these not Americans began to walk down the street it was clear to me that they were not connected to the conveyor system that the locals were on. Their bubble of reality was a different frequency from the vibration that I had been feeling. Looking up there was a great neon sign that flashed “Theme Park America Now Serving Over 300 Million customers.” 

Then I woke up...What's all that mean? You tell me...how’s your conveyor running these days...Do you hear a hummmm just beyond your ears’ ability to define it? I can't get that picture of our culture as a giant theme park out of my mind. In many ways it seems to fit better than the official version...Gotta go, my Bus is coming...