LIGHTNING DREAMS

I was sleeping, dreaming away into the night. The thunder called me back into this world. Lightning, thunder, raindrops hitting the roof and the windows trying to find a way through to the earth below.

With each bolt of lightning I was seeing the temple of the Lightning Priestess in Machu Pichu. She was standing, a silhouette, reaching out to me through the layers of consciousness that separate our worlds. My body was vibrating to the lightning energy that sparkled in the air, electricity connecting the worlds through light and awareness, her calling and my feeling the call, wanting to go and afraid to let go.

As suddenly as she was there she was gone, my mind had stepped back in between the space of the worlds and I was a once again a body on Earth, separate and apart from the connection to the infinite worlds of the dreamers.

I visited Machu Pichu for the second time last March. My first night in the Sacred Valley of the Incas, I had dreamed of a great lightning storm moving across the horizon, moving towards me. I was not alone. There was a barn with several horses directly in front of me. As dream worlds go the separation of depth, land, structures animals was not as limited by definition or perception as this world of every day Human life. The lightning was first white, spider webbing across the sky, filling the distance with it’s eerie light. As I watched the lightning moved toward me.slowly, creeping across the landscape. Then it shifted to a soft yellow color, still spider webbing, filling the sky with light. Suddenly, I realized the lightning was coming to me, I could hear it’s voice; feel it’s watching me. The horses began to whinny and get nervous so I ran to turn them out before the storm came over us, this was not a safe place for them, I thought, for some reason though I new I was supposed to be there. The horses were my old friends, the ones I had been close to when my life had been so sad and lost. They had been my companions and in a lot of ways my guardians. They had done their calling and it was time for them to go. Opening the gates they took off, I always-loved turning out the horses and watching them run for the hills.

As they disappeared into the night the lightning cracked again filling the sky with its webs of light. This time the lightning was blue, a beautiful soft blue and it covered the sky above my head. I was suddenly afraid so I got down on the ground and curled up in a ball as the space around me was electrified by the energy of the living lightning. I could feel the rain falling over me in a blessing way and then I woke up. I was in my bed in the Sacred Urubamba Valley, the mirror of the Milky Way. This was Peru and the lightning had just welcomed me, an initiation according to my Peruano friend Jorge Luis Delgado.

On my first journey to Peru the previous February I had visited the temple of the lightning Priestess in Machu Pichu and felt embraced and welcomed in much the same way as I feel the Love of the Mother at the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City. This was a bit different though this was sensual and male to female with the female having the power of the lightning running through her veins. After that journey, whenever I thought of Peru I could feel myself still sitting before the great rock face of the Lightning Priestess temple.

Here she had come to me again, reaching out through the dimensions to my little trailer at The Ranch in Tennessee. On a warm July night she had come with her light and mystery to call on me. I am returning to Peru the end of September, just 6 weeks away, and once again I’ll go to her temple and sit giving my attention and love to that place and the magical Mountains surrounding Machu Pichu.

The Peruvian Shaman say she was the most powerful witch in all of Machu Pichu, that her body was found buried standing up looking out over the Sacred City and all it’s mystery.

In a few days I’ll return home to Teotihuacan and Mexico. I’ll be back where my great awakening came through the unconditional Love of the City of The Gods and the warm hearts of the Mexican people. Living between the worlds has become my way. I can honestly say the world I was raised to be a part of was never very interesting to me so it’s only fitting that I found a separate reality to walk through. I don’t know that one is better or worse than the other, but I find one to be much more interesting than the other and both come together to offer such opportunity and Sweetness. Maybe we are, as many of the Indigenous cultures say, a bridge between the worlds. That works for me. So the next time you see a great lightning storm stop and sit with all your attention turned toward the life that’s there in the storm. You might get a glimpse of the one that lives there.

No Matter What Anybody Says

No Matter what anybody says the whole deal comes down to my relationship with my heart. If I give my power away to anything else before the integrity of my heart I will be moving away from my center.

Lately I am feeling everything around and in me with a new freshness. Like the frequency of clarity of the Heart has come into a higher vibration.

I was sitting out on our front porch this morning, on Estes Road in Nashville, feeling like my Love for Mexico was swallowing me up when a gust of wind blew through the Elm trees and a Mockingbird landed on the power line above my head. She had a fat bug in her beak and sat for a minute looking right at me. I heard her, "nothing to miss, we are all coming back together now...keep feeling it and follow your feeling...the worlds great separation is burning away in the new light of the Sun." She then resumed her bird life and flew away. Consciousness speaking as consciousness does through any form that's available til we don't need a form to get us to listen.

I have fallen in Love so many times in my life and more times than not I've fallen in Love with places, Oceans, Beaches, Mountains, Horses, People, Mysteries, feelings, a touch, a hug, a little girls laugh.

For many years falling in Love was a sideline to my "real" life. Something that spiced up the situation then I'd get back to re'al'i'ty...I never had a clue I could just follow the falling in love and live a life from that calling. That's the deal today. I can't seem to stick with anything that's not from my numerous love affairs. Mexico, Ceremony, my family, best friends, inspirations all leave my cellular structure dancing like a bug on a light bulb.

Something is happening here, what is is ain't exactly clear and that's the coolest part...we have to have faith in our calling and our ability to bring what we love to Earth with us. That is the rebirth of Heaven on Earth and that's the Deal...BOOGIE ONWARD...Lee

Two Dog Night- An Evening With Eddie George and Jeff Obafemi Carr

We are not what we believe we are. We are not what we do in this world. Our lives appear to be happening in the physical sense and are certainly experienced in a physical sense and we are so much more than our physical manifestation of form, we are the one experiencing that form.

Eddie George is an amazing athlete, a damn good actor, and much more than that. Jeff Obafemi Carr is a cool, gifted, actor, artist and he is much more than that.We are not the roles we play in life and we bring those roles too life like magic. We live our roles with such passion and feeling that we fall under our own spell, believing that we have become the role. This is the basis of theater being believable,the passion and life force of the actor living the role , being the role, expressing the character with heart and soul.Believing the role is the foundation of that suspension of belief that brings the audience into the dream of the actor.

Being human is a grand form of theatrical staging. We are born into the world and are not of the world. We inherit a legacy specific to our place , time and circumstance of birth. That legacy is then carried forward through life, developed , evolved, lived,healed, perpetrated, transformed all depending on what we as individuals bring to our characters development. We inherit a role and then we choose how that role will evolve or not.

The true experience of life happens within us. The interactions from the outside are interfaced with the presence on the inside. We are all actors and most of us don't have a clue. We take this world and our physicality so seriously that we lose our connection to the truth that is our presence within, our spirit our life force our consciousness. The Love that we are is abandoned for the sake of what we have been told and have come to believe about ourselves based on what the world outside of us holds as truth and experience.

There is an old Native American tale about the two wolves that dwell within each of us and how the one we choose to feed is the one that prospers.We take on the characteristics of what we "believe " about ourselves. Once we attach to a belief we then see the world according to that belief and seek out support to make our belief the truth. Problem is that our need to be "right" distorts our perception to the point that we no longer see clearly, rather, we see through our own investment in the belief we have attached to.We are the ultimate expression of the character actors art.We create our role, step into it, and then forget that we are acting.

As talented as Jeff and Eddie are they both know when they walk off the stage it takes a few minutes to de-role from their art and ground themselves in their inner spirit.If they were to continue to play out their characters in the world people would say they were nuts, crazy, eccentric...they know the difference and so when they are in character they are 100% there, believable, dynamic. When they go home they are the light within living as Human.

Seeing Two Dog Night was reality check in dedication and art form. Great actors know they are not just the role they play and they have the ability to be that role 100% for the sake of their art, like a special forces solider giving 100% to the mission.The ego is set aside and the expression is spirit on stage. They are actors and they are much more. They are men and they are much more. We are Humans and we are much more.

These are very interesting times. The roles many of us have lived, believing that's what we are, are being rewritten while we are still learning our original lines. We can't count on what we were told as kids being there as rock solid base lines to live by. The nature of the game is changing. The reality we demand be safe and sound is becoming liquid and slippery. Fear says "better find something to hold on to" and life says "better get comfortable with letting go".Faith is recreating itself from being where we go out of fear and need for security to the living expression of not needing to "know" before we say yes to life's opportunities.

If you are ever in Nashville you might check out the Amun Ra Theater and it's offerings of life lived creatively.The roles you'll see acted out there are directed by the heart and the spirit, that's an example we can all learn from. Check them out at http://web.mac.com/jeffocarr/iWeb/amunratheatre/Welcome.html

Now, Sayulita

Mee is at don Pedros hanging with the MANGO MAMA'S. I'm sitting at the bar in Lalo and ginas playing with the computer and listening to the sounds of our world. Little girls playing in the pool , trucks on the dirt road outside the walls, and birds and waves breaking.

Everything about what I've called cool in life is offering me an engraved invitation to finish my work in Tennessee and come back home to Mexico and get busy here with what I love doing. I told my friend Dana Walden today that there are opportunities coming from 12 different directions , none of which you can see, and I'm so on it to follow my faith into the sunset.

Maybe what I've considered at times is going to be real, that is ...thru healing ways we humans will finally let go of our differences being the basis of perception and live with sharing experiences being the foundation. Good set up for an American guy to come to Mexico and streach his world to allow SPIRIT to create with him in a new reality. You can take TV's from culture to culture but healing ways are pretty sacred and we aren't very open to healing anyway unless we have had a taste.

So, Lalo sends me pics of an old Hacienda some where in Old Mexico. This after, yesterday, seeing the most beautiful compound here in Puerto Vallarta that for sure we want to create an Integrative Healing/ Recovery Center at.

What is so cool is that we humans are close to realizing that we can recreate our world any way we choose and we can make that choosing a rockin deal.All of that is coming and the admission price is we have to undo our attachment to being ..in reaction, the victum, less than, pissed off, drama queens...etc...we must get over the ourselves we've created for ourselves and come to believe we are and we aren't.

We are such suckers we really should not be allowed to believe anything for a time out. Ok wn't happen...but....So hey, whats coming to you that you won't get out of the way for? The only one keeps us from doing what we want is us. Vaya con dios.....

Key One#1. give More attention to where you are going than to where you have been.

Practice Key one for a while and lets see what happens.....

ETERNAL NOW-ADYASHANTI

***** My friend Maru sent this poem and all the words needed are set in perfect place and time...enjoy the gift of a master....

Eternal Now



Take a moment

to check and see if you are actually here.



Before there is right and wrong

we are just here.

Before there is good or bad, or unworthy,

and before there is the sinner or saint,

we are just here.

Just meet here, where silence is-

where the stillness inside dances.

Just here, before knowing something, or not knowing.

Just meet here where all points of view merge into one point,

And the one point disappears.



Just see if you can meet right now

where you touch the eternal,

and feel the eternal living and dying at each moment.

Just meet here-

before you were an expert,

before you were a beginner.



To just be here,

where you are what you always will be,

where you will add anything to this,

or subtract anything.



Meet here, where you want nothing,

and where you are nothing.

The here that is unspeakable.

Where we meet only mystery to mystery,

or we don´t meet at all.

Meet here where you find yourself

by not finding yourself.

In this place where quietness is deafening,

and the stillness moves to fast to catch it.



Meet here where you are what you want

and you want what you are

and everything falls away into radiant emptiness.

ADYASHANTI

A Warriors Call

We were awake at 3am. Plan was to get to the Nashville airport by 7:30 to make a flight to Palm Beach , a little work and a little beach time. I could feel Lola's feet on my back in the night and knew she was hot, another fever, another cold. Laying awake in bed before sunrise I went through the possibilities of what we might do rearranging our June schedule to fit it all in. No worries, all the choices were great so what does the order matter.

Being a Dad is my closest connection to God. I can't imagine loving more than I love these little girls...all my girls, from 26 to 2. Lola, Bella, Ana , Alexis and now two granddaughters, Sydney and Avery.Unconditional love is always with me just under the surface of my relationship to the world I live in outside of me.

Feeling Lola's feet didn't make for an Oh No , We can't go reaction...in fact I just felt how much I love having this little character for a daughter and her Mom for my wife.

My main reason in flying to Palm Beach was to see a man I respect and feel a connection to cuse we have both done our best to create a doorway for those trying to undo their addictions and suffering for the sake of living a life they love. Call it recovery if you want..I'm not sure that word is accurate..doesn't really matter, it is the evolution of our human legacy and Don Mullaney and I have very different looking approaches to our work while both work from that place within us that is so grateful for our life and transformation that we had to share that gratitude the best way we know how. Really very simple and sometimes very challenging when you can't settle for less than what you feel is the best for your people, the ones we serve in our work.

From the outside we don't appear to have much at all in common but I would bet you through the eyes of God we look like two brothers who have their own style and way of getting the job done.One thing I have come to see and know about the truth of life, looks don't have anything to do with substance and real truth brings great respect and honor with it. Among warriors there is always a mutual respect that will come forward at some point, whether in victory or defeat, in argument or agreement, true warriors live for the closeness to life's integrity, a closeness that being the warrior brings.Going with the flow is usually just an annoyance to a warrior. We do it to get in position to act sometimes but I don't think we ever like it.

Being a warrior is sure not a popularity contest either. Popularity is another one of those social conventions that seems to breed soft, lazy actors rather than solid courageous Characters, warriors. I've become such a jackass these days that I almost don't trust anybody who is too popular in any field, recovery,politics, film, music, doesn't matter, authenticity brings uniqueness and social compliance as a culture has a hard time with unique.It also has a hard time with the truth.

When I realized we couldn't make the flight this morning I came down stairs and got online cancelling the flight and re-booking the Singer Island Hilton for the end of June. I'm going to see Don Mullaney, the exact day is not the point.

Many times in my life I have had powerful feelings that I needed to do something and wouldn't "understand " why..today I know that is God directing me and I don't need to understand why. Actually it's more fun not knowing, I get to figure it out as I move forward, with faith, rather than believing a head full of bullshit thinking I know something.

Palm Beach will be there and I'll play on that sugar white sand beach with my girls and visit my warrior compadre...sometimes we need to check in with each other because we are here to learn and share who we are with each other as individuals not as business people or friends or any other roles we have given so much value to. We need to check in Man to man, human to human..life to life.

Today I'm going to The Ranch and work with some wild two year old colts of ours...Now that's a mirror of Spirit for you, a two year old colt all fat and wide eyed.

To all the warriors out there I salute you and look forward to meeting you along the way...we do recognize each other and there aren't that many of us in circulation these days. To death I say "I see you and when the time comes we'll dance and sing an old Sweatlodge song to the Great Mystery" Weyah hey hey Weyah Hey......

Conscious Contact

Who am I listening to in my life? So many voices so little attention.The world around us looks more like a world in need of treatment than a world we might aspire to be loyal subscribers to. On one hand our culture and our world is not responsible for us as individuals, we are, and at the same time we are the children of this world and all its conflicts, insecurities, insanity and lies.Attempting to sort the truth out of the agenda is , well, more trouble than it's worth. I may be powerless over the world outside of myself but I am not powerless over myself ,what I believe about me, agree to concerning me, or choose to act on in relation to me.Bringing my attention back to myself keeps me from getting all caught up in all the stuff that in truth does not matter anyway.

My world exists within me. My world is a perception, a matrix of beliefs and stories. In my world there are continuously changing weather patterns of emotion, hunger, thought, sensation and experience.

In the world outside of me there are also constantly changing aspects of life, weather, belief, reaction. We are caught up in a whirlwind of economic, energetic, environmental, political and religious turmoil. What we were taught as kids as the "right" way to live has turned out to have been a very short sighted, unsustainable, addicted, demanding, borderline behaving quagmire of cultural mess. Everybody seems to be lying to everybody about almost everything and all we know for sure is that we can't count on the politicos or the systems as they exist today to save us from ourselves. See what I mean by our World being in need of treatment....

In the midst of all this, change keeps happening and with that change, opportunity comes forward...So, where is our attention? Are we seeing the opportunities or are we fighting to keep up our attachment to what has been familiar to us.

Like an individual in need of treatment, when what you have lived as "reality" stops working, there can be a real sense of the whole house of cards coming down. We are the culture of the world and the culture of the world is us. The rethinking of how we live one day to the next as a society, is , if it's going to evolve toward Happy, Joyous, and Free, going to be a leap of faith into the unknown. My point of view about Recovery has shifted from the goal being to become a "happy, productive member of society" to being re-connected to the truth of who I am underneath all the beliefs , baggage, stories and imbalances that had become my perception of myself. That perception of myself was born of my relationship with this Society and how I saw me, judged me, defined me according to societies rules. I really tried to fit in..sort of...that's funny now..but it sure as hell wasn't funny when I believed Society knew something I didn't.

Where do we go now, people of recovery, society of the USA...where do we go now Humans? Our world has hit the fan and most of our all powerful systems have shown themselves to be incapable of changing toward the opportunity of a new Paradigm.Our systems are reflections of ourselves. We are so attached and addicted to suffering as a measure of accomplishment we seem to be indulging into suffering rather than stepping back with a broad, open minded point of view and being honest about how Huge our collective and individual challenges and opportunities are.

In the USA if you work, work, work then you might believe you are ok and accomplished and headed for some promised land...good luck with that one.Life is changing the stakes to not being about how hard we work and suffer for our causes but how smart we live and how much love and joy we express, minute to minute, day by day.

Some where in the mix of our beliefs we bought into being small and imperfect as the foundation of our experience.We have no idea if we are perfect or not, we have no idea the intentions of the one that created us so who are we to even have an opinion of what we are. We've even been told we were born in Sin and must earn Gods love. So many of our beliefs have been passed on from generation to generation and regardless of how much suffering and fear those beliefs create we stay loyal to them or at best go into a like minded reaction to them. All aspects of the same way of thinking.

There is nothing sacred here but life itself...our beliefs are not sacred,our educations are not sacred...our sobriety is not sacred...the religions are not sacred..the cows may be, at least they were, like us, created by Life, not the minds of men.

What we are being shown today is the truth that our interpretations of ourselves are simply opinions and always removed from the truth, as truth exists within us as Spirit.We are that Spirit not what we have projected into the world as identity and called it "me". We recover from our identity as "Me" or we live as "me" better or less than, in recovery, small and imperfect, same ol' same ol' , Again, same way of thinking that created the problem in the first place.

All of this point of view applies to our societies and our cultures...all of this applies to our Human world as we create it and then live in it.If we want to change the world we must come to terms with the foundation of our personal beliefs. The world is a projector screen for our beliefs, we act according to our beliefs, we experience based on beliefs and we perceive through the filters of our beliefs...no way of getting around dealing with our beliefs if anything is going to change beyond cosmetics and affiliations.

In my life there is, today, a conscious contact with a presence within me. A presence that is always there and always holding me in unconditional Love and awareness. I feel from that presence that everything is and has always been ok...There is a conscious contact that exists within all of us that when we have brought our attention back to ourselves will reveal to us the thread of life that connects us all.Until we have brought our attention back to ourselves we will continue to live from the insanity of our own projections. We will continue to live from the world around us rather than from the world within us. Bringing our attention back to ourselves will require a great leap of faith. We will have to believe we are worth it and let go of the grand excuses that we are small and imperfect, that there is a measure called Normal, that has some relevance to anything. We will have to let go of our Gods and projections, our agendas and affiliations..our diagnosis and cool cards. We will have to be willing to be happy, joyous and Free...all for the sake of a conscious contact.