Monthly Archives: June 2016

Things are going to be alright

There seems to be an idea that things aren’t going well.
A fundamental question that is vital to examine is, is the world evolving or devolving?
It seems so much of what I see in pop culture are stories of devolving suggesting de-evolution. Stories that center on an idea that order is being lost.
Regardless of your political, religious, or ideological persuasion it seems there’s a pining for a past time.
A simpler time when order was understood.
A time of plenty and bounty when there was enough for everyone.
A time that hard work was the rule not the exception.
A time of respect and dignity in community
A time of compassion
A time when intellectualism was valued and aspired to.
I question the idea that we are falling apart.
I see a state of flourishing abundance every day. I have faith in evolution. Not the limited darwinian view but a view that includes the growth and expansion of consciousness and the merger of spirit.
Do you want to see the true nature of humanity? Look at New York during 9/11. Five hundred thousand people evacuated by boat in nine hours. All of the bridges and trains on Manhattan Island were closed. Strangers came together and took care of each other. Our infrastructure failed and human compassion flourished. Over six thousand five hundred travelers were housed and fed by people like you and me. Everyday normal folks, when their planes were forced to land the morning of 9/11 in Newfoundland. An entire community came together to embrace these foreign travelers. Does community even cover this? Think of these numbers! Everyone had food and shelter! That’s amazing! What a stunning outpouring of love and compassion. This is a repeating story. Snow storms in Minnesota bring out the best; people shoveling and pushing out strangers. A tornado that tore through central Minneapolis brought out people with gloves, rakes, and chainsaws eager to help their neighbors. While riding my motorcycle to the Sturgis rally I broke down. Dozens of people helped me, in ways that still shock me. The skinny kid who wasn’t on a Harley and I was fully embraced. Traveling all over the world I’ve been helped by total strangers over and over again.
The love and compassion I’ve consistently been shown has fundamentally changed me.
It’s the belief that we’re on our own that bolsters these ideas of isolation, greed, and selfishness. This is not our natural state. Our natural state is that of community.
We are fundamentally one.
We thrive together.
Last year, I told my son about a big thing that had just happened in our country. I said, “Gay marriage was legalized.” He looked at me with utter confusion, “Haven’t they always been able to be married?”
There it is, out of the mouths of babes.
Love is love
An uncorrupted simplistic truth
His natural instinct, unencumbered by any dogmatic fear based belief.
An evolution at the core of a revolution
He sees no color and is perplexed when I bring it up.
An example of a metamorphosis that my generation was a part of.
He doesn’t judge creed. He’s respectful of his Hindu and Muslim friends.
During Christmas he doesn’t boast to his friends about the things he’s received.
He wasn’t told to do this. He’s just naturally respectful of others.
Understanding that not everyone has had the same experience he’s had.
Children, the great barometer of society
An undeniable metric of evolution
While out for dinner with a friend, he hinted that the world was falling apart; unable to sustain its complexities.
I asked him, as an artist, what’s the source of inspiration for your best work?
His answer was, “It’s weird, I can’t quite explain it. It comes from a place outside of me, almost like I’m downloading something.”
This inspired me to ask the same question of other artists.
All the artists I spoke with, spoke of a similar experience.
Remarkable, isn’t it?
That speaks to a positive evolution, an unseen interconnection.
It speaks to a oneness
It speaks to the notion that we’re a piece of a single organism that we call the universe, which is in a state of perpetual flourishing expansion.
Isn’t flourishing the natural state of things?
Moss, mushrooms, and beatles on a rotten log
Soil rich with varied decompositions.
A revitalized life after a bout with cancer
Flourishing doesn’t always come in the form of rainbows.
When you look out into the stars, what is it that you see? Order or chaos?
Two galaxies colliding. A star in supernova.
I see creation and evolution.
The stars, our ancestors
Our core essence forever the same.
A cosmic dance in perfect balance.
You’re a piece of that.
The artists state that their inspiration and executions are guided by something they feel outside of themselves. This points to a central intelligence, an intelligence that thrives on a symbiotic balance perpetually opening up and evolving into richer and richer levels of beauty.
Physical states that are interwoven and interdependent on other neighboring physical states.
I’m not sure the intelligence and consciousness we experience as ours lie solely within our minds and bodies.
Intelligence seems to surround us, we seem to be awash in flourishing intelligent consciousness.
Artists are the easiest way to point this out.
We all have access to this.
The trick is to feel it, listen to it, and act on it.
We’re all awash in this. The road block is getting over yourself.
Getting over your wants and needs.
The idea seems best represented by the Hindu god with all the arms reaching out. Each arm, an alternate and symbiotic aspect of reality stemming from a single source.
A source in a perpetual state of bloom.

Enjoy this blessed day…
I feel so full.
Yet the imagery, of a ten year old boy sitting on the beach dying from ebola sits with me. Panting; hardly able to breath, he’s sitting alone. People too afraid to touch him.
I’m with that.
It’s become a piece of me.
A part of this moment.
In this same moment my orchid is blooming for the first time in two years. Vibrant purples and pretty pinks unfolding into incomprehensibly delicate intricacies.
That little boy… long since dead.
The suffering that is happening at this very moment is happening and real.
On the shores of the Caribbean, the blue frothy waves roll in with their enchanting rhythm. Soothing the ears of those that stand near.
There are children suffering at the hands of malevolent men. Horrors too great to comprehend.
Is this too much? Hold on, it’s much more complex…
Confounding contradiction.
Pulsing polarities.
Apathies and empathies.
The sun is setting over the Arabian Sea at this very moment. The richest reds penetrating the souls of young lovers immersed in their moment. Dreaming of glorious futures filled with their beloved traditions and loved ones.
There are people mourning the premature loss of a loved one. At the same moment, as a result of the very same event, others are reawakened by the news of a matched organ allowing a future they were losing sight of.
I’ve just finished a latte. The rich creamy shot pulled to perfection. The locally sourced ice cold milk stretched to a silky, shiny, creamy texture. The simple syrup flecked plentifully with dark vanilla bean. All of this is poured together with the delicacy and perfection of a seasoned french chef.
I lost my sisters years ago.
Two, two ton masses mercilessly crashing together over a thin sheet of black ice. Michelle killed instantly, Renee dead a day later. A friend I meet years later, the first person on the scene. Without realizing the connection, he describes to me, in grizzly detail, the images that stain his psyche.
The raw face of death.
Death of hope, death of a dream, death of perceived potentials.
This friend and I made a ritual of living life to its fullest potential, riding in the rain. A declaration never declared. He understood, he’d met the grim reaper years before and slipped from his grasp.
Nothing needed to be said.
He’d lost the use of his arm.
His nerves permanently damaged, forced to set down his guitar and sell his motorcycle.
He knew how to live, he knows how to live.
Reinvented, one of the fastest master skiers in the state.
A passion for riding a bicycle in the woods whenever he could.
Fate being what fate is, his legs would meet the same fate his arm met twenty years earlier. The result of a human flying through the air with no wings. Crashing onto the icy earth with the force of an enormous falling tree. His light indomitable, refusing to be extinguished. Another loss, his bike and skis put away, vestiges of the past.
Today with the use of fantastic technology and an unprecedented raw grit and determination he walks, slides down snowy slopes, and rolls over the rolling landscape with pedals under his feet.
Again, reinvented.
You will not beat him, he is unbeatable.
I used to be at war with life, taunting and teasing the reaper. Unsettled, looking for something outside of myself to satisfy my hunger. Discovering myself, a self not defined by flesh, opened me to the stunning perfection of the place I stood that moment.
What was it like to be that little boy sitting on the beach alone? What did he understand?
This is what I know…
I’m that little boy.
I’m his pain and his fear,
I’m his confusion,
I’m filled with his essence.
An indomitable force that propels me to fantastic levels of joy.
You will not beat us, we are unbeatable!
Enjoy this blessed day.