Fracking Means We're Fucked

         It's well past midnight. But I can't sleep. I heard about Josh Fox's documentary on hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking, from Bill Maher. (Say what one will about the ever vigilant pornography loving, womanizing, pot smoking, religion hating, ultra-liberal, potty-mouthed late night talk show host, but the man is smart, funny and one of only a handful of people in the American entertainment industry intelligent enough to not sell out for the money and at the same time stay committed to somehow making important issues topical in our modern highly degraded and degenerate society. (Moyers and Charlie Rose notwithstanding obviously, but one doesn't often consider them late night talk show hosts.) Leno, Fallon, Kimmel, even Letterman unfortunately, only add to the collective garbage that spews forth into America's polluted consciousness with their hyper focus on meaningless celebrity, inane pranks, and the usual irrelevant non-news bites of the day.) 

        I've been watching the documentary entitled GASLAND based on Maher's recommendation for the last hour and a half. It is late; the day was long and I am tired. 

        [Editor's Note: Over the last few weeks I have started to get numerous substantial intuitive hits that it is no longer enough to simply post or share on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter that we all know and love and depend on for the latest and greatest. It came first as an intuitive hit, sometimes I call them voices (though nothing measurably audible is heard), or visions (though it's nothing akin to hallucinogenic visions); no words that can be translated except very basic generalities... something to the effect of "I wonder if posting to social media rather than the more traditional blog is actually hurting the cause more than helping.... then more as thought-clouds... frequent thought bubbles would appear in my brain about the subject. How many people actually see a post? What if it's an important post? Something that everyone should be aware of? How many other posts and status updates is that one post competing with? And worst of all, hashtags and all, it's still damn hard to FIND information on social media without a lot of work, and impossible to bookmark or save it. 
        So sure putting something up on Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr gets it out there "fast" and it sure is easy for us... but how many people does it actually reach? Even when you have a fanbase in the tens of thousands or millions even...? Furthermore, once a post is a few days old, it tends to hit the proverbial bottom of the barrel, seems no longer relevant; hell, it's no longer even visible to most people except for the real deep diggers or bottom dwellers. But how many of us are like that these days in this age of too much information...? No, posting to social media may have temporarily seemed like the quick fix we all wanted so we wouldn't have to keep posting to our blogs with all the upkeep cost and maintenance necessary to keep them, but it just isn't going to work in the long run for committed lifetime information providers or artists or content creators. 
        So we're back to blogging now, pretty much everything minus only the most mundane items, with auto-feeds going into Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr to alert non-subscribers. Hell, this should be a blog post on its own. But fuck it, if you're reading this, now you know. Heed it. It's only getting worse. If your message is important, get it back into a more permanent blog or web-based presence outside of social media which is just too damned overloaded at this late point in the game.] End of Editor's Note

        In 2005 Bush/Cheney passed their Energy Act, a law that allows oil and natural gas companies (using Haliburton technology, Cheney being the former CEO) drilling for oil and natural gas in the US to be exempt from all the previous laws that protected our air, water, environment and even our drinking water. This was illegal for thirty years prior to their passing of this ludicrous and criminal law. It made anyone drilling for oil or natural gas in America to NOT have to be bound by or abide by the Clean Drinking Water Act, the Natural Water act and the Clean Air act. In other words, they can do whatever they want to the air or water in the US when fracking or drilling and not be regulated, or fined, or even scientifically researched. "WTF???" you might ask. Yeah, me too. When I first heard it I thought maybe I was having a flashback and kept rubbing my eyes... surely I misheard that. So I rewound and watched and listened again. Nope. Got it right the first time. Feeling irritated. But it only gets worse. 

       There are at least 596 chemicals -- the majority of which are poisonous to air, water, humans, and the environment -- that are used in #fracking fluid that is pumped underground in over 450,000 wells in 30 states across the United States currently. This is happening NOW. #Mindblowing. Colorado, Texas, Kansas, Wyoming, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, on and on. And it's only getting worse. This documentary was made in 2010. God only knows how much worse it's gotten since this was made. One of the most devastating aspects of the whole situation is that one of Dick Cheney's many milestone achievements while he was in the White House, along with spying on Americans, torture, targeted assassinations, and mass killings in the Middle East, was convincing the powers that be to allow oil and natural gas drilling on PUBLIC LANDS. All those millions of acres that Teddy Roosevelt preserved in the United States to save for generations to come -- land that belongs to every legal U.S. citizen including you and -- are now being devastated by fracking. 

         I don't want to go into a lot of the details here. That's one of the benefits of this new age. There's no need. Anyone can just run a search on it and learn as much as they want to right in the moment. Suffice it to say though: GO FIND A WAY TO WATCH THE FILM CALLED GASLAND. Do it today. Make your whole family watch it. That spouse of yours, the one who's all "I'm not into that kind of stuff" -- male or female, make them watch it too. Force them if you have to. It's that important.  This guy who made it Josh Fox does an excellent job of explaining the whole paradigm and process in a relatively easy to understand manner. Better than most online reference sources.

        The truth is that this isn't even a debatable issue anymore. It's not something that needs more science or research or exploration as some natural gas proponents suggest. It's more like a freaking disaster that's already happened. Even in large cities like Dallas / Ft. Worth -- one of the worst places hit by it, some parts now deserted, people all sick and dying with no more healthy ground water left. It's beyond discussing or debating. It's already a public health and environmental disaster. I'm more than irritated. I'm sad but more than sad. I'm angry but more than angry. Can't really describe what I'm feeling yet. Overwhelmed maybe. Over it. Like "it's time to seriously consider where we are going to move now and start planning on when" over it. America is fucked if this continues. 
        For the record Vermont has already passed a law banning fracking entirely in their state. Having used to live in Vermont part time for a number of years during the Cleopatra Ecstasy years, the people of this state never cease to amaze and impress me; for a variety of admirable reasons, this being just one of them.

        You'll have to see the film for yourself and then start studying it. Study the numbers up above. Consider that all this natural shale that is under half the United States that they are drilling into or want to drill into is surrounded by and sits underneath millions of miles of natural lakes and rivers and streams. We are talking about doing something here that cannot be undone. A catastrophe so mammoth that we may destroy half or more of one of the most beautiful countries on planet earth. And worse than that we may potentially destroy the nation's natural water supply. 
        Basically the best way to look at it is this: for those who live in any of these states where fracking is already taking place, they're screwed. They'll get sick and the survivors will soon realize that they have to move. Big cities will get bigger. Smaller cities will turn into big cities. And that's really just the beginning. There is no governmental oversight on any of this because of how the White House at that time made it all exempt from any kind of oversight; so as one of the higher-ups at the EPA said "We need to be investigating this and we know it. But we need to be directed to investigate it first. And so far we have not been directed to investigate it. No matter how many nightmare stories we hear of people getting sick or being able to light their tap water on fire etc... We are presently being told that it is out of our jurisdiction." 

         Funny. So if protecting the public health, clean air, drinking water, and the environment that is being poisoned all over the United States is out of the jurisdiction of the EPA, then who's jurisdiction is it in exactly? Right? Well that's the catch. No one's. Like I said, we're fucked. Belize anyone? Italy? See ya there soon. Ciao.  
        ADDENDUM: One note to be fair: this incredibly large amount of natural gas that we've discovered beneath the earth's surface IS a financial goldmine, not much different than digging for oil and finding a gusher. We human beings are running out of oil faster than we can develop inexpensive more environmentally safer alternatives. [Unless one believes the ongoing underground conspiracy-talk about free-energy machines that allegedly already exist but are being strangled out of the mainstream knowledge bank by Big Oil companies. This could very well be the truth. But I personally have not seen enough to feel one way or the other. So running out of oil or other fossil fuels before we are able to create sustainable alternatives is a potent reality-based concern.
        This new found treasure trove of natural gas could also very well decrease America's dependence on foreign oil. Certainly one of the most heinous aspects of the United States government now and over the last sixty years is it's foreign policy, which seems largely dictated by this greedy blood-lust for oil. Especially disturbing is the dubious relationship the U.S. has with one of the wickedest fascist nations on earth, Arabia (referring to this poor country of enslaved non-citizens as "'Saudi' Arabia" only further buys into and promotes the humanitarian hot mess the United States and the Saudi family have set up there). Not to mention Iran, Iraq, Africa, etc. etc. Anything that can be done to ween the United States off of foreign oil and thus these kind of destructive activities is a good thing. So discovering and drilling for natural gas on American soil does appear tempting on several fronts. 
        But two deeper points need to be addressed or at least mentioned. One is that regardless of how much natural gas or even oil that the United States discovers in its own backyard, one is still left with a sneaking suspicion that this will still not preclude nor prevent them from sucking every last bit of oil out of every other country on earth simultaneously. This is common knowledge to anyone who works in Big Oil or government. Energy is king on planet earth and for better or worse the United States is its kingdom and Revolutionary Guard. Truth be told we have only begun to scratch the surface of how much worse it's going to be over the next fifty years in regards to war and humanitarian crises because of our collective need for oil. God curse anyone unlucky enough to discover oil in their country. Best to just commit mass suicide before the United States or China find out about it. Point being that all this natural gas drilling in the U.S. is not necessarily going to make the United States suddenly draw down on its greedy quest to dominate the oil of the world.
        Now with this said, (like many) I do recognize humanity's bigger picture evolution toward enlightenment. So regardless of how bad and evil the world seems today, it is a much safer, kinder, more humane and just place than it was one-hundred years ago for example. There does seem to be more focus on human rights and justice for all now than there's ever been. I do not believe that the people of the world will ever be able to stop the United States from continuing it's gross misconduct or murderous ways any time soon, but we can perhaps slow it down if enough people wake up and join the cause.  
        [Traditionally the only way a major world empire has ever stepped down from it's position of power is through an invasion by another country who has grown more powerful. The hope is that this does not occur in our lifetime of course. Practically and selfishly speaking, because oil is THE primary driving force of all nations at this moment in history, it is imperative for all American citizens that the United States government continue to maintain its global dominance around the world, especially in regards to the control of the world's oil supply and military might. There isn't a thing in the world that would stop China or Russia for example from invading and taking control of the United States if they believed they had the military might or the money to do so. Controlling the majority of the world's oil supply is that defining deciding factor. So even if "green energy" became readily available to the U.S. tomorrow, there is still our safety and welfare and the preservation of our beloved American life to consider in regards to how other nations might behave if given the opportunity.]
        Finding a way to decrease dependence on foreign oil by tapping into domestic natural gas preserves will certainly help this cause. People of all shapes and sizes need to recognize that banning natural gas exploration and harvesting entirely is not the best solution. What we need do instead is to stop it temporarily and conduct more research on the process itself until we can hone and refine it to be a cleaner safer process that does not kill people or destroy the environment. This may seem too capitalist a viewpoint for most, especially members of a figurative Transcendence Army, but it's a much more realistic and practical strategy based on the current facts of life and the reality of today's world than to run around shouting and petitioning that fracking should be stopped forever and made illegal. This simply isn't going to happen. Who knows what kind of progress we can make collectively if we just slow things down a little and pump some good old fashioned American ingenuity and scientific research into all these natural gas wells.

Promote Your Status Update... Really? Exploring the Personal Expression Age

       I now notice that Facebook is offering a Promote button on personal profiles, where for a few quid more you can advert your status updates to receive more attention/exposure. (I've promised a new blog entry to The Transcendence Diaries daily from now on, as in days of old, so if any status update goes beyond 4 lines I turn it into a blog btw. Standby and we'll see what happens here...) Point being that this new trend compels one to realize that the world is quickly jumping to a "whoever has the most money gets the most attention" model, (in point of fact it is actually swerving damn fast towards "whoever has the most money gets ALL the attention" -- but this jumps the gun a bit) even on traditionally free platforms such as social media. Of course there is the "whoever makes the biggest arse of themselves that day" model as there's always been, but that's usually just good for the requisite "fifteen minutes (now fifteen seconds) of fame" type of exposure; in one ear and out the other faster than that pregnant mom of eight sea-monkeys in Kenosha, Wisconsin can find a crack publicist who'll take her on for a three month stint.
        In general the prediction made in the book We Are the Revolution -- Welcome to the Personal Expression Age about the coming trend of "the commoditization of the individual, of every individual" as a Signature of the age, is slowly inching toward becoming a very solidified reality in Western culture and thus globally. (Even the most ardent despisers of all things American still recognize that, one, in order to make a big splash financially one normally has to make it in the USA, and two, that in terms of cultural perception of mainstream success on a global scale, "making it in the US" is still the benchmark of how successful one is perceived to be). But that's subtext.
        The bigger picture point is that if regular everyday folk using social media to communicate mundane daily activities with friends, classmates, family and neighbors are now being encouraged to "Promote" their status updates for no obvious or immediate economic benefit, what's next? [Okay so now this is where we switch to a cut and paste from this Facebook status update to a blog entry usually, which despite my aversion to the extra work involved and a deep seated though irrational longing to just stay right here and keep typing, I will now do. Here we go. That's better.]
        In order to answer this 'what's next' question perhaps it would be helpful to remind ourselves of the primary driver, and trigger, of this new Age of Personal Expression, i.e. we've now entered an era where growing up moderately healthy and successful -- doing well in school, graduating from college, getting married, buying a house of your own, having 2.5 kids, retiring by age 65 with a decent pension -- is no longer enough to fulfill the average human being's need for personal gratification, satisfaction or validation. The need to be publicly acknowledged and/or recognized through Personal Expression (PE) of nearly any and all means necessary (or available) has replaced the more traditional forms of personal satisfaction. Becoming public, becoming a public sensation, even if for a brief moment, has become the new "got married, had a kid, just earned my Masters or bought my first house, etc."; UNLESS any of those events happens to make it easier for someone to "draw a crowd" or gain more access to the plethora of perceived public attention that appears available now to anyone, i.e. if getting married can be perceived as being a unique form of Personal Expression that may garner one more attention than the average bear, then that event is still perceived by the person to be a major life moment worth investing in.
        If not, then it feels plain, ordinary, pedestrian and therefore might not be as exciting as endeavoring to attempt something else that feels more authentically PE; at least and especially while one is young and still believes themselves to have plenty of good years left, (or old and feels like they've already "been there done that" with the more traditional vehicles of personal satisfaction mentioned above). [This is a deliberately short synopsis of a much larger paradigm explored fully in the book, but it should suffice in order to follow the main point(s) of this blog entry.]
       From where we sit now -- nine years into the research of this age and the book that explores it -- the above summarizes both the primary continuous driver of the age AND the primary trigger that got us here in the first place. So, with the "commoditization of the individual" Signature now starting to trend in real time, e.g. "Promote your status update or Tweet to your friends to "let people know it's important"" [a direct quote from Facebook June 18th, 2013], which costs money, it is clear that our global society as a whole is definitely heading toward a "whoever has the most money gets the most attention" or better put, "whoever has the most money gets all the attention" model of day to day life. And yet ordinary folks with no financial or career-goal gain to be had from going more public will still feel compelled to participate in such activities such as promoting their status updates or tweets or anything they can think of in order to garner more public attention, even if it just means among their local community or friends group.
        The truth is that most people will never gain much of anything from such an action. One promoted status update or tweet in this overcrowded marketplace of pseudo-celebrities (another Signature of the Personal Expression Age) does not a celebrity make. And yet because of the two primary factors triggering, allowing and continuing this trend -- the relatively new longing of the average individual to feel famous, and the corporate greed that creates the technological platforms to make the fulfillment of that desire or at least the perception of it available -- people will still jump at the chance. Facebook will bring in tens of millions of dollars in extra revenue this year from regular everyday Joes being willing to pay for the perception that "more people saw their promoted status update". No one is claiming that Facebook will not in some way "promote these paid status updates" to a larger target audience than if one didn't pay to promote it. That isn't the implication. Nor the point.
        The intriguing takeaway is that people will do it in the first place; and the fact that someone who works at Facebook actually had the idea in the first place -- and furthermore that someone else higher up actually thought it was a valid enough experiment to at least try. It is a clear indication that we have now passed the threshold in mass consciousness of understanding the undercurrent drivers of the Personal Expression Age -- they are beginning to be taken for granted -- AND have reached the first stage of a global trend toward the Commoditization of the Individual en masse.
        More later. Much more. Just thoughts in the moment.

Staying Source

[Introduction]: "Source" as it is being used here is a word I first came across in the early nineties through a seemingly random reading of a print magazine called The Avatar Journal. There was no "new age movement" to speak of as there is now. Depak Chopra had just released his first series of books and CDs in the United States and his work was then considered "way out". Hard to believe. There's truly nothing now the wise old man from India says today that seems the least bit controversial let alone novel or revolutionary. But these were different times. [For clarification and context, Ram Dass was still doing his 300+ day a year global lecture circuit as he had been since his spiritual journey to India and back in the late sixties. But this was heady little known knowledge. He hadn't gone mainstream yet. None of those kinds of ideas had. Even the mentioning of Ram Dass or Avatar or Depak Chopra even was usually met with blank stares by one's peers.]

Ironically most of the ideas that make up what some people unknowingly refer to as the "new age" movement are still relatively unknown in the mainstream and misunderstood. I have heard men I admire around the world, great men, noble men, refer to the whole new age ideology as "bunk and nonsense" simply because they erroneously group the entire global canon of cutting edge consciousness research in with the lesser important more new age material that's gone mainstream such as the law of attraction phenom. This is unfortunate. Little do they know. And little do they profit or benefit from the advances we've made along the lines of creating our own reality, consciously and deliberately. Some still pray to gods in order to attempt to steer their life, and some choose to go more intellectual and believe they have no ability whatsoever in the direction their life path takes so they've wound up bitter and cynical. (They're existentialists in reality.)

I have infinite understanding for both types -- the "religious only" and the "non-religious and cynical" -- for I would be bitter and cynical too if I didn't understand how my moment to moment and day to day experiences came to be, if i still believed them to be happenstance or chance or fate or the work of gods or even the results of the actions of others. That's a hard place to live from; to not understand that it is we who are creating each and every experience of our own personal reality. But truth be told I haven't lived from that place in almost 20 years. As difficult as it is for me to fully fathom that some people really live this way, I can still remember what it was like to live this way.

The idea that I was creating my experiences based on my beliefs first came to me, again, through this mysterious Avatar Journal that appeared in the mail one day out of nowhere. I had already studied every religious, scientific, psychological, mystical, occult and cosmological theory that humankind had ever invented and postulated throughout history. The idea that it was we alone who were responsible for our experiences was touched upon in eastern mysticism but it was always clouded by less seemingly plausible theories about less controllable factors such as spirit influences, ascended masters, spirit guides, angels, chakras, magic, karma, past lives and all the rest. Intuitively I was aware at a very young age that i could choose to leave my brain at the door and entertain such ideas if I wanted to but that they were certainly man made and highly unlikely. Though the idea of we as consciousness -- or pure awareness-- beings being the true source of our earthly experiences made sense to me. It felt right. And the idea that our experiences came about through and because of our beliefs -- rather than through fate or chance or luck or merely good decision making or a benevolent god made even more sense. After all, I didn't like eggplant for example and because of that simple fact I chose never to eat eggplant. It was simple. It was a belief.

The real controversy in the Avatar materials, the real coup de grace -- as compared to everything else I had ever read or studied, was the idea that we had the power to change our beliefs. And that if we could change our beliefs then we could change our experiences. That was a powerful idea. More powerful than anything eastern religion or mysticism offered -- no need for karmic resolution, past life healing, or chanting or waking up at dawn or hours of meditation; no need for a guru or a vegan diet or sexual abstinence or a life of asceticism. (Not that I didn't try those things. I did. I just found them severely lacking in measurable results. This new theory also promised much more than western religious or psychological theories of how the world and human consciousness works. Tried those too. Not only did they lack on the surface, just from a purely intellectual and even intuitive potential scale, but in practice they just didn't yield that much to even the most faithful practitioners. Thousands of years of human history already showed that. As many already know I had even gone so far as to become an initiated Wiccan witch and high magician in a coven (I never do anything halfway. If I'm going to learn something I'm going to master it.) Along with also becoming a Jew, a humanist, a Buddhist, a Hindu Krishna devotee, etc.

Nothing seemed to be as powerful nor as simple as this radical idea that: we as human beings are each god-like in our abilities to create our own reality based on the beliefs we hold; that we hold thousands if not tens of thousands of beliefs; that it isn't important where we got these beliefs; that we could discreate beliefs we held that we don't prefer and we could create new beliefs that we do prefer; using specific tools that we inherently possess the knowledge and power to use; and that through doing so we could then change and shape and even deliberately create our own day to day experiences or what we call "our life". All we had to do was learn the tools. So I did. That was back in 94/95. Life changed profoundly for me overnight.

The idea of Source as in capital S Source was a new idea that came out of my study of the Avatar materials through taking the courses. Simple yet powerful. That each of us is Source, the Source of our own life experiences. The twist? Regardless of whether we know it or not we are STILL Source. When life seems to just happen to us, we are still Source. We just may be so far away from being aware of it that we aren't acting AS or acting FROM Source too much, so life seems to be happening TO us rather than FROM us. Source isn't a place we go. It's who we are.

Now I understood why prayer to a god force outside of ourselves had such a low "creational yield", e.g. the measure of how often what we intend to create or "want" as the case may be actually transpires, why prayer seemed to be a fifty-fifty thing at best, a crapshoot; and why not? We were looking for something outside of ourselves to do the creating and discreating FOR us when WE had the power all along to do it ourselves. I also understood why books like "Why Bad Things Happen to Good People" were written. Bad things happen to good people because they believe they are going to; somewhere within they hold that belief. It may be conscious. It may be unconscious. But we are much bigger more powerful creators than we give ourselves credit for. [End of Introduction]

I admit it. I was very lucky to have been able to take the Avatar Course and learn the materials and knowledge at such a young age. I became successful and wealthy well before reaching thirty years of age. Bought my first home by age 26. Owned five before I was 30. I never made the mistake of marrying the wrong person and thus suffering the drama and challenges of divorce with children etc etc. I call it luck. But I jest. Really what it came down to was choice. I chose to take that course at a young age because I intuitively understood that the only other choice I would have was to live life like everyone else around me and like I had already been living. Confused by how and why things happen to us, even when we try real hard to be good people. Never sure of what was going to happen to me or not; never sure if i was going to be able to create the kind of life experiences that I wanted to or not.

So with that as the only option -- after all that's how everyone around me adults included were living their lives -- I saw it as a no-brainer to at least try learning this secret sacred knowledge that The Avatar Course offered. And they offered a money back guarantee if I didn't feel like what I learned was valuable anyway. So why the hell not?!? Almost twenty years in now and I still use the tools on a daily if not hourly basis. You can't help it. You can't unlearn that you're creating it all. Once you are shown this indisputably it's hard to pretend you weren't.

It isn't always easy. It may seem like magic at first. People's lives change dramatically in their first year or two. They go from muggles who have no idea why things happen to them to powerful beings excited to start creating things they've always dreamed of. But after a while we sometimes get lazy. Or better put, I tended to get lazy. See, the thing I've observed and perhaps this is now only relevant to other Avatars, is that we've learned a profound secret knowledge -- that it is actually we who are creating our experiences, not just experiencing them but actually creating them, and we've been given the TOOLS to use to do the creating and discreating. But even with the knowledge we still need to USE them. It's not enough to just walk around knowing. It helps. Certainly. We'll never go back to wondering and searching and praying and hoping and wishing and affirming and visualizing again.

(Consider the Abraham-Hicks materials: intriguing, desirable, but no tangible tools. So much of life is still up in the air. And "Abraham" as Esther calls herself seems to change the methods and practices as often as she changes the knowledge itself. It's fun stuff. But I wouldn't want to live a life founded only on that shaky ground.)

No way; not for me. Avatar has taught us the most powerful tools to create deliberately available to human beings in the world today. But we need to remember to actually USE them. When we are hungry is it enough to just know that food exists? Or do we not need to prepare the food and eat it? We use our tools of food preparation and eating. When we want to DO or experience almost anything there is normally a set of tools we have to use in order to do so. Want to call your dad today to wish him a happy Father's Day? Break out that iPhone or Galaxy. Or Skype him from your iPad or laptop. Tools.

After almost twenty years of learning Avatar and regularly taking
the courses, I've found that the single biggest impediment to people "getting it" as in whether or not they truly believe and experience that it is THEY who are creating their lives and experiences after they take the Avatar course is them not using the tools. They're stuck in the "I'll just read this and see if I understand it" phase. They understand it. They get it. They even agree with it. But they don't take that next step and start using the tools they learned. So they revert back to muggle thinking and being. Hoping praying wishing meditating lighting candles eating vegan. Anything and everything they can do to try to "feel good"; when all they need to do is deliberately create "I feel good". (And discreate any beliefs that might oppose that desired and preferred belief. It is the power of discreating that it perhaps the most powerful tool in the Avatar toolbox. That's the one that 100% of people on planet earth are capable of but only 1% know that gives them such power.)

And it goes deeper. There is this, not often discussed but by very few. The fact that these tools we use are in fact inherent skills we all possess from birth and even before, the ability to create what we prefer and discreate what we don't prefer. They are very much like our other senses such as site or taste or hearing or smell. Feeling, capital F feeling, as in doing Feel Its, unlike emotional feeling, is the foundation of Creating and Discreating. And it is in essence just another one of our senses, our sixth sense. The sense of Feel. Or Intuition if you will. (That's murky territory for non-avatars so let's leave it at that.) So if Feeling, doing Feel Its, is just like any of our other senses why don't we just do it all the time? Why is it such a sticking point for so many?
I posit that it's because most of us have already lived a decade or two before we take the course and relearn how to do Feel Its. So we've become programmed not to know how to do it all the time. We've become programmed to NOT Feel. And without Feeling there is very little success in creating and discreating. My best guess is that as more time passes and more young people take the Avatar courses the easier and easier it will be for all of us to Feel all the time without even thinking about it. And pretty soon this sixth sense of ours will be as common a practice and as involuntary as seeing or hearing is to us today. For now though it is something that we are going to have to remember to DO. On a constant and consistent basis.

And the same goes for consciously and deliberately creating and discreating. It isn't enough to just think about what we want or what we'd prefer to happen in each moment. It would be if no other beliefs that were opposed to that preferred reality popped up in our consciousness. Then our hearts' desires would spontaneously manifest without second thought. (One can only imagine what chaos would ensue if that ever were possible.) Though its happened to us all numerous times, spontaneous manifestation from thought, and its always a pleasant surprise when it does occur, there seems to be a built in system in place that requires us to give most things a bit of thought or effort before we manifest them out of the blue. That's probably a good thing.

So the key is to use the knowledge and the tools we've learned deliberately to create what we prefer and to discreate what we do not prefer. We can do it alone or we can pair up with a trusted friend and do it. The more we do this the more Source we feel. The more we feel like Source. I've personally noticed the difference.

Just after this years Wizards Course I got together with The King once a week over Skype or FaceTime for three months straight in order to create and discreate. To use the tools. During this last tour with the band I didn't have as much time available and so we went about two weeks without hooking up. I noticed a real difference. A marked difference. Things began "happening to me" (insert knowing laugh here). At least it felt that way. I just didn't feel as in control of the things I was creating day to day and hour to hour. I was still aware that I was creating it all. But I wasn't as able to create what I preferred and not create what I didn't prefer as I usually am. Why? Because I wasn't using the tools as often as I was just a few weeks before. Sure my creational yield was much higher than the average person's. I was still creating miracles. But not like usual. I definitely noticed a difference. So I know now, yet again, how important it is to stay committed to consciously using the knowledge and the tools on a daily basis if I really want to kick butt and live life to the fullest. It's imperative if we want to create an enlightened planet which is our stated goal. And hell yeah do I want to see and experience that in my lifetime. Without a doubt. Totally looking forward to it!

The Challenge Of Truthfullness

The key, and the challenge, is to maintain our commitment to truth and radical honesty in every moment & still play the game well enough to win-win. "White lies" I've been told "are okay". That of course is bs. A lie is a lie is a lie. If you didn't feel like taking the call then you say that or nothing at all; not "sorry I missed your call". Of course there's the game of life and we all want to play; why else r we here? The day to day battle of wits and wisdom with peers colleagues coworkers friends family even enemies if we have them. Playing feels good; it makes us feel alive. Winning feels great. Win-winning feels even better. But real winning cannot exist in the shadow of a lie, not even a small one. (Can we really measure the size of a lie? Or is it just a smokescreen? More lying. The worst kind, lying to oneself. Self-deception.) True winning feels good all the way through; post-celebration and release. There is no nagging feeling left lingering; no longing for more. No inexplicable need to explain or rationalize nor any transparent desire for yet more attention. No asserting or affirming necessary. It's a clean feeling. The exact opposite of what one feels when winning transpires in the face of untruth. That nagging feeling that something still isn't quite right. No matter how big our win just was. What IS that we ask ourselves in those momentary silences between thought and expression...

It isn't easy to tell the truth all the time. Or else we'd all be doing it. Most of us are caught up in so many untruths pre or even post-enlightenment that when we first encounter the idea of being 100% honest 100% of the time it can take us a staggering amount of time to begin to even recognize how many lies and untruths emanate from our existence and surround us. Denial is a natural element of our instinctive survival mechanism --(of the ego aspect rather than from pure conscious-awareness it would seem). Without it we would be hard pressed to live even one more hour here with all we've experienced already. Awareness of all that is is a powerful tool but it can also be traumatizing. Denial assists in our ability to integrate experiences we judge to be not preferable. No one wants to feel less than. It is not preferable to be aware of every one of our mistakes misdeeds or missteps along the windy path of life. Hence denial.

But radical honesty cannot take shape and fully form as a transparently functional aspect of human consciousness in anyone where instinctive denial is still operating. If you ever wish to discover who among you harbors secrets and untruths listen to how often or how much they assert their rightness or righteousness, their good intentions or their honesty. Though not a hard set law of the natural world, asserting does seen to be an indicator of hidden guilt shame or insecurities revolving around whatever is being asserted the most. There is power in that knowing. Not only for self preservation regarding potentially harmful behavior of others, but also in helping each of us as individuals start down the path of radical self honesty. When we find ourselves asserting or affirming our own good intentions or self righteousness more than usual it is a safe bet to assume we've got some skeletons in our own closets to examine.

The hardest part for many is the initial landing. When we spend most of our lives pre-enlightenment flying high, living life the best we can, making the most out of every moment however we know how, coming down can be tricky. Grounding is easier spoken about than navigating safely. Just becoming aware of our own set of the untruths we have consciously or unconsciously chosen to live our lives through is a shadowy affair. Cloudy skies await even the most noble pilots. But there is safety in several realizations. One, no one cares about YOU more than you do. In fact no one is concerned even a tenth about you than you are. Believe it or not most people are not spending countless hours thinking about you and how honest or dishonest you are. The judgments and criticisms we level at others we just assume are being leveled right back at us; perhaps occasionally they are, but not usually. And not to the degree which we believe nor with the frequency we imagine. We are for better or worse our biggest fan and our most ardent critic. So let go of any concern about what others may think if we decide to start coming clean.

There is also the fact that freeing ourselves from the lies and untruths that bind us is much easier than we at first believe it to be. There is almost no lie, no matter how big we judge it to be or how addicted we might be to it, that hurts that much when revealed and released. Our fear of it, of admitting it to ourselves, of what other people will think about us, or what we will think of ourselves is always more painful than recognizing and releasing the lie itself. Perhaps the most exhilarating phenomenon of all is just how liberating and enlightening releasing untruths from our attention feels. There is something inexplicably joyful and freeing about getting truly real and honest. It's like nothing else. Right up there with dark chocolate or making love.

We've never lived in an age as obsessed with self improvement, self development or enlightenment as we have in the last fifty years. (A salient argument could easily be made that the reason is because this is the first time in human history where socio-economic circumstances have allowed us to extend enough free attention away from pure and simple survival to afford us the benefit of focusing on self development or enlightenment). So here we are, smack dab in the center of one of the most self centered eras in human history, where money food shelter water and all of life's other basic necessities and creature comforts are so readily available to the most common human that anyone if they so desire can focus inward to attempt to achieve so called "enlightenment". Enlightenment being an ambiguous and subjective term at best is still in the eye of the beholder of course. But for the sake of argument we can assume that most people HERE know well enough what is being referred to. I dare say that anyone who's given the idea any amount of thought is keenly aware of how implicitly integral and important honesty is in this quest. Without a commitment to radical honesty, both to self and others, enlightenment will always seem a goal rather than a reality. No matter how many hours spent meditating or chanting (one of the slowest least effective paths to enlightenment we have learned) without 100% honesty enlightenment will always feel as though it is in the distant future rather than in the right here right now. It will remain a mission rather than a state of being.

Some might say enlightenment is nothing more than waking up to a life fully aware of the lies of our past and a commitment to never repeating them. Short bouts of shame guilt and remorse follow, naturally. (I would say it is impossible to imagine one who is fully awake and somehow manages to avoid this natural flow.) But they soon give way to true repentance and joy. Tears and laughter. Shock and awe. Relief. Lightness of being. Clarity. Many moments of "aaahhhhh...." I'd also admit to personally experiencing enlightenment as much more than that though. It's a rare and infinitely joyful state to find ourselves in to be sure, but it's not the end all be all moment of pure awareness spoken about by the most free and gifted among us. It's step one or two, getting real is. Releasing all of our lies and untruth demons. They bind our attention and make us small; blocking most of our creative energy to store up in order to perpetuate the lies we hang onto and live by. Observe the limited selfish actions and lack of clarity of anyone who still clings to even a few untruths in their day to day life. Compare them to a child. Notice the unfettered innocence and freedom with which children act and speak.

Becoming radically honest is a powerful step towards enlightenment. But still just a step. Frankly I have always imagined real enlightenment to be more akin to magic than anything else. But my guess is that the more we experience what we once described as enlightenment the more grandiose we create our vision of it to be. The whole "glass ceiling" paradigm. I imagine a world or state of being that is divine, supernatural, paranormal. And though I've experienced moments like this several times on my own path toward higher and higher states of beingness --events that could not be described as anything but supernatural or paranormal, I still hold out hope for things much grander. Physical flying at will, astral projection at will, telekinesis at will, the appearance of angels and higher spirits when called upon. Access to sacred knowledge... The list is endless.

Of course the first step to any of these experiences is still to be truly free inside. To be clear and clean. To feel it inside and out. And that comes again from being radically honest. This leads many to believe that they need to abandon living in 'the real world' entirely. It is from this misconception that we get the ideas of shamans, gurus and priests. Tibet's Dalai Lama or the Vatican's Pope. Meditating monks on mountain tops. One only needs to study history or better yet meet one of these people to recognize how subjective a term enlightenment is, and how far off we might be in our assumption that abandoning real world living is mandatory for enlightened living. (We've had the rare opportunity to know the Dalai Lama intimately for more than forty years and for most of us he's never spoken one sentence that we've not already thought ourselves hundreds of times. And I don't believe anyone's ever seen him fly or teleport. Either his view of enlightenment is far more limited than ours or he's seriously holding out on us. The so called Pope is so far removed from even his Holiness the Dalai Lama that it would seem a waste to even go there with him here.)

These are both men who have sacrificed their entire lives to achieve so called enlightenment. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of priests, monks and self described gurus of various religious orders. Yet very few have ever offered up anything more than the previous or next among us. No, sacrificing real world living is clearly not a necessity for enlightenment. It may help us avoid the pitfalls of human temptations but it hasn't helped anyone see or touch The Divine any more than the rest of us. One might add that there is also the question of why would we bother achieving enlightenment in the real world if we aren't in and of the real world to make use of it.

Playing on the big field in the big game of day to day life with everyone else is fraught with opportunities for thrilling victory and heart breaking loss. It's the biggest game in town. Or at least the universe as we know it. It's why we showed up in the first place. It's pure joy. Exaltation. It's the nectar. The occasional win makes it even greater. Consistent winning makes it intoxicating. Our challenge is to not believe the hype that surrounds us daily that in order to win we need to compromise our commitment to radical honesty and truthfulness. That in and of itself is a lie. Others may do it. Our presidents and prime ministers and religious leaders make whole careers out of doing it. Many celebrities have earned the right to trademark it they're so good at it. But it doesn't make it right. And it doesn't mean they're win-winning. Not in the big picture. All the material success in the world cannot dress up or disguise a dishonest face bogged down by a life filled with secrets and lies. Material winning is only a piece of the puzzle, a small part of this bigger picture. The real goal, the noble goal, is to win in all arenas of the glorious game. And that means achieving the state of pure unadulterated enlightenment right along with anything and everything material one might ever wish to possess. I'm not saying it is easy. But I do believe it is possible. And I am willing to keep on trying as vigilantly as I can until that moment when enlightenment is the only thing I have that I can take with me to the next big game.

Strength in Challenges

What is it about challenges that make us stronger? You get beaten down enough after a while it stops hurting. You find an inner strength you forgot you had, that you haven't seen or felt in a long time if you're lucky, at least since the last time. Instinctive survival mechanism built into our DNA since our first iteration.
I find it thrilling. A rush like an eight-ball running through your veins. An oft forgotten wild night of fortuitous encounters with beautiful strangers in a series of dark nightclubs till sunrise and beyond. Heart races a few beats faster. Skin is flushed and tingles. Hair tingles. Headspace clearer than normal. Clarity. Like the moment just before death. The seconds just before the plane smashes to the ground.
And for what? All because a random series of events that arise out of nowhere to pose life's latest challenges to our momentary perfect life. We may be peaking. We may already be down. We may just be cruising. But for whatever the reason -- and that's a subject that can be debated for eons as it already has -- now we find ourselves in one of those all too common situations where we are yet again reminded of our humanity. Our fragility. Our vulnerability. The Godless moment. Our existentially purposeless existence come back to haunt us. Try as we might we can't shake them, no matter what they happen to be in those moments, these challenges; they seem to possess powers greater than we alone can muster.
And that's when it happens. A walk in fresh air or some sleep. Somehow the brain reintegrates, becomes bigger, big enough to encompass all that we've held in it before plus additional room for the acceptance of these new challenges. Voila along comes that strange sense of calm and confidence. Subtle but as if by magic. An overwhelming feeling of cool optimism wells up within not of our own making.
No matter what they say. No matter who says it. Let them come. Let it all come. We're over the shock now. Over the sadness. Over the tears and frustration. Over the guilt and shame and the why me. Over the pain of feeling the victim. Nothing can surprise us. It's a rare freedom. In the face of adversity when we find that primitive inner strength within we realize we are truly free. Fearless.
Just from the very fact that we are alive, in spite of all the bouts with impossible odds and aggravating challenges, obnoxious assholes who refuse to keep their promises or opinions to themselves, short sighted higher ups who don't see the value of what we might value the most in life, well meaning colleagues who don't see it our way. Bam bam bam. And on and on it goes.
And yet miraculously we are still alive and regardless of how bad we may see things or feel them there is still this sacred miraculous fact to acknowledge. Does it come from that? Our desperate clinging attachment to life, because its all we think we have or know? Maybe.
But its more than that even. We start discovering new ideas fixes work-arounds. Resolutions. There all along but hastily and forcefully plucked from the gooey muck of the innards of an oyster shell like shiny pearls. More and more and more come. Not enough time to do them because we r so busy taking note of them. Challenges still there. Yep. But so are the ideas. And it's in this that we feel the safety of our newfound confidence and cool in the face of it all.
There is more of course. There always is. Things don't always work out the wag we want them to. It's the unbearable act of being alive. Vacating in the secret world of the living. Winging it. People aren't perfect. They fuck up. We fuck up. In a constant state of flux. The ups and downs. Hold on as tightly as we can and a simple bump in the road can shake us to our core and rip our comfortable worlds apart the likes of which we can't even fathom before it happens.
But somewhere inside us IS this inner strength just waiting to be released when we most need it. There's comfort in that for us all.


- Posted by The Ambassador using BlogPress on an iPhone

Gays at the Table

It just recently came to my attention that a retired and rather infamous, more than well respected at the least, reverend and ethicist in the Methodist Church -- the Reverend Dr. Ogletree -- has been castigated and may face trial for officiating at a same sex wedding between two men in New York late last year. Coincidentally the exact date of this particular wedding happened to fall on my birthday. The New York Times wrote an article about the details, which can be had by clicking here

Not being gay myself I admit I can make no claim to understand the full ramifications of either the positive or negative aspects of the controversy of same sex marriage. For people like me life in the realm of love and marriage is pretty cut and dried. Meet someone you want to start a family and spend the rest of your life with and get to it. The world will celebrate with and praise you to the point that you'll feel like a king or a celebrity for a few months. All because you've announced you're getting married. It's an odd phenomenon really. I've always postulated that this has a lot more to do with thousands of years of cultural indoctrination than anything else. Civil societies need women to be married. At least they believe they do. As well they prefer children to have fathers. Thus the brouhaha over someone's announcement of a planned marriage. You'd think they announced they found oil or struck gold.

Truth be told I was never a big fan of the marriage myth for most of my life. I understood its creation and origin from the anthropological viewpoint and never saw it as truly necessary in the modern world. Especially because so many muggles and mainstreamers had it so inextricably tied to religion in their minds and religion was another one of those "not for me" things as well. My first twenty-five years were all about truth; hence running fast and far away from anything that reeked of manmade indoctrination. Of course that mission statement and how it showed up in the real world changed as I got older and wiser.

As already established I eventually found a surprising joy and comfort through the practice of organized religion in addition to being "spiritual but not religious". There is something mysteriously satisfying and fulfilling about throwing in 110% with a church community to not only worship the great mystery of the beyond but also as a means to serve others and make the world a better place. Now don't let my overly optimistic take on it cloud your predisposed view of traditional Christianity as its currently practiced in America and the rest of the world.

I'll be the first to admit that for the most part the majority of Christians are bat-shit crazy and the last reason they think they're Christians is to "help make the world a better place." Most will tell you they're Christian because they "don't want to burn in hell" or some other nonsense about saving their soul in the afterlife. But I can safely assure any reader that there is sanity to be found within certain circles in the Christian community. Especially within the Methodist denomination. This is coming from a very committed former agnostic.

But before we jump too far into the Koolaid pitcher, I must admit that I find myself quite stymied and even angered by this recent so-called controversy over the good Dr. Ogletree presiding over his son's wedding. (Yes it was his son's wedding... Imagine that.)

See, the thing for me, for people like me, is that the ONLY way you're ever going to get me to even dip a toe in the water of any kind of organized religion is if its members and leaders are honest, rational, filled with integrity and a desire to make the world a better place AND super-badasses intellectually. Character traits that admittedly we do not normally associate with organized religion of any ilk, especially not the Big Four. I thought I had found such an oasis in Methodism. I truly did. In so far as the way it is practiced and preached at my particular church in Manhattan, a church I am proud to be a card carrying member of no less, by all accounts reason, kindness, rational thinking, tolerance and open mindedness are not only present, they are encouraged. I feel safe there. There's no obligation to leave one's brain at the door so to speak.

I felt honored and proud when the church's head pastor, Reverend Stephen Bauman, wrote an open letter to the entire Conference back in 2006 defending the view that homosexual people should be allowed to become ordained ministers and as well should be permitted to get married if they so desire. It's a logical, rational and loving viewpoint for the modern times we live and love in. Why not? Fear of "degradation of the traditional vows of matrimony between a man and woman..."? As any intelligent person would suggest, if two same sexers getting married can scare you into believing your own marriage is at risk you've got problems that no amount of "defense of marriage" bitching is going to fix. Truly the only thing that's ever going to challenge or degrade traditional marriage between man and woman is a sick heart or a weak marriage in the first place.

One of the things I've loved about being a Methodist over the last ten years is just how open minded, loving and inclusive the official doctrine of the denomination is. We are taught that "all are invited to God's table" and that "God loves us all". Some of us take these ideas seriously. And literally. We've read the Gospels and other stories of Jesus of Nazareth and we believe his heart was pure and true when he encouraged us to serve God with all our heart and love our neighbors as ourself. We find it a helpful discipline. Challenging. But beneficial to the spirit.

I can't tell you how many times I have heard so-called Christian ministers recount the lessons of the bible stories of Jesus at the well with the Samarian woman, or with the woman accused of adultery where he forgave her, said "go now and sin no more" and "let he who is without sin cast the first stone"; or Jesus supping with the deceitful tax collectors of his day. On and on the stories go, brainwashed ad nauseum into the minds of planet earth's youngest people as powerful lessons about how open minded and loving and forgiving this Jesus was.

It is needless to state here that as Christians we take the lessons of these stories seriously, as sacred, into our own lives as good examples to follow ourselves. We are either practicing the ways and means of Jesus or we're not. We follow him and his example because it makes sense to us intuitively. Not because of anything a church or a religion or any so-called leader says. Peons and cretins perhaps do what they're told because they are told to. But thinking people do only what they feel in their heart is right, the world be damned. There is more to the Ancient Greek movement of Solipsism than mere selfishness. It's a mentality that makes rational sense. Let no man tell another what truth is. Each unto ourselves belong our beliefs about what is good true right or righteous.

For that reason I cannot in good conscience blame my fellow Christian or Methodist brothers and sisters for their anti-gay views just because they don't agree with my own views. I don't expect them to believe as I do just because I say so. But I do hope to help show them a different way of viewing things, influence them towards a certain direction. One that is more kind, more loving, more inclusive; more like the one Jesus himself took. After all that's the tie that binds us all if nothing else does.

After everything else is tried and tested and shown to be mere window dressing, the hymns, the false hierarchy, the costumes, the stories myths and legends, all we really have left is the real heart of the matter: just what was Jesus trying to teach us? I believe it was and is to be as kind and loving, tolerant and inclusive in our feelings and actions towards each other as possible. And then do it even more.

Judging others to be "wrong or bad" because they don't sexually desire or love the same kind of people we do just doesn't match up with that mandate. Plenty of people already tried that in order to defend slavery years ago. It was bullshit then and it's bullshit now in regards to homosexuality. It's time we faced this reality and lovingly welcomed all of our kind to the table, regardless of how uncomfortable it makes us.

There's real growth potential there for those who are willing to take it on. The Disciples did. Paul did. Jesus did. Are we willing to follow in their footsteps? Or are we just talking a good talk? That's the question each person who claims to be a Christian needs to ask themselves.

- Posted by The Ambassador using BlogPress on an iPhone

Music Streaming is NOT Sales

ATTN ALL MUSIC ARTISTS: IODA & The ORCHARD have been attempting to secretly collect YOUR streaming royalties along WITH your digital sales royalties. No matter WHAT label you are on you need to contact SOUND EXCHANGE directly and fill out a bunch of forms telling them "We wish to collect our OWN digital streaming royalties DIRECTLY." It's a pain in the rear and it takes a few days of solid work to complete (and a lot of calls), but its worth it. Don't let the digital sales aggregators take your streaming $. It's YOURS. Not theirs.

Fight for this. Digital Streaming -- Pandora, Spotify, YouTube etc. is one of our last revenue streams and is quickly surpassing digital sales (iTunes, amazonMP3, bandcamp, etc.) as our main source of income. Now that The Orchard has bought IODA there is only ONE main digital aggregator (the mechanism to get digital music online for consumers to purchase) in the world today. All the other systems actually run your songs THROUGH THEM. This monopoly is not necessarily a "bad" thing. But this should ONLY apply to SALES. Not streaming. Streaming should be paid directly to YOU or the label you are on.

Call Sound Exchange AND your label and let them know you'd like to be paid directly for ALL digital streaming of ALL your songs through all formats -- audio and video. You'll have to write a legal letter. In addition demand that ALL BACK MONEY paid to someone besides yourself also be paid back to you.
More later.


- Posted by The Ambassador using BlogPress on an iPhone

Space Oddity

During today's monthly hair multi-coloring experiment, PURE ECSTASY rained down upon me as we listened to Bowie's entire Space Oddity album for the first time (for me) since high school. I am meant to be rinsing now, but I refuse until I finish writing this. tempers flare at my stubbornness. But WHY ELSE am "I"? If not for this? This glorious and magnificent work of art; in so many ways. Fuck my hair. Let it fall out. Fuck time tables and deadlines and schedules; in light of this feeling.
Tony Visconti and David created such a timeless cohesive & passionate epic w this one. Bowie is still channeling a lot of Dylan here. Only hints of Ziggy can be heard, but only w the hindsight we possess now. His voice is still high nasally free & full of heart hope & passion. The lyrics as well. More pot and LSD than booze and cocaine. It's intriguing how we are able to discern things such as that. I miss that voice of his. I long for it to return; though intuitively conjecture it most likely never will.
The arrangement & production of each song perfectly fit what they are, what they were meant to be. No cynicism yet, none audibly or viscerally overt at least. (Personally this is, for me as an artist, the thing I detest the most about contemporary popular rock music and the scene that surrounds and creates it. Think any local music scene U.S.A.; or MTV's annual VMA awards show... How are we even meant to breathe freely in such small minded shallow competitive and materialistic confinement? Let alone feel free enough to create heart based or soul revealing works of art?)
These are simple songs; but no less impactful; innocence is still apparent. A raw human naivety and vulnerability in the songwriting and vocal delivery. Bowie's and Visconti's harmony vocals, child-like fresh, clear, clean; chill evoking. A strong sense of excitement innovation & experimentation to the production. Psychedelic folk pop perhaps best describes the genre or style of the songwriting -- but filled with a high-art occasionally near operatic drama in the production; (someone is taking risks here, excited, ambitious, taking a stand, attempting to leave their mark...) It hints of what will come with their arguably best album to date, Diamond Dogs, (and to this listener one of THE greatest musical albums of all time in the canon of human history). Nothing like this remains in popular music today. Nothing even close. The confines of popular music won't allow it.
As a child I listened to this album every single night before falling asleep for a solid year or two during high school. No one my age understood or could relate. It was old. Dated. Classic rock. Ancient. Bowie had long since gone dance-pop and worse by the time I as a boy had discovered him. But I didn't care. I heard and felt the same thing in his music as I did in Dylan, Bolan, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed or the Beatles and Stones. It was visceral, emotionally moving, life changing. Something was missing in the music being created while I was growing up. It still is.
Perhaps that period of time in popular music -- '59 to '79 -- will forever be considered the only moment that music was allowed to rise to its full peak potential artistically. There are many variables responsible for it, many reasons one could cite for this possibility. Or perhaps it's just me and the few others who feel the same. After all, this is admittedly an entirely subjective thing. Impossible to prove. Worthless to debate. One is aware of that. And yet still feels compelled to defend the point to the death.
One of the most fascinating side effects of the experience was observing the reactions and listening to the comments made by others while we listened (even as casually as was necessary because of the inherent focus required for professional hair coloring... They could ONLY listen casually, matter of factly; and it was their first time ever hearing this album). Their surprise at how similar the songwriting and singing sounded to mine. I never thought about it before. It happened before I became self aware as an artist. The influence and inspiration. It must have seeped in. Soaked in. Taken root. And then slowly oozed out. Sometimes overtly. I can hear that now. But only as part of a much bigger-picture amalgamation comprised of so many artists. Never deliberately mimicked another artist. There were always too many. And too much going on inside my own head.
But it did get me to thinking. Perhaps the music we crush on the most as children becomes the foundation of who we are as artists ourselves. We have the time and energy and desire to afford to do nothing else but obsess over music (if that's your thing, which for me it was, more than any other one thing... (Sports and athletics with others? Or science and technology...?)) And for the rest of our lives out it pours. All based on those most formative years of ours as children. Definitely worthy of exploring further. Another post though.
For now the most important thing is to acknowledge how incredible this one simple glorious collection of songs is, to place this flag solidly in the moon and pierce its surface for all time. Music is more than music. More than the chords or the notes or the shapes we randomly assign them. It is indescribable. It is the highest form of art. Art the highest form of human expression. The most sincere representation of human feeling and emotion. Space Oddity, one of the greatest human works of art, reminded me of that today. And for whatever reason I am left unreasonably and irrationally moved to tears, overjoyed, grateful and inspired.
We may turn out to be nothing but human in the end. But through music we are able to transcend whatever limitations we attribute to this confounding mysterious possibility.
More later. Your thoughts as always welcomed.

- Posted by The Ambassador using Blogpress on an iPhone

We the Human Battery

Part I (first draft)
Everything in the known universe -- specifically things on earth that humans can relate to more readily -- requires power or energy to function or operate. When we think of automobiles or houses, offices, machines small or large, even simple things like flashlights or clocks require some type of power source that provides energy. Throughout human history we have been remarkably resourceful in inventing new ways to provide power to the objects in our lives that are most foundationally important. Hand crank radios, batteries, windmills or dams that use the power of running water, to name but a few, come to mind.
Oftentimes I think of these things when contemplating the larger question of what powers US. What energy source powers human beings...? We know of four primary forces in the universe -- electromagnetism, gravity and the weak and strong nuclear force. Then there are the more well known Newtonian forces such as centrifugal force and entropy etc. But none of these help to explain the energy or force that gives human beings power. From the moment we are conceived we exist as a living functioning operational system. Much like any other device. We breathe. Our heart beats. We blink. Our organs function on automatic performing thousands of processes as if programmed like a computer program. We move, able to move, in an infinite variety of ways. And yet we have still yet to discover what energy source provides us with the power to do these things.
Sometimes when i stop and just stand or sit and feel the life force within me, for lack of a better way of putting it, I become obsessively mystified by this question. It has to be something. From our tens of thousands of years of experience attempting to invent different methods to power external devices around us we have learned this. All things need an energy source to power them. All things it appears except living beings that is -- (for one could say the same thing about any other organic living species as well...) We, along with all the other beasts of the earth and living things seem to operate on some kind of invisible or undetectable energy source.
Yes, food and water provide us with energy which we label "calories" and time has proven that human beings cannot function properly or even live for long periods of time without these basic energy sources of food and water. By now though one realizes that we are speaking of something much larger than foodstuffs. This seems to be something more akin to a kind of electricity. An electrical power of some kind.
I think of it in terms of WiFi or Bluetooth or wireless technology. Things like wireless phones or computers that access the internet through WiFi. We don't have to plug these things into anything and yet we are able to power them up and operate them with no cables. What exactly are we as human beings accessing wirelessly in order to power us up and stay powered? What enables us to move? To think? To breathe? To have heartbeats? We have no batteries to speak of. (the human heart perhaps, but that's reaching and misses the point). Even if we did have some type of internal batteries to speak of, batteries have at least two distinguishing features that we simply don't possess internally to hint at such a thing: they need to be initially charged with energy from some external power source that they can then store; and they don't last for long periods of time without being replaced or recharged. Neither of these distinguishing features of what we know as "batteries" bodes well for any kind of battery theory internal to the human body.
One considers the so-called "breath of life" theories that have cropped up throughout human history in regards to theological ideas, deities and the like. It is no wonder that we have always felt an innate desire to create gods since we first became self aware. Who wouldn't? What wouldn't? We have absolutely no idea where we came from or when we got here, nor why we are or even who we are. No idea what our purpose is or how we are even powered. We just are. The myths and legends and theories abound. Of course they do. It is a rational reaction to existing and not knowing why.
(I am personally always amazed at other humans' ability to take on beliefs with such strong conviction about our origins and the various gods that we've created throughout our history. I prefer to keep things more open. Wait for it... Evolve... If there's one thing we've learned about ourselves through even a minor study of history it's that we are usually wrong in our theological and cosmological assumptions no matter how solidly held the beliefs might be at the time. (Tens of millions of us have believed in literally thousands of different gods and creation stories over the last few thousand years. So there's not much to stand on there empirically.))

Part II
At some point in the not too distant future human beings discover the power source which we are accessing wirelessly so to speak that provides the energy that enables us to function and operate -- just as common household items do with electricity or batteries. It is some kind of force, a power source, something self regulating and self sustaining. This does not imply it is intelligent as we are, nor even conscious or self aware as we are. Those ideas for better or worse are wishful thinking. It could be nothing more than the same kind of energy they powers stars like our sun. I would not call "the sun" intelligent, nor assume it is conscious or self aware. It might be. But I'm going to bet it's not.
Once we do discover this power source that breathes invisible life into all living things we will be able to harness it for a variety of things historically unheard of and not even thought of yet. We will actually use our own bodies to power everyday items and devices like our smart phones and automobiles. Of course our smartphones by this point will be internally implanted devices capable of myriad functions and automobiles will be more like hovercraft or small jets. But that jumps the gun a bit.
(Insert the inevitable and obligatory memory of the various Matrix Trilogy memes here...)
The real juice of the subject -- the thing to get amped up about -- is that the human body itself is a remarkably powerful energy source, albeit a mysterious one presently. But there is no reason we should still be debating which is the better option between destroying the earth through the use of fossil fuels, coal and fracking for natural natural gas or so called green energy like biodiesels such as giant crops of sugarcane or corn and the like. All have their place surely. Wind and solar energy seem to have potential. But not when considering the population growth of our species combined with the limited amount of space we have left on planet earth. The math just doesn't add up.
We must start to explore the inherent energy that is the human body. The living breathing magical battery-like organisms that we are naturally. We most likely hold more potential to power the world around us than anything else we know of. You walk into a room and the lights and air conditioner kick on. Step into your car and drive it as far and as long you want to by simply plugging yourself into it. Or you power it wirelessly. Take your pick.
One could go on forever of course. The idea of the smart-device implanted in the human body that does everything that a laptop and smart phone does now plus acts as a health monitor and healing device to improve health, ward off illness and extend life -- and furthermore is entirely powered by the human body -- isn't too far away. Five years perhaps...? (We will call this "getting augmented" -- like how being vaccinated is viewed now -- or perhaps even "getting jacked in" like the matrix (but I doubt that. We won't really be getting jacked into anything. We will actually be jacking things INTO us... Human batteries)).
I must admit I am more than a little excited to contemplate that many of us are well beyond young enough to assume that we will see the advent of such advances. And these are just the random and momentary musings of one man. I can only imagine what miraculously inventive and imaginative ideas in this field are being designed this very minute by more capable minds.
More later....


- Posted by The Ambassador using BlogPress on an iPhone

TO THE WONDER

Why is America so inane and ignorant? Terrence Malick's latest film TO THE WONDER is as always a masterpiece. Deep, ponderous, thought provoking and featuring breathtaking cinematography. Yet it opened to less than a whisper and went straight to DVD and OnDemand. IRON MAN 3 on the other hand wi surely open with a half a million dollar box office on its first weekend.

The same for CHICKEN WITH PLUMS, the film based on Iranian expat Marjane Satrape's graphic novel of the same name. THIS btw is one of the best films one will ever see. Both movies are in french with subtitles and perhaps that's part of it. No where else in the world does one find a people so devoid of knowledge of other languages or cultures than in America.

What is this strange fate of the Americans? Why is it? It is said that the United States is in possession of the best university education system in the world today. People from every country on earth travel to America to attend the colleges and universities and yet the majority of them then immediately leave once they graduate. This implies potentially at least that there is a high level of intelligence to be had in the States. And yet it is difficult to access most of the time in one's day to day surroundings unless one is very focused to do so, vigilant.

There is more. The struggles for the simplest things politically that many must endure here because of the large majority of ignorance. But I am alas still watching this glorious film TO THE WONDER. More later...



- Posted by The Ambassador using BlogPress on an iPhone

States Rights Vs. United States

Was involved in a recent conversation on Facebook with a small crowd re what to do with the leftover pulp after juicing and received a variety of intriguing suggestions. From face masks to making paper to composts. One participant suggested we feed it to the worms in our worm bin. I'd need to acquire a worm bin first of course. And it might be a good idea to learn just what one needs a worm bin for in the first place before I do that. Case solved. Worms make excellent composters evidently.

Say what one will, but Facebook - like TV or a standing army for that matter - is an amazing tool if put in the right hands, just as it can be a useless inane or even dangerous weapon if placed in the wrong hands.

Got me to thinking. WA state where I live part time, just started residential composting for everyone. Every house now has three bins to put out every week. One for garbage one for recycling and one for compost. Very impressive. In the last year or two they have also legalized marijuana (seriously, as in yeah you can smoke it just because you enjoy it, imagine that), legalized gay / same sex marriage, and are now ardently working to outlaw the death penalty. What's next? Outlawing congressional lobbying and political campaign reform?!? (One can dream...)

These bold moved illustrate the power and effectiveness of States' Rights if a state and its residents so choose to act; and hopefully helps shed light on the overarching issue itself. More than anything one hopes it sets an example for others to follow and God willing encourages some to stop trying to encourage the Federal government to force national laws on the entire population as some of my more well meaning but short sighted friends insist they do.

The media and social networks nationwide are abuzz lately with blathering hyperbolic debates by both wonks and fools regarding a seemingly endless list of new laws some want to enforce on every man woman and child in the entire country in the United States. I've stated my case both publicly and to friends and lovers and thus am thoroughly tired of arguing about the issue. At this point I refuse to spend another precious minute debating it with anyone unless that person has the power to approve or veto a bill of law.

The way I see it, and this is only my opinion -- I am well aware of that fact, one of the greatest aspects of the United States of America is inherent right in its name. One just need take a few minutes, or hours if need be, and contemplate the words that make up the name of our great national experiment we call "a country". It's a fascinating exercise. We don't live in America. (as any central or south american will quickly remind you). Unlike people from most other countries, we live in a place called "the united STATES of America". One infers it is a collection of different areas or regions referred to as States that are all united behind a central theme or collection of values. One of the most endearing aspects of living in the U.S. is the variety of differences one can find by traveling around the country and personally experiencing each State and it's people for who they are as individuals and collectively as an independent state.

One interesting bit of history often forgotten about today is that the only way that the so called founding fathers got all the different states already established in The Colonies to ratify the Declaration of Independence and The Constitution (look this up to be exact...) was if the wording was changed to reflect that each state had its own inherent rights and would not be under strict control of a national government. Of course this has been almost completely done away with now. There are so many federal laws on the books now dictating what every state in the union can or cannot do that at times it seems that the only differentiating factor between one state or another is their state bird or flower. One can safely assume this is NOT what the founding fathers of this unheralded democratic experiment had in mind when constructing the general foundation of the country.

I have always asserted, since studying and pondering this issue, that the people who live in each state should be allowed to determine their own rules and laws as they see fit as long as they don't infringe on the safety or welfare or generally agreed upon human rights of others.

There are of course exceptions to every rule. Especially in extreme cases. Slavey was one such exception. But even today with all we've learned I personally am not totally convinced that the Northern states had a right to force the Southern states to stay a part of the so called Union or country against their will and abolish slavery. This is debatable of course. And perhaps it's more fodder for stimulating thought and debate than a worthwhile endeavor to be taken seriously. But scholars agree that the Northern states were motivated more by greed and economic concerns than by a desire to be of service to others or defend human rights. They would have never survived had the Southern states been allowed to start their own country. So they forced them to stay. There are a lot of lessons in that.

Perhaps it is an event we can lean from still. As we push and pull and morph in our ever burgeoning quest toward progress and further evolution we might be well served to allow each state to take responsibility for its own rules and laws jus this once, perhaps for a short period of time -- a year or two or three -- and see what comes of it. Certain compromises could be rewarded with benefits of being aligned with national or global consensus; and vice versa. This is a model that could be explored and expounded on for pages and pages.

In short I believe it can be summed up this way: if the entire southern half of the United States wants to be heartless sexist racist homophobic earth killing environment destroying gun-toting religious-extremist murderers, let's just let them and if one isn't happy living there they are free to move to a state more aligned with their own values. The fear and i believe it is a valid one is that constant enactment of broad sweeping national laws is a dangerous slippery slope that should frighten any forward thinking freedom loving citizen of the world.


- Posted by The Ambassador using BlogPress on an iPhone

Observations Re Modern Television - Fixes (1)

Observations re modern television. This just occurred to me, but had been boiling just below the surface for months.

[as most already know, for the first 30 years of my life I did not "subscribe" to television. literally nor figuratively. not sure if there is any better way to say it; subscribe seems appropriate since most people pay a monthly fee for cable or satellite service. (a lot of people when television comes up say something like "I don't have a tv" but 9 times out of 10 they're not being honest. what they mean to say is that they don't watch that much tv or they don't subscribe to any service). regardless, i I was one of those people for most of my life. a little more than a year ago i started deliberately studying television. actively seeking out anything and everything that was suggested or recommended as being "good" or even just popular. for many reasons. the two primary purposes of this experiment though were, one, i had been, still am, working on a prediction/theory for the We Are the Revolution/Personal Expression Age book that American television was about to enter into a quasi-renaissance of sorts, which it was and now IS, without a doubt; so i wanted to explore the medium and its content more; after all, this was a theory based on intuition and research. I wanted to get a firsthand experience of it. So i began subscribing to cable television. I was right. It is. Two, i intuited that if i were right in this prediction, then "good writing" by smart people would be more in demand than ever before in human history. historically, good writers, smart writers do not go near television. in fact, smart people in general, not even as consumers of the product, do not go near television. but all that's changed. at least in my opinion. they do now. both to consume and to write for it. it makes sense. it was only a matter of time. i am writer. it is what i do more and better than anything else. music is another. but writing... is like breathing for me. (an extension of thinking really, when you think it through deeper, to its core. some might be surprised that most people do not spend as much time as others do "thinking". i am still amazed by how few people consciously and deliberately "think"... just a thought. perhaps more on that later. we're already three or four layers past our original point by now.) for many of my closest friends and colleagues, they too are addicted to thinking and writing by their very nature. television is a giant medium. it dwarfs the world of books, literature, journalism and the movie business. writers can eat and support themselves if they would only open up to television. the problem of course is that traditionally no writer worth their weight in copper even would dare write for television. at least not in their own name. but... if television were truly about to enter a renaissance and begin to allow good writing into it's bed and not exist solely as a cheap opiate for the masses as it normally had been since its inception, then worthy writers might actually find the task bearable if not downright enjoyable. so began my exploration of american television. this is not the place or time to post my findings. but suffice it to say that the theory proofed out. though american television is still primarily shite, for lack of a better word, pandering for attention like a toothless dime-store hooker in a broken wheelchair, it does possess a fair amount of decent writing. that's probably too generous actually. not a lot. not even a little. (pardon me if this offends. i am well aware that i am speaking to a very small crowd here. literati and intellectuals only perhaps. people who would never normally even consider "watching television" as a past time. a world that has almost entirely disappeared in modern times.) soon my experiment evolved from exploration to study. the question no longer lingered. i had my answer. but a new question arose. HOW does one write for television? what is the art (if any) or craft of it? the time limits obligated by archaic programming paradigms necessitate a very specific method and style, as compared to film or printed word where there is more freedom. and thus for the last six months i have been studying television the same way a marine biologist might study dolphins. most of the time it is an excruciating task i must confess. but occasionally it is downright pleasurable.]

But still there is this time limit thing. that's not the only problem with modern american television, renaissance or not; far from it. but it is the main reason i pulled out the iPad in this moment. to address this particular problem with a few ideas for potential fixes that just occurred to me. the idea goes something like this: consider LOST for a moment. that show ran for eight or nine seasons, once a week for an hour per episode, airing approximately 28 weeks out of each year. i only learned of this show a few months ago. sat down to watch one episode in October, found that i liked it, that it was relatively entertaining. from there i watched all nine seasons in a matter of a few weeks. one after the other. for hours and days at a time. nine years of television in a month. i did this because i sincerely enjoyed the show. (unlike most people i was not disappointed by the show's new age spiritual finale. i was fine with it. it is not my place to judge where the shows creators wanted to take their show. it was their baby). but here's the rub: if i had been the average person, waiting each week with baited breath for each new episode to air, I would have given up on it in season one. i don't live the kind of lifestyle where one can do that. nor do i possess the mentality to even want to.

Right now, as of this writing at least, television is very structured and formatted. rigidly so. unlike film where we allow the story to tell itself in however short or long a time it needs to, the creators of television structure the stories around the time slots they believe they need to fill. this creates numerous problems and limitations. and for no real reason. Idea one: let the idea of time-slots go. Let the stories guide the time allotted for each show. let the viewers decide on the worthiness of such a venture. similar to what we currently do with sports and tv. 60 Minutes has always run late on Sunday nights during football season. Why? Because we don't cut NFL games short just to jump to 60 Minutes.

Shows like ELEMENTARY or TOUCH or PERSON OF INTEREST (all semi-decent as far as tv goes) could do with episodes that lasted more than one hour. (One hour of television is actually more like 42 minutes due to the need for commercials). The idea that one particular story that might be better served by allowing it more time to open, simmer and eventually resolve needs to do all of that within the confines of 42 minutes "no matter what" is antiquated and short sighted. worse, it limits the work's ability for greatness. Similar to what the creators of DOWNTON ABBEY did in the third season. Several episodes were two hours versus one. Randomly and erratically and with no fair warning. But it worked. It was a pleasant surprise. for fans at least.

Idea two: would entail letting go of the idea of weekly instalments completely. for run of the mill sitcoms the weekly time-slot paradigm still works. there is usually very little story; more a series of running gags strung together to entertain in the moment and that's that. But for shows that feature a long running story line, like LOST, why not run a few shows not only longer than the rigid one hour, but also let them air several times per week; allow them to breathe like an expensive wine... open them up and tell the story, today, tomorrow, the next day, the next.... again, letting the audience dictate how often they want to see it per week.

The studios and creators of the shows (content) believe that the networks care about things like this. They don't. Their sole mission is to generate revenue by the use of the space they rent. (hence the inclusion of PAID ADVERTISING on many networks post the 11 o'clock time-slot. I've not yet discovered a taste for this particular show myself, but PAID ADVERTISING must pay better than most other shows that networks can purchase, or rent space to). If a studio or show creator comes to a network and offers up a proposal to air a show that breaks all time-slot rules, the idea can be easily sold to advertisers that are dying to break the mold of their own industry's limitations. My prediction is that it is only a matter of time before this begins to happen. Advertisers will come running. And in fact there is a good chance they would even voluntarily enter into bidding wars with one another for exclusive rights to sponsoring whole shows. Just a hunch. Of course this wouldn't be necessary. But it shows the potential for how powerful a paradigm shift this could be.

There is more. but let's leave it at that. this is good enough to remind me of the initial ideas. more later.