If you turned the Sun off, if the light just stopped, we would have 8 minutes of “light” left here on Earth.   When you looked up after that the sky would appear just like it does at night.  The darkened moon we would likely only see by how it blotted out parts of constellations.

If you were somehow on the Sun when it happened you would see the Earth lit up, reflecting the photons still striking for 8 minutes more.

The Earth is visible to other places in space only because of our Sun.  It makes us shine.  It gives us color.

The next closest star is Alpha Centauri.  It may already have died, but we wouldn’t know for roughly 1,570 days…or within 4.3 years, of its demise.  It is 4.3 light years away.

When we look into the sky we are, quite literally, always looking into the past.  Always.  It is never the present moment with space.  We can’t see what is actually happening until we get close to it, until we are actually there, right there, right next to something.  Walk outside and feel 8 minute old photons striking your face, the warm embrace of the past.

It is like this with people too.  Always the past.  So rarely do we see them in the present moment.  The light they show is often but a remainder.  At that moment or moments of trauma the light died and what you are seeing is the light from an extinguished star.  With people it is like seeing a star without the light…a place where light once was.  You can get a sense of when the light is coming from a star that is still alive…or when you are seeing light from a star that is just what is still finding its lonely way through the universe, untethered to the source from which it came.  That is how it can be with stars, with people.

But there is more.  Our source isn’t physical.  Our source isn’t based upon material resources and physics and distances measured in light years.  For us, for humans, we are stars that can burn out and be reborn.  We fade, we reignite.

We go through periods where all we can shine is the light from what we once were.  We go through events that remind us of the Phoenix and we burn brighter than ever before.

If we are always looking into the past when we look into the sky, what do we do with this when it translates literally to other people?  How do we get beyond just receiving someone’s past?  How do we get beyond just projecting our past?  How do we find our way into the raw and wild actual present moment?  For one thing, you have to get very close to someone who is very close to themselves, in order to see past their past.

Imagine how we would do this with our Sun.  In order to feel the photons that were not from the past, we would have to get very very close to the Sun.  The immediacy of the Source which is at our very center’s is very much like the furnace that heats our planet.  To get close to this place inside of another person is like looking into the heart of a Sun.

This brings me to my point…my Son.  I have been on a mission lately to turn down the aspect of myself that seems to not filter out what is being transmitted by people around me all the time.  Sometimes I strongly feel that the very reason more people are not awake the way I am…is because it really is an unsustainable way of being.  In the culture I live in, there is less than minimal support. It is a way of being that even open minded people do not grasp.  And that always sounds like arrogance.  But arrogance is something that people have when they want to have something over another, some power or control.  What I have is a way of being that I often try to get rid of.  It isn’t easy to love being open in ways that set you apart from everyone you try to connect with…on any level.  I pray for normal all the time.  But I am unceasingly aware that I do this only because of the environment in which I live.  One where my reality isn’t a consciously shared reality with 99.9% of the people I have met.

So, I have been trying hard to fit in, to be normal.  I have been working hard to shift into a place where it can just slow the fuck down.  This is where my son comes into the picture.  He sat me down for a talking to this last week.  He says, in essence “hey Pops, this whole being normal thing isn’t working for Zoe and I.  I know you think that slowing down your energy makes you more accessible and relatable to us, but the truth is that we feel you are now less whole, less available, more checked out than ever.  I want you to be you again.”  And in that moment I had a sense of dead star.  I had turned myself off and didn’t want to shine but enough light was still coming through to animate the body, to go through the days intact…I still smiled.  But Quinn…he could feel that the Source was gone.  I was just reflecting a light I used to have.  The least amount possible.

In other words, fitting in, wasn’t working.  And not just for him.  It actually took ALL of my energy to block what I am normally open to.  The desire to feel and experience life like everyone else does was so strong in me.  Just praying for normal became a daily thing.  I gotta tell ya though, it just about felt like it was killing me to do so.  I was exhausted, wrung out all day long.  I felt like a shadow of myself.  I felt like disconnected light.

Then, I reignited.  I finally agreed with my body that I would do some yoga.  Immediately everything began opening up.  The sadness of the isolation inherent in this way of being returned, but I felt like me again.  Being me feels like sunlight to me.  Energy surged, as usual.  We went out to eat and it was hard.  In the restaurant I reflected that I had been there two weeks prior and when I was there I had noticed that I couldn’t “hear” what I normally heard…I could not “see” what I normally saw.  I just saw personalities.  I just saw people as they presented themselves.  It felt relieving.  And yes, it did also feel awful…like being deaf and blind.  Today in the restaurant  I was reminded of why I had wanted normal.  I was reminded that I don’t just get to do yoga and then everything works again.  It is a process of allowing naturalness to return.  Today I sat there and felt everybody at once.  I felt them like transmission towers, powerful signal emitters.  Everything spoke at once.  It was like, instead of watching one TV channel or Movie, I was watching and hearing 15 at once.  If I don’t block who I am and how I am naturally…this is what it is like.

For others who have this same thing going on, you know well that the trick is in how to find balance.  For many not knowing how to find balance with a Kundalini Awakening or heightened sensitivity is the trick.  For me, knowing how to find balance is the easy part.  Choosing to do it…that is the tricky part.

I guess it is safe to say, that in terms of light years, I was about 676,430,115.9287671 miles away from Earth when I burned out.  It took my son 6 weeks to notice that I had stopped shining.

As always, the surest way to balance is loving who you actually are and acknowledging that it isn’t always an easy thing to do.  But if you don’t, you aren’t really here…you are light years away.

The Language of Birds: Soar (Photo by Me)

When we face
the Sky
in the direction it is facing
when it exhales
it comes towards us
invisible and pressing against trees
unstoppable,
even if only a breeze
treading across the tippy tops
of lake water praying to become
cresting tops…
the enlightenment of a once glassy surface.
Sky’s breath beats upon the wings of our pride.

We will not be here, while it always will…is this true?

And when we look down into
the long fetch
and see only the marching
backs of waves
stacked in formation
while the trees lost leaves
join their rank and file
we are peering into the invisible.
The space that inhales
and draws in all that is behind us.
It pulls it around us
and away,
like thick clothing shorn from our bodies
like a thousand coats
worn and divested every blurry second
lulling us with a sense of “surround”
buffeting us about with a sense of “taken”.

We are not pulled in, but we watch it all go.

All that greets us,
shall one day
take its leave.
Borne on the wind,
it will say goodbye…
and then circle the globe
to once again say ‘hi’.

Does it give,
does it take,
does it save,
does it make…us stronger?
‘Stand there until you figure it out‘
is not in the language of birds.
They know that when Earth exhales
and spirit inhales…there is only one word,
…soar

I’ve been feeling my way through lots of deeply ingrained layers of pain and sadness for the last two years and it has been an active and many times terrifying process. I have intentionally gone towards my pain, sadness, fear, and worry to allow them full expression so I can truly unburden my spirit and shift my patterns that were learned as a child. There is no other way to really know peace and equanimity (staying in middle ground). I do not say this lightly and understand that many believe that affirmations, meditation, yoga, optimism, self help books, life coaches, good deeds, and altruism can do this unburdening but I tell you no. Just because you read a manual on how to fly a plane doesn’t mean that you can fly a plane and just because someone is telling you all the right phrases and coaching tools does not mean they have done the work themselves. It’s a lot easier to tell someone else to do something difficult than actually do it themselves. Too many talk the talk but don’t actually walk it. I do think that these are wonderful tools that help and I completely support them and also know that they can not remove or undo our samsaras (deeply ingrained pain bodies), only we can by healing the roots of the pain. I learned that walking through the darkness is the only way to get to the light and it requires breathing, awareness, daily practice, and trust.

I had spent my entire life running from my sadness and fear and pain and did everything I could to avoid feeling it until my wife Jill died in April 2011. If I thought I knew what sadness and fear and pain was before that I was truly mistaken as the heartbreak that occurred was intolerable and constant. I was dragged down into a darkness of being that can not be described with words. Guttural wailing that left me prostrate on the kitchen floor, emotional pain surges that had me standing butcher knife to chest wondering if I should hit the floor or not, and a deep abandonment that left me drained of all life force. A continual state of deep, profound perturbation. This pattern of horror ensued for months until I began to stop trying to fight the waves and instead allow them their full expression. Fight or flight slowwwwwly became let go or be dragged. I knew that breathing was a key to getting through the rogue waves that battered my spirit’s shores and also knew that somewhere out there is a light(ness) and that I wanted to know it. After spending my life avoiding pain I decided it was time to try it differently as my old ways did not serve me and I had nothing left to lose. I began to read spiritual guidance books that provided different perspectives and tools for me to work with my emotions rather than try to stop them and intentionally did what I could to trigger my pain bodies so I could allow them full expression for the first time and also look at them and see what the roots were. Stopping feelings is like trying to stop the wind or yelling at the rain; not gonna happen. It just keeps coming and no matter what I do to elude them, I can never escape them. The book that resonated with me is ‘The Places That Scare You, A Guide To Fearlessness In Difficult Times’ by Pema Chodron. I also began to write which was another important and effective tool. I learned to stay with the feelings that came in without judging them or trying to push them out with happy thoughts. Nothing in my mind could fix my heart because in my mind was a noisy place that caused my suffering and wanted nothing more than my heart and spirit to continue suffering so it could stay in charge of my being.

My friend Charlie Morris (MeetingWithCharlie.com) once said “no feeling is good or bad or right or wrong, it just is what it is and if you find it doesn’t serve you anymore perhaps you will make a shift, or not.” Learning to trust that these feelings were waves that come in and go out took practice and trust. Understanding somewhere in my core self that I am part of nature and that nature has a rhythm to it and even if I don’t like or understand it or what’s happening, I still trust it. Why not? Nothing else up that point in my life was working for me, other than my amazing love with Jill which still had childhood patterns tightly intertwined into my adult relationship. Another tool I added to my spiritual belt is yoga. The connection of mind, body, and spirit through physical movement. It requires breathing, and presence, and willingness to stay with discomfort, and allowing the thoughts and feelings that arise during practice to come in and go out without latching onto them. All verbalized each time by the yogi leading the practice. Yoga edified the lessons I had learned through introspection, writing, and staying in it. I have taken what I learn in the yoga studio and combined it with my own inner work to use out of the studio in what I call “life’s yoga, the daily practice of being”. Lessons such as the pose begins when you want to get out of it, which translates to, when emotions bubble up that I do not want to feel I have to be willing to stay with them.

Recently there is a theme that has been a topic of conversation with most people with whom I come in contact with who want to talk. It’s about worry, which is fear, which stems from not wanting to feel something “bad” because it makes us feel hurt or sad or alone. We talk about all the noise and wind that comes into our minds as a way to avoid feeling whatever comes into our hearts and spirits. We talk about patterns that are created in us from the time we are born screaming into this world. Patterns that are ingrained in us by parents who, with their own emotionally unresolved patterns, ingrain them into our emotional wiring and we then grow into adults who react to the same emotional triggers as when we were children. Our fears of not being loved, abandonment, being liked, having value, and whatever else you can think of are still there until we go towards these triggers and look at them, from where they come, and do they still serve us now. Having mind body awareness is a key to recognizing these patterns and that comes with breath. Having awareness to recognize that “uh oh here is something that is making me feel a certain way” gives the opportunity to take a breath which helps to see the pattern of trigger and reaction. Having awareness to take three slow inhale, pause, exhales to provide the space for heart and spirit to become the influence over our being in lieu of our windy minds. Having willingness to stay with uneasiness or discomfort or pain or fear or sadness in order to release it/them. As we discuss these things there is sometimes defensiveness that arise like “I’ve already looked at it and I don’t want to deal with it anymore” or “ I just want to be happy and not think about the bad stuff” or “What good will it do to rehash the past” or “ I just try to live in the present moment”. All this is noise, wind that our minds create so we don’t have to go into our heart space because it is a part of us that we are not comfortable residing in. I look at it like this. When I first began yoga I couldn’t even come close to touching the floor in forward fold and certainly did not want to stay in half pigeon or frog as it was so uncomfortable that I would fidget and forget to breathe and think, think, think which made the poses more uncomfortable and more painful and more difficult. The yoga teacher leading the practice would tell us to breathe, allow the thoughts to come in and out like clouds passing without grabbing onto them or judging them, and the more we relax into the pose the easier it gets, just stay with it. All of this the antithesis of what my mind and body was telling me to do. So I offer this thought to you.

If you find that you are tired of being ruled by negative thoughts and emotions, are at a spiritual crossroad, or emotionally broken and scared then please practice some of life’s yoga that I have presented today. See your heart and spirit as a newbie to life’s yoga and understand that it can’t do a forward fold right off the bat. But with awareness, breath, writing, and daily practice your heart/spiritual muscle will become more willing to stay with discomfort as it strengthens through the willingness to be vulnerable. Understanding that our heart/spiritual muscle has not ever really been exercised in a healthy way and it did not become cumbered in cloaks of pain overnight. With practice your heart will be palming the ground in a forward fold that will create a space and lightness of being that you have never known. You will be free of fear and worry and sadness and open to an aliveness and joie de vive that we thought impossible. Wishing you peace, love, friendship, and joy. Slow inhale, pause, slow exhale. namaste

Except for when my daughter wrote some poetry, all the postings here on my blog have been written by me.  But my friend Ian wrote this very special thing and I really wanted it to be here on my blog.  Ian is a very special man.  We don’t go way back in years…but our friendship has had enough living in it to go back decades.  It was his wife, Jill, who first contacted me to do healing work with her.  She was and still is the most intense bright light I had ever worked with.  Working with Jill was like working with someone who had sunlight powering through their chakras.  And I don’t mean that in a lovely, peaceful, beautiful sort of way.  It was the most intense “case” of Kundalini Crisis/Awakening that I have ever encountered.  For Jilly, it was as if God was trying to shine literally through her body and it was tearing her apart.  To those who don’t know about Kundalini Awakening, that will sound dramatic.  To those who have experienced it, you are shaking your head in knowing at this moment.  We worked via Skype and via email in hopes that working together might shift her awakening experience towards a way that would be gentler, smoother, balanced…a way that was not debilitating.  The energy moving through her was visceral.  It was not uncommon for people to sit near to her and to feel so plugged in that they would experience nausea, almost akin to feeling dizzy at the top of a cliff.  The reality Jill lived in brought about the experience of the collapse of ego pretty quickly.  It was what she lived, even though she didn’t want to.  To say she was awake, was an understatement of the silliest order.  And to say that she suffered is negligent, it was worse than that.  The first thing that  intrigued me about Jill though was when I found out that she had a partner and was married.  Normally people like her, are not.  Not many people can live with someone who is undergoing such dramatic energetic swings.  Likewise, most people with this kind of Kundalini find it hard to get along with anyone for extended periods of close time.   I knew she must be with an extremely rare sort of man.  I was right.  But it didn’t really show until she died.  Western Medicine will say that Jill died from such and such and so forth.  Ian, myself and others know that even though there were of course, physically specific things going on with her, they were all manifestations of the Kundalini Awakening that had beset her for years.  When I was on the plane to work with her that fateful week in April…she was in ICU before the wheels of my plane touched the ground.  It happened fast.  After being with her in the hospital for the short time she was there I began to get to know who Ian was.  Devoted to the core.  Committed to Jill completely.  It was and is a rare love to observe.  I was right there when Ian realized it was time to ask them to stop doing CPR.   And then, we met at their home two days later before I headed back home.  He read some to me from a writing Jill had made for him and from one of his own to her.  There was something just incredibly grounded about Ian.  And that was a good thing, because he was going to need it in order to overcome the loss.   Over the next 6 months or so, I talked on the phone with Ian with some regularity.  It was over that time that I was able to see the groundedness I had known was there come to the fore as he was forced to find his way in the world without his beloved partner.  We went from a client/healer sort of relating to a solid friendship relating.  I watched him go directly into the heart of anguish, not from bravado or self indulgence, but just because a loss that large demanded everything of him.  Healing isn’t a contest.  It isn’t about who can go through the hardest things.  I think that healing is best though, when someone shares.  At this point most people still share about what practices work in an externalized fashion.  Someone will write a book about what can work for you, but they do not tell you, usually, what they were healing from or what pain caused them to write the book. People will quote others and then challenge you to learn from the quote…instead of saying “here is how I hurt and here is what I did.”  To me this is what is next in healing.  Sharing personal tales so that others can learn directly.   You don’t have to be right, you don’t need a lineage, you just have to be human and honest about it.

Ian once was told by someone who had also lost their wife “it doesn’t get better, it just gets different.”  I still tell that to people to this day and it helps them, but I have no direct experience with my wife dying.  The thing that makes that quote so relatable for me is that the speaker had lost his wife, and wasn’t someone who had just read it in a book.  The words have more weight, more meaning.  Ian has come through some really hard things these last years.  I wanted to share his writing here because it is just honest and the insights that have come for him have happened in a very direct way.  And I also wanted to share it because he isn’t anyone famous.  You have likely never heard of him.  And if you have never heard of him, and he can share something that moves you….then just think what anyone of us can do…if we just dared to share the truth about what we have been through.   Think of what a different world it would be.  He isn’t afraid to show up and it changes things.  You could do the same.

Sunset before my SUP outing June 3rd, 2013

As I lay down upon the board I am on my back, floating.  Drifting in a small cove on a lake so recently kissed by an early summer cloudburst.   I am centered on the board as if on a cross with arms straight out to the sides, hands resting on the water.  I remember when I first started laying like this.  5 years ago when the awakening first happened.  That is when I first started laying down my life to God, Universe, Goddess, Spirit, whatever word you feel comfortable using.  It was out of necessity.  When the Kundalini Awakening first started it was with an immense bang.  I nearly died, or so the doctors thought, that day my heart went haywire, the day all of this being opened up stuff started.

So I am there laying on my board, laying on the lake and doing what I did then, surrendering and saying the mantra “take whatever I don’t need, I have no answers.”

And I chuckle to myself again, under the burden of proof that whether I say that mantra or not, it is always so.  I roll over onto my belly, foregoing the long paddle still, that one normally uses when out on a SUP, and I paddle slowly forward using just my hands.  Because of the storm there are great swaths of steam coming off the water.  I am gliding silently through warm mist under a cooling orange and gray sky.  I see the breeze twist the smokey tendrils into impermanent rivers that flow over me and around me.  It caresses my skin and face.  Fish are jumping.  Ospreys track the sky above.  A solitary bat begins night patrol.

It was 5 years ago that I moved out of my home with my children and wife to start a new life.  It “was” going to just be the end of a marriage…an amicable end with a second house being built on the “back 40″ with the kids easily going back and forth between the residences.  But it was not in the cards for us, it was apparently not one of those things I needed, because God snatched that one away so adroitly, I never saw it coming, until afterwards.

Since then I have had a life that was centered around supporting my children.  They were aged 6 and 10 when the “high conflict divorce” began.  Mostly, what I have done since then, is design my life around being as available for my children as possible because it hasn’t been the easiest sort of life for them ever since.  This has meant not working a job outside the home and fighting to stay self-employed.  And I did so, for about 5 years.  It meant I could see them afterschool and they didn’t have to come home to any empty house.  It meant lots of good conversations and quality time together with home cooked meals.  It also meant though that I had to work in a self employment situation where I ran a company alone.  When my kid’s were not with me, I was flying solo for nearly 100% of my time.  And on the weeks the kids were at their mom’s house, I was that way all day long.  The primary way I made money was running an online company.  I dealt with customers, but never met them.  I was always just at home.

In terms of healing work, this was  a perfect fit.  I had an abundance of privacy and time to be available for sessions.  I could schedule sessions on the fly…often within hours of someone requesting a session, one could happen.  People could get ahold of me at almost anytime of the day.

This whole lifestyle, obviously, came with financial repercussions.  In terms of how we all live here in America, I spent about 5 years falling behind, financially speaking.  In terms of healing work and being present for my kids, things were abundant.  Mainly what I wanted to describe though is that when I had all that time to myself, in this very much hermit sort of lifestyle….I also had an abundance of just “being”, instead of doing.  In the place where I had so much time to just “be” what would happen is that…well…think of it like being in the wind.

Since my awakening happened, I experience life as if standing in a wind.  This wind is something anyone COULD feel but what most do not.  The way in which we do not feel it leaves us all with the SENSE that there is more, but the frustration of not being able to feel it when wanting to.  It is what people pray to experience, it is what people long for while on spiritual quests.  To live in the experience of the ineffable, to feel yourself in the palm of God at all times.  Well, in all that open space that I had, in all that alone time, in my awakened place-that is all I felt all the time.  No effort was required.  It was a windstorm all day everyday. It still is.

Some days were better than others.  Over the 5 years I  have had to work hard to accept many things about this way of being.  A point I want to make is that being as open as I am, that living in relative isolation is the only thing that makes it tolerable.  The sheer amount of information that is felt and experienced, even from one person, is immense.  There is, quite literally, too much to see.  And let me be clear here, I am not speaking of being too energetically sensitive.  I don’t have a problem feeling and sensing what is so obviously present.  What I am specifically speaking about is the act of seeing so much, but not being in  a place where something can be said.  To remain silent about all the things you sense and feel going on for another person…it feels awkward to say the least.  To see the future for someone you just met and their past, and their present–without them saying a word—while they are bagging your groceries…it just isn’t fun.  It gets in the way of any chance of a normal human level interaction.  If everyone were seeing and experiencing life this way it would be different, but this isn’t the way the world is at the moment.  Healing work has been a great and sacred space for me to not have to cover up what is right in front of me.

But there is a way that spending so  much time in this open space can affect you.  And if you are raising children in this culture, and you wish to relate to them of if you wish to remain relatable to anyone here…you can’t be the wide open thing.  In many ways, right now, the wide open thing doesn’t have a place here.  Sure, I could hang out in an Ashram.  I could be a guru or a teacher.  But what about when you “see” to the other side of that as well?  There is such a thing, in certain environments, as seeing too much.  In the world, right now, I am such a thing as seeing too much for me to have harmony.  Perhaps after I am done raising kids it will be different.  But for the next 6 years, I realized that I needed to get more regrounded back into the same reality my kids live in or risk being too far gone into “otherness”.   Even if being in the other places support clients really well, it doesn’t support my children.

All of our “decisions” are fate in disguise.  So yes, choosing a new way in the world was always going to happen.  Choice schmoice.  But I do my best to play the part

5 years later, after awakening, I decided to slow things down.  And it coincided with seeing that my children are in a good place post divorce.  And it coincided with needing to find a steadier paycheck.  So, I got a job outside the home and left behind self employment.  I now work in retail. I sell stuff that people like but do not actually need.  I contribute to capitalistic consumerism.  I help people fill their emptiness through the consumption of material goods.  I interact with more people in a day then I usually would talk with in a year.  I see their personality and that is ALL I see.  I block all information coming from other’s besides what they say or tell me.  It is the only way I can do the job.  Because if I am myself…all open, not only will I see too much, but the other person will feel me seeing it…and that changes everything for them even if I never open my mouth.  So I make eye contact only fleetingly and focus on keeping my job in order to financially support my children.  It is a simple path that I really like.  Part of my reasoning in taking a “real” job was because I needed grounding.  I needed to live more in the world that my children live in so that I can support them through it.

What is it like?  LOL.  Kah—raaaa—-zeeee!  It is, to be blunt, like visiting a foreign country.  What is this language?  Just as I have chosen to have a reprieve in which I block sensitivity to this “information” from necessity, I see that everyone else has  chosen as well.  This is the language of being human.  But then we suffer from it.  How do I feel since working harder to shut down this natural facility?  How does anyone feel when they try to ignore the most natural things about them?  It feels sort of awful.  I am, quite literally-disconnected.  I wanted to know what it was like to not have to stand in the wind.  In brief, it is the cause of all of our human suffering.  This disconnected state, that we choose to adopt, is where it all starts and ends.

When you are disconnected you literally must rely upon something external to make you feel good.  When you are totally connected, you can become so internally satisfied that you are disconnected from the external world.

Ah…humanity.  Ah…the Earth.  America.  Parenthood.  Money.  Suffering.  What a thing life is.  So, am I really closed down?  No.  Never.  Neither are you.  The only difference is that perhaps I consciously choose when to be open and let it all in and let it all out.  So, yes I still do healing sessions.  I am a bit harder to get ahold of.  I sometimes can’t meet for days or more when someone makes a request.  But I have also lost my sense of urgency.  The world isn’t going away.  We have all done this so many times.  In other words…there is so much to do, that we have all done before.

I enjoy my current position of fitting in a bit more, into the vibration that most people experience.  It is, like being on vacation.  And yes, it does increase suffering, but I also feel closer to my children.

And in this blocked place, this is why I go to the lake more often.  Or why I do yoga more often.  When shut down to the information, you need places to be that remind you of openness.

5 years later I am on the lake and asking God to take whatever I don’t need and I have to laugh out loud, by myself  out there on the water-the board I am laying on becomes a metaphor.

Without the board, I would sink.  The board is symbolic of my personality or Ego.  It separates me from sinking down into the water.  There is so much more of the Lake, than me.  I am on a journey of separation and without the personality this is not possible.  Without the personality I would be Lake.  With the personality I am Charlie.  Without Charlie, these words do not exist, my children do not exist.  Without Charlie, you would not be reading these very words at this very minute.  See how that works?

5 years later…still here.  By the way all pics are from the day on the lake I was referring to.  Taken with iPhone.  You can click on them to make them big and pretty.

THE LAKE

He didn’t want to go, she always does.  Then there they were, offshore.  I was looking at them and smiling.  This is why I work.  This is why I stay in ‘civilization’.  For as surely as the world pulls upon them to forget, I pull upon them to remember the lake, nature, quiet spaces, family.  He never wants to go…begged me not to force him out onto the water, she was waiting by the water’s edge.  Next thing I know he has paddled out far away and is napping on his board while she practices cross-bow turns.

What are we doing here, in these houses, these cars, these jobs, these conditions, these schools, these clothes?  I don’t have to have an answer for anyone else except for myself.  My kids, out there on their boards, they have to find their own.  But I can take them to places that are wide open, quiet, uncrowded, wild.  I can take them to places where they are most likely to find these answers…I can take them to  THE LAKE.

Paddling out on the water with them helps me remember too.  For when I have worked a full week, and raise kids by myself and the house is a wreck and bills loom, one can lose sight of what it is all about.  They need to see me at rest.  I need to see me at rest.  I have to be able to look them in the eye and remember with them, that the majority of how we spend our lives, in “modernity” has nothing to do with how things feel on THE LAKE.  And if it feels good out there, as the sun is setting and the wind whispers and fish jump…it provides a contrast.  A correcting contrast to electricity, texting, Facebook, video games, traffic.   There is a reason being in nature feels good.  Go and remember.

Remember so that the children will not forget.

This last month, Zoe and I opened a pandora’s box.  Except that it wasn’t labeled.  We may not have opened it had we known what we would find.  But it is like anything we do not expect to find that is simultaneously something we wished had not been found.  It needs affection, attention, care.  The lid never closes, never again.  Looking into a space of humanity that offers nothing positive in return only leaves one with a singular option…should harmony be found again.  That is to be the positive.  One cannot count upon or wait upon someone else to do it.  Once you know how to stand on your own two feet, you can’t get away with sitting by and pretending that standing….

The flying squirrel just landed again.  The glare from this laptop screen has killed my night vision at the moment so I could not see.  But I heard.  Tiny clawed feet strike the bark of the home tree.  Scurrying scuffing sounds follow.  Silence just after the birdhouse entryway has been passed through.  The other day I was doing yoga out here towards dusk.  I felt eyes upon me.  I looked over at the squirrel house and there was friend squirrel.  Head resting on the round doorway, watching me calmly from about 5 feet away.  We talked about flight…and karma.  I decided, again, that being human is a pretty hard way to do things.  Seriously pondering returning as a flying squirrel

This brings me back to what I was saying before the squirrel cut in…Nature.  How do we be the positive?  It can’t be done without something to aid in the balance.  Forgetting happens.  Losing track of what we are doing happens.  Forgetting our innocence happens.  Nature is the balance.  God, if you can use that word without fits and starts…is the balance.  Goddess and Gaia…if you can use those words without fits and starts…is the balance.  Movement and connection with the ground is balance.  If you can’t do any of those things. If God is not on your list.  If Goddess, Gaia, Universe and/or Spirit is not on your list, then at least find the positive in Love.  Love something.  If you can’t walk among the trees, or if you can but still can’t connect with them, love something.  Make it a small thing perhaps.  Just to start.

But if you are going to open yourself up to what is really happening here and now, with humanity…if you are going to be open to the vast gray space between light and dark you are going to need more than a cunning mind.  You are going to need love.

Love wins no matter what.  When you look into how far we have to go as a species…and you feel how once we make it, that we circle back again, and you know you still must not remain silent about what is around you, take heart…

Usually there is something that follows that phrase.  Usually people say something like “take heart…” and then an uplifting finale follows.  But “Take Heart” is all you need to know.  Just rest with your own.

Conduct yourself with heart, take heart when you fail or succeed.  To God it is all the same.

Tonight on this porch on this early summer eve I rest knowing that the wind still winds it way through trees that make the air my children are breathing.  Tonight I take heart because I know I do right by my children…one who loves sleeping under the sky…the other who sings himself silly late into the night as his fingers remember which fret to visit.  All of this after 41 years…who knew that it could be this hard and this good at the same time?

Take heart…it is enough.

Wow.  I. Am. So. Tired.

Just this morning I was dropping off my kids at school and reflecting at how calm life had finally become.  I felt the coming of a lovely plateau where the wind barely stirred.  A resting point.  For a single parent, these moments are rare.  Oh, how rare!

If you look at the previous posting you can see how my day went.  I wouldn’t say it was awful actually.  But it was anything but relaxing.  It is late and I will basically sum up here because I feel like falling over with sleep.  The crux is that Zoe has been informed that if she refuses to take the MSLs that she will be not allowed to remain in school.  She has been told that when she returns she will be given the test and if she refuses she will be sent home once again.

We uploaded our video.  We spent the whole day emailing people we thought may be helpful.  And we had a pleasant surprise.  MANY parents from all over America wrote in with lots of validating and valuable things to say.  The best part is that Zoe received very much needed encouragement from adults besides her mother and I.  When parent’s and school teachers are writing in with supportive commentary, Zoe knows she is on the right track.  We have learned so much more about the bind these school’s are in and the way legislation is strangling them.  The way they have treated Zoe, reflects precisely the way the Common Core has treated true education…it has told it to stay out of school.  My heart goes out to school boards, teachers and school admininstrators caught in this.  But again, if there isn’t a large scale movement that happens at once, we will just be a bunch of nail heads to get individually knocked down or forgotten.  It needs to be a big deal and whole school districts must land on the same page for this kind of thing to work.  Zoe and I also finally feel like we have the impetus to really get behind the Boycott idea we have had.

I have to get to bed.  But here is the copy of the letter I sent to the school principal this evening…and I thank the many people who have helped with all their support today…you gave a brave 11 year old tons of hope that maybe the world IS a supportive place to be.

Dear (Principal),
Currently  we are all set to send her to school…read below…but want to wait until the school is clear about how to handle her being there properly and respectfully.  We are happy to give you all one more day to realize that Zoe’s rights as a student…and my rights as a taxpayer are being marginalized. 

I can’t imagine the kind of pressure you must be under from the school board and I am sorry that in this struggle to rid ourselves of bad policy, that you find yourself in the middle.  I am also in the middle.  So is Zoe.  Between the three of us, only one has their education at stake.  And since you, as a principal and I as a parent, are dedicated to her education…there really is only one clear choice.

Basically what I gather is this…the people at school are under threat and behaving this way because they fear for their jobs.  They are responding to a law that forces them to administer a test.  But there is not a law that can force a student to take this test.

The law requiring testing also directly conflicts with parent’s rights and asking Zoe to leave school conflicts with the school’s obligation to provide an education to taxpayers.

So, having Zoe go to school and continue to refuse to test is her legal right, no matter what the district lawyers may say.  Zoe is just the first student in this district to do this apparently so the school is scrambling to find a measured and fair response.

Zoe is planning on returning to school on Thursday to resume her studies as a straight A student and top performer at McDougle Middle School..as a student who normally tests out at 99% on standardized assessments.  As I have said before, this argument isn’t between you and I.  It is about the people who would pressure you to exclude such a student simply for exercising her choices and rights to refuse to take a test that is not even linked to her GPA.  You said in your email that Zoe’s choices hurt the school and the teachers.  No ma’am, that isn’t so.  Policy that removes a free thinking student like Zoe from school hurts schools and teachers.

I will be unavailable tomorrow from approximately 10-3.  But I do hope to sign back in and read that there is an all clear for Zoe to resume her studies on Thursday.

Much of the material below is all transferred from that site and I wanted to post it here as well…

Zoe and I had quite an adventure today.  Watch the video below for details.  In essence though, she was told that she is not able to attend school unless she is willing to take the test.  More to come on this as things develop.

Update and Timeline:
March 2013-Zoe and I form a crazy notion to start a national campaign to do something about the teach to the test standards.
April 2013-We decide it will start with a Youtube based revolution.  We call it the Blue Hat Movement.  We make a little website…and shoot some video content but decide that we are not ready yet to make a final one.  We also choose a date for a nationwide rally date for a boycott.  Zoe also says that “if we really want to make a statement, then I would like to opt out of taking the state tests this school year.”  I tell her that this kind of idea is way too big and discourage it.  But I do call the County Test Coordinator for Chapel Hill Public Schools.  I am told that though they must discourage her from not testing…she will not be harangued and will proceed to the next grade with no repercussions.

May 2013-Zoe becomes pretty much dead set on not taking the MSL’s at the least.  Her mom and I sign on.  Her mom even sets a meeting with the school principal.  The meeting never happens but Zoe’s mom is told that there will not be any negative side effects of Zoe not testing.

May 13, 2013-Tomorrow is the first MSL and I email her teachers a friendly note, even though they already know that she is opting out.  The note, verbatim, is below:

“Zoe will not be participating in the MSLs this school year, and we wanted you to both know why, so you are not caught off guard when the test day arrives.

Her choice, which her mother and I both support, stems from quite a lot of research.  In essence, not doing the MSL is an act of civil disobedience.  It is a well thought out plan.  Zoe feels, as do I, that the Common Core Standards, Obama’s Race to the Top, Standardized Testing, and Pearson Publishing are essentially harming education in our country.

Zoe basically just does not want to be a part of a system that doesn’t leave teachers free to teach in ways that they see fit from the start.   We would really love for McDougle’s administrators and teaching staff to support Zoe in her efforts to “vote” for a better form of education in our schools.  Change must start somewhere.  And as long as we keep giving kids these tests, that we do not wish to be giving them, nothing changes.  Zoe has just decided to be a part of the change now.

Please do let me know what activity she can do while the other students are taking the test.  She will be armed with many books to read and does not wish to be a distraction to the other students during test time.

Also please note that I already have spoken with the County Test Coordinator based out of the Lincoln Center and he is apprised of the situation.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me via email or call me at _______.”

May 14, 2013-I drop off Zoe for her day at school.  Within 5 minutes I get a message from the Principal of the school:

“Mr Morris, Here is the reply we received from the district lawyer:

I understand your concerns, but Zoe is hurting the teachers and our school by not testing. You may withdraw her if you want to protest the test.”

I drive back to the school to check in with Zoe and to let her know about this abrupt about face by the school.  After all, up til now, all of the faculty had been supportive in general and no one had indicated that this kind of stick was going to be thrown.  Much to my surprise she was waiting for me in the lobby.  She had been escorted to the lobby and told to go home with a parent…the logic being applied was that for legal reasons she cannot be at school again until she complies with taking the test.  And that is where we are at this moment.

I emailed this response to the Principal:

May 14, 2013…Now
Zoe and I made a video about this.  Even though we were not ready to launch the Blue Hat Movement…even though we were not wanting to make waves about the MSL and Zoe opting out this year.  We pretty much have to say something about it now.  I can see how as long as there is only one student doing this locally that is an easy thing for the “system” to dominate and force a will upon us.  But the nutty thing is that this “system” is perpetuated by people who do not even believe in it.  They are afraid.  What a perfect machine the government has made of education now.  Teachers afraid to teach outside of a government mandated curriculum…tests given to students (MSL) to measure how well the curriculum is being implemented…funding and jobs being tied to how the students do on the tests.  It is a mess.  And as long as fear is the motivator, who will do something different?  It is amazing to me to see so many people all walking in a line because of who is above them walking in a line.  So many teachers and people that dedicate themselves to “teaching” being willing to put up with this mockery of learning.  Here we have a school telling a child that if they do not take a test, which is not even a part of their grade, that their option is dropping out of their school.  Wow…is this really about education?  Is learning a priority?  What kind of people make a law that makes a kid take a test that is not related to their final grade?  If you want to know where the buck stops in this debate, you can blame fear if you want.  I do not blame the teachers or the Principal of Zoe’s school. I can see how their hands are tied. I do hold them accountable though for not standing up and supporting a truly teachable moment.  If Zoe follows their modeling, does that lead to a better America?  What kind of society will we have if Zoe followed what the educator’s are actually teaching her through their silence?  Isn’t education supposed to prepare children to live out American values such as: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Freedom?

But back to the buck…Pearson Publishing/The Department of Education.  If you haven’t researched them and their connection with how your kid’s are learning vis a vis Common Core Standards and what the corporatization of education means, then you aren’t paying attention.  And you may think your children are free to learn.  But believe me, they are only free as long as they do as they are told.  Sigh…sure wish we were homeschooling again.

I know about how the world turns
hell we all do,
but when “sentience” has been redefined as
“that means we should have known better”…
we see
that it isn’t love that makes the world go around.

Love just happens to be
the only thing
that makes all this spinning
bearable.

Isolation
enough to make someone kill another
shares the blanket
with
Fame
that makes your toes stand and scrape
upon the edge of self destruction…
this bed brings nightmares
this kind of dreaming only happens
when we know that what is real,
isn’t what we can feel.

Love is the only thing that makes
this dream have meaning.

Gather yourself
towards yourself
drawn inwards to your center
more
more
more still…
love is the only thing
that will keep you safe in there…
And yet, travel deep enough
and love
is all you will find,
for they happen at the same time.

Orbit about you,
until you see the beauty
and with it
paint a mural upon your heart.
Pull on your coat sleeves,
coax you into the hallway
with a thousand doors,
hold the hand no matter which ones
call your name.
Reach into your pockets
to find the love letters you left
for yourself,
because you knew
to remind yourself
that this is a love story.