Pure Relief

Simplicity seems like the way towards bliss and peace and prosperity.  Release and just go downstream, let the river of your intentions take you to where you are meant to be.  I am relaxing now into the feelings of Pure Relief.  Breathing deep and accepting fully that this is the moment that I have always been destined for. It seems like whenever I stop trying to be so good at it, then I am good at it. 

I remember my 23rd birthday so clearly.  I was living in Meigs County, Ohio up on the farm.  I happened to have a little bottle of magic juice that I had transported directly from Oregon.  Now one little drop from this magic bottle would transport you into multidimensional perspectives of this world.  One time, I traveled into the cells of my body and became a chromosome inside one of my cells, completely enveloped into the inner space of my cosmic essence body.   So, I was convinced that this stuff really worked.  I mean it did work.  It was magic.

It was my birthday, and my friends down the street were having a huge party up in the woods. They set up a stage and invited this Grateful Dead cover band to play.  It was fall in Ohio with the smell of cool harvest and orange leaves in the air and everyone wanted to let go, far up in the woods, and transcend their normal lives.  I remember just standing there and watching as the band took the stage and someone said, "the lead guitarist isn't here", and everyone thought, oh no, what are we going to do without the lead guitarist to take us into transcendental realms of consciousness. 

Now, I wasn't really a lead guitar player, or so I thought, but someone set up an electric guitar on the stage with an amp and as the band was performing, it was just calling to me.  The magic juice had begun to manipulate this guitar into a throbbing dancing liquid musician, and it was reaching for me saying, "play me, play me."  One of my friends, observing my hypnotic stare, said, "go on and play," and pushed me onto the stage.  Before I knew it, I was the lead guitarist up there with my eyes closed playing just like Jerry Garcia.  When I closed my eyes, it was perfect.  I was just listening to one of those thousands of Grateful Dead shows that my brother had on tape, and it sounded exactly like that.  But, when I realized that I was playing it, it started to get completely off key and tempo.  Somebody screamed my name, "Go Tony," and it was like as soon as I heard my name I almost dropped the guitar and the groove got all fucked up.  But then, the other guitar guy who looked like this big fuzzy golden bear looked over at me and said, "you can do this man, just let it go." 

Then, and I will never forget this moment, I felt into my body and all the way down to my feet.  And from my feet, I could feel roots growing out of my shoes into the earth.  And kept going down into the earth, and way down there, under the layers of this reality, I found it.   It was the music, we were all playing way down there.  So I closed my eyes, and went down into the center of the earth, and I played that music all night without another slip.  I could not have told anyone what mode or key or amp setting my guitar was at.  I could not have even listed the songs that we played, but I know that it was awesome, so good that the band and I played all the way until the sun came up. 

I realized that night that music was like the air we breath, like the river that flows effortlessly, like the magic of an unadulterated conversation or the flow of a storyline.  Life can be magical in the moments when we let go.  I don't know if its spirit or intuition or if we all have some sort of superhero inside of ourselves that just wants to come out and be amazing, but honestly, it doesn't matter what it is.  The important thing is that it is there, and when we let go and just enjoy the ride, life is amazing. 

Break down the Dams

I feel like an undamned river.
Damn river ..
Its all clogged, like deep fried carnivore arteries.
And then, suddenly the damn breaks, because of some unseen forces in nature or whatever and its like
Waaaaaaaaa
The water flows and feeds the cracked dry earth.
The blood flows into the starving brain and I get tingles that trickle down my spine.
The tingles are God-light
I don't care if you don't believe me because I can make up any story I want.
If I want to believe that I am awesome, then I am.
No matter what you say.

And so .. That is it.
I was trapped in a cavernous abyss of lightlessness and now I am free .. or aleast I am free in my mind.
But that is all that counts.

This is how it happened.  There I was, tapping my forehead and my eyes and my belly and my face.  Tap tap tap .. I love to tap away all my pains .. hey whatever works.

So anyway, I was sitting here tapping away my pains when suddenly,  I had a vision.  And this wasn't just a run of the mill vision like when you are half asleep and half awake and you see yourself playing music in front of thousands of people and everyone is screaming your name, singing your songs and throwing you money.  This was a real vision.

I knew it was real because I could feel the bear fur on my skin, and I could smell the breath of angels which smelled like jasmine mixed with mud, and I could hear the words of the animals that spoke to me in a language that was not English, and I understood everything.  The bummer was that I woke up and forgot most of it.  Actually, I think of it as sort of a zip file within a zip file within a zip file, and I am slowly opening it up as I go and getting pieces of the vision downloaded to me in waves.  And this is the first piece, that is ... this is what the animal/monster/alien/man told me ..


Free yourself.
Open up your heart and let the waters flow uninhibited.
Open up your voice and release the music even if you are afraid of singing out of tune, or being stupid.
Open up your hands and minds and let the words flow even if you think you have nothing to say.
Break down the dam and the unknown river will reveal itself and you will be filled with joy.

And so I have, and I feel wonderous and I just don't want to stop ..
I want to follow this river to wherever it goes.

And that is all for now.
End transmission.

WE ARE ALL ONE

It's not that I am angry or fearful or upset at anything or anyone. I have spent years meditating and absorbing the energies already present in the earth. I have spent lifetimes entrenched in the global emotion of death and rebirth. I have effortlessly manifested worlds and created whole new patterns of thought and art and music. I have been stamped with the divine emblem of unity and I have become you now. In fact, I am happy to be just this .. a reflection .. an echoing vibration .. a pool of water that contains a little peace of all of us, our blood, urine, sweat, tears, and the drops that spilled unknowingly off of our chins.

We are truly all one, and I feel us, I know us, I embrace us. But this time, I want to embrace every part of us and not leave anything out. I shun the ideas of taboo. I discard all fears. I release all previous notions and definitions. I breath deeply and pull into my chest the moon and the sun of you, the dark and the light of you, the high and the low of you, the love and the hate of you and I exhale only love. The love I exhale has no evil counterpart. It is unable to be polarized as it has no contradiction and no opposite. It is love, acceptance, grace, and embrace.
Simple and pure, like the God that is all encompassing, the energy that cannot be named, the spirit of oneness that contains all and is all.

These words are personal, and they are universal, because love is only a story that we experienced and told many times. My story had everything in it. I was at once a pot-smoking revolutionary with dreadlocks and a bare-footed calculus professor and math nerd. I was at once tripping psychedelic through joyful love and captivated by worlds of fear. I remember cutting off my dreadlocks and crying to Bob Marley lost in the questions of why is society this way - designed to torture and enslave the self that longs to be free. Now it is coming .. freedom.

Freedom will come disguised as destruction of an old paradigm. John Lennon asked if we could imagine no countries and no religions .. but at this point, I would like to update John Lennon's lyrics and ask:

Imagine there's no cell phones. It's very hard to do.
No way to call or text me, and no facebook too.
Imagine all the people meeting on the street yahaa wohoo
You may say I a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
Someday society will crumble, and the world will live as one.


Imagine there's no Whole Foods. Come with me and try.
All of us will be farming, beneath one beautiful sky.
Imagine there's no money, and we share all the world.
You may say I a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
Corporate Empires must falter, and the world will live as one.


Imagine there's no petrol, and no bottled water too.
No military control, no jails, and no schools
Imagine its just us on the mountain, growing our own food
You may say I a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
Noone knows what will happen, but I pray the world will live as one.

Something like that anyway. Actually, we have to live as one .. because we have no choice. And whether or not we recognize it, no matter where on this beautiful earth we reside, we all breath the same air, drink the same water, share the same sky, and draw our energy from the same earth. So we are all one .. forever and ever. Amen.

Join the world this September on 9/11 for a prayer for peace .. Maybe this is the kind of moment we need to tip the balance of love and start to live the world that we imagine possible. ONEtheEvent.org

Detached From My Mother Again

It may be a long time before things are ok again.
Life seems to be taking lots of twists and turns ..
Shoving truth in our faces.
There is so much talk about reality creation and you get what you think about, but I don't really know ..
Is there any hope for those who are lost in thoughts that circle endlessly?
What if I didn't take the time to meditate or to ponder the meaning of life?
What if I was too busy trying to survive to go through the 14 steps of enlightened thinking or to read the Power of Now?
What if I was just trying to raise a family and worked wherever and did whatever and couldn't see any of that or didn't want to?

Funny .. its funny sometimes.
Other times it is heavy like acid rain in my stomach .. like squeezing tears from dehydrated eyes. I feel myself wanting to cry and there are no tears.

Joy must triumph, but in the mean time, there is pain, there is sorrow, there are billions of Holden Caulfields wondering where is the genuine human experience.

I know that sometimes it is too much to go through misery, loneliness or pain. Everyone will say, "Stay positive and Be Happy". But I am not happy with lies.
The truth is, I am not doing so well - the music that I make feels good in the moment, but the business is hell, and the money non-existent.

I want to be a writer, but I never write.
That is like saying, I want to win the lottery but I never buy a ticket.

I know why that guy is holed up with a Gun in the Hotel on the 580. Swat teams come with more guns, and newscasters call him a deranged lunatic, but inside they are at the same razors edge, wondering if one moment of despair would be enough to push them there. Me, I would never resort to violence, rather, I would run into the wilderness. I would take my family and everything I needed for survival and flee to the hills of Mount Shasta or Marble Mountain or Maui, and separate myself entirely from this madness.

I have been there, up in those mountains when the air blows pure over the dancing treetops and the birds fly gracefully overhead liberating my spirit.
I have been there in the timeless moments of earth change, geological freeze frames of evolution. The only violence I know is the crashing waves on the cliffs of Kipahulu and the thunderous roar of glacier melt rivers. I would happily live out my days in the bosom of Earth, and think not gain of bills and flyers and festivals and shows and maybe that is where I should go. Maybe that is why I feel this pain. I have been detached from my mother again.