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.