Worlds Collide

As long as I can remember, I have been accused of over thinking.  All too often I allow the supposed rational logical perception of my mind to over analyze a situation or subject to no end.  My simple human mind desperately fights for understanding.  We all do it, I happen to be one of those individuals that have found myself in a self deprecating habit, when I dig to far down the rabbit hole, I make myself sick.  Sure, an analytical mind is needed for problem solving and innovation, but when emotions are swept up into the equation, it becomes volatile recipe.

I usually find myself in this self inflicted agony when thrusting into the maze of mind while contemplating the matters of my heart.  I seem to have found myself near the edge of the very tempest of said confusion.  Why haven’t I fallen in, to be emotionally swept away into the madness?  History.  At long last I feel I may be learning something from my past.  Time will tell, but at this moment in time I still have my feet firmly planted beneath me.

What is the meaning for all this confusion?  What clutter of thoughts has my mind all jammed up?  Not to sound cliché or simply submit to some age old archetype, but when a heterosexual male usually finds himself twisted and contorted mental or emotionally, its usually a safe bet that a woman isn’t far behind.   It’s not what you think.  Having ones mind congested isn’t always a bad thing.  In fact, the answer I would be searching for has already revealed itself to me, and continues to do so.  I’ll get back to that in a moment.  I sense you would like finer detail.  You want the meat and potatoes.  I get it…no one likes to be jerked around.

What is the source for all my confusion…well, it’s me.  The inspiration for the source is a woman who I am quit fond of.   Her name is Jessica, the woman who took us in for almost a week while we stayed in Austin, TX.  As I have mentioned before(in an earlier blog), I met her briefly six years earlier.  I was extremely intrigued, but was dating another woman.  The depth of my intrigue was so great, I knew I would surely brew up trouble if I followed my curiosity, so I never perused even in friendship. 

Time turns, and as it does, it tend to bring up things from the past.  For whatever reason, this time around there was no excuse to disengage.  Upon my arrival to her home, my intrigue once again was in abundance.  She was easy to talk to and talk we did.  We resonate on many levels in the human experience.  Love, artistic self expression, passion for the world and it’s inhabitants, and with a gentleness and compassion that leaves space and desire to understand that which is foreign to us.

You might be asking yourself, “what’s the problem?’  Well, despite our many similarities, there is one dramatic rift.  A divide that is much too wide to reconcile, while we both stand at opposite ends of the spectrum.  The issue:  I am into monogamous paring, while Jessica is very much into Polyamory.   Still wondering why I am confused?  Yeah…so am I.  Its not really confusion as it is acceptance…or lack there of.  We are both very fond of one another, but there is no way for it to work.  In the end, the differences of our needs are far to vast.  Though I must admit, I did delve into the idea of a polyamory lifestyle.  My conclusion?  Well…it’s just not me.  Not at this moment in time.

  Sure, I’ve had my share of conditioning in this life.  Being monogamous wasn’t an issue my initial programming.  Need more…this isn’t the venue for painstaking detail, so I’ll keep it simple.   Polyamory doesn’t compute in my operating system.  First, I have my own strange idea about vulnerability.  I don’t see myself capable of being %100 vulnerable with another human being if I have plan B, C, D, & E waiting in the wing.  Second, who has the time…those who do…fantastic, but I don’t.  I’m a busy man out on a crusade…ok, not that busy.  You get the point.

Alas, the obviousness of the truth is so loud it is defining.  It had been there all along, only I chose to ignore it.  It’s what happens when you let those chemicals flow in the brain and run boldly into the oasis of emotions.  The honest truth:  There is no Jessica & Thomas romantic partnership.  Friends…yes, but not lovers…not anymore.  For me, Jessica was a part of the RISE tour, a very special aspect.  I will cherish my experience, and what I learned in the time that we had.  In this moment, that’s all there is left to do.  

No Direction But To Follow What You Know...

I have never been gone from the physical territory that I would call home.  The RISE tour is near the 6 month anniversary.  I am tired, my body it breaking down, and I’m emotionally drained.  I guess it would be safe to say that I am feeling a bit homesick.  The last cross country adventure I participated in, I had a love waiting for me back home.  This time it’s different.  Part of my heart resides in Austin, TX, but that’s another story for another time.  I like to joke around and say that all I really miss back home is the smell of my pillow.  Of course, that sentiment is a sad attempt at expressing my inner comedian.  Truth be told, there is far more about the place in the southwest that I call home.

To be totally honest, I do have a love/ hate relationship with the Phoenix area.  It’s far to spread out, and the transit system is brutally lacking.  There is a brewing culture of infuse art/activism, but it never felt as if it was interconnected.  Maybe it was just me.  Perhaps I was the one that disconnected.  I wouldn’t doubt that.  The more I did venture out of my cave as the RISE tour drew near, I began to discover what I felt I never had before, a community I truly call home.  As usual, completely segregated from on another.  With all my frustration for the city, it has such great potential.  Like each and every one of us, it’s a work in progress.

Outside of my personal opinions with the lay out of the city and its vast culture, I have those personal relationships that keep me very connected to the place.  For far too long I locked myself away from so many amazing people.  Sure I would surface from time to time & connect with people, but for the last 6 years it has been too few, and much to far between.  I always have some plan for the future, and I act like some dictator architect, not allowing anyone in my way.  To bad, I can’t stop myself from being the one in the way.  Sure, determination is needed to fulfill ones blissful goals, but balance is needed.  Balance was a foreign term to me.  As the RISE tour drew near, I relaxed enough to engage these amazing people that I love dearly. 

                                

       

If there is on place about home that I miss, it has to be Sedona and the surrounding Verde Valley.  When I finally created space, this Eden in the high desert provided sanctuary for me to heal and recharge.  Of all the places that I have been to in this country, there is no other that resonates so deeply with my soul.  It is a majestic landscape from red rocks to crystal clear streams, with some areas in the valley being covered with vineyards.  The culture vibes with new age healers, crazed artists, country folk, and metropolitan escapes convicts of corporate America. 

Like many others, I have discovered my connection to Sedona and the great Verde Valley.  Say what you will, but it may be the closest relationship that I have in Arizona.  The very thought of putting more distance between the high desert and me, brings an overwhelming anxiety.       

 Still, the time will come when I must move on.  Nothing is written in stone.  Perhaps I end up in Austin with Jessica, or by myself.  Maybe I’ll find myself in Portland.  Maybe the fates would be so gracious to have me land in Sedona.  The possibilities are endless.  The trick is to not fight the flow. 

No matter where I find myself, my heart will always swell with AZ love.  Arizona was my first home.  Sedona and the Verde Valley will always be my first love.  I won’t ever forget the experiences I’ve had and the moments that shaped me.  Born a desert rat, I was nurtured in the heat of the valley of the sun.  For as long as I live, I will be a sun worshiper.  This fact, I shall never forget.

In the Blink of an Eye

The universe…scratch that, all of existence is a mighty and infinite holographic program.  It’s quit all right.  I have no idea what that means in any intellectual thought pattern.  I have given up on figuring it out.  I can only suggest that you do too.  Instead, I choose to dance with the mystery with an awesome open intention of good will.  Like many things, the process to blessedness is a rocky road.  What am I talking about?  What is this purpose of this new age stew I am vomiting out via binary medium?  Again, it isn’t an intellectual phenomenon.  The only way I can fathom to describe what it is I am failing miserably (as usual) to convey, is summed with one word:  LOVE.

As I am confused, swirling endlessly in the chaos, I am sure to frustrate you with my nonlinear gibberish.  If you are still sitting there reading this, thank you…and I am sorry.  Let me attempt to make sense of all of this.  A few weeks ago I posted a blog about my experience in Austin, TX.  I experienced first hand in a long time, the felt presence of the goddess.  I felt her in me, the land, the experience, and in a woman.  The encounter has permeated through out my very being since that time.  At this moment, I feel that my feet have once again landed on solid ground.  This isn’t to say there wasn’t a struggle in the process of landing.

I found myself spiritually and emotionally jammed.  There was no fluidity or balance within my mind, body, or soul.  Instead, I was congested with attachment of paradoxical outcomes.  On one side, I found a mesmerizing match for partnership in Jessica.  On the other side, I knew there was one dramatic difference that had no way of reconciliation. My mind fragmented by such polarized views, I desperately lurched for logic & reason.  Logic & reason…recently I have discovered that these concepts are just cultural ordinance.

Within my internal conflict, a new catalyst ascended upon me.  I met my mortality.  Entering Baton Rogue, LA I had no idea what terror of brutal honesty patiently awaited my arrival.  I was near the end of my riding day, and learning the true ignorance that drivers had for cyclists.  Entering dense traffic area where highways & Interstates intertwined, I was forced to maneuver amongst the steel behemoths of the road.  The flow of traffic on my side of the road was merging onto I-10.  Besides being frowned upon for cyclist to be on the interstate, it wasn’t heading anywhere near my destination of the day.

 

With no vehicles approaching behind me, and none making signals communicating their intention to do so, I made my way across the exiting lane to stay my course.  With no warning the first van cuts across my path, allowing less than an inch between writing this blog and setting Zak on a mission to finish this tour without me.  You always hear people talk about that moment when they face the idea of death in such a personal way.  They speak of a flash, and a magnificent montage of ones entire life playing back to them in a singular moment. 

As I moved at the hectic pace of life, time slowed down.  Every fiber of every muscle locked into a fixed position.  My mind, which is always flying at light speed with infinite thought, became void and empty.  The white flash struck me.  I felt as if I was outside of myself.  Every memory played itself out in an instant.  A hologram of visual of every experience surrounded me as if I was inside a globed theatre screen.  Within that flash, something within took control.  A deep rooted instinct that is instilled in all of us took the reigns and guided me as far as it could from harms way.  The distance to safety may have been centimeters, but it felt like travelling a vast ocean.

Before I could come back into a sense of calm, a truck cut me off.  Again, missing me by less than an inch, and the entire scenario repeated itself.  Finally making it to safe shoulder, I stopped to center myself.  This also means I checked the contents of my shorts.   After calming down, I decided my day of riding had come to an end.  My effort to truly contemplate my own mortality, now that I have a greater sense of context, had begun. 

In the last few weeks, I have often looked back at that moment in space-time where everything froze in place, and what I discovered has changed, and will continue to change as I do.  Life is a hologram that shows us possibilities.  It is a hologram that can both bend to our will or just bend us.  It is a relationship of give and take.  It is a mystery that reflects all that we are back to us.  It depends on our eyes and awareness to witness the possible that dance before us.  For too long have I locked myself out of the room where patience and acceptance dwell.  I desire to give myself to the process and abandon distraction so that I may ascend to my rightful bliss.  This is a practice…a daily practice…a momentary practice.  I don’t wish to waste anymore time debating my purpose or path.

A meeting with the goddess…in Austin?

The Meeting with the Goddess

The meeting with the goddess represents the point in the adventure when the person experiences a love that has the power and significance of the all-powerful, all encompassing, unconditional love that a fortunate infant may experience with his or her mother. It is also known as the "hieros gamos", or sacred marriage, the union of opposites, and may take place entirely within the person. In other words, the person begins to see him or herself in a non-dualistic way. This is a very important step in the process and is often represented by the person finding the other person that he or she loves most completely. Although Campbell symbolizes this step as a meeting with a goddess, unconditional love and /or self unification does not have to be represented by a woman.

            There comes a time within the quest & journey of every hero, when she/ he must encounter the goddess.  Why is this?  Cause Joseph Campbell says so.   I didn’t make the rules up, I’m just a witness damn it!  Just go with it.  As I travel on my journey that is RISE, I to have crossed path with the powerful feminine that is the Goddess.  For me, this encounter took place in Austin, TX.  I know…I wouldn't have expected it either, but the hero’s journey will drag you kicking and screaming through some wild shit.  It's best to just let go and flow.  Savvy?

            On this particular meeting, the goddess revealed herself in many forms.  One in particular was incarnated through a woman named Jessica.  Although she cannot remember the details, this was not the first time I had the pleasure of meeting this exquisite creature.  Our paths first crossed in Scottsdale, AZ 6 years earlier.  Only a hand shake, smile, & a simple greeting was exchanged, but it made enough of a mark to resonate all these years later.  Another connection was made, this time by a mutual teacher; a woman whom Jessica & I have worked with.

I contacted Jessica in November 2011 to chat with her about RISE, and after a serendipitous conversation took place, she put forth the invitation for Zak and I to stay with her when we passed through Austin.  Little did I know what was set into motion.  Ignorance is not always so blissful.  As time passed and the journey was underway, we continued connecting with small dose of communication, I could hear the shift taking place in this strangers life as if I was living it with her.  You would have to ask her if she was witness to any shift within me.

            As we arrived at her living space, I was overwhelmed with a fantastic wave of energy.  I liken the sensation to an anticipated wave that crashes over you as you stand waist deep in the ocean.  Anticipated…yes, but still powerful.  Jessica had already displayed a spectacular way of communication, and our short time together was no different.  I found it necessary to shed the awe inspiring force that saturated me within her presence.  To fail to do so would be to forfeit my power to her.  This would have robbed both of us from learning and sharing a genuine experience, and there was too much to learn in such short order.  I made the choice to ground myself so that we may both gain from our interactions.  Surprisingly, this was something I had to do every morning.

            The second night in town, Jessica presented an invitation to accompany her to a weekly ritual called ecstatic dance.  I agreed, but attended as a witness.  Holy Jumping Shiva did I witness.  It was a powerful moment for me while on this cross country trek.  There were close to 40 people engaged in a beautiful and archaic form of expression.  They danced…and danced…and danced.  As each individual performed different styles and released a dramatic display of living poetry that captured my attention from the time the first movement was set in motion.

            Within minutes, I was shattered with an incredible amount of stimulation.  I had to quickly devise a selective viewing meditation in order to not get lost in the cluster.   Within my space, my utter stillness…I danced.  To those with an untrained eye, would see me as separate, but through my particular dance…I was touched & touched back all who were in this shared space.  Deeper I fell into a trance like state; I was slammed with a vision with Jessica as the primary focal point.  The room was a mandala & all the occupants, the moving pattern.  At the center was Jessica.  A door revealed itself in the center.

            This doorway was an invitation…an invitation and revelation.  For far too long I have basked in the fantasy of the life in which I wanted to live.  I always knew where I wanted to be and how I wanted to do it, but I always made up the excuses.  In Arizona, my dear friend Ashley was my link into this world.  She loves art, music, nature, dance, & connecting.  It was our mutual respect & love for these activities that pulled us together.  In my mind, I was always the first person ready to go on an adventure with Ash, but I never did.  I always made the excuse to stay in my mind.  I was without action, and miserable for it.  For this I am truly sorry.

            As the week went on, I shared more experiences & insight with Jessica.  We created space for one another to bounce thoughts & feeling back and forth.  I am eternally grateful for the time given to us to walk the same road, if for only a moment.  Who I was before I entered Austin, is not the same person who will be leaving.  At this moment, so near to ground zero, to make an attempt to describe it all in words would be a disservice.  One thing is for certain: on this Journey, The Goddess was revealed in Austin, she revealed love through truth.

            To place the label of Goddess on Jessica, I feel is a heavy burden, and maybe just a bit unfair.  She is more than that.  However, the Goddess encompasses all:  woman & men, element & situation.  She is a perfect personification of love, love of others & of self.  Through my experience, I have found what I want in a companion.  I can only hope that I do not lose sight of that intention.  To exude love with a true companion, the two must be the best of friend, the truest confidant, and equal partners without judgment.  When this takes form, the door to the divine is open, and the possibilities are endless.


                                                                         RISE!

The Mighty Fierce is LIFE

I have something I need to get off my chest.  There is this unquenchable desire to convey these feelings.  What ever you do, don’t be alarmed.  If you try to absorb the words as they are, I’ll do my best to express what it is I am feeling in a coherent matter.   I am feeling a tremendous amount of anxiety and fear.  Fear for what?  The fear of following a dream; not just any dream…my dream.  I am in awe at the depth of surrealism one can constantly travel.  Each new experience provides the opportunity to dig deeper into the great and magical of void of the mystery.

I feel for the first time in my life, that I am beginning to live.  Its difficult and strenuous, but at this point, I have already been overwhelmed by the rewards, love, and support.  It is interesting how an individuals passion, when followed through becomes more than the individual.  It becomes community.  There are no true words, nor deeds that could show my true gratitude for such an amazing collective.  Those I know, those that I will meet, and those that I will bump into on this journey.  Well, I guess the one way to reciprocate is to continue.

I am freaking out, and it is amazing, profound, and necessary.    Not only is it necessary for me, but for the journey.  The amount energy I feel could be akin to a nuclear reactor…maybe.  It is a rhythm that is oscillating and resonating higher, louder, and richer with each passing moment.  Will this feeling subside?  Will it transform?  Yes.  This is my new life, and I intend to at least learn how to pay attention to it.  The RISE experiment hasn’t even begun, and yet I feel such change.

I am fully aware, that I have not comprehension as to what I am about to do, experience, and find while out there in the great wide open.  The road, the culture, and weather are all great characters of the narrative that is RISE.  My relationship with the three will grow like any interpersonal relationship that I share.   It will certainly ebb and flow leaving my saturated in feelings of both joy and despair.   The journey with Zac will be both tightening and straining as be travel through the wilderness.  It will remain on our shoulders to be true to one another as well as to ourselves.

The great paradox of both dichotomy and communion will reveal itself as we travel as we move from great metropolis to the country and back again.  As time goes on, I anticipate that the very thing that makes them different will be that which binds them together.   Already, as I walk through the city of San Francisco, I am witness to the very laws that govern the most relentless aspects of nature.

I stand upon a nexus.  On one side, I see the man who has traveled the path that lead me to San Francisco in 2012.  On the other, I see a person who is now constantly morphing through the abstract realm of infinite possibility.  The three of us now stand together.  I hope my heart and intention remain true.  You the reader will be witness to what I will become.  I am sure I will be as I am now…many things to many people.

To those who I have experience…thank you for walking with me.  Whether it was a singular moment, weeks, years, or lifetime from the bottom of my heart…Thank You.   For those that await our intersection, many blessings and we will see each other soon.

The Big Shift

I feel a crazed quickening has possessed me: bedazzled by my own madness, as this rare feeling engulfs me.  I have fallen in or been lifted up into this overwhelming calmness that has set my flesh ablaze. In every moment and every breath I am embraced by a beautiful and terrifying exuberance.  As if I am caught in a ravenous entanglement of blissful rapture with my souls one true counterpart.  I feel brand new as If I am walking the last mile to my inevitable death, knowing that it is not the end…but the true beginning. 

This is so new, but frustratingly familiar.  Have I been here before?  Is this a resonance of how I felt before, when I left home and walked with Cross-Walk America?  I want to say yes, but I know that would be a lie.  Still, this is so familiar.  Is it that I almost reached this point, only to let it slip away by falling back into the banal manufactured way of life that was ordered to me?  How can I ignore this?  How do I return to a way of life I feel I am breaking away from?  Its all just a state of mind…a state of being.

Everywhere I go, I feel the obviousness of connectivity.  With the people I see I want to release an explosive showering love onto them.  In every set of eyes, I see truth, and hope they feel it as well.  I am in love with every soul, rhythm, and flow.  I have been enchanted and transfixed on the stasis of this moment.  I sometimes fear that I will lose this, knowing that my orchestrated anxiety is what will rob me.   Desperately I want to share this with others, knowing that my words are much to feeble and would serve only to muddle what I wish to convey.

I think I know how to hold this.  It seems much too simple of an activity to have much merit, but it seems to be my right way.  I can’t share this feeling within some mechanical theoretical rhetoric.  These abstracts, which by most part are passed off as fluff, seem to be evolving…and evolving at an ever-rapid pace.  At least this seems to be the case for me.  It is as if through out my entire life I have been unaware of this phenomenon or the abstract have been wrapped within a gestation period slowly growing into something much more.

I am terribly sorry if my sad simplistic way of communication is crippling my point and only confusing and nonsensical.   The contradiction of admitting that it can’t be explained while still making the brutal attempt is not far from my mind.  My purpose is to act as a pseudo explorer and report on my finding.  The main premise of that report is this, “THERE IS ANOTHER WORLD OUT THERE!”  It exists jus below & above the horizon point of your own perception.  Every treasure that you sought to acquirer to ensure the fulfillment of joy in life has been with you in every moment of your voyage.  You are the vessel that can carry you to the new world.

Pay no mind to both the internal & external voices of judgment.  There is no one person that has the intellectual or spiritual real-estate of concrete truth to dispute what I am saying.  The life we live, and how we live has been taught to us through repetitious self-proclaimed rationalism that has built a worldview on the emptiness of opinion.   There is no reason why we should allow this to brand of model building to continue.  Furthermore, it is the individual who is responsible for their change.  You do not need another consent or validation to experience the world & life the way in which your true self needs.  To do so is lazy and a determent of self.  I know very well, that what I proclaim is difficult and daunting to many.  It still is for me. Through compassion, creativity, and eagerness for adventure; there is no limit of the places you and the experiences you will have.

The Precipice

Take the time and listen to this conversation.  There are some fantastic, yet simple concepts.  We are the ones we ar waiting for.

The Memory of You is Much too loud

I have come to accept that you will always be there.  In every activity, contemplation, situation, and experience you are always close to my narrative.  I used to believe that I needed to push you out.  I used meditation, cycling, work, booze, sexual gratification, & a plethora of other suitable replacements, but still you persist.  Always there in the corner of memory, your resonance acts as an anchor to that which I have already experienced.

I felt the unnerving need to push you away.  It didn’t matter that you were already gone in form, but your substance was still apparent, and I desired to be free of it.  The foolishness slightly over shadows the shortsightedness of this simple minded thought.  The last few months, I made it a point to give more credence to meditation through practice.  In the beginning, I childishly made this attempte to eradicate all thought of you from my mental lexicon.  Over time I came to terms with the silliness of this attempt while learning the value of meditation.

It feels that I have made progress in the strenuous art.  You would be surprised how time consuming and uncomfortable self examination can be.  Yet, over time one discovers the infinite benefits from said practice.   After much time the benefits materialized, even as the memories became much too loud to avoid.  Truth seemed to fall out of the sky and drop into my lap.  There was never getting over you, not in some mislead idealistic sense of disconnecting thought from reality.

The memory of you is much too loud, and I say…so be it.  Let the resonance of your experience scream loud and long.  I should not shy from such thoughts.  You are a part of the creative force which I collaborated with when designing who I am.  I cannot out run you, forget about you, ignore you; because I experienced you, you will always be with me.  I no longer see anything wrong with this.  Despite how much malice, frustration, and regret I contributed to my time with you; which was no more than an emotional reactionary impulse, I see the necessity of the time shared.

I see the blessing in the commotion we created.  At times we were volatile.  At times we were blissful.  Whether pleasure or pain, all that remains, is that I am ever forever changed because of you.  Thank you my dearest for the catalyst you embody.  You are part of the transcendental bridge that has brought me to this place…the ever evolving NOW.