The Importance Of Getting Paid And Laid

Have you ever noticed that when you don’t have any money, IT’S A REALLY BIG DEAL?

You end up spending all of your time looking for ways to make money…looking for a job, asking for loans, dreaming up schemes and new business ideas…it pretty much occupies all of your time and a large portion of your mental capacities.

Then once you have it, it’s no big deal. You move on with your life. Money becomes such a miniscule concern that it hardly takes up any mental real estate at all. Sure, you think about it, but not like you once did.

Have you ever noticed that sex is the same way? If you’re not getting laid, you’re thinking about it. You’re plotting, planning, seeking it out. You get kinda desperate…and slightly annoying to everyone around you.

And if you’re NOT seeking out some lovin’, then you’re repressing your sexual self…all stoic and monk-like…and you start getting emotionally needy…and slightly annoying to everyone around you.

Am I right or am I right?

Then when you DO finally “get lucky,” it’s no big deal again. You’re satisfied for a while. If you’re in a sexually healthy relationship and you’re getting laid on the regular, it’s barely a blip on your radar. You move on and focus on other things.

Ever wonder why that is?

From an eastern perspective, we have these energy centers in our bodies called Chakras. I could fill pages with explanations of chakras (and perhaps one day I will), but for now, just know that each one of these “spinning balls of light” is connected to specific thought forms, emotions and needs of the human condition.

At your root, you have your first chakra. This lil’ buddy is connected to…well…your ROOTS. It governs your relationship to your family, your house, your money, and all the things that are foundational in your life and serve your stability. If those things aren’t in order, then nothing else can operate at optimum capacity.

Sans stability, you can’t think about spiritual advancement, or find healthy love, or conquer the world with your next big great idea. You HAVE to solidify your foundation by fostering a healthy relationship with your family, making enough money to cover your cost of living and or having some sort of domicile that feels good to you…then you can move on to other areas of excellence.

Same with your second chakra. It’s located in…you guessed  it…your pelvis. Specifically, around the region of your sacrum. This guy governs your creativity and sexuality. When it’s healthy, you are full of fresh ideas and artistic inspirations, and your life takes on an attractive sparkle that everyone notices.

You can foster the health of your second chakra by creating healthy expressions of your sexuality. Dancing, flirtation, and acceptance of yourself are all key components. And yes, it’s super important to have sexual relations on a regular basis.

We’ve all seen what happens when sexuality is repressed. Priests molesting little kids…knocked up nuns hiding shamefully in catacombs…rape…incest…it’s not a pretty scene.

The energy is GOING TO express, one way or another…so you might as well do it in a healthy, natural way.

You don’t have to have indiscriminate sex with strangers, but creating sexual exchanges with trusted partners is essential. This could look like cuddling, heavy petting or grinding on a nightclub dance floor.

Coitus and oral sex definitely carry their own sets of risks and sticky webbing, so maybe you save that for someone super special, but the rest of it is fair game…and extremely good for you.

Once these basic, core needs are met, you can move on to other, “higher” functions, like moving powerfully into the world in the field of your choosing, acting with unconditional love and gratitude, feeding hungry kids, reforming broken social systems, bringing together communities for charitable causes…whatever your high callings might be.

Now I’m not saying that you gotta be all about the booty and the benjamins. We’ve all seen the havoc that that wreaks on the world around us. What I AM saying is that the collective repression of these foundational, fundamental drives has created an international fascination with big bling and sexual objectification…both sides are out of balance.

Simply be at peace with the fact that you’re KINDA about the booty and benjamins…then meet your needs and move on.

Of course, as always, I welcome your questions, comments and feedback. Lemme know what you think in the comment section below.

Cheers!

How To Listen To Your Heart

A friend of mine said something really profound the other day.

He was talking about seeking new inspiration in his life after everything had fallen apart…his marriage, his career, his concepts of who he thought he was…

He said, “I know this would all be easier if I just listened to my heart, but HOW CAN I when my head is always talking so f’n loud?”

GOOD QUESTION.

We hear from mystics and poets and wise elders all the time that we should follow our hearts…that the true wisdom comes not from the analytical mind, but rather from our centers.

But how the hell do you DO that?

It’s quite simple, really. While your head communicates in words, pictures and criticisms : the language of our external existence…your heart, much like your gut, speaks in feelings : the language of your internal world.

Feelings, by the way, are not the same as emotions. Emotions (love, anger, happiness, sadness, etc.) are thoughts linked to feelings. Some of the bridges between the mind and the body, if you will.

Feelings, on the other hand, are FELT in the body. Itch…warmth…tingle…pressure…etc.

…SENSATIONS…

So while your head is yammering away up there, solving riddles and inventing new problems to tackle, simply turn your attention to the sensations you feel in your body…and specifically in your heart.

Here’s a video to help you get warmed up…

Once you feel what’s happening in between your shoulders, imagine potential scenarios and see how they feel. If you heart feels warm and expansive to any degree, then go with it. If your heart feels pained or constrictive to any degree, move in a different direction. If you can’t tell the difference, sit with it a lil’ while longer.

Then, as you walk around in the world and encounter other people, stay tuned into the sensations in your center, and use them as your primary guide to make the best choices possible.

I hope this helps you. If you have any questions, please leave them in the comment section below, and I promise to respond as soon as I can.

Love

Don’t Hate The Player, Baby…

An interesting phenomenon has taken hold in American football: helmet-to-helmet hits.

Now at first this may not seem like such a big deal, but take a look at this (warning…some of these hits are little disturbing):

What you see here is the equivilent of YOU strapping on a football helmet, standing on the curb and sticking your head into traffic…and getting nailed by a car doing 20-35 mph.

We have top athletes, in the prime of their lives and heights of their careers (some just starting out), devastated and destroyed by one tackle…one INTENTIONAL hit, straight to the head.

SOMETHING MUST BE DONE…right?

Players are getting fined left and right for this behavior, but that doesn’t stop them. Players get disciplinary suspensions, but still we have helmet-to-helmet hits. The behavior is curbed, but by no means stopped.

Why?

Because these hits do their job. They’ve been proven to be one of the MOST EFFECTIVE ways to make a man drop a ball, and turn the tables on the game.

…and the crowd goes wild…

Businessmen play a similar game. It’s all about conquest, domination, and capturing from others for one’s personal gain. The game is called CAPITALISM.

In capitalism, the goal is “accumulation of resources.” It doesn’t matter how you do it or who gets hurt…all that matters are quarterly increases in the bottom line.

Political coups in countries that hold resources you want are effective. Dumping toxic waste on other people’s land is effective. Forcing others to give you their water so you can sell it back to them is effective.

All of these are great ways to make a lot of money.

Another effective way to make a lot of money is to simply MAKE UP a lot of money.

Enter: The fractional reserve lending system employed by every bank on the planet and currently masterminded by The Fed.

If you create a lot of money out of thin air, then loan it to people and charge them interest on it, you’ve effectively MADE a lot of money. If you give home loans to people who don’t meet the economic standards to receive them, then collect interest from those people for a while before taking their home and reselling it, you’ve just made a lot of money. It doesn’t matter that people get hurt. The bottom line is happy…the shareholders are happy…good game.

Just like football players, sometimes bankers and businessmen get caught engaging in harmful actions, and they get fined. They get imprisoned (sometimes). They get “shamed.” But the acts of atrocity continue…BECAUSE THEY’RE EFFECTIVE.

WHAT DO WE DO???

Don’t play football.

Seriously…if you know that playing a game might entail concussions, broken necks and blown out knees…AND YOU’RE NOT COOL WITH THAT…then don’t play that game.

In fact, if you’re disturbed by the thought of padded gladiators punishing one another…don’t even WATCH the game.

But Capitalism is different…we have to play it. Right? Don’t we?

Nope. Capitalism is but one system, and it’s broken.

Now let me take a moment to make an important, key distinction: DEMOCRACY AND CAPITALISM ARE NOT THE SAME THING.

Now I’ll make another: CAPITALISM AND A “FREE MARKET ECONOMY” ARE NOT THE SAME THING.

In fact, Capitalism undermines the beautiful and righteous tenets of both Democracy and a Free Market Economy by creating monopolies and taking the power from the masses and putting it in the hands of a select few. Those are exactly the things we attempted to escape with the creation of The Democratic Experiment of The United States.

So…if you don’t want to get crushed by Capitalistic Linebackers, play a different game.

And don’t waste your time and your breath blaming those who play the game really well. Every unit of energy that you expend seeking to assign blame and demand retribution from someone else could be better spent taking personal responsibility for your part in your misery, and seeking to change YOUR OWN game through YOUR OWN actions.

Politicians and crooked corporate heads have lives that work for them. As long as you’re buying their products and going along with their dictates, they keep living well. Their fridges are full, their water is clean, their cars keep humming merrily down the stream.

However, if you choose to spend your money on things you can truly believe in (local food…empowering, green technology…natural healthcare methods) and live in accordance with your own personal set of high-self values, then those cats at the top have no-one to play with…and their game changes. Maybe they’ll start playing football…

Long story short : Don’t hate the player.

Don’t even hate the game.

Spin off of the old, broken model…and live a life that works really well for YOU.

hurt people hurt people

texas fundamentalism…california idealism…there’s room for all of it.

here’s the thing.

duality and energy are not a matter of faith…they’re felt and witnessed throughout all of existence. and meditation deepens our awareness of these experiences, allowing us to feel and understand the more subtle messages that God gives us through our bodies and senses. Jesus is Lord and God is the Father…cool. That’s felt through the body as well, most often by those who take the time to go within (prayer and meditation) and tune into the subtle realms.

my point is this: if you need to believe that there’s a judgmental father figure waiting to whack you on the head beyond the clouds, and a fiery, man-eating, trickerous beast hiding around every corner to trip you up and lead you astray…and that helps you be a better person, then rock on. be the best person you can be, and love your neighbor, and believe whatever you need to believe in order to do that.

but what if…and this is a big “what if”…
WHAT IF you could do the right thing just because it’s the right thing to do? WHAT IF you could avoid doing the wrong thing, and clean up the messes you’ve made…just because it feels right to do that? WHAT IF you just took responsibility for making your corner of the world a better place to be?

and this is the biggest “what if” of this whole shabang…

What if you could accept that without destruction there would be no rebirth…that without “bad stuff” happening, there would be no catalyst…much less APPRECIATION of the “good stuff.” What if you accepted that God the Father, Most High Creator of All created ALL OF THIS, and called it “GOOD.”

if that’s the case, then child sex trafficking, going to church, schoolyard beatings and feeding the homeless are all simply actions taken by people…neither good nor bad…simply actions. and the things that we “take a stand for” are simply aspects of a world that we’d like to see. they’re not necessarily “better” or “worse,” but simply “more” or “less” congruent with a PLEASANT, HARMONIOUS HUMAN EXPERIENCE.

we take a stand for the freedom of those imprisoned by slavery, because when one of our brothers or sisters is enslaved, we are all enslaved…and slavery feels yucky.

and then there’s personal judgement…instead of arguing whether we should or shouldn’t judge ourselves (or others), how about we just accept that we DO judge…and get to work refining the Judge that lives within. { CUE : meditation } invite more love into the judgement process, (use stern words as a “WAKE UP”), then kick in some kindness, and the internal judgement will yield fewer rebellious backlashes and more tangible results. after all, when you understand that “hurt people hurt people,” you can act with more compassion…a much more effective method for creating lasting positive change.

om ♥

Ixnay On The Oringbay

Just a few moments ago I was ready to rip my freakin’ face off.

You see, I have this background in marketing, and this uncanny ability to convey messages through the written word. I also have a deep love for the yoga community. Most of my yogi friends are living meagerly, and many of them would love to live a life of opulance and wealth. So, my thoughts went, “Mateo, you should totally help the people in your community learn how to market their stuff, and help them write all their promotional copy. That would be a really good business for you.”

Sounds great, right?

So I began to cast ahead into the future and look at my life as a marketing coach/consultant. I saw myself teaching a handful of low-priced, highly-attended marketing workshops filled with beautiful, shiny people decked out in Lululemon, Hard Tail and Prana, and dropping the marketing gems that I’ve gleaned over the years from my teachers and experiences working in marketing firms. During these workshops, I would pitch “next-level,” higher-priced services, like copywriting, promotional design, website creation and one-on-one marketing consultation. My wheels spun faster, and I started looking for my old notes full of all the little tips and tricks that help good salesmen tap into their targets and close the sale. That’s about the time I started wanting to rip my face off.

I know, I know…it really doesn’t sound that bad. In fact, that’s a PERFECT life for someone…it’s just not MY perfect life. It doesn’t sound like much fun to me. The thought of putting a dollar sign on everything and targeting my friends as business clients just makes my stomach turn.

Fortunately, I ran this idea by one of my good friends who has an incredibly sensitive BS meter, and she reflected my own words back at me: “It doesn’t sound like you’re having any fun planning that thing. Stop doing it right now. Do something fun.”

Wooooooshhhhhhh…all the air went out of my balloon. In an instant, I was deflated and wondering how I’d managed to waste a couple of precious hours on another concept designed to compromise my authentic desires in order to make some money.

As painful as it was, this whole experience taught me a couple of things. Funny how painful experiences will do that…

If you’re not having fun, you’re no good to anyone.

It’s true. If you’re not having fun, you’re wishing you were having fun, and you start pulling energy from other people who seem like they’re having fun. Your personal vibration drops, and you start pulling everyone else’s vibration down to match your own. In doing so, you suck all the joy outta life, and you become a low spot that others fall into, but regret being around…a sticky mess. That’s right…if you’re not having fun, you suck. Literally. Fortunately, good friends will feel that suck, and rather than enabling it, they wake you up and point you in the right direction.

Which brings us to our second lesson…

Never underestimate the power of reaching out. 

When you’re trapped inside your head, things can get pretty scary and confusing. And when you’re trying to figure something out, isolation can sometimes seem like the best idea. Here’s my handy formula for the prevention of insanity during the process of creating my life:

1. Meditate often. During meditation, you calm your head down a bit, and fresh ideas and new perspectives arise. It’s like when you go on vacation, or for a good hike, and suddenly your life makes sense again…only you can do it in your living room. Plus, during meditation, you can ask for advice from the person who knows your life the best…YOU. Meditate for clarity and new ideas.
2. Envision with your pen. Sit down with your journal and write it out. Draw pictures. Make a mind map. Explore the angles of your new ideas. Get creative and play with ‘em a bit. See whether this idea is useful or not by determining which needs it fills and who’s needs those might be.
3. Reach out. Call a friend (or two) and run the idea by him/her/them. This friend should be a trusted soul who can shoot straight with you…someone you know to be a positive, uplifting sort, who you can also count on to cut through your stories and give you honest feedback.
4. Meditate again. Tap in and see how the idea feels now.

Who knows…your friend may tell you your idea is brilliant, or your friend may totally shoot it down. Either way, you’re likely to be surprised, and you’ll have a whole different perspective. Newness…freshness…these are good things.

And here’s a bonus 3rd lesson…probably the most obvious of them all…

If you’re bored or not enjoying whatever you’re doing, go do something else. 

Life is full of opportunities to do stupid shit that you don’t like. Sometimes it’s necessary, so every time that you DO have a choice (like…MOST of the time), go ahead and exercise your right to do something else. Go for a walk. Scribble in a notebook. Play your didgerido. Watch an episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender on Netflix. Whatever it takes to shake you up and realign your focus. Remember, you don’t have to do anything. You’re obligated to nothing. Obligation is a lie of manipulation, propagated by people who want you serving their missions instead of your own. Point is, if you’re not vibrating at a high level, exercise your right to change it up.

When it was all said and done, I remembered that the reason I wanted to help my friends with their marketing was because I wanted to find more avenues to write. I just wanted to write. So now I’m writing…to you. And hopefully through my story, you’ve found some glimmer of assistance, peace, acceptance…something good. Or maybe just a different perspective. Either way, I still have my face and my sanity, which means the next time you see me you don’t have to avert your eyes in horror or worry about me sucking the life outta you. Everybody wins!

I welcome your comments, and read every one…so if you’re feeling inspired, please leave a comment in the section below, and tell me what inspires you.

Much Love

Work Sucks

When you were a kid, you were not a lazy bum.

You actively engaged the world in your own, unique way. You ran around building, destroying, exploring and examining.

You PLAYED.

Maybe you played video games, or maybe you climbed trees. You probably played team sports at some point, and you most definitely played it all by feel…but that’s a whole ‘nother blog post.

Point is: you weren’t idle. Your hands were not “the devil’s playthings.” You didn’t develop idleness until you learned that you’re supposed to take orders from someone else and spend time in between said orders awaiting more orders. It was while awaiting orders that you discovered boredom: sitting around wondering what the funk you’re supposed to be doing, and filling your useless hours watching television, eating Doritos and drinking Dr. Peppers.

Now you work some bullshit job that you don’t like to buy a bunch of crap you don’t need and won’t care about next year. You work this job because you’ve bought that old line about “…work pays you money because that’s the only way you’d do such demeaning labor. There’s a reason they call it work, Son.”

Well, let’s look up the word, “work,” shall we…(thank you dictionary.com)

WORK

Noun

1. exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something; labor; toil.

2. something on which exertion or labor is expended; a task or undertaking: The students finished their work in class.

3. productive or operative activity.

Well lookie there…nowhere do I see “dumb shit you gotta do to get paid.” In fact, it’s all about “productive or operative activity” and accomplishment…which feels pretty damn good, last time I checked.

When I was a kid, my sister and I used to spend our summers visiting our Aunt and Uncle out in the country. They had a stack of bricks set off to the side of the front porch, behind the trees, and my sister and I would rearrange that stack of bricks to build all kinds of cool houses. Inside these “houses” we’d build ovens, aquaducts and elaborate doorways…and not once did we think of it as “work.” We were architects, engineers, contractors, carpenters, bricklayers and butlers, and the whole time we were just playing.

At other times we’d make ice cream in an old hand-crank ice cream maker. It was hard, shoulder-killin, sweat-soaked work, but it was hella fun mixing up fresh cream, Fredricksburg peaches, brown sugar and vanilla, keeping ice and salt packed in tight, and turning the crank until our arms fell off and we had to bolt ‘em back on in the barn behind the horse pen. And when it was all done, we had ice cream.

We had fun, and we had ice cream.

I’ve got an idea. What if you just did whatever you wanted to do, and used THAT to serve humanity? I know…it’s crazy…but what if you just looked around at all the needs left unmet or undermet in our community, picked your favorite job, and did that? You may not make a million dollars…but really, who needs a million dollars?

What if instead of giving away all of your life energy to some task that would be better done by a machine, you got really REALLY interested in something you think is cool, and showed everyone what a genius you can be?

I’m willing to bet that your needs would be met, and you would live a rich, fulfilling existence. I bet you’d have a lot of fun, and you’d get SO GOOD at what you do, that you’d attract the best of the best to work with.

I bet you’d never get bored or burnt out again.

Tell me what you think about this experiment. Tell me what you would do if you didn’t have to do what you’ve been doing. Tell me what you really want.

Leave your questions, answers, and comments in the section below, and I promise to read them all, and respond where I can.

Now I’m gonna go play NASCAR with my vacuum cleaner.

Leveraging Opposition

Have you danced a good Tango lately?

How about just a simple 2-step?

If you have, then you understand the importance of opposition.

When you’re dancing with a partner, you want a bit of resistance. If they’re limp-wristed and wet-noodly, you’ve got nothing to work with. You end up dragging a cadaver across the dance floor for the duration of the song, and go back to your table tired and drained of vitality.

On the other hand, if your partner is nothing but resistance, you fight the whole time, trying to move this stiff chunk of muscle and bone from one corner to another in some semblance of synchronized rhythm. Exhausting.

However, when your partner yields to you, but gives you a bit of resistance to push against, you have a dance: a true meeting of bodies and wills that can create divine play, if only for a moment.

I think everything in life is like that.

Go swimming in a river sometime. If you position yourself just right, facing upstream in a moderate current, with your feet planted firmly against a boulder on the bottom, you can spread your arms and feel like you’re flying. Dip too low and you’ll sputter with a face fulla water as you’re pushed to the bottom; stand too tall and you get knocked back and swept down stream. But find that sweet spot…pure magic.

Your relationships, your projects, your business deals and child-rearing…they all push against you and ask you to push back. Lean into it a little. This life on this land…this world of duality and opposition…it’s hard because it has to be. If everything flowed super-easy all the time, the game would be no fun.

If you could carry a football from one end of the field to the other with no clock to beat and no opponents to overcome, the game would be pretty boring. You might as well just run sprints or take a leisurely stroll through the stadium. Forget the roar of the crowd…nobody cheers for the untested champion.

In all of the games of your life, your success depends on your ability to leverage the opposition you encounter. If you stand stiff, you’ll break. You’ll burn out early. Your adrenals will give up and sickness will befall you. If you never stand at all, you lose your sense of self worth and the respect of everyone, and you’ll spend your days doubting everything you do. But bob and weave and fall and rise…dance with passion and compassion…push and pull, and you’ll have the fire necessary to break through to the next challenge, and the pliability to allow life to happen through you…like wind through bamboo.

This is the game. Remember? You chose this…

Simultaneous strength and surrender…buoyancy and balance…meet, be met, and dance.

Shadowlight

Do you know your own darkness?

Are you at peace with it, or does it rattle around like bones in a box, emerging in inconvenient moments of life-worn frailty to wound the ones around you? Does it speak in sinister whispers just behind your eyes, begging for a bullet and cursing your creations?

I think that most of us are fascinated by our dark sides, even as we strive to live in the light. We desire to make the “right” choice and shine a light that all can bask in, and as such, we run from the shadow. We carry this shade like an unspoken boulder, penance for deeds done in darker moments, and when we’ve grown weary or bored, that demon slips into our skins and begins speaking with our tongues.

And does anything make us nearly so tired as the constant act of stuffing our responses into a bottle? Every shred of truth that might hurt someone’s feelings…every turn from a “negative” feeling to a “positive” reframe…every step around an eggshell or don of the white kid gloves just wears us out, until finally…SNAP!

But there is another way.

The shadow, like every other part of life, is going to be there. The sun’s going to rise, and then it’s going to set. Darkness befalls the earth, then fades with the morning light. Denying or fighting natural law is like slamming your body against a big ol’ rock, hoping that sooner or later that damn mountain will move. You’ll break long before it does.

So knowing that your shadow…your shame, anger, pain and frustration…aren’t going anywhere, whaddaya do?

Shine the light.

Have you ever turned a corner and come face to face with a really big dog? How about a really big, snarling, saliva dripping from exposed teeth kind of dog? SCUH-ARY. If you turn and run, the hunt is on. That beast will catch you and kill you. Primal instinct is a powerful force. However, if you stand your ground, look it in the eye and say, “SIT!” that massive mastif will back down just a bit. All it sees at that point is an even BIGGER dog…one that means bidness.

Your demons are the same kinda beast. Primal, wiley, but totally controllable. They feed on your weakness. They prey upon your tender parts as the kid in you curls into a ball. But they shrink from the light…they recoil and become submissive to your confidence and command. And here’s the thing…that big dog, those demons…they’re not bad. They exist in perfect order as ordained by the Creator. They serve a purpose…a unique function. They guard the gates of traumas in need of healin’. They point to areas in need of attention. And they keep other big dogs and demons at bay…when trained. Left untrained, they will find a pack to run with.

You’ve gotta alpha your shadow.

Once you do, you’ll make peace with yourself…your WHOLE SELF, and you’ll wield a personal power known only by a rare handful of awakened individuals. Owning this shadow-self in recognition of its perfection allows you to move with confidence and self-control, in harmony with natural law. It allows you to be at ease. And most of all, it allow you to be NICE, even when your plans fall apart and the sky rains flaming rocks on your resolve.

Energy’s going to move. You can move with it, or be moved by it…either way you’re gonna dance.

Flamenco?

A Message From Yo’ Mama

From the top of the mountain the world seems simple. Answers come easily, if you’ll only ask.

I asked for an answer to the hurts of humanity, and I’ve come down from the mountain with a message from your Mother.

Return to your roots with reverence and respect.

No matter what your culture or religious tradition is, we all come from a background of honoring the earth and our connection to her. All of us have ancestors who lived near the river…saw the cycles…participated in the perfect plan.

Since then, we seem to have become the bruised children of a broken marriage, choosing sides for survival. On the left sits the tempestuous yet loving Mother, on the right, the Father, harshly judgmental but kind at heart. Both are demanding and cruel at times, begging for allegiance with promises of sweets and security.

Our Earthian culture has chosen the Father, by and large. We are taught to pray to Him, to the exclusion of all others, for he is jealous and wrathful. All of our current dominant systems of faith have a Man at the mast, and the only mention of the feminine is in decidedly human form. We, as the people of the Church, are the bride. Great women have arisen within the ranks, but they were still mere mortals, and few and far between. Goddesses are acknowledged here and there, but only as secondary figures, subservient and subject to the whims of their masculine counterparts.

No wonder she shakes in protest and eats our cities with her seas.

However, not so long ago our ancestors were gung-ho feminists. They prayed to moon mothers and fierce females who demanded blood…the heads of Brahmins, virgins in volcanoes, the finest meat of the fatted calf. Woman roared, man cowered…everyone suffered. A system out of balance is bound to break.

The truth we choose so often not to see is that Mom and Dad are still hand in hand behind the scenes, holding all in harmony. The separation we perceive is a projection of the division within…the schizophrenia that leaves us indecisive and unsure, and that division manifests as we tear humanity apart.

Many of us sit in the middle and bear the brunt of the burden on our weakening shoulders, making poor choices with the best intentions, exhausted and stumbling proudly toward detriment. Through our stubborn independence we deny the help at hand. With simple pleas and humble offerings we can once again gain the favor of all of existence, and bring our lives into some semblance of balance.

After all, total truth be told, it’s OUR future at stake. This planet and the space it spins in is gonna be just fine. Long after we have wiped ourselves from history’s memory, this rock will keep spinning and another species will arise. Our souls will go on to another experiment, and we’ll chalk this one up to experience. But the splendid glory of the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, and the only thing standing between it and you…is you.

Through the marriage of flesh AND spirit we are conceived, and through the acknowledgement of that union we are made whole and complete, perfect in the eyes of our Parents.

Discipline and devotion.

Gifts and adoration.

Respect.

Shambo

In Cusco the sun is wide awake by 5am each day. Here in Texas it’s 6:52 and the first light of dawn has yet to break.

“If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?” ~Fight Club

I’m not the same man who left for Peru, seeking education and adventure a little more than a month ago. Something has softened. Something has changed. Something within me has re-calibrated, and nothing feels quite the same.

I like it.

When I was atop Mt Pacha Mama only one week ago, I laid my body across a stone altar, shoved up from the earth at odd angles with the sky. My everything ached with the burden of trying to carry my life solely on my own shoulders. My fingers dug frantically at my sternum, trying in vain to unhinge my ribs…separate my breastplate to give my heart more room to breathe. The mountain air nipped at my skin while the warm winter sun beat down upon me, tanning my flesh, obliterating sight. Soon a pink shawl was wrapped across my eyes and the soft hands of two sisters took the fight from my biceps, caressing my chest with love…so much love…

Two hawks circled above.

The medicine man sang his silly tune, deceptively weaving the words of God into a simple children’s melody, in between quatrains of non-sensical auditory doodles. His fingers found the flesh beneath my ribcage, and in rhythm with my breath, pushed sharply. A cry escaped. In the pit of my gut, something sinewy screamed in protest then released. Again, and again, and a fourth time his hands dug deeper as he shouted to the heavens in a language I barely understand, and then it was done.

The silly tune danced again.

Laughter bubbled up from deep within, lifting my body off the rocks to sit in the sun, shoulders back and head high, feeling empty and effervescent…buoyant, but balanced. Solid as the stone I sat upon.

I looked to my left to see two enormous clouds brushed out across the sky, wings stretching as far as I could see in two separate directions. I turned to face my friends and the wings were mine. Song poured forth.

All of my old grudges against the dark and destructive feminine force of the the divine mother were forgotten. Old wounds forgiven, inspiration rushed in. Insight and understanding; clarity and appreciation.

Jai Jai Kali Ma, Jai Jai Hanuman, Shiva Shakti Shiva Shiva Shambo.

I am a piece of the puzzle, a part of the whole, whole and complete unto my experience-driven taste touch smell see…listen…the Lord lives through me.

Now only a red string tied tight around my thick Texan wrist serves as a reminder: this dream was eyes wide.

I am awake.