Paradise Alive, Revolution Afoot

Here in Maui nearly a month, and difficult to generate any impetus to create something other out of the bubble of suburban comfort, experiential paradise in the outer and inner realms: loving relationship, nurturing warm ocean and air, sunshine and earth, ample drumming and social opportunities, fresh local organic food, time to work on paying jobs and our own projects. The first week, true, posed challenges settling in. We had to futz with furniture arrangement, household supplies, wireless upgrades, computer glitches, phone plan options, car registration, assorted errands in mall-ville. On the fun side of daily life we've been reacquainting ourselves with familiar places and people: sampling beaches with good snorkeling, taking walks on our neighborhood streets interlaced with golf fairways, attending zikr, kirtan, and 5-rhythms dance, and playing drums and percussion at drum classes, dance classes, beach jams, house jams, jungle jams.

Rising out of this swell of material contentment is an inner thriving, yet striving to create more, a reaching out and connecting to glimpse a bigger picture, at risk of contamination by endless conspiracy and unraveling, threats to peace and well-being, real or imagined. At every point of input is a questioning, a partial truth with another truth on its darker side, or a lighter truth hidden by the walls of projection. There is a risk of sheer reactivity, of responding in kind, of feeding polarity by leaning on one side or the other. Equanimity holds the balance, either with a balanced, classic "liberal" view, or a radical vision beyond dualistic assertions competing for attention.


The natural world serves as the testing ground for what is real: flowing currents, blowing breezes, burning sun, lava and coral, with its attendant life forms that judge our actions as valid or remote by sheer comparison. Last week we were escorted in turn by a couple of turtles for an extended swim along the coral: one turning suddenly to eye us face to face; the other, a six-foot giant, content to match us stroke for stroke for a full half and hour. Today the turtle that appeared out of "nowhere" under our plasticked noses lay mute and stone-still on the bottom, nestled in a trough of old coral, only blinking to signal its questionable hold on life. Was it poisoned, injured, dying? Scared, or bored? Or just napping, extending the long moment before its next brief breath? What story unfolded that eluded our imagining utterly? On the sign to the beach was depicted a cute couple lounging on the sand: monk seal with flipper on the leathery turtle by its side. So, missing that lost love?

In other news, we hear the revolution is afoot. Monday will reveal its truth or fantasy, forewarning or false lead. Or radiation about to bloom, sending us all to doom. Or, ascension at hand, holographic transformation an act of divine will. Or, more of the same mass diet of concocted terror, machination and mounting control, the mad dreams of a dying elite. Or, back to the basics of suburban life, outfitting the kitchen, walking the dog. Or, greeting the new sun each day with a smile, stretching the body under its unbending rays of glory.


The beauty is, there is considerable choice in the channel to tune to, the show to create. One, two, a network and multitude at a time. At the speed of coral, turtle or seal, flower or sunset, slow shared meal.

Finding Home

Finding Home

The taste of wild Pacific salmon mellow in my mouth, I reflect on the blessings of home that greeted me on my return to British Columbia five days ago...

• The cornucopia of food selection in the supermarkets and various small shops, worldwide in scope and of privileged quality.


• The wide clean quiet streets, nary a motorbike in sight.


• The convenience of a home address, phone number, access to utilities, true high-speed Internet.


• Backups to restore of music and photo collection, files, computer programs, to resume fully the digital side of life.


• Continuity of dentist and doctor care, and besides, being healthier and more energetic.


• Familiarity of streets and shops, to find whatever items are needed or desired, right now.


• Cool fresh air, the cloudless sky (without chemtrails), turning to genuine summer perfection in early May.


• Familiarity of trees, gardens, forests, landscape, beaches - and water swimmable this year in spring.


• Long daylight hours of late spring and summer, contrasting with the dark tropic evenings.


• Relaxation of the body and spirit from the irritating buzz and itch of mosquitoes.


• List of friends/family/band/pod to catch up with, events to attend.


• Compatible language, cultural personality, civil society.


• A single all-embracing culture, instead of divided status as "expat" (leaving aside deeper analysis of colonization here in North America, and how far back that goes, for instance the ice-age megafauna extinctions, or further?).


• Familiar car, house, furnishings, kitchenware, bedding, instruments, printers, desk and chair, clothes, shower and bath.

Five days into blowing this bubble of elation, I pause, already settled in, full in appreciation and now ready to consider what's next. The other side of elation, sniffing the slide down to routine, normalcy, even stagnation; and beyond, the unsettledness of the next cycle, and the complexities of merging another being into this bubble built for one - or floating it off again to another land.

In the meantime, the story settles into a space between the swings of the pendulum. Neither elation nor deflation offers to sustain. Rather a more grounded presence, neither catching up nor leaning ahead, but arriving to the next moment simple and free. May this story, with less attachment to details of home and circumstance, and more opening of heart, continue. Its mantra, whether on page 1, 5, or the last: Stay Tuned.

Coming Soon

The biggest spider I ever saw, a sentient companion over my morning sun meditation bench... after two weeks, I look up one morning to find it gone, web destroyed. That must have been one large hungry bird.

As we go further into 2012, already the days and weeks and months are spinning by, accelerating, and I have just one month left in this fertile bubble called Bali. While the outer world careens through a parade of events - seemingly chaotic, more likely orchestrated from hidden forces terrestrial or otherwise - I have kept life here simple. Revising to bring new life to an old novel; snapping photographs on sunny walks through the rice fields and walkways adorned with offerings; anticipating momentous changes to come, transformation already underway.

Who is the spider, who the flower, who the hungry bird?


What is really happening in the world, and what is about to happen? On the mainstream side we find the usual diet of war and rumors of war, endless episodes of so-called terror, frightening swaths of destruction from supposedly natural forces. The alternative media paints an opposite picture of plots and plans, documenting histories of coercion and coverup, aiming for truth disclosure above national and sectarian ideologies. Financial tyranny, we are promised, is now on the brink of collapse, as earth's vast majority of good citizens will be treated to a spectacle of mass arrests of the dark cabal.

Aligned with the political, scientific and financial whistleblowers are the angelic channelers, New Age seers, and disclosers of contact with advanced beings from beyond - who keep promising to materialize "in the very near future." The legions of spiritual teachers and guides continue chanting the mantra of inner peace and self-realization, with a contemporary twist of letting go and merging with the bigger picture, surfing the planetary shift, breathing into the One body of energy that we are, the collective cosmic organism, expression of Source.

All this news coming from all sides is unmistakably taking on a different edge now, everything coming to a head, everything to be revealed, and healed.


Channeling, whether conscious or unconscious, what is needed for human evolution, our personal lives tick by nevertheless. We go out to cosmic possibility and come back again to a feeling of, okay, whether after enlightenment or still before - in other words, during enlightenment - we still chop the wood and carry the water.  Only somehow the little things are more profound, more meaningful and important. At the same time we have the awareness of something other in the offing, something far greater, making those chosen particulars less meaningful, less important. Either way, both ways simultaneously, we do them, we continue, because that’s what we do.


And while waiting, anticipating, pausing in another long breath between the daily doing, we catch an inspiration to do more. On the creative alternatives side, we have the new activist paradigm to Occupy Earth (with room for the poetical hand in hand with the political); or to celebrate nature, culture and spirit in a further explosion of transformational festivals.

Always coming back to the present and personal, the one breath I am responsible for, each moment there is a new opportunity to go deeper, to the opening within, the tapping of source divinity, the space between cells, walking with lightness and light itself, in a frequency of dimensional shift, healing energy, higher vibration, sense of oneness with all.

Andromeda emissary Tolec says it will all happen in a flash, overnight as we sleep, and anyway not until January 2014. Craig Hamilton says the thing is to get up off our self-absorption, and see our consciousness raising as a collective identification and experience. Osnat says it’s more than sitting by oneself in silence and more than sitting together to Occupy Whatever; it’s whatever we do and wherever we walk, in that lightening of density, the opening of space between.

In reality, this reality here and now, the possibility and potential of a dimensional shift, of a higher vibration, of an expanded frequency, is discovered in the opening of inspiration - not so much a concept, idea, an analysis even of the biggest picture - but of moving energy in the manifest moment, in the cells themselves, the quickening of the breath, the tenor of the voice, the momentum of the words, the sudden swell of intensity of the music of the Balinese jazz funk band in the middle of their set, on the ground floor of the restaurant where everyone, in what a moment ago seemed a conventional, humdrum setting, sits up and takes notice, their heads starting to bob, their knees keeping time, their feet twitching, their eyes coming alight.