Mother

For all of you mothers out there I hope you will feel acknowledged and appreciated for all that you do for family. It occurs to me that the real meaning of family is those people who go BEYOND their normal level of personal sacrifice for the benefit of other blood relatives. Of course, SOME of us have family members who are ESPECIALLY CHALLENGED with the life karmic obligations, and it is our FAMILY who has to shoulder the mental, physical, emotional and often financial burdens of them. The irony is of course, that from what I have observed, EACH family member secretly thinks that THEY are the family member who is most inadequate. It is the MOTHER of a family unit who functions as the glue that keeps us all from spinning off across the world in our own respective directions. Mothers nurture, by nature, unless they themselves are challenged with karmic challenges which disrupt such actions or impulses. In such a case it can require the family to nurture the mother, as the energy flow is inversed.

Ultimately our mothers are the center of our families. They are the point from which all family emerges and they wind up being the thing that all family members have in common with one another. A famous statement about mothers speaks volumes of our understanding about life, being born into this existence, and is fairly self explanatory for Pagans and Witches: “Mother is the name for God in lips and hearts of little children.” Willam makepeace Thackeray

Relative Relativity

I think people look at life all wrong.
First of all, the very BASIS of our outlook is biased incorrectly. The general rule of thumb that is seemingly UNIVERSALLY accepted and never challenged, is, in my experience, completely wrong. We spend all our energy trying to fight the most basic aspect of life and yet we never stop to consider that what we are actually fighting against....may be the essence of life itself. What do I mean? Well for starters, life IS pain. We all do our best to experience the best in life while simultaneously attempting to escape the unpleasant aspects of it. However, the reality is that without pain there simply IS NO LIFE. What's more, pain isn't your enemy. Pain is your closest ally. Pain lets you know that you are still alive and kicking. Pain lets you know when there is something wrong, be it physically, with your body, or emotionally in your heart. Yet we all dread the onset of pain because it is universally recognized to be a harbinger of scary change, but change is unavoidable. The ONLY thing in our lives that we can absolutely count on being a constant.......IS change. So to brace yourself AGAINST pain is silly. Inadvisable. Untenable. Impractical.

Experiencing pain is after all, unavoidable. If the universe suspects that you might be getting too comfortable, pain WILL FIND YOU. You cannot dodge or hide from pain. You cannot insulate yourself from pain with money. If you don't deal with the lessons of pain the Universe gives to you then chances are that you will be required to experience the SAME pain in different circumstances until you respond to the pain in the manner that the Universe or your Spirit Guide or guardian Angel desires. The Universe gives you style points for dealing with pain well, and rewards you with....you guessed it, stronger more virulent PAIN. If you manage to become immune to the pain the Universe will bless you with a chronic condition. If you succeed in handling that you will receive an emotionally wrecking event. If you progress past this then the Universe will continue to hurl random combinations at you until you actually are, unstoppable. This is how life works. We are basically tortured into invincibility. Remember this the next time that you feel that you were treated unfairly, or when you think you have been singled out with problems.

Earth school is about having your soul flexed to the breaking point and then flexed some more. The biggest secret in plain sight is that there simply is no escape. You may convolute your life with wealth and power, sex, drugs, and all manner of seemingly insulating excess, but pain WILL FIND YOU. Eventually you will learn to embrace the pain, which is what is expected of you. The thing is, what will you ALLOW the pain you experience to drive you to do? THIS is the essence of the test. Will you allow the pain, YOUR pain, to bleed into another persons life? This is a sign of weakness. Strength is demonstrating the act of shouldering that pain and moving forward not ALLOWING that pain to escape you. Being a cage for that pain and destroying it by taking steps to either resolve it, or carrying it to your grave to ensure it cannot hurt anyone else while simultaneously negating its effects on you, your life, and your relationships to others...

If you allow the pain to make you hurt someone else, the pain has taken you over, and now YOU are the pain. (Sorry head choppers, you're screwed).

The goal in life is to walk through this garden of Eden learning how to enjoy the experiences it offers while maintaining the theme park. This means caring for the life on this planet while doing our best to leave this world better than we found it. Regardless of what others do the responsibility for each of us is what we consciously contribute. No matter what condition Eden is in, we must work to repair what we have destroyed. This is the test of time. This is the lesson for our souls and the key to our spiritual evolution.

Now, I have used MY Pain to attempt to alleviate some of YOURS. This is because I am an unstoppable warrior against pain, and I make pain my bitch. Now you see how you ALSO, can do that.

Self Love

Today I'd like to talk about a sensitive topic.

It's one that I completely misunderstood my entire life and I'm sure that many of you, also, do not have a complete understanding of what the term "Self Love" really means. This morning, for the first time in literally years, I woke up BEFORE my alarm went off. When I did, it was as if I was being addressed. A voice in my head explained to me that self love isn't about how I FEEL about myself. It's about how I TREAT myself. The voice went on to describe the relationships between Higher Self and self. I was shown an image of something I see all the time but until now I didn't realize I was being taught something. The image was that of me petting on either one of my cats. Each time I paid attention to my cats I noticed that the more I pet them, the more they lick themselves. They were teaching me two things. One thing I will touch on later in a separate piece, but for now, they were showing me that each time I pet them, they "pet" themselves. This is an incredible bit of insight that they have taught me. Cats are whole because they fully "get" that we are NOT our bodies. Our bodies must be cared for and loved as if they were our children. They are NOT "us" but they SERVE us. What is causing all of the sickness everywhere is this this total incomprehension of the REALITY of our physical condition in this plane of existence. That is, that we are Spirits inhabiting or sharing the physical body of an animal that NEEDS OUR LOVE AND ATTENTION. It is NOT us, and yet it is. Our body is our lower self. There is a huge difference between loving your lower self "your-self" and being "self-centered". It is a nuance in language that is so subtle that I had never noticed it before. If you can manage to break the inertia of past habit and look at "your-self" in the mirror, and MAKE the connection to your body and REALIZE what I'm talking about here you will understand. You will find an incredibly important piece to the puzzle of life. YOUR life. Most of us who have developed sickness or illness have had this occur BECAUSE WE AREN'T LISTENING TO OUR-"SELVES". It is so strange to think of this body that I live in as someone who needs consideration beyond what "I" want, but it IS the case. I know how this may sound, but it's the TRUTH. It's the very essence of the wisdom on ancient knowledge passed down the generations to us from our ancestors in the phrase, "The Royal We". "We" (plural) for each singular individual, IS the key to the concept of the FACT that we are Spirit and body (will) which is to say our HIGHER SELF riding around in our LOWER self.

If it helps, think of us as a little speck of light who lives symbiotically in an animal who depends on us COMPLETELY in exchange for sharing it’s body with us. WE ARE the alien race that we have been dreaming of all this time. It’s US. WE are the ones who came to earth and merged with these animal beings and the proof of the history is in our language. The clues are all around us. We have forgotten who we are. We selfishly use our bodies without regard to their needs so habitually now that we don’t even recognize them as the entity that we use. They are us, but they are NOT us. When they die, we continue. THEY continue through the biological progression we call “reproduction”. WE continue past death and do whatever we do between co-habitations until we return in a different body.

Even if you cannot stretch your mind to believe this is true, (which I assure you it is) let’s just focus on the part that will make a difference in your life. The NOW.

Self Love is the care and feeding of the animal self that you and you alone are in charge of. If you don’t take care of it, it will feel neglected and will begin creating problems for you until it gets your attention. All it wants is your love. It is part of you and yet it NEEDS to be treated with the same kind of respect and consideration that you would treat your best friend or lover with. Going back to the example of the cats.... When you pet them, they pet themselves. Why is this? Because they are showing us that the body is your temple. Your pet. Your vehicle through the physical, but more importantly, it LOVES YOU. You MUST Love it back or it will die.

In order for you to do that, you must LISTEN to it. MOST of us do not do this. We carry on about what we want and what we need all the time, but we forget, that our “self talk” is being listened to by the child within....the lower self. The body. The will. It absorbs EVERYTHING you tell it. It doesn’t naturally recover from abuse. Especially mental abuse. When a woman looks into a mirror and sees her body and becomes critical of it, that is damaging. It HURTS the body to be told it’s not good enough. It causes the body to cry out in pain and suffering. The body expresses this in the form of illness. You see, our bodies have for us an absolute unbelievably intense unconditional love. If we tell it we are unhappy with it, it will actually begin to die in an attempt to set us free to reincarnate into a different body. When we express a wish to be the opposite sex, it will attempt to give us what we want. If we remain unhappy with what it can do, it will begin to decline. When we LOVE our-“selves” we send a contrary message to the body. We tell it that we are GRATEFUL for it’s abilitys and it’s appearance and everything that it does for us. We tell it that we LOVE it and that it has more VALUE than any possession that we may own. Remember the phrase, “well? At least you have your health!”? What does that actually mean? It means well? At least you have the love and dedication of your ever faithful body who will stick to you and by you until it can serve you no longer. Our body’s are like pets. Unfortunately, we don’t seem to have sense enough to REALIZE them anymore (if we ever actually did beyond the point of our genesis)

Now, it occurs to me that there will be some of your who are going to start hollering that this whole thing puts a serious wrench in your religious beliefs. But you’ll notice I never said that there wasn’t a Supreme Being. Well? That’s because there IS .......a Supreme Being. Remember the sacred Trinity? It’s all described right there. “Father, son, and holy ghost” Father is the Supreme Being, Son would be the lower self, and YOU......the one who is reincarnated over and over in many lifetimes as many people both male and female.....are the holy ghost.

So I know that this is a LOT to lay on you all at once, but just consider it. Because I know, that in your heart of hearts.....you KNOW this to be true. Nothing is required of you to believe it, you don’t even have to ADMIT that you believe it. But AT LEAST entertain the concept and start treating “your-self” as someone who you like and respect and are GRATEFUL FOR, and treat your body like your pet or child and see if you don’t suddenly start LOOKING better, FEELING better and most importantly ............feeling WHOLE.

Remember that stuff I mentioned before about how you cannot love someone else until you learn to love yourself? Perhaps this new and vital bit of information will make that whole thing make more sense. Face it. Each one of you is a pair. This information is my gift to you. I hope you take it to heart.

Love Chiron’

Once when I was little...

Once when I was little, I was sitting a couple of feet from my grandfather on the front porch. The air was still in the morning heat which was mounting with the intentional deliberation of a large geared clock. The front porch had a stillness about it that I often wondered about both then and many years later when I returned as a grown man. It was like some sort of unearthly stage of sorts. It stood a good five or six feet off of the ground, and was the main landing to the entrance of the magical house that was the home of my grandparents in south central Texas.

Pom-pa shifted his feet. A slow act of deliberation as he slowly dragged the soul of his shoe closer to him. It sounded like a labored breath and I could hear every grain of sand trapped between the leather of his shoe and the bright sparkle of the concrete porch. While it may have sounded like a labored breath, it was more like the winding of that big mysterious clock that was even now mechanically increasing the temperature like an oven. Pom-pa didn’t seem to notice. He made me aware of my feet. My thoughts wandered between the intermittent bursts of dialog that punctuated the chewing of his tabacco. His were the shoes of a man who didn’t much care about comfort or performance. Just a piece of leather, wrapping his foot in a style that suggested a fashion long since forgotten by time itself. A big grasshopper inched his way across the edge of the porch in the now almost blinding white light. I looked at my feet. They were in sharp contrast to Pom-pas. Bright blue and white colored adidas. Even the shape of my shoe was technologically advanced. Aerodynamic. Next to Pom-pa’s shoes mine were like an exotic sports car, while his were rather like the rusted dented up old truck that he honestly seemed to prefer. But there was something about the old man. Something mysterious. Something that the little voice in the back of my head told me to hold reverence for. Something deep and exciting and frightening and amazing all wrapped up in my confusion about how to feel about this man. I sensed a darkness in him. But I also sensed a strength in him that I wasn’t certain that I’d ever run into before. Nobody else seemed to have it. It was just a feeling that Pom-pa always knew what to do. It didn’t matter WHAT happened. Pom-pa KNEW, what to do.
Pom-pa spat at the grasshopper and it stopped exactly short of it. A warning not to come any closer to the door. The grasshopper seemed to get the message and slowly retreated.
“It’s like I was telling ya Chiron, “ my woolgathering snapped to sharp focus as he broke his silence. A breath of wind rustled the leaves of the trees around us and whistled through a giant spiderweb over our heads where a spider bigger than my hand could be seen surfing the breeze. “It’s all in yor head.” I listened attentively as Pom-pa chewed the wisdom out of the tabacca .

“Say you got ta make a long trip now.” “Why what you wont to do is, yew goin’ find yo’self a beg ROCK.” I listened, enrapt with curiousity. “An’ then you goin’ find yo’self nuther beg ROCK.” “Not so beg you caint walk right, but pret near beg assa yo-cun carry.”

The cicadas let loose a silence shattering blast of sound as pom-pa continued.


“So you got TWO beg ROCKS and you go on and make yor way now, way you’ve gotta go.”

“And when you git to where you can’t go ONE STEP FARTHER, no matter how hard you try,............why you put one of them rocks down. You’ll feel refreshed and realize that you might have a LOT more energy left and can keep on goin’. So then you keep on way you’ve got to go tell you caint go ANY FARTHER. Then you put the other of them rocks down. Sure enough, like MAGIC you’ll be refreshed and can keep on goin’. It’s all in yor head Chiron, how hard things are.”

Leslie Caldwell was a mountain man. One of the last of a dying breed. A man who had his home taken from him in the name of “manifest destiny”, and his pecan orchard now resides at the bottom of lake Belton. The undocumented original discoverer of the mounds Indian burial grounds who had his find stolen from him by some collegiate academics. But that’s okay. The family knows what he did. A man who, like all of us had more than his share of demons and challenges, but who underneath it all was an incredible human being.

Pom-pa was right. I sometimes find myself back in the body of that small boy listening to him tell me about life challenges in that same matter of fact tone that he always had about him. As he used to encourage me that the true journey was not the one made by my feet, but the one made by my head.

Tale-O'-Vision

I think most people just don't understand what "TV" really is....
Television is tool that we have adopted in place of the campfire. The campfire was the place in the evening which human beings all gathered around to converse, to settle down after eating and to muse about fact, fiction, dreams and news with each other before going to sleep and starting their new day. The community revolved around the campfire. It's where the heat and light was, where the food was, and subsequently, where the people were.

When we stopped living outside, the campfire most moved indoors to the living room or the kitchen....which is where we kept our fireplaces. Once Television came about, it slowly replaced the fires in our home but it's attributes were the same. It is where we gathered together to talk about fact and fiction, news, dreams and we watched and shared the common experience of stories with it. Now, with television, we could share stories with many people. A shared reality occurred as a DIRECT RESULT of our common experience in hearing a story on television.

As technology marched on, the attributes of television further mimicked it's campfire roots. Men who wanted to show their success bought televisions which were larger and larger. Very much like the old days when they would demonstrate their awesomeness by having the biggest campfires. Larger campfires/televisions meant more people would gather there and pay homage to the owner. This wound up being an attribute to masculinity. (because size matters) A large fire/set indicated a good provider.

So what was originally fine and good for everyone was eventually corrupted by those who began to see that they could manipulate people gathering around the televisions. They began to tell stories in such a way as to make people feel a certain way, and that's when television became a tool to manipulate those who didn't spot their own vulnerability to the stories that they were being told.

For some of us, A large TV is still a beautiful thing. It's a tool used to share stories about human experience. We watch and listen to the stories and we learn what we can from the vicarious experience of other human beings without having to actually experience the hardship we witness in our own lives. When it is over, we can walk away unscathed, but perhaps more experienced. But we are the people who have eliminated the televisions ability to sell us something by not subscribing to pay broadcast services or the "free" programming which fills our homes with the noise pollution of corporate pitchmen.

But even our limited exposure to the television is still something to be guarded about. Productions are so encompassing these days as to create a visceral experience, a peek into another world, and if we aren't careful, we can lose ourselves in the fantasy of that world. It's now more important than ever to remind ourselves, that this stuff is "just entertainment".

Of course, we can still learn useful things from the stories of fiction, because they are mostly all stories about the human condition, but we should always remind mindful that reality is right out that front door.

Just a note .....

To let people know that I'm back to writing again after a long pause. More is being developed and will hit this page soon. xoxo Chiron

Windows to the Soul.

A Woman has the power to dictate her every day.

Like a butterfly, She can light upon the space she stands

and channel in every way.

She can tilt and twist that directed at her from distress back into peace.

The sweetness of her quiet dignity, arresting all without a crease.

The stillness of her presence unmoved by doubt and fear, her sensitivity heightened

means now and then a quiet tear.

A woman in good alignment craves not the worship of those in her care, because,

A woman of good consignment carries the Goddess far and near.

America the Beautiful...

America.

The United States.

Land that I love.

Land of the free…….BECAUSE……..of the Brave.

This land is your land. This land is my land. This land is home to you and me.

There are many in the world whose lives have been irrevocably impacted by the values that America represents. America has been the big brother to the world for quite a while now. The world has looked at its people with a variety of emotion. America is like the big brother that other kids in the playground would ominously warn aggressors about. Who would have thought that, as adults, we play out the very same routines that occurred on the playground?

Times change.

As times change so do people.

The virility of the strength of America has always been its sheer number of people with shared values. The “melting pot” worked. It didn’t matter where you came from, what you had been through to get here, once you were an American Citizen, you were accepted. Included. Respected. Cherished. Honored. It is because of this many seek to serve in the world’s largest VOLUNTEER military. Those who come from places without the freedoms that many Americans take for granted, KNOW, what the value of this country is, and they often seek to bond with it by offering to defend it for a few years,….at least, historically.

Times change.

America is no longer the melting pot. People who come to America do not leave behind the customs and loyalties and language from whence they came. As a result, America is weakened. No longer is America composed of a unified resolve regarding such simple concepts as morality, honor, and respect.

America is beset on all sides by the tyranny of weak and evil men, and she is suffering.

The WORLD will become a vastly different place without the backbone of America to take a leadership position on any given topic. America serves the world even if the world isn’t in agreement with America. By offering a fixed position, America creates a framework by which others measure their own position.
“The American Dream” has always merely been a dream, but our pursuit of it has unified all of us for many years. It isn’t a “white man’s dream”. It’s the dream of liberty. Freedom. The ability to work hard to make ourselves happy without fear that the fruits of our labors will be taken away from us.

Times change.

People change.

When people no longer believe in their country, then that country will cease to exist.

Those who do not know history, are doomed to repeat it.

It’s not too late to turn all this around.

To do so will require a collective conscious effort. To do so means that we must convince newcomers that what they came here for in the first place was attractive to them because it was a GOOD thing.

To do so means that we must dispense with all of this “politically correct” HORSESHIT, and remember and honor what it means to be a GOOD CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

We can do it.

We can be stronger than ever before.

But this is one issue that we must not turn away from, it is something we cannot simply agree with and leave to “others” to do. It will take all of us. We MUST REMEMBER THAT OUR SIMILARITIES ARE GREATER THAN OUR DIFFERENCES. We must realize that the American flag does NOT represent republicans or democrats or government. It represents US.

YOU AND ME.

Your weird neighbor and the homosexual couple down the street. The religious, the poor, the wealthy, the challenged, the struggling, and the plain. US.

Happy Birthday America.

I love you.

Chiron

Carrier Wave

Every once in a while something happens. Something seemingly insignificant on the surface, and yet, there is a part within that for a split second, Is blinded by a flash of lightening insight.
Something somewhere aligns with something else and there is almost a perceptible “click” as two pieces come together in a union most satisfying.
It’s strange how we can perceive something while in the perfect darkness. Our perceptions of it change based on where we are in reference to its position. We strain the limits of our perception as we attempt to ascertain what it is, its size, shape, or texture. The feelings that are evoked within our hearts can ring out in harmonic sympathy to it, like sonar. We know that it is there, but we are forced to continually ping for it, reaching to match perception with understanding. We do this until quite unexpectedly we stumble across it for a millisecond, and are at once blinded by its brilliance.
If we are not careful to stop quickly enough, we will lose it, and its mystery will haunt us long thereafter.

Such is the apparent mechanism describing my Spiritual safari. As I continue to evolve, I have recognized patterns not only in the way that I discover information, but also in the way that I am somehow subconsciously aware of HOW and WHEN to self trigger such a discovery. I have become aware, for example, by no means I am able to adequately understand for the purpose of description, able to discover a film, or a book, or and experience, which I will somehow knowingly set aside, sometimes for months, until the time is right for me to trigger it. I can tell you that it’s somehow linked to some kind of time scheme, of which I am most assuredly not the author, but that’s about all I can muster for the sake of a description. It is enough however, to reassure myself that my tour through this often bizarre wonderland is in fact a guided one, and not a self directed endeavor.

Tonight I finally popped the cork on one of these interesting little “time capsules”. It was one I had discovered much earlier and set aside for reasons unknown. The name of the film is “Revolver”, and I can only describe it as more of an experience than it resembles a story. Imagine my stunned excitement to realize it was a Luc Besson film…
With any discovery of considerable magnitude there is often created in me a type of anxiety. It is the nature of the beast that anything which might be a considerable piece to the puzzle may have dramatic repercussions regarding my personal model of the Universe, my subjective reality and the inclusive common reality’s and their variants that cluster together. A new discovery of serious proportion can be upsetting because it may bring answers to questions, or, it may just bring bigger more consternating questions. I think that this is what the variable of timing has to contribute to the equation. If the timing of an important puzzle piece is off, it may be inadvertently dismissed. However, when the timing for the release or discovery of new information is appropriate, it can act as a catalyst which stimulates curiosity down a completely new path. There is also a dark side to discovery; the unnamed fear that I have been going in the wrong direction, or that my conclusions are not sound. Sometimes, very rarely, I encounter a condition where a new piece of information is somewhat unsettling because I knew it already, but the emphasis of what I thought I knew was not accented correctly, and new information pushes a definitive emphasis in a whole new way.
Such is the case with the film “Revolver”.
This is a film with a message so big, that it’s really quite amazing that they were able to shoehorn it into such a seemingly unremarkable vehicle for dissemination. It likely should have a warning label on the jacket which states, “Warning: Objects may be closer than they appear, do not view this film alone if you have a history of higher thinking, or have experienced concurrent déjà vu’”. So, if you haven’t seen this film, there is your warning. You’ll want to really prepare yourself for a message, and ensure there is no distraction.
Now. Go take a look.

The King…has left the building

I was going through my film collection and I decided to re-view one of my films. I was about half way through it when I felt something in my head click. It was actually kinda freaky.

All of the elements are there. I can’t believe I never saw it before.

We are nerve-wracked by his behavior before we have any sense of who he is, or, what he wants.

We are awestruck with his enormity; the unstoppable force of his Will, and the physical strength with which he enforces it.

We are terrified at what we perceive to be his unpredictable anger, until such time that his wrath becomes the shelter of our protection.

We long to communicate with him, but communication seems limited to what he will show us.

All of these qualities weigh heavily upon us, as we attempt to formulate the concept of who he is, but it is this final quality which leaves us with our mouths wide open in confusion and wonder.

We are mystified that as small and seemingly insignificant as we appear to be, that such a creature could find us lovable. Not just appealing, but that he could know something about us from a look, that is so valuable to him, that he would be willing to lay down his life to protect it.

The very necessity of his desire to safeguard us, providing him with a previously unknown purpose.

The statement was made, “It wasn’t the planes that killed him. Beauty killed the beast.”

It wasn’t physical beauty which killed the beast; it was the beauty of our innocence.

The story of King Kong is the story about our relationship to God.

It is the story that we will accidentally destroy God with our ignorance and our fear.

So what is it that we really mean to convey when we say, “The King…has left the building”?

Constructive Deconstruction

A little bit of cooking for the holidays.

The New Year is coming around the corner, and with it comes all the anxiety that we create for ourselves regarding our personal progress in our lives. Let’s take a quick look at how we create ourselves and what ingredients are in the mix.

The real question that I have to ask myself is:

Who do I want to BE?
Each year we have the opportunity to break away from what has been (what WE…have been) and we have the capacity to re-invent ourselves. Reality is based upon our perception of it. Our view of the world is largely filtered by who we believe ourselves to be. It is shaped by the beliefs that we hold in regard to what we believe is possible for us, and also by that which we believe is outside of our reach. I’d like to focus on tossing MOST of that away. Start with a clean counter. Get out your cutting boards, and let’s just have a look at what we can make.

When I get to the point where I am conscious of a desire (or a need) to remake myself, it’s rather like working in the kitchen. Am I looking for a recipe book? Or do I feel confident enough in my own ability to create something wonderful from scratch? It’s actually best to start with the recipe that I have used to create myself from last year. It’s much easier to make small experimental shifts in my concoction than it is to daringly throw something together completely from scratch. After all, I DO NEED a good point of reference right?
When I am mixing values and traits, how much of the cookbooks baseline do I use for my creative endeavor? How much do I use from last year’s recipe? How much of the spice of my personal creativity do I use?
How much do I incorporate from the given of what others believe is true, (the acceptable norm) verses how willing am I to go out on a limb to create something in myself which is truly unique?
Once I decide to mix the proportions, it is EXTREMELY important that I follow through. Nothing will guarantee my unhappiness at a later date more than my creating a recipe for a character that I cannot or will not complete. I must remain mindful not to set my expectations for myself higher than my ability to stretch out to reach that goal. Equally, I must set my expectations for my personal growth high ENOUGH, to make a personal challenge of the endeavor, or I will not experience the growth I desire to have.

Baby steps.

So, let’s get a general idea of where we want to go for the rest of our lives, but most importantly, let’s keep it manageable and set our timer for simply the next year. (Because NEXT year, we will bake again!)
I can start with what I know I have already experienced. I can decide to add to my personal recipe things that I see needed an adjustment from last year. I can add new feelings I have as a result of last years’ growth to the mix, while removing some of the ingredients which didn’t quite work out. Things that took away from the finished product or aspects that didn’t add to its aesthetic appeal.
It is important for me to remember in this process that I can be WHOEVER I want to be. I can shock friends and relatives by throwing in a new spice, or I can add more of what I know that they already like. Whatever I decide, I must remember that I am not creating this recipe for them. I am creating it for myself. I am the one who must continue to be challenged. I am the one who I am creating for in the first place. This is my life. What do I want to experience? It is up to me to play in the kitchen with my recipe of who I am until I am satisfied. This is my most basic freedom. It is my most basic right. It is also…my most precious GIFT…to the Divine, to myself, to my loved ones, and to the world.

So….get your apron on and get busy!

Happy Holidays.

Deleterious Delirium

As I sit here feeling like I am on my deathbed, I am reminded in the most curious of ways how the Divine likes to get my attention. I don’t like to come off as preachy or melodramatic, my motivation is actually much more self-centered than anything like that. I grew up in a world where I fell in love with many things; I also grew up in a world that taught me to fear nearly everything and every one. In one of the conversations I had with the Divine as a much younger man, I was told that it is up to us, each Spirit upon this earth, to shape this planet into what it is that we consider comfortable. From that point on, I have done my best to help where I can to affect the changes necessary for this world to be more comfortable for myself, and others like myself, to exist in. I wanted a place to live where people were free to be who they are, from the INSIDE. From where we most closely resemble the essence of what the Divine created us to be; not from the outside where circumstances and convention and all the other dynamics occur to effectively twist and distort our Spirits away from the Divine expression of what we were meant to be actually was. Her Grace assured me that this was a noble path to take but warned me of the potential of discomfort. Of course, being young, and brash, I did what most insolent youngsters do and cast aside all warnings of danger. Part of the luxury of youth is the gross incomprehension of time, and the accompanying knowledge that youth and erroneous perceptions of indestructibility wind up being only a small portion of our lifetime. I knew I had to start small though, so I began one person at a time. Each time I saw a person I could help, I did. For a while this process seemed to be working, although honestly it became something of a conundrum when it appeared that I was making myself out to be a person who more closely resembled a doormat than a human being trying to help others. I found out much later down the road that people are just so not used to someone being good to them, that they wind up being suspicious of my motives, and some, sadly, actively undermined me in an attempt to stop or otherwise disrupt what it is that they saw in me. Eventually this started showing up in my attempts to build a career. Eventually, this manifested itself upon my Spirit in the form of negative self esteem.

I never gave up though, and I will continue this process for as long as I am able.

Those of you who have followed me for any length of time know that I tend to be somewhat opinionated. Outspoken. The previous experiences in my lifetime have helped thicken my skin to the danger of being the one in the crowd who will speak up when things aren’t right. I have many battle scars as a result of undertaking the counter-attack against what I consider to be wrong. Now, while it’s certainly true that as I write this, I cannot actually see unless I close one eye, and I am sitting in a puddle of my own sweat, my head is pounding with an urgency that suggests I may not be around too much longer, there is just this one thing I wish to impress upon any and all who would listen.

I am not any more special than any of you are.

I just elected to suffer the consequence of seeing my will through to the end.
(whether that end be my own, or that of the battle)

EACH of you has the ability, the capacity, the strength and the courage to stand up for what you believe in.

The ultimate test is overcoming your OWN personal objections as to why you cannot, should not or will not do so. You were born with an intrinsic sense of right from wrong, long before you had any person, group, religious doctrine or patriotic flag to tell you the difference. If you look for it in your heart, you’ll find it. It’s waiting for you to listen.

If enough of us stop this process of perpetuating the status quo, if enough of us can begin to see that we are all the same, if ENOUGH of us reach out to one another and realize that bitter people are HURT people….we just might have a chance of turning the tide. It has nothing to do with how much or how little money you make, how well or little known you are, how strong or how weak you are. It has to do with how much you care. It has to do with how much of your original Divinity you can recall. It has to do with your ability to realize that you are living in a very small drop of water, on a leaf, growing on a much bigger pond.

I’m amazed sometimes at how the Divine likes to get my attention. When she wants me to stop, believe me, she’ll find a way. Sometimes I have trouble sitting still. Always I have trouble arresting my mind. With this sickness, she’s managed both.

Ok I gave the message ………..so can I get better now?

Message in the Bottle

For Penny,

(Written with David Gilmour’s “Near the End” playing in the background)

Life is hard.

It can be a wonderful adventure, or a harrowing tale, but all of it, both the good and the bad, teaches us the lessons that we need to learn in order to get to that next level.

Observing the world means that we each, must create a mirror image of that world inside of ourselves. It reflects what we have been exposed to, the things that we witness, the experiences we have had, the people we have known and the things that they tell us about ourselves. It is the place inside of us where our virtual parents live, and where they continue to exist long after they have passed from this plane of existence. We build this world unconsciously; we add programming or content to it every day. It is the place where everything that we “know”, resides.

Within that world, is a dark place where we store our pain. A treacherous place, because like the scene of a grisly car accident, it is a place where we cannot bear to visit, yet we spend a great deal of time there. We return to it often trying desperately to gain some measure of understanding from an experience that went horribly wrong, or was otherwise damaging to us. It is the graveyard where the ghosts of lost love reside. Not just the lost love of a partner or companion, but the lost love of a parent or a guardian as well. In the center of this cemetery is a grave where some of us may be shocked to discover a tombstone with our own name on it. The tombstone marks the loss of love that we have for ourselves.

Within this grave are all of the reasons why we feel like we are unlovable. The secrets, the compulsions, the evil deeds, the passionate wanton cruelty to another, the ugly compulsion to protect ourselves by seizing power over others….the things that bring us shame and fear. For many of us, the amount of time we spend staring down into this deep dark whole, is as secret as this hidden cemetery is in the first place.

But it’s there, and we all go to stand next to our own graves of lost love more than any of us likely admit. Most of us find coping strategies to deal with the pain of one sort or another, but most of those “strategies” create even more problems and actually add to the gravesite more reasons to come back to the edge and stare, ponder, wonder and despair, at why we do these things to others, and why we do these things to ourselves?


As I look back into the crystal ball of my own world, I recall the faces of those I have looked up to who have folded while struggling to come to an accord with the demons that live in that grave. Layne Staley, Kurt Cobain, and my grandfather Leslie Caldwell just to name a few. Each of them stood too close to that grave, and eventually, they were pulled into it by the demons they had buried there.

The riddle of the message in the bottle is as old as humanity itself. Like the pirates of old have often sung about, those who crawl far enough into the bottle to discover the message, usually take that message to the grave with them. The Dead tell no tales. Layne did his best to document his decline, hoping that those with ears to hear, and understand, would learn from his mistake. I interpret the name of his band Alice in Chains to be fully representative of the entire experience.

The moral, if there is one, is simply this: there is no escape from the pain of life. There is only our ability and our desire to face the unpleasant aspects of it with hope, fortitude, stamina, Love and forgiveness. The Message in the Bottle was written by the Grim Reaper, and you really don’t want or need to know what it says.

I love you Aunt Penny,

Goodbye.

The TRUE present...

Well, here we are people, on the eve of 2010. I must say that it comes to me as I am fraught with trepidation. Everyone knows I tend to be a little sentimental, and for some reason NYE has always found me an emotional wreck as I try to process all of what has happened over the course of the old year, and try to get a handle on my (sometimes desperate) desires for the outcome of events in the new one. As I reflect on the highs and lows of the past year I am reminded that, at the very core of all of these experiences, it is me, myself, who controls the ups and downs I experience as a result of what has occurred. Difficult as it may be for me, to embrace the idea that I choose how I am affected by the external world, I must acknowledge it to be the ultimate truth. More difficult still is the concept that I have the ability to select my emotional state at any given moment. From the knee-jerk reaction I have when a beautiful woman enters my field of vision, to the concept of love at first sight, I must acknowledge that I am making a series of decisions at incredible speed which lead to my emotional responses.

Most difficult is the understanding of this information and the strange desire to quell it. To disown it. To object and tell myself that I cannot help but remain a complete slave to the ebb and flow of my emotional states. (Although, sometimes it remains a fact) It does appear to be the stumbling block upon which I trip in my attempt to get to that NEXT! level. Sometimes, I KNOW that it's true, but I just don't care to "mess with it". That would be the animal side of me trying to draw a line in the sand over which my intellect isn't supposed to exceed. So, I suppose it's about balance. Some aspects of my emotional condition I should let go. Some aspects I should attempt to control. Choosing which is which, well now, that's the trick isn't it?

When we can teach ourselves to reach out with open arms to whatever the Universe has on it's menu for NEXT!, it is ONLY THEN...that we are truly being OPEN. It is ONLY THEN, that we have relinquished control in our lives and made space IN our lives-FOR our lives, to unfold in front of us as intended. It is exceedingly difficult to do, and the way is fraught with illusion, (both internal and external) but once we achieve this level of commitment to live our lives unfettered by fear, doubt, stress, and negativity, only then are we living in the TRUE PRESENT. MOST of what goes on in our heads and hearts obscures the path we are intended to take because of our need to cling to outcomes. But the reality is, that it IS.....the TRUE PRESENT that is given to us. The present of choice. The present to turn left or right or up or down. The gift of experiencing our life without walking through it wearing a suit of armor. So let GO! Join me in putting your hands over your head like riding a roller-coaster and experience the high of living life without control! Live in the now. Accept the True Present! As my Spiritual mentor Charlie Shultz once told me back in my Air Force Days, "If you cannot make a mistake, you cannot MAKE.....ANYTHING!"

Happy New Year!!!!!

Love Chiron'

A-Frayed Knot

“ ...and I think it’s important to remember, in the midst of all of our personal emotional and physical roller-coaster rides life seems to arbitrarily strap us into and send us through that....

Each day we DO have a measure of sanity that we can allow ourselves.

Each day we start, is a day upon which we may, depending on the strength of our Spirit, the strength of our Will, and our commitment to a process, can irrevocably change our lives forever.

Each moment in time is a fulcrum, a balance point upon which our future can teeter this way or that, here to there, up to down, down to up. It’s all in our own hands.

Each day we complete, is another in a series of miniscule lessons which we unconsciously navigate our way through, and what we take with us on that ride is also, entirely up to us. Whether we hold tightly to our belief, to our faith, to the bar, the cover, our addictions or our denial, is also, completely up to us.

Each day we complete is cause for a celebration, because for most, harsh reality is that we live in a concrete jungle, where setbacks lie in wait for the unsuspecting, the unaware, the abusive, (whether that violence be turned inward or out).

Each moment in time is another moment ticking away reminding us of the choices we know in our hearts are the right choices to make, but often the fear to stand up weighs too heavily against the fear of our personal failure.

It is this lack of belief in the self, from which most core pain syndromes appear to be born. The fight is with the self, and it’s relation to the Divine, the Planet, our peers and our loved ones. The unconscious fight is the fight to remember that the fight with the Divine, the Planet, our peers and our loved ones,......is the fight with the Self. We ARE.

When one of us suffers, we all suffer. A chain-reaction of events (usually pain-based) spreads with viral intensity the world over.

Unfortunately, we are addicted to our own self abuse. We have become hardened, and with that we begin to pass pain off to one another like a bunch of kids seeing who can hold their open hand over a flame the longest.

Fortunately, we can do the same thing in pleasure. We have the capacity to try to outdo each other in our ability to be considerate, kind, forgiving, and above all, self-sacrificial.

When the energy has left your hands, and you can know longer hold on to the rope, you have precious little time to sharpen your awareness and understand that you are falling. It is from raw courage and a will to survive that a commitment must be made to grab the rope slipping through your exhausted and burned hands, and to face the inevitable pain that will happen when you close your fists around it. But it is what is required. It can be a test to teach us not to let go in the first place, or , it can be a test to remind us that letting go even for a short time can have painful lasting repercussions. Either way, the choice is our own. We decide what span of the rope we will live on, and we decide how often we will revisit the same stretches of that rope.

We can become intimidated by others who seem to vault up the rope seemingly effortlessly, and we can doubt our own abilities when we see such a display of locomotion. Such concern is an illusion however, because the rope of each of our lives is vastly different, with obstacles of differing sizes and shapes based on the age of the soul. The key is to keep your eyes on your own rope, and trust that others progress simply cannot be measured against your experience, nor should it be. What CAN be measured is how much and how often, we pause in our own progress to assist others in their own struggle to simply hang on.

We are each others Angels and Demons. It is all what we choose to be, how real we choose to make it, how deep or how shallow we decide to be.

We are the eyes and ears of all the spirits of who we are.

So climb. Reach for something higher. Something better. Something brighter....and leave a hand out to catch those around us who have slipped or let go. Leave no-one behind. The souls you catch on your way up ease the fear of making a mistake in your own progress. We are......each others safety net.

R.I.P.

Feeling Sad around Halloween?

It's perfectly natural to feel sad right before or even during Halloween. Halloween is all about endings.

This portion of your life is at an end. That is what Halloween is really all about.
It is the end of the cycle of transformation into witch (pun intended, sexual in-u-end-oh! a byproduct of intended pun) (lol!) anyway, {how about?} THROUGH witch (the death and decay of the old hag is magically reborn as the young sexy vixen once again....who then fertilizes the seed of the new and cycle begins again.

If you find my reference to sex glaring, that is really because it's pretty much unavoidable here. Harvest and renewal. It is the way of Earth. It is WHY you cannot separate witches from sex, sex from old pagan rituals, and old pagan rituals from Earth's seasons.

We are meant to CELEBRATE death. Death isn't the stopping point, or the bookstop at the end of life, but rather, it marks the TRANSITION between one point in the cycle of transformation...and another. This makes DEATH....a vibrant part of what we experience as LIFE. It doesn't even have to be a physical death. It can mean then end of a way of thinking, or acting, or RE-acting as the case may be. Death represents FREEDOM from that which binds. Look at the imagery. Ghosts dragging chains....etc.
The Grim Reaper with the blade to sever the connection from what once was...allowing the spirit to be released and allowed to progress to something new.

It is symbolic and in line with both animal and vegetable lifeforce life cycles.
So if you find yourself feeling a bit bittersweet about everything right now...
my advice is to GO with it.

If you feel mellon-choly: go carve up a jack-o-lantern.

Write up a list of all that has been bothering you the last year.

(things that you wish to put to rest....as in R.I.P)

Then put that list into Jack and let it burn baby, let it burn. It's kind of like the other side of a nye's resolution list. So make your list, bless it, burn it, and allow all of what you write there to be OVER. Clear your mind, your heart, your emotion of it. Celebrate it's death. For, what will resurrect from the old will, magically, be brighter, and shinier than what was before.


I hope this helps, and have a HAPPY...HAPPY....Halloween.

Love Chiron

Afraid of Love

Afraid of love.

Flashes…

of moments past.

Mental visual movie clips in my scrapbook of confused emotion, flicker, in front of my minds’ eye.

Simple exhaustion finally overcomes the defensive fear that has stood guard over a mending heart for years with the cold efficiency of an angry protective wolf.

Clenched knuckles, cold and white, from holding on too tight for too long, lose their grip and finally………release.

To my astounded confusion, I do not fall.

My world doesn’t fly apart.

The memories are powerful, the strength of their current, still, easily emotionally overwhelming.

But the concrete resolve of my new foundation…holds.

The fear that has kept me safe, sleeps soundly in my lap.

My hands and my heart begin to warm, as blood finally begins to return to them.

I choose a path, tentatively, stepping out into the world, determined…

Not to be afraid to love.

Halloween's a Comin'!

Halloween's a comin'!

It's a time when the veil between the worlds grows the thinnest.

A time when dimensions merge.

A time when all that frightens you the most, comes.....unbeckoned.

A time when the dead remind us to cling tightly to our lives,

(no matter how bad they may seem)

for they will gladly exchange places with us...and remind us

to dare....to dream.

Hoist the Main Sail!

I don't know about the rest of you, but I feel like I have just been BLASTED through the last few months as if I were on a rail-car...reaching incredibly new levels of acceleration as I blaze through this portion of my life. Remarkably, I have a few minutes to catch my breath, but the onset of the phenomenon was so wholly unexpected as to leave me looking over my shoulder even during this apparent "rest period". I haven't managed to write too much, but I have managed to resurrect some of the old files from the previous batch, which will be forthcoming. Meanwhile I have picked up and reconnected with family members, old friends, undertaken more tasks, more responsibility (you'd think I'd learn) and positioned myself to spread myself even thinner than before! (Not to worry, I won't do it!) The theme of the day (other than Halloween is COMIN'!) is one of "simplify or DIE!". As I continue to whittle away the extraneous from what matters in my life I become slowly more empowered by what is left remaining. It is a constant struggle to make ends meet of course, and because I wasn't quite fully overloaded yet, I decided to REALLY push my skills and get a sailboat! LOL! (I really LOVE it but it hasn't seen the water yet) I have come to realize that in life there is a whole OTHER thing that we all have to do. Not ONLY do we need to manage what we already have ON our plate, but we are required to also plan a forward destination complete with an intersecting path TO that destination if we are to be successful in keeping ourselves happy. To that end I am making ready for next spring/summer now. (of course I must also make ready as best as I can for this immediate holiday season which now looms in the ever present)

So, I'm still trying to find a new home for my old truck, still hope to repair my cruiser, and have now added a 14' hobi-cat to the mix. I still haven't spent any serious time in the pursuit of love, but hopefully, my vacation from that whole thing will yield new perspective and perhaps options very soon. People, you can wear yourself out trying to find love. Sometimes it's just best to give it a rest.
(especially when you consider that the only time you can really improve yourself is outside of a relationship. It's just so much faster to work an internal change when you don't have to overcome external resistance to it in the form of a questioning partner)

So: to quickly recap: 1) I'm reducing. 2) I'm organizing. 3) I'm working on physical health. 4) I'm rebuilding, restructuring. 5) I'm making a plan for everything to reintegrate. 6) I'm attempting to plan for the future.

Change is in the wind people. Hoist the main sail and let it move you!

Saluting a Warrior

Memories of Honor and Pain, Glory and Sacrifice. I Salute you and Thank you Gentlemen for what you have done. The quiet grace with which you wear your Honor is an inspiration. Thank you Capt. Huntley for bringing my papa back home.




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