As a willful young man I was critical of myself and others. Expecting perfection from myself, I punished myself for my shortcomings. My attitude toward others was, if you can’t do the job right, then get out of my way. I’ll do it myself. I powered through my life with willfulness. If I couldn’t get the square peg into the round hole, I got a bigger hammer and pounded that square sucker into the round hole. Willfulness exhausted me and made me resentful and judgmental. My heart was closed. My responsibilities weighed heavily on my mind and heart. I felt alone and disconnected leaving a void in my psyche for depression to fill.

I had witnessed my father’s descent into depression’s hell. He accepted the standard treatment of medication and I witnessed his life force and passions wither.  I knew that I needed help but I  also wanted to sustain my passion. I chose people and processes over the artificial life induced by pills. During this time I developed a support network of soulful friends and healing practitioners. I understood from practicing architecture that the best results come from the best process. I established a whole self process involving the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of myself.

Yoga and movement to music stimulated my body at a cellular level, releasing remnants of childhood traumas and opening me to self-love. Massage, chiropractic and energy work helped me rejuvenate and restructure my body.  I began to eat healthfully. I drank a gallon of water a day. Keeping my body well hydrated allowed higher frequencies of consciousness to run through me. I learned how to stay grounded so these frequencies could run through me without damaging my nervous system. Counseling and reading expanded my thinking. I was introduced to systems thinking where I came to understand that my problems were given to me so I would seek their solutions. I learned that problems arise from feeling separate and solutions emerge out of feeling connected. I also learned that solutions already exist. I shifted from mind-centered to heart-centered. As I learned to sustain myself in these new ways, my intuitive guidance became available and my spirit soared. It’s my internal source of happiness. My spirit is now my constant companion. This relationship has helped me shift my thoughts and feelings from separateness to realizing that I am connected to all things.

I began to understand that my willfulness involved forcing my desires to manifest when I doubt myself and the universe to provide. In contrast, willingness is allowing my desire to manifest because I trust my spirit, my vital life force energy, and universal law to provide. Realizing my desires is a matter of tuning the vibrations emanating from my thoughts and feelings into synchronicity with my desires. I’m learning to make my own luck and attract really cool things into my life.

I’m not special. Anyone with a pulse and a thimbleful of fortitude can change their life. Everyone has a part to play in remembering our interconnectedness. When I connect to and express from my Essence, willingness infuses my creative projects and relationships with cooperation, ease and joy. I call these New Earth experiences. I can assure you that New Earth is real and within our grasp. As one of millions who are walking this path, I offer myself and my experiences in service to others. The dream of WE is within each of us.

To commemorate the 25th anniversary of my awakening on 11.11.91, I’m posting a Blog between Blogs. On that night, Kundalini (life force energy) traveled up my spine and coalesced in my forehead opening my third eye. I experienced a profound sense of union with all things. It changed my life forever. It changed my personal cosmology. I knew I had a destiny to fulfill. Based on that first of many experiences with the divine, I offer the following thoughts about this week’s election:

Commiserating with a friend about the election results, we both felt that the life force had been sucked out of us. She described her feelings with a quote from Star Wars, “I feel a disturbance in the force.” I related to her that before dawn on the morning of election day I had had a dream about my money being stolen from my bank account. We agreed that the money in my account symbolized my life force and that this dream was predicting my loss of energy from the election results. I’ve had many prophetic dreams.

She also told me about the protests in cities across the United States. We empathized. I had felt the Bern very early in this election season. I wanted a socio-political revolution. Unlike in my college years in the 1960s, this time I supported the revolution suggested in Vaclav Havel’s address to the United Nations, “… Without a revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change……” He understood the creative power of consciousness. In support of this idea I also offered some wisdom I think is attributable to Lau Tsu, “That which we resist persists.” If that’s true, why would I ever resist something that I regard as dishonoring of the whole I cherish. Neville Goddard speaks of “renunciation” whereby we redirect our focus away from what we do not want, onto what we do want. I think it’s time to follow Bucky Fuller’s advice, “Don’t fight the system, create a new one and make the old one obsolete.” I believe these to be truisms very applicable to the current socio-political circumstances in our beloved America as well as around the world. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

As one who claims to be self-responsible and sees my physical reality as a reflection of my consciousness, I must ask myself: What aspects of my consciousness do I need to alter in order to have my elected government and all its systems honor all voices equally, those feeling disenfranchised, the privileged few as well as the masses in between? The intuitive answer: I must be balanced within myself, anchored to the core of my being, my spirit, where I am invulnerable to the ravages of dualism’s hyperbole and divisiveness. I must choose the path that includes and honors all and resists nothing. I must trust in the unity of all things because my heart tells me that all things are born from the love emanating from our common origin. Focusing there, I find uniquely creative solutions where all perceptions of my separateness dissolve.

I look at the current socio-political landscape, not only in America but around the world as a reflection of the consciousness that insists I am separate from others, separate from nature and the planet and separate from our common origin. However, I have come to see this concept as an illusion (or problem) that is actually asking me to remember my oneness with all people, with all things. In order to remember, I must be willing to look at any dark places within myself and acknowledge that I am capable of using that darkness against myself or another. If I resist or deny this darkness, it will most certainly come back to separate us again someday. Only after accepting it will I be free of my tendency to act out from my dark side.  I have found that upon my acceptance of darkness, I am filled with the most brilliant light with which I am able to touch many hearts. That’s where the memory of our oneness abides.

After this acceptance, we can collectively breathe into and unify our hearts, share what we love about life, about this beautiful planet and remember our common origin. In this unification, all resistance fades away and Havel’s revolution occurs without firing a shot. In this revolution the only thing to die is ego. Then we can embrace our differences and celebrate our diversities. In the unity of our hearts, a whole New Earth awaits our discovery, exploration and creative expression. I know it does because I’ve been there. I’ve seen New Earth. It is gorgeous!

The dream of WE, is in me! “You may call me a dreamer but I’m not the only one.” 

Sometimes when I bring up a deep or complex subject, friends joke that I have too much idle time on my hands. That’s actually not true, with writing, making art, building and urban design research and other creative endeavors, I’m rarely without something thing to do. However, it is true that I think about and explore the mechanics of life, pondering the whys, hows and what ifs. I discovered that living in the question was more interesting than struggling to find THE answers in a dualistic world where the opposite is also true. 

I’m dedicated to understanding life’s creative process. How does Creator create? I want to emulate that process. While in deep inner explorations one day, I observed that by changing my thoughts, my feelings changed. I also discovered that my circumstances changed in response to my thoughts and feelings. Thoughts and feelings of my separateness produced challenging circumstances. Unifying thoughts and feelings produced enjoyable circumstances.

This discovery was quite empowering. I now imagine stepping outside my mind and becoming the objective observer of my thoughts and their resultant feelings.  I imagine my thoughts as frames on a never-ending film strip. I observe each frame of the movie in my mind’s eye. When I see a frame with a unifying theme I focus on it while allowing other frames to pass by. Observing the recent political debates has provided excellent opportunities for me to practice this technique. I have found that I can hold my thoughts and feelings in balance (mostly) without being polarized to any one side. In this neutrality, the place where new outcomes are created, I feel self-empowered.   

Self-empowerment begins with having dominion over my thoughts.  Dominion is different from control. Dominion is rulership of oneself. Having dominion is the feeling of knowing in my core that I am an individual extension of my Creator. I think, feel and act guided by Creator’s unifying love. This doesn’t have to be serious or pompous. I’ve come to enjoy laughing my ass off when I recognize the absolute silliness of my perceived separateness, when I’m angry at another or feel victimized. I enjoy the thoughts and feelings that bring tears to my eyes when a profound moment appears on my internal movie screen.

Dominion is a cultivated art form. I’ve practiced rulership of my thoughts and feeling for years. Practicing self-rulership during this political season presented me with a challenge and Lord knows how I love a challenge. If I allow myself to be sucked into the extreme divisiveness of this political campaign season, I sacrifice my self-authority.  If I believe media commercials that tell me I need their product to be whole, I’d constantly be lacking something.  I’m grateful that I can travel to a place within me where my thoughts and feelings testify that wholeness is my natural birthright. I claim it.

Imagine a world where each of us claims dominion over our own thoughts and feelings and following Pablo Neruda’s words of wisdom, “Changing the world is an inside job.” The societal implications are staggering. If we’ve created a world of struggle and chaos from ego’s fear, deprivation and separateness, imagine the world of beauty, abundance and freedom we could create from our focused and sustained thoughts and feeling of Unity.