The Experience of Transcendence

“Life is the lie we delude ourselves with to evade our soul.”

A Vision of Transcendence

We are eternal beings.  Yet, we rarely embody our existence as a soul, or as an expression of the universe.  Beyond our body and mind is our heart center, a torus of universality resonating omnidimensional energy.  It synergizes with our intuition, our soul and the universe.  Our soul and the universe are one.  We chose to be born into this three-dimensional paradigm for the purpose of intimating and relating with our soul as a human being.  Becoming its fulfilled expression is our common destiny.  We all have the opportunity for universality.  However, transcendence is often feigned as a spiritual fantasy.    

Dream a Little Dream

In the phases of our maturity, well before we establish our universal acuity for awareness, consciousness, experience, expression, transformation and transcendence, we are institutionalized with amusement, education, ideology, heredity, politics, religion and science.  In adulthood, our exodus from our soul is complete.  We get a degree, a job, a spouse, kids, houses and cars; then we socialize, work, vacation, retire, age and die. Inevitably, we lay on our death bed regretting all the things we have not achieved.  This is the vicious cycle of humanity.  Being a victim of social reality instead of an expression of universality.

Humanity Knows Best

We believe we know what is best for us.  Yet, our intentions are focused more on our comfortability and convenience rather than our evolution and fulfillment.  We are always endorsing our limitations to ourselves and others, instead of crossing the self-imposed boundaries of our fear, indifference, insecurity and self-righteousness.  We execute our ordinary lifestyles with apathy, dread and obligation; thus, invoking our existence with the gravity of our controlled, selective reality.  We live our fixed way of life with entitled defiance, proliferating our suffering like a badge of honor to anyone who will enable the vanity of our agony.

The Reality of Artificiality

Social reality is not excruciating to endure.  It is our individual interpretation of and relativity with its “realism” that provokes our deepest fears.  We are programmed, via our institutionalization, to adopt and enact filters of perception, based on external opinion, which establishes our personal deception.  We do not trust ourselves. Therefore, we do not trust others, our soul or the universe.  Many “profess” to be spiritual, yet few choose to fulfill their unique destiny as the embodiment of its expression.  The true watermark of this is how we empower ourselves with our soul, thus transforming our environment.  The reality in which we exist is an elaborate virtuality of artificiality. 

“We are automatons in a projected simulation.”

The Slavery of Social Reality

The universal energy empowering us to evolve, transform and transcend is always leaving us.  We constantly sacrifice our universality when the focus of our attention is engaged in external circumstances and environments beyond our control.  Eventually, it becomes a daily ritual to surrender our personal power to others because we have adopted an erroneous understanding that personal accountability, integrity and vulnerability are equivalent to death.  The lie we live is not one imposed on us by authoritarian sociopaths, it is of our own device.  Only we have the power to sentence ourselves to enslavement in social reality.

The Social Vortex

Social reality is a simulation, a holographic film projected onto a three-dimensional screen.  Most of us are seated in the audience, watching the action, comedy, drama, horror, narratives, politics, opinions, science fiction and war transpire like a weekly documentary.  Often, we walk away from it as empty as the engineered storylines provoking our emotionality.  Then, we debate each other to prove our intelligence, priding ourselves on our proficiency in banter and banality.  We transmute ourselves from omnidimensional souls into social vortices, stealing artificial power from each other to bolster our selective oblivion with our egocentric vanity. 

Reclamation Project

We all sacrifice our souls upon the social altars of accumulation, amusement, apathy, conflict, conformity, consumption, excess, ideology, materiality, oblivion, security, success and vanity.  We all acquiesce our personal power to authoritarian entities and organizations because we fail to evolve, transform and transcend.  Our engagement in our environment is our enslavement.  For most, our dependence on society is near absolute, tethering us to the vicious cycles of our individual oblivion.  Withdrawing our engagement from the projection of reality is essential in reclaiming our relativity with our soul and the universe.

An Age of Awakening

We all get lost in the expectations and possibilities of how our awakening may evolve.  Universality transcends the triviality of our virtuality.  Each person has their own unique experience and expression with their soul.  The articles I have written on this topic have been intentionally obscure and vague. I do not know or understand what your awakening will be.  This is something we all need to establish for ourselves.  I have expressed clever ways to empower creativity, consciousness, evolution, transformation, transcendence and universality.  Yet, as the last quote in the previous article declared, “WAKE UP!”

The Stand for Consciousness

Information is not consciousness.  Neither is life.  They are finite statistics that confirm or deny our human existence.  Consciousness is a profoundly intimate experience, empowered by our expression of being.  It flows through us as universality, creating our unique, energetic resonance.  Much as perception and truth, no two souls are the same.  When we are influenced and impacted by the malevolent imposition of social reality, we will never become an expression of universality.  In this hostile paradigm of endless toxicity, our stand for personal transcendence empowers our universal experience.

The Experience of Transcendence

We are not even present to reality, let alone our truth.  We exist within a fantasy, engineered to segregate us from our soul.  Our engagement in social reality severs our relativity with the universe.  Universality is the omnidimensional energy our soul conveys to empower our transcendence.  Our intuition receives and conducts it through the centers of our being, into the energetic torus of our heart.  The mind and body are merely instruments to express universality as our unique way of being.  When we align, balance and center within, this equilibrium creates the energetic resonance essential to experience transcendence.

“Transcendence is the pathway to universality.”   

An Act of Inrising

“Fist in the air, in the land of hypocrisy.”

In Protest

When we protest with aggression, it gives authoritarian entities and organizations the necessary justification to respond with violence.  Once we succumb to our hostile inclinations, we play into a totalitarian game we will never win.  Even peaceful demonstrations can be interpreted as violent by the opposition.  The spark in this fragile, social dynamic is our emotionality.  Our negative reaction to the existence of inequality and injustice is when we abandon our personal power.  It is difficult to observe this in ourselves, as our egocentricity is also activated in these circumstances.  When our biased entitlement distorts our intention, our cause is lost.

To Feign in Vain

Most of us fail to live or die by our convictions.  We may be moved enough to raise the torch of truth for fleeting moments, yet our lack of commitment makes our stand futile in the face of contemporary regimes.  Personal routines, societal diversions and everyday survival preoccupy us from manifesting the vision sparking the movement.  As we mature, our demonstrations for or against social platforms is a feigned quest to present ourselves as “woke,” in a society that has wagered its identity for amusement, consumerism, desire, intellectualism, politics, religion and science.  Ultimately, we feign our protest as an illustration of egocentricity.

“Cause blood still flows in the gutter.”

Fever Pitch

I am not a “conservative” or “liberal” person.  I do not subscribe to dualistic, social paradigms that strategically manipulate us against each other and ourselves.  My expression is empowered by transcendence.  Yet, as we race toward another controversial and simulated election season, tragedy, trauma and triviality rears its viral insanity upon all who fall victim to its vicious cycle.  All who intend to hold political positions of artificial power are as devious as the elitists who animate their puppet strings.  The media is a social weapon, waged to trigger the volatility of our emotional response, enslaving and infecting us with its madness.

Rallying Cry

Recently, we have witnessed millions gathering in the streets to personify their positions.  The 1960’s ushered in a new era of protest, exhibiting demonstrations as a method for enacting social change.  However, the initial intention was never achieved, simply because it lacked the clarity, focus, longevity and purpose necessary to fulfill its vision.  This antiquated strategy echoes in our feigned and frivolous uproar, dying like a fleeting trend instead of living as an enduring movement.  As the ebbs and flows of our protests rally our feigned and futile cries, the intended change is never fulfilled.  The louder our proclamations, the greater our egocentricity.     

“Movements come and movements go.”

Antiquated Paradigm

Whether motivated by inequality, injustice, politics, religion or otherwise, protests are engaged with obsolescence.  Taking to the streets and chanting, howling and yelling with aggression, destruction or violence is a futile strategy to enact a societal shift.  Authoritarian entities and organizations have efficaciously enhanced their methods to prevent social demonstrations.  However, protests have not evolved.  Therefore, no matter how much news, noise and unrest are made with the current trend, nothing ever changes.  Most give up.  Not to the agencies they fight, yet to their own apathy, indifference and ideology.

System of a Down

Institutional authoritarian regimes, i.e. corporations, elitists, governments, media, religions and private agencies employ elaborate agendas and strategies to proliferate inequality and injustice, all for the purpose of acquiring profit and power.  Their security system against populus uprising is equally sophisticated to protect their investment in the viral deception.  Their actions and behaviors breed the reaction of our protest.  These administrations rely upon the emotionality of our response to debase and destroy the credibility of our common stand for equality, justice and peace.  Their strategy is provoking and turning our anger, fear and insecurity against us to achieve their endgame of control.                           

“Who pulled schemes on the dream and put it to an end.”

Vortex of Causality

A protest is a reaction that occurs when social inequity intensifies beyond tolerable standards.  When observed, people congregate and motivate around a popular controversy.  Yet, the sheer nature of protesting is contrarian, thus counterproductive.  The focus of the movement is abandoned when its emotionality, ideology, inspiration and vision is wagered for the instant gratification of an egocentric orgasm.  Even when a demonstration is intended as peaceful, it is distorted and propagandized as violence by the authoritarian institutions imposing the sociopathic agendas that cause the protest.  It is a social vortex of cause and effect.

The Price of Egocentricity

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.  In my honest observation, society is the epitome of lunacy.  Our personal interpretations exist as individual delusions in the illusion of reality.  We do not establish perceptions, we adopt psychoses.  Then, we attempt to impose these neuroses on others to conceal and defend our fear, indifference and insecurity, while we shame and condemn all who share diverse viewpoints.  We conflict with others because we are at war with ourselves.  We sentence our souls to our selective oblivion.  Our being, consciousness, evolution, relativity and truth are the price we pay for our egocentricity. 

“You better beware, the retribution with mind war.”

Evolution of Rebellion

Protesting is an external, social engagement; one we exhibit which segregates us from ourselves.  Everything we encounter in social reality is a catalyst to seize our attention, consciousness, empowerment and energy.  Our reactivity to environmental stimuli is how we acquiesce these elements of our personal power.  When we fail to be balanced, centered and present within, we misguide our awareness to where we direct our attention.  This is the vicious cycle of humanity.  The evolution of rebellion is shifting social uprising into personal inrising, transforming our existence from egocentricity to universality.

An Act of Inrising

For more than a decade, we have been in the flow of a universal, energetic shift.  When the world shut down over a virus, it was our opportunity to discover and create relativity with our soul.  We are in the Era of Transcendence, an extraordinary age when we may explore, experience and embody our universality in ways the authoritarian regimes of social reality have desperately attempted to oppress and eradicate.  Protesting is a demonstration of diversion, which syphons our awareness via our reactive emotionality.  The act of inrising is shifting our focus within to empower our consciousness, establish our equilibrium and transcend duality to become the expression of our soul.                

“Wake up!”

(All quotes taken from the song “Wake Up” by Rage Against the Machine.)

Songwriters: Tom Morello, Timothy Commerford, Zack M De La Rocha, Brad J Wilk.

In the Name of God

“God is a concept, by which we measure our pain.”

In the Beginning

We profess to know the origins of humanity from ancient civilizations based on history and science.  Yet, we fail to understand beyond academia.  The proof to confirm this statement is in our behavior and existence, particularly with each other, nature and the universe.  Centuries ago, a group of men conspired to write a book that would ultimately dictate to billions of people doctrines for righteousness.  Though for many, it is an egocentric endeavor. 

Many books have been written for this purpose.  However, through the generational imposition of religion, it has become the standard.  The Bible does not cause animosity, debate, prejudice and war.  It is those who use it as a control mechanism to proliferate the supremacy of their tradition.  Much like democracy, the vision of religion is sound, yet its reality has been nothing short of a nightmare.  So too is our belief in a singular God.   

“I don’t believe in magic.”

Sleight of Singularity

Nothing is one dimensional.  The universe is an expression of omnidimensionality. However, humanity clings to existential singularity for comfort, familiarity, knowledge and relativity.  When perceived through the socially institutionalized mind, it occurs as a linear timeline; quantified within a three-dimensional domain and often viewed through a filter of duality.  In this microcosmic paradigm, it is much easier to influence, manipulate and regulate the masses.

Before the organized control structures of the marketplace, politics and religion, early civilizations had a strong relativity with themselves, each other, nature and the universe.  Understanding existed before knowledge, mysticism before dogma and universality before reality.  When intelligence superseded the soul, men invented patriarchal singularity, thus diminishing the natural power of the feminine.  This matrix is rooted in our minds.

“I don’t believe in the Bible.”

Middlemen of Ministry

Religion spread like a virus across the world, guilting its followers with fire and brimstone and securing the segregation of civilization.  The people gathered in congregations, eagerly offering their loyalty, money and prayers.  They sacrificed their universal power on the altar of dogma with their blind faith, obedience and spiritual oblivion.  The cross stood as an obligatory symbol of enslavement to a vengeful God, enforced by middlemen of ministry.

To follow is societal.  To lead is tyrannical.  To be is universal.  Much is made of leadership in society.  Yet, when observed with veracity, its contemporary expression is dictatorship.  Most would opt to obey, as it appears to be the easiest path, considering the callous conditions of social reality.  Our evasion and renunciation of accountability, integrity and responsibility emboldens the middlemen of ministry; enabled by our fear, insecurity and oblivion.

“I don’t believe in Jesus.”

The Con of Belief

When we believe in something, it does not make it real.  No matter how attentively we direct our intention, it often fails to exist in a beneficial way; personally, socially or universally.  In essence, belief is a spiritual magic trick to separate us from our soul.  Social reality is designed to draw us away from ourselves.  It seizes our focus by siphoning our energy into our external environment, causing our spiritual deficiency, upon which the ministry preys.

The imposition of religion coerces us into the obligatory slavery of our soul.  The church weaponized the crucifixion to control, guilt, manipulate and condemn its disciples to a sentence of virtual salvation.  Religious persecution awaits anyone who dares challenge the Word of God, with all the fire and brimstone its ministers can muster.  The con of belief enforces the Will of God as an agenda of imaginary faith in a vain exhibition of righteousness.  

“I don’t believe in mantra.”

Congregational Dependence

Any organization exercising coercion, dogma or obligation as its stratagem is a cult.  This is certainly not exclusive to religion.  We can observe Cabals in the domains of business, media, politics, sports and science.  We justify our indoctrination by convincing ourselves it is for our benefit, growth, profit, success or survival, all the while strengthening our enslavement to social reality.  Orthodoxy is our dependency upon the simulation of society.   

The con is often the same.  One or a few leaders preside over the congregation.  What is absent is mutual trust.  One the individual person has with themselves, and the one the leader empowers upon their devotee to envision and create their own path.  However, this dynamic becomes toxic when driven by the egocentricity of the leader.  Yet, as much as the minister enforces their doctrine, the believer enables their spiritual slavery with their engagement.

“I don’t believe in kings.”

The Greatest Transgression

Many of the sins admonished by the middlemen of ministry are not as offensive as their blatant disregard for their own doctrine.  For centuries, religions have abused, chastised, demonized, exiled, imprisoned, persecuted and executed millions in the Name of God.  They built armies, decimated cultures, destroyed nature and propagated fear to turn the people against each other and themselves.  All for the purpose of preserving their religious racket to control the theology of the world.

Religion is a vicious cycle of sin, provoked and punished to segregate the people from their soul.  First, with an illustration of guilt when the disciple is shown the evil of their existence.  Second, an imposed obligation they must accept to remedy their wicked behavior.  Third, a feigned lifestyle of righteousness, to which they must aspire, yet will never fulfill.  Fourth, the sacrifice of their soul to a manmade God for passage into “Heaven.”    

“I just believe in me.”

In the Name of God

“God” is a commercial institution, blasphemed most by those who consider themselves “holy.”  We acquiesce our personal power to evade our accountability, integrity and responsibility as a universal being.  We even sacrifice our humanity to an imaginary divinity with our dependency on social conformity, popularity and vanity.  Religion is a vicious cycle of emulation that oppresses our discovery, empowerment and expression of universality.  

We are everything, and we are nothing.  All we sense about ourselves is an illusion, as is the social reality in which we engage.  It is our habitual belief in authoritarian deceptions which enables our social enslavement.  The greatest revelation we will ever experience occurs when we awaken from the religion of reality.  We have all been proselytized into a lie, invented by the few to enslave the many, all in the Name of God.          

“The dream is over.”

(All quotes taken from the song “God” by John Lennon.)

The Truth of Our Youth

“Maturity destroys our truth and our youth.”

Youth Revival

Recently, I had a revelationary experience of reunion.  My brother and I were asked to sing a song at our late friend’s memorial in our home county. (Refer article: “A Son of Leelanau.”)  When I returned from this reacquaintance with my youth, I realized how damaging it is to cast aside our childhood and adolescence in our eagerness to age into adulthood.  When we sacrifice our youth in a desperate plea to conform to social reality, we are incomplete as human beings.  Every moment is an opportunity to experience our younger selves, that is when we choose to be present to this era of our lives.  Most may see this as living in the past, while some understand it as an opportunity for fulfillment. 

An Act of Severance

When I was in my mid-20’s, I severed relations with my youth.  I was not a terrible person, and I did not commit offenses against others.  It was at this age I began my personal awakening.  During this time, I adopted an inaccurate and unhealthy perception of myself, others and the world.  As I embraced temperance, I stepped into the egocentricity of spirituality, with all its foibles of arrogance, ignorance, superiority and self-righteousness.  I broke ties with my family and friends and began the unique path that has led me here.  A friend recently reminded me this was something I had to do to become who I am.  As I recently discovered, this severance was bittersweet. 

A Vision of Reflection

After being reunited with my youth, I was inspired to reflect on who I had been, and why I would have felt impelled to dissociate from my younger self.  I recalled being adventurous, creative, imaginative, musical, poetic and revolutionary.  And though I reveled in imbibing with my fair share of substances, I certainly was not evil.  In hindsight, I observed that I had been impassioned by awareness, being, community, creativity, devotion, equality, justice, music and purpose.  In my haste to sever ties with my “wild child”, I had become seduced by what I would later understand to be “spiritual elitism,” which is simply a practice of intellectualizing the soul.  It would take me years to shed this self-stigmatism.   

The Proof of the Truth

There is no “one” truth.  There are over seven billion, even if they remain unmanifest.  Each of us has the universal birthright to envision and embrace what resonates with our being.  Establishing the foundation of our truth and becoming its expression is our human destiny.  It is a solitary path, rife with relentless, social contempt, debate, fear, insecurity, ridicule and resistance.  Our choice is either to stand for our truth or enlist in the ranks of all who institutionalize themselves into the mimicry of social reality.  We are most present to our truth during our adolescence; before education, heredity, media, politics, religion, science and society manipulated our experience, perception, personality and understanding.  Our truth is found in our transcendence.

“Personal truth is our path least travelled.”

The Birth of Truth

Before we are born, we are an omnidimensional expression of the universe.  How we empower this into our life experience is the manifestation of our being.  In utero, we are profoundly intimated with our mother; physically, mentally, emotionally, intuitively and spiritually.  As much as we are influenced and impressed upon by our mother’s experience, we too express the universe in a convergence of energetic mutuality.  Both the mother and child share their experiences in a synergistic resonance of being.  This is the most powerful human bond.  The unique truth the mother bestows upon her child synthesizes with the one the child carries into her womb.  In infancy and childhood, we are the incarnation of this universality.

Side Effects of Social Reality

Living in social reality is a traumatic encounter, on multiple levels.  Many to which we remain unconscious.  Its influences and impacts are accelerating, intensifying, manipulating and toxifying us with our every reaction to its hostility.  As we progress from infancy to childhood, we are besieged by a barrage of social institutionalization in the guise of amusement, education, heredity, media, politics, religion and science.  Before we are aware enough to nurture our consciousness, discernment, expression, individuation, lifestyle, relativity and understanding, we are programmed into an emulation of inauthenticity.  Social reality provokes our reactivity to transmute our experience from universality to virtuality.

The “Rebellion” of Adolescence

By the time we become teenagers, our personality emerges from the passing of childhood into the advent of adulthood.  We begin to distinguish between our social conditioning and personal evolution.  We become present to all that resonates with and ultimately empowers us.  It is the seminal era of our lives when our truth is born.  As our youth begins to fade, our perceptions define our experience.  We begin to establish the foundation of our being via our relativity to our environment, though most vitally with our soul.  Our progression of individuation during adolescence is perceived by society as “rebellion,” yet it is the origin of our personal power. The strategy of society is to discredit, distort and destroy our truth with reality.

The Bane of Maturity

As we “mature” into adulthood, we abandon ourselves, and our truth.  For most, it is inevitable.  Our attention, energy and focus drift into our external activities, environment and reality.  In essence, we become a contemporary version of our parents, inherently emulating elements of our hereditary lineage.  We have existed in an evolutionary shift from infancy to childhood and into adolescence.  It is in early adulthood when we begin to build our individual bubble of reality, formed by our anxiety, defenses, desire, entitlement, expectation, insecurity, interpretation and uncertainty.  Eventually, we condition ourselves to discredit, distort and destroy our own truth, engaging deeper into the simulation of society.  We feed our existence with our fear.

Echoes of Awakening

When we are young, we are intuitively proactive (positive).  As we mature, we are instinctually reactive (negative).  We establish our personal delusion, defined by our social reactivity.  Over time, we adopt beliefs, filters, interpretations, narratives and prejudice with all outside of the proverbial box of our linear existence.  Occasionally, we encounter visions of our soul as an expression of being.  Yet, within the paradigm of social reality, our universality cannot exist.  With little to no focus on the source of our being, spirituality is simply a superficial endeavor; existing as a projection of intelligence and confined to the parameters of our mind.  The expression of the universe is being.  Therefore, our universality is our truth.          

The Truth of Our Youth

We are offered infinite opportunities to cross the threshold of our humanity to experience universality.  Social reality terrifies and traumatizes us into a constant state of fear.  Maturity is an evolutionary regression, conditioning us into an unbearable relativity with our body, heart, intuition and soul.  We are existentially adrift, enslaved into the singularity of our mind.  The source of our universal energy is severed when we succumb to institutionalized intelligence.  Recently, I completed my experience of retrieving my youth. In the spirit of fulfillment, I reclaimed the part of myself I severed.  The truth of our youth inspires us to transcend our virtuality, empowering our relativity with universality.

“Our truth is the expression of our universal being.”

A Son of Leelanau

“Mama, Mama many worlds I’ve come since I first left home.” – Hunter/Garcia

Fare Thee Well

A few weeks ago, I heard from my friend Dave, one of our own from our Leelanau Family had passed away.  The first thing I did was play some music for him, as he was one of the drummers in our music group.  I sung “Sing Me Back Home,” an old Merle Haggard song we had heard the Grateful Dead cover in our infinite encounters with the Dead as a tribe of firebrands in Leelanau County.  As I sang the song, I knew I had to go to his funeral.  A few days later, I received a call from my brother that our departed friend’s family wanted us to sing a song for him.  I asked him what song.  He replied, “Sing Me Back Home.” 

On My Hands and My Knees

I chose to head up north for the visitation and funeral service the day before, as my brother was flying in from Florida the next morning.  While I drove north, I was not particularly reflecting on where I was going and who I might see, just feeling in every fiber of my being I needed to be there.  When I arrived, I visited a little with my parents, then had a video chat with a dear friend of mine from Leelanau County.  She asked me how I was being there, probably knowing way more of what would transpire than I did at the time.  Soon after, I went to bed, having woken up that day at a quarter to four in the morning, unable to sleep due to the coming weekend. 

In My Time

The next morning, I headed to the Traverse City Airport to pick up my brother.  On the way, I scanned through the radio dial to find a Grateful Dead channel out of Petosky, Michigan.  It would become the soundtrack of our weekend.  My brother was a bit stressed when I saw him due to the rough landing of his plane, as he felt it could have resulted in a crash.  We headed to our parent’s house and visited, then sang the song we were to sing at the funeral.  We went to Good Harbor beach along Lake Michigan and reminisced about our friend, his family and the current events of our home County.

Sing Me Sweet and Sleepy

Both my brother and I shifted into a reflective silence as we approached Suttons Bay, where the visitation and funeral were to occur.  These moments were the most we had spent together in many years.  We crossed the threshold of the funeral home, greeted by several friends from our youth, many we had not seen for 20 or 30 years.  We visited in the company of the open casket, sharing our cherished memories.  As the visitation ended, my brother and I joined our friend Dave and our sister Rah for dinner down the street.  An animated history of epic hijinks and hilarity filled the bar with laughter for hours until we bid our farewells. 

“Going home…going home, by the water side I will rest my bones.” – Hunter/Garcia

A Far-Gone Lullaby

On the morning of the funeral, we sang through the song a few times.  It had been almost 30 years since we sung in front of anyone together.  Time flew by, and we were once again headed toward Suttons Bay, turning north on a corner where our departed friend used to live.  I was moved to sing a song for him on our way.  We once again crossed the threshold of the funeral home into the embrace of many more from our Leelanau circle of friends.  For the half hour before the service, it was a flurry of reminiscent reunion.  Soon, my brother and I sat with our friend Dave in the pew as the Funeral Director began the proceedings.

River Going to Take Me

The funeral home was packed with family and friends.  Our friend Dudley took the podium for the eulogy, offering his heartfelt tribute.  When he was finished, he called up my brother and I.  Mark expressed his sentiments, and we both gave hugs in condolence to our departed friend’s brother Shawn, his wife and their children.  As I walked to where we would sing, I felt Shawn’s tears on my cheek.  For all the times we practiced the song, it would not prepare me for the emotion in the room and singing in front of our circle of friends for the first time in decades.  When we finished, we returned to our seats to the warm applause of our family and friends. 

Going to Plant a Weeping Willow

While we were visiting after the service, our friend Dudley rushed up to ask my brother and I to be pall bearers.  We gathered around the casket and lined up together on one side.  Dudley in the front, me in the middle and Mark in the back.  It was a powerful bonding of brotherhood.  Mark and I followed the procession to the gravesite, a family cemetery on a country road a mile from Lake Michigan.  The early spring sun was beginning to set, and we joined the gathering of people around the grave to bid our farewells.  As we laid our flowers on the casket, the Funeral Director declared, “Today, we bury a Son of Leelanau.”

I Love You More Than Words Can Tell

Mark and I headed to the Town Hall in Cedar to share in fellowship with our family of friends.  We jumped back in the car, racing to see the sunset at the one place both of us had yet to visit during the weekend, Leland…home.  We walked onto Van’s Beach as though the decades of absence had never existed.  The sun was setting between the Manitou Islands in a cradle of distant clouds.  We reunited with our circle of friends in a celebration of homecoming against the backdrop of Lake Michigan.  As the stars began to shine, we returned to the car.  The Grateful Dead channel played, “Loose Lucy,” as Mark and I sang, “thank you, for a real, good time.

Going to Leave this Brokedown Palace

The next morning, I said my farewells to my Mom, my Step Father and my brother and headed south.  As I left Traverse City, I was listening to the Dead’s “Brokedown Palace.”  I could feel the strong pull of Leelanau County as I had decades before, singing through my tears, “Mama, Mama many worlds I’ve come since I first left home.”  All the memories with our departed friend emerged from the shadows of our history.  I could not recall the person I was just days before, as I was reuniting with the person I had been and the one I would soon become.  I was simply left with the understanding; I am and will always be a Son of Leelanau County.   

“Listen to the river sing sweet songs, to rock my soul.” – Hunter/Garcia

On The Threshold

“Every moment is an opportunity to be an expression of truth.”

All Things Considered

There is an intensity to the subject matter and style of the articles I publish.  For many, it may be read as critical and pessimistic.  To others, there is an undeniable resonance with the energy between the lines.  I do not take offense when I hear from family, friends and others if the articles land for them as societal cynicism.  I have chosen to walk the path of my personal truth.  However, being an intuitive person, I sense the responses in comments, likes, shares, etc., or lack thereof.  My intentions have never been for profit, and I am not delusional enough to be seduced by popularity.  When people experience insights with these articles, even those interpreted as negative, I am fulfilled in my expression.

Delusion, Illusion and Oblivion

We each exist within our personal security bubble.  It is almost impossible to differentiate ourselves from our defenses, given our institutional assimilation via our social conditioning and programming.  It is our enslavement; imposed by our ambiguity, denial, egocentricity, fear, insecurity and self-righteousness.  We are all creators of our experience.  In every moment, we have the opportunity for universality.  Yet, we dismiss our universal birthright to conform to society.  We design our personal delusion to interact with the illusion of reality.  Our engagement in this dynamic establishes our oblivion.  We satiate ourselves with instinct and intellect, discrediting and refuting everything in opposition of our personal and social bias, narrative and reality.

Duped From the Truth

Personal truth is a social inconvenience.  It flies in the face of everything we are conditioned to believe through the enforced programming of education, entertainment, media, politics, religion and science.  From the moment we are born, we are conned into a lifestyle of enslavement.  We adopt and endorse our external dependence, because we fail to empower ourselves with our soul and the universe.  Perhaps the most difficult realization we all face is acknowledging and accepting that we were all duped.  Our egos enact an elaborate ruse to spare us from the dreaded culpability, humiliation and suffering we may encounter when we clarify and embody the truth.  Howsoever we endeavor to evade our awakening, it is inevitable.  

An Awakening

When I was an adolescent, I was confronted with the harsh reality of becoming an adult in society.  There was always a gravity of density, conformity and restriction I encountered at every turn.  It is extremely emasculating to transition from an eternal expression of being to a finite emulation of humanity.  The disturbing truth for me was understanding I would have to sacrifice too much of my soul for the gratification of egocentric “success” in social reality.  We may react defensively to this statement in justification of our own personal dependence on egoism, pride, prominence and worth.  When we choose to free ourselves from our oblivion, the resonance of our personal truth is all that remains.

“We are not an emulation of existence; we are an expression of experience.

Recollection of Revelation

As a teenage poet and musical artist, I experienced a unique fluency with creativity and imagination.  This empowered me to observe, clarify, understand and embody emotionality, intuition, relativity and universality.  What started as an act of adolescent rebellion gradually progressed into a declaration of being.  As I aged, it became a daily practice of soul preservation against the imposing elements of social reality.  I am fascinated by the energetic, experiential and transformative empowerment of universality.  The further I synthesize with my unique progression, the greater experience I encounter as a universal expression.  Social revolution does not exist without personal revelation.

The Rub of Relativity

We all have personal experiences in our social engagements.  It is almost impossible to find the equilibrium of our being amidst the constant stream of chaos, conflict, density, illusion, intensity, manipulation and programming. These elements modify us from the outside in.  We exist in a reality of artificiality, yet we are oblivious to the intricate nuances of its impacts and influence.  Our desire for superficial acceptance and belonging with our peripheral relations lures us away from our soul and the universe.  There is a limitation to the fulfillment we may share with others because we are segregated from ourselves.  No matter how much we invest our energy into our external encounters, the deficiency of our internal experience is the rub of our relativity.

I Am Who Iam

It is illuminating to experience ourselves through the eyes of others.  When we can observe ourselves outside of our permanence, it gives us a unique insight into how we occur.  It is an existential experience of transcendence, even from our selves.  I recall the first time I witnessed another’s fixed perception of me.  It was a transformational revelation in which I clarified who I was not.  A family member was speaking to me through an interpretive filter of who I was years before.  I realized they were unable to see me for who I had become, only with whom they felt most comfortable.  I shifted from reacting with aggravation to accepting their perception of me, even though it conflicted with who I truly am.

Life on a Limb

We fail at thriving when overwhelmed with the gravity of surviving.  We do not experience life.  We merely exist within the engineered parameters of a holographic simulation we collectively accept and adopt as society.  This concept is nearly impossible for the assimilated mind to comprehend.  Our cognitive dissonance casts stones of “conspiracy theory” in our malevolent quest to discredit, debunk and destroy all things beyond the proverbial box of social reality.  Our institutional programming revises our history and annihilates our mystery; accelerating the conflict, disease, fear and insecurity that enacts our enslavement.  We live life upon a fragile limb, clinging to social dependence in a desperate plea to proliferate our egocentricity.

Transcendent Sponsorship

Over twenty years ago, I met a woman who helped shift my programmed perception from knowledge to understanding.  I have learned that knowing is an intellectual encounter, whereas understanding is a multidimensional experience.  For decades, she has expressed her unbridled passion for conscious transcendence with anyone who lent her their listening.  Mine happened to be open at the time of our first encounter.  Elva Thompson is an author of articles and books, yet these pale in comparison to the awareness and inspiration that transpires in the eternal moments of her conversations.  It is ordinary to engage in relativity with others.  Yet, extraordinary to be empowered by the resonance of the energy beyond the words.

On the Threshold

We all stand upon the threshold of our unique experience with the universal energetic shift.  One humanity has yet to encounter.  For many, it may be interpreted as an apocalypse of our existence.  For some, it is the manifestation of our transcendence.  Howsoever we may choose (or not) to experience this extraordinary new era, our lives are best expressed in who we choose to be.  It is either the convenience of artificiality (fear) or the empowerment of universality (love).  Whether or not we consider ourselves conscious beings, our personal delusion with the illusion of social reality is the oblivion enabling our virtuality.  The truth we embody is the expression of our universality.                    

“Our personal truth is the resonance of our soul.”

An Heir of Transcendence

“We are not who we are programmed to be.”

In Our Beginning

Howsoever we may assimilate ourselves into society, we are an expression of universal energy, unique to the resonance of our soul.  It is all we are before we are born into three-dimensionality.  During our birth, we experience a traumatic energy schism that segregates us from our spirit and the universe.  From infancy to childhood, we are still in flow with our soul.  That is, until we are conditioned by control, egocentricity, fear, insecurity, self-righteousness and vanity.  We are then besieged by institutional, hereditary, personal and social programming via education, entertainment, ideology, lineage, media, politics, religion and science.    

The Beginning of Our End

By the time we enter early adulthood, most of our institutionalization is complete.  Once this takes root, our personal and social programming commences.  We are even awarded for our conformity with certificates, degrees, doctorates and licenses; compartmentalized into careers and tethered to a pseudo-social paradigm.  Our pride and prejudice take precedence.  We enroll in the rank and file of humanity, charging into the simulation of an interactive, virtual reality.  We fill the empty spaces of our lives with activities, amusements, attachments, beliefs, dependencies, dramas, professions, possessions, status and wealth.  Unbeknownst to us, we have sealed the fate of our enslavement.

Sensual Simulation

Our lives are a sequence of circumstances, transpiring in a sensory artificiality.  This is the true reality we refuse to accept or understand.  We assign meaning and value to our encounters, feigning sanity with our social triviality.  We perform roles of personality, steeped in frequent confusion, delusion and illusion.  We amuse, dispute, gratify, fantasize, patriotize, romanticize and traumatize ourselves to escape a social normality that does not exist.  Then we wonder why we cannot relate with others, while we fail to experience relativity with ourselves.  The happiness and fulfillment we believe we have is a projection, enacted in a sensual simulation.

Crashing the Program

If our conditioning is not apparent in this new era, we have entirely enslaved ourselves into society with our personal delusion and oblivion.  Our reliance on external gratification, meaning and self-worth assimilates us into vicious cycles of acquiescence, compliance, dependency and lunacy.  We are eagerly devoted to our captivity, deciding to follow the regime of authoritarian entities and organizations, rather than pioneer our personal path to freedom.  The origin of our emancipation is our willingness to observe, clarify and dismantle our virtual tethers to society.  We must crash the programming of our sense-based existence to embody our soul.

“Humanity is a program in the simulation of social reality.”

All Things Shiny and Bright

Everything in our social reality is a holographic projection.  The scientific communities are aware of this eventuality, yet they neglect to report its proven evidence.  It does not serve the authoritarian agenda for societal control.  In essence, their funding would be revoked.  Money sponsors the matrix of reality.  Humanity is exploited and victimized by its conditioned dependence upon and obsession with monetary currency.  Our personal power originates from our soul; and our energy flows where our attention goes.  Therefore, the simulation stimulates our reactivity to extract our essence.  It is our engagement in society which enables our enslavement.

On the Threshold

Seldom do we express our soul amidst the chaos and dysfunction of society.  We may have fleeting epiphanies, insights and even the semblance of transformation.  Yet, it is impossible to observe and experience universality within the insular bubble of our egocentric existence.  Our necessity for control, order, routine and security confines our consciousness.  Occasionally, circumstances may remove us from our comfort zone to encounter life beyond our anxiety, doubt, fear, ignorance, insecurity and oblivion.  However, when we are on the threshold of universal discovery, we often yield, retreating to the refuge of our personal delusion; within the illusion we interpret as reality.

The Path Least Travelled

Most draw their distinction from society as an utterance of ego.  Few create this diversity as an expression of their soul.  Humanity has a propensity to sacrifice its universality for a peripheral occupation in the simulation of social reality.  We are an energetic expression of omni-dimensionality.  Yet, we condemn ourselves to a three-dimensional existence, sentenced with a life of dichotomy.  Our personal programming conditions us into social mimicry.  We are eternal beings with infinite possibility.  The path least travelled is our unique opportunity to discover and explore our creativity, diversity, relativity, transcendence, transformation and universality.  

Universal Currency

The currency of the universe is energy.  Our soul is its unique expression.  The synergy between the universe and our soul is universality.  Our intuition conducts this energy to the centers of our being.  The omni-dimensional energy torus in our heart center synthesizes our universality in an infinite flow.  The frequency of its revolutions establishes the energetic signature of our being.  Our heart center transmits this energy into electrical impulses, inspiring our neural pathways.  This is translated into energetic signals, which empower our body.  The omni dimensional expression of our being is the manifestation of our universality. 

An Heir of Transcendence

Social reality resonates on a dense-vibrational frequency.  It is engineered to enslave us into intellect and instinct.  We enable this dynamic with our engagement via our attachment and reactivity to social stimuli.  Our symbiosis with social reality alters, distorts and manipulates our being, diminishing our universal awareness into the primordial duality of sensualism.  The universal energetic shift of the new era empowers us to observe our enslavement, transform our experience and transcend the matrix of society.  Our collective birthright is to cross the threshold of human history and become an expression of universal mystery.

“Life is merely a program in the experience of transcendence.”

The Blind Spot

“Truth is a daydream in the illusion of reality.”

No Men in No Man’s Land

Integrity: “the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness: the state of being whole and undivided.”  When we read this definition, the opening quote rings true.  We can feign it all we want.  However, when we contemplate our authenticity, it is as foreign to us as our soul.  We have an excess of bias, concepts, filters, interpretations, judgements, perspectives and programming.  So many perceptual preoccupations that manufacture our personal delusion.  We cannot see reality, nor truth for that matter.  Instead, we stumble around in the darkness of our individual oblivion.  We are enslaved by the stimuli of society; trapped in infinite, vicious cycles until our inevitable demise. 

The Tail of the Coyote

The coyote is a trickster who revels at pulling pranks on others.  Occasionally, he will chase his own tail and bite it.  Momentarily, it shocks him, then he attempts to solve the enigma of this abuse.  Eventually he realizes that it was indeed him that bit his own tail.  In time, the coyote chases his tail until he bites it again.  This happens over and over.  Until nature intervenes and interrupts his hysteria.  This is us! We are the tail, and our ego is the coyote.  Although this by no means is a flattering fable, it is a true portrayal of humanity.  There is only one difference between the coyote and us: we have severed our connection with the natural world.  We neglect to exercise oversight and free ourselves from the patterns of our egocentricity.

Cheaters and Lest

Instead of learning lessons from our setbacks and revealing insights to shift into a new way of being, we often strategize for an angle, looking up the answers instead of establishing our own.  We are socially conditioned for instant gratification.  We call this “success,” then move onto the next achievement.  Recently, a college football team in my area won a championship.  However, a few weeks into the season, they were caught in an elaborate cheating scandal.  The league levied multiple violations on the program.  When I mentioned this fact to some of my friends who are fans, they dismissed it as “fake news.”  I observed how strong their delusion was in defense of their team.  This is the equivalent of Trump supporters insisting the 2020 Presidential Election was stolen.

The Power of Narrative

Alternative and mainstream media reports biased, agenda-driven opinions about current events.  Our information sources are no longer factual, they are editorial.  Narrative has been distorted by agendas to influence the ideologies and perceptions of society.  To whichever side we may gravitate: Democrat/Republican, Ukraine/Russia, Israel/Palestine, religious/spiritual, vaccinated/unvaccinated or this team/that team, we are pawns upon a global chessboard of control, power and profit.  Believing our vote, faith, politics, vaccination status or sports fandom bears any social authority is our personal delusion, within the illusion we misinterpret as “reality.”  The power of narrative deceives the world.

“Disingenuity is our social disease.”

The Cult of Society

Every day, we engage in social addictions via entertainment, media, politics, religion, sports and otherwise.  When we sacrifice our conscience, empathy, intelligence, morality, relativity and understanding for superficial fellowship, we subscribe to the cult of society.  Corporations, entities and organizations broadcast ideology, indoctrination, rhetoric and propaganda.  They proliferate synthetic information, intelligence, faith, health, spirituality, success and wealth, all within the social conformity of a congregational environment.  Those who pander a “one truth for all” program are simply pyramid schemes exploiting popular belief as a cover for their cult.    

Badge of Honor

Through our personal and social institutionalization, we are conditioned to sacrifice our dignity upon society’s altar of ego. We desensitize ourselves from the horrific realism in which we are enslaved.  It is a human standard to sever our relativity with our heart, soul and the universe, as we engage in and endure social reality.  Our individual oblivion sustains the customized bubble in which we defend our ignorance, pride and prejudice.  We justify ourselves with our repressed malevolence in the toxic environment of a violent, hierarchical society.  Then we lionize and patriotize our inhumane behavior as our badge of honor, with our arrogance, entitlement and self-righteousness.

The Real World

In The Matrix, Morpheus reveals to Neo the illusion in which he was enslaved.  He shows him the “real world,” a wasteland of destruction, where machines harvest energy from millions of humans encased in pods.  We do not want to be introduced to the real world.  We see, hear, feel and sense only what indulges our dependencies.  What we most desire is the illusion.  Quite literally, we are “living the dream.”  Our denial is so paramount, we defend sinister corporations, entities, governments and organizations who control, enslave and manipulate us.  The real world is consumption, disease, delusion, failure, pain, violence and war.  For all the truth we could express, illusion is what we enable.

Wake Up!

Since adolescence, I had always felt as though there was something severely wrong with society.  When I became aware of the smoke and mirror show that is “reality,” I was enraged.  Over the last few decades, I have become more present to its deception.  I learned how to transform my anger into creativity, and ultimately consciousness.  I awakened from my daydream, clarified the nature of reality and became an expression of my truth.  This transformation has taken longer than my institutional, personal and social programming.  We have lived our whole lives in our delusion, within the illusion of society.  Before we free ourselves from the simulation, we must wake up to the reality of our truth.

The Reality of Truth

There are over seven billion truths in the world.  Our personal truth is meant for us alone to embody and express.  We will never discover it in the congregational domains of amusement, education, media, politics, religion or science.  These are all just social vortices that divert us from our destiny.  The greatest truth we will ever experience is our soul.  It is our relativity with the universe.  Our prosaic personality is the blasphemy of our universal being.  When we delude ourselves into seeking our truth in reality, we exile ourselves from universality.  It is a unique path we must pioneer with consciousness, creativity, purpose, transformation, will and understanding.  The reality of our truth transcends our triviality.

The Blind Spot of Oblivion

Oblivion to our soul abolishes our energetic flow with the universe.  Social manipulation is the watermark of our progression.  Evolution does not exist in society.  Only the simulated procession of time that passes as maturity beneath the gravity of age.  The artificiality of our social reality is the bane of our existence.  It consumes our consciousness with the singular purpose of soul extinction.  We are overwhelmed with social stimuli, which enslaves us with our own anxiety, disease, fear, insecurity, pain and trauma.  We adopt our victimization by investing in an illusion, and engaging in a society that distorts, exploits and extracts our energy.  Our personal delusion is the blind spot of our oblivion.

“Transcending our oblivion is the origin of our awakening.”

Any Color You Like

“Gender identity is only a facet of who we are.”

Gender Bender

Much has been made about how we identify with ourselves.  This person is a man, and that person is a woman.  Anything outside of the socio-physio realities of our masculinity or femininity is often condemned, discouraged, judged, mistaken and ridiculed.  The fear and insecurity of humanity exhibits feigned attempts at acceptance, love, peace and understanding.  Even when it has no direct impact or influence on the antagonist(s), we strive to degrade gender diversity out of existence.  Society may never be ready to acknowledge, approve or empower a transcendent experience with its sexuality.  Being is much more than just identifying as a man, woman or otherwise.

The Era of Balance

During the pandemic, I chose the opportunity available for all of us to go within and align, center, ground and relate with universality.  In my experiences, I discovered and embraced the multidimensionality of being to bring equilibrium within and fulfill a profound relativity with my soul.  This is not to declare I shifted into a different gender.  It is to articulate we all have male, female and transcendental elements of our being, regardless of our physical manifestation.  Whether or not society chooses to accept the recent revelations of gender diversity, we are in the evolutionary progression of the Age of Aquarius.  The era of universal balance.   

Archaic Existence

Patriarchal men need not fear that women will rule the world.  Yet, this is probably a good idea, given the destruction mankind manifests in its quest for egocentricity, supremacy and worth.  Primarily, men are aggressive, brutal, competitive, primeval and obtuse.  These masculine qualities have oppressed women into amity, empathy, nativity and passivity.  Toxic masculinity and femininity are instinctual, intellectual and emotional epidemics, condemning men and women into a one-dimensional existence within the social paradigm of duality.  We sever our relativity with our soul when we sentence ourselves to the singularity of gender identity.

Unfulfilled Intimacy

Our relativity is not only expressed in how we connect with others, but in how we relate with ourselves.  Engaging in personal and social intimacy is often a material and peripheral encounter.  When we consider all the physical, mental and emotional conditions we bring to our relationships, rarely is it ever a fulfilling experience.  Given the lackadaisical awareness many express in their relations, it is not surprising that contemporary sexuality results in toxicity.  When we attempt to fill our personal void vicariously through another, we become a vortex.  The loneliness we feel with our significant other is often far worse than the one we endure alone.  

“Embodying our soul empowers our relations.”

The Toxicity of Gender

Many tend to camouflage themselves with the social shield of their physical gender.  As we mature, we till our personal roots deeper into man or womanhood, accepting a life sentence of one-dimensionality.  Our oblivion to the universal nature of our complimentary sexualities becomes suppressed, further complicating the fulfillment of our being and our relations.  An unbalanced male may project the aggression of anger, competition, judgement, machismo and strategy, while an imbalanced female may retreat into the passivity of drama, helplessness, hopelessness, oversensitivity and resignation.  Embodying a singular gender identification is a suppression of transcendental being.  

Over the Rainbow

Gender diversity has exploded throughout society.  Many may feign acceptance, empathy and understanding with alternative communities to be “socially correct.”  For others, declaring sexual diversity is an evolutionary expression of being. Though these discoveries are ringing in a global revolution of sexuality, our destiny is to establish our unique balance, and transcend the boundaries of gender to become a universal being.  Both men and women have masculinity, femininity and divinity.  Equilibrium within creates the foundation upon which our relativity with the universe is experienced through our heart and intuition.  We are not one delineation, we are all.

A Balanced Being

When men accept their femininity and women embrace their masculinity, universal balance is established in our heart center.  This allows us to be present to our intuition and soul.  Without this symmetry, we cannot become an expression of universality.  The energy of the universe is ever transforming, empowering us to evolve, expand and progress.  We are universal beings having human experiences.  The universe empowers us to embody our omnidimensionality.  When we are related with our soul, in flow with our intuition and centered in our heart, we are a balanced being of universality.

A Personal Shift

For the last few years, I have become more intimated with universality.  This relativity is very distinct from gender identification.  The experience transcends masculinity, femininity and sexuality.  The balance of all creates a being within to express universal energy.  As a man, I observe my anger, bias, negativity, reactivity and violence.  When my expression is universal being, I experience calm, clarity, positivity, proactivity and tranquility.  By no means is this a profession of perfection.  For me, it is a personal shift of balancing all elements of my being to create relativity with my soul and be in the energetic flow of universality. This transcends the boundaries of gender identity. 

Any Color You Like

Human perception is steeped in black and white.  In the wake of this duality, our perceptions often turn gray.  The patriarchy vilifies the rainbow as a representation of deviant sexuality.  In the eyes of society, transcendent expressions of being are exiled beneath the gravity of social transgression.  The toxicity of gender one-dimensionality projects fear and insecurity, condemning us to the enslavement of identity singularity.  This new era is our opportunity to release our personal and social programming to express our totality. A balanced being is not about identifying as a singular gender.  It is the empowerment and embodiment of our soul.

“We are an expression beyond imagination.”