New Book Release

A Novel Read into the New Shorelines of Climate Change

by Ari Joshua Bouse

A Novel Read into the New Shorelines of Climate Change is a collection of previously published articles and poems, and new poems and writings about the author’s spiritual journey, major life transitions, and overcoming deep soul wounds.

A Novel Read into the New Shorelines of Climate Change is an autobiographical narrative about overcoming trauma from the author’s own personal experiences. This book also aligns with universal themes that may inspire others who are facing their own life’s obstacles. For example, overcoming grief and loss, including surviving death by suicide, divorce, and other childhood traumas are deeply woven into the storytelling. Also, the universality of these themes confront the planetary plight of Climate Change; with particular sensitivity to humanity’s role in the death of an old world and the rebirth of a New Age and Paradigm. Finally, the intention of A Novel Read into the New Shorelines of Climate Change is to be a soulful breath of fresh air for the mind, body and spirit.

Ari Joshua Bouse is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, ReikiMaster, Published Author, and Educator. He has almost 30 years of social work experience, and has been working in Public Schools in Maine for the last 19 years. Ari is passionate about teaching meditation as a way of life, and sees his spiritual connections as part of his multidimensional identity. Ari is here to lighten up the consciousness of the Planet and beyond.

Introduction

Looking back over the last several years, my writings below reveal the deeply, powerful, spiritual truth that asserts an old and new school ‘personal is political’ mindset. By that I mean the direct, observational experience of learning to live in alignment with strong feminine energy, and redefining masculinity. Instead of seeking to change the world as it is to conform to my egocentric desires; it’s recognizing that we are all part of what Carl Jung called the Collective Consciousness.

From this dimensional shift, there is an understanding that consciousness manifests itself in infinite ways. For example, Colonization is a real generational trauma revealing a culture of learned helplessness that faces the human plight. The price tag of ‘isims’, and peddling a system that segregates us into labels of winners and losers is a criminally insane mindset that is sold to us as normal. But like the wisdom of the yin and the yang; without that imbalance, there would be no harmonic convergence of the Tao.

From an energetic perspective, abundance is an energy field available to everyone that reminds us that there is enough, and we can all win. Just imagine free, clean energy and equal access to equitable resources. A deeper and higher application of the ‘personal is political’ viewpoint is the soul’s recognition of waking up to the fact that the journey in healing truly starts from the inside out.

Cocreating heaven on earth isn’t a pipe dream when enough of us understand this in a way that positively shifts the energetic footprint of the planet and beyond. All this means is what the mental health community calls coregulation and attunement. Our energy affects one another, for better and for worse. Might as well discover novel ways to harmonize with our environment. By remembering to breathe consciously, we are more likely to live in the present moment.

I remember when the gospel of Coronavirus was spreading its wings back in March 2020. It seemed that overnight the world had changed, especially for humans. However, from a systemic and spiritual perspective, there was another way to look at the pandemic even at the time it was happening.

For example, after the shutdown, there were stories about a significant reduction in fossil fuels that gave birth to seeing the skyline in places like the Himalayas when smog once blocked pristine views. Moreover, with the arrival of the Coronavirus, humanity was given a deeper way to look at the Crown Chakra opening up, as in the energetic Corona atop our heads. This is akin to the perceptible ring that sometimes circles the moon or the halos depicted in some of Michelangelo’s art.

Like everyone else, my life didn’t get easier during the pandemic. Do you remember seeing and hearing the lyrics, “I can’t breathe?” Those lyrics resonated with yours truly on a deeply personal level, and by the Full Moon in June of 2020, the feeling of being suffocated climaxed for me because my soul felt trapped. Like it or not, the uncertainty and unknowns in life became louder and impossible to ignore because our convenient distractions from turning inward were taken away. How do we all sit with that?

In retrospect, COVID revived that suffocating soul-trapped feeling I thought I had overcome. Yet, like Stephen King’s IT character Pennywise, the suffocation revealed its ugly head once again; thus, reinforcing the suffocating grip of my childhood exposure to mother’s crippling depression, multiple suicide attempts; as well as her final terribly tragic death by suicide that was attached to my being.

As I reflect back to my late 30s-early 40s, I realized how much work I had invested in myself to rework that feeling. However, being in a committed relationship, and a traditional marriage to the same person for a quarter of a century brought that feeling of suffocation back. My soul felt trapped when the sense of suffocation would come and go. Sometimes, the suffocating feeling would lay dormant, while other times growing louder. But it was always there.

Overcoming my own victim consciousness has been a journey of awakening to this truth: when I have felt slighted in life, it took a lot of inner work to see the mirror reflecting back to me of how I have slighted myself and others. Examining these tendencies and experiences isn’t sexy and is quite unappealing. But the key to confronting BS with honesty is that it’s nothing short of alchemy. It is a truly magical experience on the inside. The thing about Bull Shit is that it makes for good internal compost and mulch, if you’ll pardon the pun..

Additionally, I had conned myself into believing that COVID hadn’t affected me. As a school social worker, it was difficult not being able to go to work, and witnessed firsthand how challenging it had been for everyone since schools shut down in March. I did my best to stay connected by linking up with students, coworkers, and family online. Elevating my technology game by building a school website as a resource, and scheduling google meets were empowering. But what really helped was simplifying my life by decluttering and starting a new training program, which proved to be an effective self-care strategy.

Following my meltdown on the Full Moon in June 2020, I would get up in the morning and meditate, lift weights and then go out for a long run. After my run I would cool down in the yard. At night I would stargaze and mediate again before going to sleep. I linked up with an online spiritual community and started listening to meditation downloads to upgrade my internal systems.

When we returned to school in the fall, I spent most of my time going to work, then heading home, and into the woods to reconnect and recharge in nature. I needed to simplify my life and make myself smaller again. It was a leveling and humbling time. Nothing glamorous at that time in my life. Like the state of the world, my marriage was on life support, and I was having a really hard time living with my family. Granted, I had acted like more than a jackass, but underneath my own theatrics, I didn’t feel welcome in my own home. You can’t force something if it’s just not right anymore. But I don’t give up easily and I didn’t want to feel like a failure, so I pressed on by trying to correct the error of my ways and heal myself from the inside out.

At 50, reflecting on the past 25 years of adulthood, reminded me that I had to face my fears with courage. Trying to work through my shit within the confines of my marriage had become an act of self-deception that I could no longer tolerate. It was really hard for me to admit to myself or my past wife that I just couldn’t do it anymore. Our relationship had served its purpose, and we were just better off to throw in the towel and part ways. I don’t like to disappoint people, so I would have a tendency to tell her what she wanted to hear rather than speaking my truth. God knows I tried, but I struggled deeply with the idea of seeing myself as a failure for not making our marriage work. The truth is, I tried to envision my past wife in my future, but I just couldn’t any longer. This was an agonizing feeling for me for a long time. But in life, you either learn to sit with the tension of opposites or you don’t. Given my own experiences with trying on both hats; the latter is far less of an effective strategy than the former.

As if that wasn’t enough, another woman’s presence became increasingly clear and undeniable over the past eight years. We had developed a clean connection, maintaining a professional yet friendly relationship as coworkers. But in the summer of 2023, something shifted within me, prompting me to write a poem titled Watching Clouds as a way to process my emotions and surrender to the Universe.

I believe that a man and a woman should be able to have an open-minded and open-hearted conversation about their feelings, which is exactly what we did. Of course, talking about feelings and acting on them are two different things. We discovered that the mutual feelings had been growing in both of us for quite some time, albeit for different reasons, given the state of our marriages, and where we were both moving in our journey’s.

I was trying to hold on until my daughter left for college, hoping to cushion the blow. I ended up living day to day in a hotel for about a month before realizing that I needed to officially move out and find my own place. If that wasn’t challenging enough, during this period, my father-in-law passed away, my birth father appeared to himself as on his deathbed that winter, and my long-term spiritual counselor became gravely ill and passed away in the spring of 2024. It felt like nature’s cycle of death and rebirth was unfolding right in the theater of my life.

The writings below are reflective of how my life experiences have inspired the universality of my journalistic poetic prose. When I write, I think about my own self in relation to the greater planet and universe at large. Whenever I write, I aim to connect the dots by addressing universal issues that transcend the labels we identify with. The idea is to create an experience of inspiration, connection and co-regulation with the reader. I am thankful for my good fortune, and merely wish that everyone else could have it even better, in a way that’s fair and equitable. It’s taken me a long time to feel deserving of abundance, but we all deserve it and the infinite forms that it takes root in within our shared 3-D realm and beyond.

I hope that you enjoy your travels down the rabbit holes of these truly amazing stories. Who knows? Perhaps they will awaken new vistas within your own stories. Are they simply fixed old mental tapes, or are they portals into sovereign new experiential narratives waiting to be explored, and discovered?

A Letter To Ari From His Future Self

Like you teach others, just picture peaceful, calming thoughts and focus primarily on positive self-talk. This isn’t pollyanna. Lead with your heart and remember your head. They are meant to be in alignment with one another. When your heart isn’t into something, you can’t manufacture it or force something that just isn’t right. As with any loss, there is grief when experiencing the death of the old self. You have already known the Dark Night of the Soul experience. Follow the Universal pillars of Love and Truth. You know that being in alignment with these principles will set you free.

Be mindful that when one door closes, another one opens. Try not to get seduced by your fears. Rather, just be mindful of them. You can even transform them into spirit guides, much like you’ve done with your anger and past lives. What matters most is that you live the life you are meant to in this lifetime. You are already seeing that there comes a time when old contracts need to be broken and released. Let them go. Surrender and trust the Universe to carry you where you need to go.

Remember how devastated you were when your mom died? Of course you felt orphaned and abandoned. It wasn’t personal; it was simply where she was in her life, doing what she believed she had to do. And then your grandparents left this earth, albeit on more conventional terms. Listen wisely to the lessons from past breakups, the severing of old relationships, and shifts in peer groups, including changes in your own identity. Yes, these were transitions, and not without their challenges. Lots of thoughts and feelings were experienced by you, including pain and suffering, however, there were also profound spiritual transformations that emerged from all your experiences up to this point, and this growth will continue to expand exponentially. As you are becoming more anchored in the earth with your root, you are also growing stronger wings to soar like an eagle. Meditation on Eagle’s powerful balance of the intersection between their wings and talons reflect balance of Heaven and Earth or spirit and material reality.

We know marriage and raising a child has not been easy on you, just as it isn’t easy for anyone. You know full well that you have a hard time with traditional marriage. Being married to and having a relationship with a Virgo for all these years has been a grounding force in your life. Believe you me, the gravity has been good for your Pisces need for a strong anchor during your rapidly shifting tides at times. Even though this has not always been appreciated by you.

However, as you have relaxed your resistance, you have deepened your understanding of how this has made you stronger in the material realm, which is what Virgo personifies. As such, your capacity for empathy has deepened for concrete viewpoints so that you can see more from left brain systems of thought. Partnerships should be based on a mutual agreement, and free choice; not a one-sided paradigm or staying in it to protect someone else’s feelings, neediness or codependent tendencies. The old world vows of till death do us part, as a reason to stay in the marriage, no longer hold up for us- from a concrete, 3-D perspective, at least. Besides, a death to us parting; from an energetic perspective, is akin to the death of the old self. We don’t always want to say yes to the person we are becoming because it’s natural to cling to our old self or the way we were. All systems resist change.

While failure is part of life, it doesn’t mean you have failed at marriage. Remember the Law of Impermanence that recognizes that the one constant in life is change. You have evolved and will continue to do so.

Besides, on the whole, you had been a good husband and a good dad. Nobody’s perfect. You know that you don’t like to disappoint people, and in your own words; recognize the attachment to the disease to please old narrative. But you also know that the opinions of others are none of your business. What matters is that you honor yourself and you will do what you need to do. In the end, respect will come from that and most importantly, self respect, which is what is at stake. Hear your inner voice and trust in it. Now is the time. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. See this new narrative taking root and expanding its branches in the mirror of your mind!

Everything you have experienced unto this point has served you along your life purpose and soul actualization process. Who you are becoming is what matters most and that is what you will honor. Ignoring it, going backwards, or back to sleep is not an option. You already know that your dreams are what matter, when it comes to honoring your higher self. Truly, living life for your own highest good is what is important. Like your blog tagline says, you are an embodiment of awakening spiritual dreaming into reality.

It is from a higher state of consciousness that we look at everything you have experienced at this moment in time as what you needed to go through to prepare yourself for the next chapter of your life book. More importantly, all these experiences will facilitate the growth of your new self as you move forward.

Remember that the chips will fall where they may. Our actions are not without repercussions or consequences, both positive and negative. What matters is that you are living out the life that you are meant to live, and you will continue to do so now more than ever on your own terms. It isn’t about disregarding or not caring about how you impact others. It is about honoring yourself, as you are already aware.

Autumn, 2023

Remembering Grandmother’s Spirit

Have you ever seen the movie The Sixth Sense or heard the popular tagline from the film, “I see dead people?” It’s a powerful film that inspired a collective shift in human perceptual consciousness.

In The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell distinguishes between the mystic and the psychological crackup by suggesting that the mystic swims in the same waters in which the breakdown drowns. A psychiatrist I once worked with expanded on this idea, remarking that the only difference between someone with schizophrenia and the rest of us is that “they see things that we don’t.” Another respected psychologist I worked with summarized the complexity of our existence by saying, “there’s more than one reality.” In meditation, we reflect on the nature of reality as a multidimensional experience.

Specifically, it is important to normalize extraordinary moments, including psychic phenomena. We all possess these abilities because they are part of our human potential. Other creatures possess these abilities too. Like any talent, we all have varying degrees of aptitude in this area. But we can all develop our psychic skills, like we can do with any skill. Think about it, if you are practicing self-care by eating before you get hangry, then you are peering into the future and influencing your trajectory with a form of clairvoyance. The unwanted dirge of hanger need not be a self fulfilling prophecy.

For example, some people are naturally gifted at empathy and others really have to work at developing this skill, if they even care to do so. For some, empathy is an intellectual process, like playing a video game or downloading a file that they really have to work at. For others, the experience comes more naturally, in the form of a heart centered feeling. Of course, we all can learn how to develop our ability to communicate this skill with each other. When you develop empathy, think of it as exercising your psychic muscles. And then think of communication with others about it as a mutual exchange of giving and receiving feedback.

I really don’t like labels, but as a human, I respect that we do have natural impetus to order and classify things. Some folks call people like me empaths. Of course, like anyone else, we can also be criticized for being gifted meddlers or overly sensitive, especially because there’s ego in the powers of perception. Besides, attachments don’t discriminate when we get identified with our labels. The desire to help can become an attachment and leave us feeling depleted and ultimately resentful.

In my case, it isn’t hard for me to sense energies around me, including the moods and emotions of others. I got in a lot of trouble in my early years because of how sensitive I was to the moods and emotions of those around me, including my own emotional reactions to them. But the more adept I get at quieting my mind, calming down and harmonizing with my environment, the more effective I am becoming in self regulation. When we relax, others tend to do so. In mental health, we call this co-regulation. We all need to do this now more than ever on our Planet and Universe today.

Furthermore, it has taken me a long time to learn how to differentiate between what belongs to me and what belongs to someone else. We should respect each other’s energy field or personal space bubbles. One of my favorite mantras to reinforce in my consultation as an LCSW (licensed clinical social worker) is Q-TIP, or quit taking it personally. Easier said than done. But it is empowering to learn how to become less moved by other people’s stuff. An old mentor and friend taught me that.

While seeing things in my mind’s eye, hearing spirit or picking up unconscious forces comes naturally to me, physically seeing those that have left this Earth in material form does not. For some, this form of spirit mediumship does, and I honor their gifts. And then I experienced one of my spiritual awakenings at my grandma’s funeral, where I was in between the spirit realm and physical realm. In shamanism, this is called an alternate reality or extraordinary state of consciousness. Our brainwaves change, in meditative states; as does our perceptual reality.

Many moons ago, my family asked me to speak at Grandmother’s funeral. During the experience of expressing some sentiments about what my Grandma’s presence meant to me, something felt different- a tremor in the Force, as Master Yoda might say. As I was speaking at the pulpit, I quoted some lyrics that I knew like the back of my hand from an old folk spiritual song called Satisfied Mind. But somehow, I forgot the lyrics and just paused to take some deep breaths and grabbed my heart shaped quartz crystal in my pocket for what seemed like an eternity. And then I remembered the way the Dalai Lama gently maintains a wide angle gaze by scanning the audience whilst connecting with people with his eyes. After checking in with family members afterwards, it might have only been 30 seconds in linear time. They just figured I was having a “vision” because they know me.

Reflecting back, I became acutely aware of the scintillating sunlight shining down from the colorful prism of the Catholic Church’s Cathedral skylight. The sunlight illuminated dusk particles that flowed down onto the center aisle of the church that reminded me of the old biblical story of the Parting of the Red Sea. I wasn’t raised religious but I am deeply spiritual and recognized that I was having a mystical experience. It was as if time stood still.

And then, I noticed a well put together elderly woman, gracefully entering the back of the church. Now you could have heard a pin drop, so I remember wondering to myself, this is odd- why isn’t anyone else noticing this woman arriving late at Grandma’s funeral? And then it occurred to me that this woman was Grandmother’s spirit. She had a unique style of dress and taste in clothes, particularly scarves, which she bore in this setting. She was in human form and looked as real as the living that were there to grieve her passing and celebrate her life. Funny, my Grandma used to joke about how she’d be late to her own funeral, to my Grandpa’s chagrin, because he was always jingling his keys and pacing around while waiting for her. In fact, he used to say in his 70s that if he could have all the time back he spent waiting for her he would be 47 years old. Grandpa was the kind of guy who thought you were five minutes late if you weren’t five minutes early. In this way, their relationship embodied the Chinese Yin and Yang symbol.

Looking back, I believe my Grandpa felt safe enough to tell us about similar experiences he had with my Grandma after we all went back home after the funeral events (our family is quite nomadic and spread out these days.) Shortly after her death, he would awaken in the middle of the night and see her walking around their bedroom, and then write us emails about his experiences. I believe that Grandfather was perceiving Grandmother’s residual energy field or spirit because she was hanging around to make sure he was alright, given that he was open to it. We all thought, including him, that he would be the first to go, not the other way around.

Finally, it appears that Grandfather was in a vulnerable position and unusually open and passive to the spirit speaking to him in a way that he was ready for. Nature has a way of leveling us so that our coat of armor relaxes so that we can receive, regardless of how much psychic defenses and scar tissue we have fortified ourselves with. In fact, when it was time for Grandfather to leave the Earth, he felt more safe about letting go, relaxing his attachments to his body, fear of death, and looking forward to reconnecting with his ancestors in the spirit realm.

October 27, 2022

Remembering Our Ancestors Poem

Grandmother & Grandfather are ancestors now . . .

They are spirit guides that bring wise tidings of Love, Light and Laughter!

They opened me up to multidimensional reality because their euphemisms were timeless,

yet they were from a different world.

I remember when I saw Grandmother arrive late to her own funeral.

And then after I told Grandfather, he started seeing her at nighttime.

The other day, a coworker said she heard the wizard Nikoli Tesla was schizophrenic

because he heard voices.

But like Joseph Campbell accurately asserted, the mystic swims in the waters the

psychological crackup drowns in.

Like when an astute psychologist reflected on how there’s more than one reality.

Or when a commonsensical psychiatrist indicated that people affected by schizophrenia

see things that other people don’t.

Open hearted soul thinking awakens deeper and higher perceptible consciousness.

Brainwaves shift into new vibrational dimensions . . .

What was once seen as crazy is now recognized as Truth in the mind and Love in the

heart.

Summer, 2024

Overcoming Old Ghosts, Mindful Moments & Awakening To The Spirit Of Inner Peace

Reflecting back on my own experiences with trauma, or adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), it has become abundantly clear to me that my built in anger, etc. has been repeatedly triggered by experiences with connections to resistance to what is unfolding in the present moment. It has taken me a long time to realize that my past anger management problems and temper tantrums were really manifestations of anxiety and panic attacks, swaddled in a Brilliant Disguise. But it has also become self-evident to me that my behavior served a purpose to wake people up.

Back in my first year in Preschool, I remember feeling lonely, rejected and abandoned when the nuns would put me in an old storage closet after repetitive and challenging behavioral infractions. These punitive consequential experiences were regular occurrences back then, felt suffocating and I hated them. But at least they didn’t put me in a mechanical restraint, straight jacket or give me a lobotomy.

As I got a little older and continued to process the repercussions of those experiences, my mom said that the school staff told her that they liked me but didn’t know how to handle me. For as long as I can remember, I felt like an outsider or Resident Alien, and it was all too easy to hide behind the guilt, shame and embarrassment through the coat of armor of bravado, bodyguard of anger and playing the role of a clown. These coping strategies made for good survival skills, but also paved the way for seemingly below the radar work avoidance techniques that became barriers to personal growth later in life. We all have our blind spots and obstacles to overcome.

Compounding the early school trauma, growing up with my mom’s crippling depression, alcoholism, multiple suicide attempts, and ultimate death by suicide was suffocating on me, and amplified the aforementioned sentiment. Talk about a feeling. It’s taken many moons to shine a light on those shadows, and keep on tunneling through the Dark Night of the Soul.

Furthermore, it has taken me a long time to really get in touch with those unpleasant feelings, and the impact they have had on my own Road Less Traveled. After many years of therapy and meditation (and more than a handful of moments of self-sabotage), it has taken a lot of work (and pretending) to not get seduced into negative self-talk stories or have an attitude, chip on my shoulder or spiritual bypassing during the journey in healing.

Today, I can pull from these feelings as a way to empathize and co-regulate with others when they are struggling. And I choose to look upon the non-preferred Preschool seclusion experiences as an early meditation training program. That being said, I wouldn’t recommend or encourage the old abusive approach utilized on me in the School of Hard Knocks. It had its place, but it’s time to let go of the old baggage and replace them with new ways.

Thankfully, my second stint in Preschool was at a therapeutic center that utilized restorative practices and focused on social-emotional learning development with a garden variety of children with a myriad of visible and invisible developmental delays. I still remember the social worker there, who was a positive presence, as were the teachers.

Additionally, this writer’s meditation practice has revealed an internalized paradoxical spiritual truth worth echoing. Questions can be powerful interventions. However, during a push hands practice with an old T’ai Chi instructor, I remember when he pointed out to me that questions can also uproot us.

What he meant by that is that questioning for the sake of questioning can become a form of skillful avoidance, like creating more work to avoid work. Moreover this kind of questioning can become distractions from the truth rather than cleansed perceptual doorways that anchor us into the ground. It’s a form of scar tissue. Like when you anesthetize yourself with a substance as a strategy to cope with your pain. Next thing you know, you have another problem covering up a problem that you haven’t dealt with yet. For example, I know a workaholic who I overheard complaining about taking on a second part-time job doing the same job that he currently does as a full time job- when he’s already feeling burned out from the first full time job. Sad thing is, he’s not alone in his plight on the planet today. It’s a universal behavioral trap with humanity at large, in the sense that we are addicted to doing. But we are Human Beings, not doings.

What is more, questioning for the sake of personal growth is different because the intention behind asking a provocative Socratic question is an opportunity for self-reflection and examination. This is at the heart-mind of the therapeutic nature of meditation.

More mindfully, meditation invites us to ponder that if we can have an open, passive attitude and sit with a question, we just might experience spiritual awakenings in the form of what we call “ah ha” moments. This practice can lead us out of victim consciousness into a deeper and higher vibration of inner peace, which is a dimensional shift.

Moreover, for anyone else out there who was born with a strong, oppositional streak like me, the meditation 101 principle of having an open, passive attitude appears to be a countercultural mantra. This truth hasn’t always rested peacefully on the inner edge of my humanity, if you’ll pardon the pun. Ah, the voice of the ego likes to assert, “nobody tells me what to do, not even me.”

Finally, as we gradually soften our edges and expand our borders, we have a home base to return to that lives in the breath of the living moment. May we pay purposeful attention and gently allow the mindset of our growth to seep in organically, like herbs taking root into the ground, one step, one breath and one moment at a time. You dig?

November 16, 2022

Overcoming Deep Traumatic Soul Wounds Poem

Unexamined deep soul wounds are no ACE in the hole, if you’ll pardon the mental health pun.

A spark doesn’t have to be a trigger to a traumatic event . . .

Pain-based behavior reactively reveals itself in forms of the 4 F’s:

Fight, Flight, Freeze and Faint!

But it doesn’t have to be that way folks.

When I reflect back upon my own bodyguard of anger and anxiety based temper tantrums;

I can understand the pain based behavior of others.

Like the Boss sings, you can’t start a fire without a spark!

Our attachment to violence (aggression, guns, weapons of mass destruction) mirror the collective nightmare the shamans speak about . . .

Standing in our own personal authority is awakening a different form of respect when radiating from the key of inner peace.

Boredom and loneliness are emotions to sit with, and an opportunity for co-regulation with others.

May I humbly be a living embodiment for rising up to overcoming our obstacles in alignment with spiritual transcendence.

Summer 2024

Transformation Within During The Process Of Letting Go Without Revisited

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.

Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

The Prophet Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Looking back at Zen, I remember writing the following poem right after I graduated from college in 1996. I was embarking on a new quest, life transitions and also in soul searching, on a bus from Hartford, Connecticut to New York City to visit some fraternity brothers who I recently graduated with. Our plan was to celebrate our rite of passage in style in NYC and then venture onward to the Hamptons for some fun in the Long Island sun. But it was only a year and a half after my mom’s suicide and my heart was still bruised, battered, broken and bleeding from this freshly cut deep soul wound. Try as I might, I could not distract myself from the tough f-bomber of being orphaned and grieving. Grieving isn’t a linear or fixed process, nor without its ebbs and flows- you just never know where or when the voice of the trauma will freeze, thaw, flow like a river or inundate you like waves from a Tsunami . . .

Since you floated away . . .

I’ve been pondering my feelings – particularly today.

If I were a movie and you were my director,

After your credits were over, I could no longer cry on your shoulder.

As your script flashed before my interior eye,

I was left disillusioned before I could cry.

Literally, I was your creation – your pride and joy.

You were my mommy, and I was your little boy.

In here and Tao, it’s been many moons since my Mom left this Earth. I’m an older man today than she was when she died. Mother never made it to her 43rd birthday and was already having major issues with getting older. Learning how to be human is a complex ride and my mom’s humanity was no exception. However, we’re meant to age gracefully, like a fine wine. Easier said than done. It takes a lot of inner work to move beyond our judgements and not get sour grapes along the way, if you’ll pardon the pun.

As I look back, I feel that the hallmark of Mother’s suffering was that she really struggled with paradox or understanding how opposites in life don’t have to be enemies. Rather, they can co-exist peacefully. Happiness as a way of life does not mean that we do not suffer. One of my mom’s sisters would say that she “saw demons that weren’t there.” While that’s partially true, it’s not entirely true. I believe my mom saw demons that were real, on some level at least. But the root of her problem was that she demonized them, developed an attitude, and then went to war with herself about her perceptual reality. Mother’s entanglement with form became her vicious cycle. And that’s a normalized shared experience for many humans on the Planet today.

Moreover, the energy of an attitude feeds the ego, becomes a heavy burden to carry and can seduce us into sneaking into Martyrdom. In fact, many people do that without killing themselves, in a literal sense at least. I have met people from all over the world, from all walks of life. Different races, nationalities, genders and socio-economic statuses. One thing that I have noticed is that some faction of all kinds of people know happiness as a way of life, while others appear to have an underlying edge, chip on their shoulder or an attitude about someone or something.

For example, it could be an attitude for or against BIPOC or LGBTQ people, White Privilege, the Police, the Establishment, the Counterculture or society at large. My own experiences with trauma have invited me to try on this hat in some form or another before and it’s not a good fit.

Additionally, in our Civil Rights work in schools, we focus on six categories- Race and Skin Color, Ancestry and National Origin, Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity & Gender Expression, Disabilities and Religion. In our work, we have an intention and commitment to talk about these areas and focus on what we can do to make school, etc. a more welcoming place for everyone. It isn’t easy to do this work, or not get discouraged at times, nor get seduced into developing an attitude about the “other” or “us and them” kind of segregationist thinking.

Furthermore, it is sobering to reflect on my mom’s crippling experiences with clinical depression, anxiety and alcoholism. Being human is not without its attachments. Mother got sucked into her attachments to her mental illness and developed a toxic relationship with it. Truly, my mom wanted to be free from her suffering. But I believe she could not learn to love herself- all of it. It’s not that she wanted to die. Death was actually terrifying for her. I remember taking a High School Humanities class, where our teacher encouraged us to go home and ask our parents if they had a living will, which I did. I remember feeling enraged that my mom yielded on my query and came up with clever excuses to avoid the proposition. And then after her death and having to go through the Probate process- well let’s just say it didn’t make grieving any easier. But at least I had access to a good lawyer, from a family friend that helped cushion the blow. I am grateful for that, as well as a supportive family system and peer network. Not everyone is as fortunate in the crematorium of tragedy.

More importantly, you have to be in a dark place to seriously contemplate suicide and in an even darker place to do it. You have to con yourself into thinking that people and the world will be better off without you in it, and that you will be better off to escape the pain in your life. Some people even romanticize suicide- which is why it can be even more dangerous when a person starts coming out of their darkness because there’s more energy to do it and don’t want to return to the dark tunnel. They might believe that their soul will be freed from its entanglement with form. The tragic sadness is that we can play with death without dying and free spirit from its entanglement with form while we are still breathing. It takes work, but the payoff is worth it.

More mindfully, meditation on seven generations before and seven generations ahead helps build a longitudinal perspective about living now in the gift of this lifetime. I am living proof, in that I look forward to the time when my soul is ready to leave my body and this Earth, and yet my will to live is stronger than ever. There are 10, 000 ways to get into the valley of death- and the truth is none of us know when our number will be called. Might as well remember to breathe while we are here and soak up the precious moments as they come. Someday- hopefully many years from now- my goal-less meditation practice is to leave my body consciously by dematerializing like a rare few still do, or at least die peacefully in my sleep like Grandfather did. There’s nothing special about me and I’m not the only one out there who feels this way. It’s just a shared place in consciousness available to anyone who’s up for the freedom and responsibility of the experience. But it shouldn’t take so much work in the matrix we have created from the inside out. That’s the current suffering of our humanity that we can all release into a black hole in the Universe together if we so choose.

In my mom’s case- I don’t think her morning ritual of smoking a cigarette, eating additives and preservative enhanced coffee cakes, and then washing them down with a Diet Coke helped relax her depression or anxiety. But some healthy supplements washed down with a green drink, black coffee or green tea, water, fruit and oatmeal and a little morning meditation probably would have been a more effective strategy for her everyday living. Sacred Medicines or psychotropic medications can have their place in the journey in healing. But probably not mixed with skipping meals, a dysfunctional sleep cycle or overindulges of alcohol or other drugs- or during times of abstinence; cursing yourself with habitual negative self-talk is a prescription for bad medicine. Getting some fresh air and exercise moves around emotional blockages.

Reflecting back, my favorite take away from the internal martial arts and energy medicine is that we all need to cultivate self-love. Alternative energy starts with ourselves and will radiate outward from there. We all need to learn how to make the Qi of every cell in our bodies smile. Building a self-care regimen into our everyday routine is so important to wellness as a way of life. It’s easier to find a healthy replacement for an adverse behavior than to extinguish a habit. What more important relationship should you have than your relationship with yourself? Why not adopt this perspective while we are still breathing?

Finally, looking in the mirror and hating yourself is a receipt for feeling bad about feeling bad. But relaxing your gaze, and looking into the window of your soul and saying “I love you” is good medicine. You can do this telepathically or aloud. It’s OK to feel uncomfortable with that. I know I have. And trying to be as gentle and kind to ourselves is worth revisiting with our regular consideration.

January 29, 2023

A New Moon, New Adventures & Springing Into Life Like Taking A Bull By The Horns

A New Moon will happen on May 19, 2023. New Moons are always symbolic of new beginnings. This New Moon connects to the spiritual energies of the Bull. Further movement into Spring aligns with the Bull’s spirit of fertility and co-regulation between male and female energies.

Energetically, it’s time to ready the ship for manifesting personal goals tied to personal growth. Enjoy life’s simple and physical pleasures, like savoring good food and enjoying activities that connect us with nature and with our bodies. Remember to stop and smell the roses and to become more aware of what makes us feel comfortable and secure. It’s also a good time to re-evaluate our relationship to money, possessions and to discover what truly makes us happy and fulfilled. The chi of Bull’s breathes in powerful fresh air for setting new goals to create new changes in our lives.

Abundance comes in many forms and money is no exception. It is healthy to welcome abundance in our lives and in our worlds so that we can have a more equitable, fair and just society. Money, like anything else, is energy. Energy is energy. It’s what you do with it that counts. Regardless of what currency is circulating around human transactions, most of us realize we can manifest a more equitable systemic exchange of energy of giving and receiving, aka reciprocity.

In that light, awakening a free-thinking power to the people’s culture that is based on abundance, rather than a greed-identified agenda that peddles a specific ideology to people, will support win-win politics of living. Winners and losers and us and them kind of thinking that justifies oppressive policies and mentalities is segregationist because it pits people against each other by keeping us in pre-packaged boxes. At the end of the day, we all lose from that. But the chimes of freedom flashing in a New Aquarian Age of Diversity in Unity are blowing in the wind.

But if you deprive yourself of abundance due to your fears of greed (or fearing your own power in general), then you will be setting yourself up for the illusion of lack and an unfulfilling experience. The era of Energy Medicine, as the shamans called it, is awakening the inside-out transformation that we all need to make in order to change our world.

For example, eradicating our world of nuclear weapons, and other lethal weapons like guns isn’t a cure, but it would be a step in the right direction toward a more peaceful, co-regulative society that doesn’t shoot first and ask questions second. It should be clear that the country with the most weapons of mass destruction, militarization of the police or proliferation of mobster gangsters with the largest stockpile of military assault rifles shouldn’t be the voice of sound mental health. The more humanity awakens to and lives in the vibrational and dimensional shift of inner peace, the less we will see weaponry and violence in our world. Abundance will abound because it will naturally reveal itself as self evident.

Furthermore, we are collectively experiencing the death of an old age and moving through the early process of transitioning into a New Age and Paradigm. Many of you are awakening to these shifts within yourselves, as well as noticing these changes in the outer world. The wars, dog eat dog, widening gap between extreme wealth and poverty, or social darwinism kind of thinking are examples of the polarity consciousness that we need to heal in order to move forward. We are all interconnected strands in the Web of Life, like American Chief Seattle spoke of.

In much the same way as the Yin and Yang reveals to us about balance, opposites do attract and can work together in harmony. Non-binary and gender fluidity reflect this deeper form of consciousness so that we see that male and female, and light and dark energies are working together in harmony. People doing shadow work understand that we should not demonize our blind spots. We all have blind spots. They are just parts of our unexamined selves, which we tend to avoid because we are taught to be afraid of the dark. But when we look at our souls in an authentic way, we can allow the light to illuminate the shadows. One way to do this work is to notice any charges you get from certain people you know. Reflect on what trait they have that triggers you. Perhaps it is arrogance. Notice the arrogance in you. It’s just part of our collective humanity. Given this reflection, see if your charge to this trait relaxes over time. And try to be gentle and kind to yourself about it.

Additionally, a man and a woman can be attracted to each other, speak openly about their mutual attraction and yet not cross any lines or abuse boundaries. It’s perfectly natural. We have been programmed to believe that this is a forbidden fruit and off limits. Like it or not, traditional marriages are waning and changing forms, while polyamorous relationships are on the rise. People are feeling more safe to be who they are and out in the open about it.

Paradoxically, we see that laws are being proposed to keep people in the closet and roll back people’s rights. It isn’t about an anything goes mentality or a moral compass or values being gone with the wind. It’s about defining agreements and boundaries. But proceed with caution because regardless of what rules you set up, you can’t legislate feelings and attachments that might spring up because our actions have consequences. We should be mindful about what we want to bring down from the dreamtime.

When I think about the Aquarian Age, I think about the old Native American story about Deer climbing up the mountain to connect with the Great Spirit. As Deer is making their way toward the summit, they are confronted by a boogeyman-like demon that tries to use fear to scare Deer from continuing along the mountain to be with the Great Spirit. But Deer teaches us the power of a gentle, yet firm allurement toward new adventures.

Finally, the energy of Deer shows us the power of holding a gentle gaze coupled with a firm assertion that we all have the right to connect to a Higher Power, Love and Light and walk in co-regulative alignment with the Universe. Meditation on Deer can help you steer clear from fear-driven behavior and paranoia that you can picture in the Mirror of the Mind. We all have the sovereign right to connect with our Higher Selves and co-regulate with the Creator. Remember to breathe and focus on peaceful, calming thoughts. Don’t try to push away or cancel the other ones. Just watch them like clouds and let them pass with care.

May 9, 2023

Taking Life On Bull By The Horns

What’s next waiting behind the waving red flag?

Are my male and female energies aware of working together in a labor of love?

May our bodies listen to each other in collective coregulation.

New intentions breathe in new ways of being.

Facing the shadowy plight of our old selves back in the old world awakens possibilities moving

away from violence and control shifting into the dimension of inner peace.

We are all the Web of Life.

Becoming the change we want to see in the mirror of the mind.

Say, I Am co-creating Heaven on Earth;

One step, one moment, one breath at a time.

Ahhhhhh!

Summer, 2024

Weathering The Climate Of Change

It doesn’t take an acclaimed climatologist or gifted psychic reader to know that we are living in between the tides of old waves and new shorelines. Nobody really knows where we are going, not really. Truly, life is a mystery, but the unknown tidings of change reads like a foreign language. The future is unsettling for everyone. As the old world is fading further into the rearview mirror, the road ahead is simultaneously uncertain, not without its unpredictable ebbs and flows of chaos. The planet may be on fire, but out of the ashes, the phoenix rises. I like to think of this mythical creature as good medicine for meditation on the sacred feminine energies of life. The moon, starry night ceilings and playing music, to name a few playful feminine expressions of forms. Yet, I have come to see life as one big surprise birthday party. Or like Forrest Gump’s mom said, “life’s like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.” From that vantage point, it appears these internal fields offer more acceptance and less suffering, on the inside at least.

Additionally, the shamans of yesteryear called the matrix we are currently living in a hellish nightmare- even if cleverly cloaked in a Wizard of Oz like illusion. Our Indigenous ancestors recognized the sensuous Universe that we all belong to. Also, keep in mind that the Chinese symbol for crisis and opportunity is one and the same. There can be no yin without yang, no male without female, nor light without dark. If you look around beyond a cursory glance, notice the opposites of the same coin abound. In the tragedy of death, there is the romance of rebirth. Every breath we take to sustain life also leaves behind the wake of a dirge. It’s not about us and them, pro-life or pro-choice, democrats or republicans, rich or poor or black or white. Fighting the dark is just as stupid as fighting someone with different political views as you, although I can appreciate that kind of stupidity. Mad money is thrown at people to swim in that pool. Thankfully, the new age and paradigm we are moving into is about we and us, including self-awareness and self-expression within all that. How do we honor our Diversity Within Unity? How do we express our different forms within a unified field of interconnected oneness? Ah, such is the paradox of life. Might as well say yes to it.

Yes, we are living in confusing times. Of course we are because confusion is part of life. And we humans have been behaving in confusing ways for quite some time now, as in ways that are not in alignment with Nature. But then again, in much the same way as the mysterious places shorelines are- they are neither land nor sea but both. Shorelines reflect the sacred intersections of the spaces in between. Consider people who identify as non-binary, play with their fluidity of gender expression- or even transgender folks. These folks are merely expressing the shorelines of their souls. This is somewhat akin to the way a biracial person or person of mixed race, or a person getting in touch with a past life that matters might. You don’t have to pick and choose one side or the other. Like Dylan sang, “the line it is drawn, the curse it is cast.” Even where one side might appear dominant, there is some expression of minority. For example, the use of pronouns are a form of self-expression that, on a deeper level, are reflective of the soul’s desire to go beyond the 3-D realm. Again, what we are talking about here is the intrinsic identity of the soul and how it feels it needs to express itself. That’s why dreams are such an important vehicle for souls to travel. Moreover, lucid dreaming gives us power over our dreaming process, and what we might want to consciously co-create in our waking lives.

More importantly, every soul has multiple or sub-personalities living within their being. Just ask my past wife when those different pieces come out, and she would subsequently call me Sybil. I could get defensive or offended like my old self has done at times. But now I see the humor in this viewpoint, and even embrace it as an integrated gestalt of my humanity. Humor gets us to look at things differently and hopefully lightens us up. And people need to lighten up. On the soul level, we get to know ourselves on a deeper level. Most of who we are is a hidden, unexamined self that is formless and energetic. Regular meditators and people who consistently practice yoga and the internal martial arts tend to know this experience, although that is not always the case necessarily. Artists, athletes in the zone, dancers and people who have experienced peak experiences have sensed their soul’s recognition as well, even if the fleeting encounter quickly became lost in translation.

Furthermore, when the psychologist Carl Jung talked about the bisexuality and androgynous nature of humanity, he captured the sentiment using the terms anima and animus. Simply put, every man (animus) has a woman (anima) within his being and every woman (anima) has a man (animus) in her being. Most of our sexuality and its expression has nothing to do with sex. How do we make love with this sensuous Universe? It can be as simple as walking out in Nature and noticing a masculine aspect of yourself in a fiery red squirrel or the feminine contour of roots of a tree growing deeply into the underground. Maybe you see your reflection in a pool or water that awakens a new version of yourself that you didn’t notice before. What colors do you feel like wearing today? Am I the only half century old man that likes to play with his lightsaber in the backyard on a cold dark night? My sense is that there are other humans out there that like to walk around barefoot in the grass, along a sandy beach or gaze at the stars to connect to Heaven and Earth. What do you see out there?

Looking back when I was a kid on the playground, I acted out my humanity in different ways by chasing girls, listening to their gossip and watching them double dutch at recess, and playing tackle football, pretending to be a race car or truck, and king of the mountain with the boys. Little did I know that I was trying on different faces of the ego by clowning around in the classroom to see the garden variety of human reactions. These were all ways that my spirited behavior served to wake people up, myself included. Even in Kindergarten, I remember climbing as high as I could above the top of the slide and doing ‘cliffhangers’, by discovering the joy of hanging onto the railing, letting go and then falling to the ground and hitting it hard. While I enjoyed the shock jock value of the reactions of my peers, I loved the physical feeling of the blow, and then getting back up for more. Something in me intuitively knew that my constitution could handle it. But if I was someone else, I would have broken limbs, ribs and the like for certain.

Finally, the most significant and memorable out of body experience I remember (during my youth) was when I was playing High School football and I was running down the sidelines while carrying the ball. There was one guy in front of me, so I dipped my shoulder to deliver a blow, and then spun out of his tackle. Somehow, I kept my balance and could taste the end zone. But unbeknownst to me, I was in the dark about a guy that had been tracking me on angle pursuit. As soon as I spun out of the tackle, bam! The oncoming defender gave me what we call in football terms a ‘decleater’ by knocking me clear off my feet and on my ass. Nothing dirty about it, a clean hit in any era of the game. In fact, my old college football coaches used to incentivize these hits, and other big plays by giving out stickers to put on our helmets, for touchdowns, point after touchdowns, interceptions, fumbles and decleaters. Flat on my back, my soul had left my body and I wondered if I was dead. Thankfully I wasn’t, and after a few deep breaths, got my bearings, got back up and went back to the huddle for the next play. I’ve had the wind knocked out of me before and since, but not like that. Little did I know at the time that I was experiencing a form of soul travel and disentanglement from form, in a way that released my spirit. As I look back, the beauty of that moment was I was graced with the surprise of the winds of change. Something novel happened to me that I have since come to see as another unexpected pleasantry that I did not foresee in the script, if you’ll pardon the pun.

July 12, 2023

Weathering Changing Weather Patterns

The world may be on fire, and it’s the end of the world as we know it.

But out of the ashes, the Phoenix Rises . . .

Do you see the blessings of the curses?

Or . . .

The blessings of rebirth precipitated by the tragedy of death?

Self awareness and self expression are beacons of light in the shadowy dark corners of your soul.

May our dreams awaken our collective soul’s desire to expand awakening moments beyond the

3-D realm by manifesting deeper and higher collective consciousness.

Play outside and feel your feet on the ground.

The experience is growing. Let go and surrender to the will of the Universe.

The future will be different than the past. It always has been and always will be a different world.

Summer, 2024

SKYWRITING NEW CHAPTERS AND SNATCHING NEW GROWTH WITH HAWK

Everyone has a right to be happy.

These above words of wisdom landed on an authentic conversation between a coworker and I recently. Social emotional learning conversations like these between peers can be really supportive and healing in the school of life.

Life transitions can be an interesting intersection between grieving the death of our old self and the rebirth of a new chapter. In my case, going through the uncoupling process with my partner of nearly 30 years clearly represents an ending.

And then mixed with a budding new relationship has been quite a ride to say the least. Truly, there has been a Tsunami of tidal waves to surf, which has been a testament to my daily mindful meditation practice.

In much the same way as the Chinese Yin and Yang symbol, the Universe gives us the choice to see the obstacles that reveal themselves on our paths as either a crisis or an opportunity. They are both and it is how we move with their energies that counts.

Some old relationships evolve into a renewed sense of connectivity, while others fade into the backdrop because it’s just a natural time for them to die. It depends on what we are in alignment with or not.

There is always a little bit of dark in the light and a little bit of light in the dark. Meditation on the fluidity and interplay between these energies frees up consciousness. From this perch, we can perceive this perspective as a form of security within life’s transience, if only we allow for it.

The shifting shorelines of the changing seasons are like that, like how Winter is waning as Spring is arriving, in the Northern Hemisphere at least. In the Southern Hemisphere, Summer is waning, while Fall is arriving. The equinoxes reflect balance between masculine and feminine energies in Nature. Humanity is part of that.

The other day, a Hawk swooped down and rode along the top of my car; dangerously close to hitting my windshield. Hawk’s energies have particularly powerful connections to New Moons, and the Spring and Fall Equinoxes. The New Moon will be on March 10th, which will also mark Daylight Savings Time. The Spring and Fall Equinoxes will be on March 19th. Meditate on the mantra, out with the old, in with the new.

New Moons always reflect new beginnings.

What new beginnings are showing up in the mirror of your mind?

Hawk’s energies have connections to Mercury and can be viewed as messengers of the gods. Meditation is about paying purposeful attention to the signals revealed to us in our inner and outer worlds.

Everyday magic gives us the power to overcome life’s obstacles. Face them with awareness so that we can discover our truths.

The Universe sends us signs and synchronicities for us to notice and light our way. New beginnings are on the horizon. May we look upon them with gentle and mindful, yet open-hearted gazes.

May Hawk guide your spirit as close to the light of Grandfather Sun without getting scorched.

Hawk is symbolic, and based on the timing, is another example of a synchronicity from the universe, to help guide pathways and brighten the new beginnings of starting over.

Meditation on the mantra that everyone has the right to be happy, invites us to embrace mindfulness, be open to new beginnings or starting over, and finding meaning in both the light and dark.

March 10, 2024

Saying Yes To New Beginnings

Happiness is a way of life that invites a new lease on life that feels like starting over . . .

A general welfare opens up as within, so without.

Every breath we take reveals a transition of death and rebirth.

In the crisis of endings a discovery of opportunity sits on the horizon.

The mythical quest reveals energetic connections in alignment with the Law of Attraction.

There are no secrets.

Security builds when our souls become anchored into our footprints that disappear into the ebb

and flow of the tides.

When one door closes, another door opens.

See the extraordinary in the ordinary everyday moments.

A simple perceptual shift reveals magical mystery tours in consciousness.

May Grandfather Sun light our way without getting too scorched.

Without darkness, there could be no light.

Summer, 2024

Still The Dark Night Walks In Sunlight

I see a past life connection in your eyes

And yet here we are standing right Tao

I see a past life connection in your eyes

Now is all we have right now

When your rat scurries from the comfortable woodpile in the darkness of twilight

The spider in me gets out her pen to write

The thunder sounds and the lightning strikes

And still the dark night walks in sunlight

Well I had a whale of a time docking in your shores

And yet I stayed anchored in with my first mate

Well I had a whale of a time docking in your shores

My urges are tidal and my waters a perfect storm

Now here I sit while gazing on the lake

Wondering if you’re if you’re thinking of me while lying awake

The clouds roll in and the lightning strikes

And still the dark night walks in sunlight

There’s an echo in a hidden crevasse

Calling out from the Great Void I’ve heard before

There’s an echo in a hidden crevasse

A rapturous choir I’ll sing some more

I’ve been hiking these trails with one foot in spirit, one foot in ground

Gazing o’er summits once lost and found

The wind cries out and the butterflies take flight

And still the dark night walks in sunlight

Now I’m making my way down from the mountaintop

A message from Mother Nature I’ll share with you all

Sending peace out tweets to my peeps in the woods

Mother Nature’s direction I can’t foretell

The past is gone and the future’s undone

But here we stand in Unity as One

The sun will rise and the moon shines

And still the dark night walks in sunlight

August, 2013