Fire Outside, Fire Inside

This past weekend, I went to the Colorado Symphony, and the featured soloist was a young violinist named Augustin Hadelich. Prior to this, I was not familiar with his work. He was stunning. Just my impression? Consider this. Someone else thinks so much of his playing that they let him use their Stradivarius.

The audience was so appreciative of his performance that he also did something quite uncommon. He returned to the stage and performed an encore, solo.

But there is more to this story than just the fact that a superb musician can create phenomenal sounds using a rare and valuable instrument.

When he came on stage, my first impression was that his makeup was very strange. As he cradled the violin, I could see scar tissue on his neck. Suddenly it came to me that he must have been burned in a fire.

So I looked him up on the web when I got home. He has been playing since he was 5. His family is German, and he lived on a farm in Tuscany with his parents. When he was 15, some diesel fuel caught fire and burned his face, his body and his bow arm. Doctors thought that he might never be able to play again. He had 20 operations and spent 2 years healing. Now, he performs with great orchestras all over the world. Perhaps there is a touch of irony to his selection of works by Beethoven and Paganini that evening, reflecting the roots of the German family living in Italy. I choose to think that there are no coincidences in this story.

And all this has happened just in his first 27 years.

It is stunning, isn't it? What humans can do, even in the face of great adversity exceeds stories that the imagination could conjure up.

How strong must a person's will be to come back and make world class music after surviving such intense damage and pain?

Of course, the doctors must have performed their roles exceptionally as well. Yet, even though they restored his body, his spirit had to be restored in order to be able to perform at this level. Was it the power of music that helped him recover? Or was it something else? Maybe this will remain a mystery.

Or perhaps the fire inside was even more powerful than the fire outside.

Magic in Action

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" said Arthur C. Clarke.

It is easy to see how that refers to cell phones, computers, ipods, TVs, and other things that represent a quantum leap forward to an older generation, although less amazing to a younger generation.

People can easily agree on this.

Yet, when we look at less physical aspects of our lives, it seems more magical. For example, have you ever noticed how when you are thinking of things, they just seem to manifest? You think about a subject, and here is a book on it, found in an unexpected way, and unexpected place.

Many people have had the experience of thinking of someone, then suddenly they call. How about thinking that you would like to do something, and here is an opportunity to do it?

Yet, when it comes to bigger things, like creating a more satisfying way of getting income, our belief is often that the results are in someone else's hands.

How funny. One person imagines a new product, creates it and makes money from it, and we do not see that as magic. It is simply hard work. Another person imagines a piece of writing, or a picture, or sculpture and creates it, and it seems amazing that someone could have created music or art that beautiful, a product of imagination, rather than hard work. Why is it different?

Maybe we should quit thinking of it as work. Think of it as something we would like to do that we could make money from. Our income would grow simply from doing something we would enjoy doing anyway.

I don't mean just the obvious easy choices like mattress tester or marijuana taster.

I mean someone has fun walking dogs for other people. Someone else has fun by doing custom woodwork. Someone has fun by tuning up cars. Someone has fun by doing psychic readings or energy healing. Someone has fun by designing computer programs. Someone has fun being a landscaper or a farmer. Someone has fun cooking.

How many times have you come across a new product or service and thought, "I wish I would have thought of that." Maybe you did think of it, but you didn't do it.

So let the magic play out. Think of what you can do or would like to do and focus on it and see how much support the universe provides. All magic starts with imagination, then the rest flows from there.

What Went Right

Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday where the whole idea is to give thanks for all the good things we have received in life. What a beautiful and simple thing to do.

Notice how it puts a smile on your face and magnetizes you for more good things to come.

Often when people look back on their life, they remember things that went wrong, mistakes they made and they think to themselves, if only I had that to do over. That kind of thinking could lead into a downward spiral just as easily as an upward spiral.

So, instead, think about the things that went right, the times in your life when everything came together and you got great results. Notice how you experience an upward spiraling of energy.

Re-groove your thoughts to focus on what went right and look for ways to do more of that. And give some time and energy to those people in your life who helped things go right.

Take few moments to review and look for the victorious moments. Remember how it felt and begin to experience that feeling again. Those feelings will lead to actions, and the actions will bring results.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Our Free Will

Did you ever consider the mystery of our free will? It is the essence of why some people are atheists. The logic is there, because if we have the free will to decide what to do with our lives, what does the existence of some divine beings matter?

I am not arguing for atheism, simply looking at the topic from many angles. No matter where we are in life right now, for better or worse, it is a result of our free will. Our choices.

I personally do believe in the divine, the supernatural and believe that there are mysteries in life we cannot explain. And the whole question of what life will be like after we die is something we will never know until we get there. I don't know what to believe abou all those stories, but I certainly am not worrying about them now.

Beliefs are powerful things. They are motivators for us. We draw courage from them. Some people draw fear from their beliefs, and guilt. Other people draw joy from theirs. Whatever your beliefs, they will propel your actions.

So our free will represents our ability to either act on one set of beliefs we have formed and stick with it, or since our beliefs can also change over time as a result of our life experience, then our free will is our expression of our beliefs.

When we look at our own life, what we are seeing is the result of our free will choices and where they have brought us. Now consider that we can always change our beliefs and our free will choices, and thus we can change our lives. Right now.

We always have free will, both in wonderful situations and desperate situations. It is interesting to observe how sometimes our free will choices seem to contradict our beliefs, but of course, that is never so. Our free will choices can be nothing other than our acting on our beliefs, and our expressions of our selves. And, of course, we always have the ability to change both beliefs and free will. Most of us have. Some by a little, some by a lot.

How do you see your choices?

Little Gratitude, Big Gratitude

I am sure that the people whose houses were not burned are grateful, and having gratitude for something that big is a given.

But every day we have a chance to be grateful for little things, ideas that we acted on and turned out well, the $1 winner on the lottery ticket, the news that our car really won't cost much to fix.

When we follow a pattern of gratitude for little things, the big things just follow.

Our successes are rarely made up of one big lucky hit. More often, our successes come as a result of all the little things we did right, all the people who helped us think of those little, beneficial, creative ideas we found useful.

Each day, as we take another step toward building a successful business and making our dreams come true, a little bit of gratitude primes the pump for big refreshing flow to come.

What we discover is that all the little things we have to be grateful for adds up to bigger successes.

You Just Never Know

True to form on the Fool's Journey is the simple fact that he just moves on with his journey, experiencing life and the only thing he knows for sure is that he does not know everything.

I have been maintaining my focus on my career path, and even though I have taken steps that some might think foolish, such as dropping out of some events and deciding not to do others, I have opened up space in my schedule.

Interestingly, into that space have come other appointments and opportunities, sometimes from past customers, some from referrals, and just some from "out there" who initiated contact through my blog or a website I am on.

You just never know.

I have learned by doing that some of my advertising dollars are well spent and some are totally wasted. A long time ago, someone said "I know that half of my advertising budget is wasted. I just don't know which half."

You just never know.

Of course, we can all our own common sense to look at the track records of certain events or the logistics of the deal and make decisions accordingly. Still, there will be things we just don't know.

And as we continue on our path there are not only adventures, but surprises. Those "out there" responses are still the result of energies we put in motion. Strangers contact us because we put ourselves out there where they could find us.

Even setbacks are opportunities to put fresh energy into our efforts as we decide what to cut, what to strengthen and what to rebuild.

I am focused on my goal and proceeding toward it. That draws energy into the path. Have you noticed the same thing with yours?

Dreams of Dreams

Are our dreams within our reach or are they really farther removed than that? Why is it that when we wake up in the midst of an awesome dream, we lay for a moment savoring the parts we remember?

While still in the thrall of a dream, we can see all the beautiful developments, and then we tell ourselves that it is not real, it is only a dream. Yet, there are ways to make dreams real.

What has been the energy of the other world in our mind is simply what we are stirring up before they have materialized in our daily life. In the in between dream state, we sense that we can reach out and touch the others in our dream. We sometimes find ourselves riding around town or to a little place in the country, along the beach, into the woods or up a mountain road to a place where we just came to enjoy the sensations. And in time we feel those vibrations and discover that some of the clothes from our dream fit real nice and some of the things we thought about doing are now what we are doing.

So as your energy settles down, look at how it is moving and how you would like it to move. Yes, that dream state that is still within arm's reach.

When we give our sleep guardians various offerings to help us sleep, other gateways open, yet these dreams are also within arm's reach of our waking state. And some days we feel like we can reach out and touch them, and live in them. You see, there is not such a great distance between the world of our dreams and the world of our conscious living. We just have to reach for it, and close the gaps between the two dreams, the dream of life, and the dream of dreams.

13, the Number of the New Order

Today being Friday the 13, there is a lot of folklore and superstition associated with Friday the 13. Today we are experiencing the only one we will have this year. Last year 9 times the 13 fell on a Friday.

Two of the myths that suggest to a lot of people that 13 is a bad luck number is the story from the Christian myth of the Last Supper where Judas was the 13th guest, after the 12 apostles. In Norse mythology, there was also a huge feast of 12 gods going on when the 13th, Loki, arrived.

Judas gave the signal that turned Christ over to the Romans for his execution, while Loki's mischief resulted in the death of Balder, the sun god. Both were catalysts for great change.

The Judas kiss changed everything. Without it, Christ might have continued being an itinerant teacher and healer for who knows how long. Maybe his followers would have been loosely organized with no centralized authority, like Buddhists. But the crucifixion, resurrection and the merging of politics and religion under Constantine, complete with the establishment of the HQ of the church in the lap of the HQ of the Roman Empire changed the whole trajectory of that story.

For those of you with an irreverent sense of humor, check out Tom Robbins' novel, Another Roadside Attraction, where he speculates that the apostles really stole the body and hid it, then told everybody that Christ ascended so that they would have a more powerful story to build their new religion on.

Another religious story that pivots on Friday the 13 is when King Philip of France ordered the arrest of all the Knights Templar on that date, cementing the place of that date in history and kicking off a whole new generation of secret societies and conspiracy theories.

The story of Balder is also a game changer. Frigg, Balder's mother, and Balder both had a prophetic dream of Balder's death. She asked every creature and plant to agree not to hurt him. She neglected to secure a pledge from mistletoe because it seemed insignificant. At the feast, the other gods were playing a game of seeing how impervious Balder was to all assaults. Loki, however, knew about mistletoe and his mistletoe spear killed Balder. Frigg sent a messenger to Hel, the keeper of souls after death, to ask for his release. She agreed to do so if every creature in the world would mourn for him. All agreed, except one, so Hel stipulated that he could only return after Ragnarok, the battle at the end of the world which destroys everything and kills all the old gods, clearing the way for a whole new world to be born, and with new gods to rule it, led by Balder, the Bright and Shining One.

I do not regard 13 or Friday 13 as bad luck.

Some people refuse to travel on Friday 13, more than 80 percent of high-rise buildings lack a 13th floor. Many airports skip the 13th gate. Hospitals and hotels regularly have no room number 13.

Some numerologists consider 12 a complete number. There are 12 months in a year, 12signs of the zodiac, 12 gods of Olympus, 12 labors of Hercules, 12 tribes of Israel, and 12 apostles. In exceeding 12 by 1, the 13 association with bad luck has to do with just being a little beyond completeness.

But remember that there are different ways to do numerology. In simple numerology, the number 13 becomes 4, the number of foundation and order.

13 has as many good connotations as bad.

We do well to remember that before the church changed the calendar to what we use now, we did not have all these months with odd numbered days. We had 13 months that were all equal in length, consisting of a 4 week moon cycle.

Traditional witches formed their covens with a membership of 13, bringing yet another spiritual perspective to the number.

There are 13 stripes on the American flag. In the Great Seal of the United States there are 13 olive leaves (with 13 olives), 13arrows, and 13 stars. These form a triangle over the eagle with the number 13 on each point. On the reverse the pyramid has 13 levels.

A baker's dozen contains 13 items.

Apollo 13 was the only manned spaceflight intended to land on the moon that failed in its mission. However, the courage and ingenuity of the men aboard resulted in all of them returning safely to earth, becoming a story of great inspiration, rebounding from the potentially fatal results of the explosion of an oxygen tank. Its fame has eclipsed other missions in which everything went as planned.

So you see, there is more to suggest that 13 can lay the groundwork for strength and new beginnings as there is to suggest that it is bad luck.

Surrender

There are times when we exert our will to get what we want, and there are times when we just surrender. After we have made bold and valiant effort, moments follow when you just thank god and goddess and the world that you have had this life so far and be open to the results you get. Surrender is that delicious moment where you are waiting, expectant and floating.

The time to move again will come soon enough. When we pause for a moment, we can feel the energy moving around us and through us.

Surrender deeply into the night. Let sleep come. Open the gates to the dreamworld and let us see where we go next.

Surrender and refresh yourself before the next wave of action gathers momentum. We will need our energy to go with it.

Surrender.

Our Schedule as a Garden

Sometimes the key to greater success is knowing when to quit something as well as when to start. For example, during this year, I took a careful look at which of the fairs and festivals were producing the best and worst results for me, and that made it easy to decide which events to keep doing and which ones to erase from my schedule.

While I considered the fact that this would leave some openings in my schedule, I decided that I would be comfortable with those open days, using some of the time to investigate other opportunities plus just allowing some downtime for rest and for fun.

I had a feeling that there were other opportunities out there, but sometimes my schedule was just too full to check them out, and sometimes the events that were filling up my time were not productive.

So here I am, half way through the year, and this strategy has produced better results than the previous year.

I am also in the process of cleaning out my email address book and reconnecting with people, and this effort is already bearing fruit, although I still have a long way to go.

Networking and brainstorming with other people has been a valuable part of this process, providing valuable inspiration and ideas.

It is a trap that we can fall into to think that if we are busy all the time that we will get the most results. That is only a partial truth. Being busy is good, but not all things are worth an equal effort.

Managing your schedule like tending a garden. Plant beds need to be weeded (Wait a minute! Not those weeds!) and pruned (trimming off the dead branches) in order to provide more room for new growth, and watered (giving your friends a little nourishment) so that they have material to create with when they draw down the sunlight and weave it into new greenery, flowers and edibles. Yes, it is even easier to find a few spots where we might even add a few more flowers now, and isn't that delightful? Just for the sheer variety of color, texture or fragrance.

It's easier to recognize what needs to be done using this example, isn't it? We can keep our schedule full of the activities we have been doing, and it is not until we stop and consider where our greatest growth has come that we recognize our next best area to focus on.

Our bodies are gardens, our schedules are gardens, our connections are gardens. Tend them and enjoy the beauty that flows and the results you receive.

Structures from Silence

Often, there is so much noise in the world that it is hard for us to digest the changes that we are encountering. Courage is required for our progress in uncertain times. There are times when we feel compelled to act quickly.

Then there are times when our best next move is to be silent, sense our feelings toward our next choice and let our intuition guide us toward the choice that is best for us.

In that silence we will sense our next best move, our best position, and we gather our strength to take the next step. As we look at each option in our mind's eye, we will be able to feel which one is stronger, and that is the one that is signaling us to come forward.

Quiet contemplation allows our spirit guides to work with us better. If an idea keeps coming back to us, that is one sign. If we keep getting a yes when we hold it in our inner vision, there is a warmth that illuminates our path and ignites our passion.

The silence is the breath that we blow on an ember to coax it to burst into flames and renew our light, our heat, our desire, our vision. Once that fire has warmed us, our next breath is the fuel that sets us in motion.

Memorial Day Reflections

Memorial Day is a time to remember and honor our military veterans who have died in service to our country. It is important to have a strong military force in place to defend ourselves.

Ironically, this weekend two important milestones relate to this particular holiday. As of this weekend, 1,000 members of the military have died in Iraq, and we have spent one trillion dollars on that war. All of which, in my opinion, was unnecessary. There was no good reason to wage a war in Iraq. What have we actually purchased with those 1,000 lives and one trillion dollars?

How would I define a justifiable war? When Pearl Harbor was attacked, we rose up in self defense. People agreed that we needed to get up and defend ourselves. Private industry mobilized to support the military. Women worked in factories while men went off to fight. People accepted rationing as necessary. Everyone pulled together for a victory, and so there was one.

We did not win a decisive victory in Korea or Vietnam, I think because that unity that existed in World War 2 was missing. There was no unanimous agreement that we should be in those wars. During the Vietnam War, there were major public protests to end the war.

Why were there no such massive protests against the Iraq War? Because there has not been a draft since Vietnam. When we were all likely to be drafted to go and risk our lives in Vietnam, both the young men and many of their friends and families protested. During the Iraq War, there is no draft and all of us are not likely to go there and risk our lives unless we volunteer to do so. That leaves many people to simply ignore it.

With all due respect for the courage and dedicated service of our military men and women, the milestones pose very pertinent questions. Why do something we do not have to do, as individuals or as a country?

When the subject of providing health care coverage for all citizens, one of the objections is that we could not afford to do that. Some people object to increasing unemployment compensation even as many American businesses have moved their operations to countries where they can hire cheaper labor.

Yet, if all that is too much for us to afford, how do we find the money to pay for a Vietnam War or and Iraq War? it seems to me that if we can find a million dollars in our budget to create a war in Iraq, we could find money in our budget to provide health care for everyone, provide educational opportunities for everyone at a reasonable cost, and provide the safety net of unemployment compensation. A trillion dollars could buy a lot more life affirming things.

We should still maintain a military for self defense. For example, why not have them guard our airports and train stations, and public spaces?

In another development this week, more troops were sent to the border areas to try and prevent drug gang violence from becoming as common here as it is in the Mexican border towns. But there is a practical solution there too. If we were to simply legalize drugs, there would be no traffic for the cartels to fight over, and their reason for being would evaporate overnight. We could bring an end to that violence without using force.

I suggest that we reflect on the wiser use of our resources and make decisions which will contribute to peace. I know that some may say that these suggestions are too idealistic, but think about it. Instead of buying a war in Iraq, we could have bought health care, education and a safety net for our neediest people. And we can defuse another war by simply changing one of our laws, swiftly ending a wave of murders, tortures and corruption. Seems like a better buy to me.

So let us honor our military people by bringing them home from unnecessary wars and using our power to take better care of our own people.

The Edge Between What Was and What Will Be

The edge between here and there is always a fine line. The naked truth is that the walls going up at my day job sets the fact in concrete that there will not be people coming back into the room to work once the construction is complete.

My naked ambition is about making a living doing something I love. That would be the optimum situation for everyone, wouldn't it?

On this fine edge is simply the question of the jumping off point. When you do not have a big nest egg to carry you, and no one else to pay your way until your new business really starts to fly, when do you make your move?

I have talked to other people who were forced into accelerating the development of their businesses when the corporation they were working for offshored their jobs. They were not planning on going for it at that very moment, but when the choice is to go for it or try and find another job in another corporation, the incentive is very compelling and everything contributes to the momentum.

Creating a new business forces a person outside of their comfort zone in order to create a successful venture that can support them. The exception to this, of course, would be the person who has enough of a financial cushion so that they can live well no matter how the business performs. If a person is so insulated, their drive will be less. When a person must generate enough to not only succeed, but to live well, necessity becomes the mother of invention. The well of creativity is visited and drunk from daily.

Sometimes we seek to have enough of the way smoothed for us or enough of a cushion in case we fall, but sometimes circumstances force us to sink or swim on short notice. Sometimes with that much drive to survive kicking in, people dig deep and find the way to succeed.

Some people get to choose when to jump off the edge, and some get pushed. Either way, once off the edge, you have to hit the ground running.

I take a moment to give thanks for everything I have received so far, and how well things have worked out, and I balance on the edge, sensing the right time to use my skills and get a handle on the art of negotiating the edge once more.

It Is What It Ain't

A common phrase is "It is what it is" but sometimes a thing "is what it ain't."

Often this saying is one of resignation, an assumption that you can't do anything about it. But consider this.

One person may be looking at this thing they consider useless, but another person uses it to create a work of art. I have seen old, discarded, worn out car tires become insulation for a house. What used to be a moving part on a vehicle is now filled with dirt and keeping somebody's house warm. The fact that that old tire is not fit to be on a car again does not mean it can't be useful.

Have you ever seen a mosaic made out of old glass bottles set in concrete? Ever seen a wind chime made out of old bottles?

Next time you go to a costume party, notice how some of the most creative costumes might be creations made from what used to be fashionable clothing.

Sometimes we find ourselves in a day job that is a lot less of everything we ever wanted. But it may just be the place that inspires us to make our move into what we really want to do next. That might be the universe's way of showing us how to take the old flat tire and do something completely different with it.

There are times in our life when we learn what we want by being certain of what we don't want. And there are times when creative people recognize where there is an opening for a new opportunity by recognizing what is not working and then finding something that will work.

When our old jobs, our old careers can no longer go on as they were, creative people look for ways to create different opportunities, or at least be open to the fact that there are other opportunities. Sometimes we find that these offer us an opening that was not there before.

Eyes wide open, ears wide open, sometimes knowing that "it is what it ain't" is the key to joy, creativity. recognition and satisfaction.

Take Heart, Take Part!

Courage is on display when a person proceeds with their desires even in the face of doubt or fear. When doubt or fear cause a person to summon their strength, that is when see courage. If we have an opportunity to engage in a venture in which there is a guaranteed return, no courage is required. If we enter into a contest with a person in a subject or skill in which we are certain that we are superior, no courage is required. Doing the sure thing is sometimes the wise choice, but courage is another matter.

It is at those moments when we have doubts about whether we can do something, but we press ahead anyway, that we are acting with courage. If we are afraid that we might fail and we take a deep breath and step forward to meet that challenge, that is courage. Courage stimulates those hormones that can boost strength and propel us through those barriers we were doubtful about.

Courage is all about heart. It can involve physical strength, but the real momentum comes from the heart. When we are doing what we love or pursuing an ardent desire, we are following the lead of the heart, and when we do that we discover hidden reserves of strength. Enthusiasm can manifest positive results in the physical realm.

Take heart and take the lead. Courage means that it is not always easy, but it is always worth it. Discover joy and strength when you live life to the fullest. Courage is not about who has the biggest muscles, it is about who has the biggest heart, and is willing to act like it.

Magic Mushroom Medicine

Chemist Albert Hofmann discovered LSD in 1938 but didn't take his first trip until he accidentally took a taste of it five years later, in 1943, opening a whole new era of drug research.

It should be noted that shamans all around the world had been using various hallucinogenic plants for healing purposes for millennia. But the discovery of LSD opened a new chapter on clinical research into hallucinogens. One of the first uses of it was to treat various forms of mental illness, including alcoholism. Then when the military and CIA discovered it, they tried using it in various covert experiments, which may or may not have been combined with psychic experiments, known as the MK Ultra Program. Whether or not one set of experiments led directly to another or whether they were tangential, there were subsequent experimental programs, including what is known today as Remote Viewing. Although the world had heard of Hofmann's research, the military experiments were not known to the public at that time. The linkage between hallucinogenic drugs and the expansion of the psyche have long been linked.

And then came another group of people who became very excited about the possibilities of hallucinogens. The exuberance of people some of those early researchers like Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (later to become Ram Dass)was scorned by various regulators and by other people in academia. In this same time period came the books of Carlos Castaneda, who gave much of the American reading public their first exposure to the subject of shamanism and the use of various "plant allies." Hallucinogens became the recreational drugs of choice for a generation of young people, and given that, serious further research came to a halt for decades.

40 years later, things look different again. Today, researchers are excited about the possible uses of hallucinogens in treating depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and post traumatic stress disorder. Johns Hopkins Medical School, University of Arizona, Harvard, New York University, the University of California, Los Angeles among others are now researching the usefulness of psilocybin, which is found in certain types of mushrooms, in treating these disorders.

These schools are using money from private non-profit foundations to fund the research. During the last 40 years the growth of hospice movement, the broad acceptance of meditation practices, and perhaps the growing success of the medical marijuana movement are all contributing to a more receptive environment to this type of research now.

How many times have we seen this pattern in history, when the first people to advocate a new concept are ridiculed, then later validated.

Several years ago, I was listening to an interview with another advocate for hallucinogens, Terence McKenna, who had gone in a bit different direction than Leary. In fact, you might say he sort of extended the early work, as one of the people who also championed traditional shamanic substances, such as ayahuasca, which has also become quite well known in the last couple of decades.

McKenna, who was a serious student of the subject, but also quite witty, answered the interviewer's question about the value of hallucinogens. I am paraphrasing from memory here. McKenna said, "We can talk about enlightenment for the next hundred years. We can put it on cereal boxes and milk cartons. But the only thing I know of that can make a person's consciousness stop and turn on a dime is a psilocybin mushroom."

Like marijuana, we appear to be approaching a time when hallucinogens will be seen not only as a recreational drug or a spiritual sacrament, but also as a powerful healing agent.

Willing Green Energy into the Grid

Common sense would suggest that instead of saying that it green energy has some problems that need to be worked out like bringing down the cost of components and figuring out more efficient ways to store the energy, or making some additions or modifications to the energy grid, that we go ahead with it and find solutions to those problems.

We do know that it is cleaner and healthier for us to get energy from the wind and sun than continuing to burn coal and oil.

If something is worth doing, we put our energy into achieving our goal. Certainly creating and constructing cleaner ways to provide electricity for everyone is a worthy goal. Add to that the additional benefit of utilizing our own natural resources rather than having to import oil, or at least import a lot less of it, would be a very large benefit.

We didn't let the fact that it was expensive prevent us from developing a space program or a more hi-tech military.

We didn't let the fact that it was expensive prevent us from building an interstate highway system or making electricity available to everyone in the country. We ran telephone cables to every town in the country. We ran cable so that most places in the country can get internet and cable TV, and those who don't have access to cable have access through satellite hook ups.

Now that cell phones are the new technology, we found ways to provide reliable cell phone service everywhere. Did the fact that it was complicated or expensive prevent companies from inventing better portable music players? Better cell phones? Or microwave ovens for cooking?

Even within the oil technology, when one method of drilling oil was not productive, they invented other methods of drilling. We just need to exert the will to go ahead with it and do it. Our creative abilities will help us find solutions just like they have in other fields.

If we could apply our ingenuity and our will to create solutions to these other large tasks, why not apply them now to creating a better system of providing energy?

Do we have the will to create a green energy grid? Where there is a will, there is a way.

New Energy

I am just thinking out loud.

How many people might be put to useful work if we really tried to build as many windmills, solar panels and other methods of generating energy by working with nature?

If some kinds of adjustments to the existing energy grids are necessary, how many people might be employed in every state, county and city doing this work?

If we really devoted our minds and muscles to creating this reality, how much could we decrease our dependence on oil and coal as a source for power?

After these things are built, how many people would be employed maintaining these new types of energy generating stations?

Could this be one of the best ways to employ people while producing something we would all use? Since we all need electricity, and there have been significant advances in technology, why not pursue this even more?

I do not know the answers to these questions, but I am willing to bet that the answer would be that it would be beneficial to pursue this course of action, and that many decent paying jobs would be created and the end result would produce something we would all use and enjoy.

What are the prospects that this will happen sooner than later?

Coming Back to Life

Coming back to life has one resonance as the return of spring and the ancient fertility rituals that celebrate this fact of life. Pagans reawakened the earth with dancing singing and sexual pleasure to create sympathetic magic in the fields and gardens, imparting their energy to the reawakening of the earth and inspiring the growth of the spring planting.

The early church overlaid the story of Christ's Resurrection over the old Estara or Ostara rituals to celebrate the idea of his rising from the dead. Of course, for those who can entertain other perspectives and the quirky humor of author Tom Robbins, in Another Roadside Attraction, he spins a tale about how the early disciples snatched the body from the tomb and hid it and then told everyone he rose from the dead, in order to build up the religion around the Christ story. Robbins uses his wit to poke fun at all kinds of ideas in his books.

On another note, there is also a coming back to life that we often need to do after we face a serious setback. A death in the family, a loss of a job, end of a relationship, bankruptcy, or any number of other difficult developments that can set us back in life can sometimes send a person into a withdrawal or retreat from life. A person can get depressed over such things.

To rebound from such things, often a personal ritual is needed to signal to body, mind, spirit and emotions that you are back and ready to be back. Engaging in a symbolic act signals to your self and the universe that you are done with your period of mourning and are ready to spring back into action.

Spring Equinox is the tipping point and the Easter rituals reaffirm this message. Time to bounce back. Time to move from darkness into light. There are all kinds of ways to do this. Love, laughter, music, dance, all kinds of things can work. At this time of year, the symbols of coming back to life are all around us. We just have to activate them.

Drafting Peace

I was looking at some old photos from the 1960s today on a website, and that prompted some thoughts on what happened then.

For example, there were some huge peace demonstrations to end the war in Vietnam back then and I participated in many of them myself. Why? Simple. Back then we had the draft, whioh meant that every male over the age of 18 was required to register and having done so, you could be ordered to report for duty in the army and sent to Vietnam. Guys I knew were dying in Vietnam as soon as the summer we graduated from high school. And for what?

The simple fact of the draft gave both young men and their parents cause to be concerned, and brought many to the demonstrations.

Many people, when considering the question of whether they would be willing to die for Vietnam, decided that they would not. Eventually, popular opinion caused our politicians to end the war.

Which brings us to the present day. There were no massive demonstrations when either of the Bushes were launching wars in Iraq. Why not? Because there is no draft, so all young men are not in danger of being shipped to Iraq to face possible sudden death or permanent injury. If there was still a draft there would have been large protests.

Support is stronger for the war in Afghanistan because the terrorists who were responsible for 9/11 had training camps in that country, and there is a lot of agreement that retaliating against them is the correct thing to do.

When we don't have a vested interest in an action or series of events, we are less concerned about how it turns out. If we don't personally have to go and fight in a war, then how it goes is somebody else's problem.

At the root of that activism and idealism in the 60s was a very personal interest in making the world a better place. We cannot control what everyone else in the world does, but we can control what we do. I still look forward to a time when we are not involved in any war with anyone.

Here is a related thought. If we consider terrorists to be enemy combatants then we are elevating a handful of deranged suicidal people to the level of worthy adversary.

If we were to treat them instead as criminals to be tracked down, the violence would be smaller and more contained. If coordinated police and military forces tracked down mad bombers, saboteurs, kidnappers and murderers and treated them as such, they would have a much harder time portraying themselves as heroes.

Another current example is the horrendous spate of killings by the drug cartels in Mexico who are fighting for the rights to be our illegal drug suppliers. So now there is talk about lending military aid to the Mexican government to try and end this carnage. However, legalizing drugs would end the carnage more quickly and efficiently than a fleet of helicopters and battalions of soldiers.

Apprehending criminals rather than declaring wars could be a better way to do what needs to be done. So we can act in our own self defense and work toward peace at the same time. We can do it.