I am a reflection of our collective insanity. Or maybe our collective insanity is a reflection of what is inside of me and a lot of other people. My whole life I have wanted to purify myself. Get rid of the “bad” parts. Be perfect. I have been striving for perfection. I have been rejecting myself as I am.

I have been using all of my practices to poke at myself. I have been punishing myself with “spirituality”. I have used my breath to beam into those darkened places in myself not with love, but with an intent to rid myself of that which I don’t accept. No wonder a lot of what I have been expressing in my music has been anguished. I have been doing it to myself.

OK. Again, I begin at the beginning. But maybe I can learn that that is a wonderful place to be. Maybe I can learn that that is all I will ever have. Maybe I will learn that that is actually everything.

I feel the need to apologize for being so plain in expressing that which may seem strange. This has been the case for me since I can remember. But I am who I am. I think I need to begin to accept that and be who I am without apology. Maybe that is part of what has kept me from speaking. Or writing lyrics. I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. I want people to accept me. But I need to be honest about who I am.

I finally sat down and began to use a method that my dear friend suggested to help me find words in a non-linear, non-reductionist??? way. An expansive way. A way that plops me right down into the ocean and lets the waves throw the words to me. We’ll see. I’ll let you all know.

And I do think that that is key. What good is any work that any of us do that comes from a place of fear or lack?

I have a bunch of projects on my plate that are just wonderful. And I am working with each incrementally. But developing confidence is difficult for me. I hold myself back.

I have said before that connections with people are important to me. I am working on the assumption that it may be important to others also. I hope to find other people who will come out and work on community projects. With the changes coming on, I believe that it will become very clear how much we need each other. Two things that I am just beginning to work on are

1. A community center of some sort to fill whatever needs seem apparent, maybe a community garden, a simple gathering place where people can come together in my community and just talk. A place for the kids to hang out, who knows? I hope to get some folks together to talk about what is needed.

2. A community dialogue approaching the problem of local economy and how to shore up the ground up economy instead of it being so very dependent on top-down structures.

Am I getting myself in over my head? Maybe. But I guess I don’t have to do anything perfectly. Just trying and then continuing to try is key. These ideas were easy to come up with. Contacting a few people and getting a couple of wheels turning was easy. But how about the slogging work? This is where I will need to have courage and find compassion for myself. But I’ve got to try and then I’ve got to continue to try.

Some things feel good. Some things don’t. Are these feelings based on ideation? Not always. If I really get clear, patterns emerge which seem to be more than just my conception. Or maybe not. I do my best. We all do our best. Like following the notes of music that come. But why do they come the way they do? I don’t know. Is it me or is it something beyond me? I don’t have any way of knowing.

If I stop identifying myself as the creator, it is so freeing. I can give up the guilt and the responsibility. I don’t have to think about it any more. Then I can just be. Be what? Be a little baby just taking her first steps.

But I can’t seem to capture it. The darkness falls in on me and I am alone and crying again. I give up and realize that I am only an infant. It is OK. God is picking me up and holding me. I guess over time I will understand.

Whether I choose to admit it or accept it or not, I am in this life. I am in this body which is in this skin sitting on this very chair. I do spend my time in certain ways which certainly can be looked at from a myriad of perspectives, but I can’t get away from the fact that perspectives exist and whether you look from this angle or that, you are limited within a point of view.

At least until I get beyond the fear of it all and let the waves carry me. But how do I explain that to myself or anyone else? I don’t know what that means.

Forget that. Love. Focus on the love and it doesn’t matter. The love carries you through the lines and definitions carrying you from limitation to expansion on more and more beautiful waves of experience.

Again, I don’t know what that means. But I won’t try too hard to figure it out.

I have had a real disdain for business. For vocations. But I only have had disdain for vocations because I think of them as business. The exchange of money. I think of it as being a grasping, greedy, cut-throat activity where people are looking at each other as adversaries in the pursuit of survival. An activity which turns people toward hatred and fear. This has been my extremely limiting belief.

I think that this is a point of view that many people share, though. But I have hope that it is changing. I think that it is changing in me. I have always wanted to focus on love. But somehow, putting love into that which makes money has seemed like throwing light into a limitless well to me. Like the light disappears and is wasted. Most of the time, I guess I still believe that. I am just beginning to question that.

It has seemed to me like so many things which are of inestimable value are not valued at all economically. Like home and hearth. Like friendship. Like love. But to start to put a dollar sign on these things turns them into commodities. You shouldn’t have to pay for any of these things. But sometimes I think that these are the things that I truly do have to offer, and because I want to focus my energies on them, I am going to starve. I have been told repeatedly that this is not the case. But I just don’t get it yet.

I wrote earlier about a job that I took on for the past month. It has been one of the hardest and most fulfilling things I have done in my life. I love it. But it doesn’t pay enough to live on. So how do I create or find that which will actually pay my bills and yet be something that can carry all of that love and life that I have to offer?

Maybe as I widen my view and begin to not just accept, but love the lines, variations and spectrums within my own life, life may support me more. To love and accept the light, I need to love and accept each color in the spectrum. To become a part of the flow I need to fall and rise and fall again.

I love the Beatles.

And I am so tired. But gratified. But I wonder whether I can keep this up. I asked for this, friends. I asked for work to keep myself afloat that would mean something. And I tell you, I have found it.

I’m filling in for a teacher at a school for kids with “emotional issues”. I am finding myself more the student than the teacher. But trust is developing, I believe. I’m also still running the business that I have run for the past eight years. But then how to do the music? How to keep up with my practices? I guess I’ll just have to figure it out. People do.