Mom

   There was this one afternoon. I wanted her attention and was finally old enough to simply ask for it. She’d been away in some sense (which could mean out of the house or on a phone call or doing dishes. Doesn’t matter when you’re less than 6 years old and Mom isn’t paying attention to you. Away is away.)

   But this time was different. I had been feeling jealous of all these other people and things that could hold her attention and I’d verbalized it. She replied with a “hang on” or “uno momento” or some sort (as was a family phrase I later learned was borrowed from an Italin grandfather I never knew.)

   She finished some dishes, came over to me and picked me up from the chair or the floor where I’d been watching Tv.  She sat down on our Lay Z Boy, put me on her knee and regarded me.  It was just me and her (very unusual).  It wasn’t time to change or go to school or to sleep. It was just an afternoon or morning (it was bright out) and she had granted me my wish.

I looked in her eyes, admiring her. She was such a beautiful person. Of course she had all those other obligations. I mean she was my mother (which I think I often felt entitled me to own her) but she was also amazing. I remember it seemed I knew that if they could the whole world would have wanted to be me at that moment. All the jealousy that felt a part of my waking misery, anything bad - dissipated being up top of her knee felt like being on top of the entire world.  

   “I wish I had another mother” I blurted.

   We both lingered there a moment trying to make sense of what had just come out of my mouth. All these feelings I was having - that wasn’t what I’d meant. The betrayal I could see I had just caused her was unreal. I wanted another mother for them! Here she had put it all down - finally gave me exactly what I’d asked for - her undivided attention - and I couldn’t handle it. I didn’t know what to do to justify this gift of enormous proportions. How could I justify even a moment basking in the light from her eyes?!

   I said I wanted another mother because I didn’t want to be another burden on her. She did so much for my dad’s family, for her mother, and sister and father, for my cousins whom she had started to babysit daily from downstairs…

   I think it was the asking. I called her to sit down with me. I’d imposed a need in communicating a desire, and once I had, I felt unable, and unworthy of it.

   But here we were STARING at each other. Me a mushy mess of emotion and flustered communicative skills, and her - goodness her! I could see the tears. I could see the betrayal - the fatigue - the fury… I couldn’t stop it. I started to try “I didn’t mean…

   But I was off her lap before I could finish a sentence - a thought even in preparation of a sentence. I had real work to do suddenly. I had to prepare this thought. I had to communicate it properly. Oh what had she heard? “Another mother???” Like I didn’t even want her!?!

Men

We will never evolve until men evolve.  

Men will never evolve beyond their social locations until they recognize and accept how much their maleness is a part of who they are.

Now, there are men who will read this and think ‘I don’t need to read this. I’m not like other men.’  To them I say, read on.

There are also men who will read this and think ‘She’s an angry dyke.’ And for whatever reason they think that’s applicable, I have to say yup. Read on.

Now there are men who might recognize some of what it takes for a woman to critique men without softening it in jest or diminishing it in common flirty heterosexist banter. Even those men should read on.

The worst are the men who will not read this. Men who have zero interest in evolution even as the world balances on the brink of human extinction mainly as a result of an archaic and intricate design to protect them from their common vagina envy.

If that last part made you cringe, join the club. I’m a proud, happy, successful lesbian who shrunk the moment I felt my age and social location at a Melissa Etheridge concert.

If you don’t know Melissa Etheridge, she’s a beautiful blond rock star from the 80s known for her husky voice and her sexuality (otherwise known to many as “just a screaming dyke.”)

The fact that she was a beautiful blond helped spring load her to stardom back then and gave her the power and the clout to also come out of the closet. She was a passionate brunette who kept evolving as a singer/musician, until, when the timing was right, she shot out a sexy blond bombshell of good gritty, soulful music. Once she was a rock star, the lesbian part was able to surface because it too was timed just right.

See I’m a lesbian first (mainly because that social location has been at the root of the most strife in my life.) I’m a woman second which is of course redundant but it works as a kind of 3rd dimensional perspective in this case if and only if women who at least pretend to be sexually attracted to men make up more than half of the world we all share. There’s a very basic reason why women are generally softer when engaged in some endeavor. We evolved this way. We are generally more polite when we are dealing with perceived power (any time we are attempting to do anything.) And when we are depleted in some way, when we are too hurt or too tired to properly utilize our tools of etiquette, or when we are not regarding the obstacle in front of us as powerful, we infuriate. We infuriate men. We infuriate women. We trigger the insecure.

But we are all insecure. We are born squishy little disproportionate meat bags that depend on love to even live.  Luckily, we all have mothers. Cooperation is the only advantage humans have.

Men can’t do that. If you are a woman born a man then you know. We all know. Woman have that power, and power is something we all seek. Women had to be. But they also had to be stifled.

So what evolved? Woman literally used, even bred over centuries to be smaller, shrink quicker. I recognize the misogyny in my own panic at a concert of my peers all aging past the point of fertility and consequent male usefulness. I love her music but bigger picture time I love this moment even more. It was a struggle to keep going. But that is where I can not only be who I am; it’s where I can feel who I am from both the inside and out.

Men have this in the whole world. Some men have some of my 3 dimensional vantage point, like if they’re gay, or black, or just really intelligent. But even those guys never know what it’s like to be shrunken down entirely by the oldest and most basic dichotomy ever empowered. A man may be raped, or enslaved, or teased for not being manly enough. He may even be ignored. A man may at times know what it’s like to lose his voice in a room. But it was too long ago that a man depended upon his mother, for him to understand the necessity of winning her over. Even if he did, the societal norms protect him from his own vulnerability.  

Men have nothing to explain from this perspective. You can’t graduate to lesbianism no matter how much you joke, or wish or think you could. We all emerge from our cocoon-like social locations and engage with the world when we’re ready. But a man’s cocoon is this world.

There is an anger, a blame, a fury at realizing your own inadequate power. Men these days are hiding inside it, ducking and thwarting away from it, blaming it on all kinds of others. I know because I went through this. We all did and we blamed men. And that wasn’t right. That wasn’t us coming from our best selves, it’s true.  

But it’s easy to tease you about your narrow perspective, obvious defense mechanisms, and inadequate penis sizes. It’s funny to watch you squirm through the structures you are the last to still benefit from. While the rest of us have and know places where stereotypes about us do or don’t reflect truths we have to handle or battle, you know no places except those controlled by others. And there you find the very same tools used originally to dismantle worlds. Dismantling however, is the wrong direction.

If we want a world at all, everyone in it deserves a voice. That takes softness. That takes etiquette. That takes stamina, appreciation. That takes patience.  

If someone calls you a man, might I suggest saying “yup” and then listen.  Try to learn why they said it. 

We will not evolve until you do.

Dear Mr. Zuckerberg,

    You don’t know me, but we’ve been living in the same world for a while now.  You helped connect it with your idea for Facebook back in college. I’ve mostly enjoyed the change.
   You are also according to Internet sources worth $150 billion as of today in 2025. This brings me to the reason and timeliness of this letter. I heard that you were at an event with Billie Eilish who begged to ask the question: “If you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire.” I could understand that hurting. Guess it doesn’t matter what you do. It’s inevitable that we all get judged. But if this upset you, then you must already see. I can understand striving toward more and more just to maintain a sense of control. But it won’t last. This incident  stirred up feelings of curiosity in me. Sometimes my favorite things to do are the things nobody obligates me to do. I suddenly long to connect with you to share a few of these thoughts and ideas. 
   Of course you’re not the only billionaire that these ideas might benefit, but I feel like you might understand. You put yourself out there and changed the world by connecting. I grew up with Facebook and I’ve defended it at every turn. Memories of most of my whole life is in there through pictures and posts sent to family and friends. It’s gotten so that we don’t even keep photo albums anymore. I can hardly keep up with computer storage. And you’ve never charged making Facebook integral to the world in a very meaningful way.  

   At least through your life story, I can see the American Dream. If you ever actually read this that alone would be a testament to your ambition. 

Here’s the thing though Mark, you are a billionaire (X150) and there are maybe 8-10 billion people on this shared world of ours.  

   Many work most of their waking lives just to sustain themselves and give their children a good start. Many purport and promote stupid things just to try to market something and get ahead. I know you probably need more than most others just to maintain. And I know there needs to be some disparity in goods and services to maintain motivation. But things are about to hit the fan. It’s all going to change one way or another.

   What if you did change things? You could literally give a billion dollars to every soul on Earth right now. You’d only be down 10-12 billion (with distribution costs) so you’d still be way ahead of the game in general. And everyone would feel connected to you in a much more real way. 

   But that’s not why I’m writing. See AI is about to replace a lot of jobs. So I asked it how you could fix this problem.  

1. Taxes and fiscal policy — take more from extreme wealth, redistribute.
   • Progressive income taxes, higher top rates, stronger estate/inheritance taxes and targeted wealth taxes reduce concentration and raise funds for services.  
2. Strengthen labour and pay-setting — raise wages at the bottom and rebuild bargaining power.
   • Higher minimum wages and stronger unions compress pay gaps more effectively than redistribution alone.  
3. Universal or targeted public services — health, education, childcare, housing, transport.
   • Direct public goods improve living standards and reduce the need for private wealth to secure basic needs. OECD analyses stress public investment and opportunity pathways.  

   So it seems this points to a team you’re not currently on. I know upsetting the norm might be scary, but it’s about to be upset anyway. Why not do your best to empower everyone as much as possible and focus on a different goal? Why not try to reset us all? Think long and hard about what you want and then let the rest go. Pool your money into policy changes for the good of a shared environment instead of a self interest which is beyond you. Be the one billionaire that actually empowers other people. How awesome would that be?

   

The Gift of the Present

   “Try here. Stop.”

   “What the hell am I looking at? When does this happen?”

   “Now. You're looking at now, Sir. Everything that happens now, is happening now.”

   “What happened to then?”

   “We passed then.”

   “When?”

   “Just now. We're at now now.”

   “Go back to then.”

   “When?”

   “Now.”

   “Now?”

   “Now.”

   “I can't.”

   “Why?”

   “We missed it.”

   “When?”

   “Just now.”

   “When will then be now?”

   “Soon” (Spaceballs).

   Eckhart Tolle wrote an entire book on The Power of Now. It’s interesting that it takes a person an entire book (and let’s be honest) several reads of that entire book to truly grasp the concept of really living and being present for the only period of time we ever actually experience, the now.  But the truth is living in the moment is a skill one truly must ponder and internalize before practicing and hoping for mastery. But the benefit of this skill cannot be overstated. I can tell you just from my experience of coincidences the truth of this statement.

   “If there is no future there must be no past.” (“The Answer” Richie Sambora).

   This quote confounded me as an adolescent.  My best friend appeared to take it in stride, but I could not wrap my head around it. Time moves forward, so it seemed to me to be obvious that there would in fact one day be no future. But, regardless, this did not could not in any way preclude the existence of a past. Why would it?  This wasn’t logical, right? There is a lot that I used to dismiss that I now realize is not only still possible, but probable.

   This was all before I experienced something now being called the Mandela Effect.

   The truth is that there are hundreds of common so-called: “Mandela Effects.”  While it is possible to chalk them all up to shared mistaken memories, the fact is that if you investigate long enough, you’ll find one you simply know is not true. The feeling that someone is pulling some kind of fast one on you is disturbing to say the least. When it happens multiple times you dig a little beneath the surface trying to conjure explanations… things get hairy.

   My first experience of the Mandela Effect was just before my first born’s first grade talent show.  He was doing a comedy skit and my wife thought he might at the last minute experience a little stage fright. To head off that concern she ordered a children’s book from a series involving characters who were bears that we both knew as children. 

   It was a while later when I remember seeing the book in a glance and noting that she must have received some kind of bootlegged knock off as the series name to me definitely appeared to be spelled incorrectly.  

   This was 2017. Things were already feeling different for me, but at this point I hadn’t quite put my finger on why. I had a kid in Elementary School and pretty much since the moment he was born my life had taken off on a rollercoaster ride!  But that Spring when Kody did his comedy act in the school talent show (Turns out he’s a born showman without an ounce of stage fright tendency in his body) she’d shown me the purchase and had already read him the book.  The talent show came and went (He was a hit!) but my moment occurred weeks, perhaps even months later as I was just passing the bottom bookshelf (where we kept the kids’ books). It was then that I casually read the name of the series she’d chosen: The Berenstain Bears. 

   This was not a huge deal for me, but I do remember the moment and the thoughts that flooded as I meandered my way into another room. Berenstain Bears? I remembered The Bernstein Bears from my childhood. My aunt had read some of that series to my step sister, but it wasn’t very personal to me. I do remember at that moment thinking about Jewish names, the history and connections with fleeing Germany that I’d read, and how I’d never really heard of one ending in “stain” before.

   A little while later I remember being all excited to share the Star Wars series with my son. We got all the way to the end [spoiler alert] of Empire Strikes Back when Skywalker faces off with Darth Vader for that pivotal moment where his true paternity is revealed. Like a good Jedi Dork I mouthed the iconic words as I had done so many times prior. Luke grimaces in pain from his lost hand and pouts his retort to Darth on the fate of his beloved Anakin Skywalker’s demise as the story had been related to him by his predecessor Obi-Wan Kenobi. 

   Darth mischievously growls his taunt “Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father.”

   Luke grimaces in pain at the loss of his hand.  He shouts and pouts like a child “He told me enough.  He told me you killed him.”  

   “No,” Darth says. [Wait what?] “I am your father.”  

   What the heck? That’s not the line! I actually looked at the tape I was watching it on and considered how it must have somehow been dubbed? Come to think of it, there were a couple funny scenes.  Why was C3PO walking around with a silver leg? That seemed to have started when Disney took over releasing their versions of the series. But I thought I had the original movie on this tape!?! I specifically remembered a particularly funny Comedy Skit where the comic expressed how gay C3PO was gliding around the galaxy just absolutely encased in gold lamay!  Encased!

   Like that stark realization, slowly other disconnects began to surface. The Monopoly Man’s Monocle, Curious George’s …tail was gone??? I remember him hanging from it in my sister’s children’s book. Magic Mirror on the wall! Suddenly, there’s a weird pig tail in the middle of every Ford logo. The Mandela Effects became a kind of crazy obsession for me. JC Penny is now spelled wrong - everywhere. And Mickey Mouse has nothing holding up his pants! Nothing!!! What the heck are the buttons for???

   And then things started changing while I was exploring this. During the pandemic I joined a Facebook group on the subject. Someone mentioned the peanut butter thing again but with something new. I’d remembered Jiffy peanut butter but had been eating organic and nut alternative butter for years (we’re teachers) so I didn’t have the regular experience with that brand that others might. However, in 2020, we accepted any food we could find for a time (food was pretty scarce for a spell). I knew I had acquired a jar of this “Jiff” (despite it literally creeping me out to even look at the brand in the supermarket since I’d learned all this) but it was in our cabinet on the top shelf where I remembered putting it just in case things got so crazy and we needed some kind of protein to feed the boys to avoid having to kill the cat. (Just joking!) 😬

I read a post off that Facebook page one day that sent chills down my spine however. Someone claimed the name had just changed again for them. I ran to my kitchen to look at it.  I’ll never forget the foreboding feeling I got as I opened the cabinet. I knew I remembered the peanut butter I’d just bought.  I knew I’d looked squarely at that particular label because I always looked squarely at that particular brand’s label. Nobody but my family had even been near our house for months at this point as a result of quarantine. I reached up and turned the peanut butter jar around slowly to bring the label forward “J…” and this giant jar I had clear, recent memories of buying “…i…” had somehow “…f… [nothing].” This label suddenly now only read Jif!

   So Celestine introduced me to Physics and Quantum Physics has been in chaos for decades.  It’d taken years for me to really understand the complexities of Uncertainty Principles and Double-Slit Experiments. But now Mandela Effects seemed to me to be proof that I was quite possibly no longer even in the same universe I’d grown up in.  In hindsight, I feel now that I knew these things were wrong.  I still feel that this place is somehow different. I chalked it up to my different age, perspective or the newness of place but that doesn’t seem right anymore. It’s all different. I feel like I’m living in that that Steven Wright joke where everything I knew (almost everything I knew) has been stolen and replaced with an exact (well almost exact) replica.  I sometimes relate to that Stephen King story The Langoliers which brake down each moment but were now building almost-copies for me every new minute. And I now know it wasn’t just me who knows it.

What’s the moral of all of these Mandela Effects?  Here’s where you get a bit of a homework assignment. Look some of these up for yourself.  Go ahead, it’s a quick Google search.  Once you’ve come to realize that this kind of thing is possible, suddenly almost everything is. Once you realize everything is, then you can see the possibility of most beautiful paths you can choose.

Go to Hell

 
Ok.  Now it’s time to face your fears. You must on some level like these spiritual journeys and tangents with all these nods to the many, many people, situations, and authors that lead me through mine. There’s a word for where we are going and it’s a word we don’t even utter in my house. Yet as a concept I think it’s one of the most important I’ve ever even pondered. Our images of Hell might easily be manifested as a lake of fire or a crowd of shadowed torturers. Pick your nightmare and label it, just don’t feed it though. It really doesn’t matter. The important aspect of this thought is for you to do the work of considering the possibility - that we are all actually already in Hell.
   Yes, sit with this for a moment. Don’t just dismiss me as fleetingly negative or depressive because I’m not. What if we are all actually currently in Hell? Even if Hell, as I heard it once I believe wisely defined, as simply “without God.” What if that’s all it would take? All our horrible nightmares, seas of stuck faces, fighting, lusting, ripping each other to pieces, - it doesn’t matter. Try it. Truly stop a moment and imagine all of us currently in this life caught in a Matrix sustained by our own imperfect perspectives busily managing or manifesting our own realities and only glimpsing the occasional momentary escape in love or light, laughter, ecstasy, “Ah ha” moments, meditation, or prayer.  But the root of us, our feet, our bodies, - all of us - are actually side by side swaying this way and that, each essentially planted in some specific part or rung of actual Hell.
   Every person we meet - every single person - is often either going about their lives as though God doesn’t exist or Gods are irrelevant or arguing over who’s flawed idea of God is best. I have so many issues with the God or gods I’ve been introduced to that it almost seems like a casualty of the job. Who cares which god is God? Who cares if there is a god or was a god or you were god? So what if I was a god? How would I do the job? As a mere thought experiment it works like this: you saw What Dreams May Come, right? If you didn’t, stop reading now and go watch it as it will haunt your deepest thoughts forever. Millions of people here writhing around in our own bubbles with this god or that, in this reality or the next, Heaven or maybe even a kind of eternal us just outside our bubbles yelling, helling, healing, teaching, judging, whatever - all of it whispering all around us - within us that it’s us amongst us.
   Every “righteous” person bearing signs of our (not their) doom is actually breaking their own rules. Try it out - all of us actually standing here shoulder to shoulder burning in our own manifestations of sin and torture (or bad trains of thought and habitual unconsciousness) - we are all true fellow sinners in the way Abraham, Jesus and Mohammed explained (but have any of us ever really internalized before?) It’s one thing to be told you’re a sinner. It’s another to truly plant yourself in the understanding that we all are. 

Now look at the consequences. Nobody above or below, yet everyone is here, existing. Ever see a person with a shadow around them? Ever see a person glow? Ever judge them like you know everything? How’d that go for ya? Still coming from a good place?
   Now, let’s back up a bit. One of the issues with a simulation, manifestational (Yeah, I’m keeping that) or multiverse theory is that it cuts people off. If I am the center of my own universe then doesn’t it follow that you don’t exist or at least you don’t exist within my real reality. I’m guessing that seems counterintuitive to you at best. At worst, it’ll drive you mad. (I mean this is Hell!) Sartre was right. Hell is other people. But, we all know that the first real step is identifying you have a problem.  
   I trust this because following this thought does so much more good than it does harm. For example, there is no mind-body problem if only the mind exists. If this is the case, and we can come to the agreement that on some level we are truly manifesting our own realities, then I can manifest you if and only if you serve me in some way. Now this sounds cold and as much as it’s a stretch, in some ways it simply just doesn’t stretch far enough. That’s the real issue. The truth of the matter is irrelevant. The Truth is within what’s true for you. I know those I love are True.  
   Stay with me: We live in several dimensions with only a somewhat clear empirical sense of 3 (length, width, depth). I have those three, you have your three, and the only way I can know anything about yours is through you (if you’re honest with me). It’s almost like there’s another dimension of reality that can be experienced through our minds connecting. If you think about the dot’s perspective of a “line world,” and how it would only know of that world communicating honestly and accepting the truth of a line’s perspective, you can begin to see the trajectory. Why would the line care that the dot is there? Because they are parts of each other.  If you keep raising the dimensions, this becomes almost clear. We live in a 3 (maybe 4?)D universe, experiencing each other. But just like the aliens at the end of Jodie Foster’s journey across the universe in Contact, the only thing we’ll ever really find is each other. And isn’t there an inherent beauty in the truth of that statement?
This thought is grounding for me. Whenever I get too caught in my ego, or feeling sad or alone - whenever I just can’t seem to find the way out or I can’t repair my relationship with another ego for some reason; this is the thought that sparks what I need. Just like Elsa at the bottom of a cave in Frozen II, it’s a terrible place. At some point though, when it gets quiet, and you can see your own breath, there are others who can help. The first person you need to help is yourself, and sometimes that just means listening, allowing the quiet to speak. And sometimes that just means exploring - thinking, or talking, or sharing yourself. It might mean praying, meditating, or asking for help. At some point though, you just gotta do the “Next Right Thing.”
   All other people could be demons, or angels, both, us (our higher selves), or our messages. Think about it this way: is there ever a situation which if not looked upon as though the world were really a giant mirror, becoming the change you want to see in the world (Gandhi) isn’t the way?
   Stand here a second. What if there truly is a VERY narrow path we walk to Heaven? What if it’s like a tightrope? And the path is “walked” in our own heads? Or through Nirvana? We walk it with every choice we make as we navigate through this Multiverse. Every sin, every judgment trips us up because it’s illogical to sin or judge. God, if this is how you identify, said nobody is perfect. But God is. God made it all. Even evil. Evil moves us. Perhaps evil is good?
- Every single thought (Eckhart Tolle) - is a judgment.
- Every definition (Robert M. Pirsig) - collapses possibility.
- Every label - (Marth Nussbaum) - we place on others objectifies them. “Disgust relies on moral obtuseness. It is possible to view another human being as a slimy slug or a piece of trash only if one has never made a serious good-failing attempt to see the world through that person’s eyes or to experience that person’s feelings. Disgust imputes to the other a subhuman nature. How, by contrast, do we ever become able to see one another as humans? Only through the exercise of imagination” (Martha Nussbaum). Or connection (Polizzi).
   Each of these can actually steer us wrongly, if there even really is indeed a direction, because essentially there are no absolutes. There is no fundamentalism that we can objectively access. No single perspective is ubiquitous. No possible being is without flaw.
   What if we may have never even really “lived?” All this is actually a dream (Bishop Berkeley) or we died somewhere along the line and this is now a dream or a life review in a near-death-experience as some have described? And the lower you are in the Inferno (the smarter, sweeter, most intellectually and emotionally invested you probably are) the harder it is to break through the illusions - because we identify with them. Even the terrible ones. We are the heroes of our narratives.
   Doesn’t all that truly fit? Couldn't it? 
   I have felt like I am in Hell since the moment I seriously considered this thought. And the thing is, when I share this with people they initially retreat in disgust or defense. I stand firmly in my opinion that fear is a formidable teacher if only because I have rarely occasioned a thought more important, more beautiful, more consequential than this one, because: as a result of this thought…
I've simply never been happier!
   This may scare you but also doesn’t this simultaneously have the effect of casting an ethereal light on even the most totally mundane? Doesn’t it truly make you want to embrace your enemies knowing they’re simply manifestations of either the real you or God, someone who loves you trying to wake you from your own self-induced nightmares or someone experiencing those very same nightmares with you?
   Doesn’t it compel you to speak to your loves your each and every truth immediately without any hesitation knowing there isn’t a moment to lose or a pain that isn’t meaningful and need be ignored or procrastinated? Looking at the world in this way gives purpose to pain so that it can be attended, alleviated, and endured. Doesn’t it wake you up to listen and talk almost directly to this universe/multiverse/self/god//energy/love?  - trusting your actual life (as much as you can get your regular self - your ego - out of the way) not simply waiting for synchronicity but knowing it will answer you immediately after enough practice?  Even if it (or you) need time to process or grow, trust that it will answer directly through a kind of symbolism or language specific to you that only you (and those who love you) can decipher.  
   It’s speaking, however, in the language of our lives when we stay on our path. Open your eyes, consider the truth of it all, come from your good place, try to do no harm and live looking for that silver lining until you reside in a path of gratitude. Serve others the best possible way you can - because we are all in this together. Nothing here is new, and yet for me everything is. Because it can also lead all…

Life grows where attention goes.

I was telling this to my kid today. He’s almost 16, and of course, knows everything. He really does though as he focuses on school, getting his black belt, and expands his art portfolio. He’s usually been a bit of a loner, but he has this friend who I think has it all in perspective. She’s smart and silly and talented and just looks like she’s got Life’s number in her pocket. I was happy to find out they have lunch together. I asked him something I thought he’d know but he said he didn’t because he said he tends to do his homework during lunch. I asked him why doesn’t he just do that when he gets home. He said he wanted to get it done early so that he didn’t have to stress it. This led to a discussion about priorities and stress and my meanderings down memory lane.
   He keeps his grades high. But remembering things isn’t a problem for him and he’s a junior already on track for a decent start to life soon. I told him it’s time to chill out a little bit - enjoy the ride. True there’s a lot a stress these days. High School is crazy. This world is crazier. But never again is the absurdity of it all going to feel as pure. I spent my teen years mostly either confused or heartbroken - but I laughed hard, cried often, and lived deliberately. Sometimes I worry that in all his getting it right, he doesn’t. 
   I told him how I was sneaking out one night when I was his age - my parents were divorcing and my dad told me to go pack a bag for the week to stay at my friend’s house. There was an aluminum ladder that went up to the roof under my window. It was a fire escape according to my dad but it was really just another way out. I was almost finished when my step mother came home early. I had slinked out the window and was pondering the potential noise of the aluminum ladder when my best friend appeared at the bottom. We both knew to keep it down and we both understood the pause.
   “Drop it down” she whispered up at me motioning to the schoolbag. I tried to whisper an explanation about how the bag contained several textbooks because I was packing for an indefinite amount of time but my friend wasn’t hearing it “Drop it” she insisted, but I knew she didn’t understand what I’d said or hear how close my step mother was behind me.
   My step mother must have had heard something. She had come upstairs and was calling my name from the door to my room. “Drop it!” my friend said a little louder now which I was sure my step mother must have heard.

   “Fine” I said, and I let go. Five 400 page textbooks padded by a favorite pair of stoned washed skinny jeans and some underwear crashed against the ladder vibrating the entire length of a story to my house. My step mother had busted into my room and was at my window calling my name out into her dark forcing me to quickly straddle a chimney and slip behind it on my neighbor’s roof out of sight. I don’t know where my friend went but at that moment I knew we were both laughing. It wasn’t easy stifling side-splitting laughter made funnier by the silence of the night, but it certainly made a lasting memory out of that moment.
   It was a crazy time. That was the last of my step mother’s reign and the beginning of my adolescence. That roof was a place we’d know - her and I - where we’d stay up until the sun rose. It was where we’d smoked our first cigarettes, and sung harmonies to our favorite songs. I slipped down that ladder eventually and started learning who I was in the real world. I remember every moment (I think) from the excitement of being out to the shear bliss of those sleepovers in tiny twin beds or hidden sleeping bags wrapped in my best friend’s arms. I was a nightowl for the next decade doing sleepover after sleepover sometimes known to parents, but often not. My first girlfriend had me stuffed under a blanket between her bed and her closet while her mother stood in her doorway lecturing her all about me. I remember sliding out her window and hopping fences to go to another girl’s house that very same night. It was nuts being everyone’s secret, but it was fun and wild, deliberate and free. I was testing out my narrative - able to share to new ears who I was and what I’d been through. I was connecting with the world for the first time in years. I was choosing. I was present.
   I wound up working my way through all my demons in those years. I got to the point where I felt I’d learned how to love, and what I was really up against, and it wasn’t me. Most kids this age only want to fit in. It takes a little something extra to feel comfortable standing out. But it was this time in my life I learned to shape life into what I really wanted. I was completely done with shaping myself into that world.
   I know people who didn’t do that until they were middle aged. Shoot, I know people older than me that never have. I remember telling that to Amy - this wide eyed “friend” who was paying attention. She asked me what I would do if I could do anything. “I wanna jump out of a plane” I said. And we did. 
   It’s crazy to waste a moment of that pure and perfect rage. I told my son that I’ve seen things change that I never thought I could. The whole world is different, and there are no secrets anymore. It’s beautiful to see everyone come out and everyone have a community they can connect to. It’s astonishing to see the wisdom we spread in memes and the advice we can get from a computer at the drop of a hat. Milk no longer contains puss and everyone knows Monsano is the Devil. Yeah we have problems - because everyone needs attention, even straight white men. But soon, so much mundanity will be automated and work weeks will be shorter. Living stipends will free up energy pouring into necessity and creativity will be valuable again. 
   Could it go wrong? Sure - if that’s our focus. I told my son even though he doesn’t believe me. Life grows where attentions goes. I’ve seen it happen. I know it can. So I’m sure it will. 

The Message of the Mystics (Celestine)

   But how do you acquire energy when you are feeling low without these tactics? “The Message of the Mystics” describes how the way we are used to competing for energy or power is unnecessary. There is a much more efficient and substantial abundance of energy available. And it's really no big secret how we connect to it. We access this when we love. 

Some people describe love as being blind, but I think there is a way of thinking about love that will leave you feeling like it is only when we look with love, that we really see.

“Love is not an intellectual concept or moral imperative… it is a background emotion that exists when one is connected to the energy available to the universe” - James Redfield. 

 

Love brings happiness which again is truly our responsibility to find. Even if you are a martyr, you’ll pass the Aristotalian check for virtue if you ask yourself are you truly happy doing whatever it is you are doing. If you’re not, you might consider whether your actions are working and therefore truly god-like.  
   In the story (Celestine Prophecy) the narrator is being chased by some enemy (the story is not where the real worth of the book is) and he finds himself on a cliff. This is where he has a profound mystical experience. A couple things come together here to shake him from his usual dramas. In one sense, he loses hope. His friend is shot, he’s in an unfamiliar place and he appears to have just run out of options. The other is that he’s in an extremely beautiful unfamiliar place. He gazes out from the cliff and sees the Andes Mountains. For a moment he is struck in awe and in that way he connects. I’ve experienced similar moments of awe just stepping out of the airport in Maui, or overlooking the Grand Canyon, or looking down from the strut of a Cessna you’re about to exit at 4,000 feet! Others relate from the vantage point of their own vortex if they follow Ester Hicks. The book describes this as a kind of connection with God where the narrator somehow becomes virtually invisible to the enemy hunting him even as they walk right by.
   Growing up, the closest connection I had to a kind of daily, mystical faith was when my grandma and I would watch “Little House of the Prairie.” In those stories God is personified and appears to take an active interest in the adventures of little Laura Ingalls and her family. That was a place where I saw people pray. I saw wisdom behind the ways those prayers were answered even when it resulted in some suffering of the characters. Many of those stories were somewhat based on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s real memoirs so there might be a modicum of truth at least to the faithful culture. There is a sentiment amidst those stories that the faithful can be protected in a similar way to the way we see the narrator in Celestine escape this danger on the cliff. It is as if he had God’s cloak wrapped around him.
   The book even goes farther describing this higher vibration as the one a kind of spiritual humanity is destined for. It’s a kind of halfway point between the living and the dead and it’s suggested that Jesus may have been the first to ascend this way on that third day after his death when he rose again. And I mean, in reality we are just mass times the speed of light squared, no?

The Dynamics of Attention (Celestine)

   The fourth insight is called “The Struggle for Power.”  It describes four ways humans vie for this energy (aka power). We seek power in every moment and instinctively learn how to capture and control it generally using one of four ways: intimidation, interrogation, aloofness, and pity or what Redfield calls being a “poor me.”

Now I have divulged that I can sometimes see this energy, but I can't always and I totally understand those who might doubt this. But seeing the energy is not even necessary to understand it and to follow the mechanics.
   My feminist Women Studies background from college inclines me to think of these negotiation efforts as our means to either take power from or lend power to. This is often dichotomized as a more masculinized “take charge” method to control juxtaposed to a more feminine supportive tendency to empower that most of us in the modern Western world are pretty familiar with.
   It’s easy to see these cries for attention in others. The funniest part of dissecting this phenomenon the eventual realization that its as ubiquitous as it is moot. When it comes down to it, you learn about this and you start scrambling for the appropriate way to respond - but remember to consider that when someone is asking for your attention, why not give it to them? The fact of the matter is that attention is free and these days we practically sell it off to algorithms and AI. When we really need it most desperately from each other. What justifiably takes precedence over that?  

After a bit, it becomes easy to see these manipulations in our own behavior. But if you question whether you use these methods, or if you believe that you don’t, I strongly suggest that you ponder each moment a little bit longer. Catch yourself in a moment and evaluate your mood. Are you happy? Are you sad? Are you conscious? If you are not in the present, you are likely unconscious. You are likely in your own head, or feelings, or reacting to some outside stimuli. Are you scared? Are you trusting the universe? Are you still coming from a good place?
   Knowing these four manipulations of power can help you defend yourself from them in that all you usually need to do is identify them. It’s almost like calling out that the spirit of God can compel you! But if a person is vying for pity, maybe you can find a way to help them find a more sustainable path? If they are being aloof, simply tell them. Show them by example that you can put yourself and your needs out there safely and survive. Give them your attention for what they’re doing, but also move on. Interrogators are already interacting so know your boundaries. Make sure you are confident about them and then express them in no uncertain terms so that they are not crossed. And intimidators? Simply ask them why they need you to be subservient to them. “Who hurt you?” - is often a good start. A student blurted this out to me once at a moment I was acting without true presence or love and I never forgot it as a perfectly disarming technique.

Energy (Celestine)

The third insight is called “A Matter of Energy” and for me it took years to really see what it imparts.    
I first read this book as a lost little Lez-teen recovering from Catholicism. I put my fingers together. I thought maybe I saw light or smoke but I couldn’t convince myself it was anything beyond bent light or faulty contact lenses.  
   In hindsight, however, that pretty much reflected my relationship with life at the time. Nothing made real sense. No person, no paradigm ever really worked. I was in Community College after dropping out of high school. I’d fallen in love - hard! I’d fallen really, really hard. And even though she’d been my best friend for years, it was becoming apparent we couldn’t even be friends anymore. (It’s amazing to talk about this from a vantage point of forgiveness). I finally found myself uttering the words “This isn’t worth it to me anymore” and that was just about it. I wasn’t coming from a place of love no matter how much I tried to love her. I was angry, resentful, insecure and unsupported. So the one love of my life no longer even wanted to speak to me. I tried to recoup. I read. I attended health masses. I threw myself into jobs I thought I was destined for but all doors closed in my face one by one.  
   Anyway, at this point in my story, I’m disappointed to say the least, depressed (obvi) but putting one foot in front of the other. Slowly, I started to feel a little potential. There’s something about college. You choose your courses. It’s not the money; it’s the choosing what you’re going to learn that makes college an investment. I had a relatable English teacher who called me a “great student.”  That was all it took for me to get my footing. I shared a laugh here, a thought there... I was exploring. I was alone, but not really. There were friends. I was doing my best. I was thinking - mulling over my situation. I dated, but not seriously. I felt like a moth trying to find my way away from a flame.
   One day I looked up at the teacher of a class called Sociology and this was where Celestine really began to take root inside me. The course sounded good on paper (the study of groups of people). It seemed like Asimov’s Foundation. I’d been curious. Also I could bang the class out on Saturdays so it was easy to schedule. 
   He was going on and on about these facts I’d never been exposed to before.  Other kids were interested, but it all seemed pretty matter-of-fact to him. He was nothing particular to look at (and do not I say this to be mean) - just a guy. He was talking about the difficulty in purchasing deodorant. He explained the dangers of antiperspirant and how our bodies are supposed to sweat. The metals in antiperspirant we are conned into wiping under our arms for a societal construct were actually destructive in a way nobody ever mentioned in my presence before.
Thing is, while he did this, he was glowing!  
   This sweaty middle aged white man droning away in a room full of kids on this Saturday afternoon about the deodorant - was just glowing! The longer I watched the more I realized what I was seeing. I’d read Celestine, but this was the day it really clicked! It wasn’t the deodorant lecture I was enthralled with (although that was intriguing). That was just a truth he was imparting. It was the easy, natural way in which he procured it. This was supposed to happen. I could actually feel the vibration!
   Now, mind you, he wasn’t like lit up. It wasn’t light. It was like energy, but I could see it! And it suddenly fell in with the rest of Celestine for me in that moment because - I will never forget him. He went from whatever/whatever to perfectly beautiful for me to behold! I could see that I was both energized by him and energizing him! I realized at that moment: he was doing exactly what he was meant to do exactly the way he was meant to do it. Even if he was only meant to truly connect to me at that moment. I gave away nothing in class but I held back tears inside. It felt other-worldly.   
   I even researched what he said.  It was true.  I haven’t worn aluminum antiperspirant since.
   The point is, we all have stories. We all have purposes. This realization that we are all part of a greater story or a higher meaning will hit you when it’s time. We really are all right! The difference between a person you look upon with love and a person you look upon with anything else, is you. Are you grounded? Do you feel your own worth? (Nod to the magic mirror gate in Neverending Story). Are you truly present?
   - I will tell you that I mostly notice the auras from afar between people now. I was walking to work one day when I found myself locked on this Spanish couple handing out Jesus leaflets on a corner. The woman was handing them out. The man was I don’t know - manning the shopping cart? But I could clearly see an energy flowing from him and around her. He was there for her, but she was there for something else. And the energy sustaining her was both from him and from something else that was much more powerful. I could see their connections (energy flowing in circles between, under and around them). And I understood that there was an authenticity to what they were doing. The reasons they were there that day, on that street corner, handing out Jesus leaflets, those reasons were altruistic. They weren’t like the angry, hypocritical, insecure, God-fearing control freak “Christians” who come to feel superior at Pride Parades. She felt called to pass on the Good News of Jesus. And he loved and supported her efforts. I could even feel this as she handed me a leaflet and smiled.  
   Now it’s not often I even bother to engage with a Jesus campaigner but we couldn’t even talk. The thing was in Spanish and despite working in the South Bronx and years of effort, I’m still far from fluent. Still, I could see her intention.  And it meant something to me. It even seemed to mean something to him!
   I thought the plant experiment from the third chapter in Celestine was the end all be all, but I can’t grow anything unless it’s from the actual ground. If I lift it from the Earth it will be dead within the year. I try and try, but nothing I do will ever sustain something unconnected.
   My family and I even did Emoto's rice experiment. We had three jars of rice. We were nice to one, ignored the other, and the kids and I laughed insults off daily at the third. I think the ignored one decayed the most. Idk. The results seem so off I don’t even remember them. And I've read his conclusions were thwarted since but I've never read and understood the refutations.
   But do your own experiments. Explore your own stories. There’s a flow illuminating us all here. The fact is that E=mc2 and fundamentally, we are all energy. There are rational explanations for the power of our attention and they are empirical. Pay attention to your own attention - and watch where it leads you.