There’s probably no greater cause of war throughout history than religious differences.  The only thing that comes close to it is greed.  I choose to stay as far away from the human element of religion in my spiritual practice, which, of course, is rather impossible, but, for me, preferable.  We humans (and I count myself as one) have confused the study of God, consciousness, reality, our world, matter, thought, spirit and the universe by dividing into groups and along the way, shutting doors and windows to alternative thought in an effort to protect our own.

It strikes me that religions often are more limiting than creative.  They often force the thinker into a box and essentially say, “think this, study this, here is the only truth – shut the rest out.”

If there is anything that I’ve learned in my life’s study of spirituality, it’s that nobody has a corner on truth.  Truth is truth.  Everybody has access to it. Every religion I’ve ever studied captured and illuminated much truth for me.  The only thing that really ever got in my way was the differences in language or the various definitions of words that are tossed about.  Most religious differences I’ve found to be based on a confusion of semantics.

So I choose to call myself first a spiritual seeker rather than a religious person.  I hope this does not offend you as I approach the writing of this post with the objective of unifying thought as opposed to dividing it.

Wikipedia states, “A scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge.  In a more restricted sense a scientist is an individual who uses a scientific method.  The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science…  Some perform research toward a more comprehensive understanding of nature, including physical, mathematical and social realms…  This is distinct from philosophers, those who use logic toward more comprehensive understanding of intangible aspects of reality that lack a direct connection to nature, focusing on the realm of thought itself.”

If we’re to accept these definitions put forth by Wikipedia, then I suppose I’m sort of a scientist/philosopher, a combination of both.  I do engage in a “systematic activity to acquire knowledge” and also I do “use logic toward more comprehensive understanding of intangible aspects of reality…, focusing on the realm of thought itself.”

All said and done, I prefer the word “scientist”.  I find spirit to be actually quite tangible the more I study it and matter to be less and less the reality.  So I call myself a spiritual scientist.

If I am pinned down to name a life religion I admit very freely to being a Christian Scientist.  For those who need a specific religious definition of the way I think, that explains it as well as I know how on the religious level.  I grew up a Christian Scientist, attended the Christian Science Sunday School and learned the principles of the religion.  In my late twenties and early thirties I decided to explore beyond and commenced a 20-year journey of examination of many of the world’s great religions.  This journey was primarily the result of some very serious and thoughtful research I participated in the first couple of years of that journey using the drug, LSD.

The controlled research that I and a few friends took part in certainly opened our minds to many things never before considered regarding life, consciousness, reality and matter and launched me into even further study of spirituality in areas that did not include drugs.  It became very clear to me that drugs were not the answer, but I will say that they did provide me a fascinating starting point for exploration and launched my bark into immediate waters of wonder and matter/mind-blowing thought.

I then spent a few years as a practicing Hindu and found that religion to be immaculate in its conception, rich in thought, radical in approach and full of truth.  Ultimately I found it difficult to practice it as a western capitalist trying to build a career in show business in NYC.  I don’t know whether that would be true for me today, but decades ago I then moved on to Buddhism.

For a couple of years I studied the Dhammapada, generally accepted to be the words of Buddha, and found these verses to be elegant truths that rarely differed from the teachings of Jesus Christ.  Studying Buddhism was a joy for me because it further substantiated my understanding of the basic truths of Christianity.  There were, of course, many unfamiliar words that in the beginning would scare me and actually put me off until I learned to simply explore the meaning of the word.  Always these strange words constructed in foreign languages revealed to me truths that I already believed and understood when translated into my own language.  Through these studies I learned not to be fearful of words that I did not use or even know and rather look at their strangeness as opportunities to shed new light on spirituality.

I finally came to understand that human language is insufficient to explain the world of spirituality.  It simply was not invented for that world.  And so looking at spirituality through the various lenses of language became a plus rather than a minus.

I studied Confucianism, Jainism, the Koran, Judaism, Taoism, and Bahá’í through those years of seeking and honestly found that basically, they all said pretty much the same thing, but used different words.

I then, while in my mid forties, began to have a number of serious physical problems for the first time in my life.  As I had never been to a doctor, taken medicine or set foot in a hospital, I decided to tackle these physical problems by healing them rather than using the medical route.

I visited a Christian Science Practitioner to elicit his help.  We commenced a three-month series of meetings – one a week – where we systematically did a “spring cleaning” on my thinking.  One visit we would discuss business ethics, the next, self-confidence, the next, sexuality, and so on.  Each week he would correct my thinking and adjust my consciousness of right and wrong.  He was merciless and I dove into this cleaning of my attic with him.  During the week I would practice what he taught.

After 3 months of these meetings I was a better man – mentally and physically.  We never discussed my physical problems at all – only my mental insufficiencies or confusions.  I cleaned these up and committed to a better way of thinking and practicing that thought – a better way of living.

In the course of those three months all of my physical problems cleared up and went away.  I was healed.  There was never any difficulty moving through this experience.  It was all completely positive and I enjoyed the challenge of cleaning up my mind and watching the physical ills disappear as a by-product of that mental purification.

I became a practicing Christian Scientist once again.  However, Christian Science was then the basis of my thinking, the central core, though not the circumference of my thinking.  Since then I have borrowed helpful corrections to thought from all the sources I studied over those years countless times.  Again, truth is truth and I had a myriad of ways to investigate it and look at it.

I have never found this mixing pot to be confusing to my practice and demonstration of truth.  My spiritual seeking continues to this day – probably more than ever as I grapple with life, and become more conscious of my own spirituality.  The more I learn; the more there is to learn.

In the last ten years I have chosen music as my central tool of exploration.  As a life work, music is probably what I’m best at.  I’ve spent a lifetime practicing, so why not use it as the means to explore the objective of utmost importance.  Exploring spirituality through music is really fascinating because music is such a universal language.  It is not limited by spellings and strange words, but is appreciated and loved by all mankind.

Music too is a fascinating science.  Again, the more I learn; the more there is to learn.  The two, music and spirituality, seem to go hand in hand for me.  One complements the other.  I am a more spiritual man when I’m creating my music and I’m definitely a better musician when I approach the creation of music spiritually.

I am also always at my best as a person when I am in the studio writing, arranging, orchestrating, etc.  There I am the happiest, the most fulfilled and the least stressful.  Trouble just seem to fall away when I walk into my studio and I find myself doing everything I can in life to get to work musically.  On days when the rest of life gets so hectic that I can’t do that work, I struggle.  On the days that I work, I am fulfilled.

Still some things to be learned here… )

So I am a spiritual scientist/philosopher/musician.  Being a human being is far too often a struggle.  Here is where I need to improve and learn to manage life.  Here is where I’m still stuck – earthbound.  Both The Missus and I now discuss daily how we can approach these issues of humanity more gracefully and productively.  Here is where the problems lay.  Here is the next plateau of concentration.

In the meantime, however, I have my joy life, my world of peace, creativity and fulfillment to enter into and explore.  My gratitude abounds for this space in thought.  I am divinely fortunate.

I don’t know what I can accomplish during the rest of my time here on Planet Earth, but I do know that I am committed to this one endeavor only – scientific spiritual seeking through music.  Everything else pales in comparison.  Eating, sleeping, the laborious minutiae of everyday life all are just things to work through so that my true commitment can be practiced.  The human experience is a stepping-stone to the divine.  We’re trying to make those steps shorter every day.

Even More Inspiration

• Even Now
• When Things Go Wrong
• God Is doG Spelled Backwards
• The Atheist
• Loving God
• Phoenix Rising

I’ve always been curious to meet an atheist.  Whenever someone announces themselves as one, I always try to take a moment (or often many more) and discus their atheism with them.  I like to first start with the obvious question, “Define God?”

I’ve had this opportunity 15-20 times in life and it’s always been the same experience.  Once they’ve explained their definition of God to me, I’ve always found myself saying back to them the same line: “Well then, I must be an atheist too because I don’t believe in that god either.”

Often the definition portrayed is archaic, anthropomorphic, and usually something taught them by confused parents or Sunday School teachers, but always ideas that I find equally hard to swallow.

Can this be the most misunderstood word in the human language?  Quite possibly so.  I’m not here to rectify that.  I have had an evolving, ever-changing struggle with the concept of God for over a half a century now.  I’m not at all sure what God is, but I do have a feeling for what He, She or It is not.

A guy in the sky with a long white beard?  No.  A He or a She?  No.  A Father/ Mother?  Sort of…  An infinite and eternal concept?  Probably.  Love, Life, Truth, Being, Interconnection?  Yes.

I saw an amazing video presentation on my TED app last week by Alexander Tsiaras called “Conception to birth – visualized”.  It’s a talk showing human development from conception to birth and beyond.  Mr. Tsiaras is and associate professor at Yale and presents a beautiful and compelling talk and video on birth.  In it, he states that, as a scientist, before he explored this project, he was essentially an atheist, but that in the course of working on the project, he realized the absolute necessity of a higher power.

As I watched his wondrous video, I too saw the absolute of God.  The biological mechanism that produces each of us, the mathematical structure that forms the fetus from the two cells of egg and sperm, the absolutely miraculous evolution of egg into human person he explains is mystery, magic and divinity.  The intelligence behind this marvel called birth is so staggering that it can only be the result of some higher power.

Now I’m not sure where to put all this material result of matter molecules forming human beings, because essentially I see this human experience as an illusion – like a dream – and basically unreal in the first place, but here is a most compelling drama played out for thought.

Where does all this material existence come from in the first place?  Or is there a first place to begin with?  If it isn’t, then it didn’t come at all and isn’t really here.  Whoa…  Getting pretty deep here, Pete.  In so deep I’ll never get out.

But simply looking at this material existence – at the wonders of the human body, the infinity and scale of the cosmos, the organization of nature, the breakdown of matter into its relative nothingness, the wondrous, unexplainable and inconceivable concepts that we pass through daily and take so for granted, how can anyone with a thought past themselves not see that there is something out there, in there, everywhere that is not controlling the organization and ebb and flow of these staggering concepts.

Something is in control of all this even when things seem out of control in our own lives.  Something is still in control of the building and sustenance of life, of the evolution and organization of nature, of the revolving of our tiny planet around our small sun, (much less the creation and disposition of the many universes around us).

It is all so far beyond us, so far beyond the confines of our limited thinking and understanding – even our own brains that we carry around in our own heads are pitifully understood.  And yet it all goes on working.

I sat in an airplane last month and watched the cars below all stay in their places on their side of the road and not run into each other – thousands, millions of cars all staying in their lanes – millions of drivers avoiding instant death moment to moment driving home after work.  Something else was clearly in control.  Sometimes one of these millions breaks the rules and swerves out of control, but trillions of moments go by as the universe works and inside each of those cars sits a man or woman focused on something totally different than staying alive – their love affairs, their shopping lists, the music on the radio.  They all naturally stay in their lanes within the laws of organization and only rarely does the system break down.

From my perch in the plane, all those tiny headlights traveling at 70 miles an hour, all making it home to dinner spoke to me of God in control of His/Its universe.

And so I say to all of you self-proclaimed atheists out there, “Redefine your god concept.  If you don’t like the name, call it ‘dog’.  I don’t care, but open your thought to a higher power, a universal organization, a force of nature – something beyond yourself that is perchance in control.

We do not live in chaos no matter how chaotic our lives.  We live in the immaculate organization of matter molecules and constituent masses so perfectly organized around us that we take the whole thing for granted moment to moment.  To whom do we owe that?

Next time you take a breath.  Next time your eye blinks.  Next time your heart beats.  Next time you smile. And on and on and on…

Even More Inspiration

• Spiritual Scientist
• God Is doG Spelled Backwards
• Words Of Wisdom
• Loving God
• Thoughts On Thinking or Thinking Makes It So
• Straight ‘A’s

Much of what I do is easy to love.  I live for the moments every day when I can be creative and I’m fortunate that my life seems to bring me those opportunities daily.  However, some of what I do, like everybody else, is just drudgery.  I battle through it running headlong to what I love.  I’ve learned not to put the drudgery off, but to tackle it ASAP so I can go about the things I love with freedom.

So I’ve been working more on loving the drudgery.  Or rather taking the drudgery out of the activity and going about the supposedly non-creative stuff more creatively.  To a certain extent it’s working.  I’m happier and I have less drudgery.

I’ve been working on loving people more.  This has been my most successful endeavor in this exercise because I’ve simply decided to button my lip as much as I can when I don’t have something good to say about someone.  I’ve stopped rehearsing my complaints as much and that has enabled me to spend more time on what’s right or what’s good about someone and see them in a positive light.  It too is working.

Perhaps these two exercises sound somewhat psychological.  Perhaps they are, but it’s really not the way I approach it.  I try to approach it from a more spiritual perspective.  I focus on the spiritual man, the spiritual activity, the God-made individuality of the person in question and stop questioning.  I focus on the positive endeavor of activity and meet the difficulties with creative juices flowing and seeing the good in all activity, in every person – and then expecting only good results.

And you know what?  For the past 10 days as I’ve been concentrating on this, trying to stay with this idea moment to moment 24/7, I’ve watched endeavor to endeavor, person to person evolve into positive results.  Sounds simple and the amazing thing about it is that it IS simple.  Oh I’ve had a few setbacks, but even the setbacks don’t set me back for long if I stay positive.

It comes right down to that old Mama-taught “think positively” lesson.  But maybe that’s why she taught it!  It works.

So I’m approaching life more positively – I’m more positive about life and it’s working.  Life is actually working better!  Things evolve more easily and tend to fall into place or work out smoothly.  Makes sense…

We do create our own experience after all.  We are not at the result of the world and its troubles.  We can take charge of our life by controlling our thinking and staying positive – even in the light of tragedy.  Be here now.  Breath to breath, moment to moment – go forward.  Linger not in the negative, the past.  Go forth expectant joyful.  We’re alive.  So love life.  Love the opportunity to live.  That’s what being grateful is.

The opposite of depression is gratitude.  Find yourself depressed?  Count your blessings!  Best way I know to turn away the doldrums.

All of this comes from the simple effort to love more – people, things, activities.

But then I get to the big one:  Love God more.  My first thought was, “How can I love God more if I’m still trying to figure out what God is?”  I have a lifetime of ‘God’ definitions at my fingertips, yet still can’t seem to get my arms (or my mind) around this magnificent concept.

I wake up in the morning and think to myself, “Well, let’s see, now I’m going to try to love God.”  And nothing happens.  I feel loving, I reach down into my love storeroom and grab up an armful, but then I get stuck.  I just don’t know where to put it.

If I decide to love The Missus more, I either go find her and do it or if she’s not home, I just envision her and love the vision.  It’s easy because I live ‘in love’ with her, and in that experience, love is an immediate presence.  It is right here moment-to-moment and so easily accessible – even when we squabble.  She’s so easy to forgive because we live ‘in love’.

But God, for me, is different.  I can’t go find Him, or It and when I try to envision, nothing comes up.  Or perhaps I should say ‘no thing’ comes up.  I’ve spent a lifetime trying to drop that Guy In The Sky concept from my thinking, so I’m not going to replace it with some other materialistic icon.

No, what I’m moving towards is loving God more by loving Idea more, or to put it more succinctly, loving God’s ideas more.

I can’t wrap my brain around God.  It’s just too big an idea for my tiny gray matter.  I can’t wrap my mind around God.  It’s just too huge a concept.  I can’t get my arms around God.  Whenever I try, there’s nothing there.

But I can become more conscious of God’s idea in a given circumstance.  After all, isn’t that what the previous two pages are all about?  Becoming more conscious of the right idea moment to moment in the given circumstance with the given people or activity.

And you know, when ya’ think about it, what’s the point of trying to love God, the Thing, more anyway?  I don’t think He or It even cares.  After all, as the Bible says, “God is love.”  GOD IS LOVE.  So when we love, we simply reflect God; we reflect love.

When I love life, then I’m loving God.  When I love wife, then I’m loving God.  When I love activity – writing music, orchestrating, writing this post, thinking deeply, creating, figuring it out, solving problems, triumphing, healing, helping others, and on and on – I’m loving God.  I don’t have to know what God is; I just need to recognize His activity, his idea.

I don’t have to pull love up from some storeroom and place it on some Thing because the nature of love is that when we love, it just pours forth.  We can’t even stop it.  It’s the one thing in life that is impossible to slow – it’s that overwhelming.  That’s the nature of love.  It overwhelms us.  It overwhelms us because love is God and God is love.  I accept that God is capable of overwhelming me.  In fact, I invite it!  Any time God wants to overwhelm me, well Sir, just bring it on.  I’m up for that!

So if God is love (and that makes all the sense in the world to me) then I shall let love overwhelm me as well.

Trouble is, as humans, we sometimes mistakenly think that love hurts – that we’ve been hurt by love in the past, so we don’t quite trust it the way we trust the Almighty.  But love is the Almighty.  It is above all words, above all concepts.  It is, above all, what each of us seek.  Yes we seek truth, yes we seek a higher mind, but love is the ultimate quest.  Those who seek money, fall.  Those who seek success, fail.  But those who seek love, love.

For the time being, I’m not going to worry about loving God.  I think I’ll just love more.  That should take care of everything.

Thanks for listening.

Even More Inspiration

• Spiritual Scientist
• God Is doG Spelled Backwards
• The Atheist
• Thoughts On Thinking or Thinking Makes It So
• Words Of Wisdom
• Even Now

The artist wrote, “May our God El Shaddai, who through divine providence gives them a compassionate heart…” and I got stopped on that and asked the Missus, “Is ‘El Shaddai’ from the Bible?”  Her answer was, of course, “Yes” and I’m now somewhat embarrassed to say that inwardly I breathed a small sigh of relief and went on reading because now this guy was “OK”.  He wasn’t some sort of a nut.

Inner bells went off, gongs gonged, sirens wailed and I stopped my reading again and thought about the trap I had just fallen into.  “Who cares what he calls God?” I thought.  The guy was from Nigeria.  In the Yoruban language of Nigeria God, the Supreme Being is called Olodumare.  In French He’s called Dieu.  In German, Gott.  In Russian, ???.  And, of course, in Mandarin Chineese, ? (Shén).

It took us all a couple of decades to finally accept that God just might be a She and I’ve tried to teach my Sunday School class the concept of God being an It for a couple of decades as well – trying to get my boys as far away from an anthropomorphic God as possible.

But there I was for an instant falling into the age-old trap of human prejudice and, sadly, fear.  Fear of another man’s beliefs being different from mine – the scourge of religions today, one of the primary reasons for war, and the worst result of human lopsided bias possible.  Suddenly, reading about this wonderful man’s ministry and passionate mission for God’s work, I got scared that we just might be different.

It happened to me and I’m supposedly a freethinking, liberated, trans-denominational leader of an Inspirational music company!  I’ve spent my life studying Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, etc. and yet I too fell into the trap.

I forgive myself this human foible because I do recognize the inevitability of prejudicial fear.  I was married to an African-American woman for 18 years and dearly loved her family and friends and yet was often shocked to see the racial prejudice come up in each of us as we lived together.  This misconceived world thought is a powerful error in the human experience and something that must be guarded against constantly.  I often laugh inwardly when I hear someone say, “I’m not prejudiced.”  We all can fall.  In fact, even that inward laugh may be an act of prejudice.

My consolation is that at least yesterday I did stop and investigate my thought.  Once I did I saw the trap and clamored my way out of it and repaired my thinking.

If you want to call God “doG spelled backwards” go right ahead.  I’ll try to hang in there with ya’ and see through the semantics or language barriers and try to get your point of view.  If I don’t get hung up on the words and their spellings, maybe I can learn something more from you about God.

I do know this: Whether you call it God or Yahweh or El Shaddai or Fido for that matter, the concept of this Supreme Being is bigger than all of us and no human word can contain the fullness thereof.  There isn’t a word invented in this mortal language that satisfactorily explains it.

Having thought this whole thing through, I promise to be better next time.  Perhaps I’ll catch myself a little quicker.  Perhaps I’ll react a little less fearfully.  Perhaps I’ll grow in grace from this and have no prejudiced reaction at all.

That would be a great step in my evolution.

Even More Inspiration

• Spiritual Scientist
• Thinking And Creativity
• What Is A Cantata?
• Even Now
• The Atheist
• Hitting The Wall

Later in life, as I taught Sunday School, I began to study thoroughly the story so that I could best relate it to my boys in the class I taught.  I watched them too become fascinated with the tale and found that the discussions around the story went on for weeks in my classes.  Every step of the experience was questioned and thrashed about.  “What was ascension?”  “Why did Elijah say to Elisha that if he could see him ascend then Elisha might be able to someday ascend as well?”  “Why did Elijah ask Elisha to hold his garment?”

“Was there really a chariot?”  That, of course, was the question most considered by my 9-13 year old boys.  These were heady discussions of the spiritual process that mystifies and fascinates many of us and I must say that I learned a lot from the open imaginations of those boys over the years.

In the late 90s I wrote a powerful piece of music for the Jenny Burton Experience that became a staple of the group and a fan favorite show-stopper for nearly seven years called Revelation. I went through the book of Revelation in the Bible and cherry-picked many of my favorite surrealistic images from the mind of John and tried to put them together in some way that made a certain kind of sense at least to myself.

I think I was able to convey a strange kind of surrealistic sense to my audience because at the end of the piece each night they always rose and cheered the performance of that magical group.

The piece was just a little over 9 minutes long and though there were several returning themes that kept coming back, it was mostly through written, meaning that different melodies came and went and evolved one into another.

Because of the success of this piece, I thought I was on to something and decided to explore the tradition more thoroughly.  I began to look for a story that was Biblical as well as could be told using verses from the Bible and one that would have the imagery and drama that Revelation reached for.

Naturally my old favorite story of Elijah, Elisha, and the chariot of fire came quickly to mind.  I spent a couple of years further researching the story and  tinkering with the Bible verses to fit them into a more musical language and in some cases finding rhymes to further musicalize the text.

Once I had the story fleshed out to my satisfaction, I began to plot out the musical inventions much like an author would plot out a novel.  Where was the slow section?  How would the piece rise and fall?  Who would tell this story?  What style of music would work best in the telling?

I knew it would basically need to be told in two styles: first, in a Gospel tradition because of the Biblical imagery of the tale and second, in a somewhat classical tradition because of the classicism of the story.

Three iconic songs kept coming to mind as I worked.  The first, naturally, was Swing Low Sweet Chariot. How could I possibly write this piece and not include some reference to this gorgeous song.  So I began to work it through my already developing composition.  Borrowing other public domain work began to seem like a good idea to me so once again I went back to my childhood and found two other favorites from my youth.

Swing Down Chariot Stop And Let Me Ride was one from my early folk days first heard by me performed by the Chad Mitchell Trio.  I was always fascinated by the energy that they got out of this number, so I decided to use that as well.  Also, among many other songs considered, Ride The Chariot In The Mornin’ Lord stuck as well.  The rest I wrote myself, weaving these three iconic songs in and out.

I simply loved the process of working on that experimental piece.  Give me a good foundation and I can soar, and in this piece we really kick up our heels and ride the sky.  Simply put, it’s a great story filled with musical imagery.  It was a thrilling process to write, arrange, orchestrate and produce.

I was very clear that the scope of the piece went far beyond my talents as a singer and since it was really a kind of Classical/Gospel piece, I decided to turn to some of my deeply talented pool of NY vocalists for help.  I ended up writing the piece for 8 solo voices – seven African American Gospel singers and my long-time vocal arranger and superb vocalist herself, Margaret Dorn.  These eight soloists also served as the ensemble in the piece as we sometimes double tracked and triple tracked the voices.  Margaret did the choir arrangements.

I scored it for 4 women and 4 men and was fortunate enough to be able to hire the best of the best.  Led by Jenny Burton, Angela Clemmons, Cat Russell, John James and Darryl Tooks, this was as formidable a group of singin’ folks as you could find in NYC in the early 2000s.

The vocal sessions took several weeks.  I spent a ton of my own money on this project and was totally driven during the process to finish it and get it out there.  When the vocals were finished, I did a rough mix (a quick mix that was never intended to go to mastering) so that I could show the song to a few people.

Then life took its turns and for whatever reason the project got shelved.  Probably something came along in my life that required my complete attention and in my inimitable fashion I ventured off onto something else.

Chariot sat on my digital ‘shelf’ then for about 8 years.  Occasionally I would open up the files and play it and reminisce about the great two-year experience that I had with the piece, but it was going to be a completely time-consuming process to complete and daunting to one who was far to busy to begin with

During those 8-10 years the wonderful world of sample technology came of age.  The abilities to re-create the orchestra digitally grew by leaps and bounds and the technology around the sampling became so good that today one is hard pressed to tell the difference.

So each time I would go back to Chariot and listen, the piece would seem ‘older’ and less convincing to me, though I always loved its composition, its spirit and its vocal performances.

Yes, I know, it’s a long story – but one with a happy ending.  This year, in all my spare time, I have gone back to Chariot, first to remix it, but then deciding to completely re-orchestrate the piece with the newer technologies.  This was not easy.  It meant basically re-performing and re-programming the entire orchestra and rhythm section while maintaining the original spirit of the sessions.  I was successful at doing that and am now most happy that I’ve spent the countless hours re-constructing.

This week I will finish the mixing process of Chariot and get it to the masterer.  It’s been a long road, but entirely worth it.  This is one of my favorite compositions of my life and one that I’m very proud of.

It tells a great Biblical story in modern musical language, but, I think, maintains the integrity of the classicism.  I’ve now listened to this piece probably a thousand times and it does not get tiring for me.  I’m still fascinated with its spirit and invention.

I’ll probably sit on it a bit more through Christmas and keep tinkering, but release it in January of 2011.  That’ll make about a decade.  Seems appropriate for this piece.

Stay tuned…

Even More Inspiration

• I Stood In The Wings… Part 3
• Phoenix Rising
• Remembering…
• Life At Its Best
• God Is doG Spelled Backwards
• Christmas Foresight

But this is what we are taught.  “Love your enemies”, the Master said.

A very wise woman once taught me how.  I can’t say I use this technique enough – sometimes in the middle of emotion I forget until the problem becomes so all-encompassing that I have to really get up and do something about it.  About then, the fog of hatred in my brain begins to lift and usually I’m able to turn the situation around pretty quickly by quietly sitting down with myself and going through the following procedure.

I create in my imagination an empty white room.  In that room I stand my so-called enemy before me.  I then go down the list of all the things I don’t like about him or her.  Were they dishonest with me?  Did they say bad things about me?  Whatever it is that I don’t like about them, I look at and list.

I then take all of those things and stick them over in the right corner of the room in a great heap.  I separate them out from the individual.  I then turn back to the individual before me once again and look to see if there’s anything else that needs separating.  I make sure I strip away from the enemy all undesirables and stack them over in the right corner of the room.

Then I place that free and clear individual before me over in the left corner of the room – far away from the pile of junk on the right.

It’s OK to dislike the pile of junk on the right.  It’s OK to be wary of it.  It’s good to distrust the erroneous nature of all the negative stuff.  Don’t be naive and think you have to love error or the work of the devil.  The whole pile is to be tossed aside, seen for the mistake that it is and negated.

Don’t love the pile.

But then turn back to what’s left of the individual over in the left corner.  If you did your job right, what’s left is who this individual truly is – the perfect child of God.  That’s the ‘enemy’ we’re supposed to love.

If we look closely at this shining light of a person we see that there’s no sense of enemy left.  All that is over on the pile on the right.

Keep looking at the perfect child on the left.  See his or her immortal qualities of goodness.  You should no longer have to look through anything.  All that stuff’s over on the pile and you’ve dealt with it and eradicated it from both of your lives.

Now, if you’ve controlled your imagination firmly enough, you may love this individual.  After all, what’s not to love?  Find something?  Stick it over on the right pile, but keep looking left.  Focus on the perfect principles of this individual.  Stick to the ideal Man.  See the Christ or the Buddha nature in this soul and control your own mind so that you see nothing but the purity of this individual.

Stay focused on that no matter what.  Trust that you’ve done your job with the junk on the left and become riveted on the perfect light of the individual before you.

If you can control your own mind, not the other person, but yourself, you can change the seeming reality.  You can truly erase the negative and your experience with this will absolutely change because you changed your mind.

No longer do you have to carry hatred for one of God’s creatures.  That only hurts you anyway.

The solution is to stay focused on the individual on the left until there is no left and no right, but only the pure and perfect individual before you.  Then love that being.  That being is the Christ in man and woman – the same Christ that lives in you.  That being is the spiritual man that we all seek within ourselves.

The saying goes, “We are all one”.  Well there we are together – standing in that room.  Standing in the love.  Loving our enemies.

Go for it!

Even More Inspiration

• Spiritual Scientist
• God Is doG Spelled Backwards
• The Atheist
• Words Of Wisdom
• Straight ‘A’s
• Loving God

“Integrity” is one of my favorite words.  Its derivation is from the Latin word integritas, which means wholeness or soundness, and from integer, which also adds to the mix the concept: untouched.

Webster’s Dictionary goes on to add, ”the quality or state of being whole, unimpaired, unbroken.”  And lastly, “the quality or state of being of sound moral principle.”

The word cross-pollinates all human activities.  Or at least it should.  It governs politics, business, marriage, athletics, personal relationships and far beyond.  It is the governing principle of all human relationships: to behave with integrity.

To behave with integrity simply means to be pure (untouched) in intention.  To me it means to live to one’s highest understanding of right.  It means to live in the wholeness of honesty and goodness.  Ultimately, it means to live life as Christ, Buddha, Mahatma Gandhi, Mohamed, Moses, the way-showers, all taught us to live.

It means to “do unto others as we would have them do unto us.”

I remind myself of this noble word and invite all others to reconsider this word in their lives.

I truly believe in the Golden Rule.  It too is one of life’s governing principles.  Why?  Because it works.  There are some things in this life experience that simply work.  Like goodness begets goodness.  Love is reflected in love.  The more one gives, the more one receives.

Ultimately we must all know that if we act to our highest sense of integrity, we cannot be hurt.

There are people out there who will try to take advantage of what might be deemed our ‘innocence’, our purity, but we must stand in our integrity as a mighty fortress of sound untouched wholeness.  If we do, we cannot be marred.  We cannot be broken nor pulled down.  The word is that mighty.

We must know this and live it.

I pray that I can.  I trust its noblese.  I deeply value its lofty reach.  I scramble to reach its mountaintop.  I stand in awe of those who stand upon it.

If I can be known as a man of integrity, I shall have lived a worthwhile life.  I have not always stood in those shoes.  I have sometimes taken the easy way out and not stood this mountain.  But always it proved not to be the easy way out, but, in fact, proved itself disastrous and left me a failed individual

Perhaps it’s why I’m here: to learn the way of integrity.

It is why I write of the word.  To think on it, to study once again both meaning and root and ingest them into my life.

Oh that I could stand untouched before you.  Oh that we could stand together.

We could, you know.  We could all live lives of integrity.  If we did, the human race would take a giant leap of evolution.  The world would absolutely change for the better.  We all know this to be true.

Let us have faith that the word will prove itself.  Faith can grow to understanding.  When we have this understanding as a human race we will find ourselves on the path of the way-showers.

Even More Inspiration

• Spiritual Scientist
• The Atheist
• Loving God
• God Is doG Spelled Backwards
• Phoenix Rising
• Words Of Wisdom

In the long run, what does it matter?  Christianity’s biggest split seems to me to be was he or wasn’t he.  Was Jesus God?  Just doesn’t make sense.  To me it seems like he was not.

Don’t mean to stir up a hornet’s nest here (or maybe I do), but I think a ton of people here got it wrong.

For my money, Jesus was the way-shower, the exemplar.  He was sent here to be an example for us on the subject of how to live our lives.  He was a human being just like us and that was the point.  He showed us our potential – what we could be if we knew what he knew and practiced what he practiced.

He taught us how to think, how to treat our fellow man, how to heal, how to live.

He said, “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons: freely ye have received, freely give.”  He was talking to his disciples and telling them to go and do what he had done, telling them that it was possible as human beings to perform miracles – to live their lives on a much higher level.

This is what all way-showers teach.  That’s why they need to be human to start with.  If they were Martians, we would discredit the possibility immediately because we weren’t really the same.

Jesus was a man.  That was the point.

I don’t want Jesus to be God.  I want him to be human and his many acts of humanity throughout the New Testament only prove that.  He had lost faith when he said to his own confused thinking, “Get thee behind me, Satan”.

He had lost his temper when he threw the moneychangers out of the temple.

He had lost focus when he went back to the desert for 40 days and 40 nights to get his act back together.

And he was just plain scared up there on the cross when he said, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”

Besides, if he was God, then just whom was he speaking to?  Clearly not himself.

This Easter I celebrate this amazing human being who taught us how to live, who taught us our potential as men and women, who taught us by being an example of the best of what we could be as human beings.

He also gave us great insight as to our spiritual identities, but that’s another story.  I like to differentiate between Jesus, the man, and the Christ – that which he taught and exemplified.  For now I’ll just defend the concept of Jesus, the human man, who brought us the truth revealed and who showed us by his human life a better way of living.

Did God forsake Jesus on the cross?  Not any more than He or It does when we have a cold or get divorced or have cancer or murder.  I believe that God is always right there, right here.  Sometimes, in our humanity, we just lose track of Him or It.  That doesn’t mean that God turns away from us.

A cloud covers the sun, but we know the sun is still up there.

God is ever-present.  What we human beings seek in life is presence – spiritual presence.  It’s what Jesus had mostly accomplished.  He too battled with his humanity, his mortality.  He too had his struggles, his enemies, his loss of faith, his confusions.

But through his living on this mortal plain of existence, he taught us how to handle it by his great example and accomplishments.

This Easter it’s not the scared human on the cross that we celebrate, but the man who overcame.  We celebrate the great mind of the man who triumphed over death and showed us each how we might overcome as well.

For more inspirational music, thoughts and ideas from Peter Link,
please visit Watchfire Music.

Even More Inspiration

• The Atheist
• Spiritual Scientist
• Phoenix Rising
• Inspirational Music
• Thinking And Creativity
• Valentine Thoughts