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

Note: The following is a compilation of several posts and some new updates intended for newer readers of this blog.  Much has been written about our new project, Goin’ Home.  If you’ve been following all along, you may find some redundancies here; however, if you’re somewhat new to the project, you’ll find here a summary of events and thoughts that will bring you somewhat up to date.

What if today you could go over to your neighborhood grocery, grab that cart and shop for anything your little ol’ heart desired, then, instead of getting into the checkout line, skip that and just head home with your groceries – steak, shrimp, Haagen Daz, throw in a little Kobe Beef, some chocolate truffles and perchance a tin or two of Almas Caviar.

When you got outside with your overflowing shopping cart, the police would be there, but would just look the other way as you passed by chuckling gleefully, licking your chops.

What a great idea!  Why don’t we do this?  Food should be free!  I think most of us would agree that life would be a lot easier if food were free.

Trouble is, after very little time, maybe the next time we went back to the supermarket, the aisles would be empty, the shelves bare.  “Hey, all the food is gone!” you might cry.  “Well, let’s go back to the farmers and get more,” the store manager would say.

So we’d go to the farmers and say, “Hey farmers, make more food!”  They would respond like this:  “Without getting paid, it’s just too hard.  Sorry, but there’s just no more food.  We’re gonna go do something else.”

Well, essentially that’s what just happened to the music business – except for one problem.  Of course the farmers equal the artists in this little analogy and the artists, who love to make music, are still saying, “Oh cool, you like my music? You actually want to listen to my music?  OK, I’ll give it to you for free!”

So it’s gonna take a little time before this situation is righted.  Give the starving artists a chance to really starve.   Then they won’t be able to make any more music no matter how much they love to do it.  Cuz we all gotta eat!

We are, today, living in that era of empty aisles and starving artists.  The music business has collapsed under the weight of horrible leadership. (The four majors ignored the power of the Internet for so long that now they’ve missed the boat.) File sharing and outright stealing have become the norm for millions of young people.

The unfair treatment of artists by the companies has long been legendary (the companies themselves would always make back all their investment before the artists ever saw a cent of their royalties), and now development money has completely dried up as both the major record labels and the indies struggle for survival.  Where would the pharmaceutical industry be without research and development?  Nowhere.

That’s the old record business.

But all is not lost.  Never before in the history of the world has music been more proliferate.  Everywhere we turn, there is music.  “The day the music died” is a virtual impossibility.  Music is simply that much a part of the human consciousness.

So, as part of the natural order of things, a new world emerges.  Out of the ashes of the old one rise new ideas, a more fair treatment of the artists by now paying royalties on first dollar earned, and a cutting edge approach to new ways of approaching fans and customers.

It is a renaissance time in which the artist is now asked to be both business person and artist.  Not only must he be able to play his guitar, but he must also be able to understand the constantly changing evolution of the Internet and its powers.

In most cases today, the artist must be his or her own investor, marketing department, graphics designer, videographer, accounting department and retail store.  Selling from their own websites, many artists have almost been able to accomplish the near impossible.  Where most fail is on the all-important level of promotion.  By the time the new music is finished, mastered and manufactured, there usually just isn’t enough money left to promote the product.

So the music sells to a few friends and family and sits quietly on a website among millions of other sites that perhaps receives a hundred hits a month, if they’re lucky.  And the music languishes on a virtual shelf.

One thing we know for sure: Acts who tour, sell.  Acts who don’t, don’t.  So we must tour.  Touring is expensive, however, and the money is gone.  Often, many artists don’t even get to this point, running out of money before the CD is actually completed.  It’s a frustrating scenario.

However, now there is the hope of companies like Kickstarter.com and Indiegogo.com, on-line companies where artists and entrepreneurs with creative projects can raise money through crowd-funding from leagues of possible friends and supporters from around the world.

We are exploring this very real possibility right now with a new CD, Goin’ Home – On Heaven and Beyond to be released in November of 2011 and promises to be an in-depth look at a subject that many of us spend most of our lives avoiding.  Here is a joyful, sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, exploration of the transition from this world to the next.  It’s really a celebration of eternal life.

The CD’s purpose is to open our eyes to the timelessness of our future.  The vision is to take an open-eyed look at an eventuality we all will face one day and face it head on.

The music is drawn from both original compositions, and also from the rich tradition of beloved Spiritual songs and Gospel lyrics from the past hundred years of the American songbook.

Great traditional songs like In Dat Great Gittin’ Up Mornin’, When The Saints Go Marchin In, the title song, Goin’ Home, with Antonín Dvo?ák’s timeless melody, and even Spiritual classics, I Ain’t Gonna Grieve My Lord No More and I Got A Robe all receive new fresh approaches and orchestrations and tremendous performances by a powerful cast of New York session vocalists and guest artists.

The choir alone is worth the price of purchase.  Led by double gold album R&B/Gospel vocalist, Jenny Burton, it’s performers comprise an ‘A’ list of world-class back-up singers who have sung with just about every major star in the music business – from Celine Dion to Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Sting, Bobby McFerrin and even Luciano Pavarotti.  The list goes on and on.

They are flawlessly organized by vocal arranger, Margaret Dorn, (Bette Midler, Jennifer Lopez, Carly Simon, Michael McDonald, Garth Brooks, Diana Ross) and together create a sound that blends with both a rich meticulous warmth and also can get up and shout down the rafters when needed.  They are: Angela Clemmons, Keith Fluitt, John James, Kevin Osborne, Catherine Russell, Vaneese Thomas and Darryl Tookes.

Guest artists joining this gathering of superb talent include: Julia Wade, who with seven Inspirational solo CDs under her belt is Watchfire Music’s best-selling recording artist, Tom Tipton, who served for 29 years as a soloist at Reverend Robert H. Schuler’s internationally famous Crystal Cathedral and has sung for four U.S. Presidents, Barry Danielian, one of New York City’s most in-demand session players recording with such pop notables as Celine Dion, Paul Simon, Bon Jovi, Ricky Martin, and James Taylor, and AHMIR, the #1 most popular R&B group on YouTube with over 50 million views.

We also close the CD with a new song recently penned by Grammy award winning songwriter, Julie Gold, best known for Bette Midler’s version of her song From A Distance which won the Grammy for Song of the Year in 1991.  Come To Me As A Bird is a heartbreakingly beautiful new song that is sure to capture the imagination of millions.

Watchfire Music, www.watchfiremusic.com , an Inspirational music company and on-line store, will release this CD and be the machinery behind the product.  Without the machinery, it’s pretty much a dead end road no matter how talented you are.  That machinery is almost in place.  The company is now in the black and running off earnings and no longer investor monies.

However, we’re not a rich organization.  We have to find special funding for special projects.  This new Kickstarter concept is most interesting to us because we have such a loyal and appreciative customer base.  We receive letters every day from people around the world expressing their gratitude.

With the projected Kickstarter money we will hire an Internet publicist, who knows these new and far less expensive ropes very well.  We have little overhead.  We run our company from virtual offices in four cities across the country over Skype, the Internet and email with a little telephone thrown in.”

It’s a different world, but I truly believe we’re on the cutting edge of it.  The Internet is the new way and we’re using it and understanding it.  It’s an exciting new Phoenix rising that fascinates me every day.”

So, once again we mount another CD, another show, but with a stronger machinery behind us.  With the success of Watchfire Music over these past 6 years during the roughest period in the history of the music business, we have been able to put together a strong on-line presence, a smoothly working delivery system to tens of thousands of loyal customers and have an Inspirational record company and on-line store to back this project.

Let’s be honest here, however.  The future of the music business, with all the file sharing and “free music” concepts, is a very tough road ahead.  The Internet is the new Tower Records and the hope is that this new and challenging world will provide a new start and a better way.

We’re small, but nimble – perhaps not yet a supermarket, but rather an elegant deli finding it’s way through this new world.

A three-city tour and subsequent Internet webcasts of the live performances are in the planning stages for 2012.

To find out more go to:

http://kck.st/o9vUvR

Even More Inspiration

• Light At The End Of The Tunnel
• Spiritual Scientist
• Love Is The Reason For Living
• Looking Back on 2010
• I Stood In The Wings… Part 4
• The Changing Scene

Even More Inspiration

• Spiritual Scientist
• The Atheist
• Thoughts On Thinking or Thinking Makes It So
• God Is doG Spelled Backwards
• How To Handle A Liar
• The Center and Circumference of Pain

Tonight I shall forego my usual thoughts on Inspirational music and concentrate instead on a great lesson learned decades ago by a young man out on his own in the world for the first time and struggling with life’s many temptations.  I shall kid you not and tell you right from the beginning of this tale that the young man in question was I.  The tale is true.

I was a sophomore in college and at spring break, when all my friends went off either skiing in Colorado or partying in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, I, of pole-vaulter fame, went off instead to get a jump on the track season and practice my skills at the University of Illinois.

I had gone to the University of Virginia my freshman year on a track and soccer scholarship where I had tutored under a great college pole-vault coach by the name of Lou Onesty (interestingly enough pronounced like the word “Honesty”).  As a pole-vaulter it had been a wise decision to learn under this man, for he had been the first true pole-vaulting coach I had ever worked under and I had added a full two feet to my best height that previous freshman year.

Trouble was, though I was thrilled with my progress as a pole-vaulter, I was otherwise pretty miserable at UVA and decided to transfer to a small college in Illinois named Principia College where many of my friends attended.

These were difficult times for pole-vaulters.  “Why”, you must ask?  Because literally three years before, at the end of my high-school experience, the pole-vault world had switched from Swedish steal poles to the new and much improved fiber-glass poles and the world records had shot up as never before.  Now, vaulters, instead of muscling up a stiff steel pole, had to learn how to be catapulted by a flexing fiber-glass pole through the air to greater heights than ever before.

I had begun to learn this high art (pardon the pun) the previous year under Coach Onesty and wanted to make sure I was ready for the season by getting a jump on practice.  I had another vaulter friend who invited me to spend spring break with him vaulting at the indoor facility at the University of Illinois.  I jumped at the chance.  (yet another unintended pun)

I had convinced my new coach at Principia College to by me the best new fiber-glass pole which was, at the time, an expensive $250.  I packed this new pole into a plastic tube – 16’ long – and strapped it onto my car and drove off to the U of Illinois for two weeks to practice.

The two weeks of practice went extremely well.  I was bigger, stronger and faster and, working with some of the U of I coaches who generously offered their time, I was getting in great shape and bending that pole like never before to get the snap and lift to thrust me high into the air.  I could see more great progress on the horizon.

They generously allowed me to store my pole in their equipment room at night and gave me a key for free access to this room.

On my last day there, while I tried to squeeze every bit of time on the track I could out of the experience, the coaches left my friend and I alone in the indoor facility at end of day to continue vaulting.  There we remained for another two hours until my friend left for a date.  I told him I would take a few more vaults and then pack up, lock up and leave.  We said our goodbyes and he left me alone in the facility.

I remember deciding to take five more vaults and then go because it was getting late and I still had to pack up my car and do the 250 mile drive back to St. Louis where I lived.  In the hushed quiet of this great indoor track facility I sprinted down the runway at top speed on the first of the five vaults, drove my pole into the box, arched back and as I gave it everything I had, felt the pole bend as never before and prepared for its catapult thrust.

And then, while in mid-vault, the sound like the roar of a shotgun, blasted through the arena.  I felt the tensions of the vault go immediately soft and found myself flying awkwardly through the air and landing crazily to the side of the runway entirely missing the foam landing-pit.  I was not hurt, but I was immediately devastated because my expensive fiber-glass pole, which was hollow, had shattered in my hands at the result of the powerful bend.

I had heard of poles breaking before, but it had never happened to me and I just sat there in the dust of the runway and wept because I knew immediately that my season was over before it had begun.  I was a pole-vaulter without a pole, and a small college like Principia College would never have enough money in their budget to buy me another.

Dreams shattered, I showered and began to pack up what remained of the unfixable pole and went to the equipment room to get my travel tube for my car.  There in the room in the corner rack stood 10 or 12 U of I poles just like mine, except that now they weren’t like mine at all.  Mine was broken.

In my depression and devastation I had an idea.  A rich school like the U of I would never miss one of their poles.  Why not just slip one of theirs into my car tube, throw the remains into my back seat and get rid of them on the drive back to St. Louis?  Who would ever notice a missing pole among 10-12?  It was my only choice.

Let us pause here in the tale and look a bit into the flaws of character of the hero of our story.  He had grown up a good boy – taught the rules of moral character, taught the difference between good and evil and taught the discerning of right versus wrong.  But he had strayed while traveling the world on his own.  The previous year he had discovered how to steal – not how to rob banks, mind you, just petty thievery – the kind one would not go to jail for, but would certainly reap great embarrassment if ever caught.

Trouble was, he had never been caught.  His modus operandi had been clever enough to fool everyone (except, of course, himself) and he’d gotten away with his petty thefts so far.  In fact, he had found the act sometimes all too thrilling in its drama and pleasing in its result.  It had become fun to fool the people and pleasant to own something new and otherwise unaffordable.

There was attached to the experience the slight smell of addiction.  So this choice was the only choice.  It would be easy and no one would ever find out.

So I packed my new pole into my travel tube, strapped it to my car in the cover of night and took off for St. Louis.  A hundred miles or so down the road I pulled into a small country town, found a dumpster and put half of my shattered pole there and on the way out of town threw the other half into a farmers corn field.  Evidence destroyed.

It was when the thief got back into his car that he made his first mistake.  He forgot to turn the car radio back on and so he continued his drive back home in silence.

Now it was after midnight.  The fresh spring air and the quiet of the lonely highway began to take its toll.  The silence gave rise to conscience.  And the conscience was, at last, troubled.

I had known inwardly for some time that I was on the wrong course.  But the crimes had been so petty and the results pleasing.  Now, however, I had moved up into a whole new level of crime.

I drove on for another 50 miles, but now my mind was racked with guilt and the fear of being exposed, and the magnitude of what I had done caught up with me.  But looking back I know that really what happened was that the goodness that was always my basis, simply rose in my consciousness and took over.  As I drove on I came to a strong realization of where I was going with all of this and that it was to my doom.

In fact, my doom had arrived.  I understood that if I continued in this direction my downfall was right around the next corner.  It wasn’t that I feared getting caught so much as I simply feared the person I had become and made a conscious decision to turn from this and become my true self again.

And so, now 180 miles down the road and moving closer to 2:00 in the morning, I turned my car around (and turned my life around) and drove back.

I reached the U of I about 4:30 that morning.  All was asleep and quiet.  The gym and indoor track facility was locked up tight.  I could leave the pole at the front door of the track, but that was pretty weird.  Then I noticed an open window high up in the building.  Somehow I scaled the wall and got into a third story window, found the key I had left behind, opened doors and put what did not belong to me back where it belonged.  I locked up and got back into my car and at 5:30 AM, began the 250-mile drive home again.

Corny as it may sound, I did not turn my car radio back on.  Instead, I began to sing hymns as I drove.  I think I sang about every hymn I ever knew that night as I drove and the new day dawned on a new man.

That was a life-changing experience.  I stopped stealing for good that night though I have to admit to stealing a few hearts.  But that night I got it.  And as a result of my change of thought, my character changed.  I became a good person again and I cannot put words to the happiness I felt and the sense of awakening I felt on the entire drive.  The experience is here with me today as powerful as it was back then.  I was healed and the healing was complete.

Epilogue to tale: When I got back to school after spring break I marched right in to confess my sins and reversal of character to my new coach.  I explained that I would work in any way he wished to make the money to buy a new pole.  I expected the worst.

What I got from Coach Crafton was, “Well Pete, I didn’t buy one pole; I bought three.  I knew you might break one.  After all, they break.  No sweat.”

Good triumphs.  Evil bites the dust.  Life Lesson for a Pole-Vaulter.

Even More Inspiration

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

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

So we create our world in our minds.  This goes for the physical world as well as our imaginative world.  And on second thought, this goes for each of us as well.

I’ve always found this to be a pretty mind-boggling concept, but not really when one considers the world of our dreams.  When in that mental state, the world around us seems as real as the world around us in our waking state.  Then there’s the awakened state that most spiritual leaders often speak of – that which we are working to attain in this life on Planet Earth.  Three states of thinking: Dreams, Waking and Awakened.

“How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?” – Plato

This ancient thinker struggled with the same thoughts as we do this very moment.  It seems like we spend most of our time in this earthly experience floundering about in the second state.

“We are what we think.  All that we are arises with our thoughts.  With our thoughts, we make the world.” – Buddha

I’ve been looking for Jesus’ specific thoughts on thinking and coming up somewhat empty until I considered his demonstrations (some call them miracles, but I prefer ‘demonstrations’ – demonstrations of the truth of being).  He walked on water.  How did he do this?  He thought he could and so he did.  He raised the dead.  He understood the truth of death – that there is no death, and so changed the perceptions (thinking) of those around him.  Lazarus rose.  Jesus appeared after the crucifixion.

“Change your thoughts and you change your world.” – Norman Vincent Peale

“The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” — Albert Einstein

The demonstrations of Jesus were whoppers, way-showers to us in the waking state.  However, the higher thoughts of some of our greatest thinkers also show the way to living happier daily lives as well.

“We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think.  When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.” — Buddha

“As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” — The Bible from the Book of Proverbs chapter 23 verse 7

“The more man meditates upon good thoughts; the better will be his world and the world at large.” – Confucius

Many people place success at the top of life’s ladder.  For my money it’s happiness, though I’ll have to admit lately in my latter years of this visit I am more considering the word “awakening” as the top rung on the ladder.

But happiness, for me, has always been huge.  Living in the roller-coaster world of the entertainment business can be a rough ride for even the most successful, so I’ve learned not to make success the epitome.  I’m certainly happier having made this decision in life.

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.” – Marcus Aurelius

I wrote a song once called, “I Think; Therefore, I Am”.  Looking back on it, I find it to be rather sophomoric.  I think that I wrote it when I was too young.  I needed 20 years of seasoning before I tackled that one.

But thinking back on it, I came across this:

“’I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am’ — a philosophical Latin statement used by René Descartes, which became a fundamental element of Western philosophy. The simple meaning of the phrase is that if someone wonders whether or not he exists, that is, in and of itself, proof that he does exist (because, at the very least, there is an “I” who does the thinking).  It forms the bedrock for all knowledge, because, while all things can be questioned as to whether they are from the realm of reality or from some figment of imagination (a dream, influence of a demon, etc.), the very act of doubting one’s own existence serves as proof of the reality of one’s own existence.”  – From Wikipedia

Whether or not one chooses to debate the above, Mr. Wikipedia is right when he says, “It forms the bedrock for all knowledge…” This bedrock is thinking.  Thinking is the basis for all things.  Without thinking, there is nothing.  Take away thinking and matter does not exist.  Creativity does not exist.  Man does not exist.

“We are formed and molded by our thoughts.” — Buddha

Perhaps thinking is the action of God.  (A concept sure to be considered in a later blog post.)  If we are made in God’s image and likeness then we are a product of God’s thinking.  We are the results of his thoughts – or said in another less anthropomorphic way, we are a product of Thought. 

“Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force — that thoughts rule the world.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Even More Inspiration

• Spiritual Scientist
• Thinking And Creativity
• God Is doG Spelled Backwards
• The Atheist
• 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