• Phone Post

Words have been written to show me the power I possess and secretly hold in fear.  Men causing antique aircraft to hover like helicopters, men changing their visage with a simple wave of their hand and passing through walls as if they were made of air, shadows armed with blades as real as the ground beneath my feet (for whatever that may be worth) to spill a man’s blood, driving cars with no gas required, dead men walking as natural as life.

And yet, here I stand, feeling no wiser than I did a month ago when I called upon my brother the Raven.

I feel him inside my body, mind and spirit.  This cage of flesh keeps him safe, or is it my own ego that is safe by his continued imprisonment?

I ask again to be given the strength and courage to burn this physical cell and free the Raven so that we may spread our wings and soar, as brothers, as one.

It is our time.  Thank you.

Time for a yet another wallpaper pack since I promise you another one before I go off to Semarang for my Christmas holiday. And yep, it’s another Touhou Wallpaper Pack for you Touhou fans out there. I’ve just went back from the cinema watching Avatar and boy it was such a mind-blowing film. I think I will give a review on that later on. But this time, enjoy the wallpaper I have chosen specially for you. Cheers!

• Phone Post

“Have you ever read that book?”  She paused for a good two minutes before the question found its way out of her mouth.  She looked completely out of place.  Homeless?  Possible, but somehow doubtful.

Sitting outside the coffee shop at Main and Ashland, I was pausing from my  read of “Illusions” to take a phone call from a dear friend.

She looked like she was from Europe, but she had no accent to match her look.  Conservative, warmly dressed as the winds at this time of year are whipping off the ocean to bite unprepared or unsuspecting passersby.  Maybe a wool skirt, some sort of shawl, and a scarf, all drearily clad in black, save the light (probably faded?) blue scarf around her neck.  I paused from my telephone conversation.

I just bought the book tonight.

“It’s a great book.  It’s true.”  She said the sentences one after the other, but to her there was a distinct difference between the two.  It was both great and true, together and separately, but mostly separately from the way she said it.  “Have you ever read any of his books?”

No.  This is my first experience with Bach.

My friend graciously held her breath in the earpiece as I casually indulged this random woman.  I shifted my feet from the low stone and mortared wall that might only be capable of thwarting a Dachshund’s attempted breach and not much else, to the ground as I leaned onto the white, plastic cafe table in front of me, getting a little closer to this woman.

“Well, it’s good.  And it’s true.  Just don’t let it lead you down a path you don’t want to go down.”  She clung awkwardly to the corner of the brick facade of the coffee shop for a moment before she swept herself inside.

I went back to my friend on the phone.

That was interesting.

We chatted for a few minutes as I recounted precisely what happened.  I watched and narrated to my friend as I watched this woman walk to the counter of the coffee shop, stand, turn in a circle or two, then exit through the other door on the main face of the building.  I was explaining how strange and interesting it all was, when she suddenly appeared again.

Her fingers gripped the corner of the building like “Kilroy“, but at an angle as if there were gale force winds sweeping her off her feet.

“I know I’m just an old woman, but what I told you was wisdom.  You will take it or leave it as you choose.”  And she was gone.

I read a few passages from “Illusions” to the woman I consider to be a part of my heart’s twin before I hung up the phone to allow her to sleep.

How interesting was that little scene?  I was fascinated.  I returned to the book and breezed through the first 80 or 90 pages.  I wanted a beer.  I needed to see Jill.  I didn’t know why, but I did know why too.  Jill was supposed to have this book.  I knew it when I bought it.  And when I bought it, it was one of those magical moments (surprised?) when I didn’t see the book where I thought it should be, but the book called to me and practically jumped off the shelf at me as I was turning away, dejected that it wasn’t there, to leave.

I found Jill where she typically is on a Monday evening, at the pub, behind the counter.  Jill doesn’t know it yet, but she is a pretty good doppelganger for my heart’s twin.  The same heart’s twin to whom I was speaking on my phone when the mystery woman showered me with her unusual blessing.

I ordered a beer and continued to read.  About 35 or 40 minutes later, I read the passage at the beginning of this post for the first time.  My eyes met with Jill’s right before I read it.  I already knew, it’s the biggest part of the reason I go to the pub, but the validation made me avert my eyes in some weird feeling of embarrassment.  Does she know?  It’s hard to know or be certain of such things, but I know what I know.  We have met somewhere in some place in some time and known each other well, but not yet in this time and place.

I finished the book in a couple of hours all told.  Subtract the distractions and the time spent watching Monday Night Football, and the telephone conversation, and it probably took me all of two hours to read.  I set the book down on the bar.

Jill took a step to me.  “I have picked up and shelved this book several times!”

Have you?

“Yeah.”  She said something else, but I didn’t hear it all because my mind was swimming and racing about how she was clearly supposed to have this book.

Do you own it now?

“No.”

Then yes you do.  This is yours.

“Are you sure?”

Completely.  I knew it when I bought it that I would be giving it to you.

Jill didn’t even blink when I said that.  Maybe she hadn’t heard.  Maybe she was ok with that type of thing.  Hard to say, really.  She took the book and placed it on a fax machine that sits next to her POS system.  I continued to field questions about finishing a book in a couple of hours and why I would then give away a book that I had only purchased three hours past.  Jill moved about in her regular fashion attending to those who required her help, paying no attention to those who seemed to be fascinated by my gesture.  I liked that about her.

Jill!  Can I have the book for a moment?  I want to earmark a page for you.

“Sure.”

I found the passage and earmarked it and placed it back on the bar.  Another stranger sauntered up and made a remark of how wonderful the book was.  I was a little surprised at how many people knew the book, quite honestly, but I was enjoying the whole thing too much to dwell on that for too long.  I donned my white “old man” sweater and my knitted charcoal scarf and said goodbye to my new friend from Montreal to my right, to Jason and Jill, and started out the door to my car for the drive home.  I wonder if Jill will understand.  I wonder how much I do.

Yes, it’s time for another Touhou Wallpaper Pack frenzy again. I’ve collected a lot of picture over the past month and it’s time for me to share it with you guys. This time, Flandre Scarlet gets a lot of wallpapers since I think she has the most awesome wings (with crystals and stuff). Anyway, I hope you like my selections which I started to compos from the past two weeks. Enjoy.

• Phone Post

I was bouncing off the walls when I reached Dr. Ken Best’s office.  I was happy, excited even, to see Ken and experience whatever magic and wonder might await me.  He asked me what was going on today, and like a child with ADD chasing every bell and whistle and light at a  carnival , I quickly spat out ten, or maybe twenty, or perhaps it was a thousand different things that were happening.

It all boiled down to one thing.

I feel stuck.

“Stuck?  How?”

I feel like my spiritual and mental and emotional bodies are flying along at such a great pace, but that my physical body is lagging sorely behind.  Like I want to make my physical world and self the manifestation of my spiritual self, and I haven’t quite figured out how to do that.

(Easy for me to say now.  It took me ten minutes and 157 different verbal angles to get that out for him in that moment.)

I feel like I’m on the precipice of something great, but I have felt like this for a very long time, so I don’t know if I’m on the same precipice or a different one.  I just want to jump off and fly.

“It’s always a different precipice.”

Ken turned out the main overhead lights, leaving just the lamp on in the corner as if to signal this was about to get serious.  I actually prefer it that way; it adds to the magical ambiance.  Then he took me through the usual rigamarole of cracking and twisting and popping.

“Did you read the book?”

Kybalion?  No, but I haven’t gone to look for it yet, either.  I’ll go tonight.  I’m going to the beach, and The Mystery Annex is right there.

“Don’t get it.  I won’t have anything to give you for Christmas.  Besides, I have another book for you.”

Oh?

“Illusions, by Richard Bach.”

Ok.

I gave my neck and head completely to Ken, trusting him with a child-like heart.  This was the first time I had ever given over my neck and head so easily, and the cracking that followed proved as much.

“Life is about jumping off the precipice.  Say it please.”

Life is about jumping off the precipice.

My fingers pulled apart.

“Life is about always being on the precipice.”

Life is about always being on the precipice.

My fingers held.

“I can have enlightenment now.  Say it please.”

I can have enlightenment now.

My fingers almost held together.

“Maaaybe.  Would you like to know that you can have enlightenment now?”

Yes.

We worked through several things all pertaining to my enlightenment and the bringing of my spiritual understanding into the physical world.  I was lying on my back, per usual, with Ken seated to my left working my left ring finger and thumb to mark the truth of the Thetahealing.  Tears filled in as small pools under my closed eyelids before they began to find less and less room until, eventually, they overflowed the negligible space of my sockets and trickled down the sides of my face.

We were finished, or so I thought, and I think Ken probably did too.  Then something happened that had never happened before.

I opened my eyes and Ken was staring directly at me, although it honestly felt more like it was through me.  I met his gaze and did not let go.  Something was happening.  His face began to shape-shift on me as is common when staring at someone or something with a softened focus.  I could see he was experiencing something, seeing something, and I could only dream of having that power (or more accurately, I had not yet fully given over to the belief that I already have that power).

I struggle in those moments to not comment, thinking about how I will write this moment in my blog later on, how it will sound or what approach to take, and a hundred different other things before I stop myself and realize I need to just be in the moment.

Somehow the magic was lost on me as I wrestled with my brain to be quiet and still.  I could see in Ken’s face that whatever had been happening was over.  I sat up slowly as Ken moved around behind me to wipe the table with a sterilized wet-wipe of some kind.

“Wake up…wake up…wake up.”

The words hung in the air like ghosts haunting me.  I moved to a chair next to Ken’s desk to put on my shoes, and suddenly I was overcome and began to cry.  It was slow at first, but wave after wave after wave crashed over me, and I could no longer hold it back.

I don’t know when it happened, but Ken was sitting on the table directly across from me.  If I hadn’t been in his office, I would have forgotten all my dignity and I would have cried aloud in my sobs.

I must be strong.

“Don’t fight it.  Walk into it.”

It was another moment when I wanted to be freaked out by Ken seemingly reading my mind, but I apparently have become accustomed to such things with him, and instead, I only allowed myself to go deeper.

Ken allowed me my space.

I have been hiding.

“Yes.”  It was neither a confirmation or a question.  It was an invitation to expand.

I know who I am.  I know what I’m supposed to do.  I know what I can become, and, yet, I have been hiding.  I’m so tired of hiding, Ken.

His next client arrived.  I had to pull it all back together and walk out now.  I did my best.

I woke up with the worst sore throat, I actually called in to work.  It’s still that swollen after a day of relative rest.  I did get a haircut and some groceries, then went back home.  I was only gone and hour and a half.  Instead of napping my mind kept going; I just recently learned the term Satori, which basically means spiritual enlightenment.  It hit me-this is exactly what has been happening to me for the past 6 months or so.

It’s like someone has flipped a switch-my new found happiness, pseudo relationship, having real feelings about everything with my ex.  It makes sense.  They come out of nowhere and are usually about what I’m thinking about right then.  It’s really kind of cool.  Something all of a sudden becomes crystal clear and makes sense.  I wouldn’t have thought it possible before it happened.  This is the source of some of my real healing.

Here’s a fun fact for everyone-Spontaneous Orgasm is real.  I had never heard of them before this week.  They are they most incredible thing you can imagine.  I didn’t realize it was a side of effect of certain meds.  They been happening since I met him.  Thank God they happen when I’m at a stoplight or I might have a real problem. :0

If anyone has anything to share about Satori, I’d like to hear about. It’s a pretty fascinating concept.

• Phone Post

Ken went on vacation and asked me to housesit for him.  Housesitting is ok, for the most part, but this entailed 4 birds, 2 cats and an old-enough-to-know-better, but still-too-young-to-care French Bulldog puppy.

The animals were an adventure all unto themselves.  I have never dealt with birds before, but they were surprisingly easy.  Not one peck or bite attempt the whole week.  Cats take care of themselves for the most part, and these two are the most amazing acrobats I have ever seen in feline form.  Oh, but that dog!  And, to keep it extremely interesting, I have to think that the entire animal kingdom of that house conspired against me at least for one night.

It was Saturday night.  I was foolish enough to believe that I could sleep in on Sunday morning, so I was up until about 1:30am.  Falling asleep on the couch, I awoke from my grogginess to the smell of something foul emanating from the kitchen area.  That dog!  I was only out for a few minutes!  Thanks for the present.  After corralling the dog, I decided he should stay in the office so I could actually get some sleep that night.  It was a good plan, or so I thought.  I didn’t expect the cats to be a part of the proposed jailbreak cum torture-the-human plan.  After lying down around 2am, I was awakened by a cat jumping off something as of yet undetermined, but most likely the chifforobe, onto my stomach.  It was 5am.

I went the washroom (that’s for my Canadian friends), and I decided the dog had clearly learned his lesson.  I released him from his containment, and I allowed him onto the bed ready to sleep the better part of the morning away.  He was acting a little weird.  I told him as much, but, alas, it was to no avail.  I pushed him aside and pulled the sheets back up under my chin, and I rolled over onto my side.  Wet!  What the – ?

That dog!  He peed all over the bed.  I jumped up and turned on the lights.  Sure enough, there it was.  The body pillow was soaked.  The sheets had spots in a spray pattern that would make CSI wonder how the hell that could happen.  Back in the office you go, my friend.

After throwing all I could into the washing machine, I decided to lie down on the couch and follow through with my plan of sleeping in.  By now, the sun was peaking through, and the birds thought I should have a trumpeted morning tribute fit for a king.  Thanks, birds.  I could handle that, actually.  I have some strange ability to block out the cacophony of the world when I really want to sleep, which would have been great, but for those cats!

The little cat decided that it was an easy like Sunday morning kind of morning and this was the morning for loving me.  Lying on the couch, the little cat sat on my head.  Not by my head, not around my head, not even in extremely close proximity to my head, but ON my head.  I brushed her off probably 10 times, and of those probable 10 times, she walked around the couch, and promptly sat again on my head.  I love you too, kitty.

It was useless to try to go back to sleep.  I walked to the corner to get coffee and read.  Needless to say, I was pretty much useless the rest of the day.  The wizard was messing with me, testing me now through his animals.  At least that is how it seemed to me.

They wore me out.  By the time Ken came back, I was a wreck.  Stressed, exhausted and at my wits end.  Ken laughed and laughed on the ride home from the airport as I recounted the week with his beasts.  I can’t blame him.  I laughed too.  It was, after all, pretty funny.  Well, it would have been if it had happened to someone else.

I don’t really know what the point of that whole story was, but if I did know, I would have to say, patience, sometimes the best laid plans go to waste and you better be ready to roll with it, and maybe the realization that sometimes I have to get broken physically to have a spiritual experience.  All in no particular order.

I had my first lucid dream on Wednesday, the night before Ken arrived back home.  I may not have had it if I wasn’t at the end of my physical energy rope.  I also cheated on Ken while he was gone.  I had my first cranio-sacral session with another magician named Rob.  Maybe the combination of the tired, the magic of Ken and the magic of Rob, the animals, the energy of the wizard’s home, all of it came together to give me that experience of lucid dreaming.  Now I know I can do it again.

Oh! I have so much to share with you all.  If you can see fit to forgive my negligence in the writing, I promise, I’ll see if I can remember it all.

Planet O’Connor continues to spin through the cosmos. It has been a busy and productive month even though there has been little fundamental or profound change. Thanks to the help of some key friends, my script “Rock Hard, Big Dick’s” is finally “getting read” by some people who might actually matter…all while it is simultaneously winding its way through a couple more screenwriting contests… but there won’t be any news on the contest results until well into the new year.

This past month has also found me happily collaborating with some creative pals on various projects (large and small) of theirs… which always makes me feel useful and also more connected to the creative realms.

I have also been working on new stories and material for ‘live’ shows and am hoping I’ll get invited to do another ‘Sit n Spin’ show in 2010, while also getting onto a couple of new stages. …as always it is all about saying “yes” to whatever the universe might put in front of you and always being open and ready for whatever bits of enlightenment might come next. Sounds a bit corny, I know…. but that doesn’t make it any less true. Also coming soon: I am gathering data for the upcoming (in early January) “2nd anniversary post” for ASK A PUNK….

]]> http://shamansun.com/2009/12/07/be-here-now/ Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:13:33 +0000 shamansun http://shamansun.com/2009/12/07/be-here-now/

“When the Mexicans in their deficient mythical-magic structure encountered the mentally-oriented Spaniards, the magic-mythic power failed in the face of mental strength; clan consciousness failed in the face of the individualized ego-consciousness. If an integral man were to encounter a deficient mental man, would not deficient material power fail in the face of integral strength? Would not the individual ego-consciousness falter in the face of the Itself-consciousness of man-kind? The mental-rational in the face of the spiritual? Fragmentation in the face of integrality?

..What can man do to bring about this mutation? …Man is in the world to sustain it as well as himself “in truth,” not for his or its own sake, but for the sake of the spiritual present. It is this spiritual present which elevates wholeness to transparency and frees us from our transient age, for this age of ours is not the present but partiality and flight, indeed, almost a conclusion. Only someone who knows of origin has present–living and dying in the whole, in integrity.”

–Jean Gebser, Ever Present Origin.

It’s nice to see this rather unpretentious blog has been appreciated enough for people to start sending me you stuff. I encourage you to do so, even if i might not review or write about everything. At first i thought me getting stuff for free could possibly compromise my position as a honest blogger, that i might feel obliged to say something nice or smooth over the harsh opinions i might occasionally blurt out. But i notice now thats not the case, send me crap and i will tell the world how bad it is, send me good stuff and i will promote it with love. Send me boring stuff and i will probably just disregard it. Just this once i will make an exception, make a precedent for you to know what kind of music there really is no point in sending to me.

The New York based, i think though they call themselves international, label LionDub were kind enough to send me some tracks off their back catalouge.  Zero G’s “Bassculture”, Pinchers “Enemies” (Marcus Vionary remix) and Marcus Visionarys “Carib Ep”. On paper it all sounds good, collaborations with Johnny Osbourne, Luciano, Jahdan Blakkamoore, and Satori sounds interesting. In my headphones though it does not. The Zero G track is… meh, ok but…meh. The Pinchers remix is some happy sunshine vibe reggae DnB that i would never listen unless off my head on ecstasy and amphetamines in some Napa night club, which i rarely am. The Marcus Visionary ep shows more promise, “The General Remix ” with Jah-Dan is actually a big track, but it was of course good to begin with. The rest of it does not reach the same levels. Never bad, never interesting, this is in my opinion really what is killing dubstep right now. Ok, tracks but never more, lacking in imagination and creativity. Probably ok on the dance floor when you don’t concentrate on what you’re listening to, but nowhere else. Well ok, the soca sounds of “St Vincent” may possibly be creative, unfortunately the track sucks.  I suppose there might be an audience for this kind of music somewhere. But it’s not me

order kindle download here

order paperback here

The Adventures of Bhodi Lava

By John A White

Tantra Beach is a playful though unusual novel that’s based on a true story. Set in India, the main character Lava is on a quest. He has just ended a difficult relationship, having lived the past four years at a new age mecca. Feeling daring and confident, he goes to India for the first time, directly to a large ashram where sexuality is not only accepted but encouraged and thoroughly explored.

To his amazement he finds what he seeks and much more. His explorations into the exotic culture, and into the world of tantra, combine as a powerful elixir that both liberate and heal him. The deeper he goes, the more lucid his encounter become. He winds up on the southern coast of India with an enlightened mystic and thirty other seekers. Living in huts in a primitive jungle camp, they practice ancient tantric techniques. The magic that unfolds is what the book ultimately tries to convey.

About the author:
John White grew up in Connecticut, attended Dartmouth College, and graduated from the University of California at Santa Cruz where he studied writing and world religions. He spent four years at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, immersed in shamanism, eastern mysticism, gestalt, and bodywork, and has lived and traveled in ten countries, including three years in India and three in Thailand. Since the age of seventeen, he has practiced many forms of yoga and meditation, and has attended numerous zen, vipassana, and tantric retreats. He has had a variety of jobs – an aid in a psychiatric center; a roofer; a mountaineering guide; bartender; physics teacher; and daytrader. He has written two other books, Suburban Zen, and Letters from India. Currently he’s fifty-one and living in Thailand where he’s working on a new book.

“Got a minute?”  I shrug and follow him outside; this has something of the flavor of an impromptu performance review.  As we wander out into the sun (is that what it is?) my glasses, like the peril-sensitive sunglasses of Hitchhiker’s Guide, turn dark — who says that the future isn’t now?

“So, you know, rumors have reached me.”  In other words, I’m sure I’ve been shooting my big mouth off again; when you’re at the hub of the wheel you keep turning turning turning until up and down seem the same.  What. Did.  I.  Do.  I have a strange sense of premonition as the familiar refrain ensues.  “You know, there are other jobs here,” delicately pausing, “that sound like fun.”

In an instant, the satori moment hits; I spend so much time plonked down in the chair that it feels like I’m rooted  in place; in another flash, me-as-tree brings up another image:  spreading my branches over the group and showering wisdom down.  That’s jumped the shark — internally I snort derisively and the images are swept away as I interrupt.  “Just so I’m educated about what else is out there — it’s not all good times and young kids; there’s something to be said for regular schedules and no one knowing your home phone number.”

Relief spreads like dawn on his face.  “Exactly!  Because, you know, I’d just heard …” It’s all perfunctory at that moment and we’re just marking time until we go back inside, until the peril dissipates to let me see clearly again.  Despite having taken position having to stare into the sun, if only I could bottle that desperation I’d be rich the next time I’m out of work.  Meter it out in small doses, lest your head swell into mistaking invaluable for valued (there’s the picture of the shade tree again), but keep your heart open — for life, and for life:  take as needed.

– Lumic Lütcher

• Phone Post

I just looked up what that meant in Debbie Shapiro’s book, The Body Mind Workbook, and I’m not sure I really wanted know all of that information, but it is apropos.  The neck indicates a limited perspective, or narrow mindedness, perhaps, and the shoulder represents a lot of heart energy, as in, if you’re not doing what you should be doing according to your heart, then it can manifest as pain in your shoulder.  Didn’t I just say something about fighting what I know I “should be” doing?

Ken did his routine magic with regards to the re-alignment of my body. I was lying down on my back, and Ken was working on my neck.

I work in a restaurant, and we have two fish on the menu at night, so there is no end to the supply of fish that I see being prepped on a regular basis.  The chef is very thorough.  He feels the fish, carefully sliding a surgical gloved hand back and forth against the flesh, examining every inch of it.  Back and forth, back and forth, he always seems to be looking for something, reading, absorbing the messages the spiritless body reveals to him.  The flesh always acquiesces to the gently prodding of the chef’s hand.  Then, quickly, deftly, he slices.  One fillet.  Then, the process resumes from the top.  Feeling, looking, reading the body that remains.

It’s a strange thing to see, really, but one that has helped me in my work with Ken, oddly enough.  It’s difficult to let go when Ken works the neck.  So to help myself, I imagine my neck as the flesh of the dead sea dweller.  I allow Ken to work the flesh like the chef prepping the evening’s meal.  Information which I decide to share today with Ken.

I should have known as much.  He always gets me when least I suspect it.

“What’s that about?”

Control, I think.

“And what’s the worst thing that happens if you lose control?  First thing that pops in.”

I’m not doing what I want.

My answer was filled with apprehension.

“And what’s the worst thing that happens if you’re not doing what you want?”

And on and on we went, until somehow we ended up on a ride that took us to love from the beginning of the end of a dead fish.  Let the Theta-Healing begin.

And so we did.  Ken began the process.  Asking me questions about love.  Did I deserve it?  Was I allowing myself to be open?  Was I afraid of being hurt?  Was love suffering?  Was love pain?

Hurt.  I was afraid of opening up and finding myself hurt.  I didn’t know that.  I also didn’t know that love was suffering and pain according to my body’s wisdom.  Not consciously, anyway.  But here we were, and I have seen and felt enough through this journey to believe in this process.  Ken would ask me if I wanted to change this pattern and that pattern, to which I always replied, “yes”.

Ken did something today that he had never before done.  While he was asking me questions about control and taking us down that rabbit hole, he gently grabbed my face and said, “look at me”.   I was ready to bawl.  I didn’t.  I held it all in for some reason, but it was there.  I had always closed my eyes through this part.  This time I decided to watch.

Ken’s head bobbed lightly back and forth every time he asked me if I wanted change a pattern and I answered yes.  My yes was his permission, the button that made the ride begin.  His eyes closed, he just kept nodding, the silence broken only by his first yip of the day.  We laughed as he described his optimistic hope of getting through the session without a single yip.  With his eyes closed in a trance-like state, he was performing some of his wizardry of ridding me of old patterns and giving me new, more constructive and productive ones.  It’s part of the stuff I don’t fully understand intellectually, but I “feel” intuitively.  He finished by asking me if I believed the new patterns we had just established.  I said yes.  My body said yes.  Maybe things really are looking up.

• Phone Post

I’m trying to live in the present moment.  I’m trying to stay out of the Rabbit Hole of the past and future.  For me, it’s more the past.  I’ll relive conversations over and over and over.  Analyzing them, studying them for content, for feeling, for meaning, and why it happened the way it did.  I’ll play it over until I can find a better outcome, and when I can’t find a better outcome, it paralyzes me sometimes, and just drives me crazy at others.

I have much work to do here on this planet.  I feel it.  I know what it is.  Ken’s program has me evaluating, establishing and actually writing down my goals.  It’s not too much for one man to change the world, right?  Jesus did it.  Ghandi did it.  Mother Teresa did it.  Dr. Rev. King did it.

As I study while I walk the path laid out before me, I find myself infuriated and frustrated by all the lies.  What were you taught in school?  Do you know?  I mean do you really know?  Did you just swallow it all as fact?  And why shouldn’t you?  I doubt many of us have actually taken the time to fact check our collective brain washing.  Like you, I wouldn’t have thought that it was even possible that I wasn’t getting the truth in school, or at church, or from my parents, or wherever one picks up these things.  They all were there to teach you the truth.  That’s what I understood.  These are the facts.  Not, these are the truths we want to sell you, and you should buy them because that’s the way the world works.

Our government is full of lies.  That’s no big shock, is it?  But what do we do?  We sit around and bitch and moan.  If a man like Dr. Rev. King comes along, then some of us jump and join in the parade.  And if someone like him doesn’t come along, then we just sit around reminiscing about the time when someone like Dr. Rev. King did come along.

Our schools still teach that in 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue.  Our government is trying to coerce us into buying healthcare reform when they are really selling insurance reform.  Our churches still teach from a place of the fear of dying and going to Hell.  Our NAACP leader here in L.A., stated we were living in “post-racial America”, and I just had a 77 year old man at my local market tell me this morning about a trout fishing technique called “nigger fishing”.  Really?  He didn’t even have the courtesy to look over his shoulder to see if anyone might be offended.

The lies are pervasive.  Some are blatant and bold.  At least with those I know what I’m working with.  The others, the more surreptitious lies, those are the ones that are making my heart so heavy.  I know it’s not my job alone to call attention to these insidious machinations, but sometimes it feels that way.  If I could carry the burden for all of you and for me too, then I would.  I want to, in fact.  I’m just not sure yet how much of that is my responsibility.  We all need the truth.

• Phone Post

Ken’s work has been outstanding.  I am having more stretches of time where I am completely devoid of pain.  These stretches have given me enough reason to ask if I am allowed to run again, to which Ken graciously tells me no.  The no running policy is for the pool, not for my life.  It’s frustrating me to not run at all.

I am standing taller.  Feeling lighter.  Some days I am even able to be practically eye to eye with Ken’s six foot three inch (give or take) frame.  And that brings in the question of whether or not that’s energetic or truly physical.  It’s surprisingly difficult to say.  I will seem to be as tall or taller directly following my session on the table, only to find out, as we did last night by placing a little black box on the top of our heads, that he is indeed still close to two inches taller than I am.

Ken, and so many wonderful people around me, want to know why I am holding myself back.  In college, my movement teacher wrote an end of the semester review about me that I have kept to this day.  To the point, he ended it with “I send Jon on his way with the hope that he define what causes him to undercut his own prodigious talent.  After that, there will be no stopping him.”  No pressure, right, Bill?

Back to the foot (enjoy the pun, I give it freely for your amusement).

Ken asks me what is it that I am afraid of moving forward in my life.  The pain of the foot represents my hesitation or trepidation of moving something forward in my life.

I have been afraid to own my “prodigious talent”.  Why?

I guess the old quote attributed to Nelson Mandela (apparently incorrectly attributed, see: Marianne Williamson): “our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure” kind of sums it up well.

I went in to see Ken yesterday with the intent of telling him that I was ready to go deeper.  I was given the “message” that Ken may be waiting for me to simply ask him to take me further down the rabbit hole.  I didn’t get the chance.

I was on the hip rotator machine, a wonderful contraption for those with tight hips like mine.  Let’s just say I’m no Elvis Presley.  Ken sat down next to me and began chit-chatting about nothing in particular.  I was about to burst with my new found exuberance and daring.  Then Ken tells me he is ready to take beta testers for his web based workshops.  He tells me there will be assignments.  I wanted assignments.  He tells me there will be meditations.  I wanted meditations.  He tells me there will be an online blog.  Well…

I laughed.  Ken asked why.

I tell him how I was all ready to come in and “demand” to be taken deeper.  He seems amused.

The time certainly seems to be now.

You can scourge the web and books and ask many a “true” Goth themselves but you will not get one pertinent answer. I’ve found the best way to explain what goth is and what it means to be goth is to go through the history on how it started.

History of Goth Subculture

The name Goth was first and foremost given to an Eastern Germanic Tribe which played an important part in the fall of the western Roman Empire. The term later became negative and synonymous with barbarian and uncultured. This was due to the then-contemporary view of the fall of Rome and the depictions of the pagan Gothic tribes during the process of Christianization of Europe.

During the Renaissance period in Europe, medieval architecture was labeled as gothic architecture and considered unfashionable in contrast to the then-modern lines of classical architecture. By the late 1700’s in the UK, nostalgia for the medieval period led people to become fascinated with the medieval ruins. The fascination was often combined with an interest in medieval romances, Roman Catholic religion and the supernatural.

Horace Walpole was the leader of the gothic revival architecture movement in the UK and enthusiasts of this movement were nicknamed “Goths”, the first positive use of the term. Horace Walpole was also the founder of the “Gothic Literature” genre with his 1764 publication of “The Castle of Otranto.” This book contained the more modern connotations of the term “gothic”. He claimed that the book was a real medieval romance that he had discovered and republished. Thus the term gothic was associated with the mood of horror, morbidity, darkness and the supernatural as well as self parody.

The gothic novel established much of the iconography of later horror literature and cinema. Prominent features of Gothic fiction include terror (both psychological and physical), mystery, the supernatural, ghosts, haunted houses and Gothic architecture, castles, darkness, death, decay, doubles, madness, secrets, and hereditary curses. The stock characters of Gothic fiction include tyrants, villains, bandits, maniacs, Byronic heroes, persecuted maidens, femmes fatales, madwomen, magicians, vampires, werewolves, monsters, demons, angel, fallen angel, the beauty and the beast, revenants, ghosts, perambulating skeletons, the Wandering Jew, and the Devil himself, (in no way meaning that he is worshiped)

An additional notable element was the brooding figure of the gothic villain, which developed into the Byronic hero. The most famous gothic villain is the vampire, more notably Count Dracula, originally depicted in a novel by Bram Stoker, who was then made more famous through the medium of horror movies.

The influence of the gothic novel on the goth subculture can be seen in numerous examples of the subculture’s poetry and music, though this influence sometimes came second hand, through the popular imagery of horror films and television. The Byronic hero, in particular, was a key precursor to the male goth image, while Dracula’s iconic portrayal by Bela Lugosi appealed powerfully to early goths. They were attracted by Lugosi’s aura of camp menace, elegance and mystique. Credit is given to the band Bauhaus’ first single “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”, released August 1979, with the start of the goth subculture, though many prior art house movements also influenced gothic fashion and style. Notable early examples include the musical group Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Dave Vanian of the band The Damned. Some members of Bauhaus were, themselves, fine art students and/or active artists.

Some of the early gothic rock and death rock artists adopted traditional horror movie images, and also drew on horror movie soundtracks for inspiration. Their audiences responded in kind by further adopting appropriate dress and props. Use of standard horror film props like swirling smoke, rubber bats, and cobwebs were used as gothic club décor from the beginning in The Batcave. Such references in their music and image were originally tongue-in-cheek, but as time went on, bands and members of the subculture took the connection more seriously. As a result, morbid, supernatural, and occult themes became a more noticeably serious element in the subculture. The interconnection between horror and goth was highlighted in its early days by The Hunger, a 1983 vampire film, which starred David Bowie, Catherine Deneuve, and Susan Sarandon. The movie featured gothic rock group Bauhaus performing “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” in a nightclub. In 1993, Whitby became the location for what became the UK’s biggest goth festival as a direct result of being featured in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Throughout the evolution of the goth subculture, familiarity with gothic literature became significant for many goths. Keats, Poe, Baudelaire and other romantic writers became just as symbolic of the subculture as dressing all in black. A newer literary influence on the gothic scene was Anne Rice’s re-imagining of the idea of the vampire. Rice’s characters were depicted as struggling with eternity and loneliness, this with their ambivalent or tragic sexuality had deep attractions for many goth readers, making her works very popular in the eighties through the nineties. Movies based on her books have been filmed in recent years — notably Interview with the Vampire, in which goths appear directly and indirectly.

For me, the Goth Subculture is a romantic, dark yet decadent view of the world and life, an acceptance of the life and death, the light and dark in all our lives and in the world.  Goths are indifferent, though not uncaring, open minded, well read and intelligent people.  Accepting of diversities and praising differences, enjoying the bad as well as the good in life.

 

Take note!

 

• Phone Post

The whole week without Ken, I had been trying to apply the solitaire version of the Lumbar Roll (see: Chiropractic 101), at least as I saw it, without success.  Generally speaking, I usually do this every night as I lie down to sleep, so this maneuver for me is not new, nor does this maneuver ever usually fail me, but, for some reason, being away from home, I could not pop my low back under any circumstances or carnivalistic manipulations (if all of you just accept it, it’s a word, trust me.)

Ken amazes me on a regular basis.  I don’t understand how he can put me on my back, cross my arms in front of me, make a fist with one hand that he places on my spine at the upper back, then apply a light pressure to my crossed elbows, say “nope, not there”, move his fist another time or two, then finally find just the right spot, and then quickly, unexpectedly, push those elbows straight down to a wonderful, sometimes thunderous, CRACK!  How did he know?  Don’t misunderstand me, I would not want to be seeing him for this if he didn’t know, but it still fascinates me and boggles my mind a bit.

So, of course, just as one might expect from a magician of his type, he gave me the ole Lumbar Roll to two deeply satisfying thuds in my low back.  Thank you.

He worked on my neck.

“This is like a ham sandwich in here, huh?”

Aaaggh! Yes.  It hurt like hell.  He had never used the term ham sandwich in the professional realm.

Ken digs into the ham sandwich, and begans moving my head around.  First in a clockwise fashion, then counter, then ears to shoulders, and, seemingly, from my point of view, any which way he thinks it might go.  I don’t care about not holding back.

I moan in pain, at times crescendo-ing to a polite scream, or yelp, perhaps.  Ken mocks me with every sound to the point that I can no longer contain my laughter.  A strange cacophony pours from my mouth making me wonder what it is exactly I’m feeling, as I can’t decide if the laughter is helping me to release the tension or just adding to it.  (As it turned out, it was the former and not the latter, so The Guru was right again!)

There are times when I feel more in tune than others, and probably because I am more in tune some times over others.  I felt Ken was going to do something today, some magical, something with an incantation.  I heard it in my connection.

He heard me too.  As he brought out some toys, he said, “You may ask.”

What are you doing?, I asked playfully.

“After your journey, I thought you might need some balancing.”

Cool.

Ken placed what felt like a cool, small stone on my third eye.  He then placed some different colored discs along my body on my chakra points, save my third eye chakra.  He sat down behind me, his hands on my head, as I closed my eyes and allowed myself to drift away.

Ken’s yips I’ve told you about.  This was something different.  It was lower, gruffer, almost animalistic in it’s sound.  I could see an old suspicious junkyard dog that just knows something is on the other side of the fence, and he is going to huff and puff just to let that something know that he’s there too.  Another lesson in staying focused on the work without judging it.  Thank you.

I was suddenly lying on very cold snow.  The wind was blowing at gale force strength.  I was clutching a small, thin white pole that had an orange flag slowly tearing away from it as the winds blew their icy breath across the entire expanse of land in front of me.  In a flash, the flag was ripped from its moors, and I glanced up and found that all that was left was a small thread that was twisted around the pole.

I hear the click of a lighter.  Burnt sage permeates the room.  Ken begans an incantation after placing the final cone on my third eye chakra.  His words are inaudible.  It makes no difference, I love when he does this.

Your yips were quite different today.

“They weren’t yips.  They were more a Tibetan thing.”

I recount my journey to the icy wind and snow.

“Ha! Maybe it was Tibet!”

He seems very satisfied with that.  It’s nice to see that he still get excited about this stuff.

“You have a red dot hologram on your forehead.”

Oh.  Should I leave it on, or take it off?

“Leave it on for as long as you can.”

Ok.

I meet some friends, some old, some new, for a light dinner.  I have never met Rob before.  A New Yorker that has found himself in Canada doing some healing work of his own, Rob is delightfully grounded and real and philosophical and esoteric all at the same time.

“So, what’s the red dot for?”

I was doing some healing work and my Guru told me to leave it on for as long as I could.  (Ken and I have an inside joke about him being my Guru, I write that mostly for his amusement, just so you know.)

“What’s it do?”

I don’t exactly know.

“Ah.  Does that matter?”

Nope.

“Good.”  I can tell he really means it.

Yes, it is good.  Faith is a funny thing.  I haven’t felt like I had much need or room for Faith in my life.  In Ken I trust.  I say that tongue-in-cheek, but there is much truth to it.  I said before that I know somewhere in me is the capacity to travel on the astral plane, or magically bend time and space, or touch something and “feel” its energy the way Ken does all these things.

Just try this on for size.  All matter is mostly empty space.  99.9% of all matter is packed into the nucleus, so therefore, most of the solid objects, the chair I’m sitting on, for instance, are really mostly empty and nothing solid at all.  So, technically, if I could learn to control my molecules, I could effectively pass through this chair by arranging my molecules to pass through the spaces of the chair’s molecules.  Do I believe that?  Yes, absolutely.  So why can’t I pass through this chair right now?

Dad, this next bit is for you, I know you won’t believe I’m quoting the Bible, but here goes.  There is a really poignant verse for this, Mark 9:24.

Mark 9:24 (King James Version)

²⁴And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.

It’s that unconscious grain of unbelief that penetrates the very real belief I hold that I can rearrange my molecules to pass through those of the chair, thus holding my tush squarely in place, thank you very much, Mr. Chair.  (It could be a lady, but it is wood.)

I give this work as much of me as I can without judgment.  I want to experience that freedom.  I wore the red dot hologram the rest of the evening, by the way.  Through dinner, and the other two hours or so that my friend Stacy and I spent at Barnes & Noble.  I was even called Red-Dot Man by a gangling teenage boy.  It was fun.  I don’t fully understand why or how that thing worked or what it was doing, but I trust Ken enough to move through my unbelief and go with it.

The official forging of Frodo Baggins’ new identity as Ringbearer is not designed to glorify any kind of heroism. On the contrary, the great necessity for the Fellowship to accompany Frodo during the earlier part of the Ring Quest signifies that Frodo is an “anti-hero”. Frodo’s need for an accompanying Fellowship demonstrates that he is weak, timid, vulnerable, and infantile in the ways of the world, and naturally requires a Fellowship to protect him. As Frodo is protected by these mighty fellows of great status and power, and as they display their martial brilliance and heroic valour in the exertion of such protection, Frodo is, in a sense, belittled, despite his most important position in the Fellowship. Through this belittlement, Frodo Baggins comes to represent an “anti-ego”, which is more in harmony with the Eastern devaluation of the ego.

According to Joseph Campbell, the doctrine of individualism so common in modern Western society has no real equivalent in the East. “There the ideal…is the quenching, not development, of ego.” (Campbell, 1962:22) Because of this discouragement from clinging to the restrictions of ego, the Eastern psyche, to a large extent, remains “wide open to the seizures of completely uncritical mythic identifications.” (Campbell, 1962:23) The devaluation of the ego is one of the principles that perfectly validates reading LotR from Eastern perspectives. At least from a Zen perspective, the devaluation and ritual cleansing of the ego, featured prominently in Frodo’s journey to Rivendell, eventually lead to a state of greater realization equivalent to an experience of Zen enlightenment, referred to as satori.

It can be interpreted that the experience of satori is brought about by a transcendence of personality, status, conditioning from external circumstances, and even intellect. Only through such a transcendence does Frodo’s being merge with a superior form of collective intelligence that has given rise to and nurtured the existence of the world of the Elves. This process of merging between Frodo and the superior collective intelligence, however abstract that may sound, occurs towards the end of the crossing to Rivendell. As will be argued in the latter part of this chapter, the mystical, dream-like quality of the cinematic presentation of this phenomenon provides substantial allusions to the Zen experience of satori:

Zen writings commonly refer to satori as realization of the “original mind” as it is in itself, the universal ground of consciousness, concealed beneath the temporal conditioning that forces people to experience life through outlooks arbitrarily limited by their cultural, social, and personal histories. (Clearly, 2001, vol.1:3)

One of the reasons for the classic appropriateness of using the cinematic portrayal of Frodo Baggins’ journey to Rivendell as a case study in this chapter is that this episode in the film signifies Frodo’s transcendence of his previous cultural conditioning and personal history. This transcendence not only directly parallels the aim of Zen and the nature of Zen enlightenment, as described above. More importantly, Frodo’s transcendence of his previous Hobbit conditioning is an appropriate case study for this chapter, as it presents Zen as a universal ideal, transcending the limitations of cultural, social, and personal divergences.

Zen after all, seeks to transcend separateness and dualism, and to be liberated from such constructed patterns of thought and action. In the same spirit of transcendence and liberation, Frodo’s entry into an Elven haven signifies an inter-dimensional fusion that transcends the rift that could be potentially generated by the aloofness of the Elves and the long-standing suspicion that Hobbits hold towards the world outside their native Shire. In establishing the concept of Zen liberation as the principal theme running through Frodo’s journey to Rivendell, I will initially apply the Zen notion of emptiness in my discussion of the earlier episode of Frodo’s crossing. I will then apply the Zen notion of enlightenment, referred to as satori, in my discussion of the completion of Frodo’s crossing, as well as his re-awakening in the Elven haven of Rivendell.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Campbell, Joseph (1962), The Masks of God: Oriental Mythology, The Viking Press, New York

Clearly, Thomas (2001), Classics of Buddhism and Zen: The Collected Translations of Thomas Clearly vols 1-4, Shambhala, Boston and London

• Phone Post

Above all other birds it is the soaring eagle, with its size and weight, that gives the most abiding impression of power and purpose in the air. It advances solidly like a great ship cleaving the swells and thrusting aside the smaller waves. It sails directly where lesser birds are rocked and tilted by the air currents.
—Edwin Way Teale, “Bird of Freedom,” Atlantic Monthly, 1957

The Eagle was the last animal in that particular journey.  All the animals have significance, but I find the order to be interesting with the Eagle being the last. There seems to be one very important theme in that I am being asked to stay grounded while reaching for knowledge, understanding and my own openness in the spiritual world.

The Eagle, as the Ostrich and the Buffalo, finds itself relying on the land to feed itself, but unlike the Ostrich and the Buffalo, the Eagle is capable of leaving the land to soar majestically in the sky.  They all point to the connection between the Earth and the Sky, or the grounded physical and the ethereal spiritual dimensions and the link between the two, but the Eagle takes us deeper into the spirit by breaking the chains of the earthly-bound being.

In Native American culture, the Eagle feather is one of the most sacred possessions one can maintain.  Eagle feathers were given out extremely sparingly for acts of valor and bravery, and the warrior that desired to wear them bore the burden of proof of his valorous exploits to gain permission from the Elders to actually wear the feather.  It was given as a sign of ultimate respect.  A warrior was more willing to lose his tepee and his horse rather than lose his Eagle feather which would bring disgrace in the eyes of the Tribe.

If you possess an Eagle feather, (which interestingly, is illegal without a federal permit, apparently no matter how you obtain it), it is required that you, out of reverence,  build a “home” for it to keep it safe.  It should not be soiled, abused or allowed to be around any type of drugs or alcohol.  It is the duty of the bearer of an Eagle feather to maintain the sacredness of that feather at all times.

It was believed the the Eagle feather immediately commanded the attention of the Great Spirit, as the Eagle was the messenger that could carry the prayers of the people directly to Father Sky.  Once the Eagle had delivered the messages of the people the Eagle would return with wisdom or visions from the Great Spirit that would direct the people on their path.

Eagles are social animals in some respects, although you would be extremely hard pressed to find two in the same place at the same time.  Both the male and female share the responsibility of  incubating the eggs and the rearing of their children.  Eagles mate for life, but the Eagle is also wise enough, however, to recognize the importance of achieving balance between family life and venturing off on its own for its personal well being.

The Eagle is asking me to be patient.  An Eagle will sit at the top of a tree for hours at a time surveying the land.  It asking that I do the same for my own life.  Be patient, consider everything and every angle, and if that still isn’t enough, or for greater clarity, then take flight to see the big picture from the sky or the “God perspective”, if you will.

The Eagle has excellent vision and hearing for hunting.  I can use the vision and hearing of the Eagle to open myself to the world of Spirit to allow for greater understanding of direction, messages, insights and healing to effectively reach me on my personal hunt or journey.

The Eagle’s beak is powerful enough to rip through the toughest flesh or to be wielded as a weapon against an enemy, but it is still delicate enough to groom a mate’s feathers or feed a newly hatched chick small portions of food.  The Eagle asks me to be mindful of the way I use my own beak, or mouth.  It can be used to nurture and care for myself and those around me, or to an unaware mind, it can destroy or be harmful.  I am to be conscious of how I speak, and when I speak, and to be certain that I use the appropriate words in the proper frame at all times.

The Ostrich and the Buffalo asked us to look for the good in all things while striving for justice and equality, but consider the quote at the beginning of this post, the Eagle “sails directly where lesser birds are rocked.”  Stay the course, stay on the path, and don’t be persuaded by the wind of the naysayers or those who would seek to destroy you or those around you, in whatever capacity or form that may take.  The Eagle is asking us to see all things from the “Creator’s perspective” without judgment or attachment, to know when to be grounded and when to soar, and to choose our words carefully,  so that we empower ourselves and those around us to reach the higher vibrations or dimensions, thereby increasing the power of our connection to the Divine.

• Phone Post

On my way to visit Ken, I fantasized about him touching me in some magical, wizardly way.  A tap on the third eye, a zap to one of my chakras, an incantation I couldn’t understand, something, anything.  I wanted to be transported to angels that would wrap me up in their wings, make me feel safe and let me be weak for just a moment.  I wanted to let down all guards, all tension, physically, emotionally and spiritually.  I didn’t want to be alone.  I wanted someone or something else to take the responsibility for my well being.  I wanted a glimpse of the release and comfort of the death of this body, no matter how brief.

Mick Jagger told me once that you can’t always get what you want, but that you always get what you need.

Ken was booked and running just a bit behind in his day.  Two wonderful ladies had just finished working with him, and they were now out in the lobby sharing small talk about current events, mostly Michael Jackson and the movie “This Is It” that will be out shortly.  Ken walked out to do some routine paper work for them, and the ladies began lauding praise upon Ken with the passion of the fanatical.  Ken and I exchanged smiles, his humble, mine proud.

We politely excused ourselves and promptly retreated to the wizard’s chamber.  Ken, per usual, moved deftly through the physical routine of cracking and popping my body back into alignment.

There was a beep.  His computer.  It was the front desk letting him know his next client had arrived.

“Why didn’t you schedule the later appointment?”

I had scheduled as late as possible.  I always do.  I never know how long these sessions will last.  Besides, I enjoy spending the time with Ken.

My time was up.

But I wanted to cry!  I wanted to feel something I could not control and had no power to stop.  I was vulnerable.  I was willing.  I could have been had for the taking.  I was practically throwing my physical and spiritual bodies at the mercy of the gods, the spirits, the ethers, everything, and I had no takers?!  This wasn’t right.  How was this what I needed, Mick?

If Ken knew where my heart and mind were, and what I wanted, he didn’t let on.  We simply embraced and said our goodbyes as the next patient was awaiting his attention.

I still don’t know why that was what I needed, but I guess this one was up to me.  Ken asked me once if he had to do everything, or if I could take some initiative and seek it out on my own.  He was just busting my chops, as it were, but there is always some truth in those exchanges.

I started to find some of that release yesterday, but as of this moment, I am not letting go completely.  I censored it even for my own inner workings.  Which begs the question of what sense it makes for someone to not be completely vulnerable and open to themselves.

Satori, a trio of OSU students, has been making some wonderful folk tunes in the state for past year. An interview with the band is below and be sure to check back soon for Satori’s original performances of “Going Home” and “Throw the Mind Back.”

• INTERVIEW with Satori (From left is Daniel Clutter, Aaron Hale and Blake Parks)

Stillwater is where the wild things are and the sounds from Library Lawn early this month are evidence.

Local folk act Satori, a trio of OSU students, performed original songs “Home” and “Throw the Mind Back” under the shade of the slackline trees for “on.”

The pace of the band is far from that relaxed though.

The trio recorded an album in a single day last December with Steve Foust, a sound engineer at the Seretean Center, and is about to release the self-titled CD after Thanksgiving.

Although they play together, the three have different influences.

Aaron Hale praises psychedelic artists, Blake Parks has a bluegrass background and Daniel Clutter says his mother’s accordion got him interested in music.

But where the music came from isn’t that important because it’s definitely sounding great right now.

• SONG ONE – “Throw the Mind Back”

• SONG TWO – “Going Home”