In practice, however, even a cursory look into the actions of government and big business reveals ethical indiscretions.

In the United States of America, we can see a fairly steady transition from free enterprise to oligarchy: as individuals and then corporations accumulate wealth over time, they naturally are able to have a greater influence on economics – and thus government.  A pattern emerges in which the people at the higher levels of government have extensive connections with those in power at large corporations.  Greed and simplicity has overshadowed a moral obligation to due process and the citizenry, and thus lobbyists and handshake deals more thoroughly influence our political climate than does public opinion or national elections.  These indiscretions go so far as to lead to violent conflict both at home and abroad, such as street crime, alleged terrorist attacks, and endless wars both public and secret, including economic warfare.

It is at this point that popular opinion in the country of origin begins to swing in opposition of the dominant government in protest of social inequality, and when the voices of people are not responded to, they become aggressive.

A new culture of civil disobedience has grown in North America, starting, it seems, with the Seattle Washington WTO meetings in November 1999.  These demonstrations can easily be thousands or tens of thousands of attendants; the experience is frightening, as the herd is emotionally enflamed, feel left out of significant conversation.  The expectation of the police is not to serve and protect – but apparently to defend the corporate and political privacy, and use force if necessary to do it.

Thus there is a strong negative charge at massive demonstrations and the fear is what is picked up on and reported by popular media.  A militant sense of defiance backed by righteousness  is what is expressed by these gatherings, but the egalitarian principles that underly the indignance are little extolled.  Demonstrators, seeking to express themselves and educate the populace are instead perceived as chaotic and frightening – which serves to alienate moderate people from the cause and having ultimately negative results.

The principles of liberty and freedom that the U.S.A. was founded on do still exist, but we cannot count on our temporary [Right-Wing Fundamentalist Christian] government to encourage or protect them.  Our freedoms are available to us, but we must take responsibility to ensure their sovereignty.  

In my day to day life, I want to contribute to other’s happiness rather than make anyone’s life any harder.  I like to leave the spaces I use nicer than I found them.  I prefer not to contribute to hostility by vehemently arguing in opposition to my government’s decisions or speaking with an impolite tone when addressing those who have political opinions different from my own.  I envision a positive future, and live my life each day as though success is guaranteed.  I vote with my dollars by seeking out small business and local merchants and farmers.  I believe that each person I treat with kindness is a victory.

As I mature from a young person into an adult, I am reevaluating my ideas of success.  In the past I have tended to shun a higher salary in exchange for a preferable quality of life, but now I begin to consider how I can raise healthy children and offer them educational opportunities as my parents did for me, or how to offer my parents resources as they age.

Perhaps, if I’m using it to help others, pursuing money as part of a business sharing Dharma isn’t necessarily evil.

In my studies of energetic medicine and the patterns of consciousness that underly all of existence, I tend to prescribe to a model in which intention is the precursor to action and indeed predetermines action and outcome.  Consciousness itself has intrinsic value more important than any commodity.  As people grow and advance, accelerating learning and broadening perspective through world travel and advanced communications systems, they are more and more attracted to activities that help them develop their consciousness – an obvious example is the growth in Yoga teaching as an industry.

I posit then, that I can utilize the tools of intention and manifestation, clarity of vision and insight, to create a center of consciousness development via clean lifestyle choices – what is popularly called a “business”: we utilize the tools of commerce and money to create something truly accessible and available to people so that they can get an enjoyable experience learning about – for lack of a more accurate word – Dharma.

In the meantime, I can generate capital – something done with expert recklessness in the Silicon Valley – for myself and family, as well as employees and teachers.  Since we will use manifestation to ensure our business is successful, we can diversify, opening franchises ad facilitating social projects, generating revenue that we can use to reinvest in our community.  All the while living in comfort and luxury to support deep personal meditation practice.

Ah, activism:

• By emphasizing the positive rather than the negative, your movement can recruit and educate people rather than frighten and alienate them.
• When you focus on the brilliance of loving kindness, compassion, can feel love and forgiveness to your “enemies” rather than hatefulness and malaise.
• Rather than continuing to re-articulate the obvious problems in our society in endless social dialog, emphasize cultivating a quality of consciousness that allows you to see through the problem to discern the specific techniques you can employ in your life to have an impact.
• Help people orient towards a model of health that involves independence and quality discernment to inform their health choices – in this way, people can see beneficial results in the ways that they want to without having to prescribe to anothers’ dogmatic ideas on health.
• Vote with your dollars!  These speak louder than ballots in todays one-world-political-industrial complex.

I hope someday to return to this passion for percussion and performance, and I think back with love and gratitude for my work with my friend Greg Beuthin.

Nonetheless, I examine my life choices.  I intend to pursue the martial arts as a life path. I choose this because I believe that practicing and teaching martial arts is a direct way to help people empower themselves and develop a mind/body relationship.  The martial path is inherently about warriorship and individuals taking personal responsibility.  Thus, through mudra and combat exercises, practitioners are led to discover a spiritual path and deeply grow as beings.  Or perhaps I choose this because I fear for my physical safety and want to be competent at beating people.  The latter doesn’t seem likely.

Ultimately, I want to be unconcerned for the fate of my body or identity.  Regardless of opinions about any supposed afterlife I may have, I prefer to not fixate on the attachment to being alive, and sharpen my ability to appreciate life as it is.  This seems pragmatic to me: death is deeply unknown, which is frightening – however, it is universally unknown to all mortals, ultimate, unfathomable, so, let it be.  Not particularly fearful, but neither driven by love.

My approach to nutrition follows these lines.  My choice is to eat all food as fresh and whole as possible, and in accordance with nature’s food-chain.  Industrial food systems are very recent additions to civilization, and have become wide-spread very quickly, as reductionst models of science describe all phenomenae as components of a machine rather than elements of an integrated whole.  These recent models are untested, and already appear to be causing harm at multiple levels of nature and culture.  I frankly want to be involved as little as possible with systems that inhibit life or sequester creativity and freedom.

I want to participate in the flourishing and proliferation of life.  At the thought of this, I feel a powerful emotional swell in my chest.  Perhaps this sensation may be described as ‘love’.  The decision that triggers it, however, is one of merely ‘appropriate action’.  Life proliferates; I want to contribute my actions to that proliferation.  Including my family; parents, siblings, and someday, children; all humans on their quest to embody their highest-selves; animals, both wild and domesticated, with habitat and food supply; plants, cultivated herbs and vegetables, grasses, pasture, trees, shrubs, ferns, mosses; fungi, of course – all proliferating with my assistance and, yes: Love.

However, I fluctuate in my practices, at times abandoning organic foods for the immediate gratification of the service and richness of the restaurant experience, or forgoing movement practices in order to focus on employment or entertainment goals. Even now, my practices are not infallible, and I still experience extreme moods and attraction to intoxicants now and again. But more so now than ever before, I am able to witness and moderate these fluctuations, and herein lies my faith in my movement towards balance: in the past, I felt a victim to happenstance, unable to control or buffer my shifts in mood or desire. Yet with a continued commitment to a spirit-based lifestyle of service and practice, I continually feel more at home in my bodymind, able to sit in silence and meditate.

I keep my mind engaged, eager to seek out new experiences to learn from, and am not particularly plagued by foggy thinking or profound laziness. I have a fit and healthy body, though it occasionally experiences Cold and Damp and Yin Deficiency. I am able to maintain healthy relationship with others, and when I find myself being insensitive or selfish, I am usually able to take responsibility for my feelings and communicate my desire to find mutual contentment. My commitment is to a path of service based in the concept that all beings and things are interconnected, and the one true purpose is Universal harmony.

I believe that the most effective course of action for me to bring myself closer to total balance is to continue to apply the principles I already have: deepen my commitment to a diet of fresh and local organic whole foods as the foundation for a practice of mindful living, seek out teachers of medicine and the Tao who I can respect and learn from, and perpetuate relationship as a practice of service, supporting the people in my family and community.

Since I arrived, in fact.

I ought to have told you earlier in our relationship, but I’m not the type to settle down, and no sooner do I arrive than I am already looking at the exit door. It’s a pattern I need to work on, I know. Because we started some things together. Things that when we started, I thought I was ready to commit to. A real career, a real community. I took on a lot of responsibility for our growth together, and I saw early on that I got in too deep too quickly. That happens sometimes when we meet again after a long time apart, and the new traits make even the old familiar ones exciting again.

An adage I use often: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I’m not sure exactly what that means, but I suppose figures of speech become so because they speak to us on many levels, sometimes eluding us with simple complexity…

Anyway…

I got in too deep too quickly, and I tried to correct for that. I noticed you notice me withdrawing, and even as I did so, I was really intending to come back with fervor, stoke the coals and grow back stronger, but, well, that just didn’t happen. And I left you hanging.

I’d like to say, Reno, that “It’s not you. It’s me.” But it is you. You left me hanging, too. I thought you’d pick up the slack in our relationship, see that the distance I was creating was for my own protection, realize that you could keep us both safe by stepping up to the challenge of taking care of your old friend. But that didn’t happen. You stayed needy, quietly, and I just couldn’t keep feeding you all I had.

Reno, you’re a Gateway place, some intersection of laylines gives you purpose. The last place between lush free Pacific and desolate, barren dystopic desert – just look at all the “Burners”, those transhuman souls desperate to re-create the excitement of cosmic life who pass through you in droves on their annual pilgrimage to the psychotic other-land of their imagination, forced by the tight white collar of this doomed culture to flip out in the opposite direction, Reno is their gateway to that land. Also between the hot south Vegas Angeles and the cool north Portland Seattle, while not a pit-stop for most, Reno, you are the fulcrum.

Even more, Reno, you are a portal between above and below, the reality of the living and the realm of the discorporeal. I meet as many disembodied beings as embodied ones, searching for the warmth of connection with another soul, able to envelop and protect them from their own limitless hunger.

Take a look at yourself, Reno: you exist as transition fixed, progress frozen at each step. You amaze me with your progressive stationaryness. A lot of people, well, they need to spend time on the threshold – from here one can look forward and backward through time, peer at the notion of the soul, obsess over sureality – until they become ready to tip the balance of their own destiny in the controlled repetitive falling of walking forward.

Reno, I’m sorry to leave you. It makes me sad.  It does. I’ll watch you from afar, and check in, but I’ll miss all the games we started that we didn’t quite finish. Or really, even quite begin.

But it isn’t you, it is me.

I am thrilled for the future! One can only stand on the precipice of destiny for so long before being drawn in. Not that I believe in destiny, necessarily, or karma, but with observation the patterns of life are undeniable. Not sitting still says something about me: I am not complacent. I am not waiting for something better to come along, I am beckoning it. And consequently, my life continually improves, quality of life gets richer, growth and learning accelerate.

When I reunited with you, Reno, it was meant to be only a short time. That short time extended, and extended some more until I didn’t know for sure when we would separate. (I hope you didn’t get too comfortable during that time – I didn’t.) So the last half a year has been borrowed time… I hope you can understand.

I’m leaving you to be with Heartwood Institute again. Heartwood is a village, a school, devoted to healing arts. My students are here and there, but my teachers are waiting for me there. Accelerated growth, deepening of practice is the hallmark of that kind of life. For all of our amazing projects, I feel stagnant where I am.

It’s time for me to move on.

It’s both of us.

Let’s try not to have a drawn out farewell. I ain’t one for no emotional goodbye…