Let's tell the truth. We don't want to be LOVING to anyone but ourselves.

Take offense, object if you dare, but deep down you know that I'm telling the truth. And before you cite how parents love their children unconditionally, I can only tell you to reread part one where I described my particular upbringing. But even in the most loving homes, there's a tendency to enforce our will upon another and call it 'love', when it's our desire to have someone else get right what we never did and we teach from a lie and a broken and often unhealed place. No wonder we raise damaged children who go on to repeat our shortcomings! What have they truly been taught to do, except be as selfish as the example they've been shown? So how did I break the cycle and learn to Love God and more distinctly, my neighbors as myself? Who said, ...I have?

The year is 2006 and I'm sick to death of New York City. Well, not the whole city, just my struggle in it to achieve an acceptable standard of living in a city that required more than it ever gave and had been slowly killing my spirit since my move there and more than ten years of challenges was simply ENOUGH. But I didn't have a clue where to move to, or any assurance that another move would matter, but I felt that anyplace would be better than my perceived hell. So, with the help of another musician that I had befriended, we would leave NYC in November of '06 for Taos, NM to work with another instrumentalist on a project that has yet to be released three years later, but served as the single most critical happening to not only move me physically, but ultimately spiritually toward a deeper love for myself, God and others.

I still remember the day I landed in New Mexico for the first time. As we drove out of the airport in Albuquerque toward Santa Fe, that open vista totally moved me in ways I had not anticipated. I was seeing farther than I had ever seen, without a building to block my view and my heart soared with the possibilities of change when I had become so certain and jaded that I had seen and done it all. NYC does that to you, makes you feel you're in the center of the universe and after 15 years of that lie, I wasn't prepared to learn in one instance that there was 'more' work to do, more life to live.., more LOVE to be received. My stay in Taos for that initial three weeks informed me that I needed to make a permanent move and when I returned to NYC and within 30 days, I would finally do what I'd desired to do for some time.., but now, I had a destination..., Taos, NM !!


The trip back was so filled with anticipation, that I foolishly felt I would land in NM and immediately ascend to a higher plane. What I heard from the pilot on the descent into Albuquerque was that the state was experiencing a freak winter storm and the whole place was literally covered in snow and for us to proceed with caution, especially into the higher elevations.., with Taos being at center of that warning. SAY WHAT??!! My idyllic setting for my ultimate transformation was under snow? But what could I do, but move along this certain path. I would eventually get back to Taos, back to living in the earthship where I had first encountered God. But this time around, under these conditions, Jan/Feb of '07 would be the most trying months of fear and uncertainty but in the midst of them, I learned to fight on the real battleground of every breakthrough. I learned that it wasn't NYC, or the snow, nor the drugs or the alcohol.., but what I THOUGHT about all those unrelated subjects that truly defined how I would function on any given day. Being isolated and alone was the best condition to discover 'what remained' when all else was taken away. What remained, for me, was a conditioning that harkened back to every little thing that I had harbored in my heart, every little slight and unforgiven transgression that had taken root and 'tho I thought all these items resided in my heart.., I would learn that they were simply represented there, but their origin was actually my mind and every time I changed locations, lovers and employment.., the center of attack took up home in that new environment.

Once you fully understand this, you can stop playing the victim card at every turn. Stop putting others through the ringer for what can only be healed in you. There's no way we can love God, or our family, or our neighbors if at the core of everything we touch is a diseased, distressed and yes, disturbed mind. I had two months to remember it all, to see the truth of my journey without the crutches that often cloud this development. To say facing the revelations was easy would be not only a lie, but misleading. This process is HARD and few begin it, even fewer complete it and the number that continue to renew their minds after the first upheaval are even rarer. But here's the truth, it's an active, on-going process, and like most things that are worth achieving, it requires real sacrifice of our selfish desires and preoccupation with pleasing and distracting ourselves. It requires a looking beyond the physical into the realm of the spiritual and if you're blessed to have someone who can truly walk this daily walk with you, you're blessed. But, know that I'm living testimony to it being able to be done in a vacuum if no one is available. I can't share with you the exact process it'll take for you, or the form it'll take.., but I do know it requires shutting out the 'world' as we experience it, with the expressed intention of opening up your whole life for review and during that time, allowing The Spirit (which is with you now, especially if you're still reading this) to speak specifically to your point of need and then a final determination to stay the course by every means necessary 'till the Peace of GOD is revealed and manifested in your life.

This is my prayer for you, that you begin this process, too, and I thank you for indulging me by reading these words. It's my prayer that you'll know the LOVE of GOD and like me, you'll be willing to share the truth of your journey to aide another.

BeBLeSSeD. I mean that.

Each One, Reach One and Teach ONE.

EDENintheDESERT