I was asking my son the other day why there appeared to be so many ice cream trucks trolling around Miyako. Seems like every 20 minutes or so, through the apartment window or around the corner from whatever restaurant we were eating at, we were serenaded by the twinkling sounds of pre-recorded ice cream truck music.
    Turns out it was garbage trucks. I have no idea what the ice cream trucks sound like. Metallica, maybe.
    Ah, Japan, the land of the rising contradiction.
    To say that I've been overwhelmed with the sights, sounds, food and people of this fine country is to understatement what Kanye West is to tact.  
    Japan is definitely one of my best creations by far. If I had known I had created a place this amazing, I probably would have visited sooner.
    But let me start with the people. Of all the concepts in Busting Loose, expressing "appreciation" has probably been the one that I have neglected the most. So it's probably no surprise that I created myself to end up in a place where it is almost impossible not to appreciate everything, especially the people.
    For those of you who have never visited Japan, unfailing kindness and politeness is the starting point for personal interactions, and I must say I'm enjoying it immensely. Coming off my recent trip to Las Vegas, the contrast is even more dramatic.  
    In Las Vegas, everybody wants something. They want your attention, they want you to buy a timeshare, they want you to try their escort service, they want you to slurp margaritas off their breasts, they want you to spend money, they want you mainline alcohol so you'll spend more money, they want you to almost die in the heat so you'll go inside an air-conditioned casino and spend still more money. The list of wants goes on and on, along with the pretense of fake hospitality.
    By contrast, in Japan, I seem to be spending most of my time receiving. The first family that my son, Teo, and I spent time with in Tokyo bought us meal after meal in the city, cooked for us at home, paid for entry to shrines and temples, and hauled us all over the city to see the sights. They even came to the train station to see us off to Miyako and I felt like I was with family. It was quite a gift and I feel sort of inadequate for leaving them with a piece of Navajo pottery and a jar of El Pinto salsa. I mean the salsa's good, but not that good.
    That was just the start. Every time I think we're finished sightseeing or being entertained, along comes another benefactor. My son's landlord and his wife took us on a trip up the Japanese coast the day after we arrived, so we could see some of the most jaw-dropping land and seascapes in the world. And they bought us lunch at a swanky hotel.
    I must pause here for just one moment of not-so-greatness. The next day, Teo and I walked all over Miyako trying to find somewhere to exchange my traveler's checks for yen. One post office and four banks later, no luck. But my son did call someone he works with and found out where I could engage in this transaction the next day. As it turns out, that was just the prelude to another fabulous experience.
    Ito, a gentleman that works with my son, agreed to help me with the traveler's check problem. He came by the apartment at 9 a.m., drove me to the bank, and helped me negotiate the transaction with one of the most cheerful bank tellers I've ever met.
    That was pretty much all I was expecting. But I offered to take him to coffee at one of Japan's ubiquitous Mr. Donut shops, the one landmark in Miyako that I have quickly become familiar with. (It's right next to the other landmark I'm sure I'll become familiar with, the Tomato and Onion restaurant, where you can get traditional Japanese food, and wacked-out versions of American favorites, like meatloaf topped with pizza, pizza topped with meatloaf and triple-decker cheeseburgers with a slab of prime rib on top, and a side of fried chicken nuggets with lard sauce. Oh, and a green salad.) Anyway, we dined on donuts and coffee, then got back into his car, presumably to drop me off back at the apartment.
    Nope. I had mentioned that Teo and I had tried and failed to find a map of Miyako so I'd be able to get around when he wasn't there. So Ito took me to a place near the train station to find a map, along with a bunch of tourist brochures. He asked me if we'd seen Jodogahama Beach the day before.
    No, we had not.  
    Of course, within minutes, we were headed for the world-famous Jodogahama Beach up the road from Miyako. We not only cruised the beach, but spend a good three hours there, taking in the scenery, the sea breezes and the soba noodles for lunch.
    So, we're on the way back to Miyako and I'm thinking about all the important things I have to do when I get back to the apartment, and we stop to visit a farmer's market and then a "recreation center" that puts most spas to shame. The appreciation is the equivalent of $50 a month for swimming, a sea mist room, an aromatherapy room, yoga classes and many more cool things you won't find at Defined Fitness. I've spent $75 for a mud pack alone in Marin County, so believe me, this is a deal.
    Five hours later, he dropped me off at the apartment.
    I could give a dozen more examples of what I'm talking about, and that's just the first week. I mean, policemen bow to you here, and no, hell hasn't frozen over, although I hear it usually does by winter, at least in these parts.
    So appreciation is the watchword for my first week here. It's getting so intense, that I'm wrestling with the question of whether I deserve all this. Should I be more conscious of imposing on my creations, or should I just casually mention that I'd like to drive to Mt. Fuji and see what happens?
    Hmmmm.
    
    

    Even before I left for Japan, I learned my first lesson. Obsessive-compulsive disorder and trip preparations do not necessarily mix.    
    It was apparently a huge lesson that my Expanded Self felt I needed to learn.
    It began the week before, when I attempted to liquidate my IRA to help finance the trip. (I'll give myself some credit, at least I'm not obsessing about retirement, huh?) I completed all the paper work for my broker, we talked about the exciting adventure I was about to go on and I left with instructions to email the routing number so the money could be deposited into my bank account the same week. That was Tuesday, a good week before I was to leave. Smart, right?
    Over the next few days, I did things like spend 30 minutes trying to figure out how to split up my travelers checks into different pieces of luggage and money belts, because I knew someone would go through my socks if I hid some of the money there.
    I worried about whether I should wear a back brace through check in at the airport, since under a shirt it looks like I could be a terrorist with a bomb strapped to me. I'd be detained interminably, miss my flight, be rendered to a dark hole somewhere in Eastern Europe and generally have my trip disrupted.
    Were the jars of salsa intended as presents for my Japanese hosts going to shatter in my luggage if they weren't triple bubble-wrapped, enclosed in a bag and nestled in a bed of styrofoam peanuts?
    It got crazier.
    The money still hadn't shown up in my bank account by Friday. My broker emailed, saying there had been some kind of delay within the banking system, so wait for Monday. I'm leaving Wednesday, no problem.
    Monday came and my broker called to say she had forgotten to submit the routing number I had e-mailed her, and the deposit had been denied. I re-sent it. The money arrived Tuesday. But the fun was just starting.
    Wednesday morning -- departure day -- with 99 percent of my preparations finished, about to drop off my car and get a ride to the airport from friends,  I worked on the coup de grace -- laptop computer security. For the first time since I've owned a computer, I decided it would be good to set up my laptop so that a user had to type in my secret password to use it. In the possible event that my laptop was stolen while abroad, (insert wailing and screaming here) at least the bastards wouldn't be able to log in and steal all my passwords and information.
    I was actually going to wait until the next day in Los Angeles when I had more time to mess with it and some help from someone who knew what they were doing. All this despite the fact that my laptop would be surgically attached to my hip the entire time, and that my son had told me on several occasions that Japan was the last place in the world my computer would be hijacked. In fact, if someone did steal it, they'd probably leave a better one in its place.
    But no. All I could envision was some young cyber-thug running down an airport terminal with my life in his hands. Besides, all I had to do was follow a simple procedure, and voila, the final protection would be finished.
    So I did it.
    Then I re-started the computer. I typed in my name and password. The little screen just jiggled and spit the words back at me. I tried, 30, 40 times. Nothing. I called my techie friend, Blaise, who had recently upgraded my computer.
    I told Blaise what had happened. We tried a few more things. Nothing. He knew the name and passwords were correct because he had just used them to do the upgrade.
    Blaise, who was just returning de-planing at the airport from a trip,  suggested he could look at it if I could meet him on the other side of town. He was waiting to be picked up and taken somewhere by his brother, though, and would call me back when he knew exactly where he was going to go.
    I still had to drive from the far reaches of Albuquerque to a bank to cash a check for the trip. and get to my friends' house. All in about one hour and a half.
    Shit.
    I borrowed a friend's laptop to search for possible solutions, but nothing looked remotely good.
    I'd either have to leave the laptop with Blaise and let him figure it out then FedEx it to me at some exorbitant cost, or have him burn a start-up disk for me and mail it to Japan, hope it arrived at the remote town where I'd be staying with my son, then have him walk me through the fix via phone.  For me, that's the equivalent of performing brain surgery on a fellow astronaut at the space station, with House giving me instructions on the phone. Did I mention, I'm not a surgeon?
    My blog posts, my internet businesses, my writing assignments and most of all, my presence on Facebook would all be horribly impacted. Double shit.
    I took off in my car, hit the bank, then did the Busting Loose process twice, as I raced across town to meet Blaise, who was in a cigar shop with his brother and a bunch of other people milling around.
    I immediately started up the computer and let Blaise take a look as thought of doom filled my head. We chatted nervously as I envisioned my Japan trip in ruins -- all because of me and my fear.
    As one attempt by Blaise after another to log in failed, I began my next OCD routine. I gathered the address where I would be in Japan, and other contact information. I calculated shipping costs. Blaise slaved away, typing in password combinations and checking instructions on his IPhone. After half an hour, even he was frustrated. I must admit, it's fun to hear geeks curse.
    Then Blaise let out an exclamation. "I'm not sure what I did, but I'm in." As we back engineered a solution, we realized he had accidentally typed in two spaces between my first and last name when entering them, instead of one. It was a mistake I had made when setting up my name and password upon purchasing the laptop several years earlier. A simple mistake we would have probably never would have figured out in a million years.
    Happy I was.
    Never mind that I subsequently misplaced my boarding pass and some other papers while driving to the airport. No big deal.
    The whole Japan trip has been an interesting mix of letting go and grasping. Living in reactive mode, then torturing myself over my decisions.
    The past few days have given me enough fodder for a few years of process and contemplation, so already the trip's a success.
    It was just one more exhilarating lesson about the fact that I'm still operating under the illusion that I -- the player -- have any control of anything. I still think I can foresee, and subsequently plan and scheme my way around any problem that arises. It's a good lesson and one that obviously needs to be reinforced frequently by my Expanded Self, because going on 53 years now, planning has not necessarily been my best friend.
    So today, I'm going to get out of bed, and that's all I'm committing to. Sayonara until tomorrow.
    
    

   

    We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive...” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: “Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?”
                        Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas -- Hunter S. Thompson

    When the late Mr. Thompson composed his savagely funny, drug-drenched indictment of the American Dream, he made it difficult for subsequent generations to write anything serious about Las Vegas, at least with a straight face. But I will try.
    When last we connected, I was on the road to the great mirage in the desert, to see what the next twist in my story line would be. I was neither light-headed nor seeing bats. But then again, that's probably due to the low-grade acid that was the only thing I could afford at the time.
    Otherwise, it was perfect. Here I was strapped for cash, headed for the place where money is a religion and the collection plate is shaped like a slot machine. Here I was, a firm believer that we live in an illusion of our own creation, headed straight for the city that is the epitome of fake.   
    The drive to Las Vegas from Albuquerque is about nine hours, give or take a pit stop or an orange barrel obstacle course. Unless you are an aficionado of the mesas and volcanic landscape of the high desert, it is a scenically unremarkable drive that veers sharply into ugliness by the time you hit the Mojave Desert.
    But once you wend your way through the hordes of lobster-colored tourists at Hoover Dam, past crystal blue Lake Mead and into the home stretch, and see the casinos gleaming in the distance, you must admire those who envisioned this sand-blasted Xanadu in the midst of some of the most coyote ugly terrain this side of Mars.
    I arrived at the New York-New York hotel in the late afternoon. For those of you, like me, who have not visited Vegas in some time, it contains not only a casino, but a fantasy version of New York City, meaning it's a humidity-free 68 degrees on a summer afternoon, there are no obnoxious cab drivers and the trash-filled sidewalks that make New York such an aromatic city in the summer are non-existent.
    It is truly a magnificent illusion and a dead-on representation of somebody's (mine) idea of what New York City might be like in a parallel universe.
    But that's why Las Vegas is not really a city, but a state of mind where anything is possible -- from a threesome with a midget hooker to a slot machine jackpot that changes your life forever.
    As much as I was wishing for the former, I came here to face my demons about money, as part of my Busting Loose process and the big payoff weighed heavily on my mind.
    I hoped against hope that I could do the Process a few times and then my Expanded Self would deem me worthy of receiving appreciation in the amount of say, 40 grand. Hey, I'm not greedy. But just that thought meant I was judging my current cash-poor hologram. And with judgment, inevitably comes disappointment. Damn. As Robert Scheinfeld loves to point out, to my great annoyance most of the time, you don't do the Process to change, fix or improve your hologram.
    On a deeper level, that kind of thinking means that I didn't trust the Truth of my infinite abundance. I was quickly watching the odds against my winning anything go sky high.

    What was I doing here? What was the meaning of this trip? Was I just roaming around in a drug frenzy of some kind? Or had I really come out here to Las Vegas to work on a story? Who are these people, these faces? Where do they come from? They look like caricatures of used car dealers from Dallas, and sweet Jesus, there were a hell of a lot of them at 4:30 on a Sunday morning, still humping the American dream, that vision of the big winner somehow emerging from the last minute pre-dawn chaos of a stale Vegas casino.
                                                                    Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas

    So it comes as no big shock that I didn't hit the super-mega-giant jackpot. I know you're all disappointed. In fact, I came away from Sin City a bit lighter in the wallet. (You did know that sin in Spanish means "without?")     
    In fact, the entire weekend was one long lesson on my stories about money. What did I learn? Nothing that the lot of you who have been to Vegas don't already know. If you're Busting Loose From the Money Game, Vegas is where it'll be in your face.
    Whether you have money or not, if you're not Busted Loose, it will bring up every discomfort you have about money, because no matter what you spend it on, somewhere in Las Vegas there is something better and more expensive to spend it on -- bigger pitchers of margaritas, swankier and more exclusive clubs, hotter nightclub acts, bigger-breasted escorts, more expensive hotel rooms and smaller midget hookers.
    Unless you're truly Busted Loose, Las Vegas will keep challenging you to really believe in your abundance and express appreciation.
    I wish I could say I trusted the Process. But I didn't. I realized, at least for this weekend, I preferred to bleed to death slowly at the 5-cent slot machines, than take a real chance on my abundance. I returned home, somewhat disappointed that I had not only not passed the test, I had not really taken it. I had feared and loathed instead of having the faith to take the great leap.
    But it turns out, Expanded Self is going to give me a second chance to trust.
    As I was recovering Monday morning from my trip, secure in the knowledge that I still had a roof over my head and an inexpensive place to live, my housemate and owner of the home where I live, let me know that I would have to be moving out by the end of September. Nothing personal, he needed the room for his daughter.  
    Another great adventure awaits. What can I say?
    In the meantime, at least I returned with the satisfaction that some things happened to me in Vegas that will have to stay in Vegas -- and for that I'm eternally grateful.    

In part 3 of my interview with Robert Scheinfeld, he answers a "fascinating" question from an Another Way fan, explains the purpose of limit and restriction, talks about "finger-snapping magic," and gives a sneak preview about his next live event and his newest projects, which will include live, interactive webcasts on the relationship game, the body game and when the going gets tough in Phase 2. Check out part 1 here and part 2 here, or go to the Busting Loose page and scroll to the bottom to listen to all three segments.

    In part 2 of this interview with Robert Scheinfeld, he discusses:
     -- Whether it matters if science proves his Busting Loose theories
     -- What it was like in 'no man's land" before Robert Busted Loose.
     -- The difference between Busting Loose and Fake it Until You Make it
     -- Collision learning vs. direct learning -- the value of bumping into illusions
     -- Living life wIthout (a bank) balance
     -- Whether he feels pressure to be "Robert Scheinfeld, teacher"
Listen to part 1 here.

     I had the pleasure of interviewing Robert this week. We talked about a lot of subjects during our wide-ranging discussion and I'll be presenting the interview in three parts this week. Among the topics we discussed in Part 1 were:
     Why he chose to write about the Business Game
     The process of writing the new book
     The important difference between changing your limiting beliefs to empowering beliefs, and exchanging your limiting beliefs for the truth, and why the former doesn't work
     He explains how the power of intention lies with Expanded Self and why most self-help practices don't work
     How judgment keeps us from expanding. If you think something is not okay in your life, you're creating an illusion, and keeping yourself limited and restricted. Thus, if you try to create a result, you're energizing the belief that you have doubts about your own power.
    This interview is geared toward Phase 2 players, although he does include an explanation of the Busting Loose concept. If you're not up to speed, you might want to refer to the Busting Loose page first and scroll to the bottom to find more information. Otherwise, click on the icon below to listen to part 1.

    Just how far are you willing to go on your journey of awakening? Are you ready to relinquish your life as you know it?
    These questions came to me as I listened to the words of Adyashanti, one of my favorite teachers, from his CD "The End of Your World." 
    It seems that the longer we follow our spiritual impulses, the more our ego dares us to play a game of "Chicken," like Buzz in the famous racing scene with James Dean in "Rebel Without A Cause."
    Will we have the nerve to make the jump to complete awakening, or bail out before we get there? I ask this question because I see this doubt reflected back to me from many practitioners of Busting Loose. Can you really never worry about money or taxes? Can you really create anything you want and do whatever you want to do without limitation? Can you really always be in a state of bliss?
    The ego is betting that we won't have the nerve to go all the way to find out, and it's got a lot riding on the outcome.
    But what is the ego, exactly? That gets tricky. Robert Scheinfeld would probably say that it's simply another false construct we've created in the hologram and given power to. And he would be right.
    In Adyashanti's words, it's the false sense of self that we carry within us. It's the aggregator of all the beliefs, opinions, concepts and thoughts that make up our identity, which manifests in a body at a particular point in space. And he would be right.
    Our ego likes the body. It gives the ego a sense of solidity and reality that the mind alone could not. And by collapsing the wave form into this one possibility, it keeps us from all the other possibilities. In truth, we are everything and everywhere. The ego just makes us seem separate.
    As we've learned, beliefs, thoughts and bodies are illusory. The ego knows that, too. Its answer is to just keep us thinking, worrying about the future and trying to make itself indispensable.
    To do that, our ego ditches our true self in line to make sure it gets first crack at filtering and interpreting everything we experience.
    "When we hear someone speaking, we actually hear what we think about what they're saying." Adyashanti states. We don't actually hear what is, until maybe two weeks later when we have that V-8 moment of realization.
    When we feel ourselves losing our sense of reality, the first thing we usually grasp for is a thought, like "This can't be happening, I'm Donald Trump."  A thought. Think about that. That's as ridiculous as the Donald's combover.
    When we have doubt, that's the ego speaking to us. Even Robert relates his "dark nights of the soul," when the ego let him know in no uncertain terms that the journey was way too challenging, intense and overwhelming. Fortunately, he persevered.
    As Adyashanti describes it, enlightenment -- the extended version of awakening -- is no longer believing what you think. By extension, if you are no longer believing what you think, then ego disappears, and light can enter, at least until we believe another thought. But do that enough times and ego really gets upset. That's why we seem to engender obstacles as we get closer to breaking through the cloud cover.
    What does unbelief look like? How can we remain undefined by thought and still live? Don't look at me.
    I know that at this point in my Phase 2 journey, no matter how many experiences I have of the process having an effect, I still want another one. I still want to be convinced. I still don't trust. I'm still grasping on to old beliefs. The ego's got me right where it wants me, for now.
    But I always know there is hope. I remind myself of what Robert says, that we're not here to exchange beliefs, but to exchange beliefs for the truth, by doing the process. In the meantime, we can't do anything wrong, no matter what the ego tells us, and some day, I'll just sit back and marvel at what a great creation the ego was.
    Adyashanti has a slightly different take. "Part of being awake is being willing to be crucified," he says. "The threat of death can't control an enlightened being."
    Either way, we have to be fearless, or we're just going through the motions.
    Speaking of V-8 moments, perhaps this scene from the end of "Thelma and Louise" of the girls going over the cliff in their Thunderbird is closer to the spirit of what I'm talking about. After all, Buzz didn't really want to take the leap. His sleeve got stuck.     

    Can we truly appreciate how wondrous our lives are?
    I was contemplating that last night as I drove home in my zippy red Hyundai, my Ipod blasting vintage Prince, fresh from enjoying a sumptuous dinner, watching the clouds turn a glorious pink as the sun set over New Mexico.  
    You've probably experienced some variation of this recently.
     There is not a religion or spiritual practice or Stuart Smalley desk calendar that doesn't tell us we should express appreciation for everything we're blessed with, whether it looks like we're blessed or not.
    With the exception of the sunset, we've experienced something that 99 percent of the beings who have ever lived on this planet would never know.
    But who's missed out, us or them? I think it's us. We've made true appreciation nearly impossible, at least in this country, in this time.
    There was a PBS show a couple years back, "Frontier House," that popped three modern families in the ol' Wayback Machine and transported them to 1880s Montana.
    As the cameras rolled, they built houses from trees they cut, made hay, raised livestock, hauled water, grew vegetables and wore uncomfortable clothes made from corn stalks. (I made that last one up.)
    Tensions ran high, in families and between families. Food supplies ran low. Wild animals threatened them. Then there was the woman who cried about not having make-up. Seriously.
    By the end of the show, it was determined that one of the families would not have survived the winter (most likely due to the great Make-up Famine of 1883). A second one had a chance. The third would probably have made it.
    It was good drama, as good as you can get on a fake reality show.
    An experience like that might benefit some of us. Instead of forcing everyone to buy health insurance, maybe the government ought to force us to re-live that show for a season or two. I mean the best survival story some of us have is about living on ramen noodles and Pabst Blue Ribbon in college.
    But let's take it a step further. How about we pretend we're a tribe of hunter-gatherers? We've got to traverse the steppes of central Asia and hunt down a mastodon with rocks and spears while we survive on ant dung.
    Assuming you weren't gored, and the 15 of you dragged the bastard back to camp, skinned it, carved it up and put it on a spit -- over a fire it took three hours to get going, not counting hunting for wood -- wouldn't that meat taste great? The best tasting meat you've ever had, right? Until next week, or next month, or whenever the next mastodon or the next squirrel, wandered by. In the meantime, you might pray to the mastodon god or sacrifice a virgin or two. That's how much you'd appreciate it.
    I can't say I've ever gone wanting, but I do recall a good lesson in appreciation. A few years ago, I was invited to participate in a Native American sweat lodge ceremony.
    Inside the structure, it soon became heatstroke hot, especially for a novice like me. I remember one of the other participants asking if anyone ever died during one of the ceremonies, and the leader replying matter-of-factly that he'd witnessed participants die, more than once.
    As I sat there braising, I remember curling my fingers beneath the edge of the enclosure, just to feel the winter air outside and know that if I could keep my fingers cool, I might just survive.
    About an hour or two into the ceremony, we each drank a few sips of water from a ladle passed around in the dark. Still the best water I have ever tasted.
    By the time we exited the sweat lodge, the temperature had dropped to below freezing and it was dark and snowing outside. I crawled out, sweaty, clad only in my underwear, hands and knees sinking into deep mud, dazed and nearly blind (without my glasses, I can't see shit.) It was the most primordial feeling I've ever experienced. I stood up, unsteady. I could not find my glasses or my clothes and I could feel the cold air, which for a few moments felt heavenly, begin to freeze the sweat on my back.  
    Someone managed to locate my glasses, or I would have known not only the spelling of hypothermia, but the actual meaning of it. I dressed quickly and joined the rest of my fellow lodge-dwellers in a warm house, with wall-to-wall food.
    But the feast was beside the point. After the sweat, I would have eaten bark beetles with ketchup and liked it.
    In a time when a life and death decisions revolve around what kind of Chardonnay to bring to the housewarming, things just don't seem as precious, or miraculous, as they really are.
    Nowadays it takes a death, or at least a near-death experience to register on our Richter scale of appreciation, and even that appreciation tends to fade with time.
    Which begs the question, if we can't appreciate the simple gifts of daily life, can we ever really appreciate ourselves in a spiritual sense?
    For many of us, that is the crucial question. If you are in the process of awakening you know that appreciation is a key.
    If you further accept the Busting Loose proposition that we manifest our own reality from consciousness, and that we are infinitely abundant, powerful and loving beings, then there is a lot to appreciate -- both the amazing illusions we've created and the Truth about ourselves. It seems pretty simple.
    But it also seems the bigger the miracle, the more we take it for granted.
    I'm thinking maybe the key to appreciation is in Robert Scheinfeld's statement that Phase 2 is about feeling and experience.
    No need to jump the Grand Canyon on a Harley. But do something simple. Men, next time you're in the meat department of your grocery store selecting steaks for dinner, take a moment and imagine you're picking up a slice of filet mastodon. Go back about 10,000 years and remember just what a thrill it was to kill that sucker, and just how good that meat tasted.
    Ladies, next time you're in the cosmetics department holding some Estee Lauder Turbo Lash Motion Mascara, think back to the old days and imagine how long it took to gather the plants to make the dyes to allow you to paint blue and red spots on your face for the solstice celebration.
    It's a first step.

    I've been attending a truly interesting and enlightening conference the last few days called "The Language of Spirit."   There have been several notable presenters -- physicists David Peat (Blackfoot Physics) and Amit Goswami (What the Bleep Do We Know?), author David Abram (The Spell of the Sensuous) and James O'Dea, the former president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, among others.
    But the purpose of the conference is the bringing together of western and Native American ways of knowing about science, consciousness, reality and related topics. The centerpiece is a three-day dialogue among some 20 participants from various backgrounds and countries, from quantum physicists to Aboriginal storytellers.
    The idea is not to debate, but simply to present various viewpoints on a given topic and see if some consensus can be arrived at.
    This year's focus has been on "Space and Place," and what that means from all these perspectives.
    The individual presentations and the group dialogue have prompted  a bunch of deep thoughts and reflections on how I experience my world.
    But first and foremost, the idea has come to me is that if I thought Busting Loose was radical, it's really got nothing on the worldviews of most of the participants.
    I guess where we would diverge is that the participants here, to a person, feel a sense of urgency to solve the world's problems, especially those associated with the environment.
    As I mentioned in a recent post, I don't feel that sense of urgency or even minor interest in most of this, because I've moved into the understanding that everything "out there" is truly made up and illusory. As I change my consciousness, the world around me changes accordingly.
    But as I listen to these passionate and intelligent people I've created, sometimes a shred of doubt begins to creep in. Is this some kind of message for me? Has my understanding and practice of Busting Loose caused me to become too cavalier about the whole concept of the world as illusion?
    I can see sometimes how taking a radical view could be a smokescreen for my apathy, and apathy is not high on the list of things that I want to bring to the world, illusory or not.
    I know that Robert Scheinfeld would say that if taking on a cause truly supports you in Phase 2, and you get fun or enjoyment out of pursuing some solution, then do it. There's nothing wrong with it. Just remember the cause and the solution are both illusions.
    But then I hear an Aboriginal woman talk about her people's sacred relationship to the land, and how that relationship nurtures the people and the land, and I almost feel obligated to wander the deserts of Australia with her on a walkabout.
    I should be concerned about world peace, right?
    The moderator, Leroy LIttle Bear, reminds us that to enter into this type of dialogue, it is necessary to get rid of our "tacit infrastructures" -- the concepts and beliefs that accumulate in us over time -- so that we can be ready to receive new knowledge from new places.
    (I must interject a note here. Leroy helped start these dialogues in 1992, and is one of the wisest and funniest people I know. After a participant related the experience of going to sleep and dreaming that he flew through his bedroom window, Leroy deadpanned, "Was it paneless?")
    This concept of "tacit infrastructures" obviously jibes with Robert's concepts, in that we humans tend to buy into the rules of games that we will never win while playing in the hologram. That's always a good ground for me.
    It seems to me that the divergence is on this question of beliefs, but not in the way you might think. Robert has encapsulated it well in his new book: we're not here to change beliefs, but to exchange them for the Truth. I'm hoping the group will move from simply wanting to change the beliefs of others to getting to the Truth in this dialogue.
    Leroy, who is Blackfoot, also explained how a particular problem might be resolved in a tribal setting. Someone would come to a relative or friend with a particular issue. The relative would present it to the talking circle and the elders would each speak their piece.
    But instead of the circle issuing a decree, the person who brought the problem to the circle would be asked to take the wisdom of the group with him and solve the problem.
    That's pretty much where I am as we enter the second day of dialogue. I'll be listening and learning and coming up with my own solution about just how involved I will be with the issues of the outer world. And if anybody knows of a cheap flight to Australia, let me know.     



    
    
    
   

    One of my great passions is learning the truth with a small "t" behind many of the things we take for granted. For me, it's practice for learning the Truth with a big "T."
    For instance, most of us assume that giving a diamond wedding ring to the bride is an ancient custom passed down through the millenia. Nope, basically it was a slick advertising campaign started in the 1930s, and financed by the diamond cartel DeBeers, to boost a slumping diamond market. The marketing geniuses were able to turn essentially worthless carbon crystals (they are good for certain types of drills) into great symbols of courtship and marriage.
    And by creating the illusion that diamonds are gifts that should never be sold or given away, they protected the market for diamonds. Because unless you're holding on to the Hope diamond, the actual chances of you recovering the cost of the average diamond on the open market are pretty much nil.
    So, while the diamond may not really be forever, we can rest assured the advertising will be.
    Along those lines, a couple of stories, actually, a book and a news article caught my eye this week. One was a Time magazine article about how overrated exercising at the gym is, especially when it comes to weight loss and fitness. As Robert Scheinfeld likes to say, "That's true, and somehow I've always known it."
    The book, "Moneyball," by Michael Lewis takes the quest for truth to an entirely other level. It is a thoroughly joyful dismantling of many of the myths behind our great American pastime. For those of a more tender age, that would be Major League Baseball, not surfing for porn.
    "Moneyball" tells the story of how the Oakland A's, one of the least financially viable franchises in baseball was able to put together a stunning run of successful seasons, competing against teams that had two or three times the amount of money to spend.
    The key to it all, the author explains, was the willingness to throw out more than 100 years of baseball "wisdom" and start from scratch.
    The A's management was Inspired by a generation of pioneering researchers, namely Bill James, who in the late 1970s began analyzing hallowed baseball statistics and devising new ways to look at the true value of baseball players and the underlying mechanics of the game. It was then up to A's general manager Billy Beane, to actually implement new strategies based on this knowledge and make them manifest on the field.
    The revolution threw everyone off balance in the A's organization. The opinions of scouts, with decades worth of experiencing finding ballplayers fit for the major leagues, were suddenly discarded for computer printouts. The A's drafted many players sight unseen, based on new insights into their statistics.
    Many of the players were unknown to the other teams, and a good lot of them didn't even resemble athletes. (one pitcher had two club feet) But they got the job done.
    Essentially, Beane and company were able to see through the illusions of how the worth of players was typically judged (body size, foot speed, meaningless statistics) to realize what they actually produced on the field.
    The same principles applied to the hoary traditions of baseball strategy and Beane saw that his teams played to the new paradigm. It took vision, nerve and diligence.
    One interesting aspect of this was that the rest of major league baseball, with a couple of minor exceptions, either looked the other way, or attacked this attack against tradition, many without having ever read the book.
    And teams continue to throw ungodly amounts of appreciation at ball players and continued to struggle, or like the Yankees and Red Sox, just buy everything in sight and sometimes succeeded. It's just easier to put power in the lie than it is to try another way.
    As a practitioner of Busting Loose, this somehow all made sense. In baseball, the results don't lie. Either you won or you lost. With your spiritual practice, it either affects you, or it doesn't. It's pretty easy to tell if something is working.
    So I don't know that anyone has attacked "Busting Loose," like they attacked "Moneyball," and I certainly hope not to manifest that. But as with the Oakland A's, Robert has gone against almost everything we hold as true in presenting a radically new philosophy of living and playing.
    Be thankful you have the tools to challenge the lies and the courage to follow through. Batter up.