Light, Love and People

How do I say it? How do I convey how inspired I am by people?

Some amazing things happened to me at the Center of the Heart spiritual center in Santa Barbara this past Sunday. We held our art show and reception there.

Before the service, we meditated in the sanctuary. On the walls hung the paintings the homeless people created on our 2008 tour. A vision came to me while I meditated. I saw beams of light shining through all the paintings, converging in the center of the room, and shining outward through the paintings into the world outside. The paintings glowed with this light, like stained glass. And I realized that this is why the paintings where there, on the walls at the Center Of The Heart. They were there to focus and amplify the light of love from within the sanctuary and spread it out into the world. The paintings are the windows in the windowless walls of the sanctuary. I see the people who created the paintings as windows into the heart and soul of humanity. Light shines through them.

Another amazing event, or should I say person, occurred - July Millane. She was a homeless person I met at the Casa Esperanza in Santa Barbara a few months ago when we visited the shelter. We recorded her music and video taped the recording session. I didn't expect to see her because we had lost touch with her after inviting her to the Center Of The Heart a few weeks ago.

When she saw me, she literally flew off the ground and hugged me with all her might. She walked most of the morning to get there. July couldn't wait to tell me all the great things that have been happening in her life. She now has her own room in a house and a job too. The day before, someone gave her a nice 12-string guitar which she loves to play even though it only has 5 of the 12 strings so far. She is working on her songs and poetry and looking forward to attending classes at an audio recording school. That was why she came to California from Nebraska last year. But she had some bad experiences on the way and lost all her stuff, arriving with nothing in Santa Barbara.

July told me about her vision of a house in Ojai with 12 acres where homeless artists and musicians could heal and create together and raise money through their collective work to help others. I told her about my vision - the Hearts Of Fire Healing Center - which is remarkably similar to hers. Visions are like that, they spread and grow without words, gathering strength in our hearts until they burst into the world with power, inspiring us with our own greatness.

I truly live a blessed life and it is blessed by people, by people like July. Love abounds around me.

Another Inspiring Weekend!

Hi Folks!

Not sure if anyone is reading my posts here, but it does me good to speak what I hear inside my head.



We had another fabulous art show extravaganza this past weekend, Oct. 11 and 12! About 50 lucky people stopped by at the Ojai Enrichment Center here in Ojai to see the first, comprehensive display of the art work that we collected on our 2008 tour. We raised about $190 too!



The most important part of the event for me and our team was the great conversations we had with people about being human. We talked about homelessness but not about homeless people per se. It was more about what is missing in our culture that allows homelessness to persist.



Community is a big missing. In our quest for fulfillment, we work and buy, work and consume and vainly hope this will bring us peace and happiness. But it as we all know, it doesn't. Why? Because the fundamental need and desire of human beings is love and connection with other human beings. Working to buy and buying to work doesn't meet these needs. In a real community, people not only help each other but they trust and rely on each other. In a real community, people are valued for their contribution to the community, whatever that is for each person.

In our culture, contribution is measured by money, by property, by things. Sure, we acknowledge people for their good works but this is a rare event, which is why it takes place at the annual good citizen award banquet or some such.



We also talked with people about housing. Today, houses are standing empty, their owners evicted or bankrupt, while thousands of people including the former owners, sleep in the parks, in the forests, in cars and on the streets. New eco-friendly and inexpensive building techniques exist like cobb and straw bale, but are banned by antiquated building codes that were originally intened to promote public safety but now serve the economic interests of big business and oppress the people.



In summary, we learned that regular, ordinary people really do care about others. And are beginning to see that there is no person, no goverment, no authority, no anybody to look to that will create a world that really works for people. WE are the only ones who can do that. We are are working on that in our own way. I hope you join us!

What Has Albert Got To Do With It?

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." - Albert Einstein.

This seems like an obvious statement, doesn't it? We don't really need a genius to figure this out, do we? Yet we keep doing this again and again.

We created a culture that values people by what they have and what they consume. Thus, those that have less and use less, ARE Less. Less than what? Less than human, less deserving of respect, love and compassion?

We live in this culture, in a collective judgment of who we and others are. And there is a lot of suffering because we really believe who we are is what we have, or don't have.

As Mr. Einstein deduced, we can't find answers to homelessness using the same thinking, the same judgments, the same view of humanity that created it. A new view of humanity, a new paradigm if you will, is required to find answers. This new view is not really new - it has lived inside most religions for centuries. However, these religions also exist inside the economic, survival based paradigm and thus do not effect fundamental change in the world.

I don't have all the answers, but I know that we can start with being human and loving humans simply because we share this planet, the experience of life and a deep connection that transcends this world. Let's start with love, love for no reason. Just love. You love me and I love you.

(above, "Wilson" a watercolor by Ray, Turning Point Foundation, Ventura, CA)

The Answer Is GIVING!

As we hear more and more bad economic news and people get more frightened, more afraid - what happens? What happens to people when they are scared? People feel like their survival is threatened, that they may loose the things they have - the money, the car, the house - things that they believe are essential to life.

What has happened is that we have invested who are in what we own and those things have become us. Our ego, our identify actually convinces us that we ARE those things. How did we go from a sharing, connected society to one where our value is determined by what we have and what we buy? For decades, capitalistic beliefs have undermined and literally polluted our world. The myth of the self-made success keeps us all at the grindstone; the elusive image of wealth and freedom few achieve. Somehow the spectacular success, the money and fame, of the few keep us striving for that dream. Our culture reinforces these beliefs from birth with a constant barrage of messages from the media, from friends and from our family. The message is: who you are is what you have; your value is in your possessions. Consequently, we must buy more and more, but there is never enough because our ego always wants more. Then we work more to buy more. And as we now see, working more is not enough. Borrowing more became the only way to buy more for most people.

So as we get more frightened, we hold on ever tighter to the things we have. As we hold on, we worry more about loosing what we are holding on to and others do the same. A collective worrying permeates our society and soon, everyone is afraid of everyone else because they might want what WE have. This is an unnatural, inhuman way to live and that is where we are.


But there is another way, a way out of this maze of worry and fear.


GIVE !! Give away the things you are holding on to! Yes, give more than you have ever given in your life! Wow, what would our world be like then? Instead of paranoia and fear of loss, we would see joy spreading as people received more than they ever have before. We would see joy in the faces of people as they give away their concerns replacing the anxiety we now see. And to top it all off, everyone would feel grateful and connected to the only real source of peace and happiness on this earth - other PEOPLE !


The homeless boy in this video lives with his mom at a shelter in Oxnard, CA. He is happy and his happiness has NOTHING to do with what he owns or doesn't own. He has love and he gives love. That is all anyone needs.