Other Musings

cultural | community oriented | edu–tainment

I not only share my philosophy of living with sacred, crazy-juicy, fierce and euphoric creative abandon through writing, I also do my small part to help vivify others’ lives in experiential ways. Drawing on a professional background in event planning and production, I partnered with two brilliant individuals in 2003 to birth Epiphany Works, LLC. Through this company, which is run using conscious business principles, we are able to subtly align others with activities that ignite their own inner spark. Our events are beyond the ordinary and a bit mysterious, yet simple and fun.

EW’s Mission Statement: To provide public forums for enlightening entertainment – based in spiritual traditions and world cultures – that awaken a sense of awe, wonder and radical amazement at the miracle of life, beauty of community and infinite potential of higher consciousness.

Learn more at www.epiphanyworks.org.
 

Meet G-ji | The Intuitionist

One of my core passions is opening to life’s grandeur in the fullest possible sense; for me, that includes my sixth sense. For many years, I’ve studied and experimented with my intuition and have written about some of my meta-phenomenal adventures in Everything Matters, Nothing Matters. As one of my fave songwriters, Jason Mraz, raps:

My home is deep inside the mystics /
I’m known to keep diggin’ on existence.

You see, I believe that creativity and higher consciousness are inextricably linked. While writing is an emotional and intellectual pursuit, I view it foremost as a sacred act. Know what I mean? When you’re so engrossed in something and blissfully lose yourself in it, your creative PVC pipe is at its most clear and pure. You tap the divine. You merge with  the Creator.

As human artists, we often glean inspiration from others who are highly and broadly connected in this way. So, here goes. On this page I will post an ever-changing amalgam of random musings, luscious quotes and wows (words of wisdom) from others who’ve obviously talked on the red phone. Reading their stuff can help you vibe up to new creative heights, as well.

“Sound the depths | of your own being”

These words by 20th Century poet Rainer Maria Rilke are the closest ones I can find (at the moment) to describe that sweet, expansive union of reciprocity that I reach for in my most cherished relationships:

Only someone who is ready for everything,
who doesn't exclude any experience,
even the most incomprehensible,
will live the relationship with another person
as something alive
and will himself
sound the depths of his own being.

“You are | God in drag!”

Ponder this poem from Hafiz about the divinity in all of us.

You are the Sun in drag.
You are God hiding from yourself.
Remove all the "mine" - that is the veil.
Why ever worry about anything?
Listen to what your friend Hafiz
Knows for certain:
The appearance of this world
Is a Magi's brilliant trick, though its affairs are
Nothing into nothing.
You are a divine elephant with amnesia
Trying to live in an ant Hole.
Sweetheart, O sweetheart
You are God in Drag!

“After great pain | a formal feeling comes.”

For anyone who may be enduring suffering of some kind today, the eloquent words of Emily Dickenson echo through the ages.

After great pain a formal feeling comes —
The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;
The stiff heart questions — was it He that bore?
And yesterday — or centuries before?

The feet, mechanical, go round
A wooden way
Of ground, or air, or ought,
Regardless grown,
A quartz contentment, like a stone.

This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow —
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.

Insight Out

Here’s a little ditty from inside the pages of Everything Matters, Nothing Matters:

“So, what are you going for, enlightenment?” a wise man (wise guy?) asked me while we were chatting at a work-related cocktail party. Talk about Integration. There I stood, tipsy with a wine buzz, all dolled up in pink lipstick and high heels, waxing rhapsodic about the allure of communing with Spirit. And this simple, humble man, a Christian mystic––a self-professed carp out of water at this Hollywood gig whom I’d watched work the room like the Clintons at the Democratic National Convention—getting all over my shit about me wanting to find my Holy Grail.

“Do you even KNOW what you’re going for?” he prodded. “Do you?” Woo wee. It was a fair question. I was in a mood to hear myself answer it.

“No, I’m not really going for enlightenment. Of what use is that to me now? That’s the Big O, the cosmic climax. What stirs me most is the pre-O, living in the splendor of becoming, the full flush of adventure and emergence, where anything is possible, and where I can screw up and even get screwed, in the figurative sense, if need be … sort of like Anaïs Nin in Henry and June, don’t you think?”

“How should I know? You’re the writer.”

Okay, I had gone a bit far, and he was having a hostile moment at my expense. I granted him that but couldn’t resist extending the metaphor. “Yeah, that book is about her erotic awakening, how she wants to bite into life and be torn by it, how she swallows the laughter of her lover like bread and wine. Only replace sex with Spirit, lover with Beloved, promiscuity with piety. Life is my unexpurgated spiritual diary, my rendezvous with full-frontal consciousness.”

“Huh. You’re speaking of love. Is it possible that you and God are having an affair?”

“How should I know? You’re the mystic.”