I am sitting on my bed.   It is a special bed.  A Brookstone computer pad is sitting on my lap.  Erliechda, my trusty HP laptop, is resting just so under my sensitive fingertips.  I just fired up ITunes.  I had downloaded 192 songs from a collection entitled Music From The World Of Osho.  Right now I hear some slow and peaceful flute music.  After the day I have had, that feels just about perfect.   Hot green tea is resting on the night stand.  Let’s stop for a second, allow spirit to fill me, and patiently wait for words to spew forth.

I don’t have to wait long.  I have been thinking quite a bit lately about how I live my life, and what is truly important.  I have been putting things into the perspective of …”If I knew I only had 6 months to live, would I look back in 6 months and have any regrets?”   I know I sure do take the future for granted, like it is definitely going to be there when I am ready.  When men attend The Bridge event, they are given the opportunity to participate is a very life affirming ritual in which they confront their own mortality.  If this were my last day, how has my life in totality been?  What was really important, and what was more or less bullshit?  Where did I waste time?  Did I spend my time with people that mattered to me?  Did I live honorably?  Does that matter?  In the end, what will I regret?  In the end, what will I remember and say “I am so happy that I did that!” or “I can’t believe I let that opportunity pass me by!”  It makes me ponder the questions of  what is a life well lived.  In the end, I choose love.

Last night I had the most remarkable meditation.  Normally I sit in a half lotus position when I meditate.  Last night, I lied down on my bed.  It was a guided meditation which lasted 30 minutes.  I liked it so much, and felt so drawn in, that I had to do it a second time.  There was one point, when I was at the edge of a lake, and everything became illuminated with a rainbow of color.  I was taken away.   I did not want to leave this place.  It was so pure and still and peaceful.

As I learn to live an unfiltered life, I become increasing aware of how easily I can disappear.  During my meditation, my intention was to focus healing energy on a friend who has an injured ankle.  When I am in the other place, the astral, the spirit world, the third place, I have learned to travel, and connect, and move energy in ways that I did not know were possible.  I remember watching my old teacher, marveling at the things he could do. Now much of it makes sense.  I still have plenty to learn.  I am also very aware that with this power comes responsibility.

What does it mean to be unfiltered?  For me, it means being vulnerable.  It means being open.  It means living unprotected.  It means going for it 100%.  As my friend Daniel would say, it means sharing brave open love.  It means not always having it figured out.  It means daring to let go.  It means lightening up.  It means accepting and not controlling.  It means going against most everything I was taught about protecting myself and not getting hurt.  It means living in a space most people stay away from, and being okay with it.

It also means feeling the real depths of love, rather than the mediocrity of convenience.  It means living as a true adult, putting aside my teenage ways of being.  I mean, what is the point of being here in physical form on this amazing planet, if I am not willing to feel and breath in the true depth of the experience?  Being that I am a cancer, and we cancer folk are supposed to be highly sensitive, I feel things rather profoundly.  I have known the lacerations of betrayal.  I have felt such joy with my children.  The promise of a loving partner has filled my sails.  The disappointment of expectations unmet and love lost has brought me to tears.

“The world is a wonderfully weird place, consensual reality is significantly flawed, no institution can be trusted, certainty is a mirage, security a delusion, and the tyranny of the dull mind forever threatens — but our lives are not as limited as we think they are, all things are possible, laughter is holier than piety, freedom is sweeter than fame, and in the end it’s love and love alone that really matters.”
Tom Robbins

Love is a very unique energy.  Lately, I have learned to ride the wave of this energy.  It is very attractive.   It is big and it is intoxicating.   I have learned to swim in it.   I notice how both men and women are drawn to it.   It is irresistible.  There is a fearlessness necessary for the real thing to appear, else it is all pretense and that is very unattractive.  Love is a current.  It is not an agreement.  It is not an arrangement of I will love you if you love me back.  That is not living unfiltered.  That is rather living protected.  That is not being vulnerable.  That is hedging my bets.  It is not courageous.  It is not living at my edge.

This last month has sent me to some places energetically and emotionally I have not traveled in a while.  The places of courage, willingness, release, surrender, let go, forgiveness, adoration, devotion, betrayal, peace, joy, and returning to the source.  None of this is possible in a protected state.  Vulnerability is the key.  Security is the enemy.

In this vastness where will your ego be? In this vastness where will your suffering be? In this vastness where will your mean mind be? The mediocre mind, where will it be? It cannot be there in such vastness, it simply disappears. It can exist only in a narrow field. It can exist only when it is walled, enclosed, encapsulated. The encapsulation is the problem. Live dangerously and be ready to live in insecurity.

                                                Osho

However, there is a price to pay for this insecurity.  For as amazing and beautiful and essentially divine so much of life may seem, and no matter how generous anyone  may be in sharing their light, there is a risk of incredible pain.  Recently I felt this pain.  It is all consuming.  Nothing seems to make sense.  Everything is muted and dark.  At times, I can’t even sit still, for a wave of what can only be called an overwhelming “diabolic bolt of dark energy ”  rocks me to my core.  In time, it passes.  I must breath threw it.  I must walk in nature.  I must cry hard tears to release it.   I must remember that this too shall pass.  This is the price.   And I will gladly pay it.

So why do it?  Why live unfiltered, if there is the possibility of gut wrenching pain.  I have asked myself this quite a bit lately, as you might imagine.  My answer is that I can’t stop.  My spirit simply will no longer allow it.   I have no choice.   I must live fully.  As Helen Keller said, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”  The best way I can say it, is to share a most amazing and true poem that I recently found online.  Having spent much time with remarkable women in sacred space, these words reverberate loud and clear.

If you want to change the world… Love a woman – really Love her. Find the one who calls to your soul, who doesn’t make sense.

Throw away your check list and put your ear to her heart and listen.Hear the names, the prayers, the songs of every living thing-every winged one, every furry and scaled one,every underground and underwater one, every green and flowering one,every not yet born and dying one…

Hear their melancholy praises back to the One who gave them life.If you haven’t heard your own name yet, you haven’t listened long enough.

If your eyes aren’t filled with tears, if you aren’t bowing at her feet, you haven’t ever grieved having almost lost her.If you want to change the world…

Love a woman – one woman beyond yourself, beyond desire and reason,beyond your male preferences for youth, beauty and variety and all your superficial concepts of freedom.

We have given ourselves so many choices we have forgotten that true liberation comes from standing in the middle of the soul’s fire and burning through our resistance to Love.

There is one Goddess in every woman. Look into Her eyes and see-really see if she is the one to bring the axe to your head. If not, walk away. Right now. Don’t waste time “trying.”

Know that your decision has nothing to do with her because ultimately it’s not with who, but when we choose to surrender.

If you want to change the world… Love a woman. Love her for life – beyond your fear of death,beyond your fear of being manipulated by the Mother inside your head.

Don’t tell her you’re willing to die for her. Say you’re willing to LIVE with her, plant trees with her and watch them grow.

Be her hero by telling her how beautiful she is in her vulnerable majesty, by helping her to remember every day that she IS Goddess through your adoration and devotion.

If you want to change the world… Love a woman in all her faces, through all her seasons and she will heal you of your schizophrenia-your double-mindedness and half-hardheartedness which keeps your Spirit and body separate-which keeps you alone and always looking outside your Self for something to make your life worth living.

There will always be another woman. Soon the new shiny one will become the old dull one and you’ll grow restless again, trading in women like cars, trading in the Goddess for the latest object of your desire.

Man doesn’t need any more choices. What man needs is a Woman, the Way of the Feminine, of Patience and Compassion, non-seeking, non-doing, of breathing in one place and sinking deep intertwining roots strong enough to hold the Earth together while she shakes off the cement and steel from her skin.

If you want to change the world… Love a woman, just one woman. Love and protect her as if she is the last holy vessel.

Love her through her fear of abandonment which she has been holding for all of humanity.

No, the wound is not hers to heal alone. No, she is not weak in her co-dependence. If you want to change the world…

Love a woman all the way through until she believes you,until her instincts, her visions, her voice, her art, her passion, her wildness have returned to her …

… until she is a force of Love more powerful than all the political media demons who seek to devalue and destroy her.

If you want to change the world, lay down your causes, your guns and protest signs.

Lay down your inner war, righteous anger and Love a woman…beyond all of your striving for greatness, beyond your tenacious quest for enlightenment.

The holy grail stands before you if you would only take her in your arms and let go of searching for something beyond this intimacy.

What if peace is a dream which can only be re-membered through the heart of the feminine, in man or woman?

What if a man’s Love for Woman, the Way of the Feminine is the key to opening Her (and His) heart?

If you want to change the world…
Love a woman to the depths of your shadow,
to the highest reaches of your Being,
back to the Garden where you first met her,
to the gateway of the rainbow realm where you walk through together as Light as One,
to the point of no return,
to the ends and the beginning of a new Earth…”    Anonymous

So many lines in this poem wash over me with layer and layer of meaning.   The Grail stands before you.  She is the Grail.  Falling for the one who calls to my soul and doesn’t make sense describes my calling.  Just one woman is all this loyal male seeks.  I have sat in so many rooms among so many men, and I know this poem is a minority report.   This is not what passes for wisdom or truth out there in the world.  That strikes me as sad and ignorant.  My port is open.  My surrender is complete.  I am ready to embrace her.  May She honor me in her time.

A few months ago, I was sweating it out in a very hot sauna at  Coach’s Corner in Sebastopol.  The man next to me, who worked in hospice care,  told me about an article on the regrets of the dying.  I found it and want to share it with you.

Bonnie Ware, an Australian nurse who provides palliative care for dying patients, has recorded their most common regrets. One of the top ones is “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.” What would your biggest regret be if this was your last day of life?

 Here are the top five regrets of the dying, as witnessed by Ware:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Finally, this week has reminded me that the universe will always only give me what I can handle.   I can trust that I am being watched over, and that I am being held in a safe warm place.  After a really bad day, then comes a truly magnificent and miraculous day.  It is a day to let go of the past, and embrace what is now showing up for me.  My light has found new places to shine.   I have attempted to live valiantly and give everything I have to those that I love.  If I died tomorrow, I will know I did not play it safe and protected.   I opened my soul, shared all I have, and loved like a true heart warrior.    No Regrets!