Where Will You Be on December 21st

DEC 19, 2012

Dec. 21 Planet

I have an opportunity to share with you some of the information I have just received about the days of this week starting on the auspicious Dec. 21, 22 and 23rd. I hope it will inspire you to step into participation with this historical event instead of what so many are doing is watching and waiting.

We have a habit as humans to spectate world events. We have a chance as the Mayan Calendar ends and there is a new shift of consciousness on our planet to both effect the outcome and be positively affected by these new energies. Here is what I want to share with you at this time:

The Shift that will be occurring is an energetic opening. How that manifests all over the planet is not known yet there is endless speculation. What is known is that there is a “Window” of energy opening from the center of out galaxy that will magnify the energies that each one of us embodies during these three days. The energy we focus ourselves on will in fact create a kind of ‘instant Karma’ that will affect the months and years to follow. If we are stressed, argumentative, uncentered or ungrounded, angry or resentful then that will be the karma that will manifest in kind. But most of all if we live in a place of fear we need to look at why and shift our energy.

What we all are being called to do is embody love, gratitude, sharing, joy and kindness. Then, what will karmically follow will be “in kind”. This is a very important time to slow down, focus, meditate, hug our children, give to those who need what we have and connect to others in love.

The events of Sandy Hook may have been part of how we each open our hearts just a little more than usual since broken heartedness leads to far more aliveness and soulfulness. Let us embrace the changes that are upon us is larger gestures of love than ever before.

Take time for these three days to recalibrate your life to align with the best of who you are. Then share yourself with everyone. Plan those three days intentionally. Be with people and in places that make loving easier, that bring you joy and aliveness.

And I received this very helpful email that I pass onto you as we all approach this new cycle that starts this Friday the 21st.

“December 21st, 2012. The Winter Solstice. For some of you, a date that has been at the front of your consciousness for quite some time; and maybe for some of you, just another Friday before Christmas. As someone in the group of the former, it has been a focus point on my path of change.

While my own personal beliefs find importance in honoring this and every solstice, this solstice IS special. It is special because it is a date that has drawn the attention of hundreds of thousands, hopefully millions of people around the world.

Coinciding with the end of a 5,125 year cycle of the Mayan Calendar, for some it is a meme that means the end of the world, for many more it means the dawning of a new age, and for others it is just another tall tale or something not within their personal radar.

For me, I prefer to focus my energies and consciousness on the dawning of a new age. And while it doesn’t come from a mystical supernatural force, it does come from the supernatural force that is within us all. It is something that has been gathering momentum amongst humanity exponentially in the last decades. It is a shift from a world of separation to one based on oneness. We see examples of it everywhere, but especially from the increased world-wide practice of yoga and meditation.

So, what does this mean exactly? If you believe that we shape our own world than I invite you to join us in tapping into the power of critical mass, the power we hold to change the world. And I invite you to invite your friends and family.

Watch the video introduction to unify.org http://vimeo.com/55312674

Commit yourself to participation and synchronize with The Unification Moment at 8:00pm UTC (that is 3pm EST / 1pm MST / 12pm PST) on December 21st. This time coincides with the Birth 2012 celebrations being synchronized around the world, with Australia being the first continent to receive the December 22nd sunrise, welcoming in a new era. (http://birth2012.com/)

“Over 80 organizations around the world have come together to organize a unified meditation taking place in hundreds of cities. We invite every yoga studio, every meditation center, every meditator, everyone who’s even thought of meditating to join us for a moment that could change the rest of our lives. Join us wherever you are and organize your own event at unify.org. Already part of an event? Please invite everyone at the event to unify with the rest of the world at 8:00 PM GMT. The Unification Moment will be 12 minutes of silence, 12 minutes of chanting/singing, and 12 minutes of imagination where we all imagine the world we are inspired to create. All at the same exact time! There are scientists around the planet collaborating to study what impact this meditation may have on our planet’s electro-magnetic field.”

If you have even a speck of curiosity or a bit of wonder about this shift then I gently recommend participating. Wherever you are, take a minute, or three minutes or twelve and shut your eyes, focus on your breath, quiet your mind.

“The great challenge of our time is to create a global culture that is sustainable, peaceful, healthy, and prosperous. We can rise to this challenge, just as previous generations have risen to the challenge of their day.”

Where will I be on at 1pm mst? I’ll be with a small group of friends & family including kids and elders, up in the rocky mountains, meditating in a joined heart space with all of you, my friends & family.

I hope this resonates, and if so, please feel free to forward this on”.

Sharon Joy

Fierce Compassion

Dec17

FIERCE COMPASSION

DEC 16, 2012

“Fierce compassion is motivated by the awareness of someone’s suffering and it addresses it by looking at the root cause of it. When we come from this place, we understand that we sometimes need to cause discomfort in the service of growth.”

Charlie Glickman

In the Bhagavad-Gita, the sacred book of the Hindus, Lord Krishna says to Arjuna, “Plunge into the heat of the battle and keep your heart at the lotus feet of the Lord”. And perhaps when Christ turned over the moneychanger’s tables in the Temple and called them Vipers and Hypocrites he did so from a place of inner calm. I am challenged this week to find this precarious place between outrage and love in the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

I have been moved to write allot these past few days. Not enough can be felt and not enough can be said. I am a person who does not watch TV, the news, subscribe to a newspaper, or watch the nightly shooting reports and the death toll around the world. I am aware. I know what is happening. Yet, there are moments I do allow the news to break into my life as in the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

The night before these Connecticut families dropped their children off at school, having packed little lunches, Avengers book-bags and smooched the cheeks of their sandy haired boy or brown eyed girl who was a part of the fabric of each parents hearts, I could not sleep. I awoke agitated at 2am and feeling what I have come to privately call “a disturbance in the force”. I feel this way with seismic activity a-la John Travolta in Phenomenon. And when there is a natural disaster or impeding catastrophe I am activated. Call it telepathy, or maybe call it precognition it doesn’t matter. It is how I personally know that we ARE all connected…to everything.

That next morning I saw on my Facebook page a post about Adam Lanza and 26 people who were dead because of him. Some part of me knew I wanted and needed to allow this story into me. So, I found the photos of grieving parents, of the 6 year old children with light in their eyes, of the dedicated teachers who died hiding the children in their care. I learned the name and age of each child as the day went on and then read about the 29 year old teacher who hid her class of children in cabinets, only to be shot and killed herself.

This teacher was the age of my oldest daughter, Sasha. At that moment it all became real. I became each parent and each of the tiny children were my children playing in sandboxes. I could see my daughters being dropped off at Toddy Pond School in Northern Maine. This massacre was firmly on my doorstep of my heart.

And then the psychologist in me read several outstanding writings about mental illness and the young boy who did the unthinkable. The unthinkable! And Adam became every other lost boy I know, every other disturbed youth who is buried under the weight of a culture that has purposefully created apathy, self-hatred, taught our young men and women that killing for the country is patriotism and heroic and who have abandoned those who have a label of ‘mental illness’ to the care of our drug culture only to make a profit from another’s despair. It is not Adam Lanza who was insane, it is our entire culture who created him.

This story of Sandy Hook is deeply personal and deeply Universal, igniting a possible awareness that Adam Lanza is a symptom of something much more important. Our culture wants to slap him and his family with a label of mental illness while all the while, decade after decade, hiding from the reality of spiritual illness, heart sickness, soul loss and emptiness that goes hand in hand with a culture that has lost our way entirely. We are not asking the right questions. We are not even looking most of the time until the “unthinkable” moves in next door.

This horrific moment in our shameful history as a culture is a wake up call to stop seeing “the other” as the bad guy. The collective apathy, the military industrial machine and the lack of a social and moral consciousness is the real “bad guy” here. It is not about Adam being “sick” or raised by parents who did not understand him. The death of these children, men and women is a collective issue. A collective responsibility.

Then, I stumbled on one woman’s letter to President Obama. Her voice sliced through the debris of confusion we all feel, to poignantly identify that the children of Sandy Hook, of Palestine or Pakistan are the same children with parents grieving and all faceless to most of us. This one mother rips at the truth that violence is out of control on our planet and points out that much of that violence is created by our governing bodies and then carried out by a thousand young ‘Adam Lanzas’ who have been supplied with a gun by our country who, in the name of freedom, then kill women, children and entire families just like Adam Lanza did.

She says.

“Mr. President, where is your “overwhelming grief”, tears, and words for THOSE children whose lives were violently cut short and continue to be cut short in Palestine, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, etc., via weapons supplied and paid for with American tax dollars? Do you not feel “overwhelming grief”, or have any tears or words for THOSE children? Is it because THOSE children are not “THESE children”, “our children” aka AMERICAN children? Are THOSE children not worthy of our overwhelming grief, tears, words, or their future?

As a parent, not only do I feel overwhelming grief for those children whose lives were cut short in yesterday’s tragedy, I also feel overwhelming grief, GUILT, and SHAME for every single child whose life has been cut short via the American military–industrial–congressional complex.

Mr. President, every single child … NO MATTER THEIR LOCATION … is our child. So, please spare me your selective, manipulative, hypocritical emotion. Not only is it embarrassing, but the overwhelming grief, guilt, and shame every American should feel for any child’s life that has been cut short is already more than any of us can bear.”

~ Robin Rantamaki

Robin Rantamaki is using a voice that we all could cultivate. A clearly outraged voice rooted in a love and compassion for life that together creates Fierce Compassion. In my worldview this is what the Great Mother is all about. Where is the collective cry of all mothers on this planet who have the power to stop the insanity, the death and destruction and preserve life?

This moment in our history requires that, I for one, develop two things: Courage and a willingness to speak and act with fierce compassion. The ingredient that is essential is personal action. Speaking up and out. Stopping my support of the mass illusion that the American Dream is just that. Refusing to stand behind anything or anyone that strips any person in our world of the right to live. This is being brave in my book. This is how brave I must become willing to be in every action I take.

We are a culture that hides from the truth. We hide in our TV’s, we hide in our houses, we hide at the mall, and we hide in our video games and our inability to speak to our neighbors. Adam Lanza has driven me out of my comfort zone and out into the street. The only place for me to start is with my words. My first action is my willingness to send out this post, then to sink firmly into the center of my heart and create a fiercely loving stance from which to live.

We are all abuzz about the end of the Mayan Calendar on Friday of this week. We hear voices of doom and some immanent cataclysm: Earth Changes, the Collapse of the Economy, the return of Jesus, the disclosure of life on other planets. The cataclysm is here. Right Now! The end of what we know about a civilized life has just been destroyed by the truth behind these killings. The anticipated and hoped for ascension of human kind and the waking up of humanity is here now in how each one of us chooses to ..or not… choose to respond to what is all around us. There is no earthquake that is any bigger than what just happened at Sandy Hook. If we are not shaken to the core then we are asleep.

A Modern Day Parable

Dec3

by Maya Christobel

She caught my attention. An older woman who seemed more like a child really. Her unruly and disheveled hair flew in the wind and her brown eyes were wild with expectation. Her gate was long and certain and she was on a mission. I dropped my grocery bags by the car and followed her as she weaved in and out of unfamiliar streets, her long robe swaying behind her, arms pumping fiercely as if she were in a race. As she passed a dog tied tightly to a bicycle rack on the corner of Park Street she stopped momentarily and slipped his collar off scooping the black-eyed beagle up into her arms and continuing on as if she had expected him. I could not keep up with her and began to run behind as she continued to rush somewhere I imagined to be very important.

Trees and flowers caught her attention, a rock into her pocket, a feather tucked into her sleeve. Suddenly, a boy and then a bird and some old man sitting near the park joined her and now there were many people following her trail. She turned down and small street and a homeless man in a cardboard box watched her come near. She stopped, her face a breath from his wide eyes as she smiled a smile that nearly knocked him to his feet.

Then she took his hand and pulled him up and without a word he joined the growing crowd of children and old people and animals that seemed to become a wave of energy pulsing through the streets, climbing up to the top of the small clearing overlooking the city.

By the time I could catch up and find my breath she was still, standing quietly overlooking the smog and hazy hidden buildings below. Everyone was quiet, waiting for her to speak, to say something important, to tell them what to do, to levitate, to combust, to break down weeping. She turned and with a deep and haunting laugh said ‘What fun life is”.

A Case for Greatness

Nov28

We live in a world where speaking to someone’s Greatness is infrequent. Most often we speak to what is wrong, what is incomplete, aggravating, and problematic in a person. Praise and appreciation fall between the cracks of relationship usually rendering the basic pallet of connection one of working it out, putting up with, overlooking or simply, reactive confrontation when we get overwhelmed.

The basic ingredient that can change the tide in any relationship is honesty: Speaking the truth, first with yourself and then with the other. The first question is “Why am I not telling the truth? What am I afraid of and what do I think the outcome will be if I keep choosing to withhold my feelings or thoughts and observations?”

Yet, in our new age culture where tolerance is far more desired than confrontation, we have gone to the other side of the equation. Tolerance tends to end up looking like skirting the issue, having sympathy for the plight of a friend, when many times it is really fear of confrontation that drives our silence and in-authenticity. So we call it “Tolerance”. That is a kind of lie that we feed.

There is a middle ground that we rarely find ease at identifying and then live out in our relationships: A combination of Empathy and one of Fierce Truth Telling. The question is for most of us, how to tell the honest truth from the heart in a way that speaks to the appreciation for and the greatness of the person we care about, instead of how they have failed?” This is the essential and necessary shift we all need to make in all our relationships, both to self and others, and in the larger Shift that is happening on our planet.

As the paradigm of power shifts incrementally from a patriarchal model to a more balanced form of Power, which now includes the feminine skill of empowering through intuition, instinct and empathy, we are challenged to re-write the common ways in which we approach all of our relationships. It is way past time, to eliminate all the dysfunctional forms of relationship with other people and with ourselves no matter what we imagine the risk to be. The cost of not doing this is far greater than the perceived risk.

There is a long list of habits that we learned from our parents, our government, our culture, our church and an even larger list that is fed from unspoken fears: Namely, that if we are ruthlessly loving, we will be rejected and unloved in return. How many of us have become expert at ways of being in relationship or business that in fact never helps us achieve what we want, which is connection, love, power, creativity, full expression of self and harmony? How many ways of undermining the success of relationship do I practice without consciously thinking?

* Withholding the truth because I believe the person cannot handle it?

* Withholding my feelings because I don’t want a conflict or to be rejected or in many cases loose the little bit I have or think I need from that person?

* Telling myself that I cannot say the truth because I need something from that person that they will take away if they do not like what I say? I then settle for something that is incomplete, dysfunctional and dishonest. I fall out of integrity with myself.

* Rationalization is the biggest lie that we use to protect ourselves. We tell ourselves that it is better that the person does not know the truth because they will be hurt, offended or will not be able to handle the truth, so “I will protect them from those feelings because I love them”. This is the root of becoming an enabler: Allowing the person to continue to be or do things in ways that alienate and create problems for themselves and for others and not speaking to the power and greatness in them, but to their weakness instead. By doing this we never allow for the possibility of change and growth and everything becomes stagnant. Not only the flow of love in the relationship but the flow of money and resources. A kind of energetic constipation where nothing is moving takes over.

The minute we conform to someone’s dysfunction, adapt to it, and accommodate even for selfish reasons, we have supported limitation and dysfunction instead of health and vibrancy in the person we are with. And have you noticed that we then feel less vibrant ourselves, more constrained and unhappy? In other words, we strip the person of the possibility to grow into the person they are capable of being and strip ourselves of a life of integrity that only brings ill health.

When we do this the toxicity of Resentment and Bitterness worms its way into the groundwater of each person in the equation. We do not foster greatness in ourselves or in the other. We live in a model based in fears and limitation. Therefore, the outcome of ANY relationship, whether it is a love relationship, a friendship or a business partnership, will reflect the energy going into it; namely, limitation and lack of greatness, stagnancy of feelings and of resources. As within, so without.

A model for a new paradigm in relationship or business must be based on not only honesty at all costs which is rooted in holding the vision for a persons greatness and for their own ability to learn and change, but also for our capacity to rise above the adaptation to weakness model and firmly plant ourselves in the vision of who we are capable of being and who the person is capable of becoming.

We do not hold with respect, a persons inherent Greatness, if we allow a friend, lover, parent, husband, wife or colleague to become defined by their limitations or blind spots. And, we do not live in our own Greatness if we are not willing to risk living in total honesty and fierce loving.

AO Means Light

Nov23

AOMusic went to Nepal with five young people in August. We recorded children who are singing on our new album to be released in 2013. This is our fundraising trailer for a documentary that we hope you will all support.

Who is your Neighbor?

Nov23

WHO IS YOUR NEIGHBOR?

NOV 23, 2012

heart world

I was rushing to a meeting with a new strategic planner and felt a little unprepared. I’m a bit of a stickler for getting places on time. I threw my briefcase into the car with some bottled water and tried to stay under the speed limit, since here in Point Roberts, Washington there is one policeman, known as Officer Slick, who has little to do but give tickets for tiny offenses. He is Point Roberts onlypoliceman.

I pulled up to the four-way and turned onto Gulf Road, making sure I came to my full stops at every stop sign, one of Officer Slick’s pet peeves. It was raining cats and dogs as it frequently does here in the Pacific Northwest. I glanced at the clock. I was just going to make it to my meeting.

Suddenly there he was. Al, a very old man in a green wool sweater shuffling down the road. He seemed to barely move and was soaked by the driving rain. “Should I stop?” I glanced at the clock and kept driving, seeing that it was straight up 11am. But, there was that feeling in my heart that I have often, making it impossible for me to continue. I spun around doing an illegal U-Turn, hoping that officer Slick was nowhere in sight. I pulled up next the man who had not even made it three feet since I past him. I rolled down the window and asked if I could take him somewhere. He was disoriented. Maybe he couldn’t hear me correctly or maybe he was not used to being helped. I pushed open the door and asked him to get in out of the rain.

He could barely close the front door behind him and sat slumped in the passenger seat. His wool sweater smelled of a dog or maybe a wet horse. “Where are you going on a day like this?” I said, smiling. He took a moment to look over my car and then answered, “Food for Isabella?” Was she his wife? His friend, I wondered. He was shivering as I pulled back into the street. “Are you going to the Marketplace?” “Yep, she woke me up this morning and said she was hungry”. How could that be? I thought. “Is Isabella you wife?” Al turned and smiled. “No, miss, she’s my cat.”

This man looked in his late eighties or early nineties, worn out by a life I knew nothing about. He then started to talk about what a friend she was to him and the best cat he had ever had. I pulled up to the Marketplace and said I would wait for him and then take him home. I called my strategic planner and said I would be…quite late. So much for strategically planning my day down to the hour.

Twenty minutes later there was no Al I sight. I got out and dashed into the store only to find that he was lost somewhere between the cat food and the Skippy peanut butter. I helped him find the last item on his list: Gator Aid. Checkout took forever since in this man’s life everything moves at a snails pace. I taped into my deep reservoir of patience and finally got him in the car with packages and all.

He talked of his cat and then tried to remember what street he lived on. We had to backtrack a little and then he pointed to his house. The classic home of a recluse, a person who barely subsists, even though when you look at the house you know it used to be something special at one time. There was a broken down truck in the driveway since they took away his drivers license he said. An old skiff for fishing in the front yard that looked like it had been there since I was born. All the drapes were pulled tight and held in place at the windowsill with pieces of firewood. I worried that he heated with wood.

We got him out of the car with my umbrella, packages almost too heavy for him, yet he insisted on carrying them himself. Then a thank you. Then a sideways smile. Then he disappeared to the back of the house and was gone.

I sat in my car for a moment nearly having forgotten I had an agenda. All I could think of was Al. His life. His devotion to walking in the rain for cat food and his love of his dear Isabella. All I could think of was his living alone and in dire need of what most of us take for granted. I was no longer in a hurry.

This past year I have aligned my life with a cause to help children in crisis situations who have no parent, no food, and no shelter. Children who have lived through the unthinkable like the earthquake in Haiti or the Tsunami in Japan. I left thirty years as a psychologist to pursue a larger passion. It is very important to me to be living from the center of what I believe I was called here to do. Helping children have their basic needs met and helping others open their hearts to people they may not know is now my work. And, yet, Al lives right down the street and he is in dire need too. Al needs food and help. Al needs love. All is my neighbor.

I don’t need to go to Haiti or Osaka to look right outside my window to see loneliness or need. In fact I wonder if the nightly news of chronic devastation, war and poverty desensitizes us to recognizing who lives on our own street when we watch nightly crisis and dramas around the globe? How many houses do we pass with overgrown yards, drapes pulled and old people shuffling out to try to bend down to pick up a newspaper? How many homeless people could have a square meal and tell me their story, if I were to simply stop ‘strategically planning’ my day and take the time to take them for a lunch?

If I woke up every day expecting to witness something around me, some person, some animal, some situation that could use my attention, my dollar, my car, my excess and be better for it…I would be better for it. Our world would be better for it is we each committed to this action of love. Millions of people would be helped in a single day. My question to every human and to myself is this: Why don’t we all live like this all the time? What will it take for all of us to start? Who is the Al in your life?

From Hollywood to The Garbage Dumps

Oct20

AOMusic aligns with causes around the world who are devoted to helping children. We work with SoleHope and HavServe to help crisis ridden areas. But here is one man I want to meet and work with. Scott Nesson. He is someone who can shine a light for all of us on what it means to follow your heart. This is an article from the Christian Science Monitor.

Scott Neeson left Hollywood to save children rooting in Cambodia’s garbage dumps He sold his mansion, Porsche, and yacht and set off for Cambodia to provide food, shelter, and education to destitute children.

Neeson’s final epiphany came one day in June 2004. The high-powered Hollywood executive stood, ankle deep in trash, at the sprawling landfill of Stung Meanchey, a poor shantytown in Cambodia‘s capital

Scott, a former head of 20th Century Fox International, cares for more than 1,000 Cambodian children and their families.

In a haze of toxic fumes and burning waste, swarms ofPhnom Penh‘s most destitute were rooting through refuse, jostling for scraps of recyclables in newly dumped loads of rubbish. They earned 4,000 riel ($1) a day – if they were lucky.

Many of the garbage sorters were young children. Covered in filthy rags, they were scruffy, sickly, and sad.

Clasped to Mr. Neeson’s ear was his cellphone. Calling the movie mogul from a US airport, a Hollywood superstar’s agent was complaining bitterly about inadequate in-flight entertainment on a private jet thatSony Pictures Entertainment, where Neeson was head of overseas theatrical releases, had provided for his client.

Neeson overheard the actor griping in the background. ” ‘My life wasn’t meant to be this difficult.’ Those were his exact words,” Neeson says. “I was standing there in that humid, stinking garbage dump with children sick with typhoid, and this guy was refusing to get on a Gulfstream IV because he couldn’t find a specific item onboard,” he recalls. “If I ever wanted validation I was doing the right thing, this was it.”

Doing the right thing meant turning his back on a successful career in the movie business, with his $1 million salary. Instead, he would dedicate himself full time to a new mission: to save hundreds of the poorest children in one of the world’s poorest countries.

Much to everyone’s surprise, within months the Australian native, who as president of 20th Century Fox International had overseen the global success of block-busters like “Titanic,” “Braveheart,” and “Die Another Day,” quit Hollywood. He sold his mansion inLos Angeles and held a garage sale for “all the useless stuff I owned.” He sold off his Porsche and yacht, too.

His sole focus would now be his charity, the Cambodian Children’s Fund, which he had set up the previous year after coming face to face, while on vacation in Cambodia, with children living at the garbage dump.

“The perks in Hollywood were good – limos, private jets, gorgeous girlfriends, going to the Academy Awards,” says Neeson, an affable man with careworn features and a toothy smile. “But it’s not about what lifestyle I’d enjoy more when I can make life better for hundreds of children.”

He sits at his desk barefoot, Cambodian-style, in white canvas pants and a T-shirt. At times he even sounds like a Buddhist monk. “You’ve got to take the ego out of it,” he says. “One person’s self-indulgence versus the needs of hundreds of children, that’s the moral equation.”

On the walls of his office, next to movie posters signed by Hollywood stars, are before-and-after pictures of Cambodian children. Each pair tells a Cinderella story: A little ragamuffin, standing or squatting in rubbish, transforms in a later shot into a beaming, healthy child in a crisp school uniform.

Neeson has more than 1,300 sets of such pictures; that’s how many children his charity looks after. Every one of the children, the Australian humanitarian stresses, he knows by sight, and most of them by name. “You go through a certain journey with them,” he says. Houy and Heang were among the first who started that journey with him in 2004. Abandoned by their parents, the two sisters, now 17 and 18, lived at the dump in a makeshift tent. “We felt sick and had no shoes. Our feet hurt,” Houy recalls in the fluent English she’s learned. “We’d never seen a foreigner,” Heang adds. “He asked us, ‘Do you want to study?’ ”

Today the sisters are about to graduate from high school. They want to go on to college.

Neeson maintains four residential homes around town for more than 500 other deprived children and is building another. He operates after-school programs and vocational training centers. He’s built day cares and nurseries. His charity provides some 500 children with three meals a day and runs a bakery where disadvantaged youths learn marketable skills while making nutrient-rich pastry for the poorest kids. It pays for well over 1,000 children’s schooling and organizes sightseeing trips and sports days for them. “I drive the staff crazy,” says Neeson, who employs more than 300 locals, many of them former scavengers. “If I come up with a plan, I want to see it implemented within 48 hours. If I see a need, I want to do something about it. You don’t want to see suffering prolonged.”

He sees plenty of both need and suffering.

After decades of genocide and civil war, millions of Cambodians live in abject poverty. Many children are chronically malnourished, and many never even finish primary school. On a late afternoon, as garbage pickers begin to return to their squalid dwellings of plastic sheets, tarpaulins, and plywood, Neeson sets out on his daily “Pied Piper routine.” Navigating a muddy path, pocked with fetid puddles and strewn with trash, which winds among clusters of derelict shacks and mounds of garbage, he picks his way around a squatters’ community. Everywhere he goes, children dash up to him with cries of “Papa! Papa!” They leap into his arms, pull at his shirt, cling to his arms, wrap themselves around his legs. “Hey, champ!” he greets a boy who clambers up on him. “He needs a dentist so badly,” he notes, referring to the boy’s rotten teeth. His charity offers free health care and dental services to the children and their parents.

In 2007 Neeson won the Harvard School of Public Health‘s Q Prize, an award created by music legend Quincy Jones. In June he was named “a hero of philanthropy” by Forbes magazine. (“Well, I finally made it into Forbes,” he quips. “But no ‘World’s Richest’ list for me.”) When Neeson spots certain kids, he hands them their portraits from a sheaf of newly printed photographs he carries around. “I want them to have mementoes of themselves when they grow up and leave all this behind,” he explains. They give him their latest drawings in return.

He stops at a windowless cinder-block shanty inhabited by a mother and her three teenage daughters. The bare walls are adorned with Neeson’s portraits of the girls in school beside their framed Best Student awards.

“I’m so proud of my children,” says Um Somalin, a garment factory worker who earns $2 a day. “Mr. Scott has done wonders for them.” Neeson rescued one girl from being trafficked, another from domestic servitude, and the mother from a rubber plantation, after he had come across the youngest girl living alone at the dump. “We always bring the family back together,” he says. “We help everyone so no one slips through the cracks.” The need is great: Life here can be unforgiving. “This girl has an abusive father. This one here fell into a fire when she was 6. That guy got shot. That one there lost an arm in an accident,” Neeson says, reeling off details.

Then, flashlight in hand, he doubles back down another path – and steps into what seems like a different world. Behind a high-security fence, children sit in neat rows in brightly painted classrooms, learning English and math in evening classes. Others play on computers in an air-conditioned room.

Until recently, the site where Neeson’s new school now stands was a garbage dump. “When I started working for him, I was surprised how much he does for the children,” says Chek Sarath, one of his helpers. “He places their well-being above his own.” Neeson stops by young children who have their eyes glued to a Disney cartoon playing from a DVD. “I miss a lot about Hollywood,” Neeson muses. “I miss Sundays playing paddle tennis on the beach with friends and taking the boat out to the islands.

“Sundays here, I’m down at the garbage dump. But I’m really happy.”

• Learn more about Scott Neeson’s work atwww.cambodianchildrensfund.org.

Visit us at http://www.aomusic.com

The Seed of Truth

Oct7

A Seed Planted

It has been one year since I sold most of what I own and drove away from Tulsa Oklahoma. I had been called there to help my mother die. Four years later, my time was done in Oklahoma and I asked a question. “Now…what makes me happy”. Then I turned the corner into my sixties. For the first time in nearly forty years I had no children at home, no husband, no clients to care for. I just had me. And my two cats Hazel and Snow.

The question of what makes me happy was new. It was asked in a new spirit with the emphasis on ME. What makes ME happy. I had spent decades organizing my answers around the ‘whole’ of my life. My happiness was always intertwined with my daughters, or the man I loved, my mother and family and the concern I had for my clients who entrusted me with their stories and their care.

There had been little time to truly know what my own seed of happiness was. So, I set out for one year to discover the answer. Not by making a list of what made me happy, but to have an experience of “being happy”. What became quickly obvious was that I was surprised by happiness. I never went out looking for it or trying to create happy moments. Happiness found me. And in unexpected ways.

And what also became a life lesson was discovering that the way happiness found me was because I slowed down every aspect of my life and made room for happiness to come in. The art of allowing my life to flow and simply following the current has been the gift of this past year. Our society is focused on doing, on making, on busily trying to get our life to look like our vision. This presupposes that we are the only one to make or break our own possible happiness. That boot-strap mentality locks us out of the experience of being part of the mystery, of the divine, of a destiny that has a design and pattern to discover. It creates isolation.

Allowing life to move us has at the center this divine mystery of a perfect design. But allowing is a relational word. Allowing does not mean I do nothing. Allowing means I hold the vision, embody the energy and move my feet and then the dance begins and my partner is Spirit, God, the Universe, and Love.

I did do one important thing before I put the carrier on top of my Nissan and drove away toward the East Coast: I set an intention. A strong intention. I sat up late into the night and wrote my vision for my life. I soaked it in, knowing that somehow I had captured on paper a glimpse of a life I would love and then I tucked the writing into my Tarot Bag. The vision was filled with joyful ideas of being closer and working with my daughters in a business, of being surrounded by music, living in nature, writing for film and seeing myself succeed with my writing. I wrote of being in a common community with like-minded people, increasing my health and prosperity and being with children in my work. Then I drove to Asheville, North Carolina.

Now, one year later I am astonished. When I arrived in North Carolina to spend a short time with my daughter I ran into a problem renewing my driver’s license. This problem still persists and even baffles congressman Perlmutter in Denver. No one seems to know how to solve my lack of ‘drivability’. The loss of easy mobility left me stranded in North Carolina longer than expected. So, I went to a workshop on manifestation and then two days later met Richard Gannaway from AOMusic through a Craigslist ad of all things. Four hours later my life rearranged.

Richard handed me two of his Grammy nominated albums. Driving home I slipped them into the CD player in my car and headed down the Blue Ridge Parkway. It was raining. My first big surprise was about to occur. I started weeping, pulled off the road and nearly one hour later had finished listening to’ And Love Rages On’, with the windows fogged and motor still idling.

The weeping was a direct message from my soul to me. Weeping with joy validates the moment I am in as sacred, as important, as inspired. In that moment something redirected in me and pointed me back to Richard and AOMusic. My mind said “this is crazy”, “this wasn’t on the agenda!”, “WHAT are you DOING?”. I kept driving. Now one year later I am a partner with Richard and AO and proceeding with a vision for a film series that is inspiring great interest. I am immeasurably happy.

That one surprise by the side of the road…of joy…love…creativity…happiness has led to me back to digging out that piece of paper I put into my Tarot Bag just a year ago. I re-read my hopes and dreams. I smile when I realize that almost everything I envisioned is in my life right now: I work with children who sing, I am surrounded by music, my daughter Jessie and I work together on a project she helped to shoot in Nepal, I write for film, have gone to film school, live part time in two amazing natural environments, Asheville and the Pacific North West. I have a community of inspired, creative, loving co-workers and friends. I have a new kind of partner of the heart with Richard Gannaway. I have been prosperous and happy and healthier. All because I opened to the possibilities, allowed for my life to move with serendipity, coincidence and intuition.

The art of navigating life this way has been the largest learning in my lifetime. And now as our holiday season begins I have a new question. Not about what makes me happy, or what’s next. But a question about where is home? Having been nomadic for over a year now it is time to find ….home. And finding home is never possible until each of us feels entirely at home in the self. This year of SELF discovery has brought me to a new way of thinking about home. Home is the space that is a sacred anchor for our soul to live out our purpose for being here. Finding home is my next adventure. Or better yet! I will let home find me.

Back Home

Sep9

The team that left two weeks ago for Nepal as ambassadors for AOMUSIC are back home.

Karan to India,

Josh to the Caves of Maratika to meditate,

Rob to Asheville, North Carolina,

and Jessie is driving across country bringing in excess of 25 hours of footage to Seattle to be edited,

while Richard works post production with the recordings of the children of Nepal.

I was like a mother hen for those weeks. Pacing with excitement, hearing every day of the amazing adventures and the light that surrounded this team every step of the way. Marveling at the surprise turns that led them back to Kathmandu, recording with Rock star Robin Tamang, singing with street children and a group from an orphanage, culminating in the team climbing high to the Himalayas to record their final interviews at sunrise.

And interestingly enough once all planes had touched ground and I was on my way to going with Jessie to Seattle for production of the film, I flew to Denver and suddenly had emergency surgery for acute appendicitis. So, I have much to think about and consider as this next phase of a dream unfolds and I am flat on my back being lovingly tended by my friend Kathleen who is a steller acupuncturist, while Jessie drives alone through the salt flats of Utah on her way to meet our editor in Ballard, Washington.

When life is stopped on a dime as it was for me twice these last two months, I am paying deep attention to what the Universe is telling the Gypsy in me, at exactly the one year point in my nomadic journey. I imagine it is to stop…moving.

So, I am sitting with this possible message from the Universe and will write on what I am clear on…. when it becomes clear. But today I received this final journal entry from one of our team members that wraps up following this magical and powerful journey five young people took to Nepal for AOMUSIC. Thank you all for your emails, your love and support.

Next Stop in this story. Seattle, LA and …maybe home…wherever that may be.

In Conclusion Rob Lenfestey writes:

“I have arrived back in the states after another long series of flights. This one at least included a four-hour layover in London which I maximized by taking the express train downtown and running for hours, seeing the sights and taking in England for the first time. All in all, I am amazed that our trip was as short as it was. It seems that in 10 days in Nepal we were able to cram so much experience in that we stretched every second into lifetimes. It seems these were filled with a depth of experience that was beautiful and extensive!

When I listen to the music from AOmusic’s last album I continue to receive chills and even tears sometimes. The heart and inspiration pouring from this music speaks of wonder and imagination, speaks of unity and hope, realized. To capture this essence musically and share it with the world is one of my deepest intentions and so this opportunity to work with this team to create this music is a cause for celebration. This is the essence of my feeling listening to it now, after having gone through this whole adventure.

I connected with this amazing team; with children from English boarding schools, orphanages and the streets; I experienced the freshest Himalayan air carried on the winds of a dying monsoon, and I experienced the suffocated dust and grime that penetrates your sinuses in the streets of Kathmandu. I witnessed rhinoceros in the wild, massive and beautiful among the tall grasses and played with yoga asana on the back of an elephant. I also saw the same elephants chained tightly where they live.

Elsewhere I witnessed the last painful breaths of a street dog that none else seemed to care about. No matter the extremes, Nepal kept me fully engaged. And somehow the sense of wonder through all of it remained. Remained, by channeling the innocence and imagination of the children; seeing the world with eyes that have not condemned these experiences to a hardened perception of how things should be. I came to Nepal with this in my heart; that the qualities of AOMUSIC that inspire my imagination be the very breath of my experience. And so it was.

It is my hope that all media created from the fruits of this journey reflect that inspiration and serve to nurture its growth and vitality. This seed is also planted into all future endeavors with AOMUSIC.

Aug31

Our AO team has finished their 12 day trek to Nepal. Karan and his attendant Baldev have returned to India, Jessie and Rob have landed in Raleigh NC after a 33 hour flight from Kathmandu. And Josh has decided to stay on and trek to the Maratika Caves for spiritual retreat. The entire trip was nothing short of miraculous.

These young people were recording Nepalese Children and filming this process that AO has gone through for over the past decade in order for world music to be created through AOMUSIC and proceeds from this music can go to benefiting the children themselves. And the team filmed…themselves as a team. Interviewing each other from the moment they met at the Kathmandu Airport for the first time, to the day they parted company just a few days ago.

On their last day together, exhausted and spent, they all decided to wake each other up at 3:30 am and trek two hours up to the Himalayas to record their last interview with one another, as the sun rose. Their dedication every step of the way was constant.

Now the footage goes to Seattle where it will be edited and a short film will be created for fundraising. The recordings are with Richard Gannaway who will continue to finalize the last songs for AO’s new album to be released in 2013.

So, after a few bumps this week in my road, I am finally introducing you to the person on the team who was indispensable. Josh Massad. I met Josh three years ago in Tulsa Oklahoma. Instantly I knew him to be a rare individual possessing a deep compassion and spirituality that filled the room the minute he entered. Josh is a musician, taught children around the world music filled with love and joy. But, I was never able to get to really know him other that first etched impression. I moved away from Tulsa and he left for India.

Then one night only weeks ago I woke up around 2 am and instantly, his face was right in front of me as if he were in the room. His radiant smile reminded me of all that I had felt on our first meeting. I sat up and knew immediately that I had to find him, that I had to tell him what was about to happen in Nepal. I had no idea why but it was clear I needed to act. But where was he? I tracked him down through friends in Tulsa and found he was in Goa, India. My email began with, “I hope you remember me…and I have no idea why I need to write you…but”.

Following this “impulse” and vision in the night has led to Josh being an integral part of our team. But his response to my email was stunning, having no idea that when I wrote to him he had a story of his own. Here is a little of that story and his first email to me back in July:

“How should I respond to such an email? And one that is found during an intuitive search thru my junk mail – on a rainy evening?

How do we react when our back hurts?

How do we react to painlessness?

And when a child cries? Or when a child laughs?

When one is born? Or when one dies gracefully in old age?

How about when God answers our prayers..?

well… here goes.

Quick response to your idea about joining AO: Yes, in my most humble manners – I too have so much to share with the world! I believe our goals are One. Count me In! Tikrami! At Your Service!

And here is the rest of my story:

Today, we are celebrating a festival for cobras here in india. I don’t know the details yet, probably Shiva’s Cobra that he often wears around his neck is honored (as a god). The cobras are said to come out and even into our homes but we are safe if respectful and by making prayer hands. All the temples are playing great music and lighting Agarbathi (incense).

I have been living in Goa for the last 6 months. I am so intrigued by Goa’s ‘Hindu Christianity’. Goa is also known as “India-lite” and for this reason: Though there is poverty and plenty of orphans and tons and tons of trash – it is nothing compared to the rest of india – save one state that I love more than Goa much due to its cleanliness, spirituality & music; Kerala.

I ruptured a disc in my lower back while mid-flight from Chicago to Delhi 6 months ago exactly. Which also means that my 6-month Visa expires in 4 days! I had been considering doing what many people do and go to Nepal for a while and then reenter India on a new visa. What timing.

After the rupture, I successfully took my train from Delhi to Mumbai on Feb 2^nd where I was to record a big festival concert featuring some of the greatest percussionists and musicians in India and the world. Maybe you remember the band Shakti, who began in 1974. Anyway, times were tough for me, and eventually I had an MRI that frightened most doctors.

Continuing on, Feb 14^th, I came to Goa to tour with a world music ensemble, Emam & Friends, played only one concert and then became paralyzed, spending the next 5 weeks in bed only. One daily visit to the toilet left me the rest of the day to contemplate pain. Eventually I renounced my ego-causing attachment to pain all together!

It has taken me 6 months to heal naturally. With great help from Ayurveda, I am healed! All the others told me surgery is inevitable – though I trusted them as respectable doctors, I didn’t hear that they knew me, or better – the God who resides within me – who I was and still am so determined to know and Love.

When I first came to Varanasi in 2008, I found myself among a 5,000 year old civilization. I had to be part of it, I had to learn, I had to contribute. And that is when ‘Teaching My Ancestors’ established a month of village school visits, laughing and playing with my young ancestors. The greater international project took the name, World Through Music.

Each winter I have returned to my growing student body here – last year we taught in 9 Indian states. I am learning so much from these kids, they give me the opportunity to experience love – I and the project are Empowering them! And I am hoping to master the art of ‘wordless communication’ that is peaceful and Creative! The school is a forum for sharing.

I was taught a ‘song of welcome’ from Liberia – by my teachers 15 years ago – and do they know, does anyone know that thousands and thousands of kids in India are still singing that song today, years after I shared it them, they still have the purity of welcoming in their hearts. I know this because I return to them a year later – and they sing me this song that traveled from Africa to America to them and has most likely reached the cosmos by now, within their hearts, as One Soul.

Each Spring and Autumn, (accept this Spring I was here in bed) I am in Tulsa teaching and sharing my international experiences with American students.

It became so clear to me that these students are the leaders of our future and that now is my time to do my work, but soon I will be old and they will determine the fate of the world. With all these weapons and temptations/distractions, we need to train our community in self-control (pratyahara – yoga) and appropriate action.

Then my work must be to train these kids. All around the world, it was clear to me that most kids are not receiving proper training. Even in the USA where there is some investment in education, what are we teaching? – – are we teaching life, community, and the beauty of breath, silence, sound, universality, freedom, freedom in death, healing one another? Or often just the opposite?

Like AOMUSIC, I believe these children, all of them, will influence our future world, TOGETHER. So give them something in common with their international peers, introduce them, teach them community, empower them that they know their responsibility, to family, that family need not be limited to common languages, etc.

What could be easier, more beautiful to access Truth, expression, inclusion, spontaneity, “peaceful & creative forms of communication”, than art? And music is sound, healing that everyone loves. Through Music I have learned about the world, and so thru music, I will do my work teaching Truth to the world. Yoga also, music and yoga teach me patience, control, unbounded love and forgiveness and keep me alive, connected, healthy and inspired.

How can I further this international community? In 2010, I worked with a Tulsa school for one month, teaching them all these things, yoga(union), breathing(awareness), music(expression) (determination) and then we built instruments, played them in a shared musical experience. Then our students, knowing I was off to teach in India – offered their made & blessed instruments to my Indian students which I carry everywhere with me.

Off I went to India with 24 Rainsticks on my back as an ambassador to offer these kids a chance to know themselves better, and their connection to the world, to their peers – through the gift of Music.

I began recording my classes only a few years ago. Video and audio. (more equipment to carry) but also thankfully, more people to hire and get involved with. That is what I know I need, more people, more participation. I have been forced to work alone dear Maya for most of my professional career and it is such a blessing, all my dreams are clear, I work diligently and find creative ways to succeed – but this one man trying to raise an international family is hard work. I need community that which I teach of that is family! All I have to do is what I do best, Inspire and Encourage.

But my back finally gave up supporting all my issues – and the project has been halted again – (another disadvantage of a one-man show). I haven’t anymore money. I need sponsorship. All of Tulsa supports me – but I don’t have experience asking for money. I missed $5,000 of work in april/may/june in Tulsa schools with a tour I created called ‘Beats To Bridge’ connecting the American student with our Indian students. That work took years of preparation and was crucial to my survival. Now in debt with hospital bills and haven’t any plane tickets home or even money to pay musicians here to contribute to the album now that I am healthy again. My life is just now starting over – I feel like I have been given another chance to live, to pray, to celebrate, to Inspire, to Serve!

All of the dreams remain – even have been further empowered – there is not a doubt in my mind that my ‘dreams’ or my ‘service’ need be fulfilled. I don’t feel necessarily attached, only that I need to survive to serve and I should continue with a well-conceived plan.

Since the last month or two, I have been approaching Dzogchen Monastery nearby in Karnatika and hoping I could spend a month there meditating and internalizing the Sacred Sounds of Prayer. I offered to produce recordings of their prayers if they pleased to raise money for them. I haven’t yet been formally invited, and today my visa is the biggest issue.

Then your email arrives Maya. The timing …well….perfect. Our goals are one dear Maya! And our means are quite similar. Your team has decades more experience and accomplishment than myself. I come in humble admiration.

I am willing to reserve my plans with calm or give up any attachments if my path was meant to lead us to collaborate – of course I surrender. I have not foolish or proud or selfish intentions. India and America are two of the greatest teachers especially in combination. I am forever a student. One of my most recent lessons is to protect myself and that God within me.

Whenever The Mother calls, I shall answer.

If I can assist on your project in any way, I would be most honored and appreciative. To work with you and this wonderful family of humans and musicians that you mention is obviously a great blessing which will help me fulfill my own destiny.”

Josh proved to be, as I lovingly refer to him, the Yoda of our team. He brought his suitcase of instruments for the children to play wherever the team was. He supported the team when they were exhausted with joy and patient listening, he helped Rob with all the recordings and Jessie with sound. Josh was a spiritual backbone for our project in Nepal.

My learning was simple and powerful: To listen to my dreams, to follow that inner nudge, that fleeting glimpse of something that you cannot know why it crossed your mind and to trust the process as it unfolds. To count my intuition as valuable as any asset I possess. If I had not acted on that nighttime urging, seeing Josh’s face and not knowing why, our trip to Nepal would have been quite different. Josh became the glue that held the vision together. How could I have known that?

So please tune into this next step of filmmaking. The team that has once again miraculously assembled themselves is another magical story to tell. And you know me. It is all in the story.

Namaste