I have tunnel vision. All I see, is the road laid out before me. I see a road full of potholes. I can’t possible steer around them.

“I am going to hit that big one up on the right.”

“I’m going to get a flat.”

“I’ll be stuck at the side of this terrifying road.”

“This road is rough.”

A tiny voice in the back of my head suggests, “look up!”

So, for a moment, I look at the bigger picture. I look up from the road to the horizon. I realize that it is in fact a sunny day. The sky is blue and the clouds are those picture perfect bundles of white. They’re the kind of clouds that make you want to lay on your back in a grassy field and look for shapes.

“I see a turtle.”

“I see a dragon.”

“I see a teddy bear.”

Honestly the clouds look very hug-gable.

Everything about this day is perfect.

A loud grumpy voice hollers out “Look down you fool!”

This damn road!

Fear of bumps keep pulling my mind back to the road. It’s a beautiful day. But there is a pothole in front of me. There are speed bumps and cracks in the concrete. This road is a mess.

The quiet voice calls back to me, “That’s a nice car.”

I am reminded that my car is nice. It is solid, it is sound. I’ve sure come a long way in it. But it can go a lot farther. I can get many more miles out of this old chassis. There were a few engine troubles over the last couple years. But I’ve worked hard on maintenance. The car is running better than ever. Better yet, I have learned how to repair the engine. It there are problems again, I can make repairs.

The grump calls out, ”But this damn road!”

The quiet voice whispers, “look to the sky.”

These two voices begin to argue, back and forth.

I watch like a terrified child, seeing his parents argue in front of him.

The grump looks straight at me and with an angry edge to his voice yells, “YOU ARE GOING TO RUN STRAIGHT INTO THAT DITCH!”

The quiet voice rallies, with a golden tone in its compassion filled voice, it suggests simply, “Kevin, you can fly.”

With no more urging needed, I lift my wheels and take flight.

I didn’t know I could fly. All I had to do was ask.

Namaste,

Kevin

There is a lot of fear going around today.

A lot of fear.

We are sad. We are scared. We are scarred.

But it’s not what you think.

I want to start with a disclaimer. I’m sad for what has happened recently in Paris, France. I mourn with the families that have lost people. I even empathically feel their pain and fear.

The amount of media coverage has blossomed the event in our minds to epic proportions. France is changing their military stance to the world based on this event. The US is trying to block refugees from coming into the US because of it. We are in full blown defensive mode.

But the world still needs our compassion. To shut down compassion as a result of this would be an epic failure on our part and a triumph for terror.

Thursday night, I was at a concert in San Francisco. One of the major attacks happened at a concert in France.

My mind went there. What if it had been my concert? What if attackers had come in during my event. What if I had been killed?

In a way, that was the point of the attacks. To take everyday situations and turn them in moments of terror. To remove people from normal behavior patterns and make them afraid.

The job of the terrorist is only half done with the attack. We empower the terrorist by telling the story over and over again.

It can be helpful to know. It can be beneficial to mourn.

That time is over. It is now time to move on. It is time to stay awake and be aware, but let go of fear. Don’t let yourself be dragged through the mud. Don’t consume what the terrorist and the media are feeding you. It’s not a healthy diet.

You will not die in a terrorist attack. I can say that with 99.999 percent certainty.

There are 7 billion people in the world. If we were to lose 1000 people to terrorism in the last year (which is an over-estimate), that would mean the odds of dying from a terrorist attack are 1/7,000,000. The odds of being struck by lightning in the US are 1/1,000,000. This means you are 7 times more likely to be struck by lightning than you are to die in a terrorist attack.

I can say with 99.999 percent certainty that you’re not going to get struck by lightning.

You will live forever. Then one day you will die.

You are immortal. Until you are mortal.

This is not a threat.

This is not a warning.

This is a fact.

It is the best-kept secret on the planet. For some reason, nobody likes to talk about it. Everybody dies.

All life will end. Your body will cease functioning at some point. At that point, life will be over.

Until that point, don’t let anyone take the joy of being alive from you. Not the terrorists. Not ISIS. Not the media. Live your life, love your life, you are alive.

You don’t need to live preparing for that moment.

You don’t need to live fearing that moment.

At the end of the day today, I will go to bed. It doesn’t mean I need to spend all day in my pajamas in my bedroom prepping for that moment. It doesn’t mean I need to even think about going to bed all day. My focus will be a thousand other places today. When my day ends, then I will prepare and I will go to sleep. Not before.

My death is the same. My death may appear to come in the middle of the day or long after midnight. I may fall in my prime. I may pass in waning hours withered and forgotten.

But until that moment, I am alive. So are you.

I must not fear, fear is the mind killer.

Don’t fall for it. Don’t believe that everyone in the world is out to get you. Believe in love. Believe in peace.

Don’t believe in a sinister force that must be destroyed in order for you to have peace. Peace cannot be attained through warfare.

Today I send my love and joie de vivre to France. I send my love and joy of living to the world. What the world needs today is the same thing it needed last week, your love, your compassion, and your joy.

Namaste,

Kevin

Hi All, Sorry I’ve been away for a while. I really enjoy writing my blog and sharing my ideas with you. I also really enjoy the feedback and affirmations provided from time to time. Life gets busy and I took a little breather. I’d like to say “I’m back, and better than ever!”, but since I’m already perfect, there is no where to go but toward further understanding, and I still feel a little confused. Life sends us in all sorts of directions. The important thing is to stay centered and breath. Thank you for sticking with me.

Have you ever stopped to consider how amazing your body is?

Have you ever watched yourself move in the mirror? I don’t mean in an egotistical way, this isn’t about narcissism. This is about wonder. Have you ever watched yourself move in a mirror?

Have you ever looked at your hands while you were typing on a keyboard? Really watched the movements of the fingers as they flawlessly find their way between keys while you work through writing a message. Have you ever stopped to think about how they find their spots on the keyboard? How does that work? How does your body do that?

Of course there is a simple answer, we’ve science’d that out. Your body has muscles and the muscles control motion. Each joint has muscles for extension and retraction. The bones are there to hold everything in place, as the muscles ripple around them. In turn, your brain sends signals to the muscles in a coordinated symphony to tell the muscles where to go. Then there is muscle memory. This accounts for how you’re not so good at typing the first time you sit down to a keyboard. Then after years and years of practice you’ve trained your muscles what to do. It’s a simple as programming a computer. Your body knows where to go from past experiences and it simply repeats the pattern. It’s all mechanics and chemistry in action.

Your logical brain reads through it and says, yeah, that makes sense. Then you move on with your day.

Whereas your 12 year old child brain (an unacknowledged part of the brain that most people ignore) is standing up with a huge ass grin on his face and jumping all around saying “WTF, that’s amazing!” “You really expect me to believe all the gibberish about muscle memory and extension/retraction!” “You don’t even know dude!” “You’re just making stuff up.”

Interestingly the 12 year old mind sounds a lot like the version of you with inhibitions and some reasoning skills dampened. We’ve learned to shut down that voice. It makes us sound rash and impulsive. It also makes us sound a little uneducated like we don’t know how things really are. Or more specifically like we don’t believe what we’ve been told about how things work.

We are ‘educated’ to believe we know how things work. Someone who thinks they understand something doesn’t ask how something works. A person that isn’t asking questions isn’t questioning answers. We believe we know what we know. We believe to ask if our answers are wrong, is a sign of failure on our part. We’ve believed it this long, we better keep believing it so we don’t look like idiots. The problem is, when you don’t ask questions, and you’re surrounded by idiots, it looks like everyone agrees on the truth. When in reality, you’re just surround by idiots.

I don’t say this to disparage. I say this for effect, to identify the reality, at some point we are all idiots. It’s okay, it’s just a label. What’s important is that you don’t learn to ignore the label so you don’t identify with it. Instead, you identify with it and recognize it as a reminder to ask questions.

“The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.” – Confucius

What if Money was no object? What would I do if I didn’t have to worry about paying bills, feeding my family, etc.

I always find myself in a duality when I think about this. Money is an object. Money is what pays for the food and the shelter. Money fuels the car. Money pays for the electricity.

How much house do you need? How much food do you need? Why do you need fuel? The answer to these are sometimes simple and sometimes convoluted. The deeper the story gets, you may need to unravel to get to the truth.

We unraveled a bit last year, we got rid of one of the cars. We are now a one car family. We are also a 6 – 8 bike family. We bike all over town, to Groceries, to chiropractor, to visit friends, etc. It’s increased our happiness and lowered a bills.

Need to lower the bills a bit more before I quit my day job… But finding passion and connection with the idea in the video below will remind you, money is not the object. Money is not the destination.

Let money be a tool for your life. Don’t let yourself be a tool for money.

Namaste,

Kevin

I’ve been editing a releasing old blog posts with new memes on facebook (ChakraChime) and instragram (ChakraCommunity).

If you haven’t already, liked us on facebook https://www.facebook.com/ChakraChime feel free to do so now.

Here are a few popular links to stories that have been well received on facebook.

Allowing for Chaos – Trapped in this duality between boredom and adrenal fatigue, I tend to oscillate back and forth between, alternately seeking out change and running away from change. As you can imagine, it is a rather frantic way to live and leads to a lot of energy spent for not much result. AKA, much ado about nothing… – http://wp.me/p2w7BK-8E

Breathing Through Transition – We love births! We love having a new life to wonder over and to see the world through fresh eyes. But for a parent, birth is merely a transition state. After the birth, your work isn’t over. Nurturing this newborn is a lifetime practice.
– http://wp.me/p2w7BK-6y

How much return do you expect for your spiritual effort?

How many people would you have to save in order to start a movement?

How many lives do you have to impact before you feel successful?

How do you measure your spiritual value?

When you look at investing money, with a financial advisor, it’s pretty common for them to try to establish your risk tolerance. From that information, they estimate what your return will be annually, based on your ability to handle risk. If you have a low tolerance for risk and just want  your money to grow slowly over time you can probably get 5% returns, meaning if you put in $100 dollars, at the end of the year, you would have $105. If you have a very high risk tolerance, they may estimate your returns at 20%. This would mean that if you put in $100 dollars at the end of the year you could have $120. But of course there is a downside to risk. Putting your money at risk for 20% gains means that you could lose 20%. So now at the end of the year you may end up with only $80 dollars left.

Now let’s get back to you.

What is your spiritual risk tolerance?

How far out there are you willing to put yourself?

What kind of returns are you expecting?

How many lives do you need to touch to feel your effort is worth it?

How many people do you need to save to make it worth trying?

I often ask this question when I am writing my blog. How many people do I need on my subscription list to consider myself a success? How many likes on facebook? How many hearts on instagram? What are my metrics?

Why am I even talking about metrics? This is spirit. This is free. We aren’t given 100 units of spirit when we’re born. We don’t need to invest wisely with spirit. Spirit, by it’s nature, is uncaged and untamable. I can’t save up spirit to spend next week. It flows through me. We need to engage with spirit, when the spirit moves us.

Today I have a chance to share spirit.

Tomorrow I have a chance to share spirit.

Yesterday I was able to share spirit.

Our world is hung up on metrics and statistics. We want to see numbers and understand the impact. We seek efficiencies and insights. There is no need in the world of spirit. Additionally the world of spirit ripples out in ways we cannot possibly imagine. The story you tell today, the person you helped yesterday, the song you sang to yourself in the elevator; These are all energy waves rippling out, impacting the world in ways beyond you reckoning.

Today I send out my message as an offering. I am enough. You are enough. We are mighty.

If I reach 1000 people with this message I am blessed.

If I reach 0 people with this message I am blessed.

To simply be here today with you, I am blessed.

Namaste,

Kevin

I always thought I would get with it one day.

Have an exercise regiment, get in shape.

Find the answers to life, the universe and everything.

Find my passion and drive it through to it’s natural conclusion. (happiness and wealth, right?!?)

I would figure it all out and have it all. (At least the all that really mattered. And I would understand why it mattered and why the stuff I didn’t have and didn’t need didn’t matter.)

You know, I would become enlightened.

I thought I would reach some sort of state of perfection. And I sort of did.

I had a great exercise regiment. I was really enjoying the exercise.

I got so strong that I did a century ride around lake Tahoe…

And then I had kids.

I got so enlightened that I took a yoga teacher training course…

And then I had bills to pay.

I established a nice balance between work life and home life…

And then I got lyme disease.

Feel free to insert your own ideas here. The formula is pretty simple.

I <insert awesome thing here>…

And then I <insert derailing event/activity/acquisition here>

These aren’t excuses. They’re not explanations. They’re my life. And my life has had its successes and its failures. I’ve had my triumphant achievements and my cataclysmic events.

Like all things that happen to us, each event is a mixed bag. You can look at them as negatives or positives depending on your outlook in life. I don’t regret having kids for a moment. But to say it’s all sunshine and roses is delusional at best. To say it’s all manure and storm clouds is equally delusional. But to say these activities derailed my previous activities and reset my mental image of who and what I am is completely apt. To say that these events were life changing and forced a shuffling of my priorities is accurate. To say that in the shuffle I lost a few things that were important to me is also true.

So where do we go from here?

You’ve just been smacked down by life. What’s the next step?

Try again.

I always figured that once I had an epiphany and saw the light it would remain in view. I didn’t consider the fact that someone or something would jump up into my view and block my visibility of the afformentioned light. I didn’t consider that my epiphany would fade or need to be adjusted for the new world that formed around me. I never considered that I would have to have the same epiphany again.

It’s happened enough in the last few years that I have decided there needs to be a word for it. So when an epiphany comes back to you that you had forgotten over time, it shall now be referred to as a repiphany.

I also have to admit that I was initially ashamed of the idea. Or at least hesitant to mention that I needed to relearn something so vital to my world view. The idea that I would need to be slapped in the forehead by the same idea over and over again implies that I’m a little slow.

However once I came to terms with the idea that I may be a little slow, I warmed up to the concept.

The universe is patient and kind. It doesn’t mind repeating itself. It will send a lesson as often as it is needed and repeat that lesson whenever you need a refresher.

Embrace the repiphany.

Open to the idea that there is room in your life for a reset button. Maybe you’re not in the shape you were a few years back. Maybe your health isn’t where it was before that thing happened to you that made everything take a turn for the worse. Maybe you aren’t the same person you were when you realized that you needed to become a yoga instructor. But you still have room for growth.

Lucky for you, you’re already perfect. So you’ve got that going for you. All you need now is to remember to not be afraid. Be open to repeat experiences. Be open to hearing the same story from the past and learning the same lesson and reapplying the conclusions that were lost over time.

Open yourself to repiphany.

Namaste,

Kevin