Consciousness is the will that executes reverse entropy.

You only exist because consciousness willed it to be so.

Consciousness demanded it so strongly that the law of probability gave up their preference for disorder and you became flesh.

And, remember, you are consciousness.

Well it’s Wednesday, and that means it’s time for another blog. Deadlines are funny things. They can drive us to achieve. They can hold us accountable. They can stress the hell out of the prepared and unprepared alike.

In software it’s the age old debate. There are 3 goals for releasing a product. Quality, Features and Time to Market. They say you can have 2 out of 3 at any given time, but you can’t have all 3. What that means is that you can add a lot of features to a release and get it out on time, but then you probably won’t have time to test it all thoroughly, so it will be buggy (industry term for full of bugs (defects (broken things))). You can add a bunch of features and make sure they are all thoroughly tested, but that means you will miss your deadline and not get to market in time for whatever holiday shopping season you had your eye on. Lastly you can Test it thoroughly and make your release deadline, but you had to drop a few features that may have been critical to the market place so your product won’t sell, maybe.

So here it is, another Wednesday and my blog is shipping more or less on time. So I’ll let you decide if I sacrificed quality or features. Did my blog have a lot of typos? Or was it thoroughly spell checked, but the content was useless?

Can you hold art to the same standards that you hold consumer goods? How does art weigh in? Is it appropriate for art to have a deadline?

When was the “Mona Lisa” completed? Did Leonardo da Vinci work on it for a month? an afternoon? or a year?

Turns out he worked on it for 4 years and still didn’t think it was done. 4 years! (citation)

So when is your art enough? When is it ready to ship?

When I have painted in the past, mostly art classes in grade school, I have been frustrated with my work. They were not up to the level of quality that I find pleasing to the eye, but still it is my art and practice makes perfect. But I did stop practicing.  If I spend more than a couple hours on a painting it seems like a long project. So to consider painting for 4 years… It’s unfathomable.

While I’m quite certain he didn’t focus his sole attention on the Mona Lisa for 4 years, it’s still astonishing to consider a project of this magnitude. When you wonder at the detail and attention put into the painting, think about how each stroke must have been considered and reconsidered as the brush was manipulated.

I have heard of companies where software releases took 4 years. Usually the release was less of a work of art and more a flying spaghetti monster. And companies that allow that sort of gap in market presence don’t get to stay in business for too long. The world with it’s global ADHD moves on and finds the next shiny object to gawk at and marvel over.

The world seems to be speeding up, faster and faster to a frantic pace of discovery and novelty. We are constantly shifting attention to the next great thing the next big idea without consideration for the impact of our rapid consumption, fatigue and disposal of the last great thing. What is the carbon footprint of an idea?

With all of this in mind I encourage you to set deadlines and allow them to be missed. Release your art and make the world a more diverse place. Find your format, hone your craft, and walk your path. You may have the blessings of a person that can focus on a project for 4 years and still not consider it done. But 500 years later there will still be people marveling at what you did. Or you may find that your art takes 5 minutes and is forgotten in 30 seconds… But you reached out, you sent goals, and you experience your life and your art on your terms. That’s really all was can ask for.

Namaste,

Kevin

I remember a specific moment in time when I was talking to my mom. I would say I was about 10 years old. Old enough to believe strongly and young enough to make bold claims. We were talking about some medical condition, she was a nurse at the time and these were common discussions. She had used some medical term I didn’t understand. After a long explanation I understood, but was resolved that the world shouldn’t be so complicated. I responded with sincerity and enthusiasm, “When I grow up, I’m going to write a dictionary that explains medical terms in words that everyone can understand.”

I assumed at the time that I would go into some medical field and then make my knowledge accessible to the layman. I never did go into medicine.

I didn’t realize then, but looking back I can see it wasn’t that I was interested in medicine. It was that I wanted the world to make sense and I wanted others to be able to see the sense of it. I also saw language as a way of segregating people. The languages we learn in each profession are an elitist tool that draws boundaries around areas of knowledge and exclude those “uninformed”. As if to say, “If you haven’t spent 10 years learning the words I know, I won’t bother talking to you”. It may reflect a need to feel superior, and language tends to be the quickest path to isolation.

I find I still both balk at and embrace the differentiators in language. As my primary profession in computer software, an industry riddled with specific terms, the segregation shows up every day. Don’t get me wrong the terminology is crucial to specificity. But it’s also a path to overburden that must be cleaned up before any effective communication can take place. Then to make matters worse, in an industry already buried with specific terms, here comes the acronym. RAM, ROM, HD, VGA, HDMI, USB… And these are just the common ones. I’ve been at companies where they produce their own new acronyms on a daily basis. If you were out of work for a month and come back to a group meeting, you can find yourself completely lost as they bandy back and forth with the latest TLA (three letter acronyms), to describe everything from cloud software to going to the bathroom.

I recently entered the world of VOIP (Voice Over IP) (IP means Internet Protocol) (VOIP means telephones). And I came across the acronym POTS. It means an old style land line, as opposed to mobile phone or VOIP. So at first I thought it must refer some hardware structure of the land line. Something that resembles a pot or a bucket. Nope. At the risk of sounding stupid in a meeting I asked what POTS means. The answer even surprised me. Plain Old Telephone Service… Really?! We can’t just say that? Or land line? Did we really need to spell it out the long way and then acronym it… Well POTS it is.

It’s endemic, It’s the nature of a metaphorical language. Even, and I should say, especially, spirituality requires it’s own language. Imagine stepping into a christian church for the first time as an uninitiated, or if you happen to be lucky enough to be unitiated, imagine the lost feeling as you walk into a yoga studio for the first time. What did he say? What’s an asana? What does Namaste mean?

Metaphors evolve and words get stale. Think of some of the words in your world that are completely buried in mire. Words that mean so much, that they now hold little meaning at all. Words like ‘Politics’, ‘Religion’, ‘God’. The word ‘God’ will conjure an image in everyone’s mind, everyone you talk to will have an impression from this word and the use of the term will impact everything in your dialog from then on… But what does it actually mean to the person you’re talking to? Do they have any impression in their mind that’s even close to the meaning you had originally intended? The more loaded with meaning a word becomes, the harder it is to communicate using it, because the translation on the part of the receiver is less predictable.

So we come up with new words, and more specificity. And then we educate those around us, that we care about communicating with, to help them understand what it is we’re trying to say. The cycle of language and metaphor grows and recedes and repeats.

This is why I use the word Namaste in my close. Partially because it has strong meaning to me. But also because it has new meaning to me. It’s an ancient word and in certain cultures it is overloaded with meaning. I’ve seen it used in presentations in India as casually as saying “hello”. I was honestly offended. It was impersonal and quite frankly too intimate for a presentation on how the Oracle database was going to help my business…

For me it’s much more precious.

When I say Namaste, it means to me: Putting aside my ego, the divine within me acknowledges the divine within you.

It means I see the spark of God within you.

It means that I have the spark of God too.

It means that I’m not bragging, I’m not being pretentious.

I’m being authentic and setting aside the part that will judge both you and me and determine if we are worthy of such a gift and if one of us has it to a greater extent than the other.

That voice is silenced and I sit in wonder amazed that we are even able to have a flawed conversation in language that both of us share but neither of us fully understands.

And I pause each time I write it, to consider, do you know what I mean?

Watch your language.

Namaste,

Kevin

(Click to play audio file)

I hate being late. It really grates on me.

Some days, you do what you do, you bring everything to the table, but the balance sheet tallies wrong, and you end up in debt.

There is always tomorrow. But how do I judge my today?

Today I was late, everything was out of time, I was behind from square one, and for the first time in 2 years I didn’t get my blog out before noon.

But how do I tally my day? What is my currency?

If I judge on timeliness, I lost. I didn’t make my deadlines and I didn’t fulfill all of my commitments.

If I judge on grace under pressure, I lost. I was frantic and overwhelmed and I lost it with those around me that I hold most dear.

If I judge on Cosmic Karma, I suppose tied. I shifted focus from what I wanted to do to what I had to do. I had to wait for the time to breath later in the day. The world didn’t end and my blog got written. Nobody unsubscribed when I missed my noon deadline (they waited till my email came out).

Can I judge myself on being non-judgemental? Can I go back to he beginning of the day and forgive myself for taking care of my priorities before my pleasures? I love writing this blog, but today my commitments were high and passion suffered in the face of need. But I found a time for both, at a later time.

Can you practice awareness in the moment, after the moment has passed? Can I look back at how I reacted and find a path that I would have wished I took? And is that any different than regret? Becoming a better me by criticizing the me of the past?

When it’s all said and done I am the person that I have always been. I will do what I can, and I won’t do what I cannot.

When I look out at the world and cast a light of compassion and grace to all the people struggling out there, I hope that my eyes will stumble upon a mirror. Then my eyes will meet with those of a man who can most benefit from my grace and compassion. The man who needs me to understand and accept him above all others. I will see the man who needs my unconditional love most of all. And he will weep at the acceptance when he realizes he is truly loved.

Namaste,

Kevin

One time I had a debate with a drunk man. My father always told me, “If you argue with a fool, what does that make you?”. But I still couldn’t resist, I get pulled into philosophical debate so easily.

His position was that we are all chemical engines. Our reactions are programmed responses based on our previous experiences and inherent wiring.

He argues that if you are driving down a road and someone cuts you off, you have no choice but to get angry, it’s a function of our behavior. Road rage is just a buildup of these experiences forming into action.

I argued that we all have choices to make, and whether to get angry was one of those choices.

It also seems a matter of perspective. In other words, how you interpret the situation.

In my argument I referenced a time, years ago, when had been cut off by someone. As I looked into the car I realized it was my neighbor. I knew my neighbor well and he was a good person. So from this knowledge I inferred that there must be a good reason he was in a hurry and that I should not take it personally. Anger left me and compassion entered the picture.

This lead me to the next level of thought, “What if I treat everyone as my neighbor?” What if I were to believe inherently that all people are “good people” and there is typically some good reason for their behavior. It would let both them and me off the hook. They would incur grace for their actions, and I in turn would not find myself taking actions personally, as the cause was outside of me. Ergo, I have chosen, through logical inference, not to get angry.

But this is one of the key benefits of, and why I enjoy so much, having a philosophical conversation, it gives one time to deduce the best reasoning and outcome. It’s not always simple to apply it to your day to day life. This is why awareness has become so powerful for me. Tying awareness into experiences can lead to intellectual responses instead of emotional responses. So when I am capable of applying awareness to a situation I can identify it more clearly as what is really happening and not get bogged down in a knee jerk emotional reaction.

But awareness and reasoning takes energy and now I am a parent. As a parent I find that most days tend to wear me down to the nub. When run down and exhausted there is little room for reason and you fall back on baser instincts, emotion and default reactions win the day. And the debate resumes.

Are we chemical engines? Or are we mystical avatars?

Is everything that we do really the result of chemicals interacting with each other through a set of logic paths that are preprogrammed? While the pathways are complex and not always obvious, are they actually predictable and consistent? Could you, if you studied someone long enough, predict their every action and response to stimulus?

Or are we something more?

Are we actually the puppet master pulling the strings from the outside? Knowing that the puppet is likely to behave in a certain way, but capable of making decisions against default action? Can we choose to be other than we have previously been?

Is it all a matter of perspective? Is this debate really meaningless but the outcome crucial? Is the most effective means of being better, simply believing we are better?

Does establishing in your mind the belief that the world is not out to get, empower you to not be gotten by the world?

If this were the case, this would make awareness the most powerful tool mankind has ever discovered. This would mean that when we are aware of our reactions we can respond as we would choose, instead of taking the path of least resistance, we are actually empowered as the avatar instead of mindless as the machine. So awareness give us the power of decision making.

Who will you be today? The machine? Or the avatar?

Namaste,

Kevin

That’s a cross I’ll have to bare.

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

There is wisdom in old wisdom, and there can be deception, but the person being deceived is often yourself. Don’t be fooled by the ease of access and availability of old sayings. In a way, they are like invoking a spell, but the primary impact is on the caster (aka, the person speaking). They summarize a mental state that you are either in, or one you shift to with the incantation of the phrase.

Never judge a book by its cover.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

In a way, sayings are dismissive, they allow us to fall back on old thought patterns instead of establishing new ideas. In a way they are a crutch of how we used to think, or worse yet, how someone else taught us to think.

Life is what happens while you are preparing for it.

He has been skimming a little of the top for years.

Sayings become analogies in our minds. We know what they mean and how to apply them. But we may not understand the full impact or original meaning of the sayings. I’ve been making a lot of chicken broth soups recently. And in my last batch, I was scooping out ladles full of good wholesome broth, I noticed that all the fat was on the top. That is when I had an “aha” moment. Skimming off the top doesn’t just mean you’re stealing a bit. It means your taking from the richest part of the soup, where all the fat is. Skimming off the top means that you’re keeping the best out for yourself.

No good deed goes unpunished.

He is an indian giver.

What you could be doing, when reciting a catch phrase, is bringing to the surface a subconscious bias or even prejudice that you have accepted so thoroughly that you no longer think about what your saying. There are saying like ‘indian giver’ that fell into disdain because popular culture had identified it as racist and an incorrect stereotype. But if we rely upon popular culture to help us identify when we are out of balance, then we are severely out of balance, much like popular culture.

The next time your brain falls into autopilot, and you find yourself about to spit out ancient wisdom, stop, and consider:

Do I believe what I’m saying?

What does what I’m saying actually mean?

Where does this saying come from?

Context is powerful, knowing where your saying comes from can help you identify if you truly want to identify with what you’re really saying.

Awareness is powerful, and understanding what your saying before you say it can help you as a communicator.

Namaste,

Kevin

Bonus Material:

What Namaste means to me:

Putting Aside my ego, the Devine within me acknowledges the Devine within you.

When I was a child my parents had a series of metal trivets that they had mounted on the wall above the cabinets in our kitchen. I grew up reading these and to this day I can recite them and even visualize the image that was on each. For your consideration, I share some of my base programming.

“Good, Better, Best. Never let it rest. Till your Good, is your Better. And your Better is your Best” – (can’t remember the picture)

“Yard by Yard, life is hard. Inch by Inch, it’s a cinch.” – (Picture of an inch worm crawling)

“If your wife doesn’t treat you as you deserve, be grateful.” – (Picture of a man running with a frying pan chasing him, assumedly thrown by his angry wife)

“A house is made of brick and stone, but a home is made of love alone.” – (Picture of a brick house)

you’re Such An Amateur! I’ve heard it used as an insult. I’ve heard it used to belittle someone’s effort. More importantly, people use it on themselves, to describe their own beginning efforts, and not always with personal kindness.

“Oh you’re into photography?”

“Yes… But, I’m just an amateur.”

We often forget that amateur is a required state. You can’t start anything as a professional, you have to work to get there.

I’m learning to play the guitar… Again.

I had an electric guitar for most of my late teen years and college years. I’d putter around and learn a few guitar licks here and there. I played at playing guitar. I was an amateur.

I was always discouraged when I’d look at people around me learning to play, because they could always do something better than me. And professional musicians! Oy, forget about it! They were on a whole other plain. How could I even compete with that? So after a time, and a fair bit of not practicing. I gave up and sold my guitar.

She was a beauty too.

We live in such an exposed world. At the click of a button we can see anyone doing almost anything. And usually to go viral, and get attention, you have to do it exceptionally well (or very, very, very poorly). It can easily put you in a mindset that there isn’t room for an amateur anymore. There are so many people that are so good at what you want to do, why bother?

There is no space for someone to begin and practice slowly moving up the ladder of progress. Or so it appears.

The truth is that amateur isn’t a dirty word, and it’s not a negative state. Being an amateur is a wonderful thing. It’s a crucial rung on the ladder of progress.

There is alway room in any practice for passionate people to enjoy themselves. Whether that be playing guitar, making baskets, or writing a blog.

So now 20 some odd years later, I’ve remembered how much I enjoy music. And I’m at it again. Learning a few new guitar licks, playing some music, and getting discouraged. My how the cycles love to repeat. My primary advantage this time is, that I’m a little wiser than I was. There is always room at the top, and there is always room at the bottom, and there is plenty of room for me.

There is also, plenty of room for you. You bring something to the game that nobody else can, yourself and your energy. I encourage you to find something you love, and embrace doing it. Don’t worry about how good someone else is at it. Try not to get discouraged. And remember, it’s about the journey, not the destination.

Though it doesn’t hurt to have a few kick ass guitars along the path.

Namaste,

Kevin

“Remember the pledge you took, when they let you off the hook, and sent you spinning away, back into yourself.” – Human Rocket – Devo 2010

Okay, I’ll be honest, I’ve gotten several ideas for blogs from Devo’s album Something for Everybody. I just discovered it recently. Devo released an album of entirely new music in 2010 and I love it.

As I was listening to the lyrics of human rocket, cited above, an idea came to me. “Remember the pledge you took, when they let you off the hook”.

What if we’re on vacation?

What if we took a pledge to take a break from our spiritual path and this life is actually our break?

Some would argue a vacation gone miserably wrong.

Sort of like having a hurricane hit while you’re on your honeymoon in Cancun. (Yes, this happened to my wife and I)

None the less a vacation, if you will, from our cosmic responsibilities.

Bare with me for a moment, because the idea requires a few building blocks to take shape.

Assume for a moment that reincarnation is real. At least in some form. This may not mean that we keep repeating a life here on earth over and over, but that this life is part of a progression of experience, as opposed to being the alpha and omega of our existence. This would imply that there is a continuity to our existence. A narrative linked together by a common spirit. Each incarnation could seen as a chapter in that existence.

Now consider a book metaphor for a moment. What if you were reading a book, following the thread of the story, and then you get to chapter 18 and, as the result of a sudden and unexpected head injury, forget the first 17 chapters of the book.

You are quite tenacious, so you keep reading the book even though you have no idea who you’re reading about or what’s going on. You lose the continuity of the story.

Luckily for you the book is well written so you are able to read chapter 18 without getting entirely lost, even though you don’t know the back story. Then as you’re finishing chapter 18 your memory starts to return. You remember everything that happened in the first part of the book and can piece it all together. You start to integrate, in your mind, whatever you read in 18 with the previous chapters.

What if, by being here, we’re in our chapter 18? We’ve entered a knowledge void where we’ve lost the thread of the prior narrative. We don’t know what happened before. But we’re given enough to keep reading. The story keeps unfolding.

What if, this wasn’t the result of some cosmic head injury? But in fact a calculated break, offered by the universe, a vacation from our cosmic trajectory. Without the burden of knowledge of everything that we knew before.

“Remember the pledge you took, when they let you off the hook.”

So what pledge did you take?

Be true to thine self, and to thine own self be true.

Do onto others as they would have them do onto you.

Or simply, I promise to enjoy myself.

So what if you were in fact, let off the hook, for this life? Would it change your attitude about your experiences if you found out that this was your rest and recuperation before you get back to work?

What would you do differently with your day, or with your life, if you realized you’re on vacation?

Namaste,

Kevin

I don’t know how this is going to turn out. Or what I’m going to write. I don’t even know what’s on my mind. I want the results to be something impressive. I want everything I write to be the most amazing thing that anyone has ever read. But that’s the ego talking. That’s my desire to be special. It’s well known that if everything is above average then that average is wrong. On average the average is in the middle and the outliers are on the edges. So most of what I write will be average and some of what I write will be spectacular and some of what I write will be really pathetic. So how can I hope to achieve my goal? How can any of us achieve our goal of excelling when the end result, if we truly do raise the bar, is to obliterate our previous activities and mar them as below average, because we have raised the average. So what was acceptable before is just crap. And all I’ve really been doing the whole time is spinning my wheels trying to gain traction, trying to find something to grab onto to dig me out of this pit so that I can be the light at the end of the tunnel to guide people. To provide hope in a world of darkness to provide a glimmer of the future that could be… But what if I’m fooling myself. When I turn my light on thinking I’m near the end of the tunnel, but in reality I’m still near the bottom of the pit. And like my shifting metaphor I start dragging people who were near the top down into the mire because they see my light and see seek for hope even though it’s in the wrong direction. What if I guide people in the wrong direction? What if everything I share is just the wallowing thoughts of a pig in the muck trying to cool off and not really accomplishing much but getting dirty. Would I hope that my thoughts lead me to a place of joy or a place of sadness. Do I do justice to the world and my path to force the outcome, to make the results be positive when I feel negative. To make someone smile even though I feel sad. Does projecting joy in a world of darkness lead to joy? Yes. It does. If you start with two sad people and a happy thought, one can fake it and if the other latches on and smiles then the smile is real and the faker will then smile back and suddenly in a world of sadness you have two people smiling at each other and the tables have suddenly turned. And so my sincere hope for you, regardless of my personal mood, is that you find a way to smile today, for the world is smile worthy. And your light will shine back to me and I will smile and we’ll find that there really was happiness at our cores but we weren’t sure how to get it out. And here it is. 🙂

Namaste,

Kevin

About a month ago, I was walking through the woods in an isolated part of California. It was just me and the dogs on an old fire trail. The further I walked from camp the more isolated from people I felt. But I didn’t feel alone. If anything I felt the presence of observers, of some sort of benevolent energy watching over me and observing, as if curious to see what will happen next.

It was probably just my imagination. After all, of what interest is Kevin out on a dog walk? Not exactly the moral dilema that make for a good psychological thriller, or the struggle for life and death that captivates us when a team scales Mount Everest. Just me, and my dogs, out for a walk.

Never the less, I felt something. So on a lark, I called out, “If you can hear me, please show yourself, I’d like to meet you.”… I waited, and waited… Nothing.

Nothing manifested in a dimensional fracturing field of light. No entities walked down as if on an invisible staircase. It was just me and the dogs calling out to the emptiness. Well the dogs weren’t calling out, they were just looking at me funny trying to figure out who I was talking to.

I wondered as I stood there. Are they perhaps prohibited from interfering? Maybe they have some sort of law prevent them from interacting with mortals on a whim.

But then it occurred to me. What if they couldn’t hear me. What if there were some physical law that allowed them to observe me, but not hear me or speak to me. What if there were no rules in the way, what if it was simply a limitation of the observation medium.

This of course lead to my next thought. What if God couldn’t hear me?

For most people talking to God through prayer is a fundamental part of their relationship with God. But what if God couldn’t hear you?

What if the only way you had to truly interact with God and send a message was through your actions? What kind of message would you be sending?

We live in such a legalistic world that in many situations your actions aren’t judged as much as you are judged on your ability to explain your actions. With good verbal skills you can explain away almost anything, look at our politicians. What would the world be like if people never had the chance to explain themselves, they were simply measured by their actions.

Perhaps we would start to act very differently.

Namaste,

Kevin