Currents

We stand as the water Stands in movement And in grace, Taking our tides Upon the reef. Flowing towards And away and yet back yet again, We remain with the world Always in Motion. Even in our silence.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi said, “Repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed and still kept within the bounds of reason."   I am propelled to think that a strain of this thought explains the time suspension of this island- always at its premium (92 octane).   For the past two months I have lived in the same Creation I have been living my entire life but yet, as change always finds us, in an entirely different Wormhole.  In observation of the local life (completely in separation of any and all tourist activity) I have been witnessing this 'freely chosen discipline' that Csikszentmihalyi talks about.  There is little fear for the taking.  As the pulse and rhythm of the waves call daily to those who partake it is hard to not notice the Flow of life that is procured.  Fear seems o...

Hiking through an endless tread of Hawaiian greenery along the Ko’olau Mountains in eastern Oahu this morning, I realized just how priceless allowing yourself to BE in the moment truly is.   As my hiking party and I attempted to find a seemingly long-forgotten trailhead (notorious sign-less Hawaii for you), being in good company and conversation allowed my usual frustration at such matters to pass .   A s time wore on and we eventually found what we thought to be an arrow pointing us in the right direction (which eventually let us in another circle mind you) in the hot humid heat that makes your skin feel like moisturized fly paper as the beauty being magnified before my eyes upon this volcanic landscape made a mystery that held my gaze with penetrated prevalence.   It was as if I was in another world- an island of my saving grace…for there, looking at the Ko’olau peaks, it seemed that all this good we spend drea...

What drives human beings to continually yearn to expand, grow, prosper, create, enhance, step forward?   And at what cost are we willing to pay/sacrifice to do so?   As we look at the major paradigm shifts of history (as stated in the Great Transition (2002), Raskin, P., Banuri, T.,Gallopin, G., et. al), we see transitions from the Stone Age with life lived in tribal demeanor with hunting and gathering as their main source of means and oral language (still allowing the Colors of the Wind room to breathe) as their main source of noted communication shift to Early Civilization with their city-states, agriculture and writing (Daniel Quinn's separation of Leavers and Takers in his famous Ishmael starts here with the Agricultural Revolution) and then lastly to our Modern Industrialized Era of nation-state organization with printed writing.   Proposed in this advancing of man is a new era called the Planetary Phase where globalization and the internet will most likely repr...

Noting the direct effect that an inch of a free mind has on the choices of each individual is both perplexing and utterly igniting.   How we, who when cut the same would both bleed, find ourselves upon this individual circumstance   and option of choice placed before us, for us, or by us, that no one else in the world can say that they know is absolutely inviting.   Where does the origination of each choice occur?   Through our creation of them?   Through our Grand Design?   Half of each and half of that?   What happens to the choices we never choose? So many different forms of life are working within the network of these choices every single day. Decaf or non?   West Point or Peace Corps Africa?   Life or death?   How are we to ask what is meaning to one and then the other when each choice is backed by an origination from a different set of genes, childhoods, strengths, timing, and colors (“is my green the same as your green or do you...

Upon reading Madeleine L’Engle’s, A Wrinkle in Time , it has yet again made me ponder the principles and connections of spirituality and science; two seemingly very key tools in description of this miracle we call Life.   In her book, L’Engle allows the meaning of life of the Murry family and other protagonists to tangle in love for one another and passion for their framework of talent and unique gifts among the realms of quantum physics.   A repeating message throughout her writing questions the English language upon the constriction that it provides to the yoke of meaning that we so passionately crave to explain, and that the characters in her story had to exercise in order to save one another.   The beings throughout the cosmos that the Murrys meet along their journey who communicate through existential (as you will) means as well as a hands and toes count (to the second power) of other surreal senses, are able to convey a certain wise-ness about the workings of the un...

Upon recent and past observation, love seems a domineering factor in the philosophy of the human mind.  There are many forms in which this appears to take place.  Romantic endeavor, the irreplaceable bond of the family unit, Platonic love, brotherly love, humanitarian love...or as the Greeks and C.S. Lewis likes to categorize: Storge, Philia, Eros, Agape (The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis)...the list goes on.  We have heard it all before.  Poets, historians, theologists, psychologists, philosophers, artists, musicians, knights in shining armor, etc.....all have, in one way or another, "studied" this phenomena through their own color wheel.  I think we can assume that love does indeed exist and in strong form.  But what exactly is it in this idea of love that allows it to resonate with all life?  I often joke that it is, indeed, our shared electrons that form the bond in which this occurs, the fuzzy little critters that seem to form the s...