The circle of life swings around each and every Thanksgiving for me and returns me once again to a place of reflection. I ask myself if I have lived the past year with gratitude.

Thanksgiving is just another day. But, the true beauty of our desire to recognize a day for 'thankfulness' is that it practically forces us to take pause at least to the extent of recognizing the words 'thanks' and 'giving.'

Frankly, I think the day should be called 'Giving Thanks Day.' In the United States, often we are taunted by the commercialistic machine to make this day about eating exorbitant amounts of food as an act of recognizing how good we have it. However, if we do take pause and reflect on what such a day truly means, we would actually spend less time eating and more time giving. Ah, the perfect diet program... giving.

In my process of reflection, moments flash before ...

I spent some time this weekend making new friends while visiting a log cabin in the mountains of Arizona. I feel blessed to have spent time with these people and throughout the weekend that we shared, I often found myself observing and reflecting upon the experience and their personal perspectives in association with my own life and where I am headed.

With good fortune, as we sat on the back porch in the evening hours sitting around tables by candle light, I was gifted some great philosophical conversations. As ambient music played in the background and crickets chirped in the surrounding forest, we shared stories of our past and perspectives of the spiritual realm.

One point of interest that surfaced more than once was what a 'spiritual person' is. I found that judgment tended to creep into the conversation at times. Specifically, I shared a story from my past that might...

I sit here at my computer screen looking upon a blank white page that patiently waits for my words to be cast upon it. It awaits my medium, thus painting a picture like spreading explosions of watercolor recreating the powerful visions in my mind. So much has transpired over the past months… such commanding shifts have bestowed themselves upon me, delivered by the recent series of transformative eclipses.

My life has changed in ways I could have only wished on my greatest adversaries… if my heart were in such a place to cast harm upon another. But, my heart is open, and thus I must only receive its gifts and sculpt in my hands the raw cold clays of reality into lessons for the greater good. For being seemingly lost is most effective for helping us ultimately to be found.

The treasures of my world, that which is outside of me, seemed to hang in the bal...

A conversation:

Would it scare you if I told you that I sense that the second coming of Christ may very well be within each of us through a spiritual awakening? That I believe that we have a oneness with God now and always will but, maybe we just don't realize it? That heaven could be realized right here on Mother Earth? That love is the way simply by wholeheartedly being now, right here, what you believe God to be? Forgiving, nonjudgmental, unconditionally loving.... and that if we were purely this way, we may cease to physically exist because we would vibrate so high that we would transcend the physical and be nothing but the pure loving light of God?

Maybe the concept of 'Jesus' , whether metaphorical or actual, was simply a demonstration of this to each of us... that we have the power within us to be as selfless and all-loving.

Many of us experience ...

Is't my desire,
to finally inspire,
a revolution in the heart of thee.


From wills within,
may heaven spin,
it's evolution of the blooming tree. 



On planes and rays,
across sails and cayes,
may winds of change leave a trace. 


In the song of the lark,
and a moment too dark,
may the light cast upon your face. 



Under the spell of time,
an imposing rhyme,
shall complete this thought to soon.


In the midst of night,
shall the dreams of flight,
release you from this captive room. 



With a gentle ca...

I have found there to be such a deeply rooted relationship between our internal evolution of Self with our association as a living, breathing human being within our natural surroundings. I have been pondering this concept of self-reliance and the attraction to societal conveniences lately, all while meeting and interacting with a number of new friends who have made the valiant jump toward a self-sufficient existence. I recently wrote about Self-Reliance in my last blog 'Self-Reliance in Suburbia'. My musing lately has transformed me into an acute observer of my surroundings from the self-reliant perspective and thus, I have witnessed a number of moments that have been quite enlightening. I have toiled for years over the 'inconvenience of convenience', writing about it in the past here on Token Rock. But until I really began to delve into self-reliance I hadn't really grasped what ...

For the past several years, Carrie-Anne and I have been planning to finish our backyard off with a swimming pool, a few flower beds, and a citrus grove of four citrus trees. Our home and yard décor is an old-world Italian theme and the part of our backyard that is near completion features beautiful stonewalls, columns, and fountains. The pool area was going to resemble a classic Tuscan pool.

Our thinking started to shift this spring when we decided to scrap the plans for that remaining 2000 square feet of yard and instead start installing a space that would support our desire for a more self-reliant lifestyle. Thus, we began researching urban farms online. We found several excellent examples of real success stories including one of the original 'urban farms' located right in t...

At age 41, I figure I have been spitting toothpaste twice a day for the past thirty-eight years. After figuring in the first few years of not having teeth and another few hundred days I probably didn't even brush my teeth as a kid, I estimate that I have spit toothpaste somewhere in the neighborhood of 27,540 times. I find this to be an interesting fact since recently I discovered a Probiotic toothpaste that consists of many beneficial ingredients including live healing microbes that are beneficial to the mouth, stomach, and intestines.

As children we are encouraged to brush, brush, brush. We are provided by our parents a tube of paste chock full of what television programming describes as 'defensive' ingredients and instructed by our dentists to coat our teeth with super-hero shielding substances such as sodi...

The wind blew across the land stirring up dust from the arid landscape. As the Sun descended upon the horizon, the dust particles reflected an auburn glow. Gazing to the distant west, ridgelines highlighted a maze of endless walls. Countless passageways spread in a spherical pattern into the blinding light.

These walls of ancient stone command each of us to traverse our labyrinth of life. Spiraling we must, into our deepest contemplations.

Reaching the nucleus of the maze, we discover that what seemingly spiraled inward also radiates outward. As within, so without.

The steep shadowed walls curve about giving us the occasional comfort of warmth from the Sun's rays.

Pacing forward, echoes collide, blocks remove like windows to the other side. But the walls make fools of us, for they only separate us from ourselves.

Their ca...

Sometimes we feel like we want to hold onto something so intently and yet, just as readily let go of it and be free from how we feel it burdens us. It is easy to say that we can simply make change happen as many of the self-help books suggest. This is why I am not a life coach. I am no more 'advanced' in new thought than the experiences that challenge my thinking every day. These challenges are no different than yours. They may have different labels, but they are all the same. We must work together to create change for the greater good of all involved and when that change seemingly effects us in an adverse way, we must realize that no action has been taken deliberately against us. We are all pure and innocent.

Love always prevails no matter what the experience. In irony, when love itself is the challenge, we must dig deep within to find love for ourselves first and...