Fear or Self Divinity, Our Choice

FEAR OR SELF DIVINITY, OUR CHOICE

I haven't written anything "creative" for a very long time.  Between, working and trying to refocus with the opening of the Phoenix Gate and a multitude of other reasons that can be summed up as "life",  it has been a struggle to really find anything to say.  After all, I tell myself, these are only opinions and is there truly an original opinion anywhere on this planet?  Any really new ideas?  Have we become a society living on a two lane highway and the minute we try to take an alternate route, a creative way to get from point A to point B, we are discouraged through the media, our friends, academia, church, politics and so on?........Gone it seems are the Carl Jung's, the Joseph Campbell's, the Buckminster Fullers...Or maybe just maybe there are millions of us thinking out of the box, but it doesn't get any real play in the public arena, I mean if it isn't on CNN it isn't true, right?

What does seem to get a lot of airplay is fear.  Ah, fear!  The great controller.  It's the reason we are in wars, don't speak our minds, go to the doctor instead of healing ourselves, insure ourselves up to the hilt in case "something happens", and so on and so on and so....  Oh then there is the fiscal cliff, extreme weather, toxic food and not feeling equal amongst our peers.  Since the beginning of time the masses, us, human beings, have been controlled by telling us to be afraid.  Be very afraid.  And now, because you are so afraid we will protect you.  But then what happens when the protection becomes the fear itself?  When because we have put our trust in another human being (never a good idea) and that human being turns out to be, well human, we are in a very precarious state becoming disappointed and living in horrible disillusionment.  i.e. Hitler, Stalin and really, any political leader of any one of the super powers, past or present.

This man made fear permeates everything and I mean everything which feeds into keeping us disconnected, alienated, depressed and lost which then physically manifests into chemical imbalances, then mental illness, leading to irrational behavior.  Are we getting the connection, yet?

"We have an opportunity to connect with something so divine, so special, so Godlike, so important - what we have is the opportunity to connect with ourselves.  To look within and see the Godliness in all of us"

Two days after being told that we had ships off the borders of Syria, while still being in Iraq and Afghanistan, someone grabbed a gun and went on a killing spree.  And if he didn't have a gun he would have had a bomb, and he if he didn't have a bomb he would have had a knife, and if he didn't have knife he would have had an ax and it goes on it goes - But the point is that here we live in a country that is about to be in three wars or a world, rather, that is controlled by fear with most of our money going to the military industrial complex.  So my question is this, "Why is anyone surprised that this doesn't happen more often?"  I think it's a miracle that as many of us are as safe and secure as we are in spite of the craziness that we have been spoon fed.

We have an incredible opportunity to evolve as the human race, as the mass collective, the collective unconscious  - to a new vibration that is currently pulling and giving us opportunities to make choices that will aid in our evolution.  We have an opportunity to connect with something so divine, so special, so Godlike, so important - what we have is the opportunity to connect with ourselves.  To look within and see the Godliness in all of us.  We get to be who we were intended to be, incredible human/divine beings that can accomplish so much.  So much more than any culture before us because we are truly unique in that the evolution will encompass all that is human.  Our spirit, mind, physical and etheric body, senses, elements, but most importantly our emotions.  Our emotions will be allowed to evolve intact.  Many cultures sacrificed this very human trait to ascend, but never did they do it with their emotions.  So aren't we the lucky ones?

As the energies continue to bombard this planet, each one of us gets an opportunity to make some choices.  An opportunity to ask ourselves questions that won't just shift our own lives but the collective lives of all beings who exist here.  Some are going to go into a  hellish place and play out their fears and psychosis in that way, but the more of us that choose the light, the less of them will choose to live in the dark.  We are not just responsible for ourselves and this planet, we are responsible for each other.

There are only three fears that exist - Fear of being wrong, fear of being lonely  and fear of being hurt.  If you do the math it seems to play out as:

Fear equals lack of faith  *  Lack of faith equals lack of divine connection * Divine connection equals joy

In science, for all animals, cell migration is an essential and highly regulated process. Cells migrate to shape and vascularize tissues, in wound healing, and as part of the immune response. Unfortunately, tumor cells can also become migratory and invade surrounding tissues. Some cells migrate as individuals, but many cell types will, under physiological conditions, migrate collectively in tightly or loosely associated groups. As I or we move into the next state of being, the tissue of the new reality, the body of the collective, there is nothing that I pray for more than to have every single human being or (human cell)  to shift into that reality because, I believe it is an all or nothing proposition.  The migration of the collective, eradicating the cancerous cells with love and light, so that we can move forward.  We all go or none of us goes.  Each a cell in the human collective and ask, "How can I be useful?  Who truly needs my help today?  What can I do to be a better person"? 

Through the holidays and onward, while we are running around with our fears and daily challenges coming up, maybe we can make a choice and not allow it to mar the day.  Maybe all of us can make a choice with our  higher minds, that this is a perfect world playing out its evolution because in God's eyes everything is perfect....In God's eyes we are perfect.  And if God thinks so then why don't we.

I love you all.
From my Garden to Yours.

There is no disrespect meant for anyone that is in grief.  This is written with a respectful and loving intention.

A Personal Obituary to Kathi McDonald

Keeper of the Complaint

I had bought Kathi's records in the seventies and had seen her name on the back of at least fifty albums. She had performed on two hundred and one-hundred of those records were certified gold.  She was considered one of the best back-up singers in the world, one of the best in the style she sang in. Style? It was I'm scraping my face on cement, need to get screwed right now, I feel everything too much, missing a layer of skin style. When Kathi's voice went to the place right above her hair, I guarantee you'd cry.I never understood any words she sang. Words weren't important to her. It was how her voice moved, how total her range was. It was about the abuse her throat could take night after night. Kathi McDonald was a singing machine. I grew up in Detroit. Leaving in 1977 and drove until the water stopped me which meant Seattle. I had heard Kathi lived in the Seattle area. I sang along the way, jam sessions mostly. The South side of Chicago, Minneapolis, Madison, Billings, and Missoula were some of the places I found to sing the Blues for people that didn't care and didn't pay. While I was busy singing for my supper, Kathi was singing with the famous; the Rolling Stones, Long John Baldry, Elton John, Freddie King, Tina Turner, Big Brother and the Holding Company and Joe Cocker. Leon Russell used to take her along with the other women in his stable to the revival tents in the South, so they could learn the right way. Her first band was the "Santana Blues Band," later to become Santana. I didn't get to meet her until 1991. She was performing at Bumbershoot, a three-day music festival that was held once a year.  It was the third largest music fest in the country and was legendary for its disrespect of local talent. Nancy Claire, one of the women who had joined up with the show in the beginning, took me to meet and hear her, and to ask if she would like to hook up with Seattle Women. Her talent was everything I thought it would be. She was better in person than on record, if that was possible. I stood watching, not believing what I was hearing. How could anyone be that good? I was excited; finally I would meet the great Kathi McDonald. There she was 5'3" wearing the same high heels that were part of being an Ikette with Tina Turner, stomping each foot as if the ground was where the sound was coming from. When her show was over, Nancy and I approached her so that I could be introduced. As soon as we met, Kathi started to talk at me, as if she had known me for years. She was yelling how there was no dressing room since Bumbershoot had suggested she change in the broom closet. What I didn't realize then is that everyone was of equal importance to Kathi, unless you got her work, then you were elevated by a small degree above the rest of humanity. That was how we would communicate for the next 20 years: Kathi complaining and talking at everybody in the room. I tried to "really talk" over and over again but to no avail because Kathi didn't do meaningful conversation. Everything was a joke, a quip, a bit of gossip - hopefully all of which would make us laugh, which it did. And her wit! It was sharp and dangerous. Something like Dorothy Parker meets Janis Joplin whom she hated as her reference point was that she was always compared with Janis. Honestly, I sort of understood because Kathi was a better singer than Joplin. (Kathi had taken Janis' place when she died in Big Brother) I think that she believed Joplin's fame should have been hers. When a fan would ask her to sing Joplin she would turn on them and spew out something like, "I don't sing dead white people!"  That would shut them up. Probably wouldn't be asking for an autograph after that. Watching Kathi in action; singing, complaining, talking, walking, dancing, performing, cleaning house, working, or whatever, was like watching a monkey try to screw a football. It was exhausting. She was the type that had to have the rockets on her back. But like any veteran performer knows, keeping rockets on your back carries a high price, because there is re-entry and that is always difficult.  No thanks - don't really want a ticket for the reality train. Doesn't feel as good as those darn rockets. Re-entry is the worst for a performer.  You need to decompress in a let out the steam slowly kind of way.  It's taken me years to know and master this. It had never entered Kathi's mind. So with those rockets she of course, had an off-again on-again; I can handle it, romance with drugs. She also drank which could lead to some interesting times on stage. Like the time she sang "Mojo Working" for forty-five minutes. I'll never forget having to stand on stage, watching her and the show go completely out of control. The place was packed, my hands were tied, it was Kathi with a rocket, and the only thing I could have done was pull the plug. Hell, she even gave the bartender a solo. We informed her of her blues aria the next day. I was worried about her. This wasn't some nobody getting drunk once in awhile. She was an idol of mine, a woman who was going to kill herself with booze if she didn't stop soon. I couldn't really say anything, at the time I drank too. But I was more worried about her than myself. My drinking hadn't yet reached the late stages that Kathi was then entering. So we made light of it.  The group teased her about it for years. That incident, coupled with her boyfriend, who wouldn't put up with her drunkenness, put an end to her booze exploits for a short time. But drugs, that was another arena. She kept those around like a savings account, just in case she might need it on a rainy day.  She never lectured us about the evils of them because she didn't have to. Her existence and the way she sang made everything clear. She was a living example that life could be successful, tragic and corrupted. In her mind, there was no place for her to go, except for the private world of dope. I believe she was too sensitive to live. My husband and I were producing a blues festival--one of the largest in the state. One night we were all standing on the side of the stage watching Booker T and the MG's. This was history; R&B history. It was how you played the stuff. The way R&B humps, grinds, builds, breathes, connects, keeping it simple, embraces, like good sex. Booker T and the MG's, man, they wrote the book. I watched Kathi watch them. Tears in her eyes--the layer of skin she was missing--was so obvious. She had to use. What she felt, the depth of it was too much for her. She felt things more intensely than most of us. She needed to so she could sing intensely. Today I got a call from Seattle Women alumni, Patti Allen, telling me that Kathi's heart stopped. Of course it did. Really, what took to so long? I believe her heart was breaking from the moment she hit her first stage. Maybe the only way to keep that big heart beating was to fill it with alcohol and the preferred drug of choice.  Maybe those things filled up the hole where life should have been fully experienced. Kathi had to complain, had to make it difficult. It was her safety mechanism, so that no true information could get in.  Her safety was in distortion. I loved her for that. I loved her for surviving her unique pain. Kathi - I say goodbye to you as you join your blues sister LJ. You are a true original. There will be no one like you, in body or in spirit. I love you.