Dad's transcendending Death

So ... the story goes about 2 weeks before dad died Arthur was visiting it was late. He and I were playing cards or risk or stratego and Dad was pacing the hallway when he stopped us and talked about having a purpose after he dies in the afterlife if there was one and was that he wanted to come back and communicate the existence of the afterlife if it was in anyway a possibility and he said he would promise to make it happen. Neither Arthur or I had any impending sense about his very fast approaching death so we neither gave too much much attention to it, but then about 2 weeks later while home alone with him while my mom tended the liquor store in San sidro, he asked me to help him to the bathroom and after a couple of minutes I heard a crash from the next room came running in to find him slumped over the toilet in severe jaw clenching pain. I got him on the floor and cradled his head in my lap and then began to run my lists associated with just such a unprepared for disaster. After improvised CPR, chest pounding, hysteric pleading, during a moment of calm, I felt the heat draining from him and came face to face with his movement into ash, next I called my mom, and after that I began a serious wail. In the following year however, this conversation he had with Arthur and I kept popping up for me, especially during times of loneliness when his absence was most felt, it has for most of my life been an insult to the tragedy that I felt. 

Over time, I've simply moved on and forgotten his promise and the huge disappointment in his not being able to keep it. It was only until a few days ago that the true character of that man, his demonstrating leadership and being a leader, showed up for me in that last totally unselfish stand which he took for the benefit of his sons, which he did with total conviction against all odds. It's just breathtaking for me to consider it today and such a warm glow of pride wells up in my heart. Until this epithany a few days ago I would never have dreamed I'd ever be able to confess to this massive transformation and appreciation I feel towards him today. So it is .. and you the first person I've shared this with! I can't take full credit for this amazing shift in my relationship with him though, there was been a recent startup of some work with Werner Erhard in the domain of, you guessed it, Leadership ... and I'm going to find no resistance at all to returning to that lesson plan after having this initial resolution to a lifelong feeing of loss and abandonment and disappointment. Just within my own personal sphere I can't recall a greater leader than my father who was so magnanimous that he was calling out what he saw possible even after his death ... and his conviction and vision for that possibility was total ... I could spend 10 lifetimes I think and still not exhaust the inspiration that one moment of his leadership gave and continues to give me.

Mark captures my focus yet again, leaving me to say this...

Don't get me wrong, How many times have you listened to some personal coach talk about how to properly valuate yourself beginning with your fee. Such a silly argument, cause if your worth the fee, it ought never be an issue and this kind of response to Mark's coaching emphasizes virtue of character before marketing expertise. From my limited experience of Mark, a compelling generosity of service is just where he begins. I may have been a bit harsh on him insofar as I really have no basis for challenging him like that when in fact with the person in focus Mark undoubtedly coached him in just the right area and in the right way to compel that person's positive response. That's heavy hitting. The choice of this testimonial though doesn't leave any hint, clue, or suggestion of a far more neglected space beyond the gross transformational bars, beyond the bar of purity on one's self where you've now re-climbed the tallest mountain in yourself 10 times over so that your beginning to do with without hands, blindfolded. Stepping up the difficulty like that is one way to keep it real, giving that coaching expertise would certainly be another, the question was cleaved for me over the edge drama, in which any reduction in the overt dramatizing of breakdowns is such a massive significant transformation on an energetic scale that its all too easy to become addicted to being in the presence of that release. My angle or approach or higher interest here however is aligned with the deeper mysteries of life and my personal inward call back to the divine. I have been admonished at every intersection of my path and ever curve in which I was influenced by far greater adepts than myself that the ultimate and hardest challenge that prevents and sidetracks one after another from fully liberating themselves from ignorance and merging with the eternal and infinite grace which calls us all back to that source is our identification with attachment to successful alchemical productions and their siddhis. The most important inward disipline then is our higher compass and there the greatest challenge because in this work you will find severely powerful capacities and skills you never dreamed of when you began. And its these blossoms that have the capacity to hook our egos enslaving our future destinies all in the blink of an eye. We fall asleep and identify our possibilities in life with our egotistical false self and were spun sideways and revel in our wreckage due to that comparison made egotistically. Forgive my rambling on but I thought it only fair given my earlier challenge which Mark may or may not have understood, and with this now hopefully my questions might be a little more helpful. In all things, may presence lead your valuation, so that during those moments when our path has suddenly lifted us into some bright new field of dead air where no references or comparisons or legacies exist by which value is commonly established, you arrive loaded for bear!!! smile emoticon

Eliot expounds the non dualist thought with RIGOR

You say I am repeating

Something I have said before. I shall say it again.

Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,

To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,

    You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.

In order to arrive at what you do not know

    You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.

In order to possess what you do not possess

    You must go by the way of dispossession.

In order to arrive at what you are not

    You must go through the way in which you are not.

And what you do not know is the only thing you know

And what you own is what you do not own

And where you are is where you are not.

Beginning New Project: Kidney Donor Incentives

I'm starting a new project I'm calling the Kidney Donor Incentives Project. This will require new legislation which willl mandate incentives for living donors where at present there are none and people like me are truly suffering. I just started a new "binder" (a substance I take with food which binds to certain chemicals that my system cannot remove and dialysis has a tough time removing a well, and these substances in toxic levels will kill me right away or in the long run will ruin my health as well. This binder costs $2,000/month. I pay $24,000/month for dialysis services. The stent procedure I had last month was outpatient but the bill was still $60,0000. When I die my estate will be depleted of funds that the government has spent and continues to spend on me at present. If the law were to provide some incentive for donors to step forward ... there is so much money on my behalf to be saved. Corporate greed has made medicine into a business so there's that uphill battle to wage and then there is the obstructionist congress we have in place still which concerns me, but how hard can it be for me to persuade those who can help about the reality which is my health and the waste which until I get a transplant will be continually made as profit to the business concerns which are getting wealthy on my suffering? What recommendations do you have for me? I believe you probably have a few since I'm aware that you have yourself been struggling to create a successful startup of your own. I'm not really sure how or what business model I need to organize my efforts around, perhaps you do or you may know someone with that particular expertise?

Narcissism

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.