Conversations – Installment #58

May 13 through May 25, 2012

Beloved, a new book has been released in recent months by Dr. Karen Moriarty entitled, Defending a King, His Life and Legacywhich is taking the fan community by storm. The book examines your life in the years since the end of the trial and after your return from abroad. The years 2007 through 2009 are analyzed in fairly exacting detail. It is a very telling expose` of what it was like to be Michael Jackson during those years in Las Vegas … of your isolation from customary human contact … of your relationships with your security guards during those years … with your beautiful children and your total devotion to their welfare … and of the manipulation you suffered at the hands of the people you had hired to manage your vast financial empire. It is obvious that you touched Dr. Moriarty very strongly and deeply; her thesis is very sympathetic to the unique circumstances faced by the ‘most famous man on Planet Earth’ on a daily basis while trying to live a quiet life with your children away from the public eye and sequestered from most of the entertainment industry.

One of the points that Dr. Moriarty makes in her book is that your wealth, fame and name were regularly exploited by the lawyers and business and press agents who ran your affairs. She states that you often didn’t know about the deals that were being made on your behalf by your representatives, that you had no way of keeping track of where your money was going or who was lining their own pockets at your expense and that your security personnel went unpaid for months until you, finally, made a phone call to your financial advisers to make sure they were appropriately compensated.

Others, including both of your ex-wives, your mother and your siblings, have also spoken about their distrust of the people around you. They often felt that you were being manipulated by the very people you trusted and gave powerful positions in your organizations. Of course, as a result, the on-air punditry has had a field day with words like ‘naïve’ and ‘eccentric.’

Your children wonder how a man of your obvious intelligence, vast experience, artistic genius and acute powers of observation (which have all been remarked upon by many of your colleagues) could have been so horribly deceived by sycophantic journalists and greedy associates.

This is a complicated issue with tentacles that extend into many different facets of my life. Several factors contributed to what some people call my naivety. Let me see if I can explain them all clearly.

First of all, there’s an old saying that ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’ and, I think the truth of that adage was demonstrated over and over in the events of my life.

No matter how honest, loyal and ‘up front’ a person is when hired, handling that much power and wealth eventually gets to him. After a while, he starts to believe that he deserves to be paid by the people who wanted my endorsement or by the media who wanted to invade my privacy or whoever is holding out the bribe.He begins to feel entitled … that it’s right for him to accept money or other incentives from all the people who just want him to give me a tape or a demo, a manuscript or a screenplay … or an introduction. I mean, it’s just business. There’s nothing dishonest or disloyal in that, right? That’s the way it’s done in the entertainment industry. These side deals are the grease that lubricate the wheels of commerce in the unseen underbelly of Hollywood.

The problem is when you pocket that money, where do your loyalties really lie?  Can you remain committed to your employer’s best interests with single-minded purpose when someone else is supplementing your paycheck to go against them? Are you loyal to the person or organizations paying those six-digit bribes? Or is your loyalty really to yourself and your own enrichment? The question becomes who controls the controller of the gravy train?

In addition, he begins to think that he can dictate to me ….make me do what he wants me to do or appear where he wants me to appear or dance when he wants me to dance … regardless of whether I want to do it or not. This was a common problem for me … not only with the people who were running my affairs … but also with friends who eventually began to think they had a right to convert me to their way of thinking or make demands of me based on our close friendship.

For example, Bob Jones was the most loyal friend to me for many, many years, and as Vice President of Media and Communications at MJJ Productions, represented me with the utmost integrity for most of that time. Someone told me about a couple of deals he was trying to score on the side and I had to let him go, and he ended up writing a terrible tabloid ‘tell-all’ about me and testifying for the prosecution at my trial.

Yes, Michael, I remember reading about Mr. Jones’s defection in Aphrodite Jones’s book, Michael Jackson Conspiracy. I was shocked that he had turned traitor after so many years of faithful service and wondered what had prompted it.

No one is immune to the temptation of that much money and power unless his loyalty is based in love.

And, even then, the seduction to the dark side is hard to resist. When someone tells you, “All you have to do is get him to show up and we’ll give you a hundred and fifty thousand dollars” or “just tell us where he’s going to be at a specific time and we’ll give you a Rolls Royce.”

Even my own family was not immune to these kinds of bribes and enticements and I know they love me. My brothers and sisters and my father and mother were always being approached to make sure that I would attend an event or perform at a concert or make an appearance or phone call … and they were offered huge bribes for their participation.

That was one of the reasons that I began to distance myself from them during the Victory Tour. I didn’t want to do the tour to begin with but the promoter offered my father and brothers very large perks and I let my mother talk me into the tour ‘for the sake the family.’  Then the promoter came up with this absolutely terrible, hare-brained scheme to distribute the tickets in blocks of four which required a huge investment for a young person to afford. I knew I didn’t want to be involved in his plan as soon as he approached me with it and I let him and everyone else know that I wanted no part of his scheme … or him … that I wanted the promoter replaced and that I didn’t want him speaking on my behalf. I fought them and asked them to distribute the tickets more fairly, but, as was so often the case, my vote was only one of six votes and I was outvoted. My brothers were like, “We gotta get everything we can. The sky’s the limit.”

I knew they were wrong. I knew there was going to be a backlash … and there was … and the promoter had to go back to the drawing board and come up with a fairer way to distribute the tickets that didn’t require a young person to invest over $100 to see the show, but this incident was just one of many that prove my point. At the time, I told Frank that the tour would be the last joint venture of The Jacksons. When my brothers heard that, they were like, “What?!? You can’t do that!”

Another example is that first Pepsi commercial. I didn’t want to do it, but Pepsi was offering my father and brothers HUGE incentives … seven figures and six of them were zeros … for them to get me involved. It was never about the money for me; it was always about my vision of uniting the world in the joy of the music and magic. All I wanted to do was work on my music. I had a bad feeling about it from the outset … and later events proved that I should have listened to my gut. When I, finally, agreed to do it for the family, look what happened.

They were always trying to get me involved in things that I didn’t want to do … concerts or appearances or Vegas shows … and pocketing the incentives. And they were always going to my mother to get her to needle me into doing things because they knew she was the only one who could get around me.

Yes, Michael, I remember reading about the ticket fiasco and wondering how that one got past you.

Well, that’s how it got past me. Please don’t get me wrong. I love my family, but they can be exasperating. [Michael sighs.] Eventually, I had to decide that if my vision of unparalleled excellence in music and performance and film media was going to happen, I was going to have to do it alone and not be one vote out of six because “what’s in it for me” and “what can I get out of it” doesn’t mix well with “what can I give of myself to make this happen” and “what will it take in effort and practice and devotion to make this work.” Although we shared “the sky’s the limit” destination, we came at it from entirely different perspectives. They didn’t share my vision … or my mission.

Through the years, I kept hearing Jermaine talking about how the brothers were going to re-unite and he was always very specific that “yes, that included Michael” to do a series of concerts or perform somewhere. I would always laugh a little and think, “I wonder if Michael knows about this?”

No, most of the time, I would hear the reports the same way you did and wonder the same thing [Michael laughs.] Infrequently, he had approached me and I had refused to be involved in whatever it was he was pitching … and he made the public announcement anyway. He thought he could force me to ‘pitch in’ for the family by making a public announcement about it. It never worked. See what I mean by exasperating?

Yes, I see. But most families can be exasperating.

Yes, that’s true, but they were always trying to make my family the ‘most dysfunctional’ family in America. We were just a normal, typical family with all the same petty annoyances and grievances that most families share.

Secondly, you would have to have lived my life to understand fully, but you mentioned something in passing in an earlier discussion.It had a lot to do with the ‘growing up’ process that I always wanted to avoid. You mentioned that you had learned to hide the sensitive side of yourself beneath layers of hardness, to protect that fragile part of you from even those closest to you. Would you mind putting that part of our earlier discussion here?

Sure, Michael. I think we were talking about how beautiful and rare this love that I have found in you is and my gratitude for it. Is this it? [Reference Installment #54 – March 17 through March 25, 2012]

Yes, I think much of the world has done the same thing. And I can totally understand that need to protect. I think it’s something that most children learn as they grow into adulthood. Attending Junior High School and High School, I believe, can be a traumatic experience for very sensitive young souls. It’s where we learn that we are not the center of everyone’s universe, if we even get that far thinking that we are, at least, the center of our parent’s universe. We erect these walls as a coping mechanism.

I never attended Junior High or High School on a regular basis because I was always jetting off to some part of the world to perform concerts or to tour, so I never learned those coping mechanisms. I never learned to mask my tears with anger or defiance. And I’m very glad I didn’t! I never learned how to shut out the pain of the starving children in Africa … or young burn victims. I never became sensitized to the tragedy of war or the horror of genocide or the emptiness of a mother’s arms because her son has gone off to fight in some faraway country and will, undoubtedly, come back changed … if at all.

Yeah, that’s it. My life was unique in many ways and one of those ways is that I never had those experiences that all young teenagers have in achieving adulthood. I never ‘toughened up’ as my father would say; he thought I was too ‘soft’ … like my mother.

That ‘toughening up’ process is the loss of innocence we’ve described before and I never wanted to lose the innocence that was so valuable to me. It’s acquiring the layers of hardness and learning to hide pain beneath anger and defiance. It’s hiding who you are behind masks and learning how to play the games people play with each other. It’s learning how to lie so that those tender parts of you are not exposed, manipulated or injured. I wanted to remain untouched by all that so that I could continue to have that special relationship I had with Music which we’ve talked about earlier.

We’ve been together

For such a long time

Now, music … and me

There have been others

But never two lovers like music

Music … and me

Most kids learn this stuff by the time they are in high school, but I didn’t attend high school on a regular basis.

When I did attend school, I was surrounded by bodyguards … driven to school in limousines … whisked into and out of classrooms. And even that limited exposure ended when the school my brother and I were attending received death threats against us. Do you know what it’s like to be an eleven-year-old child and realize that someone out there holds such jealousy and hatred against you that they would call the school and threaten to kill you? Those bodyguards were there for a reason; death threats became a fairly common occurrence in my life.

Yes, Michael … that’s one of the points Dr. Moriarty makes in her book. She describes the ‘arsenal’ vehicle which was driven by one of your security people as being filled with weapons and hazmat suits, in case someone tried to take your children hostage or took a pot-shot at you to achieve his or her fifteen minutes of fame and notoriety. I cannot imagine having to live like that.

Most people can’t, but for me that was ‘normal.’ It was all I had ever known. And it made it difficult to live any kind of ordinary life.

I didn’t have the freedom to socialize with the other kids … no extra-curricular activities … no standing by the lockers and talking about last night’s TV shows (shoot – half the time I was on them performing) … no science clubs or sports … because I could have hurt myself and any accident or injury would have affected my ability to perform and cost everyone around me a lot of money.

Being the front man for the Jackson 5, if I was injured and couldn’t perform the show stopped. It was a lot of responsibility for a kid. And my father made sure that I realized that my carelessness or lack of responsibility impacted the whole family. My brothers could get hurt and the show would go on … and that actually happened during the Victory Tour. Jackie was injured and couldn’t perform and we did many shows without him. But the show didn’t stop. If I got hurt and couldn’t perform, that was IT for the show.

I was always shielded and protected by the people around me … first my father when I was very young … then my father and the Motown machine when the Jackson 5 became a hit … then, as my father became less and less active, his role was taken over by Berry Gordy and Bill Bray and bodyguards and lawyers and talent agents and press agents. There were always several layers of protection that kept me isolated from the normal, everyday things that all kids face during their formative years.

Don’t get me wrong …  I needed those people in order to commit myself body and soul to Music … to remain open to the melodies and harmonies which were always playing in my heart and mind. I had had people around me all my life who had exploited my name and my wealth … for my own benefit as well as for theirs. I needed them … and I needed to be able to trust them … tough people who could conduct my business affairs, leaving me free to concentrate all my energy on the sensitive, innocent parts of me that responded to music and the pain of others with purpose and resolve. No one can be everywhere at once and as my brand grew it became more and more impossible for me to oversee everything. By the time it hit the Thriller stage, it became difficult to follow all the tentacles reaching out into all my business affairs.

Much of the world doesn’t see that the entertainment industry is a cut-throat juggernaut that will quickly chew up those who allow it to run over them and spit them out. All most people see is the glamour … and it is glamorous … but it has a tough, shadowy, hardened underbelly hidden beneath all the glamour. Toughness is required to navigate the ins and outs of the business. But that was not who I wanted to be, so I needed people I could trust around me to be that for me while I devoted myself to the sensitive, artistic side of me.

And we’re back to the first point in this discussion. Even the most trusted of my representatives could be seduced easily.

When you grow up isolated from customary human contact, shielded and protected from the world around you, devoted to remaining innocent and childlike so that the music would continue to flow through you and out into the world, committed to remaining empathic  and feeling the pain of the children who were sick or dying and wanting to do something about it, you don’t see the greed and dishonesty in people. You see their vulnerability … because you share it. You see the qualities that make them more like you. In some cases, you see something in their eyes that makes you uncomfortable, but being who you are, you can’t identify it. You just know there’s something wrong and can’t explain your discomfort.

I think I said something similar before when we were talking about Gavin. Would you mind putting that here?

Yes, Dear One, I remember. Let me see if I can find the relevant reference. Here it is. In Installment #16 (February 19 through February 26, 2011), you said:

When I met Gavin, he was a boy who only had a few weeks to live. His parents had been told to begin making arrangements for his funeral! I met him on the phone, really and we would talk for hours. I would call him from wherever I was and encourage him to keep fighting his cancer and taught him how to visualize the cancer cells being gobbled up by the PacMan cells. When we met face-to-face, he was a very sick child in a wheelchair … bald … weak … undersized … and the effects of his chemo made him very ill. He was a sweet, open, caring, loving boy with a terminal illness. After he had visited Neverland a couple of times, he began to get better and I was so grateful.

By the time of the Bashir interview, almost two years later (which is when your friend probably saw him on television), the child had changed dramatically. For one thing, he was two years older when he had been told that he would be dead within a few weeks. He was very much more under the influence of his mother … and his mother always made me uncomfortable. There was something in her eyes that I couldn’t identify.

Is that the one?

Yeah, that’s it. As we’ve talked about before, when two people meet there is an exchange of energy between them. The energy that is you and the energy that is me either recognize or do not recognize each other as One. In other words, they identify qualities in each other that they either share or do not share … kinda like a mirror reflecting them back to themselves. If there are a lot of shared traits, they experience an attraction or an affinity to each other. It doesn’t matter if the meeting is face-to-face or through technology like a television broadcast or the internet; the same attraction will occur although dimmed a bit. This is what happened when that train hit you in 1992. If there are very few or no shared traits, they repel each other. They make each other uncomfortable. Are you with me?

Absolutely, Beloved … always.

Good. So you see, when I first met Gavin, I identified very strongly with his vulnerability. I saw lots of common traits that we both shared, saw myself in him very clearly and my heart responded to his innocence and his bruised and wounded soul. My empathy couldn’t help but reach out to him and try to heal him. But later, as he grew older and more under the influence of his mother, I saw less and less of those traits we had shared … and more and more of the qualities that made me uncomfortable in his mother. He was going through those growing pains that most adolescents experience and acquiring some of the layers of hardness and loss of innocence that separated me from him more and more.

In that passage, I mention that there was something in Janet’s eyes that I couldn’t identify. And that is true.

Okay, so … here’s the thing. How does honesty recognize and identify dishonesty? How does love and generosity and a genuine desire to heal identify possessiveness, greed and manipulation? How does ‘what-can-I-give-to-heal-this-person’ recognize ‘how-can-I-profit-from-this-situation?’ The two viewpoints are so diametrically opposite that they may cause a repulsion, discomfort or disconnect … but the discomfort can’t really be identified, can it? That’s what I meant in the earlier dialog. Although I felt a discomfort around Janet, I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was that made me uncomfortable.

Because of my isolation and inability to ‘toughen up’ like most kids do in their adolescent years, I didn’t grow those layers of hardness around my heart … the ones that could relate to and identify the traits in others that were not reflected in me. And I am very glad I didn’t. It was those layers of hardness and coldness and dishonesty that would have shut me off … made me less open … to the music (which was as necessary to me as breathing) as well as to the pain of others. It would have made me stop and consider myself and what it would cost me try to heal that pain in whatever way I could.My life would have looked very different if I had.

In other words, my spirit didn’t callous like you referred to earlier; it just bled and bled and bled. Greed and dishonesty, coldness and hardness of heart were not part of my emotional make up. I couldn’t relate to them. So, identifying them in someone else was impossible.

Do you see what I mean?

Yes, Dear One, I do see what you mean. But, I have to ask you this. Please forgive me. I don’t mean to offend you in any way, but when I read Michael Jackson Conspiracy,one of the points that really caught my attention was that you had signed over your Power of Attorney to your representatives at the time that the Arvizo’s were staying at Neverland. I read that you had done the same with someone called Dr. Thome Thome when you were involved in rehearsals for the O2 shows.  I wondered why you would be so incautious.

See? You have fallen victim to a judgment of ‘incautious’ based on your very limited knowledge of how things are done in big business and in the entertainment industry.

I’m sorry, baby. I don’t mean to be judgmental.

Don’t apologize. I am not offended. I can understand how you have reached this conclusion.You are accustomed to hearing of this power being assigned only as a last resort when a person is on his death bed or is incapacitated past the point of conducting her own affairs.

This is one of the points that the media has blown way out of proportion in my case … like plastic surgery. I didn’t invent this method of doing business … just as I didn’t invent plastic surgery … but I did use it to my advantage.

The reports always made a big deal out of anything that would make me look strange.  I couldn’t just get my nose done and a cleft added; because it was me, I was addicted to plastic surgery. Everyone else in Hollywood can get breast augmentation, tummy tucks, serial Botox injections or major hard road re-construction. But Michael Jackson gets his nose done and it’s suddenly front page news. Have you ever looked at Joan Rivers’ face? This is another example of the same kind of thing.

Assigning Power of Attorney is a common practice in the entertainment industry and in the corporate world. Busy Fortune 500 executives, actors, entertainers and celebrities often sign over their power of attorney to their lawyers or representatives so that they can close deals or sign contracts or make purchases on their behalf in their absence. For example, Branca needed my Power of Attorney to accomplish my purchase of the ATV Music Publishing catalog while I was touring on the Victory Tour. He needed it again to clinch the purchase of Sycamore Valley Ranch which became Neverland Valley Ranch while I was touring on the BAD Tour.

In most cases, the Power of Attorney is used to close the transaction and, then, it is rescinded or nullified when the purchase or contract is in force. Branca was always upfront about the Power of Attorney being rescinded. Others later in my life were not, but because it was such a common practice in my field and I had done it so many times over the years, I never questioned or checked that the Power of Attorney was nullified. And we are back to the first point we discussed in this Conversation, again, aren’t we? Do you see how the tentacles branch out into almost every area of my life?

Thirdly, I never wanted to see those traits because I believe very strongly that we have to bring salvation back.

You and I must make a pact

We must bring salvation back

Where there is love

I’ll Be There

Part of bringing salvation back is remembering how to trust. As we’ve talked about before in these discussions … we don’t trust ourselves, we don’t trust our parents, we don’t trust our neighbors, our national leaders, our corporations, our governments, our clergy and religious leaders and we don’t trust our God.

I wanted to demonstrate trust because how can you preach a concept unless you practice it? I wanted to trust that the people around me were good and honest. I wanted to trust that they would be truthful and faithful and loyal. And I never wanted to judge anyone unfairly. I knew what that felt like and I never wanted to cause anyone such pain. I would rather err on the side of trust than to judge someone as unfairly as I was judged by the world for half my life.

I mentioned before that trust will be a tough lesson for all of us to re-learn because we have become so used to not trusting. And it will not be without its rather spectacular failures, but it will be worth the pain of those failures to return to trusting our God, first and foremost. All the others will follow like night follows day from that.

Jan – May 25, 2012

Conversations – Installment #57

May 10 through May 13, 2012

Michael, my Beloved Angel, our book is out.  And it is amazing.

I don’t know how to thank you for continuing to push me toward realizing my dream.  It took almost twenty years, but we finally got there.

And I don’t know how to thank you for making that dream a reality … for giving that gift to the world … for allowing my messages and my words to be heard in yours in the physical realm, even after my physical experiment has ended. God bless you! 

You see? In God’s Perfect Plan, everyone’s highest and greatest good is taken into account. When we express the gifts she has given us, the entire world benefits. No one is left out. That’s what makes the Plan so doggone perfect. On Earth as it is in heaven. As above, so below. I am so proud of you for making this happen for both of us, even though you were so afraid of it for so very long. For all that time, you allowed your doubts and fears to define you and deprived yourself of owning your own untapped potential!

You spent so long telling yourself why it couldn’t be done and completely overlooked finding out how to make it happen and committing yourself to overcoming the obstacles standing in your way.

In my physical life, I never wanted to hear why it couldn’t be done. All I wanted to do was learn what I needed to know to overcome the obstacles and put in the time and effort and love to make it a reality.

Yes, Michael, I agree. You are such a beautiful and perfect example of that principle. In your music, in the example you left us of a life so beautifully-lived, in your speeches which always encouraged us to ‘go for our dreams,’ and in these conversations, you always showed us the way to go and moved us toward a more expansive view of ourselves and what our lives could mean than we ever imagined was possible … a more all-inclusive definition of who we are and what we were meant to be. In defining yourself as beyond limitation and in your unquenchable determination to be the best you could possibly be, you help us see that, we too, are capable of much more than our limiting, contracting, critical self-talk gives us credit for.

God bless you! And thank you for having enough faith in me still … after all the garbage you’ve heard and read … to permit me to be your teacher, allowing me the privilege of showing you … all of you … what can be accomplished. Most of all … thank you for continuing to value my touch upon your lives and hearts and souls. Yes, we limit ourselves … or allow others to limit us … so much with our judgments and lack of patience. With a little perseverance, a lot of hard work, determination, no star is beyond your grasp.

Cuz you can climb the highest mountain

Swim the deepest sea

All you need is the will to want it and a little self-esteem

So keep the faith because it’s just a matter of time

Before your confidence will win out

But you gotta keep the faith 

It’s like we’ve spoken about before when talking about the game that is supposed to be teaching you how to dance <ahem> [Michael clears his throat and then giggles.]

I know, Baby … I know … maybe I’ll be able to devote a little more time to that idea after July 1. I need 60-hour days!

You wouldn’t live through 60-hour days.

I feel like I’m barely living through 24-hour days!

We’ve talked about that before, too. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Relax. But we’re getting way off track here.

What we believe, we become. In a previous conversation, I asked you to yell those words. Would you please do that again here?

Okay!

WHAT WE BELIEVE, WE BECOME!!!!

Thank you. If we believe we are incapable of any kind of achievement, whatever it may be, we will be incapable of any kind of achievement. We create our own inability with our belief in it. We make that our reality by giving our attention to it … by focusing on it!

But, if we believe that with a reasonable amount of effort and time we can achieve what we desire, we will create that achievement and we will find that we can do anything. Just change your belief and your whole world changes. Don’t listen to those voices that tell you ‘it can’t be done’ and ‘that’s impossible.’ Just DO it! Stop sabotaging your dreams!

Stop this agony of wishing

Play it out

Don’t think, don’t hesitate

Curving back within yourself

Just create … just create

We are all capable of so much more than we allow ourselves to imagine. We all have so much latent potential just waiting to be tapped and recognized, longing to be freed from the jail cells we have imprisoned it in with our lack of faith.

There is so much more to being human than our striving for more … more money, more power or more ‘things’ … allow us to contemplate as possible. With a little focus and some devotion and some hard work, we are all stars in God’s canopy. And we can do anything.

Believe in yourself no matter what it’s gonna take

You can make it happen but you gotta keep the faith!

Beloved, ever since my copy of Conversations: The Book arrived and I held it in my hands for the first time, I have been totally wrapped up in trying to grasp the concept of ‘expansion.’ The word expansion is defined as ‘the act of expanding’ which doesn’t help a whole lot in understanding the term. So, we have to go back to the word expand to find the meaning. The American Heritage College Dictionary defines expand as: ‘to increase in size, volume, quantity, or scope,’ or ‘to open something up or out.’ And Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary adds the following definition to the former two: ‘to express fully or in detail.’

Michael, I’ve been fascinated with this concept in the past couple of weeks.

That’s interesting. Can you tell me why?

Well, Beloved Angel, my mind has been turning this concept over and over in several different contexts. I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around it, and it hasn’t really crystallized with any degree of clarity, yet. I think it’s kinda like your explanation of the term “vast” from our earlier discussion in … what was it? … Installment #40 (August 28 through September 3, 2011). I think it’s one of those terms that we don’t really understand the definition of very well. Or, would it be more appropriate to say that we haven’t begun to delve into it with any degree of depth? Like the term “vast” … its meaning is more inclusive … and elusive … than we think.

My thanks to Isabelle for the beautiful background image.

Let me see if I can explain how this concept is shaping in my mind. At least, it is running through the gears when I am not so totally in love with our book that I am sitting in my recliner and reading it AGAIN! (I mean, it’s not like I haven’t read it through for errors like four times already! But it’s a different experience when you take that ‘focus’ on looking for problems away and you just read it like a book. LOL! I should know this thing by heart, by now.)

[Michael laughs.] Do you see how things change when you shift your focus … change your perspective? That statement just proves my point.

Yes, it does, doesn’t it? I read a quote somewhere that a music critic had written about you. I wish I could find it again. I thought it was in Joe Vogel’s book Man in the Music: The Creative Life and Work of Michael Jackson, but I skimmed quickly through the book and can’t find the exact quote at the moment so I will have to paraphrase. It was something like: the music industry had to expand to accommodate Michael Jackson and it shrank back down again when he stopped making great music. [Afterward ... Yay ... I found it! It is in the Introduction of Joe Vogel's book and the quote is attributed to Hampton Stevens, a cultural critic: "The oft-repeated conventional wisdom - that Jackson's videos made MTV and so 'changed the music industry' is only half-true. It's more like the music industry ballooned to encompass Jackson's talent and shrunk down again without him. Videos didn't matter before Michael, and they ceased to matter at almost the precise cultural moment he stopped producing great work."]

Well, you never stopped producing great work, but, aside from that obvious fallacy, when I first read the quote, it impressed me with how true a statement that really is. I mean, in retrospect, it seemed like that’s exactly what happened.

No one had ever experienced anything like Michael Jackson before. Your creativity, devotion to innovation and perfect execution, and your vision for your projects were totally unprecedented, so we all kinda had to expand our definition of the term ‘entertainer.’ Your ability to see past the limitations in the human condition … and achieve the impossible, as a result … as expressed in your short films and in your recordings didn’t really fit the modus operandi of any other artist that was in regular rotation on MTV or VH1, so music television had to stretch to accommodate your presence. Your commitment and over-the-top methods in recording and pushing the technology to conform more closely to your dreams had never been seen in a film or recording studio, so those technologies had to broaden and new technologies had to be developed to do things the way you wanted them done.  All of these areas in the field of entertainment had to expand or explode outward while you were on the scene. We’ve talked about it before as ‘pushing the envelope upward and to all sides.’

It was like you were an explosion of never-before- seen talent and ambition, creativity and imagination. Explosion is defined by The American College Dictionary as follows: ‘a release of mechanical, chemical, or nuclear energy in a sudden and usually violent manner’ (well, I think they should add kinetic energy to that listing, but that’s just my opinion) … or a ‘violent bursting as a result of internal pressure.’

However, I don’t think the critic went far enough. It wasn’t just the music industry that had to expand. It was the entire field of entertainment. It was film production and performance art, as Stan Winston commented during the behind-the-scenes footage of Ghosts. Many of the technologies that were developed for your use in Ghosts have been used in recent films like the new release of Dark Shadows.

It was dance and physical expression, as Chris Judd, Brett Barnes, Wade Robson, all your backup dancers for the O2 concerts and Travis Payne have commented. It was the recording industry and its techniques and technology, as Bruce Swieden and Teddy Riley and Akon and Lenny Kravitz have stated.  It was fashion, as Zaldy and Michael Bush and Dennis Tompkins said in the Special Features of This Is It.  Everything and everyone around you had to stretch … expand … to make room for you … in the field of entertainment.

Gee, I didn’t think I was that big. You are making me sound like some kind of cartoon character who puts a hose in his mouth and blows up like a balloon or like Harry Potter’s aunt who swells, popping buttons and beads all over the place before she floats away into the night sky. [Michael giggles.]

That’s exactly the visualization that comes to mind when I’m talking about the term ‘expansion.’ The field of entertainment had to become elastic … like a balloon … to stretch outward and upward and to all sides … so that you would fit.

In size you are small (especially when you started out); in stature you are Paul Bunyan on steroids; in strength and resolve you are Samson from the Bible; in impact you are the Big Bang, Beloved!! And the echoes of your presence will be felt on this planet forever.

Paul Bunyan on steroids. [Snickers.]That’s funny!

Which brings me to the point of this Conversation. [Took us long enough to get here, didn’t it?] It wasn’t just the field of entertainment that had to become bigger to accommodate you. The entire planet and the whole definition of being ‘human’ had to take a deep inhalation and expand its lungs while you were physically present on this Earth. The term generosity had to be redefined. The definition of the term humanitarian had to expand.  The word forgiveness had to achieve new clarity. The term artist had to take on whole new meanings that are still being explored by all of your children.

Music television retracted when it adopted the reality show format. The field of performance has contracted because no one else on the planet can do what you did to … and with … an audience. The recording industry shrank when you left the studio because no one shared your vision or invested as much in the recording process, so no one is pushing it forward by leaps and bounds, as you did on so many occasions. As a result of that contraction, Sony has experienced its eighth year of billion dollar losses and red ink. And Michael Jackson, who single-handedly bailed the recording industry out on more than one occasion, isn’t around to pull it out of its downward slide.

In contrast to the field of entertainment, however, instead of ‘shrinking back down’ when you moved on to new adventures as the quote earlier so falsely claimed, that ‘expansion’ that was so much a part of your life with us has continued and escalated in all of your children.

We are experiencing an ‘explosion’ of imagination and talent … a second Renaissance, if you will … of unprecedented magnitude. One manifestation of that Renaissance is our book, but there are many, many others.

Many of my friends who have never drawn anything in their lives are being moved to draw you … or paint you … to express their love visually … and I have included several of their sketches and paintings in our book.  Others who have never written poems before are putting their love for you into beautiful poetic expressions.  There are people reproducing your likeness in gumballs and soda cans and beading and chicken wire … on building facades and 3D sidewalk art all over the world. Statues are blooming like flowers in far flung corners of the world. New videos are created on a daily, almost hourly, basis. Tribute songs are being written; tribute shows are being performed and are touring the country.

You have crawled inside each one of us who have allowed you the smallest sliver of space, taken a deep, deep breath and stretched our definitions of ourselves to include creativity of which we never imagined we were capable. It’s amazing and I am so blessed to be a small, insignificant part of it all.

As the tidal wave of ripples radiate outward from your physical life, those threads of light expand outwards, engulfing and exploding out of each one of us in ways that we never dreamed were possible. You have, with your example, given us permission to explore the grandest vision of ourselves we have ever entertained and encouraged us to step into that vision in new and unprecedented ways. And we are so very grateful.

Yes, it’s your time to shine. I’ll be right there with you.

Jan – May 13, 2012

Announcing “Conversations” The Book

Available now at Lulu.com

Conversations – Installment 56

April  21 through April 28, 2012

Come Together Over Michael Jackson

My Heart, in our last installment, we discussed a major, unified push toward creating a healed Planet Earth with visualizations and prayers intended to address some of the major issues facing our world and anchoring those solutions within our own individual awareness and the collective consciousness of our world.

Yes, I remember your Gift. It is so beautiful! Thank you!

We’ve decided to call this campaign “Come Together Over Michael Jackson.” It is scheduled to begin the day after the Major Love Prayer on April 25^th with visualizations aimed at silencing every gun on Earth for one minute on June 25, 2012 in your name and in your honor.

Each successive month from the 26^th through the Major Love Prayer on the following 25^th a different focus topic will be chosen. A six month schedule of focus topics follows:

Present to June 25:  Silence every gun on planet Earth for one minute on June 25.

June 26 to July 25:  No child dies of starvation on Planet Earth on July 25.

July 26 to August 25:   No child on Planet Earth dies from a treatable disease on August 25.

August 26 to September 25:  No young person dies from random or gang violence on September 25.

September 26 to October 25: No young person is denied an education due to ethnic origin or economic lack on October 25.

October 26 to November 25: Every child victim of a life-threatening disease realizes his or her dream on November 25.

Additional focus topics will be added to complete the year as your children approach the end of the six-month period.

Suggested Visualization:

You may wish to bring a sacred feeling to your practice by lighting a candle or burning sage or a favorite incense to purify your meditation space and enhance your quiet mood. It is strictly a matter of personal preference.

Sitting in a comfortable chair, take several deep, cleansing breaths, inflating your diaphragm first and then your lungs and filling your inner space with the white or golden light of love. Allowing your mind to be cleared of all thought, expel any negative emotion with your exhalations, emptying your lungs first and then your diaphragm.  You may wish to ask your angels and guides to be present and to guide your spiritual practice.

When you are breathing comfortably, sanctify your inner space by repeating a favorite prayer, mantra or inspirational quote. One of my favorite prayers … and one that we have used with great success in the past … is St. Francis Prayer:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace
Where there is hatred, let me sow love
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
Where there is sadness, joy
O, Divine Master, grant that I may seek
Not so much to be consoled as to console
To be understood as to understand
To be loved as to love
For it is in giving that we receive
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it is in dying that we are born unto Eternal Life. Amen.

When your mind is quiet and your breathing feels natural and comfortable, visualize the last few moments of Michael’s performance of Earth Song from any of the many stages upon which he performed it.

See the tank roaring onto the stage as he stands with his arms flung wide in front of it in defiance.

See the soldier opening the hatch of the tank and jumping from its treads to point his rifle at the innocent bystanders occupying the stage with Michael.

See him turn and point his rifle directly at Michael and the pained, haunted look on Michael’s face.

Watch as Michael slowly raises his right hand to touch the barrel of the rifle with his fingertips and point the rifle towards the stage.

Watch as Michael plants his feet firmly at the front of the stage, turns his arms so that his palms are facing up and motions with his arms from the center of his chest out over us, his audience, in a silent plea for us to do likewise. Pour all the love your heart can hold into the intention of silencing all the guns on Planet Earth for one minute on June 25, 2012. Know that Michael joins his prayers and intentions to ours and that all of God’s universe joins us in our visualization to create peace.

Repeat this visualization, if you wish, to anchor it firmly in your awareness. On the repetition, you may want to add your intention that on June 25, 2012 all the guns on Planet Earth are silent for one full minute. Feel the joy of that minute of silence and extend that joy and peace outward to blanket the planet. Feel our great love for our beautiful, blue planet and all her inhabitants. On the day of Major Love Prayer (the 25^th), know that you are joined by thousands of others in every corner of the world. Feel their presence. Feel the love we all share … for each other … for our planet … for our beautiful Earth Angel. Focus that love like a laser beam upon our planet. Visualize joining hands all across the world to blanket the planet in our love.

If the last few moments of Earth Song are uncomfortable for you, substitute the few moments from the short film for Heal The World when the soldiers throw all their guns into a pile on the street. This visual speaks to the same concept just as strongly.

You may wish to add prayers for friends or loved ones experiencing health or personal problems.

Finish your visualization practice with a prayer of thanksgiving for your intention being made manifest in this physical reality. Thank Michael for being near and joining his intention with ours as we heal this violation of our common human spirit. Thank him for bringing us all to Come Together Over Michael Jackson.

I know that you have been doing this visualization for a while now, haven’t you?

Yes, I have.

I think you should tell your readers what happened the first time you did this visualization.

Okay, well a few of my friends and I were discussing this concept and some of them expressed concern over being uncomfortable with the rifle pointing at you. Suggestions for substitute visualizations were proposed. One of them was to use the visualization as suggested above, with the rifle barrel pointing directly at you, but then to show the gun melting like in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. We all remember Elmer Fudd’s frustration as his shotgun barrel spluttered and coughed and melted, hanging loose from the butt and swinging with his movements or dragging on the ground as he chased that “wiley wabbit” across the cartoon landscape.

So, the first time I tried this visualization, I was very successful in anchoring the picture in my mind. As you and most of my readers know, this is still a new experience for me so I was very pleased with how easily this short clip from your many performances of Earth Song during your HIStory World Tour was reproduced in my mind. I saw the tank roll out onto the stage very clearly and I saw you jump out in front of it with your arms extended out to the sides to stop it. I pictured the soldier jumping from the hatch and pointing the rifle at your dancers and the children you had invited to participate. I saw the soldier turn and aim the barrel of his rifle directly at you. Then, just like in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, the barrel of the rifle melted and ended up swinging flaccidly from the butt of the gun. You looked over and saw this and just started laughing uproariously and ended up rolling around on the stage holding your sides and laughing. I was a little upset because I was trying to be serious and began to view the incident as a failed attempt.

My thanks to Debbie for the beautiful graphic.

[Michael laughs.] No, it wasn’t a failed attempt. As a matter of fact, it was probably the most effective visualization experience you have ever had.

And it brings out a very good point that I wanted to make, so I’m glad you injected this incident into this discussion. I know these meditations are dealing with very serious situations, such as war and hunger and children dying of preventable diseases, but you really need to bring some joy and light-heartedness into this practice. You are a little too serious. We need to inject a little fun and humor and laughter into these visualizations, occasionally, to propel them into the world consciousness … and your own … with more speed and force. You have to admit, this incident has made your practice much more memorable in your mind, hasn’t it?

Definitely, My Heart … it is memorable. Each evening and morning since, as I sit down to begin to breathe consciously, I wonder if it will be repeated or if I will get through the visualization with you still standing on your feet with your arms extended toward the audience.

Well, we don’t want it to become stale, do we? We’ll just sneak it in every once in a while to keep you on your toes. [Michael giggles.] 

As we’ve said before in these conversations, you are forming intention…and there is nothing on earth that can stop intention from impacting your own mind and your own soul and, by extension, the world soul. Intention is the steam-roller of creation … the earthmover of reality. It is the work horse that gets the job done. 

While intention is the earthmover, the steam-roller of creation, joy is the fuel that moves that massive machinery forward, the accelerant without which the task becomes a chore instead of the act of selfless love that we want to broadcast with these visualizations. It’s the Pac-Man part of the equation that brings fun and imagination and laughter and releases all those ‘happy’ chemicals into your own organism. By extension, the world soul must be impacted with that same joy and laughter. 

I always brought joy and my love to everything I did whether in the recording studio or in film production or in performance or in building Neverland Valley Ranch.

Yes, Michael, and it showed. I was re-reading Joe Vogel’s magnificent book Man in the Music: The Creative Life and Work of Michael Jackson today and noticed the following paragraph in the Introduction:

In spite of his quirks, it is nearly impossible to find someone Jackson worked with who didn’t walk away with a profound level of respect and appreciation. Even when his personal life was in disarray, his creative colleagues witnessed an individual far different than the man depicted in the tabloids. From producers to assistant engineers to fellow musicians, they describe him as possessing a certain ‘aura,’ but being down-to-earth, humble, and polite. They describe his sense of humor and ‘boisterous’ laugh; they describe his curiosity; they describe his passion and excitement for each new project. “All of Michael’s recordings were done with a sense of joy that I have never experienced with another artist,” recalls longtime recording engineer Bruce Swedien. “Not just fun and laughing and stuff. I mean real musical joy. His passion for what we were doing was boundless.”

The quote reminded me so much of this incident with the visualization. I actually saw the visualization again in my mind as I read it. I interpreted ‘happening’ upon it today as just another illustration of your subtle methods of communication with me … one of the many ways that these conversations get accomplished.

[Michael laughs.] Well, this must be a first. Woohoo! I don’t think I’ve ever been called ‘subtle’ before. I think I like it. I’m subtle! The thing is that you noticed that little visual running through your mind just after reading the paragraph in a totally unrelated context, tucked it away until you got home and remembered it long enough to put it into our conversation. And this is what makes these discussions possible. Thank you and God bless you.

I remarked upon a couple of other paragraphs I read in the Introduction of Mr. Vogel’s book as well. May I put those here, too?

Of course.

Okay. From the Introduction of Man in the Music: The Creative Life and Work of Michael Jackson:

As an artist, then, Jackson’s work was about liberation. He wanted to free what was bound, transform what was petrified, and awaken what was dormant. He wanted to break through any obstacle that constrained the imagination, any chains – psychological, social, or political – that imprisoned the body or mind. This is what art meant to him personally, and it was his intended effect on his audience as well.

For millions around the world, of course, this is exactly what he accomplished. To admirers, he was always far more than a mere celebrity or pop star. He was music incarnate. Listening to his songs or watching him perform was an injection of life, a torrent of powerful emotions. Some likened it to a sort of spiritual ecstasy. Others compared it to an exorcism. Fans spoke of feeling transported, empowered, connected, inspired.

If there is an overarching thread to Jackson’s work, however, it is its persistent dissatisfaction with the world as it is, and its attempt to provide some kind of escape, liberation, or transformation as antidote. It is a fundamentally Romantic paradigm. Art, as the poet Percy Shelley put it, is “the mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.” It is a journey, in other words, toward wholeness or integration.

The thing that so moved me about the above three paragraphs is that they represent a perfect illustration of what you are still doing. Joe Vogel related it to your art; he doesn’t quite jump off the cliff into the spiritual realm, but sees it in the body of work you left behind. I see it in the impact you have had … and continue to have … upon us, your children … in these conversations and in the thousand and one ways you continue to breathe your spirit into us.

Hee Hee Hee! You noticed? Remember, I told you earlier that you are all my songs … my love songs … and that I would bring the same patience and attention to detail with your development as I brought to the recording process … or film production … or the performances. That is true.

Yes, Beloved, I noticed.  With these conversations you are “transforming what was petrified” … our inability to see past the physical realm is being transformed into a realization of an entirely different dimension, a dimension in which your continued presence is palpable and a thing of great joy to us.

You are “freeing what was bound” by releasing our imaginations to recreate our world into a haven of joy and peace and goodness with these creative visualizations.

You are “awakening what was dormant” by aligning so many of us with a higher purpose and opening our hearts to a more spiritual view of life, while at the same time encouraging us to utilize the individual gifts we have been given in service to that cause.

You are removing the blinders from our imaginations and encouraging us to dream BIGGER than we ever thought possible … to guide our world into a more sane, humane, loving and healing awareness.

You are still engaged in this “journey toward wholeness or integration” … in your art … in the conduct of your life during your physical experiment … and in your communications with us, guiding us toward that same wholeness and integration in the aftermath of the day the Earth stood still. It mystifies me how consistently and single-mindedly your art, your life and your afterlife are aimed unerringly at the same goal.

“Even though rooted in Black experience, he felt it would be a crime to limit his music to one race, sex, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation or nationality. Michael’s art transcended every way that human beings have thought of to separate themselves, and then healed those divisions, at least at the instant that we all shared his music.” Mr. Vogel attributes this quote to Michael Eric Dyson, cultural critic.

The sentence that really caught my attention from the above paragraph is: Michael’s art transcended every way that human beings have thought of to separate themselves, and then healed those divisions.

You are still doing this. Even what has been considered the ultimate separation of death doesn’t slow you down. I am in total awe of the beautiful symmetry contained within these comparisons.

God bless you! But, please, don’t be in awe of me. I never wanted anyone to be in awe of me. I’m no different than you. That awe was what separated me from all of you during my physical life. It was the reason my late night forays into the streets surrounding my house at the very height of my fame ended in disaster because when the strangers I met realized it was me, they were like, “Oh my God, you’re Michael Jackson! Will you give me your autograph? It’s for my daughter.” It is what kept me alone on one side of the glass window while all your love and caring was on the other. That awe was what made it impossible for me to be treated like everyone else.

I am not doing this alone. You are all an integral and important part of this process … even when you think your experiments in visualization have failed. Those experiments cannot fail.

When your individual consciousness is whole and integrated … your mind, body and soul fully and completely in balance … it must affect the world soul. The awareness that:

If you want to make the world a better place

Take a look at yourself and make a change

Is what we are striving toward is so important.

Instead of being in awe of me, join with me … all of you … in this awareness of love.

You can change the world

[I can’t do it by myself]

You can touch the sky

[Gonna take somebody’s help]

You’re the chosen one

 

We’re on a mission in the everlasting light that shines

A revelation of the true enchantments of our minds.

So long, bad times

We gonna shake it up, and break it up

We’re sharing light brighter than the sun

Hello, good times

We’re here to stimulate, eliminate

And congregate, illuminate

We are here to change the world

Sing it

We are here to change the world

Gonna change the world

So just surrender cuz the power’s deep inside my soul

Sing it

We are here to change the world!

 

Oh, My Heart, I do so love you!

And I love you, more.

Jan – April 22, 2012 

Videos by Gerri Stone

While I am involved in proofreading, please enjoy the below videos made by Gerri Stone. The first is Love That Never Ends, a poem that I composed and posted here at With a Child’s Heart that I read on a blog radio entitled A Place in the Heart. The second is a poem by my dear friend and roommate in my pilgrimage to Michael Mecca in January, Charlene Burgess.

 

Thank you, Gerri for finding just the right pictures to go with the words.

Conversations – Installment #55

April 1 through April 8, 2012

I am walking along a dark path bordered by tall trees. The ground beneath my feet is strewn with pine needles; my silent footsteps raise the scent of a pine forest after a late winter thaw.  Light surrounds me that I cannot explain, but it caresses me as I walk and follows and precedes me as I go as if it emanates from my very being.

I carry in my hands a package, brightly-wrapped and beribboned. Ahead, through the tall trunks of the trees that seem to join over my head in a gothic arch, I see a brightly lit pastoral scene, shades of green and bright, saturated hues, the colors almost achingly-intense. I do not seem to be in any great hurry to reach my destination, stopping frequently to smell the lightly scented perfume of the tall trees or to watch some small animal scurry up a gnarled trunk or to listen to a faint, almost subliminal melody that floats just beyond the level of my awareness.

As I approach the end of this beautiful tunnel, I notice that the brightly lit space beyond is alive with color sparkling in a light that seems to rise from all directions, but whose origin is not detectable. This quality of light is beyond sunlight or moonlight. It sparkles and twinkles playfully from all directions and casts no shadows. The path is crossed up ahead by a stream or brook of glittering water from which rises a nearly subliminal melody, just on the cusp of detection by my sense of hearing. Across the brook is a clearing be-speckled with tiny wild flowers of every shade and hue. A tall tree bearing red fruit grows almost directly ahead. For some reason, the sight of this many-branched and leaf-bedecked tree increases my anticipation of reaching it, hurrying me along the path with my outstretched arms containing the package preceding my footfalls.

I approach the brook at almost a run, wondering how I’m ever going to get across. No bridge spans the distance between shores. My urgency increases when I notice someone sitting beneath the marvelous tree. Cradled between the ancient roots and resting with his back against the massive trunk sits a man. He is slim, compact, his elegant limbs at rest. He is wearing a red shirt, black pants and a fedora shades his face and forehead. His knees are bent toward his torso and his mismatched, stockinged feet, one encased in bright lime green and the other in yellow, rest against the verdant grass beneath the stately tree. He is reading and the book he is reading lies against his thighs, leaving his hands free to turn the pages. Intermittently, his left hand sinks towards the earth at his side … to something resting beside his left leg and hip that I cannot see from the shore upon which I am standing, still trying to figure out how I will cross to join him.

He doesn’t seem to notice me across the brook from him, and I hesitate to disturb him by calling out, but I hear within my own heart, “Come to me. I’ve been waiting for you.”

Throwing caution to the winds, I step off the embankment. To my surprise, I walk across easily without getting wet and scurry up the opposite bank to kneel at his side. Only then does he look away from the book he is reading to smile up at me. His face becomes visible as he tilts his head up and it emerges from beneath the shadow of the wide brim of his hat … his beauty spellbinding, his eyes hypnotic and his smile engaging. Finally, as his left hand descends to his side again, I notice a small dog lying by his side. The dog is a Shetland Sheepdog, but a very small one. The dog looks at me and rises to its feet to crawl over Michael to get to me, his tail wagging his little body furiously and his bark a familiar, warm welcome.

“Impy?” I whisper. “Sir Impalot? Is it really you?” My thoughts are chaotic as my little dog vaults over a reclining Michael to jump into my outstretched arms, unbalancing the package resting in my hands to fall on Michael’s abdomen.

“Ouch,” he exclaims, laughing, his audible exhalation a resounding, “ufff.” Imp is wagging his entire body in his joy and excitement to see me. “He’s been keeping me company,” Michael explains with a huge grin.

“I thought you didn’t like dogs?” I ask in dismay.

“Nah,” he replies. “I love dogs. I was a little afraid of some dogs in life, but there is nothing to fear, here. And Imp would never bite me. About the worst thing Imp would do is love me to death. We’re good friends. I thought you would appreciate seeing him again.”

“You were absolutely right, Beloved. I miss him a lot.” I say. “You know, it’s funny … when I got back to the house after shopping today, I could have sworn I heard Impy barking as he waited for us to get inside. That dog has a bark that could peel wallpaper.”

Michael looks at me intently. “You could get another dog, you know.”

“No, Beloved,” I respond sadly. “There could never be another Sir Impalot … just like there could never be another you. He is totally unique.”

“I understand. What’s this?” Michael asks excitedly looking at the brightly wrapped package balancing on his flat stomach and rising and falling with his breaths.

“I’ve brought you a little gift,” I explain, calmly putting my beautiful, little Sheltie back on the ground and petting him as he curls up between both of us, his back end butted up against Michael’s arm and his nose resting in my lap while my hand pets his little head.

“Is it a Super-Soaker? Can I open it, now?” he asks with excitement in his voice.

I laugh a little before responding. “Now, Michael … what would you do with another Super-Soaker? You have the market cornered on Super-Soakers! And, no, you have to wait until June 25 to open it! [Michael whimpers a little.]

Then he laughs. “Okay, it’s June 25 … and you’ve been gone for a little more than a month.”

“Just kidding. Of course, you can open it now!”

Michael reaches around the box with a huge grin on his face to close the book he was reading and place it beside his left leg and hip in the spot that his gift to me, now gently sleeping on the lush grass between us with my hand caressing his little head, had rested only moments before. As he does, I notice that the book he is reading has a kind of burgundy or claret-colored cover with a black and white picture of him. Below the picture is the word, “Conversations” in fancy white script. The book is about six inches by nine inches by about an inch and a half thick.

Michael notices the direction of my gaze and comments, “It’s already real here. I can’t wait for you to hold it in your hands!”

“Is it good?” I ask sheepishly.

“Nah,” he replies a little forlornly. Then, he giggles. “Good doesn’t even begin to describe it. It’s the best! How could it not be? It is our love made real. Of course, it’s good!”

Gently, Michael unties the huge red bow on the top of the cube and inserts his elegant, long fingers under the seam of the paper to uncover a pure white, square box. He lifts the top of the box and looks inside and then his beautiful eyes search mine puzzled.

“It’s a Re-Birthday gift, Beloved … from me … and anyone else who wants to join me in this exercise. I know it looks empty, but it is full to overflowing, Michael. It is one year … 12 months … 365 days.

“You crammed a whole year in this little box?” he asks.

“Yup … a whole year. Beginning on June 25 of 2012, and each of the twelve succeeding months we will be devoting all our prayers and meditations and visualizations to a different problem that needs to be solved in order to heal our world … in your name … and in your honor.

You’ve told us in these Conversations that our focus is the most powerful weapon in our arsenal. You’ve shown us how to use that focus to anchor our intentions in the field of consciousness around the planet. In Conversation #22 (April 2, 2011 through April 9, 2011) you said:

Science is discovering some very interesting facts, one of which pertains to quantum physics. Experiments in an atomic collider have shown that atoms appear (become visible) and disappear (become invisible)…wink in and out of ‘reality’ … according to whether or not someone is paying attention to them. In other words, focusing your attention on a thing can move that thing from the invisible, spiritual Field of All Possibilities into the world of physical manifestation. This is how I moved all the songs that I left you all from the spiritual, invisible Field of All Possibilities. I focused my attention on hearing those melodies and beats and harmonies, making it an intense laser beam of intention, and plucked them out of the spiritual field that surrounds us all. They were already there! They just needed my attention to become ‘real.’

Therefore, ‘focus’ is the most powerful of the weapons in your arsenal for creating change in your world!

One of the reasons that some of the children in the hospitals I visited…or who were my guests at Neverland … were healed of their illnesses illustrates the point I was trying to make. One of the main side effects of any serious illness is the feeling of helplessness…the feeling that there is nothing ‘I can do to change my circumstances.’ Children, especially, are victims of this side effect because they are powerless in so much of their lives. So, I taught them how to visualize the cells that were making them ill as a specific color and used the visual of PacMan (a nearly universally-recognized game with which most children are familiar) going in and eating up all those colored cells.

The first benefit of this visualization was that it took the kid’s mind off (removed his focus from) the feeling ‘there’s nothing I can do’ in his situation …which is a self-perpetuating negative spiral…and gave him hope to focus his attention on. The second thing it did was give him a tool with which he could help himself…he didn’t have to depend on the adults all around him …the doctors and nurses and his parents; this was something he controlled when the rest of his life was out of control. The third thing it did was to allow the child to have fun, even those who were too sick to hold the game console in their hands. They could do this in their minds. Fun is an emotion that brings focus and playfulness and laughter and imagination into any situation …which diverts the child’s attention from his own internally-negative environment and switches the focus into more positive intention.

But it also has a major bio-chemical effect for the organism which has turned on itself by creating the child’s illness to begin with. These bio-chemical effects are not fully understood by our science at this time. Laughter and fun release a surge of “happy” chemicals within the brain which filter down through the entire organism, changing the internal atmosphere and surrounding the “unhappy” chemicals produced by the disease, itself. These “happy” chemicals have a calming, soothing, healing impact on the organism. And sometimes, not often enough, but sometimes, the child got better. I would have wanted all of them healed.

Second you are forming intention … and there is nothing on earth that can stop intention from impacting your own mind and your own soul and, by extension, the world soul. Intention is the steam-roller of creation … the earthmover of reality. It is the work horse that gets the job done. I’ve told you before in these conversations, when you arrive here on this side of the never-ending stream of life, you will find that you will be creating your own world (as you are on the physical side of life but with much more immediacy), traveling at the speed of thought, being fully present in more than one place at a time, and comforting more than one person at a time. And all of it is done by intention. Intention is not only the name of the game…it’s the only game in town. So, it would be good for all of you to practice before you get here…and that’s what we’re going to be doing in this installment.

Many of us, like the children you helped during your physical life, are trapped in our thoughts that there is nothing we can do to change our world. With these Conversations, you have shown us that there is something we can do … that we are not powerless … that we can improve our inner environment … and that the outer manifestation will change as a result of our intense focus.”

“Yes,” Michael says with a twinkle in his yes. “If things had gone differently, this is one of the things that I would have shown the world at Neverland. I had such marvelous plans for it … a medical and research facility that would treat children with the respect they so deserve … using traditional as well as folk and integrated medicinal modalities. They wouldn’t be confined to beds if they were able to move around more freely … and wanted to. Their visitors and activities would be restricted only by what they wanted to attempt. Of course, the rides and movie theater and water park would have already been there for their enjoyment and entertainment. I planned on showing 24/7 cartoons on giant outdoor screens so that if they awakened during the night, they wouldn’t be frightened and there was something to engage their minds in fun and laughter. I had people working on the plans and blueprints, designing the condominium units which would house entire families, so that they could all be together for the period of treatment and not have to worry about leaving their little ones alone.

It was all about two phases of construction away … about ten years. If I had just had that ten years, it would have been real in the physical world. As it is, it is reality here in the Field of All Possibilities and just awaits someone to pluck it out of the Field and make it happen. It’s only a matter of time, now. It is there. I guess it was mine to dream it … to imagine it with all my love … but it was not mine to build it.”

“Michael, do you regret that you didn’t get to complete it?”

“No, I trust in the perfection of the Plan. There is no reason for regret. It will happen in God’s time. I am grateful for the dream.

Sick children are so depressed … confined to no activity … tied to intravenous tubes and monitors … their little bodies filled with poisons to kill their cancers … nothing to take their minds off their suffering. It’s so wrong! Anyone would be depressed under the same conditions. They are often left alone for long periods of time while the nurses and doctors are taking care of other patients and their parents have gone home to sleep or take care of their brothers and sisters. And they are frightened.”

“In Installment #25 (April 23 through April 30, 2011) you said:

My vision has already come true! You and your friends have already created my vision in your visualizations and prayers. You have concentrated the most powerful tool you possess … your focus … on seeing it within your own universe. Furthermore, you have cemented it in your minds and hearts with your intentions to make it happen. Redirecting and refocusing that laser beam of attention from anger, resentment and a need to ‘make him pay,’ you have dedicated yourselves, your thoughts and your prayers to LOVE every day for more than a month, in your specific case…others have done so once a week. Whatever worked out best for you, it was more than you were doing before you committed yourselves to this vision. By taking a few minutes out of your day to sit quietly and commune with me with loving intent to fashion a healed world for yourself and your children to inhabit, you have fixed that vision in the new ‘collective unconscious’ we are creating … together. As more and more of you join that wave of LOVE, it grows more and more likely to manifest in your physical environment. Now, it is just a matter of time before that vision is reality. God bless all of you for your devotion…your friendship…your love…your understanding … and your determination to ensure that I am not forgotten and that my mission survives me.

Beloved, I am reminded of how so many of your children joined their hands … and their hearts … together to envision the outcome of the trial of Dr. Conrad Murray … not with thoughts of anger and vengeance against this man who so callously took your beautiful physical life from us … but with love for you.

Your Call for Love was heard and many people responded with faith and purpose. We refocused our attention from our negative emotions to cleaning up the courthouse and surrounding it with our love … and the intention that God’s truth would win the day. We offered our love in the form of sunflowers to everyone who approached the courthouse on the first day of the trial and our visual representation of your Call for Love as described in these Conversations (Installments #20 and #23) made a visual impact, creating a field of sunflowers for your family and your children and everyone, including the reporters and camera crews, to remember. Our prayers were answered in a very spectacular way on that occasion.

We cleaned up our own internal environments, removed the thorn from our anger and the sting from our desires for vengeance and anchored our intentions within the collective unconscious. The results were amazing.

Now, we give you back the unbelievable gift you gave us … our focus.

The first problem to be tackled is a daunting one, and it is one that will require a concerted effort on the part of all your children working together … in unison. I am hoping to get all my readers and all the individual groups on our social networking sites working on the same concept throughout the month in their private meditations and prayers. We will be focusing all of our meditations and visualizations … in my case, morning and evening on a daily basis … on anchoring the intention of silencing every gun on the planet Earth for one minute on the 25th of June in the collective consciousness of the planet … one magical, mystical minute in which not one gun is fired on Planet Earth in the name of Michael Jackson.

To make this concept visual, I will be envisioning your performance of Earth Song throughout the world during your HIStory World Tour … the moment when the soldier points his rifle directly at you and you move the end of the rifle to aim it toward the stage. During my early morning and evening prayer sessions, I will visualize this scene in your many performances of Earth Song.

Then on the 25th of the month, the Major Love Prayer will ask all of its participants to spend the first few moments of their regular practice on this visualization, blasting this intention with all the power of our combined focus into the collective unconscious with all the force and love we’ve got. We will hit this intention like that train hit me in 1992 and propel it into the universe with our Major LOVE Prayer.

I know this is a herculean feat to attempt, but you always told us to ‘dream BIGGER’ … to imagine ‘MORE’ … and I am taking your advice on this one. As you so strongly pointed out in several earlier Conversations, nothing was ever accomplished until someone dreamed it, first, in his imagination. No giant leap forward is possible until and unless one person … or a group of people … somewhere at some time … imagines what it would be like if …

We will re-imagine our world as one in which not one gun is fired for one whole minute on June 25, 2012.

And, I think it’s important to remember that we don’t have to actually succeed in silencing every gun on the planet in a little more than a month. That would hardly be enough time to accomplish such a gargantuan task. All we have to do is succeed in anchoring that intention with our love within the field of consciousness that surrounds the Earth and to which we are all connected … give it a sure foothold within the universal consciousness with all the loving awareness we can find. Once it is real there, as you’ve told me over and over again, it’s only a matter of time before someone in the physical world tunes in to that vibration and finds a way to make it a reality in this physical world. I think it’s a worthy goal, don’t you?”

Michael sighs deeply. “You guys ROCK MY WORLD! This is probably the best present I’ve ever gotten. Did anyone ever have such loyal and devoted friends? A whole year of these kinds of visualizations?”

Yes, Michael,” I reply quietly. “The following month we will choose another problem that requires our attention. For example, perhaps in July we could focus all of our prayers and meditations and visualizations on one day when no child on this planet starves to death (like you did in Ethiopia in the 1980s with We Are The World) … and in August one day on which no child on this planet dies from a treatable disease (reflecting your years of support of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund or UNICEF)… and in September one day on which no young person on this planet is killed in random or gang violence (the message of your Beat It short film) … and in October, perhaps, an entire month where no young person is denied an education due to his economic status or ethnic background … and in November, maybe, a month where every child suffering from a catastrophic illness sees his dream come true … and so on throughout the year. Perhaps, we could even find a month within that year to set the intention of a healed, truthful, honorable media which respects itself … and its audience … enough to eschew the promulgation of lies and sensationalism and checkbook journalism.

These are all problems to which you devoted time and effort and resources during your physical life, contributing to UNICEF and UNCF and mentoring programs and Make-a-Wish Foundation. And you spoke frequently about the media and its abuses.

You hold in your hand an entire year of loving intentions and intense, laser-beam-like focus … in your name and in your honor … to heal the planet you so love and the people you so cherish in celebration of the anniversary of your rebirth … and of your life. Along with all the other tributes planned, may this small gift bring certainty of our deep and abiding love. ”

“I don’t know what to say. You bring tears of gratitude and humility to my eyes … all of you. Our love’s a sacred, sacred thing. Never forget that.”

With these words, Michael rises to his stocking-clad feet and holds his hand out to help me up. Pulling me towards him, he embraces me and kisses my forehead.

As I return, I hear thunder and realize that a heavy rain is falling outside … and inside my little haven it is a little less heavy … but it is RAINING IN MY ROOM! “Michael!” Is it my imagination or did I just hear someone chuckle!

The thought crosses my mind, “I sure am glad my husband and my son-in-law fixed my roof this past weekend!”

Dealing with a Deluge – Anybody got an ARK?? LOL!

Jan – April 3, 2012

Conversations – Installment #54

March 17 through March 25, 2012

Beloved … have I told you recently how much I love you?

Everyday … in every way … you tell me this. By the way, you’ve been doing much better on our little experiment. You’ve got it up to four days a week consistently. Sometimes, you turn over and go back to sleep, but you’ve been waking up almost every morning and spending a few moments with me … and you’ve been falling to sleep every night after spending a few minutes in prayer and meditation with me on your mind. Keep up the good work.

And you know what my response is, don’t you?

Yes, I do … you love me more.

Exactly! But do you mind me asking what brought this on?

No, I don’t mind you asking. Almost from the beginning of these Conversations in October of 2010, one of my friends in Germany … and one of those fans who followed you around Europe, attending an obscene number of concerts during your tours, whom you recognized and with whom you had a flirty, semi-personal relationship … has been typesetting them and saving them in an easily-transferrable file in case I ever wanted to publish them in a book format.

When she started sending me the files, I was not totally convinced that I would ever publish them, but it was wonderful to have them all in one, easy-to-read file and I would occasionally go back and read one or two just to fill up my tank when it was running on empty, in a way. [Michael laughs and starts singing, “Running on Empty” by the Eagles.] I thought that I might make them available in eBook format for any of my readers who expressed any interest in them.

However, I knew I could never offer them in any format without your approval. After all, these are your dialogs as much as … or more than … they are mine. I’ve put off talking to you about the idea because I have been content to publish them on my little blog and count on you to lead those who need the messages they contain to them, as you have done so efficiently for over a year and a half.

Recently, my friend sent me all of our Conversations to date (numbers 1 through 53) and I decided to sit down and take some time to just read them from start to finish. So, I put them on my little NOOK and read through them as if I were reading any book. As a matter of fact, I couldn’t put them down.

As I read, I became more and more convinced that I had a responsibility to give the gift of these Conversations to a wounded and confused world.

Good! I’m glad! [Michael giggles.] After all, that’s one of the things we’ve been talking about throughout our dialogs … finding the gift you bear for the world … and then, giving that gift with all the joy in your heart.

I mean … it’s not like you haven’t written a book before, is it?

Well, no, but I never really intended to have anyone else read that book. I recognized at the time I was writing it that it was more an exercise in explaining myself … and you … to myself, if that makes any sense at all. And writing that book ended up being a major blessing in my life because of all the things I learned in the process. It was a learning experience like no other I’ve ever had. It ended up being an exercise in self-discovery.

See? It doesn’t matter if you ever intended for anyone else to read it. It was good practice. You learned that the journey has its own rewards and that those rewards really have nothing to do with whether anyone else ever read it.

These Conversations, too, are a blessing beyond compare. However, I feel that it would be wrong for me to hoard them. If they bless just one other person as abundantly as they have blessed me, I will be content.

Wait a minute! Are you saying you don’t mind if I publish our dialogs?

Mind? Why would I mind?

Well, I thought that you might think that I was just trying to promote myself in some way … or make money by exploiting your name.

No, I don’t think that at all. Remember me? I know you and I know your love for me. We’ve talked about gifts before. Okay. Here, I have an idea. Let’s turn this around. Let’s reverse it.

I knew from a very early age that music was a gift that I was given by God. How would it have been if I had just sung and danced in my own house and refused to give the gift I had been given to the world? My life would have had a few less extremes … been a bit more normal, perhaps, but it wouldn’t have achieved its purpose.

There never would have been a Michael Jackson, at least, not one you would have recognized. There wouldn’t have been a little black boy singing I’ll Be There. There wouldn’t have been a Motown 25 performance … no We Are The World and, as a result, millions of Ethiopians would not have survived the 1980’s … no BAD or Dangerous or HIStory World Tours. There wouldn’t have been any train to flatten you in 1992. [Michael laughs.] There wouldn’t have been any allegations, you wouldn’t have seen me in my hotel room, all those wonderful little miracles you experienced … and have gone on experiencing … as a result wouldn’t have happened, you wouldn’t have written that first book and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. And that’s just looking at the two of us; we haven’t even examined how this scenario would have changed the world you are living in today. As a matter of fact, my life may have ended prematurely … before I reached adulthood … because of the drugs and gang violence in my neighborhood in Gary, Indiana.

Maybe, the world would have remained as it was back in 1958 and it would have had to wait for another talented little boy to come along and drag it out of its complacency and bigotry and racial segregation and nationalism. It would have had to wait to ‘come together’ in real joy and hold hands and sway to the rhythms, regardless of generational or ethnic or national or religious barriers.

Would you want to go back to the way it was the day I was born into a poor, blue-collar family in a mostly-segregated steel mill town?

No, of course not.

Neither would I. Now, when I can see all the ripples that are still crossing that still pond of the universal field of consciousness, I am so grateful that I was given all the blessings and, yes, even all the pain that accompanied them and that I gave those blessings to the world in the best way that I could.

My ‘best of joy’ and all of the major blessings … as well as some of the curses, I must admit … in life came from offering the gifts I was given in the best and most perfect way that I could to as many people in the world as I could reach.

That’s why I invited all the kids from hospitals and inner city schools out to the ranch for a day of fun. It’s why I visited hospitals and orphanages all over the world … why I air-lifted food and medical supplies to Sarajevo … why I bought needed supplies and equipped burn centers and hospital wings … why I sent my people all over the world to look for a compatible kidney for a little boy who needed one. That’s also why I devoted myself to perfecting the gifts that allowed me to travel the world and reach out to countries that most people have never heard of in song and dance and love.

In this way, it wasn’t just me who was blessed; everyone was blessed. And the gifts that I had been given were multiplied and distributed to where they were most needed … kinda like the story of the loaves and fishes in the Bible … everyone had something to eat and their needs were satisfied.

This is what we are all intended to do with the gifts we have been given … and believe me; we have all been given something that our world needs very desperately right now. Whether it is drawing or painting a vision of something that no one else can see in exactly the same way … or singing a new song to engage the hearts of those who hear … or dancing a dream to ignite the dreams of those who witness it … playing an instrument with all the emotion and pathos that it brings tears to a listener’s eyes … or putting words to a piece of paper in a staggering and unique way … we are all here on this planet for a reason or we wouldn’t be here. And that reason is our truth as well as our purpose.

When we find it, it will become our best friend, our most intimate lover, our constant companion, our confidant, our teacher, our antagonist. It will goad us and compel us and cajole us into expressing it in some way. And that expression is the gift we bear for a world that needs it more than you will ever know. Even if the world rejects your gift, at first, the giving of it is still required because later ripples will spread from it and affect people who aren’t even born yet.

Golden Hills Above Neverland

Baby, love never felt so good

And I doubt if it ever could

Not like you hold me, hold me

Oh baby

Love never felt so fine

And I doubt if it’s ever mine

Not like you hold me, hold me

And the night’s gonna be just fine

Gotta fly, Gotta sing, Got the way

I can’t take it cause

Baby

Everytime I love you

It’s in and out of my life

In and out baby

Tell me

If you really love me

It’s in and out of my life

Driving me crazy

Cause baby

Love never felt so good

Never felt so good (oh)

It never felt so good

Never felt so good

It never felt so good (Never felt so good)

It never felt so good

Never felt so good

Michael, I love this song … and it has been playing on my MJ3 player a lot lately. Every time I hear it, it makes me think that … indeed … Love never felt so good. I must tell you that I have never experienced anything to compare with this love between us … as individuals … and collectively … and I know my friends are reporting the same. Not wanting to speak for how anyone else feels, let me just speak for myself.

I, for one, have never felt so completely known by anyone or anything in my life. I always felt that I need a protective barrier between myself and the rest of the world, defense mechanisms to shield my tender-heartedness from prying eyes. I’ve always felt that my heart needed to be guarded and hidden from the people around me … my parents, my brothers and sister, my friends, my work mates … and even from myself, at times. I’d been taught that I shouldn’t expose my deepest feelings to anyone … that no one would understand my fears of being unloved, of being abandoned, of being rejected … and so I kept it my deepest secret and protected it zealously from everyone around me … even my closest and most trusted friends. I built walls around that sensitive side of me and became hardened to some of the things that I witnessed in the world around me in order to protect myself from feeling the pain inflicted by others … and experienced by others … within myself.

Yes, I think much of the world has done the same thing. And I can totally understand that need to protect. I think it’s something that most children learn as they grow into adulthood. Attending Junior High School and High School, I believe, can be a traumatic experience for very sensitive young souls. It’s where we learn that we are not the center of everyone’s universe, even if we get that far thinking that we are, at least, the center of our parent’s universe. We erect these walls as a coping mechanism.

I never attended Junior High or High School on a regular basis because I was always jetting off to some part of the world to perform concerts or to tour, so I never learned those coping mechanisms. I never learned to mask my tears with anger or defiance. And I’m very glad I didn’t! I never learned how to shut out the pain of the starving children in Africa … or young burn victims. I never became sensitized to the tragedy of war or the horror of genocide or the emptiness of a mother’s arms because her son has gone off to fight in some faraway country and will, undoubtedly, come back changed … if at all.

I never wanted to believe in the hatred or bigotry or greed to which human beings could descend … that could accuse an innocent man of horrible crimes for no other reason than to get him to sell his beautiful home and move away and never return … until I was the object of that kind of narrow-mindedness and betrayal. It was a shock to discover such wrath … a shock from which I never fully recovered.

Beloved, I have found … in this love … that no wall I could build would keep you out … no coping mechanism could turn you away. Nor would I want them to.

[Michael laughs.] You make me sound like a bad rash!

No … just a pushy, little moonwalker.

Okay! That’s a little better, I think.

I’ve also never felt so totally loved … so completely cherished … so needed. So much so that even the raindrops falling from the sky stop long enough for me to get out of my car and walk into the house without getting wet … or amazing shadows and cloud formations remind me of the fact that My Love is with me.

Don’t forget the attack of the ‘Ninja Butterflies’ … or the psychotic DVD player … or …

Speaking of ‘Ninja Butterflies,’ Michael, we have a surprise for you this year on the anniversary of your re-birthday. Not only is the ‘One Rose for Michael’ group gearing up for an awesome floral display that will knock your sequined socks off, but we are planning a Monarch Butterfly release at Holly Terrace. Permission for the release has already been granted and the arrangements have already been made for the safe release of over a hundred beautiful, stained-glass-winged butterflies. In addition, 1,000 red roses donated from your children in 42 countries from all over this planet marked our 1000th day of missing you on March 20, 2012.

Aww! You guys Rock My World.

Baby, love never felt so good

And I doubt if it ever could

Not like you hold me, hold me

Oh baby

Love never felt so fine

And I doubt if it’s ever mine

Not like you hold me, hold me

And the night’s gonna be just fine

Gotta fly, Gotta sing, Got the way

I can’t take it cause

Baby

Everytime I love you

It’s in and out of my life

In and out baby

Tell me

If you really love me

It’s in and out of my life

Driving me crazy

Cause baby

Love never felt so good

Never felt so good (oh)

It never felt so good

Never felt so good

It never felt so good (Never felt so good)

It never felt so good

Never felt so good

Jan – March 23, 2012