Thou Art

The brightly-colored rainbow in a cloud-tossed, stormy sky
The whisper of the ocean as it goes rushing by
A puddled stretch of sand awash with the tide
The eerie, forlorn lament of sea gulls on the fly

The perfection of a shell all twisted and whorled
Picked up and treasured by a barefoot little girl
The crack of a gaily-colored flag in the wind all a-whirl
The colors of a pinwheel by a breath set a-twirl

A pink and gold sunset as the sun meets the sea
Shooting streamers of light stretch across the waves in beams
The star in the night sky, winking through the branches of a tree
Lightning bugs a-twinkle, chased by you and me

The full moon dancing over the horizon, dolphins breaching in mirth
Sparkling and twinkling in the moonlight with the motion of the surf
The laughter of the waves as the tide drenches the Earth
The melodies and rhymes as a song is given birth

The snowcapped mountain peak as it touches the blue
Snow glistening like diamond dust, sparkly and new
The blush of the rose petal still tightly curled
Too shy to peak out, too modest to unfurl

The heady scent of gardenia wafting lightly on air
Barely noticed by others with no time to spare
To my senses, a treat, a gift precious and so rare
I must take a moment, my gratitude to share

The softness of a newborn baby’s skin, wrinkled and red
Damp tufts of hair lying silky against a perfect head
The leap of joy when the heart hears that first cry
And croons the gentle tune of a favorite lullaby

Shafts of sunlight piercing a heavy gloom
Paths to the heavens creep across a darkened room
Like precious memories enlightening my mind
Anticipated moments with you I’m anxious to re-find

Thou art the strength of the lion, the grace of a cat
A snap of the fingers, a casual toss of a hat
The point of the toes, then spinning so fast
Landing on point, a moment to hold, forever to last

A weekend of quietude with a fascinating book
The forgotten treasure found hiding in the little used nook
Peaking from the place we neglected to look
Always in a hurry, Thou Art all the pleasures I overlook

Thou Art
Every beautiful sight my ancient eyes have seen
The music of a child’s laughter met by ears so keen
Every delicious flavor that has tickled my tongue
The pungent, the sweet, the salt since I was young

Thou Art
The whisper of satin against newly-clean flesh
The single tear shed as two hearts are enmeshed
The deeply felt sighs as two spirits embrace
The touch of love’s finger stroking my face

Thou Art
The peace of a winter evening enshrouded in snow
Lightened by flickering candles, the hearth all aglow
Boundless peace undisturbed, I am content to know
That love brings you back to me when I enter the flow

Thou Art
My LOVE
Always fresh, ever new
Ancient as the pyramids reborn as morning dew
You wrap me in your spirit, impale me with your glance
Pierce me with your gentle smile, inviting me to dance
Our LOVE across the heavens raining down upon the Earth
In you my heart beats with the tide patiently awaiting rebirth

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Conversations – Installment #36

July 16 through July 23, 2011

Michael, I sometimes feel so frustrated … like something is waiting to be born inside me and I want to hurry it along.

Something IS waiting to be born inside you. It’s called your awareness … your consciousness … and its birth is occurring in every new moment. You can’t hurry that; it would be like deciding that five months should be long enough for a fetus to grow enough to be born into the world. It takes as long as it takes. The normal is around nine months. I suppose you could decide to remove it at five months, but there’s not much likelihood that it would live if you do. You want what comes out to live forever and the only way for that to happen is to allow it to gestate and become fully formed. There are some things that you just can’t hurry.

It’s the biggest mistake you can make because you end up pushing against the natural flow of the universe … and deflecting it further away instead of bringing it closer. This was something I learned from Quincy … don’t write the music … let the music write itself. It’s the same thing here; don’t force it to bend to your definitions … or time constraints. You are not in charge; you are just the midwife in this process. You need to take the “I want …” out of it and become an observer in the process. You need patience.

Yeah … well … we all know about me and patience, don’t we?

[Michael laughs.] Yes, you know how to spell it … and that’s all anyone should ask of you. You may not think that’s much to go on … but, I want you to change that kind of thinking right now. Let’s start calling it a beginning. We’ll start there and build!

That reminds me of Kenny Ortega’s comment on the This Is It Special Features. He said that you had told him that the show had to open with something spectacular, something that nobody had ever seen before. Then, he laughed and said, “Okay … so that’s where we begin.” That’s our starting point. It sounds a bit ominous.

You know how I created my music. You’ve read about it before, but let me give you a little more information so that you can fully understand. I’ve said many times that I couldn’t take credit for the songs I wrote; they were a gift from above. Sometimes, they would drop fully-formed into my lap and I would hear melody and harmony and lyrics all at once. Other times, I would just get the ‘germ’ of an idea … just the faintest whisper of an inspiration … the grain of sand that somehow manages to embed itself inside the oyster’s shell  … and I would just know that was the way I wanted to go. But all I had was the seed, the germ, the grain of sand. It hadn’t sprouted yet … it hadn’t sent out roots … it was just the seed. So, it was just the unshaped, unformed possibility or potential of the song. In these cases, I knew that it was going to take a little longer.

Like you described, it felt like ‘something was waiting to be born inside me.’ So, I know exactly what you mean. Those ‘germs of ideas’ and ‘whispers of inspiration’ and ‘grains of sand’ need time to mature … like good wine, they need to age. You need to mull them over … shape them … mold them … and, sometimes, you need to destroy them and start all over. As that process continues … sometimes over a very long period of time … they kind of collect other germs of ideas that stick to them like Velcro … like a snowball rolling downhill or that grain of sand forming layer and layer to form a perfect round pearl.

Earth Song took a long time and the process was painstaking in the extreme. I learned over time to be grateful for each and every stage of the creative process … from germ … to embryo … to fetus … to contractions … to Lamaze classes … to labor pains … to birth. Each stage is important and has something to teach … a gift to impart.

Joe Vogel claims that you started Earth Song in 1989 and it wasn’t released until the HIStory: Past, Present and Future album in 1995. That’s six years!

Something like that. It grew over time … and, in some cases I had to wait for the technology to catch up with what I wanted to do … or the way I wanted it to sound. It’s not always fast and easy; sometimes, it takes soul-searching, heart-breaking, gut-wrenching, physically-exhausting work. But it’s always fulfilling and worth the wait.

It’ll be fine. Do you trust me?

[Jan laughs.] Of course, I trust you! You are my Beautiful Beloved. I couldn’t trust my own soul more.

‘The nights are getting darker … (Hold my hand) … and there’s no peace inside … (Hold my hand) … so why make our lives harder … (Hold my hand) … by fighting love tonight. Cuz I’ve been there before and you’ve been there before, but together we can be all right. When it gets dark and when it gets cold, we hold each other till we see the sunlight. If you just … Hold my hand, baby I promise that I’ll do all I can. Things will get better if you just hold my hand.’

[Michael sings both parts … and s-l-o-w-s the song down … so that it becomes a ballad of unearthly beauty … {sweet, merciful heavens … who knew that song could be so intoxicating?}  … and I get a visual of him standing in front of me with his left arm extended toward me and his eyebrows raised in a questioning glance … those beautiful, brown eyes boring right through me . Of course, my hand reaches out for his in response … and just as our fingertips touch, the visual fades.]

Oh, baby! You do love to live dangerously, don’t you? You are such a beautiful, irresistible tease! One of these days, I am going to jump your bones! [Michael giggles.] It’s going to happen! It’s like the nervous breakdown I’ve been on the brink of for the past twenty years. [Michael’s giggles roar into unreserved laughter!] I owe it to myself and no one … and nothing … is gonna deprive me of it!  So, be prepared, Beloved!

This version of Hold My Hand should be released immediately! Did you record it? Please tell me you recorded that!  I so love your voice on this song. I have nothing against Akon, but your voice … I don’t know what it is … it just resonates with something deep inside me … your tonal quality or the vibration … or the energy you transmit in them … complement and harmonize with the vibration at which my soul naturally pulses … or something … it sends me into a world of pure, unequivocal, joyous surrender!

It’s like plucking a harp string; it’s the vibration of the string which produces the beautiful sound of the note … but it’s the sounding board chamber through which that vibration passes that adds the sweetness and depth and emotion. I’m not terribly good at the art of analogy, but your voice is the vibration of the plucked string … and I am the sounding board through which you pass. In your voice … I find my home … the deepest fulfillment of my purpose. Other singers have beautiful voices, but my heart doesn’t find a home there … I can visit for a while, but always long for a return to my home in your voice!

Awww! God bless you! And you are very good at the art of analogy, I think.

Michael, I know that there is a reason that this Great Spiritual Awakening is occurring among your children.  Someone described it as those of us who are joined in common purpose … all the millions of notes in our Symphony in the Key of Love using your beautiful analogy from earlier conversations … have a Michael-chip implanted in our motherboards which was activated by your departure.

[Michael-chip.  Kinda like micro-chip. I love that!]

We feel awakened to your love, to your beauty, to your purpose, to your goals, to your ideals, and to your music and the thoughts you expressed through it. It’s like an ‘aha’ moment, but instead of the ‘aha’ heralding a ‘let down’ or a sense of ‘anticlimax’ as is usual in these experiences … it ushers in greater and ever-greater engagement, deeper and ever-deeper spiritual involvement until we feel so saturated in your love that we are amazed that we don’t flash like neon tubing! It’s like we’ve fallen into a never-ending rabbit hole and the rate of our descent never slows or stops.

Don’t worry … I’ll catch you! I told you that all my life … and it’s still true. You are in no danger of being swallowed by the abyss. You are not alone, for I am here with you.

Have I told you today how much I love you? Nevermind … I’m sure you already know. It seems to me that I have always known you. I sense a series of smaller, lesser Awakenings, at least in my life. Would you mind if we took a little walk down memory lane … explored this concept in more depth in this dialog?

No, I don’t mind at all.

Okay, for me, the first awakening occurred when you were a young boy singing I Want You Back … and, especially, Who’s Loving You … with your brothers on the Ed Sullivan Show. Who could ignore that? You were electric … magnetic … carried an adult’s charisma … your voice was magic … your joy in the music was so contagious … and you played the audience like a master! I had to stop and watch … you captured me at that moment. As I look back from forty years in the future, the moment is freeze-framed like a cherished photograph. I remember being awed by your performance. But you were a little kid … eight years younger than me. I found it difficult to believe that any little kid could move like that or sound so incredibly professional … and even more difficult that a little kid could keep up that kind of momentum for very long. You showed me, didn’t you?

[Michael giggles.] Well, four decades isn’t really very long, is it?

I didn’t fall in love you then. I felt like it would be almost immoral to fall in love with a ten-year-old boy at eighteen … kinda like robbing the cradle. But I did notice you in a very big way. Then, in rapid-fire succession, ABC and Stop the Love You Save and I’ll Be There and Ben and Got to be There and Never Can Say Goodbye!!  It was like you were all over the radio … everywhere I turned. This was going to be a recurring pattern, but I didn’t know that at the time.

I heard them all … and sang along to most of them … as I drove here and there in my car. There were some light, boogie, get-down-and-dance cuts, but so many of your songs speak to the message of Love. Of course, most songs conform to that pattern, but your songs … especially in retrospect … transfer so much more easily between the erotic, romantic definition of love … which is the one to which this world seems addicted … to Divine, Spiritual Love … and back again … without losing any of the meaning or emotion.

Love is love. There is no separation … no categorizing. That is the human tendency to break things down into chewable segments to understand them better. In the world of spirit there is only one kind of love. What the human race calls love is not really love, especially when it seeks to possess, control, limit or inhibit freedom. The Beloved must be free to soar and explore the very best and most that he or she can be. If not, that’s domination … that’s control … that’s possession … it’s not love. I’ve been a victim of … a selfish kind of love … it’s time that I realized. There are some with no home, not a nickel to loan. Could it be … really me … pretending that they’re not alone. [Michael sings.]

Love is never selfish or controlling or possessive or grasping. It is not impatient or abusive. Love seeks only to give of itself in an unending supply of joy … fulfillment … freedom. It seeks to provide only the best of itself to the Beloved at all times. It doesn’t ask, ‘what do I get in return?’ or ‘what’s in it for me?’ or ‘why can’t you be more like …?’ It doesn’t belittle, but lifts up. It doesn’t degrade, but builds higher. It doesn’t criticize, but encourages greater achievement. We don’t understand love very well. Love is the basis for all life … the longing for the bliss of union … of joining … of Oneness.

It’s what we all seek outside ourselves in our obsessive need for more ‘things’ … more ‘pleasure’ … more drugs … more ‘money’ … more anything. We can search the world over to find what our soul yearns for  but the only place we are going to find the peg that fits that hole is within our own soul and its connection to its source. And the Source is Love!

Exactly! It’s that higher definition of love that I’m talking about. Forty years on when I listen to some of those old songs, I get the same emotional and spiritual comfort and uplift that I get from your more recent recordings. In Our Small Way and With a Child’s Heart and I’ll Be There and Ben. There is a remarkable symmetry of incomparable beauty between the messages in some of your earliest recordings with Motown forty years ago and your more recent material. In Ben, you ask us all to overcome our prejudices, some of them unreasonable (although I, personally, am not terribly fond of rats.) It’s the same message you broadcast in They Don’t Really Care About Us and Is It Scary. In Our Small Way is Heal the World and We Are the World and Man in the Mirror … but sung by a ten-year-old boy. In With a Child’s Heart you praise the virtues of retaining the joy and wonder and innocence we knew as children; it is the flip-side of Have You Seen My Childhood.

Now, I know you didn’t write the music back then. You just sang what they gave you, but somebody somewhere must have been inspired by something or someone Divine; because those songs are touched by the same pregnant import … and filled with the same faith and hope in the human race … as your later work; it’s astonishing how consistent the messages are in these early songs with those you recorded later in your career.

I told you earlier in these conversations, they were an announcement … a proclamation … to get your attention … to let all the notes in our Symphony in the Key of Love know that the composition is ready … that the orchestra needs to start tuning up … and all the little notes need to be ready to sing their parts. While the little boy in the pink hat and fringed vest may not have totally understood the process … shoot, that little boy didn’t understand some of the words he was singing … his soul knew what it was doing (and so does yours, so please be open to its leading). You and I must make a pact; we must bring salvation back. Where there is love, I’ll be there. Those words were not an accident … or a coincidence. They are a summary of our purpose … of the Plan. It’s what we are ALL doing here, the only reason we exist.

The next phase of your life I missed completely, Beloved, to my eternal regret … but I suspect it presented another opportunity to awaken. It was only long after your teenage years that I heard the voice that still sends shivers up and down my spine every single time my MP3 player serves up songs from this period. I like to call it your ‘virgin’ voice because you were just trying it out, finding its boundaries, stretching its limitations and discovering its capabilities. There were still moments when that beautiful ten-year-old voice could be heard playing hide and seek with the new one, but it’s okay because both of them are so beautiful.

When I heard songs from this period in your life much later, I marveled that I wasn’t paying attention and asked myself, “How could I have missed this?” I never heard One Day in Your Life or Morning Glow or You Are There or To Make My Father Proud or Push Me Away or Dreamer until the 1990’s when that train we’ve discussed before hit me and I started researching your life. When I did hear them, I was totally floored by the flexibility and versatility and beauty of that newly-adult instrument. There was a breathless quality to it that produced an equal and corresponding breathlessness in me. In the art of analogy, it would be like comparing coming home … to coming home and curling up with a well-washed cashmere shawl, mug of hot chocolate and a good book.

I would have thought that the development of puberty would have changed your voice … or, at least, my emotional reaction to your tone and timbre … and it did! It made that resonance stronger and more all-encompassing … took that feeling of homecoming and strengthened it. But I didn’t know that until so much later. I believe that this period of your life was another opportunity to become further awakened, but the opportunity passed me by at the time … it was only much later that the potential awareness was revealed to me.

And it was perfect timing for you as it was. So, don’t regret that you weren’t paying attention. You were attending to other important matters. The proof of that statement is that that’s the way it happened. There are no imperfections in God’s Plan for you. Trust in that and you will never have to wonder “what if.”

Once again, the messages were in the music … the love you sang could be felt as romantic; and I’m sure many young girls fantasized about that voice touching them with love … shoot, there are many mature women who fantasize about it still (including me) … but it was also growing in its universality … there was a more powerful, prayerful, spiritual and emotional tone in the timbre of your voice.

One Day in Your Life speaks so clearly to me of the position your children find themselves in now.  “One day in your life, you’ll remember a place, someone touching your face, you’ll come back and you’ll look around you. One day in your life when you find that you’re always searching for the love we used to share, just call my name … and I’ll be there.” [Jan sings.]

One Day in Your Life is perfection, Beloved. Your phrasing, your approach, the soulfulness you inject into each line and note … it’s perfection. There’s just no other word that describes it. Whether you were singing to a specific young lady … or an entire world full of young ladies … or to the spirits that inhabit each one of us, your children, who had become alert to your meaning … the love is the same … you have unified the two into ONE. The authors of The Official Michael Jackson Opus examine this song and arrive at the same conclusion. One Day in Your Life is so reminiscent of I’ll Be There in that the emotional impact lies in those last seven words … and the fact that they are the same seven words repeated in both the child’s voice and the newly-adult voice … with all the emotion that each was able to convey. It’s breathtaking!

The period of The Jacksons at Epic Records was a ‘coming of age,’ a ‘rite of passage’ … of testing your voice and writing ability as well as your autonomy … of learning to trust the inspirations you were receiving … and, once again, I missed it. Several songs, however, were impossible to miss and came from this period that restate your message very clearly, most notably Can You Feel It, which reiterated your message from Ben of equality and provided your first creative film outlet with The Triumph. Other songs from this period include Destiny, Show You the Way to Go, Strength of One Man, Dreamer, Man of War … and some your best dance music like Blame It on the Boogie and Shake Your Body.

I so love Let Me Show You (the Way to Go) … ‘I don’t know everything, but there’s something I do know. I’ve read and heard a lot and now I’m ready to show that we can help each other to overcome (we can do it, we can do it now) … live together underneath the sun … please, please let me show you, let me show you, let me show you the way to go … I’ll never let you down’ … [Jan sings again] … and you never did, did you?

Woohoo … you can sing! You and I are gonna dance when you get here, baby!

[Jan laughs.] We’re dancing now, Michael!

Hey! You have been listening, haven’t you? [Michael laughs.]

I love so much that you were always aware of your status as a role model for the young people in the world … and like you said much later … you were always conscious of history … that you were creating it in each moment. Usher has been quoted on the subject: “The one thing that he always said to me was, ‘Be mindful of history. Be conscious of history. Don’t get caught up in just the moment. Understand that each moment is a piece of history and you should approach it that way.’” You never considered that responsibility onerous or that obligation a burden as so many have done in the world of sports and entertainment. To you, it was a privilege, an honor and something that you devoted your life to.

This was also the beginning of your association with the peacock as a symbol for racial and international harmony. I read a quote in which you stated that the peacock combined every color of the rainbow within its plumage which was the reason you adopted it as jacket art for the Triumph album.

Then came the Off the Wall/Thriller/We Are The World blockbuster era … and this one I didn’t miss. For the second time in your still young life, your face and voice were everywhere! One had to be living under a rock on Mars to be unaware of Michael Jackson during the beginning of the 1980’s. The Girl is Mine was knocked off the charts by Beat It and Beat It and was knocked off by Billie Jean! This was another huge, worldwide, global invitation to ‘come together over you’ … and it succeeded hugely.

I loved Billie Jean the first time I heard it … that bass line just vibrated up and down my spine … and I had to rush out and get the vinyl version of the album. When I got home, I played Billie Jean and Lady in My Life over and over and over … almost wore out the grooves on that record. I, like much of the world, was paying attention. After the Motown 25 television special, there wasn’t a part of the planet that was unaware of Michael Jackson.

It’s my theory that these two albums were intended to get the whole world’s attention … and they succeeded admirably. With these two albums, you were gaining confidence as a performer, a singer, a song writer and a film-maker … honing your craft to rapier sharpness … and it showed. While Beat It may have been the only overt message on the Thriller album, your songwriting was maturing … your voice was hypnotic … your dance had achieved other-worldly status … and your forays into film-making were rewriting history in both music and the visual arts. You virtually created the musical short film genre. I still hadn’t fallen ass over appetite in love with you, although I came pretty darn close when listening to Lady in My Life. We are the World carried your message forward during this period in a big and dramatic way.

And then came BAD. Many people mark the beginning of the Michael Jackson Era from the release of Off the Wall or Thriller, but I mark it from the release of BAD! I know that statement is kind of odd … especially when you consider that this was another era that totally passed me by. I wasn’t listening to music during this period; I was rebuilding an old farm house and having children and playing supermom, which didn’t leave a whole lot of time for recreational activity.

After 1992, when that speeding locomotive knocked me into the ‘spiritual zone’ …  and I started researching you and discovering what I had missed, BAD was the first album I bought in my search for Will You Be There. And while I didn’t find it on that album, what I did find was remarkable.

You had penned nine of the songs on the album and every single one of them carried some kind of message. This collection was a mature, powerful, thunderous proclamation that you had arrived; and a thinly disguised invitation to the entire world to join you in remaking the planet into one of peace and compassion. Another Part of Me and BAD and I Just Can’t Stop Loving You and Man in the Mirror … even Liberian Girl and Speed Demon carried your special message of love … I was stunned that one little disc could carry so much Michael Jackson within its grooves. Moonwalker illustrated each of the songs’ meanings … gave visual dimension and depth … in a fun-loving, innovative and imaginative way! You had grown into that remarkable voice that had been birthed so long ago in the 1970’s and had begun singing a lot of your own background vocals.

BAD has always kinda taken a back seat to Thriller, but both are perfection from beginning to end.

The Dangerous era … ah, Beloved … this was the invitation I couldn’t ignore, discount or rationalize away. Within the span of an eight minute song, the performance of which on a beautiful October evening in 1992 just blew me out of the water; you changed my entire life.

But, that’s where you’re wrong! I didn’t change your life at all … all I did was invite you to change your life. I was in Bucharest, Romania and you were ‘on the dark side of the moon.’ How could I have changed your life? No one can change anyone else’s life. The most anyone can do is invite you to explore your own inner world … call you to look in the mirror and ‘make that change’ … encourage you to discover your gift and use it to impact your world. It was in following that calling that you changed your own life!

Your spirit recognized in me and my performance a summons to a higher purpose … a purpose that had always been present and known by your soul, but had lain dormant until you were ready to re-member it … and accept that invitation. You recognized that my devotion to ‘100% perfect execution’ was my way of expressing my love for you … my joy in the music and dance … my encouragement for you to become all that you have the potential to be … and my gratitude to God for the gifts I had been blessed with. It was my way of praising God.

As a result of that invitation, you felt compelled to find out more about who had touched you in such a personal, secret, intimate way … at the level of spirit … which is not a common occurrence in your experience. You began to investigate and immerse yourself in my music and my performances … to find out how that could have happened. You began to read … my books, spiritual writings, self-help authors. And you began to answer a lot of your own questions. You began to listen with the ears of the soul instead of just the ears of the body; you began to see with the eyes of the soul instead of just the eyes of the body. You began to imagine … and create … a world of spiritual bliss with this person who had so aroused your curiosity. You began to allow your spirit … your imagination … to inform your writings. And each step along the path led you further and deeper into your own spiritual awakening.

You attributed it to me, but it was you all along. Just like all of you are attributing the Spiritual Awakening that you are experiencing now to me, but it is really you … all of you … whose spirits are remembering their purpose.

When the pupil is ready, the teacher will appear. I am so grateful for the gifts God gave me so that I could play the role of teacher for so many of you! It is a great blessing.

Jan – July 22, 2011

 

 

 

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Conversations – Installment #35

July 8 through July 15, 2001

Michael, there is a huge scandal brewing in the United Kingdom and Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper (tabloid) empire is dead in the middle of it. News of the World, one of the most salacious purveyors of trash in the world, is accused of hacking into private mobile telephones of terrorist victims, murder victims, politicians and public figures, including a number of former Prime Ministers. I don’t know a whole lot of the details, but in the brief stories I’ve read on CNN, News of the World is being investigated for unethical, if not illegal practices including obstruction of justice. Its editor, Rebekah Brooks, has resigned under the weight of the accusations being flung.

News of the World is just one of the tabloids targeted; this scandal has the potential of bringing down Murdoch’s empire in a blaze of scandal … which, somehow, feels a bit like poetic justice, doesn’t it? Hopefully it will also inject the fullest possible lens of public scrutiny into the tabloid industry, exposing its far-reaching abuses and excesses and ‘checkbook journalistic’ practices … not only in the United Kingdom, but its repercussions have the potential of affecting news gathering on a worldwide global scale.

The scandal has risen to such proportions that Murdoch’s acquisition of one of the large satellite companies in the British Isles has been abandoned and there is talk of jail time for his son, I believe. Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of the British Isles during the time of Lady Diana Spencer’s death has been quoted by CNN as saying, “we have tolerated the intolerable” in regards to the scandal-monger’s scandal.

Good! It’s about time that man and his nefarious dealings were exposed for what they are … legalized blackmail. His pack of so-called reporters are nothing more than a bunch of professional ‘bearers of false witness’ on a scale and magnitude that is unimaginable to the casual observer buying their trash in the checkout lanes at the local supermarket.

They feel they are above the law; it’s okay for them to speed through crowded underpasses, chasing someone at reckless speeds just to get their ‘money shot’ … or roar through crowded intersections against traffic signals … or snap pictures as a beautiful, loving woman dies in the back seat of her crumpled vehicle instead of doing something to help her … as long as they get their ‘blood money’ pictures. It’s okay for them to install cameras underneath toilets to capture their prey in unguarded moments as they use the facilities in their hotel rooms. It’s okay for them to invade people’s privacy in helicopters over hospitals. They are nothing more than legalized stalkers, vampires who suck the life out of people for money.

Ah … don’t even get me started!

It’s about time we all told them … IT’S NOT OKAY! You are not above the law. There are limits to what we will tolerate from our journalists … and you have passed them.

These people have taken the basic, inalienable rights granted in the constitutions of many of our modern democracies … the right to freedom of the press … the right to presumption of innocence … the right to privacy … and made them a laughingstock among intelligent people the world over.

They spout their creed of ‘the people’s right to know’ and leave off the most important word. It should be ‘the people’s right to know the TRUTH.’ They don’t care if what they print is the truth as long as it sells … as long as they can pay someone enough to say it’s true so that they can quote them. They’ve admitted as much on film. They’re proud of it!

This is an entire industry of sanctioned sociopaths. They’ve literally gotten away with libel, slander, and murder on more than one occasion.  They’ve driven people to suicide with their relentless, incessant criticisms and, then, chastised them for their weakness while putting on a ‘false face’ of remorse … ‘we’re so sorry they killed themselves, but the public has a right to know’ to deflect attention from their part in taking human life.

They lie, cheat and steal … and kill … and the law protects them by refusing to make them answer questions under oath about their tactics. Their ‘Shield Law’ allows them to use any and all underhanded maneuvers to get their interviews or pictures and they know that they will not be brought up on charges if they scurry under their ‘Shield Law’ because they’re ‘journalists.’ This was proven during my trial. Bashir had a high-power attorney hired by ABC who made sure his client was not forced to respond to any of Mr. T’s questions under cross examination. It was a joke! That’s their version of ‘freedom of the press.’

You know, there’s a reason that bearing false witness is listed in the Ten Commandments … right up there with the big three: murder, stealing, and adultery … because it kills. It kills the spirit of truth …. It kills the spirit of love … it kills the spirit of tolerance and equality … it kills the human race’s creative spark and unquenchable yearning to be more than it is. What’s more, it feeds all of the public’s basest, most cannibalistic, most sadistic tendencies … plays off the lowest instincts in humanity instead of encouraging us to explore our highest and truest and most altruistic leanings.

By doing that, it makes us all believe that we are base and cannibalistic and low; when, in fact, we are miraculous … each and every one of us … and can prove that to ourselves if encouraged to excel by uplifting stories of courage and selflessness. We are so much bigger than they give us credit for.

Just look at the response of New York’s citizens after the World Trade Center attacks. Many of them entered those buildings, knowing that they were putting themselves at terrible personal risk, to save the lives of those trapped inside. And many of them died when the buildings collapsed. That is the side of human nature we, as a society, must start to recognize, evaluate and promote if we are to evolve into a truly advanced, highly-evolved society.

Instead, the tabloid industry feeds the smallest and pettiest side of human nature … the side that watches gleefully at the sidelines as another is tortured or killed … the side which scorns our innate goodness and cynically reinforces our own inner voices in belittling our dreams … the side that makes a mockery of our ability to manifest those dreams of a better life and a healthier and more peaceful world.

If there is a ‘devil’ at large in the world today, its name is ‘tabloid journalism.’ It dampens the spark of Infinite Love that lives inside each and every one of us. It’s like putting a lid on a candle flame. What happens to the flame if it is covered?

The flame can’t get any oxygen to feed it … it dies … it goes out.

Exactly! The human spirit needs to be fed … like the candle flame … just like our bodies and our minds and our imaginations. Without nourishment and nurturance, the spirit atrophies and dies. The tabloid industry is one of the worst violators of human potential that ever existed. It keeps us apathetic … because we’re easier to control that way. And it uses its global publications to deflect our attention from the real problems in our world by drawing it to petty finger-pointing, scandals and the foibles of our public figures. It chooses what news we are exposed to … what stories are told and the angle from which they are told … to control our minds and keep us from knowing the truth. They know what they want the story to be before they ever send the ‘journalist’ out to report it.

Yes, Beloved, I know. Charles Thomson had written a story on you, basing it on factual interviews and documented evidence, and sent it in to the publication that had commissioned it, warning them about the myths and legends to steer clear of. He sent it to the publication and was shocked when the story came out that it contained nothing of what he wrote, just regurgitated all the myths he had warned them about. I wrote about this in the case study I wrote for The Voices Education Project. The editorial staff had changed his story because it didn’t ‘toe the accepted line’ … went against the status quo … that the editor of the newspaper wanted. It’s disgusting what these people get away with.

It’s like in The Wiz … the Scarecrow can’t get off of the frame that’s holding him as the crows degrade and demean him. They make him spout their doctrine … You Can’t Win, chile … you can’t get even … and you can’t get out of the game [Michael sings] … to show how indoctrinated and brainwashed he is by the constant diet of negative thoughts the crows are feeding him in order to control him and keep him from beginning even the most basic of achievements. They don’t care that they are lying to the Scarecrow to keep him up on that frame and control him. They have no conscience about it. They don’t care that they are stomping on his spirit of curiosity and adventure. There’s no law against it. So … it’s a lie … so what? There’s a huge pay-off … they get to continue to degrade and demean him, to laugh at and humiliate him!

But along comes Dorothy. She tells the Scarecrow that he can do anything he sets his mind to do and helps him untangle himself from the frame. First, he falls flat on his face, reinforcing everything the crows have been telling him all along, but Dorothy doesn’t give up on him. All he needs is a little encouragement and he is on the ground dancing.

The Scarecrow represents the human race which is a ‘victim of negative thinking’ (promoted, fostered and protected by the tabloid industry) … a result of the constant diet of ‘you can’t’ and ‘you aren’t enough’ and ‘you aren’t worth it’ and ‘you can’t win’ it is being fed by the crows. The crows are the tabloid industry feeding that spirit-quenching, mind-numbing, soul-dampening, mud-slinging constant diet of negativity, the sadistic pleasure that searches out … like a heat-seeking missile … the lowest common denominator of humankind and keeps the human race from attempting to achieve what it was sent here to do … just like the Scarecrow’s own belief that he couldn’t make any change in his life kept him from climbing off that frame and achieving his potential.

It’s nothing less than diabolical treason against the very soul of humankind. The devil has been called the ‘deceiver’ since the beginning of time … and he has found his truest expression in the ‘tabloid’ industry of today.

It’s not just the modern tabloid industry … Satan has been around for centuries … perhaps, not on as global a scale … but the deceiver’s fingerprint is all over history!

It was the equivalent of the ‘tabloid industry’ (in his time) that was responsible for Jesus’s crucifixion, for example. The Pharisees lied to the people of Jerusalem … and then paid them to call for his execution … just like the tabloid industry lies to and pays informants against public figures today.

During the Roman Empire, the role of the ‘tabloid’ industry was played by the slavers who sold gladiators to provide entertainments in the Coliseum … the gladiator contests … and the martyrdom of thousands of early Christians in the most gruesome, gory manner possible.

Similarly, one of the first things that Hitler did when he took office in Germany was to take control of the media so that he could use it to spread his evil propaganda. By lying to the German people, he controlled the thoughts of an entire nation and systematically dehumanized elements of society that he wanted eliminated … the Jews, homosexuals and the mentally-challenged. He couched his bigotry in nationalistic, patriotic jargon that made it unpatriotic to oppose him and gave ‘lip service’ to the concept of advancing the ‘superior Aryan race’ … made it a national priority for women to give birth to pure blue-eyed, blond-haired sons and daughters of the Fatherland.

We wonder how such tragedies as The Holocaust and slavery happen, how people can be convinced to treat their neighbors with so much cruelty and violent loathing like the wholesale lynching of black men in the pre-Civil Rights Movement era. That’s how they happen … that’s exactly how the Holocaust and slavery and public executions happen.

First, you begin small with seemingly harmless stories over which people just laugh and shrug their shoulders. Over time, the stories escalate as the payoffs accelerate. It’s engineered to happen gradually to deflect attention and give the appearance of legitimate journalism, but there is always an angle from which the stories are written. That angle aims at mockery of the target, at instilling fear, at eradicating all points of commonality between ‘us’ and ‘them.’  No one really notices that each successive story furthers the idea that ‘he’ or ‘they’ are different, not really one of us, separate, other, weird, freak, ugly, less-than-human so it’s okay to laugh at them on national television or feed them to the lions or liquidate them in their millions in gas chambers.

And we’ve all heard the old saying that ‘history repeats itself.’ That to me is so frightening. I am afraid for you all!

Well, I pray that this investigation extends to every corner of the globe, exposes the abuses of human rights and excesses practiced by the tabloid industry and results in … at least … some kind of ethical standards to which journalists are required to adhere in the pursuit of their profession. In other words, I pray that it spells the beginning of the end of ‘tabloid’ journalism as we know it today … and contributes to a healthier media environment for all concerned.

I pray for that, too. All of heaven would rejoice along with mankind if this expression of ‘the deceiver’ were taken down, removed from power and rendered impotent. While I know God’s Plan is perfect in its timing and execution, it makes me so sad … that it didn’t happen sooner … that it came too late to save my friend, Lady Diana … a beautiful, caring, sweet, shy and intelligent woman who only wanted to use her fame to help people. Sad that it didn’t come in time to save Charlie Chaplin, who accepted self-imposed exile in France because of the incessant tabloid attention and lies …  and Marilyn Monroe, who was hounded to death by the tabloids … and Elvis Presley and so many bright and beautifully artistic people who could have made so many more contributions to the world if they had only been left alone to do so.

Illustration from The Caricature at the Voices Education Project. My thanks.

Including you, my Dear One. I wrote at great length about this very topic in The Caricature for the Words and Violence Curriculum on The Voices Education Project website. The curriculum was released in September, 2010. A full transcript of the entire piece, which examines the tabloid media’s quarter-of-a-century-long campaign to assassinate the character of the most popular recording artist … as well as the most prolific humanitarian and proponent of meaningful change … the world had ever known, can be found at the link to the right on this page. Following are a few brief quotes from The Caricature which, I believe, apply to this dialog.

Public perception of Michael Jackson was significantly colored by the sheer scale, magnitude, and pervasiveness of the myths that spiral from fairly harmless, inane fantasies to increasingly misleading and harmful descriptions of a persona which bears no resemblance to accounts by those who knew Mr. Jackson personally. The misinformation may have even become a killing weapon by eroding and chipping away at a sensitive soul – an unequaled artist, humanitarian, and activist who possessed the ability to poignantly draw attention to the planetary and human condition and lobby for and mobilize agents of change. That Mr. Jackson possessed that ability and desire was proven more than once by the milestones of his life.

Through decades of sustained scrutiny upon a man who bore no resemblance to the manufactured and sensationalized version, the media defined a creature instead of a man; they drew a cartoon labeling it publicly “Wacko Jacko” and other derogations. This continuous and escalating psychological assault masquerading as journalism is reminiscent of schoolyard bullying. Few could have borne the repeated blows with equal grace and dignity; the fact that Michael Jackson endured them for decades is a testament to his strength and surety of purpose. Because of the relentless nature of the featured stories, much of the world envisions the tabloid version when the name Michael Jackson is mentioned. Despite the fact that it is a total fabrication, a fiction, a corrupt fairy tale that leaves one searching for any socially redeeming value, it endures. “If you hear a lie often enough, you start to believe it,” said Mr. Jackson who wondered, along with his admirers, why this cartoon was created by men and women who seemed to have abandoned the standards of truth, human decency, and ethics that once characterized a lofty and respected profession.

The historical picture painted of Mr. Jackson made it easy to doubt his integrity when the story broke in late 1993 that a child had accused Mr. Jackson of molestation. Most people did not immediately think that a beloved entertainer was the target of a shakedown; most of the world gasped and remembered all the fictions they’d read, shrugged their shoulders, and prepared to believe the worst. It was effortless because of all the previous associations and opinions based on tabloid biography. The news industry exploited Michael Jackson, making lots of money in increased circulation while convincing the public that he was some kind of oddity of nature.

And

The cautionary tale here is the rush to judgment on the part of the public fed by reports published by an industry whose first and only allegiance by its own admission is greed and the accumulation of profit at the expense of people, truth, justice, and the civil rights of individuals thrust into the public eye by talent, fame, or public office. Accustomed to journalism being an ethical profession, we trust that sources are investigated for possible axes to grind by our reporters and television anchor persons, that accusations are thoroughly examined for possible extortionate motives, and that what we watch and read has been scrupulously vetted and verified prior to publication. As shown in this case study, this trust is misplaced. The destruction of unique and irreplaceable human lives by media wielding “pens mightier than swords” – and cutting as deeply – is unacceptable in a democratic society.

And

What we can take away from this case study is: very powerful editors and broadcast network executives decide what we, the public, are going to read and watch. Their reports on the subject of Michael Jackson, specifically, pivoted for much of his life on ridicule, accusation, and character assassination instead of accurate information. Our highly-vaunted democratic process is held in the steel grip of media. How exactly are we to know the truth? And how much truth are we allowed to know on subjects of arguably more political and social relevance?

God Bless You!

Now, I want to move on to brighter and happier subjects, Beloved. I hope you don’t mind.

We’ve talked before about all the different ways your children commemorated the 2^nd Anniversary of The Day the Earth Stood Still in earlier conversations. I am happy to report that your 53^rd birthday will also be celebrated by your followers in many different ways.

One Rose for Michael, the campaign that brought 4,500 beautiful, long-stem, red roses to Holly Terrace on June 25, 2011, has taken a slightly different approach for your birthday this year. By consensus, they have decided to donate to vaccinate children against preventable diseases in hard-hit areas of the world. The campaign has a goal of vaccinating 5,000 children; they have already collected enough to vaccinate almost 1,500! (Update: as of Friday, July 15 we have hit 1,500 and they’ve upped the goal to 10,000!) These vaccines will be distributed through The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) in the name of Michael Jackson. Your children want your name to remain associated with worldwide relief efforts and humanitarian missions.

Now, that’s what I’m talking about! Do you see how much ‘bigger’ the human being is than he’s being told he is? They would like you to believe that there is nothing you can do to make any kind of major impact on the monumental problems that the world faces, but there’s nothing that can’t be done if we raise our voice as ONE! [Michael sings these words with great emotion and emphasis.] At least one thousand five hundred children will have a chance to live their lives free of polio and measles and tetanus reactions. One thousand five hundred … and possibly ten thousand! That’s amazing!

Thank you so much! This makes my heart happy. I am so proud of all of you. All the trees that have been planted and the floral tributes and video tributes and blogs … and now … vaccinating my babies! [Michael’s voice contains tears.] God bless you all! I can’t talk anymore right now. My heart is flooded with emotion and gratitude. I’ll catch you later! I love you so much more.

Jan – July 15, 2011

 

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Conversations – Installment 34

Disclaimer: The following post could be considered, by some, to be provocative and controversial. Please understand that the opinions expressed are the opinions of the author alone.

July 3 through July 10, 2011

Michael, There is a lot of discussion occurring in various forums … videos and discussion forums and personal blogs all over the internet … that are comparing you to Jesus. One hip-hop artist by the name of Aqualeo has a multi-segment video on YouTube entitled “Michael Jackson was Your Jesus” in which he posits that the foretold ‘Second Coming’ of the Book of Revelations would look much like your life and career. He asks questions like: What would Jesus look like [in the Second Coming?] Wouldn’t He be instantly recognizable all over the world? Wouldn’t he represent black and white, male and female, child and adult? Wouldn’t He appeal to every creed and call for unity and the elimination of all divisions? Many of my friends and myself revere you in much the same way that we revere Jesus. How do you feel about that?

[Michael giggles and covers his mouth.]  I am so honored and moved by all your love … and by your wanting me to remain an integral part of your lives in this way. I am humbled by the comparisons because in no way do I compare myself to Jesus. In my physical life, I tried to imitate Jesus … to remain humble and to make a difference in every way I could, but I am not Jesus … nor am I a reincarnation of Jesus. His was the life I modeled mine after. If I achieved any degree of success in that, I am grateful.

So while I am thankful for all your love, I don’t consider myself worthy of your reverence. But, at the same time, I do understand how you have jumped to that conclusion. Human beings are fascinated with labeling things … categorizing them … dissecting them and examining them under a microscope to make them easier to understand intellectually. When you encounter a person or an occurrence, your brain automatically refers to your memory banks and compares that person or occurrence to what it finds stored there. We’ve talked about this before in earlier conversations. The fact that so many of your brains search your memory banks and come up with the same comparison is beyond gratifying to me in ways that I can’t even begin to describe. It brings tears to my eyes because it shows that my striving to attain one-tenth of the love of Jesus and to represent him in a way that all of you understood was not in vain. Thank you for validating all of my efforts.

Well, the correlations and points of comparison are astounding, Beloved. They are hard to avoid.

Both of you were prodigies … ‘old souls’ in little bodies … as so many people who knew you when you were young have testified on numerous occasions. Smokey Robinson called you a ’40-year-old midget’ and Berry Gordy has said that you had a kind of ‘knowingness’ about you even as a very young boy.

Of course, we can only know Jesus’s life from the writings of his followers … and within our own spiritual ‘knowing’ … because he lived so very long ago … and my experience with you since 1992 has taught me to believe very little of what I read of someone. Nonetheless, there is an incident recounted in the New Testament where Jesus is separated from his family during a Passover visit to Jerusalem when he was a young boy and is found by his parents three days later teaching and listening to the learned debates of the priests. From this incident, one can infer that both of you shared this trait of ‘knowingness’ … although in different spheres of influence … beyond your years.

Both of you suffered from a ‘lack of credibility’ … not because of any lack or deceit on your parts … but because the people of your respective times expected something totally different from what you each represented. The Jewish people of Jesus’s time expected their Messiah to be a military ruler … to overcome the Roman ‘heel of oppression’ … a wealthy and mighty king to crush the Romans and restore Israel’s autonomy and sovereignty as a nation. They couldn’t understand a Messiah who came from the common people … from a relative backwater like Nazareth … who was humble and whose main purpose was to bring to his people a new understanding of God and His kingdom. They thought they had God ‘in the bag’ … that their understanding and interpretation of God was sufficient. After all, according to their Scriptures, their God had conquered their enemies in this way before; He had physically expelled invaders and sent them wise and just rulers centuries in their past. They didn’t want a spiritual leader who would exhort them to ‘render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s;’ they wanted a temporal king, one who would dispose of the Romans and free their land from tyranny.

Your lack of credibility stemmed from a similar misinterpretation rather than from any lack or deceit on your part. The people of your time, my Dear One, didn’t expect a ‘rock ‘n roll pop star’ to be profoundly anything … except dissolute. Profoundly loving, compassionate, intelligent and with an unquenchable drive for excellence in everything you touched … this was totally outside our realm of experience. We expected orgies and drugs and alcohol and all the other vices that ensnare others in your fields of endeavor. A soft-spoken, shy young man who loved the innocent pleasures of childhood and saw God in the face of every child he ever met was antithetical to our expectations, totally alien to the stereotype we have set up for a person of your unparalleled fame and position. One who spoke of ‘healing our world’ and ‘respecting the autonomy of our children’ and ‘being the voice of the voiceless’ while remaining humble, gracious and kind to all comers regardless of social status, wealth or position could do nothing but raise suspicion in the small minds of your contemporaries who couldn’t see past the smoke screen of your fame. He was dangerous … unpredictable … unable to be pinned down; such a one had to have ulterior motives for building an amusement park and inviting children to play with his toys. Your non-conformity to our expectations contributed in large part to our mistrust. That along with the boundaries you ignored and eradicated without really trying … racial and cultural and denominational and political … made you a target for all of our angst. We are so very sorry, Beloved.

You need to stop lumping yourself in that category. Many of you understood; many of you saw through those expectations … the smokescreen of my public persona … to the more personal human being who drove it. Many of you knew me and responded with faith and love, supporting me through all the trials and sending me ‘spiritual reinforcements’ at critical times and I am so grateful.

Living up to what others expect of you while ignoring what your soul needs for its nourishment and completion is a sure fire way to a conflicted life. Those things that the world expected of me were not me. I would have been hypocritical to conform to those expectations. Hypocrisy breeds resentment and blocks creativity; my channel had to remain clear for God’s creativity to explode out of me. It required me to nurture that flow of creativity with those things that brought me joy.

The same is true for each of you. The world demands that you conform … and you know this to be true within your own lives. Each of you knows where your heart is at rest; each of you feels instinctively when the ‘planets are lined up’ … when your heart, mind, body and soul are aligned. It’s an unmistakable feeling. You described it in our earlier conversation when you were talking about writing your book. You said you felt like you were being led and the little synchronicities and miracles occurred at more regular intervals. You noticed them and took a second or two to be grateful for them. You were speaking to me in your mind … and I was responding to you in much the same way we are conversing now. You said, “the next decade of my life was the most soulfully-aware, spiritually-conscious, mystically-fulfilling decade I had ever lived. Every day was a new, exciting adventure. I couldn’t wait to discover what miracle was lying in wait for me as the day unfolded. It felt like I was being led … like an angel had his hand on my shoulder and was leading me into a whole new life.” (Conversation – Installment #18 – March 6 through March 12, 2011).

You’ve been taught to depend on your priests and ministers to tell you what is right for you … or to look it up in some book that was written by men who lived centuries in the past … instead of the urgings of your own soul. As a matter of fact, you’ve been told that those ‘hunches’ and ‘feelings’ are suspect and should be ignored. You ignore those hunches and feelings at the risk of living a fragmented life, one that is misaligned and disjointed. When you are aligned … as you were when you were writing your book and as you are now in these conversations … you feel led, powerful, things fall into place easily and lock tightly, you are unobstructed and your desires are made manifest in your reality with an ease and naturalness that is unmistakable.

You’ve been taught that you are ‘imperfect’ and that it is ‘blasphemous’ to aspire to the same kind of spiritual attainment that Jesus embodied. This is not true; it is not blasphemous; this is what you’ve been sent to this planet to achieve. Aspire! Dream! Imagine! Attain! Achieve! It is what you were designed for; and, then, be every bit of what you can be! Don’t be afraid of offending God by aspiring to be like Jesus, for example! God is in the wings applauding every one of your efforts. She is your most appreciative audience.

Your world says the word ‘dreamer’ as if it’s a bad thing. It patronizes the ‘imaginers.’ As we’ve said before, it is the dreamers and imaginers that will move humanity along in spiritual, emotional and physical evolution. It is you … my children … who are changing the world with your love for me … and for each other … and for the planet … and for the children. God bless every one of you!

Your words are so inspirational, Michael, as always. I love you so much and I thank you … I will try … but it is way off topic for this conversation. As you like to say, “Quit distracting me, we are on a roll, here.” [Michael giggles.] Back to our comparison!

Both you and Jesus were clear channels for the unconditional love of God to be made real in the worlds you inhabited. Jesus told his disciples that LOVE was the most important of God’s commandments, that the letter of the law was subservient to the Spirit of the Law and that if a man needed healing on the Sabbath, he should be healed on the Sabbath regardless of the strictures against doing anything on the day of rest. It was one of the criticisms leveled against him … that he encouraged his followers to ignore the letter of the law. He made the law new … and human.

You encouraged your colleagues and co-workers with the words, “God bless you” at every opportunity. You used the words to mean ‘thank you’ or to plead for intercession in a child’s illness. You asked everyone around you to remember that ‘love is important’ and ‘the world should be full of love’ and ‘do it with love … L.O.V.E. … love.’

Jesus encouraged his followers to allow the children to approach him and said that the children of his time were overlooked and neglected just like the children of your time are overlooked and neglected. He told them that the most important among them should be servants and illustrated his point by washing their feet, which, at the time, was the function of a slave in those households that held slaves or the women in those that didn’t. He also taught that if they wanted to be the most exalted they should become as little children for ‘of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.’ And he healed the children, but denied that the healing originated with him; instead, he credited His father in heaven for the healing. He told them that all he had done was ask, with faith and gratitude for his prayers being answered and that with ‘a mustard seed’ of faith, they, too, would do what he did. As a matter of fact, he said, “greater than this shall you also do with faith.”

Both of you spoke in parables … short stories with multiple layers of meaning, each layer containing a germ or moral or point. Jesus’s parables are contained within the New Testament … The Prodigal Son is one of the most famous. Your parables were your songs and short films and performances of those songs. Earth Song is a parable and there are multiple layers at which the meaning can be interpreted … the music and lyrics themselves (which are powerful enough all by themselves) … the settings and concepts of the short films you used to make the moral visible on film … and the props and films you used to convey your message in performance with the added ‘punch’ of your body language to convey your meaning and make them unforgettable. Man in the Mirror is a parable. Heal the World is a parable. All of your short films are the dramatic representations of the parables contained within your music.

I’ve recently read a wonderful book by Dr. Willa Stillwater called M Poetica: Michael Jackson’s Art of Connection and Defiance which makes a genuine attempt to examine your work as a serious artist. The meanings that the author finds in works that have been formerly discounted as “pop music” are manifold and startling and profound. She treats such short films as Beat It, The Way You Make Me Feel, Dirty Diana, Ghosts, Stranger in Moscow, Scream and Blood on the Dance Floor within her treatise and her conclusions are eye-opening and thought-provoking. She posits that with your short films, you introduced us to characters we felt comfortable marginalizing (like the gangs who populated the set for Beat It) and made us see them as human beings very much like ourselves at a time when hip-hop was solidifying its hold on urban culture and she examines your impact on that solidification process. The book is a thoughtful and compassionate look at Michael Jackson, the penultimate artist.

Joe Vogel has also released a 50-page essay (kind of a ‘trailer’ advertising his book which is due out this fall) on the musical importance of Earth Song. He calls Earth Song your ‘Magnum Opus.’

That’ an interesting combination of songs to examine, isn’t it?

Yes, very! And they both do a very good job of dissecting each of them. I was pleasantly surprised as I read M Poetica and Joe Vogel’s essay.

Both you and Jesus were magnetic in ways seldom experienced previously by your audiences. There is magnetism on the level of the magnet and paperclip … and there is ‘off-the-charts,’ ‘out-of-the-ballpark’ magnetism on the level of a black hole gobbling up space debris and planets in its path. Jesus and you shared the black hole level of magnetism. People were … and still are … drawn to you by an almost inescapable pull. Of course, adults fight that kind of ‘drawing’ because they don’t understand it fully and it frightens them; they think there’s something ‘evil’ or ‘cultish’ or ‘hypnotic’ about such unexplainable magnetism … whereas, children just run to it with open arms and embrace it with absolute trust and faith.

I love that … black hole gobbling up space debris and planets in its path … garffgarffgarff [Michael makes a noise like he’s gobbling something and laughs.]

Jesus discouraged his followers from making him the ‘Son of God,’ (advice which they totally ignored after he was gone). He told them that we are all sons and daughters of God and that, with faith, all things are possible. He walked the Earth humbly and never made himself important, always credited God for everything and by doing so, brought God into daily life in a way that his world had never seen before. He forced the people of his times to make a decision about their faith in God.

You, like Jesus, spoke often of God. It seems like you mention Him in every interview. You told reporters that God was responsible for your music and your dance, that you were just a channel through which they came; you always thanked God for the gifts of music and for your talent, refused to take credit for the songs you wrote and described your creative process as ‘stepping into the flow.’ You told Neff-U that melodies and harmonies are ancient, that they have always been ‘up there’ and taught him to just pluck them out of the air. You walked humbly on this Earth and even in times of your greatest extremity were more concerned with other people and their needs than you were with your own anguish or pain.

Tom Mesereau spoke at the Gardner Street Elementary School on June 25, the anniversary of The Day the Earth Stood Still, and I have seen video of his presentation. His speech was brief; he related two anecdotes from his personal experience of you during the trial. The first anecdote related that his sister was diagnosed with terminal cancer during the early days of his association with you and that when she returned from the hospital, she found a huge floral arrangement and personal note from you welcoming her home. The second anecdote was about his struggle with vertigo during the trial and he recounted that you called him to make sure that HE was okay in the midst of the most horrifying and humiliating experience of your life … one in which your life hung in the balance. These are just two examples when you diverted attention from your own situation, which was perilous, at best, to tend to the needs of others. There are dozens of others.

Beloved, you too, brought God into the mainstream of society, a society which prefers to think it has God ‘in the bag’ and to ignore Her except on Sunday morning, one which condemns anyone who doesn’t attend church regularly and spout the accepted doctrine, whichever accepted doctrine that happens to be. When a truly spiritually-attuned human being who has a personal relationship with God stands before it, it doesn’t recognize him.

My thanks to the anonymous author of the photograph.

And the similarities don’t end there. Jesus was brought up on charges that were patently false, remained silent at his trial, was found not guilty (Pilate is reported to have said, “I find no fault in this man.”) Nonetheless, to appease the crowd which had been paid to call for his execution, Pilate had him stripped and beaten in the hopes that the crowd would be satisfied. When it wasn’t, he is reported to have said, “I wash my hands of the fate of this man.” In other words, he was put on trial, exonerated of all wrongdoing, stripped and beaten and then was crucified anyway.

Here the similarities between Jesus and you are glaring … obvious … unable to be ignored, my Dear One. While our world has progressed far enough in two thousand years to no longer exalt in the physical torture and public execution of another human being, our evolution has not precluded us from reveling in the sadistic pleasure of watching while another is psychically, emotionally and spiritually flayed alive while we stand by and do nothing to stop it.

You didn’t stand by and do nothing to stop it; you did everything you could do. You must stop blaming yourself. Your feelings of guilt do no good; they just add to your conflict. Most of all, you sent me spiritual support. You prayed for my deliverance and my strength to bear it all with dignity. Without those prayers … and those of so many others … I doubt I would have been able to find the fortitude to remain strong and resolute.

It wasn’t enough, Beloved. You, too, were stripped and experienced the total humiliation of having your body photographed by ‘impartial’ observers while the man responsible stood by in the next room, listening to your sobs and pleas to ‘stop this.’ I wonder what kind of pleasure he got from this. You, too, were put on trial on trumped-up charges that were patently false. You had the additional torture of having to propel yourself into that courtroom daily and listen to the name you had built so meticulously over a forty-year career dragged through the mud for five months. You, too, were exonerated on all charges. And you, too, were crucified (metaphorically) anyway.

But even that is not the most obvious of the similarities between you; the most glaring and telling of the comparisons … and the one that confirms in no uncertain terms who you are (for me, at least) is the impact your leaving has had … and continues to have … on the planet, the emotional implosion that has been described in these conversations previously as the ‘lightning bolt’ experience and compared to the detonation of a 25 megaton atomic bomb, the ripples radiating out into the cosmos  from the pebble thrown into the still pond. One of my Facebook friends has described it in the following words: “We are experiencing a rush of energy, a torrent of love, a powerful resonating in our cells that is impossible to ignore. It is a creative force and we are pulled into it.” (Thank you, Monica.)

Jesus’s departure caused a similar phenomenon. St. Paul describes his ‘lightning bolt’ experience on the Road to Damascus in the Acts of the Apostles. His experience left him blind. The ripple effect from this one event … Jesus’s crucifixion … changed the world of his time … paved the way for the history we know today. The Renaissance and the beautiful works of art that resulted would not have been possible without this event … the rise of the church as a world power would not have been possible without it. Of course, the dogmatically-controlled lives we all live today, too, would not have occurred without it as well. I pray that the human race does a better job of interpreting your life and its impact upon world events than it did in the case of Jesus of Nazareth.

It will be interesting to visit this planet in two or five or eight hundred years from today to see the ripple effect from your life … and your departure from the physical side of it … as they expand throughout the cosmos. I pray we have matured enough in that time to sublimate our need to control our neighbors and allow free-will and free thought to inform our spiritual, physical and emotional lives.

So, what do you think of these comparisons? Are you offended by them? It’s not important what I think of them. What’s important in this discussion is your opinion. How do they make you feel?

My reaction to such discussions is, “bring it on!” I feel absolutely no conflict in comparing you to Jesus of Nazareth. I honor and respect you both in that comparison; feel that neither of you is diminished in any way by it.

Unlike Jesus’s followers, I do not feel a need to deify you, though. If we deify you, we do you an injustice. We kinda take the ‘hardness’ out of it … it’s not hard for God to do what’s right … to be kind and generous even though the world treats him cruelly and brutally … he’s God, after all … and by extension … above all this human CRAP. But it is hard for a human being to do what’s right … to be generous and give everything he is and has to help ease the suffering of the world … even when the same world he is trying to heal turns on him with a vengeance. It’s not hard for God to create a life that is an inspiration for millions of people on a massive scale … he is the Creator, after all. But for a regular guy, especially an African-American regular guy from a working class family … that’s hard! To influence an entire world and change things for the better … eradicate world hunger by half … for God, that’s a snap! For a Rock ‘n Roll pop star … that’s hard! So, we do you an injustice to deify you. We take the significance and beauty of a human being striving for perfection out of the equation, if we make you into a god.

What’s worse, we eliminate your effectiveness because you wanted to show us that we, too, must find the gift that we were created to give our world, and give it joyfully and without counting the cost … but if we make you a God, we blunt our responsibility to do that … because human beings can’t be God, so we can’t follow the example you set for us. Can’t be done, so why even try? That’s the ‘original sin’ concept that you described in an earlier conversation, again. Do you see what I mean? We remove our obligation to strive for the excellence you personified by making you anything other than what you are … a man with all that entails. You had to fight the same demons we all have to fight … as a matter of fact, you had to fight all those plus some that most of us will never have to fight … and you still came out smelling like a rose … instead of being the thorn in the rose’s side!

So, I don’t think our mistake is in deifying you, My Dear One … because I don’t … you are the most remarkable man this world has seen in a long, long time. And I don’t think it’s wrong for us to compare you to Jesus, because the comparisons are glaring … obvious … unable to be ignored! And I don’t think it’s wrong for us to continue to speak to you (pray), now after June 25, 2009 because I think those who lead the way, as you he did, are still concerned about those of us left behind and want to help us achieve some level of spiritual attainment.

I think our mistake is in deifying Jesus! (Heretical thoughts! Oh, well, I always did say I would have been barbecue bait a couple of centuries ago … that hasn’t changed.) By doing so, we lifted him too far above us … so far that even trying to strive to become like him was blasphemous … so far that even mentioning his name in the same sentence as ours (like in the case of John Lennon claiming more popularity than Jesus … or you saying that you tried to ‘imitate Jesus … I’m not saying I am Jesus’) is heretical! People were burned at the stake for less. We separated him from us, made him ‘other’ rather than ‘one of us’ who just happened to do what is right and was crucified for it.

The Christ Consciousness which you and Jesus of Nazareth share, is a universal concept. Buddha shared it. The Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita of the Hindu faith describe it. The Muslim faith shares it. It is not exclusive to one person or faith. It is the model of the fully-realized HUMAN BEING … the human being who has realized his potential and strives to achieve it! There is a psychological term for it … the SELF-ACTUALIZED human being … made famous by some well-recognized psychologist (sorry, can’t remember his name) … Mazlov? I’ll look it up later and let you know. Maslow … that’s it!

Very few humans beings ever attain to that ideal. You did! Jesus did!

It is my firm belief that God has shared his divinity with each of HIS wonderful creations, including mankind. She created us in Her image and likeness and planted that seed of divinity within each one of us and through it … she BREATHES us all. I do not find any contradiction in comparing you to divinity. I believe that … at our core … our spirit or aura or whatever you want to call it … our soul … is divinity in motion in our world. Our mission, should we DECIDE to accept it (HUGE IF), is to allow that inner divinity to inform and influence our thoughts and our actions … to so let our light shine that the world can’t help but notice. You did that! Few do!

I believe that you let that inner beautiful divinity shine so clearly and so magnetically that you lassoed the WHOLE WORLD into your web … and caused the emotional implosion that you caused when you left this physical space. But that is NOT THE END of it … just as it was not the end of Jesus. You continue to reach out to all of us who are paying attention … and I believe that that is one of the most important parts of your message … one of the reasons you came to us at this time and in this way … to allow all of us to know that we are also welcome to share in this divinity and to encourage us to so structure our lives and thoughts as to shine along with you.

God bless you! Yes, it’s your time to shine!

Jan – July 8, 2011

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Conversations – Installment #33

June 26 through July 2, 2011

Well, Beloved, it looks like most of us survived another anniversary of The Day The Earth Stood Still.

[Michael giggles.] That was a good movie. Did you ever see that movie? Not the new one … the old one?

Of course, I saw that movie, Michael. “Klaatu mirado nicto!” I think I have it somewhere on VHS. You’re right! It’s a great movie. Throughout the movie, we all think that Michael Reny is the ambassador … when it really turns out to be Klaatu. I love it.

I think that is what I will start calling June 25 … it fits quite well. I’ve toyed with other labels because I absolutely refuse to call it the day Michael Jackson died; you haven’t died … you are more alive in our hearts and souls than you ever were … and more vocal. Thank you for that … it is such a great comfort!

I thought about calling it The Day You Rocked Our World, but you rocked our world every day of your life, so I gave up on that one. The Day The Earth Stood Still has a nice ring to it, conveys the import of the event well and describes the visceral feeling that occurred for a lot of us, so I think that’s what I’ll call it. It’s an emotional day for all of us. We don’t want to remember that day; we wish with every breath we breathe that day had never happened; but if it had to happen we will not suffer it to be in vain … we all want to remember you in a meaningful way that would make you proud of us … by promoting your legacy and making a difference in our world. In other words, we will use it as just another in a very long litany of reasons to celebrate you and all you mean to us.

When it rains lemons, make lemonade, huh? [Michael giggles.]

Exactly! We all paid homage to you, Sweet King … each in our own way. Some were lucky enough to travel to the sites that you walked or pay visits to your final resting place or fly over Neverland and visit your home from a helicopter. Some left gifts for your children and your mother at the Hayvenhurst compound. Some gathered with like-minded friends to celebrate you with music and dance. Others honored you in prayer and meditation, joining their hearts with people all over the world to take a moment and be thankful for all the gifts you shared during your time with us … and since. A fuller listing of the memorials is included in our previous conversation.

But while we were busy preparing all the gifts we wanted to bring and lay at your feet, none of us were aware that you were preparing your own gift for all of us. It should have come as no surprise to us, I suppose. After all, that would be completely in character; you were always more concerned with giving than receiving.

One of those gifts delivered on the anniversary of your Re-Birth is a song you recorded with Barry Gibb in his studio in Florida called All In Your Name. Barry uploaded the entire song to his website on June 25, 2011 and it was all over the internet on the same day, shortly after the special anniversary global Major Love Prayer ended. The timing was beautiful … as if it was your response to all our memorials! It was immediately shared on YouTube and social networking sites. I, personally, saw at least three different versions of videos based on the song distributed on sites that I visit. Of course, I had to download it and put it on my MP3 player.

Barry was kind enough to share little snippets of the videotaped recording sessions on his website several weeks ago. It is my understanding that he was deluged with requests for the song, so, perhaps, the leak was his way of celebrating his friend, Michael Jackson, on his Re-Birthday. Or, just perhaps, he was … how should I say this? … goaded … urged … nagged … by a Beautiful Angel to release the entire song. [Michael giggles.] Either way, we consider it a GIFT from above … and we are so grateful. Thank you!

Now I got a mission
The story unfolds
What the wise man has told you
Is already known
That a woman and a man
Should go by the Plan
And we’ll find out
How high we can fly

There’s just one religion
One family of love
We suffer the children
As God cries above
The giving not the taking
With hearts open wide
And it looks like we fall
And it burns like a flame
Any ground that I claim

So what is my life if I don’t believe
There is someone to watch me
Follow my dreams, take all the chances
Like those who dare
And what of our world? What does it become
When the damage is done?
You held out
You say no
You stand up
Only God knows
That it’s all in the game
It’s all in your name
Follow me to the gates of paradise
They’re the same
It’s all in your name.

How do you do that, baby? How do you reach out from a song that was recorded in 2002 (according to Barry’s website) … almost ten years ago … and grab hold of our hearts with nothing more than your voice and just turn us inside out with the beauty of the experience? And how do you encourage us to ‘follow you to the gates of paradise’ with so much feeling and inspiration in just a few little words?

I don’t know how that happens either! Really! [Michael whistles his anemic whistle … and I have a visual of him with his hands in his pockets as he rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet.] ‘Anemic whistle?’ You are so cruel!

[Jan laughs.] Yeah, right! I am so not believing that innocent act! In addition to the song, I think you gave me a personal little gift this weekend. Well, actually … I think I’ll amend that statement … and make it two personal little gifts.

I did? What two personal little gifts?

Don’t act so innocent! Well, we’ve talked before about my collection of Michael Jackson video clips. With all that I’ve collected from 1992 through 2002 and again from 2009 to the present, it’s pretty hard to find a clip that I haven’t seen before. But one of my friends found one this weekend and posted it on one of the Facebook groups that I frequent. It’s a clip of the 2003 BET Awards with you presenting James Brown with a Lifetime Achievement Award. 2003 was just after I stopped paying attention back then. I so can’t believe that stuff like this happened and I wasn’t watching and taping it! But there it is. When I viewed this video, I was just so grateful; it, too, arrived on June 25. I loved watching this 4-5 minute clip; you were so emotionally moved and honored to be presenting the award to him. I love it!

Now, you and James are together again. Do you see him often?

[Michael laughs.] I don’t need to see him … We Are One.

What do you mean, Beloved?

Well, we’ve talked before about the exchange of energy that occurs when two people meet, right?

Right!

Okay, it’s a little different when energies that have been embodied but are rejoined on this side of life meet. I don’t know exactly know how to explain this. I need an analogy to help you visualize what I’m talking about. Let’s see if I can come up with one.

When embodied auras or energies meet, there is an exchange of energy between them. We’ve talked about this before. The energies or auras touch, an exchange occurs between them and they either recognize … or do not recognize … each other as One. But the two energies or auras remain separate because each is contained within his or her own body and attached by silken fibers to that body.

On this side of life, the same exchange occurs but the energies merge and become One while remaining individuations.  I know that sounds like a contradiction, but it’s not; it’s that dichotomy thing that trips up any attempt at describing the two sides of life. It’s very much a part of this side of life at all times, but spiritual beings who are still engaged in and committed to their human experience have a hard time understanding how two opposite things can be true at the same time. Here that’s not a problem. Just like it’s not a problem for two solids to be occupying the exact same space at the exact same time. Do you remember our previous dialog in which you described a visualization in which you saw me and the courthouse occupying the same space. It’s like that. Are you with me?

Yup, gotcha!

Okay, here try this. It’s a really poor analogy, but let’s give it a whirl. Your granddaughter likes to play with bubbles, right?

Absolutely! Loves them!

Good … so here’s the thing … sometimes when she blows a bubble through the little wand thing … she gets two bubbles, doesn’t she?

Yes, they are joined together, especially when the ‘little wand thing’ is divided or split.

So, two auras are like the two bubbles. They are one, but anyone with eyes can see that they are two, right?

Right.

Those two bubbles represent the two embodied auras or energies exchanging … or meeting … and remaining separate on the physical side of life. Now, I imagine that she has chased the bubbles a time or two, hasn’t she? And she likes to try to put two separate bubbles together, right? She’ll get one back on the wand and then another will land on top of the first. What happens to the two separate bubbles when she puts one on top of the other?

Usually, the two bubbles pop. But on the rare occasions that they don’t pop, as soon as the bubbles touch each other, they merge into one bubble.

Exactly! It’s MAGIC! The two bubbles touch … and they merge into One. There ya go! They are no longer separate. Two have become One. Anyone watching this imaginative play knows that there are two bubbles, but someone who hasn’t been watching only sees and experiences One bubble. This represents auras or energies meeting and exchanging on the Eternal side of life. They meet, make an exchange and merge into Oneness, yet each knows himself or herself … as well as the other … as separate. We can go and visit the individuations if we want to, but we don’t need to because We Are One. Does the One bubble have to go and see the other bubble that has joined with it? No. Because they are both there within the same bubble. Does that help?

You know, you are really good at analogies, Michael. I am learning more and more about you every minute. First the wonderful symphony analogy, then the stereo continuation of it and now the bubbles. You make things seem so clear.

Thanks. I suppose I could have used drops of water to reveal the same concept, but you get the picture. You spoke of two gifts. That was one. What was the other one?

Well, Saturday night I had another of those experiences where I merged into the Oneness with you and I awoke Sunday morning absolutely sure that we had communed, for lack of a better term, during the night. What’s more there were two words circling in my head … The Gift. So, not thinking much of it, I got up and brushed my teeth and washed my face … The Gift. Then, I went downstairs to make a pot of coffee and put in a load of laundry … The Gift. Then, I started talking to you … out loud. “Okay, I got it. The Gift.” I heard your voice clearly, “No … capital letters.” “Okay, baby … capital letters … THE GIFT.” So, I finished what I was doing and climbed the stairs with coffee in hand. All the while, THE GIFT is repeating over and over. I got my writing table set up and fired up the computer and was sipping my coffee. THE GIFT, THE GIFT, THE GIFT! “Okay, baby, I’m going as fast as I can! You gotta let the computer boot up, for heaven’s sake!”

Finally, I got a blank document open and the words just started flowing. Seriously! I don’t really know who was writing this thing, but I suspect it was you. It sure as heaven wasn’t me!

My thanks to Debbie for the gorgeous photograph!

THE GIFT

Unwrapped and rejected
My warranty expired
Alone and dejected
I remain in the basement of your Hearts
With the tires removed
Tread torn and mangled
Last year’s winter coat
With the junk of your life I’m entangled
I’m the jeans you never spangled
The tasks you failed to wrangle

I am what you needed
Tho not what you wanted
The clothes that didn’t fit
The colors too glaring
In the darkness I sit
Too stark and low cut
A reason for staring

Your son’s catcher’s mitt
Your mother’s fur coat
Your girl’s Barbie dolls
Your dad’s model boat
The papers you saved
From schooldays long gone
The letters you failed to write
To friends now beyond

The old eight-track tapes
Awaiting a player
The old Ouija board
That cryptic soothsayer
The old 45s
You collected as a child
And played on your hi-fi
When dancing so wild
Are now my companions
Gathering dust
Infested with insects
Given over to rust

But don’t weep for me
Because I have a secret
I won’t let you forget me
This warranty doesn’t expire
It lasts for eternity
I won’t be forgotten
put aside or shunted
I won’t allow my memory
To be blunted

The next phrase you hear
The next song you sing
Will remind you of me
Waiting in the wings
Down you will go
To the basement of your heart
To untangle the junk
To make a start

There you will find me
Amidst all the clutter
With excitement you’ll toss aside the junk
Your heart all aflutter
You’ll remember the love
That went into the giving
The songs and the dances
To encourage full living
You’ll dust me off
And hold me close to your heart
And in that moment you’ll know
That we will never part

I am the gift
That keeps on giving
Long after the music dies
The one you’d forgotten
So long in the basement
The door has closed
Throw open the casement
Unwanted, unexpected
But so very much needed
Unrecognized, unwarranted
In your hearts I am seeded

Look for me there
Hear my voice
Heal the world
You have a choice!
I am always here
To help and guide
Hold on tight to me
It’s going to be quite a ride
Don’t feel guilt or sadness
They are a waste of precious time
What’s done is done
You have always been mine!

Because I am the GIFT that keep on giving
Long, and long after the music dies.
I am the LOVE that went into the giving.
And LOVE NEVER DIES.

Now, you know very well … it was a team effort! Is this the second gift you were talking about?

Yes, Beloved … and the communion of the night before it arrived was an integral part of the expedrience. You know how unaccustomed I am to spending a night in such heavenly pursuits. The ecstasy of awaking the morning after and being disappointed to still be breathing … and the whole day … and week … and month … and year … and life … stretching before me in an endless moment of regret that I didn’t stay there … in that state of mystic union … with you.

I want you to promise me, Michael … when it comes my time to leave this Earth … please, baby … will you come to take me?

[Michael laughs.] I’ve already told you over and over that I will not leave one of ‘mine’ behind. And you are mine … just like it says in the poem. You are all mine! That was the most important line you wrote, did you know that? [I knew it was the one that made me cry. Is that the same thing?] You know, it just might be in this case.

You have always been mine … even when you thought you weren’t … even when you tried so hard to convince yourself that you weren’t … that it was ‘time for you to grow up’ … you were still mine. My picture on all the websites still drew you to me. You couldn’t fight it. You tried, but you had to read what was written and shudder at the lies, sending me a quick prayer to be strong through it all.

You’re trapped in halls and my face is the walls.
I’m the floor when you fall and when you scream it’s cuz of me.
I’m the living dead, the dark thoughts in your head.
I know just what you said.
That’s why you got to be threatened by me.
You think you’re by yourself, but it’s my touch you felt.
I’m not a ghost from hell, but I got a spell on you.
Your worst nightmare … it’s me, I’m everywhere.
In one blink I’ll disappear and then I’ll come back to haunt you. [Michael sings.]

And then, when you heard ‘Fall Again’ … you ‘fell again.’

[Ah, that song, Michael! You can’t possibly know what that song does to me. Melt doesn’t even begin to describe how that song affects me.]  The word is MERGE … we merge in it … we are one in it. Two souls become One like the two bubbles we just talked about … and like you experienced during your sleep.

But, I will even go one better. I promise you that you don’t have to wait one moment to share in that ‘mystic union.’  All you have to do is be open to the experience … and allow yourself to acknowledge who you really are underneath all the conditioning your world imposes.

You already have me in every moment of every day, week, month, year and life … so much so that people are starting to wonder about you. They catch you speaking to me … and they are beginning to think you are a little odd! What happened when you went outside today … cracked … me … up!

I heard you laughing. When I came around the corner of the building, I was so enrapt in our conversation; I didn’t even realize I was talking out loud. Those two people coming down the sidewalk were so stunned to see me talking to myself. So, I explained, “I always talk to myself; I’m told it’s only a problem when you start answering yourself.”

You do that too! It’s so funny!

I don’t think they were totally convinced. You are going to get me into trouble one of these days, Beloved. But, I don’t care … bring it on!

Jan – July 3, 2011

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