The above image illustrates something I'm more than ever convinced of: the Plant Kingdom is the Higher Intelligence on Earth. Plants are our elder kindred. They gave rise to the Animal Kindgom, which we're part of. Vegetation generates the atmosphere and feeds everything on the planet, both directly and indirectly. It gives us priceless materials and provides all our major medicines. I'm seen with a great being thrusting its magnificent flower stalk upward to the sky not far from the San Antonio Botanical Garden. I'm humbled and my human ego gains perspective in such a context! My mother is GAIA. I'm Father Nature's Son. 

Let me fess up: I'm a bookaholic. Ever since my mother taught me reading and writing in 1st grade and then I spent 2nd and 3rd grade in the classroom of Miss Rose Wood, I've loved nothing more than--and only a few things equal to--reading a great book. This early education taught me the excitement of learning. It gave me the skills to find out anything I wanted to know, and made me an autonomous learner.

Perhaps it's a mixed blessing, as it also encouraged me to spend much of my first 40 years living in my head. I'm still quite cerebral. Still, ongoing practices such as singing, dancing, Yoga and mindfulness meditation help with my embodiment. Now my path is getting out of my head and more fully into my body. Or, rather, exploring presence in which mind, body, all those apparently separate parts of a person are One.

Language is a two-edged sword. It's powerfully creative, the oldest and most potent form of human Magick. Language can also be incredibly limiting to the direct experience of being totally alive. Language can even be destructive. It's a potent tool that deserves respect and careful use by we humans whose monkey minds tend to chatter on and on. Much as I love stories, stories must not be mistaken for what's actually happening, which is something mysterious, profound and unknown.

As Ramana Maharshi, the great sage of Advaita (or non-duality) said, "Non-duality is neither non-dual nor dualistic." So when I say I like to use both reason and intuition this is in fact a dualistic and limiting statement. I always seek to expand further beyond the limits of my awareness. So which contains more information and wisdom in the above photo: the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN magazine, or the blossoms in the vase? Obviously the flowers! Each nucleated cell of their structure contains chromosomal libraries of biological intelligence spanning billions of years. Don't get me wrong, that's the one magazine I subscribe to! Only I'm more-than-ever proudly a Flower Child.

I'm also fond of my coffee mug that quotes Osho: "LIFE SHOULD NOT ONLY BE LIVED, IT SHOULD BE CELEBRATED!" Amen. I'm amazed that, whoever and whatever Osho actually was, he unleashed so many great living luminaries among his students, folks who are movers and shakers to this day. I'm neither a follower or leader of anyone, I hope, except perhaps that's again, dualistic thinking. I AM THAT.

 Whatever I AM, I'm increasingly aware that I live in Paradise, that my life is Heaven on Earth. This is not a religious sentiment, in fact it's surprisingly literal, what I mean. On the right you can glimpse the emerald verge of the Garden of Eden. Tom has made of this place, a living image of that famed Paradiso.

All humans have the opportunity for this self-realization, when the scales of mundane existence fall from our eyes, we SEE that only in our minds, in our imaginations, our images, have we ever left this state of Original Innocence. We are animals; we are angelic beings; we are the "gods" of the ancient world and our everyday lives are indistinguishable from Real Magick.

I've spoken here of the genetic wisdom within our cells and not only does this  reveal that the essence of all our direct ancestors lives and abides within us, even more astounding, there lives our relationship with all biological life on Planet Earth. Sometimes I say I'm more interested in physics than metaphysics, yet that too is a somewhat limiting dualistic statement. Above you see one of my older artworks from the 1980s when I lived in Estes Park, Colorado, reflecting a kind of scientific mysticism. The dymaxion form at the top represents a geometry elucidated by Bucky Fuller; the mastodon skull I sketched in the Denver Natural History Museum; the quetzal bird I'm simply fond of; two atoms flourish under the tusks; while a strand of shimmering, twisting, supportive DNA arises from below.

While that painting is one of the few survivors from a legacy of hundreds of artworks that were lost, I won't go there to narrate a tale of woe. Rather, let me share one of my current project that excites me, the e-book THE 9 REALITIES OF STARDUST for which I also have an associated site. This book and a possible DVD based upon it reflects my recent obsessions with spiritual materialism, or the non-duality between those concept so often and so deceptively viewed as separate. Plus my fondness for the concept of stardust, which I consider a key to my self-awareness as an embodied being.

I've also got numerous novels and so-called nonfiction books in process, including a series of 4 novels collectively titled MOONTUSK that is in the pipeline to be looked at by a publisher in 2010.

Likewise my visual artwork constantly evolves as well, for after a hiatus of some 20 years from painting in oils, during which I focused most of my energy on writing, I've resumed painting. On Tom's birthday last year as we drove into Austin, I expressed my wish to do so, something he always encouraged me on. So for HIS birthday he purchased me a brand-new set of art supplies. What an amazing guy!

Thus you can see (above) the first oil painting I did in the fall of 2008 following that 20 year pause. It's titled Natura Naturans, which is Latin for something like "Nature being natural," or "Nature Naturing." As always, I'mnot inclined to interpret my creative work, at least not until after something is finished, though by now I can say that I suppose this image expresses my sense that what we call Prime Source manifests most direcly and purely in Nature itself. The landscape is inspired by the Hill Country where I now live, the atmospheric haze of extreme humidity visible.

Well, these days I'm a happier camper than I've ever been. You see me floating on a river at the foot of the hills where I live in Paradise. Though I'm sometimes accused of having a brilliant intellect, and maybe so, I'm far more interested in full embodiment, that is the direct non-dual experience of feeling totally alive and One with All Things!