What’s Your Purpose?

What’s Your Purpose?

Hello, there! Ready or not, here’re a few questions to consider. And answer. Especially since life is what it is and doesn’t wait for us to feel ready.

            Are you clear what your Purpose is?

What is your Purpose? Your deep, life Purpose?

Are you on Purpose?

If you feel off, what do you do to get back on track?

Or did your “Purpose Train” derail and crash and the wreckage overwhelms you?

Are you already on Purpose and you navigate through challenges not necessarily with grace but with clarity? What works for you?

What the heck is a “Purpose” anyway, and why is that “P” so big?

What a great place to start! A purpose in general refers to plans, motives, intentions, aims, reasons, basis, causes and justifications, and guiding visions and goals. When used to refer to one’s “deep, life purpose” the term “purpose” takes on deeper and/or higher meanings.

Purpose becomes a clear, focused, drive to live a certain way with determination, resolve, and commitment. It is bigger than achieving a goal or a task, although such actions could be considered “mini-purposes.” It’s more than Mission and Vision Statements as your Purpose drives those declarations. Often one’s purpose is anchored by one’s deep values and beliefs, intangibles expressed in one’s credo, morals, and ethics.

A purpose is the foundation for one’s existence. Your Purpose is the foundation for your existence. It’s what you do to live your life.

It is consciously and intentional living life full out as much as we can as often as possible. Being on purpose demands of ourselves we do what we feel compelled to do, whether it is to serve God, life, nature, humanity, the stars, political causes, family, businesses, social justice causes, etc., while we leverage our natural gifts and talents in combination with our education, experiences, and learned skills. Purpose is not limited to gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, politics, the military, NGO’s, or business enterprises. Purpose is what you do, why you do it, and how you do it expressed through the actions of your life. Your businesses, your families, your organizations, your passions are not necessarily your purpose but expressions of your Purpose in action.

Purpose as a deep, life Purpose is spelled with a capital “P” to emphasize its singularity of focus and domination of your life’s existence. When awareness, intention, and commitment integrate Purpose crystallizes.

Getting clear to what is your deep Purpose in life is a prerequisite for being not just successful but deeply satisfied in any endeavor, including businesses, sexualoving partnerships and families, NGOs, sports, even hobbies. You may feel successful in your business or volunteer activities, for example, but feel deeply dissatisfied because you’re doing them for all the “wrong” reasons, such as from a sense of obligation, duty, cultural conditioning, those woulda-shoulda-couldas, etc. rather than living from your deep life Purpose.

A common metaphor often applied to being on Purpose is comparing it to being a train on the tracks. You may have heard phrases such as “Are you on track? Is your train on the tracks? Did you go off the rails?” or “I need to get back on track.” Even “I have tracks but no train.” Psychotherapists and counselors even have a term for people who feel thrown off by traumatic events in life: derailment. I know, for example, I was derailed way back in my early 20s when my first wife left me for another man. That trauma ricocheted through my life for decades, often in ways I wasn’t even present to for years.

There is also a misconception among some folks that being on Purpose is for men, or business owners, or is a masculine trait, or is a capitalist drive. Such ways of thinking are cultural baggage that inhibit and limit full self-expression. Artists, women, non-profits, and those from more cooperative social and economic groups also have their deep, life Purposes to discern, develop, and express. Whether something cultural is defined as “masculine” or “feminine” are often subjective interpretations that often box people in with an already-always listening that denies, even refuses to consider what else is possible.

It took me 52 years to discover my Purpose. The concept of a deep, life purpose wasn’t new to me. I’d been familiar with it for some time. Where I’ve been thrown off for so long was my inability to untangle the mixed messages I got from my family of origin and society at large. I failed repeatedly at getting crystal clear. Just when I thought I was clear, things got murky.

Repeatedly I was told two conflicting things: 1) “Wow, you’re an amazing writer – so when’re you gonna get published, get a job as a professor, or turn your books into movies and make a million?” 2) “Yeah, cool, so you write. I like to draw pictures of bug-eyed space aliens myself. When’re you gonna get real and get a real job? Or start a company or run a business if you don’t want the j-o-b?” It took me awhile to get off the drama triangle of victim-rescuer-persecutor.

I kept collapsing short-term urgencies and various responsibilities into my purpose as my Purpose. My natural gifts and talents were collapsed into my Purpose, and I had to dig them back out. I confused goals, dreams, ambitions, tasks, many of them short-termed, as my Purpose. What I didn’t get was yes, today I need to do this, for now I chose to do that for a month, and even though they are not actually my Purpose they align with my Purpose as they help me build toward it. So I may do q, r, s, & t, which I dislike, because they allow me to move toward u, v, & w as full expressions of my Purpose, which I love. Does that make sense?

There was a lot of untangling to do. Years were spent peeling back layer after layer after layer as one peels an onion. It helped, too, to dive in deep whether it was whitewater kayaking and alpine mountaineering, or transformative spiritual and mystical experiences, or all the professional and personal growth, training, and development workshops.

Many years were spent distinguishing my self from my identities and the masks I wore in public and in private. Getting clearer as to who I was, what I am, where I am, where I going, where I intend to go, what I need to do to do so and who I need to work with, and how, and why. So many questions, all simple questions, all asking about different aspects of the same core entity…me, and what was bigger than just “me.”

In the wake of hosting a Native American house blessing and all that opened up afterwards, my wife Kristina sat down with me with a stack of blank paper and her bag of colored pens. She’s an amazing and gifted woman. In two hours she guided me through an exercise where I discovered and declared my deep Purpose in life. I got clear as to what it is I do and why I do what I do. It was an amazing and powerful experience.

Kristina is a genius at such things. She’s a business consultant, coach, and trainer. Organizational development and the dynamics of human relationships is her thing. She breaks down the hyper-compartmentalization of many corporate structures to reveal all organizations are for, about, and composed of human beings. Her passion is Polarity Management, OD jargon for dispersing the illusion of  “bottom lines” to integrate products, services, money, assets, and creating value with what is often forgotten but more important, human beings and their relationships.

As an organizational change agent engaged in the transformation of these relationships, Kristina lives, eats, and breathes her Purpose. Kristina declares “I co-create awakening experiences of enduring empowerment such that people love and express their True Self.” Although she has played with the wording off and on over the years and has juggled other people’s opinions about those words, she ultimately returned to the core of the deep, life Purpose she realized for herself back in August of 1997. It rang true for Kristina as her own true self-expression for her raison d’etre.

What is my Purpose?

I create art with language to connect people with their own humanity.

That’s my deep, life Purpose. It’s what I do: “create art” with how I do it: “with language,” and my why: “to connect people with their own humanity.” Expressing my Purpose shows up in different ways: as an author, blogger, poet, historian, current affairs analyst, speaker, teacher, trainer, in sales, on video, in conversation, even in silence.

My first language was silence. As a birth trauma baby, I almost died several times during birth and my first two weeks out of the womb. The doctors informed my parents I was “mentally retarded.” One of my grandmothers who kept me for a week realized I wasn’t responding well and told my parents to have my ears checked and hearing tested. They did and discovered I wasn’t “retarded” at all, but partially deaf with a moderate to profound hearing loss in both ears. It took me almost six years of speech therapy to speak English.

One of the head doctors on staff kept telling me I was a bridge between worlds and would grow up with a unique gift to build bridges between people and groups of people. As a young boy, I didn’t know what he meant back then and had no desire to be a bridge for people and motor vehicles to move back and forth across upon. I didn’t get it until many years later when I began to understand metaphors. “Building bridges” also meant connecting people and organizations to one another, not only a feat of engineering and construction.

I’m an artist, and my art is words, whether spoken or written. I don’t have to be a genius in the art to express myself. And I am compelled to write. I am driven to work with and to play with language. My drive also strives to make the world a better place for connecting people to their humanity.

Yes, I also write for pleasure, for entertainment, and to make money, and I feel called to go much further than those things with my God-given talents. Look across our world. We are one species sharing one planet. Despite all our many differences, and there are many, we have far more in common with one another than not. When people awaken and connect, the primitive, limbic “fight, flight, or freeze” reaction subsides and conflict can be addressed without violence, perhaps even resolved.

To monetize one’s Purpose is a different challenge, one distinct from discovering one’s deep Purpose. Not every Purpose is appropriate to monetize as a business, of course. It has to feel right. There has to be alignment between one’s Purpose, ethics, and livelihood. One’s work as well as play can be an expression of one’s Purpose, too. Being an entrepreneur and leveraging your natural gifts to create value for yourself, your family, and others is certainly a powerful way to live your life on Purpose. You fulfill customers’ objectives and make the world a better place at the same time.

If you think your Purpose is simply to make money, or put food on the table, or buy a dream house, or get your favorite candidate elected, or simply have fun randomly doing whatever you like, well, you are not on Purpose. Those items can be objectives of a life lived on Purpose, but there’s no clarity or deeper drive to better one’s self, humanity, and the world. Doing whatever is just randomly doing whatever the moment brings. Purpose transcends the moment. It’s the bridge between past and future so creating the future becomes the now.

Sometimes we put too much energy into trying to understand everything rather than just going with it. Spending time figuring things out may have value, and it is distinct from actually creating and shipping what you create. Are you hiding behind planning and planning some more until everything is perfect? That’s one of my flaws, too. So stop it. I tell myself to stop when I catch myself hiding out and playing small. I’m not on Purpose when I’m playing small and hiding. My mistakes are too tiny. When I live my life fully on Purpose my mistakes are big and my messes messy. And that’s OK. That’s good!

What’s your Purpose?

by William Dudley Bass

September 22, 2011

© Copyright by William Dudley Bass

SKIN

SKIN

tells a story.

Only problem is

God knows the Truth.

Come back, o scattered bones,

come back to me, I cry.

But only dust...and ash...

return.

by William Dudley Bass
Sunday, September 11, 2011
(First published on 9/11/2011 on Facebook in Prezz Pressley's Facebook Group "MEN who r NOT AFRAID 2 CRY")

(NOTE: I republished this at William Dudley Bass on Earth at the Brink at http://williamdudleybass.com/MyBlog/skin/ on Tuesday, November 15, 2011.
Thank you.)



(C) William Dudley Bass 2011.

What is Deep Listening?

Consider these:

• What do you listen for?

• How do you listen?

• Who do you listen to?

• Why are you listening?

• Are you listening about something or someone, or are you listening for something or someone?

As you ponder these five questions to come up with your answers, below are several things to consider. There’s work to do and practice before we can answer those questions on a deeper level.

First, elephant ears. Yes, elephant ears, as in “Put on your elephant ears” or “Listen with your elephant ears!” Those words came from a coaching and leadership training seminar I assisted with over a decade ago, and I’ve remembered them every since. One evening as we were meeting (this seminar met over a period of three months) just before the participants arrived, one of the course leaders curved his arms out and up at both sides of his head. He was a young man, a tall guy named Jonathan.

“Put on your elephant ears,” said Jonathan. “Imagine you have these big, huge, enormous, elephant ears out to here, like this,” he said as he motioned again with his arms. “Elephants can hear really, really well over vast differences. And many people these days don’t feel heard. Even when they’re up close to someone else. They don’t feel listened to by other people. So put on your elephant ears and listen to them. Listen with your elephant ears as if you’re gonna hug them with ‘em. Yes, listen to each person as if you’re gonna wrap these huge, enormous ears around them and hug ‘em. Hug these people with your elephant ears!”

We got it. I got it. Forever. Jonathan was a stand for powerful listening.

Empathy is a powerful listening tool, too. According to psychologist Daniel Goleman, known for his pioneering work on emotional intelligence or EQ, there are three kinds. Interestingly enough, it is ideal to have some of all three and many people do or can train and develop themselves to be more empathic.

First is cognitive empathy. When I, or you, understands what another thinks. That means to see another’s perspective or point of view even if we don’t agree with it. At least we get it. You must be a really good listener to understand another’s viewpoint. Problems occur when people of this type can listen well enough to understand another, but they don’t care about you except how to manipulate you for their own ends.

The second is emotional empathy. This is the ability for a person, including us, to feel the emotions of other people. Emotional empaths are great at naturally tuning in to other’s feelings and emotions. They’re so good at it they feel the same feelings and emotions inside themselves as if they were their own. This feeling for the other results from deep listening and by firing the brain’s mirror neuron system creates rapport. Emotional empathy allows one to feel with another but not for or about them. There’s no compassion.

Empathic concern combines the above two, the cognitive and emotional varieties of empathy, the desire to understand another plus the capacity to feel their feelings, with compassion. Compassion can be defined as concern for another with the desire to help them out and make things better.

Deep listening, truly deep listening demands empathy. It not merely hearing with your ears and auditory senses, but you being able to tune in to another’s needs. You’re paying attention.

Another powerful tool for deep listening is silence. Jokes and quotes have been made about “why God gave us two ears but only one mouth.” There’s a point in all that. If your mouth is running a mile a minute how can anyone listen? And are you even being heard? Can you hear yourself? A friend of mine on Facebook recently pointed out the word “silent” has all the same letters as “listen.”

In another seminar training in a different institute, the leader became incensed with me over what I was absolutely certain was a huge misunderstanding. After I sat still and listened for a long time to other people telling me their opinions, I didn’t agree with any of it. And I opened up to just listen to them. In fact, I had to listen to them to discern whether or not I agreed or disagreed with them in the first place. As the moment wore on, none of that even mattered. To learn and to practice, the leader suggested I get a copy of Stuart Wilde’s book 1996 Silent Power and read it. I did.

It’s a slim volume jammed with insights and practices. Much of it had to do with keeping your mouth shut and your heart open. I learned to pay attention not just to others but also to our surroundings. For me to listen deeply to others, I first had to listen deeply to my self. The same for you. You can learn to listen deeply to others. First you must listen deeply to your self. Not your ego, or your belly, or your genitals, but to your soul, your spirit, your sense of self. Better yet, pay attention to all of those; so much you can discern what’s truly powerful and in alignment with your purpose.

Listening has a deep resonance for me, especially as I don’t hear well. I was a birth trauma baby and as a result became partially deaf. The doctors at first diagnosed me as being “mentally retarded.” That’s what they told my Mom and Dad. It was my step-grandmother who as she kept me for a week while my parents took a long overdue vacation realized my hearing had to be checked. I ended up wearing hearing aids, spent almost 6 years in speech therapy learning to read and speak English clearly, and was mainstreamed into hearing schools. All of that generated many challenges for my family and I.

As I grew up into adulthood, I learned how to read lips, facial expressions, gestures, and more subtle “body English.” While those abilities complemented, even enhanced my hearing, they didn’t necessarily make me a better listener. I had to work through many of my own issues to get in touch with myself. In a way to serve as a deep listener for others was similar to learning one must first learn to love one’s self before they can truly love another.

That is Deep Listening. Now you’re deep in the ocean as a whale or a submarine running silent. Or astride the African savannah with your elephant ears wide open. That’s great! Powerful! Because now you can go back up and answer those five questions.

William Dudley Bass

August 12, 2011

Sources:

Goleman, Daniel. "'Empathy'-Who's Got It,

Who Does Not,"

Daniel Goleman.info. May 2009.

http://danielgoleman.info/2009/05/02/

empathy-whos-got-it-who-does-not/.

(*If clicking on the website link above does not work per format constraints, please copy and paste the full link or URL into your browser address bar. Thank you.)

Wilde, Stuart. Silent Power. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House,

1996, 2003.

© 2011 by William Dudley Bass

Go Write! Write like a Dog!

I grew up writing like crazy. My Mom, a poet, encouraged me to write from the get-go. I’m told I could write my name by age 3, although I don’t know if anyone could read what I wrote. I learned to write with both hands and even with both feet. Never had the elegant cursive of my lettered ancestors, though. I was too impatient and liked to go … FAST! You should’ve seen the jagged sentences scribbled with a pencil gripped between my toes.

One sunny afternoon in October 2008 as I drove around the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, Garrison Keillor came on the radio. One of his short, nap time blurbs for NPR. He quoted another writer, Augusten Burroughs:

“The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It’s not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work.”

Now that kicked me in the ass. Ow!

I pulled off to the side of the road, whipped out a little notepad of paper I kept up front between my water bottle and a cup of coffee, and began to scribble furiously.

A couple of years earlier I saw Dan Poynter present to a group of struggling Seattle authors. What a blazing performance! While his style and subject matter didn’t resonate with me, other things did. I will always remember his vivid description of himself as “always writing.”

“I’m always writing,” Dan said as if it was just plain ol’ common sense. “When I’m standing in line, I don’t wait as that’s time going to waste. So I whip out a pad and pen and start writing. When I sit down on the airplane or the train or take the bus, I pull out my pad of paper and start writing. I’m always writing.”

It echoed that corny but intensely cutting line from Alec Baldwin’s character Blake in that 1992 movie Glengarry Glen Ross, “Remember ABC. Always Be Closing!” Almost won Baldwin an Oscar, too, that always be closing. So, always be writing!

Garrison Keillor claims he gave up golf to spend more time writing. I instantly felt guilty for all the time I spent playing in the great outdoors. Oh, I rock climbed, hiked and camped, canoed and kayaked, backpacked and pedaled, got into alpine mountaineering, and did wild, crazy things. Like almost dying. And if I had succeeded in that I certainly wouldn’t be writing. But I had to stop beating myself up. And I did. Those adventures gave me many wonderful and sometimes terrifying things to write about...and for.

In June of 2011 Seth Godin came to Seattle and presented. While I sat there observing in awe, someone asked him how did he write and what structures did he put in place to write? Seth snorted and shook his head.

“That’s has no relevance, so I won’t answer it,” he said. “And I’ll tell you why. It because you can’t copy me or anyone else, you have to find out what works for you. If I were to tell you how I write, then you would try to imitate it. We each are unique.”

“And,” Seth went on, “I made choices. We each get to make choices. Mine was I write like a dog. I write like a dog!”

The room was silent. “I don’t wait until it’s perfect, either,” he said. “I let it go. I ship it.”

So if you desire to write, or feel compelled to write, go write. Write like a dog!

And ship it.

by William Dudley Bass

August 8, 2011

(C) 2011 by William Dudley Bass

UFO seen from Mt. Erie, Washington

A group of six people, including myself, witnessed an unidentified flying object from the summit of Mt. Erie on Sunday, July 3, 2011. The other five were my wife Kristina (age 42), my daughter Kate (age 12), and three men who appeared to be in their mid-to-late 60s. I’m 52 years old. Mt. Erie itself is a relatively short but steep mountain amid those scattered across the San Juan Islands. At 388 meters high (or 1,273 ft.) it is the most prominent in the area and dominates the Skagit River Delta region of northwestern Washington State. It dominates Fidalgo Island and looms above a string of lakes near Deception Pass. The peak lies in the City of Anacortes park system. From the mountaintop we six saw a UFO engaged in unusual actions. Those actions were as if a machine ship or biological organism behaved as a subatomic quantum particle/wave.

The Location

Mt. Erie is noted primarily for two things. The first is the stunning panorama of views from the summit. From different points one can see into Canada and across to Vancouver Island. One can gaze in wonder across the Salish Sea to the Olympic Mountains to the west and east to the Cascades. Mt. Baker dominates the Cascades close by and Mt. Rainier anchors it beyond the distant skyscrapers of Seattle. Close by in the Cascades the rocky peaks of the Twin Sisters jut up into the sky. Bald eagles soar around the forests and over the patchwork fields of local farmers. One can at the same time stare spellbound across pastures, seas and lakes, lakes with islands in them, cliffs, big islands and little islets, mountains from two ranges, into two countries, and with a little imagination, out to the Pacific.

The second thing Mt. Erie is noted for is the variety of routes to the top. A maze of hiking trails weaved up the slopes. Rock climbers scramble like spiders up steep, rocky cliffs. Most folks, however, prefer to drive up a narrow, winding road to the tippity top. A few bicyclists will pedal their way up. Some refuse to go up at all and spend their time in boats on all that water below. I’ve hiked and climbed up a few times before and canoed two of the lakes, but I did what I usually do…drive up in my car.

We parked atop the summit. As we got out of our minivan, I noticed the time. It was 5:07 pm Pacific Time. Being almost two weeks after the Summer Solstice, it was bright and sunny. We were blessed with a gorgeous summer day with temperatures in the mid-70s and a cool breeze. I love coming to Mt. Erie. It’s been my family’s favorite place to bring out-of-state visitors, assuming the skies are clear, of course.

Kate and Kristina dashed with Jo our dog out to a lookout platform ringed with railings. I poked along with my camera. From this vantage point we could see in an arc from points east to the south and back to the west. Most of the Cascades were partially hidden by a row of jumbled clouds that reminded me of small thunderheads and cumulus clouds. Three men were already leaning out over the railings and enjoying the views. One was clearly the unofficial tour guide and pointed out various landmarks. Their conversation was a fluid mix of clear English and seemingly unaccented Spanish. Kristina is fluent in both languages. Kate knew a little Spanish, too, but I could barely remember mine.

What We Experienced

Kristina, Kate, and I looked out toward the Cascade Range. My view was focused more on the scenery below as clouds obscured much of the mountains. I glanced at my watch showed it was about 5:15 pm. Suddenly the group of three men to our right became quite animated and started pointing up in the sky and out toward the mountains.

Being hard of hearing, I got close to Kristina and quietly asked what they were talking about.

“They see something moving around in the sky.”

“Where?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Somewhere over there. Oh, there it is! Can you see it? Looks like a big black dot or something.”

I peered hard. My eyes focused upon the wall of broken clouds hanging in front of the Cascades. Suddenly, I saw it. A black object shaped like a line in the sky with a hump in the middle, like a garbage can lid with large center handles viewed on edge.

“I see it!” I shouted. “It’s a bird … an eagle soaring with its wings stretched out … floating atop the air currents.” I was about to say “thermals” when one of the men interrupted me in a friendly way.

“No, it’s not a bird,” he said. “Look at it again. It’s too far away.”

We looked again. He was right. The object did not move around as a bird or a hang glider or paraglider would upon a thermal. It was above the clouds roughly in the direction of the Twin Sisters but also in front of the clouds. As I scrutinized it closely, I realized it moved in what I called a stationary wobble. It stayed still in the air, no movement whatsoever except for a slight wobble. As the “wings of the bird” or “edges of the garbage can lid” dipped up and down they did so in such a shimmery fashion I realized the object was also rotating around its center axis. But it was too far away to see any details beyond movement and that it appeared black. The one exception was as it shimmied and rotated while wobbling in a stationary position, I could the smallest glint of sun against something reflective on the edge of the “lid” as it came around. The direction felt counterclockwise, but I couldn't tell for sure as I've seen certain types of wheel-like objects appear to spin one way while actually spinning in the opposite direction.

Kate and Kristina peered intently at it. The three middle-age men were quietly animated and focused.

“Whoa!” Kristina shouted.

“What!” What!?” I said.

I had looked away for a moment. In that time Kate and Kristina saw the object zip with dramatic speed to their right (its left) and make a half-circle crescent-like maneuver up into the sky. I turned back quickly and saw it higher in the sky. Then I watched it drop straight down. It plummeted down with incredible speed. It dropped very straight with exact precision. Down down down it shot fast fast fast. I thought it might crash into the fields and woods below. But it didn’t. Quite unexpectedly the object winked out of existence. It disappeared. From visual existence anyway. Poof! Just like that.

We were all excited now.

“What could that possibly be?” one of the men said.

“Well, it clearly wasn’t an eagle. Nor an airplane,” I said.

“Wasn’t like any bird or plane I’ve ever seen before,” said the man who acted as tour guide to the others. “I know birds. And I know airplanes. In fact I live right next to that military base down there on Whidbey Island, and I know my planes.” He motioned far below to the naval air station on the island beyond Deception Pass.

“It’s wasn’t fireworks, either,” another man said.

“Well, it was clearly an Unidentified. Flying. Object,” I said, and briefly shared with them my one other experience with a UFO back in the mid-to-late 1960s. “That was much closer and thus easier to see that it was a spaceship or some kind of metallic ship. It clearly under intelligent control, but I don’t know from who or from where.”

“Yes, that was a UFO. Must’ve been a UFO,” the other men agreed without hesitation.

“Remember, too,” I said, “that UFO doesn’t mean their alien spaceships from another planet. They could be. They might be. There’s billions and billions of planets out there in the Universe. Who knows? But that object operated as if it was under intelligent control.”

“Well, that was the very first UFO I’ve ever encountered,” Kristina said.

“Yes, that was definitely a UFO,” another gentleman said.

“That actually exhibited behaviors I’ve read about current UFO phenomena,” I said. “Instead of flying saucer we’re experiencing what many are called orbs. I don’t know what they are.”

“It’s also much bigger than we think,” I said. “It was too far away to be a bird that we thought was an eagle that looked too far away.”

“Oh, it’s much bigger than a bird,” said one of the men.

“Much bigger than a plane, too,” I said.

“Yes,” said another guy. The three men pointed out the shapes and sizes of different planes close by and also off in the distance.

“Watch that Cessna,” I said and pointed. A Cessna flew by our mountaintop and swung off toward the south. As it buzzed off into the distance it got gradually smaller and smaller and smaller.

“That UFO was further away than that Cessna AND it appeared much bigger than that little Cessna at that distance.”

“Wow,” said Kristina. “There was no noise.”

“What?” I asked. “That Cessna’s pretty loud. Even when it’s far away I can hear it droning and buzzing.”

“Oh, no,” said Kristina. “I mean the UFO. It didn’t make any sounds. There were no noises at all.”

The man who knew planes and I agreed with Kristina, too, that not only did it not make any engine or motor sounds we could hear but that the mystery object maneuvered in a way impossible.

All six of us agreed that whatever that UFO was it was not an airplane, not a jet, not a helicopter, and not balloons. Whatever the object was, it was far larger than a small airplane. How big, we could not tell. We don’t think it was as large as a big passenger jet. Nor was this UFO some kind of bird or even a flock of birds and certainly not bats. We were not hallucinating. No mass hysteria or hypnosis. None of were drugged up and or drunk. I didn’t ask the three man that, but they appeared quite sober and solid. We were all relatively calm. The UFO was not a rocket, not an angel, and not a demon or any animal-like or humanoid or divine entity or ghost we could recognize. It wasn’t marsh gas. It was not Planet Venus. It was broad daylight, still sunny bright in the late summer afternoon. That UFO was way too large to be a remote controlled toy helicopter or plane. But could it be a robot drone?

“Kate,” I asked my daughter who kept staring out into the sky with a twisted up face, “what do you think it was?”

“Mind tricks, Daddy. I think it was mind tricks.”

Afterthoughts

Well, was it mind tricks? Or a robot? Even if it was a drone, no drone I know of in the American military-industrial-intelligence complex can maneuver like that: staying absolutely still in one spot while wobbling and rotating without making any audible sound, perform incredible maneuvers involving rapid acceleration and deceleration at high velocities. I’m no engineer, but it seems such movements would generate G-forces that humans would be unable to withstand. And I could be wrong. It has been said by technology and secret weaponry buffs that research and development in the classified compartments of the military-industrial-intelligence complex often create machines and technologies 35 years ahead of what’s currently public and available on the market.

Another possible and logical answer would be that it was a machine that was itself alive and intelligent or operated by intelligent life forms from other planets and dimensions. Could be both/and/all as well. While this UFO acted as if under intelligent control, its actions upon us seeing it resembled those of a wild animal more than anything else to me.

Considering the rapid explosion of knowledge with so many new discoveries, it makes sense that our Universe teems with billions and billions of stars and billions more of planets. As the Universe is close to 14 billion earth years old, it is quite possible for life to have evolved on many of these worlds and in conditions far harsher than we have imagined. It’s possible that on some ancient planets life evolved billions of years before ours. Imagine intelligent species not just a few hundred or even a thousand years ahead of ours here on Earth, but a billion years ahead of us. Why, we talk about the coming Singularity mid-century where machine life may surpass biological life right here on our planet. Water itself also seems to be far more common than once thought. Furthermore, it seems more and more that our universe is but one inside a Multiverse of parallel or bubble universes. While we live in an awareness of four dimensions, there are dozens more dimensions.

At the moment we believe time travel and teleportation are impossible. While they may exist in certain extreme laboratory conditions and theories, such actions don’t seem possible in our mundane world with human bodies and their machines. Once upon a time, however, many scientific and engineering achievements were once thought “impossible,” including sailing ships to the far “ends of the Earth,” heavier than air flight, spaceflight, walking on the moon, deep ocean submarines, generating nuclear explosions via atomic fission and hydrogen fusion, cloning animals, harnessing brain waves to operate machinery, invisible metamaterials, and so on.

Even the cutting edge research into neurology, parapsychology, consciousness, and spiritual experiences including near-death and out-of-body experiences demonstrate there is much we simply are not able to perceive enough to measure yet anomalies exist so often as to be commonplace. The latest advances in cosmology and quantum physics with M-theory, superposition, dark matter, antimatter, black holes, holographs, and quantum entanglement challenge our understanding of reality.

One interesting thought I considered after this event was that this large physical object behaved as what I’ve recently read about quantum particles. I’m no physicist, and I read of quantum being particles and waves at the same time or moving from one state to the other, being motionless while spinning, extreme movements, and then vanishing from sight as in the wink of an eye. So what is going on here? I do not know.

There is another aspect of this strange UFO that puzzles me. The six of us stared at it. As a wild animal focused upon some task suddenly goes into “fight or flight or freeze” upon realizing it is being watched, the UFO seemed to respond accordingly. It behaved as it became aware we were focused upon it. When I shared this with Kristina, she rolled her eyes and laughed. She thought this crazy notion of mine was more in alignment with Kate’s idea of “mind tricks.” The three men weren’t around to ask by then. And Kate believes our minds made it all up as “tricks” and “shadows.” Except there wasn’t anything to cast a shadow.

Photos? Videos? Sadly, no. While I had a Nikon D90 camera slung around my neck and Kristina, Kate, and I had cell phones with cameras, none of us took any pictures. None of even tried to photographthe mystery object. First, it transfixed us. Then it moved far too fast to have captured any clear images. None of the three men attempted to take pictures either.

We all saw the same thing and experienced the same thing. I do see better than Kristina, and she hears better than me. Our interpretations, however, were based upon our knowledge of various topics, whether it was birds, airplanes, science, psychology, and UFOs themselves. All I witnessed from the summit of Mt. Erie is similar to the reports by many other people who have had close encounters with strange flying objects.

While the first UFO I saw back in Virginia with my entire family was clearly a metallic vessel or machine of some kind, this UFO was even stranger. I published a detailed account of this childhood event followed by a dive down the rabbit hole into the study of UFO phenomena and the politics of UFOs with its ramifications for our global civilization. To read my essay “UFOs: An Encounter in Virginia,” visit my blog Cultivate and Harvest at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2011/02/ufos-encounter.html. Thank you.

by William Dudley Bass

July 8, 2011

(This is from memory as well as from notes I texted from July 3, 2011.)

© 2011 by William Dudley Bass

Tears for Me

Tears welled up from my eyes - for my self - for the first time in many moons - and I felt them wet upon my face. Ever since my heart got turned to stone 27 yrs ago, even after that story was dissolved & discarded 3 yrs ago as all made up in my mind, I find it hard to cry for myself, easy to cry for others. A moving incident from a book, movie, or article - both fiction & nonfiction - can move me to generate a flood of tears. But, oh no, only a drought to dry up my soul. I felt the depth of my own sorrow at the pain I've caused those I adore so deeply. Sorrow that turned to grief and eventually via the alchemical transmutation of forgiveness & compassion up into joy.

(First shared on Facebook in Prezz Pressley's group "MEN who r NOT AFRAID 2 CRY.)

by William Dudley Bass

On Facebook on June 27, 2011;

Here on July 8, 2011

(C) 2011 by William Dudley Bass

Aye, Dirt is Divine!

Aye, I like that dirty ruttin'! where all things Primal are revealed to be Divine, where all things wet & messy are but the rapture of a mango opening into your mouth, where intimacy is the portal for spirit to merge with soul, for flesh with flesh, for star dust with stardust, the many becoming one.

(Inspired posting to Prezz Pressley's Facebook Group "MEN who r NOT AFRAID 2 CRY.)

by William Dudley Bass

Posted to FB on May 26, 2011,

Here on July 8, 2011

I AIN'T NO MAN

I ain't no man. That's just a word. Somebody else's word. I'm not my name. I'm not my history. I'm not my past. I ain't the future; ain't happened yet. I'm not my stories - they all made up. I ain't dead - but will be eventually. I'm not my personality or my character. I'm not my identity. I'm made up in my own mind, and I'm not my self as there is no self. I ain't no ego or no id. I'm not my consciousness or my subconsciousness. I'm not my shadow or my inner child or adolescent or whatever. I ain't no woman tho I came outa one and like all humans who ain't cloned or genetically engineered with sheep & cows & chimpanzees I'm a mix of Y & X. I have all those things, but I'm not those things. I'm not my body. Yeah, I have one. But I'm not it. I ain't nothin'. Rip off all my clothes. Ain't got no shame. Ain't got no pride. Ain't got nothin'. Feelings & emotions rise up like hot scorching magma...but I let them go & cool off. I ain't nothing. There's no AM in my I. Standing in emptiness a hot flash of darkness renders naked all creation. Moving into light I start again...move into possibility...into my power...into love...cuz I'm done Seeking. Tears find me. Carve gullies down my chest and belly. Tears burn open holes in my flesh and fill my heart as wine. The more I cry the clearer I see. I cry so hard my head breaks open round my tears. Salty wine pours down my insides and out. My legs rust apart like iron and break upon my feet like clay. All dissolve into the sea. I topple into sand beyond the furthest stranglehold of my own hands. Ozymandias dead and unremembered even after the winds long blow away the sands. There is nothing but this present moment, nothing beyond death but words. Nothing explodes into everything becoming anything. Power flows and love churns reborn. Flowers crack open concrete as massive stars destroy whole galaxies. In the Bang of Big every tiny quantuum particle waves into a genesis of evolution from which arises after 14 Billion years the capacity to forgive and feel compassion, to feel empathy and love, to embrace paradox with and not or, to transcend the horror we visit upon one another, to open up and cry, and to love, and to love with power, and be love in that power. Love...it is our gift to gift as a species, our art we put out into the multiverse of billion billions of planets with billions likely teeming with life...when we finally face the mysterious beings afar will be our greatest challenge to love...and sometimes in 14 Billion years things move fast and "they" may not wait for us Humans to get our act together & stop slaughtering each other & wake up into our own power to get that LOVE powers the Universe.

(Inspired post to Prezz Pressley's Facebook Group, "MEN who r NOT AFRAID 2 CRY.")

by William Dudley Bass

May 25, 2011 on FB,

Here on July 8, 2011

(C) 2011 by William Dudley Bass

Gabriel Requests Your Surrender to The One

Magnificent Gabriel came down upon the earth, folded back his wings, & clambered up into the cave above Mecca to recite the words of Allah to an illiterate merchant. Muhammed, PBUH, chose to listen in spite of his fear...to listen as if he had elephant ears...cuz he knew to be the last prophet of that axial age he had to do more than just hear so never mind the wind and rain the heat and cold the searing pain...till finally Gabriel relaxed his grasp and Muhammed, PBUP, as the great angel exhaled he the prophet inhaled, inhaled the sacred exhale of Gabriel, inhaled the Recitation, breathed to life the Qur'an, and then out across the deserts he walked and he rode, laying the foundations of the worldwide Umma, and history was never the same again. Surrender to God as freedom, not enslavement, was the greatest gift of submission. Oft misunderstood as enslavement, and still misunderstood as submitting to something way out there, while within, The ONE awaits thy ultimate surrender, inshallah.

(Inspired by "Gabriel Secret," prose poetry by Prezz Pressley posted on July 6, 2011 in the Facebook Group "MEN who r NOT AFRAID 2 CRY.")

by William Dudley Bass

July 7, 2011

(C) 2011 by William Dudley Bass

The Eye of Everything

As the we ride the Earth thru endless cycles of rotations upon its revolutions around Sol, cycles that may someday stop perhaps even before Sol drags all its planets around the center of the Milky Way, light shifts, darkness expands, love heals, and across a Kosmos jammin' with spinning masses a voice shouts suddenly from the shadows before a fire blazing in the hearthmaw...jerks us awake as copies of The Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart slips from our grips...and with scolding index finger jammed up the Sacred Ass of God with 3 more dirty fingers pointing back down into Blessed Inferno...the reincarnation of Krishna Allah shakes his eyes open & peers around the circle at us & shouts again "Each one of us has a point of view. Each culture and religion has a nest of views like a den of snakes. Above, however, above us only God has View." Another shout breaks open the smoke..."Assalamu alaikum...for the 10th Avatar is here in our midst as the mystic Christ revealed not as another Prophet, but as...us! You! Me! Yes, us, all of humanity." And the Kundalini rises blind up the spine singing "Everything is Sacred even if you hate it."

(Inspired by Prezz Pressley's poem "EYE" of 6/20/2011 warning one to consider the angle of one's sight amid the Sun and the Night when one is Wrong and one is Right.)

by William Dudley Bass

June 22, 2011

(C) 2011 by William Dudley Bass

On the Altar

Toppled from the throne of a once-vast and mighty empire whose fearsome name no one remembers except broken stones, King Ozymandias bled his tears into the sand that sucked him deeper like a mad old lover whose yoni won't let 'em go. The more he cried the deeper he sunk & drenched the sand with the tears of all he killed raped maimed and tortured upwelling thru his body like water pushing up thru a tree to breathe & become one with air. Tears dried & sand turned hard like cement became rock as Ozy all petrified his core solid rock choking his soul so tight his head splintered off his neck into scattered shards of light .... with a whistling sigh only the wind heard the lost souls of thousands soared high & free riding upon the wings of they own sorrow grieving nothing save the ecstasy of union with Earth. Eons later as humans walk the Earth in blind oblivion of their own impending tipping point so many so many can't even see the very Altar they stride upon everywhere they turn, an Altar hungrily awaiting for its sacrifice, waiting for its flood of tears.

(Inspired response to Prezz Pressley's poem "The Altar" in June 2011 in the Facebook Group "MEN who r NOT AFRAID 2 CRY.")

by William Dudley Bass

June 23, 2011

(C) 2011 by William Dudley Bass

I am not my Name

My name is William,

William Dudley Bass,

And I am not my name.

I am my Word.

Nurture, nurture myself:

I love, honor, and respect myself.

I love, honor, and respect myself.

I love, honor, and respect myself.

AHO!

I am alive.

I am here, right here now.

I have a history.

I am not my history.

Nor my stories or identities.

I am not my legacy, or my reputation, or anyone’s opinion.

I am not my own beliefs, views, or interpretations.

I have my beliefs, views, or interpretations I give meaning to,

Of course,

But I am not any of those...things.

I am here, right here now,

And I am alive.

What happened is what happened, just what happened.

Truth.

Meanings, interpretations, perceptions, views, myths, filters, beliefs

Are all made up,

All stories,

And stories are lies.

Unless it is, of course, called “a true story.”

Would that be a false lie?

We all have views,

And only God has View.

If such exists, either View...or God.

Views are not truths,

just events filtered, deleted, and interpreted by mind.

I am not my body or my feelings and emotions or even my thoughts.

I do have a body, and with feelings, emotions, and thoughts, of course,

But am not any of those...things.

Even a construct of mind is made up by the mind to be a construct of mind.

In the beginning and yet again there was nothing leaving nothing but The Word.

I am my Word.

AHO!

(Influenced by works as diverse as Landmark Education, Peak Potentials Trainings, Scott Brooks’ mythopoetic men’s work, and Jeff Shushan’s psychotherapy and counseling.)

by William Dudley Bass

April 20, 2011

(C) 2011 by William Dudley Bass