Embracing the Butcher

On Day 59 of my 100 day cleanze, I experienced the incredibly inspiring and brilliant words of my favorite preacher on the planet: Dr. Michael Beckwith of Agape International I say ‘experienced’ because to watch and listen to Dr. Beckwith is to be riveted with pure, unadulterated life force and Love, straight from the Source of the Universe. His energy is always mind-blowing. He’s got the punctuated, humorous delivery of Chris Rock with the wisdom of Krishnamurti (never thought I’d see those two in the same sentence…!). And Dr. Beckwith, through the vehicle of the non-denominational Agape church, transcends all religious traditions and doctrine, speaking from heart to heart, human to human, with no institutional clutter or meditation. Beckwith cuts out the middle man. Many of you may have witnessed him in the ground-breaking film, ‘The Secret’- it’s easy to spot him: in a crowd talkin' smart stuff about how to get rich quick through the laws of attraction (i'm not knockin getting rich quick!), he’s the inspired African-American brother with the dreads preaching more a message of Self-Love. Dr. Michael Beckwith is the REAL deal.

I will admit that I don’t get over to Agape quite as much as I’d like. I’m not the biggest fan of Church in general, having done about 20 years of weekly Catholic masses where you sing hymns and recite prayer and hold hands, etc. I’m not knocking Catholics or organized religious celebrations persay, I’m just saying that organized religion doesn’t quite work for me. I’m a Spiritual Anarchist, and forge my own path. And as non-denom as Agape may be, it still has vestiges of that church service structure. But this Sunday in particular, I was officially called to support the ‘Juice Fast for Peace’ with Dr. Beckwith and Dr. Gabriel Cousens of the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center. This ground-breaking union of New World spiritualism and original Judaic Essene tradition is accomplishing an amazing thing, bringing juice fasting to the masses. They have about 70 or so people from the Agape Community on a 7-day juice fast for peace. I will go into this more later this week. But for now I’d like to focus on a message that Dr. Beckwith so eloquently launched from the pulpit, rocking my soul to another level. It’s a theme I’ve always espoused, but I had never heard it put quite so succinctly and perfectly:

‘A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.’ What a meme! The idea is that Crisis equals opportunity. Many of you may be familiar with derivations of this theme from other sayings in our culture such as, “Every cloud has a silver lining.” Or one of my favorites, “If life deals you lemons, make lemonade.” The essence is that there is positive to be derived from even the most negatively damning of circumstances. But Dr. Beckwith’s meme takes it to another level. Without crisis and without problems, sometimes there can be no growth, no learning, no progress. If there were no crisis, we’d all be just sitting on our laurels, hangin out, with no need to do anything. We humans tend to grow complacent and lazy when everything is smooth and groovy. As painful as it may sometimes be, crisis, and its cousin ‘mistake’, are the supreme catalysts for growth and evolution. Because when the chips are down, and the walls are caving in, you HAVE to focus, you HAVE to rise to the occasion, you HAVE to figure something out, or else you…well, you go down, at least for the moment. But of course, still, the opportunity is always there to learn from your mistake, to use your mistake as a springboard to go higher than you’ve ever gone before.

In essence this is what I’m attempting to do by writing this blog, particularly when I focus on my past with all its warts and short-comings. I am using my past transgressions and self-abuse and ignorance as a way to communicate to you that sometimes this is the only visible path to understanding and to enlightenment. Sometimes we have to crash before we wake up. It’s a very human thing. By coming to terms with my short-comings and own personal crises in this blog, I have the opportunity to help you examine how you can do the same.

So let’s take my relationship to marijuana as an example in point. For a good 15 years, I was a full-on pot addict, wakin' and bakin' daily, blazing my way through every day. As with ANYTHING in life (except lies), marijuana CAN be constructive when used properly with conscious intention. For me, it often served as a catalyst for some brilliant visions of future plans and ground-breaking ideas. And then it would also often be medicinal in alleviating anxiety when the walls of my unstable entrepreneurial existence were closing in on me with credit card debt and judgmental pressure from the outside world to "Get a friggin job!" But slowly over time, I transitioned from using marijuana as temporary medicine and an intentional brain-storming tool and started to unconsciously smoke it all the time. I would smoke it when I woke up, before I went out, before I did anything! And at the slightest suggestion of a crisis, I would pack the crisis in a bowl and burn it up in my lungs. I was wasting the crisis/opportunity day in and day out.

That, among many other issues which i will expound upon in a later blog entry, is what I see as the biggest problem with marijuana. It’s just too damn easy of an escape hatch for life’s problems. It lulls one into a complacency that at best causes one to miss out on evolutionary opportunity, and at worst puts oneself in danger of extinction. Pot extinguishes the proverbial fire that Life lights under your butt before it has a chance to compel you to solve the crisis. Yes, it may make you feel better for a moment, but in your ‘feelin good’ moments of relief, you’re missing the opportunity to jump up to the next quantum level, to rise to the occasion, to actually solve the problem. I am so thankful for the iZO Cleanze for teaching me this important truth. But even more, I am thankful for the crisis of my pot addiction because it is one of the straws that broke the camel's back and caused me to start detox cleanzing, which subsequently sparked my mission to cleanze the world! I can truly say, thank the Universe I was a pot addict. It sparked (pun intended) the need for transformation, and motivated me to spread this healing message to the world.

To quote an oft misunderstood line from Bertolt Brecht: “"Sink down in the slime; embrace the butcher; but change the world; it needs it. “ I invite you all to embrace the butcher and seek the light that is borne in the darkness of our souls. We all need it!

What's your lemon that you can turn into lemonade?