My New Book

Enlightenment for Rebels: Celebrating Our Wild and Sacred Earthly Selves in Jubilant Defiance of Disembodied Spirituality

In this reverently rowdy text, I propose versions of enlightenment that don’t require an escape from our world’s gorgeous pandemonium, but thrive on a wildly disciplined engagement with it.

Throughout an unpredictable weave of unruly stories and genre-fluid texts, I cross-pollinate exuberant activist passions with drug-free explorations of altered states.

I invite readers to have maximum fun as they experiment and improvise with imaginative spiritual practices. How can we cultivate wisdom that’s both grounded and ecstatic?





The book is available at all online stores, and you can get a 25% discount here.

It’s also available here:

Bookshop

Barnes & Noble

Amazon


The ebook will be available in a few days.





Grateful Immersion in the Glorious Human Mess: Excerpt from the book

My family, allies, and I are allergic to spiritual teachers and teachings that coax people to disparage the core features that make us human. We’re not sure why their sprawling quagmire seems so deliciously tempting to multitudes of souls.

They claim that the body is a distraction and desire is an affliction? We say NOOOOOOO! Feelings are traps, the ego is a dire hindrance, and our personal stories are obstructions to illumination? NEVER!!!!!

Sorrowful dismay wells up as we watch legions of tender aspirants guzzle this fake news as if it were sacrosanct wisdom.

Our love of life protests as our fellow wanderers try to extinguish their mortal magic in the name of escapist transcendence.

We are rattled as they neglect their own precious soul savvy and demean their majestic flesh. It’s tragic and heart-breaking!

Our alternatives are celebratory rhythms and rhymes that immerse us in the glories of flesh wisdom and creature consciousness.

Resolved: We crave and deserve spiritual approaches that honor all the magnificent human features named below.

• Feelings and physical sensations are sources of vigorous wisdom. They’re not erratic, banal burdens we must ignore and expunge to be free.

• Desires are holy fuel for our liberation and intelligence. They’re not toxic obstacles we need to abnegate and suppress.

• The ego is a crucial ally in our zeal to be vividly alive. It’s not an enemy to be demeaned and disowned, but a tool to be tuned and aligned with righteous purpose.

• Our stories and identities are essential to who we are, where we’ve been, and where we’re going. They’re not illusions to vanquish and shed, but evocative texts to honor and integrate.

• Our bodies are sacred vessels and sources of sublime wisdom. They’re not distracting burdens but miraculous masterpieces.

• Our relationships are potentially at the evocative heart of our spiritual practice, not intrusive diversions.

• Earth is our beloved home, not a limbo or prison where we suffer and grieve in temporary exile from some supposedly better place.

• Our incarnation on this planet is an exalted gift, not a punishment or ordeal.

• Movement and sound are equally valid paths to illumination as stillness and silence.

• Our everyday lives are sources of rich opportunities for delight and discovery. They’re not burdensome trials rife with irrelevant, boring, and oppressive hindrances.

• Connection is just as key to spiritual deepening as solitude; community is as important as self-sufficiency; cooperation and empathy are crucial for growing our glistening wisdom.

• Play, humor, and creative expression are divine gifts that belong at the heart of our spiritual practice. They’re not afterthoughts, irrelevancies, or optional extras.

• Sexuality can be a pathway to divinely inspired transmutation. It shouldn’t be compulsively dismissed as an inconvenient bedevilment or vulgar need.

• Work may be an aid to spiritual practice rather than an obstructive vexation that interferes with our focus on our highest and noblest aims.

• Grief, rage, and the difficult emotions are worthy teachers rather than sheerly problematic digressions and detours to be overcome.

• The endless changes that life brings us can be sources of interesting challenges, not doleful emblems of constant loss.

• Nightly dreams may be treasured wellsprings of wisdom and guidance, not indecipherable tangents.

• Our ancestors and lineages, both biological and chosen, are sources of power and wisdom worth consulting and honoring. They’re not to be confined to sentimental and nostalgic musings.

• Some experiences may be so marvelously intense, unique, and potent that they become permanently inscribed in eternity—imprinted on the undying record of all that has ever been felt, witnessed, and loved. They’re not necessarily subject to utter dissolution and disappearance, but are kept alive in the deep memory of existence.





To hear the song WORLD KISS, whose text appears in the book, GO HERE.




Here’s another excerpt from the new book:

Pleasure, Bliss, Ecstasy, and Gleeful Zest as Spiritual Fuel

Many spiritual systems the world has inherited regard pleasure, bliss, rapture, ecstasy, elation, and related super treasures as troublemakers and distractions. The so-called “lower self” is greedy for such wasteful irrelevance, the saintly authorities say. “Begone foul deceivers!” they imply or declare outright.

How many zillions of us have been taught, often with dire and threatening tones, that feeling really good leads us away from life’s essential goals? Holiness and sanctity are likely to accumulate in us only if we shun the supposedly inferior temptation to bask in delight.

Of all the idiocies foisted on humanity, this one is among the most egregious. We are in danger of veering into apoplexy as we contemplate such a criminal delusion. We’ll try to be civil.

In both our extensive mythic explorations of dreamy truth and our scientific investigations of hard-core reality, we have gathered incontrovertible evidence that pleasure is a central necessity for any spiritual quest that actually works.

It’s a sensory instrument. A tuning fork. A feedback system. A way the body says, Yes, this. More of this. Keep headed in this direction. You’re getting closer to home.

We’re not talking about the jittery sugar-high of addiction or the perverse, jangly thrills that sabotage health.

We mean the rich, ennobling euphoria and exhilaration that arise during encounters with smart fun: inspiring us to love ourselves more, expanding our capacity to love others, leading us in the direction of our shining dreams, and helping us solve our knotty problems.

The eruptions of these life-giving nourishments might come through the stimulation of our senses, emotions, or imagination. They don’t yank us away from the sacred. They are among the sacred’s favorite ways of snagging our attention. Evolution didn’t give us many reliable compasses, but this is one of them.

Our comprehensive research reveals that when we feel genuinely good—not inflated or superior, but resoundingly buoyant—our ethics improve. We’re more patient and curious. Less brittle and defensive.

When we’re swooning or even just shimmering with delectation, we see other people more clearly. They’re not obstacles or mirrors of our lack, but fellow creatures doing their best with the weather systems inside them.

By contrast, chronic deprivation, especially when dressed up as virtue, tends to make people tight and pinched and resentful of anyone who looks like they’re enjoying themselves.

Self-denial doesn’t reliably produce saints. Often it just produces people who are very good at pretending they don’t want what they want.

Those who know how to feed themselves often have a super-capacity to give without keeping score. Their generosity leaks out sideways. There’s surplus.

Here’s our very-well proven hypothesis: Compassion grows less from being twisted up about suffering and more from inhabiting joie de vivre so fully that we want others to feel it too.


To read the rest of this article, GO HERE.