Yo girl. Whats up with you? I never see you on here. Do u ever check these? (I must confess to being more of a sender than a reader… but I’m trying) R u just working mad hours now? PLT sent you an email a few days ago but was worried she may not have the correct email address. I told her I’d give you a shout. Just remembered, and was on here. Lemme know if you got her email. It’s all good. Just a few-week delay in our usual annual investment stipend. But we’re going to overnight Lighthouse the check on June 1st. They should receive it by June 2nd and cash it on the 4th or 5th. But we wanted to let you know way ahead of time because we are floating with “less than zero” – good book – in the bank until we get that wire. fun times. But overall lots of groovy things going on. I got “signed” finally. (!) U hear that shiite? BMG. The ‘second’ largest label in the world. (Universal is the largest) Was pretty awesome. Met them at their office down on 39th street. 11th floor. Pretty bad ass. Felt like a rockstar for a brief moment there. They actually like me. I have now come to the conclusion that any blocks we experience — such as “not getting signed” for years in between signings (this is my third record deal) — are US doing the blocking. Inside of ourselves. I know. It sounds like avatar or abraham or just about anyone else these days. everyone thinks they’ve “got it” … But then when you actually “feel it” it’s different; it’s like u ‘get it’. It’s real. But you don’t get it till you actually feel it and experience it. It’s not something we can intellectually dig through in order to conclude or deduce or understand as ‘fact’. It’s more like tasting chocolate. We have no idea how good (or bad, depending on how you feel about chocolate) it is. Maybe we’ve just heard about it. but we’ve got no reference point for it really. So we don’t really pay attention to it. or perhaps we try really hard to imagine what it tastes like… but it’s all in our head and we soon forget about thinking about chocolate altogether. But if we’re ever lucky enough to get a taste… then it’s like BAM so THIS is what chocolate tastes like! Well blimey why didn’t you freaking tell me?! LOL. The cut to the chase: Wayne Dyer turned me onto it a few weeks ago actually. He stated in his new (but totally not new, and i mean NOTHING new in it at all) book/series that “We are all God. If we want to experience our wishes being fulfilled (and then he quoted some ancient master as he always does — the guy never actually writes or invents anything himself. Weird, right? Because he is considered (by at least one fan who created a list) one of the Top 5 Spiritual Teachers in the World Today. And yet he almost never innovates or creates anything himself. Just retells what others have already said years before) (Wheh! Talk about Falknerian clauses!) “If we want to experience our wishes being fulfilled we need to FEEL what it would feel like if they were already fulfilled. We need to breathe into that feeling and BE IT.” Etc. Well we’ve heard that one before. And before that. And before that. Sheesh. Talk about radiohead. But it was interesting. Because over the last nine months I — as “Ed Hale the rockstar” — have had so many consecutive successes, and become so damn popular in that identity that I myself started actually believing it. Or feeling it better put. I mean, better put, I started feeling like it might be OK to begin dipping my foot in the water of certain ideas that for many years had been foreign to me, such as “I am a successful rockstar” or “I have a Top 40 hit song”. “I am a celebrity” “I have millions of fans who love my music”. Sure I’ve played with those primaries for years. But they always got eaten up by other primaries I considered more important, like “I AM a popular rockstar, hell yeah, but more like an underground cult figure. Not one of those mainstream jerkoffs. I’m an innovator. Not a celebrity. Celebrities are shite.” Things like that. And I felt really comfortable in that. Talk about Tony Robbins “Six Basic Human Needs”… Well, truthfully I feel he cut that ribbon way too short to make it a gift worth giving, because there are likely many more than just “six” basic human needs. But I got the gist that the beliefs that we harbor about ourselves are secondary to deeper beliefs. They aren’t THE beliefs. They’re SYMPTOMS of THE beliefs. THE beliefs, the deeper beliefs are rooted in more deeply held NEED type beliefs. As in “what do we believe we NEED?” Or more like VALUE beliefs. As in “we are who we create ourselves to be based on what we VALUE the most”. I obviously have valued (hold foundational value beliefs about) being an inventor, visionary, innovator, revolutionary much more than being “popular, famous, successful, a celebrity”. U think? Right. I know. But still. I never really saw that one could be messing with the other. I also have known for a long time that I’ve harbored a very strong desire to be “one of the people”, to be accepted by everyone, the world, the stranger on the corner. To not stand out. To fit in. To be just another Joe. And it’s damn hard to feel like that if you’re a popular famous successful rockstar celebrity. Right? Or so I thought. Until “I” started actually experiencing what it was like to be a successful popular singer in the mainstream sense of the word. (and I am, humbly and with awareness here, fully aware of the fact of how utterly unpopular/famous I actually am. I am speaking about this from the very small limited view that I am fully aware that I am currently in. But it’s a larger viewing space than I’ve ever been in before, just to be clear) It happened so quickly that I didn’t have time to stop to think about it or feel it or even notice it. I was too busy just trying to keep up with the workload. But I’ll tell you, when Billboard magazine came to the house, as it always does week after week, and we opened it up and saw my name in it, right there amongst all the other names, names that strike a definite chord within our subconscious as being those exact same words, i.e. popular successful celebrity, it had this very strange almost mystical effect on me. It was truly a surreal moment. In the truest sense of the word, surreal. As in I didn’t really FEEL anything. More like “Cool… yeah I know, it’s cool. Whatever.” That was the fear talking there. U know, fear is – luckily for us all – rather shallow stuff. It’s on the surface and can be easily let go of. I’ve never found fear to be very deep or strong. But maybe that’s just me. Fear that “here it is today yeah, but where will it be tomorrow?” But the damn song went higher, not lower. And then higher. And it’s still in the Billboard Top 40 today and it’s been months now. So I got used to it. Subconsciously at least. Combined with one thing after another, just bam bam bam, and one day I woke up and noticed that i was feeling… good, happy, proud, confident, successful, hopeful, encouraged. What was funny was that no one was boxing me into the “you can’t be a successful innovator if you’re a mainstream success” belief. But I didn’t know that. Because all of this is underneath the surface of things. It doesn’t matter how much you talk about it. We have. You and me. All of us. Millions of times. All of it. Everything and anything that has ever been talked about or thought about before we’ve already talked or thought about over the last few years. Guaranteed if there is only one thing I can vehemently and indubitably guarantee it’s that. Some of us are thinkers and some of us aren’t. We happen to be thinkers. So sure we’ve talked about this. But it’s not enough. Thinking. Talking. It might, and I say this cautiously, talking and thinking MIGHT help stir things up, but that’s about it. FEEL or EXPERIENCE is where it’s at. This was a feel thing. I started entertaining the idea that people actually did like me. Or like my music. And not just “the cool 1% people and thus I won’t be well known till I’m 80” but regular people, normal people, all people. It didn’t feel that bad. Or that far away. Little things made it appear as an almost tangible belief to hold. Emails. Letters. Articles. Interviews. Tweets. Etc. I started wondering, could it be possible for me to just be popular and/or successful for just being ME? JUST for who I am? For my music yes because it’s made by me? As in I don’t have to do anything except just be me? and just keep doing what I do? THE VOICE kept saying “Yes honey, we’ve already told you this hundreds and hundreds of times…” But I was actually starting to feel it. See it. Be OK with it. In fact, welcome it and be excited about it. I already knew that underneath it all I wanted to be known for being an inventor innovator visionary, so it was already there. That belief. Lo and behold every time i was in conversation with someone “in the biz” they would mention something to the effect of “the thing I like so much about you Ed is that you are SO freaking different. You aren’t like all the other ‘white guys with a guitar who sing’. On the contrary. You’re way off the chart, totally off the beaten path compared to everyone else. No one has ever come around who we can compare you to. If anything that’s our challenge.” I would listen and think “Is that a good thing?” Should I try to fit in more? Is this my problem? But I kept being told NO DON’T START trying to change to be like everyone else. For God’s sake Ed. Not now. (and trust me, there are plenty of people who are more than ready and willing to advise you of all the things you need to change about yourself if… fill in the blank. But luckily none that I believe in enough to follow their advice. So I started smiling inside. Like real smiles inside. Like could this be true? Am I now all of a sudden ok, good, cool, groovy just being me — even though i’m so weird and different and NOT the typical rockstar singer — and don’t have to do anything? AND as it turns out that in and of itself is the identity belief of being different / an innovator inventor visionary manifesting itself along WITH the identity belief of being popular famous successful simultaneously. And i had to do NOTHING. In terms of changing or manipulating myself into something else. It just was. Probably always was. And I just never knew it. Scratch that. I never believed it because i never FELT it. And for whatever reason I couldn’t quite muster up the creative force to create FEELING it. So i always just felt how i felt and tried as hard as i could to think of things to do to try to create being and experiencing what I wanted; in this small tiny little aspect of the bigger picture of my whole life (because let’s face it, this is just one little aspect of what many would consider a most excellent life i’ve been blessed with. I get that. And I’m super grateful for it. Just talking about the art aspect of the career aspect of my life as a whole.) I could see it but it always looked really far away in the future. Never felt it. Always felt the other things. Any other things. But just not THAT. But starting to feel it, BOTH “its”, the fame success popularity AND it being about ME, being ME, being different, being someone who is “doing it differently”, made me start acting it. And pretty soon I started feeling really comfortable with it. Like actually proud. I NEVER thought I would feel proud to be THAT. I had too much charge on THAT. Selfish petty shallow, not contributing to the greater good but only to the self. All that stuff. Total garbage. And we all know why. So no need to go there. But boy oh boy that feeling of being proud to be who you are AND proud to be experiencing success because of it… it’s really something special. It’s fun and it juices you. And it gets you going all day and keeps you going. And pretty soon what once seemed like a ceiling as they say starts looking like the floor and so you start reaching for bigger and bigger things, higher and higher. All because you honestly FEEL that which you once only dreamed about or wished for. U know that old adage, “The universe can’t tell the difference between one dollar and one million dollars.” So that’s why bankers can trade in billions of dollars, because they are used to it and the universe, well it doesn’t really give a shit. It’s all just feeling to the universe. Money is money. Is money. Is money. A housewife in bumfuck middle of the country urban/rural/suburban America trying to make ends meet thinks and FEELS that getting a raise for an extra five thousand a year is a miracle. But a banker will spend that on a suit each week. And the banker will probably feel more comfortable spending that five thousand than the housewife. Not because of anything other than FEEL. He’s just more accustomed to feeling that large amounts of money are no big deal. And the universe — as a symbol for mass consciousness of all that is and ever has been or will be — isn’t really aware of the difference in those numbers, only that the FEEL being experienced is perhaps somehow related to money energy or buying and spending or acquiring and selling energy. Well I believe it’s the same thing with who we are. In every way. If we say to the world “I am this” and we really FEEL it, the world reflects back to us “You are that. Yep.” This is by far the closest i have ever come to really experiencing this “idea/belief/theory” in a usable tangible measurable way. I’ve experienced plenty of super natural / paranormal miracles in my life. But I have almost always relegated them to being due to some sort of mystical divine other worldly being that is NOT us. Rather than taking FULL responsibility for them myself. But now I can see, FEEL, that it is us. It’s been us all along. It’s how we FEEL. And it doesn’t exclude this other worldly divine being idea at all if we don’t want it to. Yet at the same time it also doesn’t “have to” include this being either. That too is most likely totally and entirely up to us, whether or not we decide to create a “God figure” in our little creation game or not. For me personally I like it, so I’ll keep it. It helps. But I can see how for some they may just not need it or want it or be able to even relate to it. And that’s their right. Their thing. Not ours. But if we become good at being able to deliberately control our ability to change our state, our FEEL, in order to start seeing, feeling, being what we desire, wish for, long for, hope for, we may just be able to create anything we want for ourselves. By doing nothing more than that. Sure there’s a lot of elbow grease involved. Or not. If you take my particular example — the music business — there are plenty of people we can point to who put no elbow grease into it at all and still walked away with giant trophies before they were old enough to vote. But i guarantee they were dreaming about it, seeing it tasting it feeling it being it inside of themselves, long before. Accepting it. Dreaming about it, wishing for it. Same thing. Then entertaining the idea as a reality… i.e. trying it on, feeling it. Enjoying it so much they started to act like it and be it. Before IT actually was. And just accepting it. Allowing it. Regardless of what “was” or “is”. Walking around as if it already is. Yes. That’s it. And allowing that IT’s possible. Whatever that “it” is. The key to life. At least the key to creating life — as opposed to just getting tossed about in a sea of maya that tells us that “things are happening to us”. God I miss our talks Lauren. All this blathering at the mouth has given me a real hankering for our late night talks. I feel like we just went at it for two straight hours like we used to. Except it was me the whole time. But i heard you. 🙂 I hope that all is better than well in your world. And I hope that talking to you all this stuff has a profound effect of encouraging you in some magnificent ways that only YOU can know and understand. Truly. I love you bunches still. Bun #1 (only because I came out of the oven first)
