There is something about the way we’re trained to view the world that tends to separate spirituality, religion, and real mundane life. But Oran Parker, the host of Find the Good News podcast, has found that it shouldn’t be the case because these things are just as interconnected. Now more than ever, we need to be reminded of that. In this episode, Oran gets interviewed by Corin Grillo to talk about spirituality, religion, and our true human nature that show up in these chaotic times—one that is about oneness and togetherness. They talk about calamities and how it reveals our ability to become each other’s embers of hope and how we can use this in surviving chaos. Join Oran and Corin in this conversation as they show us more of what we are capable of: the Lotus in the mud, surviving and thriving amidst it all.
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Listen to the podcast here:
The Lotus In The Mud And Surviving Chaos With Oran Parker
I woke up with a text on my phone and I read it. The text was shocking. It was from one of my newer friends Oran Parker, who is the Host of Find the Good News. He’s also an impeccable producer. His show focused on good people doing good works wherever he can find them. In his show, he visits with all kinds of people, artists, educators, healers, teachers, authors, and spiritual leaders. I thought it was intense to get that message from him because what it had to say was that he, his home, his family, and his community were devastated by Hurricane Laura.
He was reaching out for support and help. I could tell it was uncomfortable for him and awkward. I was touched by this because I was evacuated from my own house from the fires that are here on the West Coast. It seems that these times are treacherous in more than one way. It’s not COVID or politics that there are these natural disasters peaking and valuing. I invited him to have an emergency session with me to talk about what’s going on with him. We get into some deep topics. Whenever we get together, we get into some good topics surrounding mysticism, spirituality, and religion.
In this episode, we share his experience in finding peace through this madness and how to navigate through these times. This is a long show because we had a lot to discuss, but hearing from real people going through deep things and a man with Oran’s perspective, it’s special because no matter what comes at him, he’s going to dig deep into the mud and find the juice and the fuel that spiritual field that keeps him going. He’s one of us.
He comes through a vulnerable place with us and shares his reality and truth. He talks about the real situation down on the ground there for him in Louisiana and much more, including that he’s a prophet. I knew it already, but you need to hear the visions that he had and how crazily it came true. A lot is going on in this one and please do check out, Find The Good News, his amazing podcast. I hope you enjoy this one.
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You’re finding yourself in this interesting place in life and your career. I did this with us last time, but I wanted to pull the cards for us to know how the energy shifted. I’m using the same deck. I used the little birdie deck called Divine Feather. Let’s see which animal comes forward for you.
I love readings. I love doing oracle decks or anything like that. I love sitting and thinking about them too because you always find when you crack them open, so much keeps pouring out if you sit with them long enough.
Do you have any favorite decks that you work with?
I do the I Ching regularly.
I used to do the book. Does it have like an oracle deck now?
They do have an oracle deck for I Ching, but I don’t use the deck. I use three coins to do my numbers and everything. I do a few decks at once and this whole thing. I use the animal medicine deck. I also do one called the Shaman deck. I make a mix of all three of those things. I’ve liked this whole little personal and you ended up developing your own thing. I try to get a big picture every couple of weeks to give time between readings because I have found that that cycle seems to make it more relevant. It lets me look ahead a little bit and go, “I’ve had two weeks behind me. I’ve got two weeks in front of me.” It’s a bardo thing. You’re always in the midst of this change.
As you’re speaking through that, it hits me like, “What a true mystic you are.” When I say mystic, for me, mystics are people who are committed to discovering their own unique way and their unique connection to spirit, to God or whatever you call it. The way you’re describing it, it sounds much like what I do where it’s like, “I know these outer things, but fundamentally, I have to find my own answer.” You’re mixing it up with a little Shaman deck and a little I Ching.
I nature all the time. I’m not a gardener, but I love plants and watching them grow and experimenting with plants. I was talking with somebody before the hurricane hit. I said, “I pinch plants everywhere I go when I travel. If I see a little vine or something that I like, I go, ‘I wonder if that would root.’” A lot of those plants, you just put them in water and over three weeks they’ll develop roots. What I have is all these pickle jars and plastic jugs and stuff all sitting out in my area where I do that. It’s crazy looking, but some root and some do not.
The ones that I can tell are rooting well when I put them in the soil and they begin to acclimate, some of those are full-blown plants that I’ve had for a while. Some don’t make it. I was thinking about that as I was talking to them. I said, “That’s how I’ve come to treat my spiritual life and on reflection. What did I pinch and what rooted? If it’s not going to root, I’m wasting my time.” It’s like shoving yourself into something and going, “I’m going to grow this. I’m going to get grow lights and I’m going to get AC that’s going to keep the temperature where it is year-round.” I was like, “What a bunch of hogwash and bunch of effort.” If nature doesn’t want it to be there, it probably shouldn’t be there. It’s not supposed to root there. There are things spiritually that aren’t for everybody and those things don’t root. They’re not supposed to root if you look at it and allow it to happen the way it’s supposed to.
That’s genius. A lot of us put a lot of unnecessary pressure on ourselves to conform to anything. It could be yoga culture, Buddhist culture, angel culture, Catholicism, and mystics. The list goes on and on. We try a lot of things and it’s not a loss. When the plant doesn’t root, it’s not personal.
That’s a great way to say that. It’s not an attack against the plant. The plant is good and healthy. It will grow in the ecosystem that it’s supposed to, in the environment that is healthy, but that doesn’t mean you should take that, uproot it, and go stick it in the ground. I’m in Louisiana and there are things that are going to grow here because it’s almost tropical. It’s humid, wet, hot and we have a longer growing season. Things that grow in those types of climates are going to grow here, but things that grow in dry places shouldn’t be here. I am nothing against those things. They’re meant for that place. Taking that approach, it helps me to go, “That’s a good thing where it’s at. It’s just not good here.” We try to shove things in places that it shouldn’t be.
You’re talking about the nature of colonialism in general, where we have forced fed different populations into different kinds of religions. Sometimes it takes, but mostly it kills a lot of people.
It’s the way you start talking in the language of the Universal Christ or the Cosmic Christ, and then you’re getting into this universal seed type thing that is universal that you can stick it in the ground and it’s going to grow. It’s going to look like that culture and that place. It’s going to absorb and take on those forms and become beautiful. That’s the Christ idea that I’m attracted to, but when you start talking about the rigidity of Christ as religion or Christ as an organization, and you set a box and some rules and you try to stick that thing somewhere, it is like what we see here. It’s like you’re building a house on shifting sand or in a flood region. You better have some good insurance because it’s not going to hold up. It’s not meant to be there.
[bctt tweet=”Change is always in flux, no matter if it’s good or bad. It is eroding and being born at the same time.” via=”no”]We’re forcing our way through it. To stick with the plant metaphor, forcing these things down to our own throats or other people’s throats is like an invasive species. That’s what it looks like over time. In California, we have a lot of invasive species of plants here such as eucalyptus trees that are freaking beautiful. They smell delicious. However, they’re not from here. They’re from Australia. The work of the mystic is sifting through people and cultural perceptions of what’s right and what’s wrong, and eventually, coming to a place where you’re finding peace through your own way. Oran, it feels like that has been part of your path.
I think so. Like most people, I have struggled with it too because there is something comforting about tribal acceptance. I was like that. I talked about that the last time and I bring it up often, but I find many beautiful things in Catholicism because when you start to scratch them, you find the mystic root of that thing.
The mother is in there somewhere.
You go, “That’s the thing I want to suck on.” I’ve latched onto it and I want to drink out of that breast. Somebody is like, “I get that, but you need to forget about that breast and that nipple and what you’re drinking. We’re going to pasteurize it for you. We’re going to tell you what you can drink it out of and then when you can drink it.” I then go, “You’re stripping the life out of it and you’re putting it in a plastic bubble on a shelf.” I’m not poo-pooing on Catholicism because it isn’t all like that, but I do see that happens with religion in general. I’m like, “This whole packaged thing, it’s not good for everybody in the same way.”
There are some vessels where it takes root and other vessels where it doesn’t and it’s not personal. You have to work with what works for you and respect it. I respect what roots for other people, how different we are, and how fantastic that is.
I’ll tell you a story. It is tied to Catholicism. My Catholic friends are going to love this. I have this beautiful clay water font that I got for my birthday or Father’s Day. It survived the hurricane, which is great. It’s hanging outside my front door. It’s got this big clay bowl and this beautiful version of Our Lady of Guadalupe. When my wife gave it to me, I said, “I love this thing. She looks like she’s on fire.” It’s in the sun’s color. I haven’t been to the Catholic church for a while or went to a service for a long time. I would always fill up my holy water bottles there at the church and bring that home.
After a time, I started making my own holy water through this whole ritual that I had. I had a pinch of this and a pinch of that as you talked about, but where it’s at on my front porch, my watering hose is watering the plants, but it also fills that water font up. I had this weird old throwback that hit me. It was like something that gets in you when you’re in a religion. I was filling it up. I saw that filling up and it was pouring over. I had this almost inclination to stop like, “I mixed the garden water with the holy water.” I laughed and I stood there. I kept pouring it.
I watched as it flows over and spillover. I laughed at myself and I thought, “Not only are you no longer in the church, you also have come to believe in this whole way that you make holy water because you believe that all human beings are ordained, priestly, and shamanic to some degree or another. Now, you’re also saying, ‘The garden water is getting mixed with the holy water that I made.’ You’re stopping and telling yourself that holy water somehow isn’t as holy as the water that you think you made.”
I’m using terms that are ridiculous, but all this was going through my head. I was laughing and watching. I was telling my wife about this. I said, “When I go out and water the plants, I sit there and I purposely water that bowl with the garden hose because I started thinking, ‘All the water is holy. All the water in your body is holy. The water you’re breathing through the air is holy. It is sacred. It is of creation. What are you thinking?’” If you come to my house and you think you dip your fingers in there to give yourself a blessing, maybe you’re getting a garden hose water blessing because that water is holy.
Sign me up for that kind of garden hose baptism. That sounds like my cup of tea.
It is stripping away these things. If we set one thing aside and go, “That’s holy and this isn’t,” then there begins the whole tripping over our own feet of losing touch with judging ourselves and others and everything.
I’m getting the chills here because I feel like it’s pertinent on many levels about how we’ve used our spirituality or our religion or how we’ve been trained to view these things. It’ a separate world. Spirituality is here, religion is over here, and your real mundane life is over here. It’s a whole separate component.
It’s all separated. Everything’s in a little spot. Don’t mix it and match.
In order to be spiritual, you better be praying or doing this over here or this over that. What I’ve learned when I started working with spirit in my sessions for other people and things like that is that they did show me that spirit doesn’t have the same sense of separation as the human beings. I have worked with prostitutes or people who are smoking crack or whatever, I never from spirit got the impression that they weren’t on their own spiritual journey. It didn’t matter if they had a crack pipe or having sex for money. Wherever we’re at, it is a spiritual experience. I love what you’re saying there, and what’s poignant about God garden hose water versus the ultra prayer water, especially on the planet, we all need to simmer down and see that the death process is as sacred as the life process.
I love these kinds of conversations because it’s making me think of some self-analysis and what I have been doing, going through this whole hurricane thing. That is a spiritual thing in and of itself. It’s every lesson we think we know may bear. You guys are dealing with fires so you’re dealing with one type of mega natural disaster. We’ve got wind and water over here on the Louisiana Coast. Years ago, I came home from another mega-storm. Everything was destroyed. Years ago, I would have never believed we would be doing this again, but I watched myself and the changes that can take place in one person.
When I came home this time, it was different. I remember the last time we’re having shock and awe. I don’t think that coming home this time was different because I had seen it before. It was completely different. All of the lessons were real. I was like, “This is change.” I talk about this all the time. It says, “Change is the law.” I’ve carried that around for many years. Do I believe this? We say and do these things and we adopt them. We think we practice them, but if we can still tiptoe around the danger a little bit.
It’s an intellectual process. We get it intellectually.
Surviving Chaos: The work of the mystic is sifting through people’s perceptions of what’s right and what’s wrong, really eventually coming to a place where people are finding peace through your own way.
Am I going to be okay when I come home? Everything’s turned into toothpicks and shit everywhere. You’re asking yourself like, “Do I believe change?” I tell people all the time, “We know change is the law. We should work with change.” If something bad happened, the natural law says that it will eventually swing towards another way. Something else is already coming as this thing came and you want to work with that. If I’m telling everybody that, “What am I going to say when I get home?” I go, “Everything’s completely topsy turvy. Change is the law, Oran. Practice it.” It was nice to go to find out that I do believe it.
It’s not that you believe it, you can live through it. In practice, you are embodying it differently. I feel like even at the onset of all the global crises that are obvious in 2020, the one phrase that I have said over and over again is that, “This is no longer a drill.” All that good shit you’ve been doing behind the seat like, “I’m going to pray. I’m going to go to my retreats. I’m going to do all of this stuff.” It’s all bullshit until we put it into practice and everyone is testing their metal.
I talk about humility a lot. In the last several years, I’ve been in a position to help people in a way. Not in huge ways, but when somebody needs help, whether it’s financially or they need resources, even if they need a strong back, I’ve been in a position to be the one to say, “I’ve got a truck. I’ll come to help you move. I’ll do this XYZ. You need $100 or $20.” I’ve always kept my door open to that at any time, no matter what it is. Mostly, I have not been on the receiving end of that. I’m not complaining about that, but I’ve never had to be the one to say, “I need help.” I admire people like that though. I look at people like Gandhi. I look at Christ. I look at the Buddha. I look at the monks standing out there with their begging bowls like Milarepa living in the mountains, living off handouts in Tibet.
Those are the types of people who I adore their writings and their teachings, but I’ve never had to be those people. Coming home and having to ask people for help, I was like, “You are learning something here because you’ve never had to do this before. You never had to hold your bowl out and say, ‘I’ll take what you put in it. If it’s something that I’m not used to in my world of comfort, I’m going to be grateful because everything now is screwed up.’” It’s an ego reducer that I haven’t had the opportunity to fully experience in this white privilege comfort zone that I’ve lived in. It’s a hurricane, it’s a disaster, and yet it’s all that shit that everybody talks about, but it also can be a spiritual practice.
Depending on your matrix, and it sounds like you’re doing it, I noticed that you were MIA for a while. I even thought about you that week and like, “I wonder what he’s up to. I haven’t seen him online.” I woke up at 6:30 in the morning and I saw that text message from you. I could feel the humility or the reality when you shared what had happened and that you were asking for help. All of a sudden, I put myself in your shoes. I haven’t known you for that long, but I know who you are. I know that you do give so much and to have had this kind of devastation happened for yourself, your family, your community, I can’t even comprehend. I’m dodging fires up here. We’ve gotten evacuated, but it hasn’t happened yet, but it’s imminent. It is pressing upon me. The fact that you reached out meant a lot to me and on many levels. I want to thank you for reaching out to me personally and letting me know.
I got to say, publicly, the assistance is more than I can ever imagine because in these situations, as you know, with what you deal with on the West Coast, everything stops. Whatever you were doing on the day before stops because you immediately go into all of your emergency prep modes. I hate to say it this way, but you had these rings of concern around you. You’ve got a wife, kids, pets and home, then you have your outer ring of family. If you have anybody that has any health issues and you can draw all these rains and like, “How wide are my arms now? What are my resources to help with these people? Who in these rings can take care of themselves and who can’t? What resources do you have on hand? How quickly can you shore up any that you don’t? Shoring up shelter and transportation.”
It’s all those things and they happen quickly. I know anybody that’s ever evacuated went through some version of those things. I’m good at emergencies. I shift into a whole other mode. Everything gets clear and I know what to do because I was raised to be that way. It’s a little bit of parental training that kicks in, but I feel for people and I’m seeing that more so that people are starting to come home. I feel for people that don’t have that. There’s a mental health issue to this whole thing that is raw and apparent. I am seeing it in my community. Families are already tense or fractured. I am trying to tip-toe around. There was a tragedy in our community and I’m hesitant to blame it on the hurricane, but this was already a rupturing situation.
This hurricane not only fractured the infrastructure and the homes and all that kind of stuff, but it also lets loose raw human rage that couldn’t be held back that cause the tragedy. You go, “Would this have happened anyway?” Probably, but in the midst of everything else that’s going on, it reveals the mental health aspect. Many people are hurting in ways that are not financial. They can have a home that can be completely destitute in their ability to have loving, compassionate relationships.
What’s interesting about these natural disasters that are happening and layering over a pandemic is that all of us are getting taken to our edge. We’re trying to say in an insane reality, “How do we cope?” For me, since the COVID thing, I have been getting directed from spirit to shift my focus a little bit. It’s shifting where I usually do a lot of intuitive and energy healing work. They are taking me back to my roots as a psychotherapist. Over the next many years, it will be about helping people to release trauma, identify trauma and traumatized behavior, and de-shaming a mental health crisis because many of us, especially our men are having a crisis here. A lot of people aren’t used to reaching out for help. I feel like it is a revitalization personally towards like, “Let’s make sure down on the ground. We’re not about to kill each other or ourselves.”
I see that for sure. You’re right about men. I have a small group of men that I would call friends. I tend to be more friendly with women. I get along with women better. My friends tend to be women. The friends I have that tend to be men are more willing to go into that heart space. Probably because I feel safer there and I know that they feel safe. We can talk about these tender spots. Men can be strong, but they don’t have to be hard. That’s something that I think is brilliant.
Men traditionally think, “I have to be tough to be the breadwinner.” The world is hard. We have to make men hard so they can face the world. These ideas have been taught, but I don’t think that’s who men are. I still think you can go out, be strong, work, and do all this stuff that people think of guys. I don’t think anybody would look at me if they see me working or my stature and go, “He’s not a real man.” They might listen to some of my conversations and go, “I can’t believe I got to talk about all that stuff,” but I don’t care about that stuff. I have zero concern about what men think if I’m tough, strong or if I’m sucking up my tears. I do not suck up my tears. I will cry all over you. You’re going to be soaked by my tears if we get going.
That would be an honor, at some point.
I’ll fill up my garden font with my tears and invite everyone over for that.
You are going to get all Mother Mary about that shit. You’re going to leak it out of compassion. That’s great that you’re saying that about our men. I worry about our men, to be honest. Our women have been working on this for a while, but another interesting facet about what’s happening in my business behind the scenes that most people don’t know about is that I believe spirit brings me people. What has been fascinating to me is that the people who reach out to me spontaneously, they’re not even on my official list. Maybe they’ve read my book. Maybe not, but people have randomly found me. I would say 75% of the new clients that I’ve gotten are men who own their companies, who are CEOs, and they’re actively having this heart awakening, dialing in into spirit and they don’t know what to do with it.
Secretly, a lot is happening for our men that they don’t necessarily feel like they have the avenues or the resources or enough other men speaking about these things. There is a level of shame when they start stepping back from like, “I’m ultra-wealthy. I have my own company.” None of this shit matters. I’m starting to believe in things like magic and spirit. These interesting things are happening to me. I feel like our men are awakening. As much as the paradigm of the feminine and we’ve been victimized and utilized and all of that, I feel like our men have been as harmed by the paradigm that we’ve been living in, which is you’re not allowed to have emotions. You’re not allowed to have deeper spiritual access unless it mimics these outer and religious things. You’re allowed to talk about Jesus, but you can’t talk about having a spiritual experience. What’s amazing about you is that you don’t give a shit. You are saying it. The more that you say these things out loud, the people that need that voice will find you too.
You always hope that anything you’ve been through and anything you’ve learned that’s positive and helpful will be helpful. That’s probably the simplest way that I can say it, like, “If you’re going to go through things and you’re going to learn things and you’re here, what good is it to you if you’ve learned it? Maybe you can apply that in your immediate circle and a few of those circles around you, but what about when it’s the encounter?”
You have to stop apologizing for your awesomeness. You got to own it.
[bctt tweet=”People are so easily swayed into believing that there’s an enemy and that there’s an other.” via=”no”]It’s nothing big, but it’s the small things. My son and I had to go to Texas to get gas for these generators. It’s expensive and you’re already going, “I don’t have any new income coming in. Everything’s on pause. I’m spending the income I have on tons of shit that I would normally spend it on, which is propane and gasoline.” You’re in this cycle of propane and gasoline, but even still, you’ve got to look at it and go, “Even though I’m in this cycle that sucks for me, there are still people under this layer that don’t even have propane and gasoline. They don’t have a home.”
While we were in Texas, we were filling up all these gas cans. They’re everywhere and you have fifteen gas cans. You look like a freak. I was like, “I’m getting so much gas.” It’s red and highlights you’re one of those people. I hate to say it, but they were like, “That’s a hurricane person getting supplies.” You know that there was a stigma that comes with it. We were getting gas and there was this guy on the side of the road. He was in the we’ll work for food type of situation. He came walking by Jonah and me. I’m good at assessing a real need. I try not to even do that, but the guy did have a need. He had a backpack. You could tell he was living out of that backpack.
He wasn’t just a guy on the road trying to fleece you. He had his whole bike geared up with his stuff. I’m trying to repurpose and to be industrious in that one but I can’t. I was like, “This guy has been living out here a while.” You could tell. He had it figured out, but it was still hard. I was like, “Come here.” I had $40 in my wallet. I gave him $40. He was like, “I can’t take that. You guys are from the hurricane.” I said, “I have it now. I’m giving it to you. Take it.” We talked. He sat there while I filled the gas and he genuinely asked questions like what we were doing. I asked him about his gear and how long he’s been on the street and if he had water.
The guy showed me his backpack. He showed me what he had. We had a good conversation. My son was like, “Dad, we didn’t have the money to do that.” I said, “We did have the money to do that because we did do it. We had the money for our gas too. That guy is in a whole other type of emergency, except he is more long-term. Ours is going to end at some point.” He’s got a whole different set of hurdles to jump. He’s probably got to get an ID. I know all these things that these guys go through. To get a job, you got to have an ID and an address. He has all this stuff. For now, he’s stuck in the cycle of existence. He’s at the mercy of whoever’s going to give him a handout.
I was like, “We could be at somebody’s mercy center and we are now.” I think about being men and looking at that situation with that guy. I’m like, “This is over and over again. This is how we be men.” It isn’t beating the hell out of each other or mentally abusing each other, puffing each other up, pumping up and trying to be the tougher guy or sucking it all up. It’s okay to be weak in front of each other because if you show me your weakness, I can put something in there. I can give you something. If I don’t know you’re weak, I wouldn’t know that you have a need. It’s something I’m learning hopefully through all of this.
It was a blessing rambling. It’s beautiful what you’re saying on many levels. It sounds like this beautiful gift, but I like how you say it like, “If you don’t show me, I wouldn’t know.”
What’s somebody else saying, “Closed mouths don’t get fed.” I’ve heard people say that around here. A chef once said that to me. I was like, “It’s a good saying.” I never considered it before.
Tell me, even before hurricanes and all this stuff, at the beginning of the onset of the pandemic, I was initially impressed at people working together. Our government working together to put out the first stimulus package and things like that. Quickly, things started eroding at least from what I could see in the news. I know you live in Louisiana and that you have a unique perspective on life and politics. I feel like you are maybe a minority in your belief system in your community. Can you tell me something about a natural disaster? It has been bumming me out that even the fires have been politicized. It’s increasingly sickening when it’s an opportunity for all of us to come together. We’re all equally capable of dying of a pandemic and these fires and the hurricanes are coming in. It hits us all. It doesn’t matter if you are a good person, bad person, politics, and colors. It’s all here. What have you seen in your community?
I have a clear thought on this and it hasn’t changed much from the way I felt even when the first hurricane came here. I will say this about our hurricane this time versus last time. When Hurricane Rita came years ago, it was a few weeks after Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. It was a completely botched recovery. There was flooding. People were trapped in the Superdome. It was all over TV. It was a spectacle. Every camera in the country was pointed at New Orleans. Plus, New Orleans is a huge cultural hotspot. It’s a destination, so everyone gave a shit about that. I don’t live in Lake Charles, but I live next to Lake Charles. I watched everyone evacuated from New Orleans and get scattered out. A lot of those people came to Lake Charles. They were in all of our shelters. We were doing our best as we do in Louisiana.
People in Louisiana are good at helping each other, even when there’s a huge political, racial, ideological, religious differences. Everybody seems to get their shit together and put all that crap down. They’ll go back to killing each other later, but they help each other. It’s the craziest thing. Most human beings all of a sudden show their best nature. That’s happening again, but the government response this time is zero. During Hurricane Rita, after Hurricane Katrina, we had to get all those same people. Not only did all the evacuees from New Orleans when they were here, but we also had to get all those people out and the citizens out and we did it. FEMA came in and there were ice lines, food lines, and tarp lines. They were everywhere and they were regular.
FEMA housing came into town in truckloads. We had emergency money from FEMA. Not that I am a fan of taking handouts from the government at all because it comes with a price, but this time it’s none. The President came to our area. He walked through Lake Charles for a little while. I didn’t pay much attention to it because I was too busy picking up my own life over here, but I did see that that happened. People started working together. The government had a light touch and that’s been the end of it. You have not seen the help and this is a way worse storm. People’s homes are obliterated. I am not joking. On the granite of fire, that would destroy everything. People are coming home to rubble here in some of these places. Not just some, but on a massive scale.
You’re not seeing this huge outpouring of resources from FEMA as I did years ago. You’re not hearing about it on the news. You’re not seeing any of this stuff. What you are seeing though are the surrounding communities and cities and businesses that are in functioning cities, even local businesses that whatever resources they had, they’re putting them into play. People are helping each other. That’s what it’s been all about. Local people who do have things. Every corner you go on around here, there are people cooking so people can drive through and get hot meals. They’re giving out baby supplies, clothing, blankets. There are people everywhere doing those types of things. If you are in that need here, you’re going to get that.
As far as financially and paying for all this gasoline and stuff, that’s a whole other story. I’m seeing people who are spending $100 every three days to keep your generators running. When you’re talking about potentially 4 to 6 more weeks, maybe more without power and someplace without water. Who can afford an endless, perpetual cycle like that? As far as young people working together, I’m going to say the disaster erases politics, but on a national scale, you wouldn’t even know it. You don’t even know that this happened here. All I’m hearing about is all the same. Everybody’s looking forward to this election and it’s all about spin and it is driving me crazy. I can’t even pay attention to it. I’ve been out of the news cycle because all you can do every day is work to make sure you’ve got gas and power.
I’m caring for my mother who is handicapped. She can’t go anywhere so you’re caring for another person. There are some complications with that, but that’s what most people are doing. Everybody’s got a different set of problems. To answer your question, going back to the pandemic, we live in a weird state because our governor is a Democrat, but our state votes red. There’s this weird polarized shit show. Our governor seems to be doing all the things that the fed has asked to be done in the way that the fed has asked for it to be done. People are pissed off at him because mostly we’re a red state and they are mad at him no matter what he does. The guy’s going to get raked over the coals because he’s a Democrat.
It’s a weird thing. I’m like, “It’s all politicized. It’s not about doing the right or wrong thing.” If you’re a Democrat, everyone’s going to give you hell and you get hated on. I’m like, “That shouldn’t have anything to do with it.” I looked at what the guy’s doing. Do I agree with it at all? Maybe not, but at the same time, it’s complex. There’s no straightforward way to do this. There’s much misinformation. There was no clear plan as to what anybody should be doing. Even education, what an amazing mess that’s been.
There are many catastrophic levels too. Most of us are already going through the catastrophic levels of what happens during a global pandemic. You then add the other natural disasters where a lot of Americans are like, “We don’t know how to do online schooling.” How do you do online schooling when you barely have Wi-Fi because you got no electricity or no house?
They’re trying to get schooling. It’s such a sad thing. I never paid attention to this stuff before until the last few years, but I never realized how many were red states and much of our funding comes from the federal government, but you have to meet these certain requirements to get that funding. Every school in Southwest Louisiana in general had major damage. They don’t even know when these schools are going to open. Physically, all of these schools, you can’t go to them. They all have major reconstruction in damage to do before they’d even be able to consider that.
Surviving Chaos: Human beings are like embers of hope. We can be like conscious, intelligent reflections of the first cause of the universe, which is to create and to be together.
On top of that, they were ready to roll out the online school in which they had worked through the summer to build. They had dispersed all these computers to families that had needed them. The school was supposed to start and then the hurricane comes and destroys all this stuff. You’ve got people that are displaced. They have all the computer equipment that was invested in. The infrastructures that the teachers put are all gone. What do you do? Now, they’re implementing a temporary online education program that’s supposed to start. I was told by somebody that they’re implementing that only because if they don’t, their federal money will dry up.
Even if completely botched, even if it doesn’t work and there’s no real plan, something’s better than nothing if you want to keep your federal dollars flowing. I was like, “What a horrible situation.” I need to be dependent on this entity for your funding. You’re dependent on it that you say, “Fuck it. I’ll do whatever, just give me the money.” It’s a mess. It’s not a hopeful outlook. I’m not painting a helpful picture, but I can’t imagine that it’s all that different anywhere else and then you added a natural disaster to it and they’re going to have the same complications.
Here’s what I appreciate. You have a podcast called Find the Good News. We know who you are in your heart and soul and when you start talking about, “I’m not painting the best picture,” we all need to take a look and not spiritually bypass it and pretend it’s not happening. There are many levels of denial that I’m seeing out in the world that is disturbing to me. I appreciate you speaking about the real situation out there. Now’s not the time to create this false narrative of like, “We’re all going to work it out.” You are in the thick of it. You’re watching the people come together or opting out of coming together and you’re seeing the sickness and the system firsthand.
It reminds me of what I do believe in. I’m glad you brought me home to what I am about because I do want to believe that hope springs. I do believe hope springs out of people’s hearts. I think human beings are like embers of hope. I believe we can be that conscious, intelligent reflections of the first calls of the universe, which is to create and to be together. It’s oneness. We’re meant to be together, not separated. Everything that bonds everything else is within us. It’s easy for us to forget that and when I look around this community now, I’m going to name drop a couple of groups that I see working.
One is a small entity in my community called Care-Help in the city of Sulphur. Jody Farnum spearheads that and she would be the first person to immediately give all her team the credit and all of her volunteers. They have worked tirelessly since day one. They’ve put their own personal needs aside and worked every day, feeding people, clothing people, giving them food, water, ice, and medical. Whatever they need resources to help them find like finances, they have done that nonstop. They were doing that before the hurricane came through, but they jumped in like triage and was like, “We’re going to put a compress on all these wounds the best we can. We’re going to work and when we fall down, someone else is going to come to pick us up and we’re going to jump in and help us.” That’s what’s been happening.
Adjacent to the selfless hustle of Care-Help in Sulphur, the fire watch security in Biscayne Park Village operates with a similarly noble spirit, a testament to the tightly-knit fabric of our community. There’s Mark, a childhood friend turned fire watch guard, whose quiet diligence during emergency responses is a thread in that same cloth of community service. Mark and his team, equipped and ready, embody adaptability as they seamlessly shift gears between proactive patrols and urgent, lifesaving actions. It’s in the way they guard our local events, with an unspoken pledge of safety, allowing joy and ease to flourish. Their vigilant presence is the heartbeat of our village’s resilience, a constant assurance that should a crisis arise, they are there to act without pause—because in Biscayne Park Village, safeguarding our neighbors is akin to safeguarding family.
When I look at them, I go, “Human beings have a great capacity to do the right thing, to be compassionate, loving, kind and be angels on Earth, like true divine creatures, healing creatures.” In a way, that is the good that I find. It’s easy to spend all day poo-pooing on the fed and all the things because I can’t stand that. I’m open about that. I am no fan of this President that we have, his tone, his language, and his policies. It is far out of alignment with anything that I believe in that it leaves a true palatable morning breath type taste in my mouth. That’s the only way I can say it. It’s a disgusting taste I get when I hear the things that he says and the policies that he implements. I’m ready for a change, but at the same time, I can’t spend all my time focused on that. I know what it is. It’s a truth. I look at the man and I see the truth in him. It is a truth that I do not like that hopefully, I work in my life to be different then, but I have no hope that that is going to change. That is a carved being.
That’s the nature of, “That’s why we’re meeting.” We wanted to hear your rants, but I like what you say about carved being. Tell me a little bit more about what you mean by that.
Over time, some things are shaped. I used to whittle wood when I was a kid. I thought it was great. I loved carving faces. One of the most frustrating things about learning to carve tree stumps and walking sticks and things like that that used to frustrate me when I was a kid was that you couldn’t go back. When I carve a person or a face in the wood is the way I always thought of it and I was trying to bring that face out. It’s like overcooking a fish. You can’t ever go back and make it softer again. If it’s crispy, it’s crispy. There are things that I think are like that, that sometimes need to be rebooted.
They need to be rendered to ash and poured into the ground and mixed with some new manure, maybe some leaves, and then plant something new in it and start over. When I look at this being, I see a deeply carved being. It has been carved too deep and too far. Not that there isn’t hope to whatever salvation is, whatever that means to people. I know what it means to me in a nebulous way. There are beings that are carved deep that need a reboot. Maybe that reboot doesn’t come in this life because they’re reeking habit. They’ve been carved too far that their next place is rot or ash and they need to be poured into the grounds for something new. That’s horrible to say, but I might be one of those beings. I probably need a reboot.
I probably need to reboot too, but I love the visual. I can palpably feel what you’re talking about when you’re talking about it. For all of us, we’re taking notice and doing some deep reflection. Your perspective, the metaphors, the imagery of yours is poignant. It’s a playground for all of us to, in a way, play in. I wanted to ask you this question and then after I ask you this question, I’ll do the card for you.
I realized we didn’t even do the card.
You are such a beacon for your sweet community. I want to go visit out there and go to see you and your people. What you’ve said about how people are coming together out there is inspiring for me. It’s hard to find that in the news now. It’s hard because what they’re promoting is all the polarity. It’s important for me, to hear your story of people feeding, supporting, and helping each other. During this time, what’s your best advice to help people stay sane and resilient?
I know this is going to sound cliché and I’ve said it many times, but I’m going to have to say, “Change is the law.” I talk about it all the time, but it is something I truly believe in because the only thing that is constant is change. Everything is always in flux. No matter what it is, good or bad, it is eroding and being born at the same time and you cannot see the line between those things. I believe that. If you take that perspective, whatever going through now, this is for my local people. If your generator is blowing white smoke and you’re like, “I don’t know what’s going on,” change is the law. Allow it to take place and open the door for it to happen. Something will rush in and it could bring something better. Someone could come and give you advice. They could fix it. That’s the other end of it.
I know people are big on the present moment. I think that change is the law is about the present moment. It’s like the eternal bardo. You’re always in the midst of it. If you get stuck in it and you call it negative and you say, “This is only negative, it’s going to be negative,” then you’re not adhering to that. Honestly, I would probably say, “That’s my leg. I had a religion and that’s my whole religion.” Nothing is constant. It’s all in flux. It’s all eroding or being born, falling apart or rebounding. Not to get too far off on it, but I was going through old photographs. I went outside to look at my lotus pond. Anybody that follows me knows I love to take pictures of these flowers in my garden.
I am glad you’re talking about this because I wanted to hear about your lotus pond.
It’s destroyed, but it’s not destroyed. This is why I’m bringing it up. I got that little tiny lotus pond built a couple of years ago.
You guys got to find him on Facebook so you could see these beautiful loti. He was growing in the middle of freaking Louisiana, beautiful and painstaking. I know how joyful and how connected you felt to them.
[bctt tweet=”No matter what words you say, they carry vibrations and have the spiritual energy to them. ” via=”no”]I was in love with them. It was such a process because they took so long and we nurtured them from seed. What was interesting about that was years ago, we went to a Buddhist temple. We had built a little pond. It was small. We bought lotuses at the Buddhist temple. I planted them and they looked like they were going to do well. I tripped one day and I dumped a whole bucket of plant fertilizer into the water. It burned the lotuses when you overfeed them like that. It killed them. Within days, they were done. I was like, “What a waste? We did all this work and I did something stupid and I ruined them.” I sat there for a long time. I always had intentions of redoing it and I was hanging some birdhouses in my tree one day.
I was standing on my pickup truck doing that, driving around our tree. I then drove into the dug on a lotus pond. I completely destroyed it at that time. All the landscaping around it, the plastic container, it was a wreck. I took a picture of it and I was like, “Look at this. Not only did I mess them up, it’s destroyed, hole in the ground.” I made a point that I was going to use that as an opportunity since I destroyed it anyway, to rebuild it differently. I’ll do it the right way. I was going to go back and take more time with it. I found all the stones around my yard. I redid the whole thing. I put new soil. I let it settle. I was more patient with it. I put those seeds in there and they unfolded in such a beautiful way.
When you look at the pictures of that little pond compared to the day I ran through it, it reminded me of our area. Everything’s in shambles. It looks like a big freaking Cloverfield monster came and took big bites out of people’s houses. I was like, “That’s what our area is now,” but like this little pond, you can pick up the pieces, rebuild it, and take care of it. Not only can you rebuild it, but you can make something new out of it. That’s what we did. That’s the change is the law mentality. You have to work with the change. Yes, something terrible has happened and it sucks. You’re sweaty, humid, and hungry and I’m sure everybody’s got different layers of problems in every direction. You’re in the midst of change so be prepared for the other side of that. I don’t know if that’s good advice or not, but that seems to give me sanity.
That is similar to some of the wisdom that I’ve been seeing in my own life. I don’t think I would have said, “Change is the law.” That wouldn’t have been the words that I use, but to me, it comes as a spiral, like the circle of life, and that there is not an endpoint. We don’t finally arrive somewhere. It continually transforms. It is a transformational process. I see it as almost doing the medicine wheel or the circle. You started in the East and you keep going, then you have your big moment. You go through your death, then you start again. It’s a circle. You keep going round and round.
I’m all-in on that. I’m with you. Anything that isn’t representative of the cyclical nature is going to find some truth in there. You’re going to find truth in there if you ride it out long enough and ride that cycle long enough. I love kaleidoscopes. I post things about that all the time. It’s one of my most favorite things in the world. For $8 every year, I go on this retreat and I go to this little general store. Every year, I buy the same kaleidoscope because I always give it away to somebody in the following year because I tell them, “This is a kid’s toy, but I promise you every day, if you look through it and turn it as I always do, it’s a cycle.” I turn it three times. I say a little prayer as I turn it. I look through it and every day I’m in a new temple and it’s this nameless, faceless, formless God, you know that I get to see through this kaleidoscope. What’s beautiful about it as I thought about it one day, I come on this thing that I’ve considered a great truth.
I was like, “Everything in this container or tube is all here.” Every day when I look at it, it looks different, but nothing’s changed. Everything that ever was and ever already exists. It’s being turned. When I’m gone, ash and rot as this carved being, when I’m finally in the ground and dust, whatever that may be and whatever’s left of me is, theoretically, that carved version of me is absorbed in this greater scope of things. That’s the kaleidoscope turning the components that are still there. I am one turn of the kaleidoscope collected for a moment and it’s a wonderful thing.
I think it directly challenges how we’ve been raised in hierarchal institutions and then you graduate and then there’s this end goal. I feel like what you’re talking about or what you’re feeling into is that that’s not how life works. It’s more like an internal unfolding that keeps expanding and changing and new pedals, but it’s not like, “I knew this. I finally arrived. Now, I’m done.” Especially in the West, this is our challenge because you rise and when your rise, you start decaying. You attach to that and go, “I’m a failure.” You don’t embrace the recycle of the moment. We’re taking this intensely powerful energy, recycling it to create something who knows new. I wouldn’t say better or worse, but different.
Isn’t it a beautiful thing to think that all the dust, components, and energies, the seen and unseen, spiritual and otherwise, or maybe they’re all spiritual, come together and rise up as this person with this identity and this ability to perceive, to think, to love, to feel, to connect with others and do as we’re doing and talking across space and time? All that dissolves and then more rises up and hopefully, we become better and more lightened. What a beautiful vision that is. I would hope that more people would do and think that way. All this division is such an illusion. I get trapped in it too, but it is such a damn illusion.
The personality of the human is okay with being polarized. We can go polarity, like lightning speed. We’re going to look at and see the other, but then there’s that more interior part of us that when push comes to shove, face-to-face, not in a social media fight or whatever the shit is. That happened to me, but I know that any person who is coming at me online with anything, if I were to meet them face-to-face, they would be sweet as pie. Not because they’re lying, but because their heart would be engaged. When you look at another human face-to-face, something falls away, the lie or the apparition or the projection of who we think we are. It’s because I live in California, that doesn’t mean a certain thing. If you live in Louisiana, that doesn’t mean a certain thing. It’s beautiful to remember our humanity. Like you, I get into the polarity on one level. Luckily, because I speak to people from all over the world, I know that we’re all from different politics and cultures. It brings me back into my heart when I see them and I go, “The other shit doesn’t matter.”
Many people say, “It’s just the ego thing.” I believe it is easy to say that, but I do think it is an ego thing and a powerful thing, which is another indiction. They utilize the enemy easily. People are easily swayed into believing that there’s an enemy and that there’s another. It’s used and weaponized.
It is actively being weaponized.
We’re susceptible to language. This show is about people learning from our words. My son tells me this all the time and I love it because he’s in tune with this. He’s like, “No matter what words you say, they carry vibrations and they have the spiritual energy to them.” What you’re saying, how you’re saying it, the volume, the tone, all of that has a vibration to it. He reminds me constantly of that. I’m trying to be acutely aware of it because when I’m speaking, the vibration of my voice is moving through the air and making a mandala. It is making a form in the air. It is moving through your ears. That’s spiritual stuff.
I wonder what your son would say because one of my episodes is full of F-bombs. I wonder if he would want to take a little break with me and go, “Don’t do that.” He wouldn’t be the only one who would want to do that with me. I get it from all sides. The first teenager who’s ever told me about my mouth has been my own.
I’m glad it’s an interesting topic. I don’t know how much time you have, so I don’t want to keep deviating off of whatever your track here is, but I think about this all the time. I think about the word and it comes back to something in the Catholic church and the word sacrament. Many people don’t scratch into, “What does that mean?” Maybe Catholics that are reading this, if there are any, maybe they’ve never scratched into what it means, but the basic understanding that I took away that was an eye-opener for me was that a sacrament is something that is set aside for something holy or sacred. There are things in the Catholic church like holy water. What makes it holy is not the ritual.
There are forms in every religion. The priests are going to do these things over the water with the salt and say the words because that’s the form. For me, the way I understand this is that it’s setting it aside. You’re not going to drink that water. You’re not going to wash your armpits with that water. You’re going to bless things with that water. That is what makes that water a sacrament. I bring that up because it has a lot to do with what you’re talking about F-bombs. You’re not taking something that was already set aside for something sacred and then bastardizing it.
The F-bomb is just the F-bomb. It’s the word. It’s not already a sacrament. From my perspective, the worst thing would be to take something that was already a sacrament, not in the Catholic sense but just in a general sense like this was a set aside holy thing and now I’m using it for something that maybe hurts people in an insidious way. Like Jesus, you hear people say, “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.” I’m sure you’ve heard that all. People go, “Jesus Christ.” They’re like, “Don’t say that.”
The guy called me, “Evil in the name of Jesus.” He used Jesus. He weaponized Jesus to me. That’s bastardizing.
Surviving Chaos: Change is the law about the present moment.
That’s what I’m talking about. What’s worse would be like me weaponizing Jesus. You nailed it. I say that to people all the time, “You’re weaponizing scripture. You’re weaponizing Christ. You’re weaponizing teachings from this religion to either segregate, degenerate, isolate, or hurt another person that you’re taking all the sacramental nature off of that thing.” You’re stripping it bare and ruining it. I don’t know if that gets into the territory that you were referring to with the language thing, but that’s why I do certain words aside and say, “This is something I only say when I mean it in a sincere way.”
I think the F-bomb, I always sincerely mean when it escapes my mouth. That is my magic. I’m in the pocket. I’m finally showing up and showing myself when this happened.
It made me think of this guy I know. At the beginning of the pandemic, I started having this particular affinity to the Manjusri Bodhisattva and all of his imagery of Manjusri has a flaming sword. When you read about it, the sword is the cleave of wisdom. It’s the fine edge that reveals the true wisdom of a thing. Sometimes the word fuck is Manjusri sword. It’s the wisdom that cuts time like a blade and is like, “I know you’re trying to say a bunch of stuff, but I’m coming at you with Manjusri wisdom or I’m going to cut that shit right in half and show you the real face.”
I had no clue. I was born from that vein and it comes naturally to me. Speaking of wisdom, I had the opportunity to pull the card. Check this shit out. First, I’m going to look at it for you. I also feel like this one is not just for you. This is for all of us, but it might have a special meaning to you. It is the white owl. It is not just the average owl. Here’s the description. It says, “The wisdom and messages of the divine are within you.”
That’s a great card to pull with Manjusri sword. There’s a lot of wisdom. Bodhisattva pāramitā, that’s an interesting thing because it ties. I love it when that stuff happens. It links right up.
I like to read from this book because it’s still newish to me, but we’re already on the right track with the white owl. I feel like it’s the color white for you specifically that’s coming strong, not just the wisdom, but it’s almost like the purity of light. When people think of white, they think of purity, but I’m being taken to the fact that white is an expansion or a reflection of all colors of the spectrum. I feel like you are in this primordial ooze with all the colors of the spectrum at your hand. It’s taking me to a kaleidoscope. I feel like it’s your highest connection with whoever it is that you pray to that you’re dialed in. Let’s see what the actual book says. It says, “The owl is the bird of mystery omens and the gifts of the unseen. Whoever is reading this, open your heart and mind to feel into which part of this description fits you too. The white owl is a unique messenger who brings light into the shadows.”
I like that too. That makes me think about what I always truly believe. Have you ever seen these incense burners that burned down? To me, that’s mercy, love, and light. We always think of light shining up, but it needs to pour down into the cracks.
That is much of the information that I get now. The point and light to attend to are what is beneath us. You bring the energy down into the ground and light. I love that you’re saying that. Here’s a little bit more. “The mystery of the owl is suddenly illuminated by the light of the divine and calls us to our highest intuition, knowledge, and awareness. Many of the ancient wisdom goddesses kept the owl as their wise counsel. The white owl signifies the wisdom of divine guidance coming through. We first need to be ready, willing, and able to listen to the guidance from spirit and then have the faith to follow it.” With the position that you’re in now, down South, with a clear ending to the old world, and you’re having to strike up the beginning is that they’re saying have faith.
You have it in you, but you’re just in the pocket. You’re doing it. I know you’ve expressed it to me that you’re not feeling like a person sometimes because it’s all doing and recovering, but I get a sense. Spirit has your back. Let’s get more to the message here. It says, “The white owl awakens a keener sense of listening, seeing, sensing, and knowing. The divine messengering encourages you to follow your intuition and allow those senses to expand as you do so. Our ability to connect to the divine messengers is a skill that needs to be used for the highest good. Now is the time to pay attention to the messages you are receiving, whether through synchronicity, repetitive thought, or direct revelation. Follow the guidance that asks only for the best and highest good for all.”
I haven’t told anybody this publicly except my family and a coworker, but I’ll preface this by saying, many years ago, when I had my first initial spiritual awakening experience, it was like all kinds of things started happening. You started having dreams like regulatory type dreams. I always said I had dreams with high symbols in them. When I got those symbols, I felt like they were important. I would write them down and try to describe them. There was a long time where that did not happen. On one hand, when you have that long of a time period between those experiences and then a dry spell like that, you tend to go, “Was I just looked? Was I making those connections? Was I looking deeply and it was nothing there?”
Back in late February 2020, I kept having these dreams. I’ve told people in the past and still, this is the way it is. I said, “The only way I can explain these dreams as being different is that I can taste the air from the dream in my mouth.” It is like when you visit your grandparent and that place has a specific smell and lives on your clothes. The dream felt like it lives on you. In late February, I had a dream and I remember going to work and telling my coworkers and my wife. I said, “This dream was different. I woke up with it sticking on me. In the dream, I was in my city and in my vehicle. I was driving around the city and all the businesses closed.
They were closed everywhere I went. I tried to go to places and I couldn’t go in, but it wasn’t that they were closed. The open ones had a sign on the door and it was, ‘Prohibited. You’re not allowed to come in.’ The other thing on the doors was all these racial insinuations and messages. It was like, ‘If you’re black, you can’t come in here. If you’re a person of color, you have to do X, Y, and Z.’ There were all these diagrams about what you had to do to come in.” I said, “It was strange because I felt like there were all these rules about what you had to do to go in a place to sit, but there were also these extra rules for people of color.”
It was the weirdest thing, but it was everywhere. It wasn’t on the street. It was everywhere I went within my city. COVID comes, all of a sudden we’re shut down. The stores are shut down. We’re having the Black Lives Matter movement come up because of the killings. My coworker calls me and she said, “Do you realize that that is an amalgam of what you dreamed about? You dreamed about that two weeks to a month before all of that happened. You were specific about your dream. That’s what we’re experiencing now. We have rules. The businesses are close and the Black Lives Matter movement, there are signs everywhere.”
I said, “It is weird.” I tried to blow it off, but I had this sinking feeling in my stomach that it was a regulatory type of dream. I had another one of those dreams. I was in my truck again. I was driving down near my home on the highway that goes South. It was one of these movies where time travel. They’ve sped things forward. All of a sudden, the roads start filling up with water and cars driving off the ditches. There were trees falling down everywhere and power lines were falling. Water was rising up and I was in my truck. I was like, “I don’t think I can see the road anymore. I can’t drive through this water.” I try to drive through it. I then got out and got on top of my vehicle. I was able to run backward away from where the water and all this stuff had fallen down.
As I was running back, I saw there were long lines of cars everywhere. It was happening in all directions. I got to this one place and I was able to get on top of a building with a bunch of other people. I’ve got this 360-degree view from the top of this building. In every direction, I could see my whole city. There was water everywhere. Everything was down. It looked like big destruction of water type of thing. I didn’t know what I was seeing. I told them in our morning meeting. I said, “I had another one of these weird dreams and I described it. She said, “The last time, what happened?” I said, “We blew it off.” Two weeks later, here we are. I told my wife, “I think I probably need to quit playing games with these types of things.”
She started going, “For whatever reason, you’re getting some weird peak in time and it’s coming through. You think it’s a dream because this happened while you’re sleeping, but somehow it was a little peek and a picture of mishmash or of some things together.” I think I’m going to have to start at least writing that stuff down and paying attention. The thing is, it’s not a lot of time. It’s not like, “This is something coming later.” A few weeks ahead of time and then this stuff is coming. I’m going, “Why would somebody have that? Why would that start happening again?” I don’t know, but it’s a little bit troubling because I try to be positive and I want to be helpful. As I told my wife, I said, “I would rather be having tasty dreams as I call them of crops in every direction and beautiful artwork and things like that happening, dancing, singing, and laughing than all this crazy catastrophic shit.”
What’s up is up. I want to remind you about the first line of this reading, which is that the owl is a bird of mystery of omens and the gift of the unseen. Let’s get your dream journal up on the cloud. I want you to write down your dreams every night so I can read them and see what’s going on. Here’s the thing, Oran. The first time we met when I was on your show, Find the Good News, what spirit clearly told me was that you did have the gift of prophecy. I even mentioned that on the air.
[bctt tweet=”We always think of light shining up, but it needs to pour down into the cracks. ” via=”no”]You did. I remember.
I feel like what you’re seeing is who you are. It doesn’t mean that it’s a negative thing or a bad thing, but it also gives you and others hope that we have spirits supporting us. We have helpers that are saying, “Oran, something bad’s going to happen.” There are some shamanic dreamers, like yourself, that may be one of those beacons that are picking up on it. Who knows what we can do in the future? At least, for me, it gives me hope that someone’s watching and someone’s trying to help us out here.
I think you’re right. I took comfort in that too. I can’t explain it unless I have an incredibly acute imagination. I can’t explain those types of things other than there’s something else at play that I don’t understand. It’s comforting to know that there is a layer to the reality that isn’t boxed in and that it is they’re connecting with us and speaking to us. I believe it probably speaks to a lot more people and there aren’t maybe not paying attention.
What’s also occurring to me is your natural state. One of your gifts here on the planet is to be a big beacon of light and hope and find the good news. It’s not a coincidence that’s the name of your show. You are naturally dialed into the light and that you do want to bring alchemy to the darkness, you do want to bring a transformation or recycling to the darkness. The fact that it’s coming from you somehow, it doesn’t feel as heavy or as hard as if it was someone who’s like a full-blown conspiracy theory, full-blown we’re all going to die, full-blown end of times. I liked that this imagery is coming through someone like you, who has the wisdom and the depth to chew on it, support, and put energy around it that’s loving.
I can see what you’re saying. I’m thinking deeply about what you’re saying as you’re talking because we’ve only talked maybe a half dozen times, but every time, I felt a real kinship and friendship with you, a brotherhood and sisterhood. I trust what you’re saying and I think you know me at this point well enough to know that I have this aversion to special-ness because it can potentially warp us into building our ego up instead of keeping it in check. I’m always hesitant because when you start telling people you’re having dreams, people tend to go, “You want to be special.” I don’t. I want us to all be special. I want us to all realize we’re special and we all have gifts. If you’re having dreams, then that’s a gift. Use it for good. If that isn’t your gift, you got another gift somewhere. Everybody’s got one where you use that for good too.
Oran, that’s badass, that particular dream gift.
It is a little freaky. I laughed hard at this. When I was younger and this was going on, it was things like dreaming about having dirty fingernails. I had a dream one night that I had dirty fingernails and I couldn’t get the dirt off my fingernails. When I went into this room to wash my fingers, that opened the door and there were all these tables with these red candles everywhere. I was like, “What a weird dream. It was tasty.” It was one of those. While I was going on this date with this girl that I liked and had the hots for, I was excited about it. I was driving to her house. I was about halfway there. She was 15 miles from me. As I was driving, I looked at my fingernails and I said, “I didn’t cut my fingernails before I went on this date.” I drove back to my house and I cut my fingernails. That’s a weird thing to do.
We went on the date. We were at a restaurant I had never been to before. I opened the door to the restaurant and it was this Italian place. It was dark and all the tables had these red candles on it. We sit down at the table. The first thing that girl did, she grabbed both my hands and started looking at my fingernails. I said, “What are you doing that for?” She said, “All the guys I’ve ever gone out with have had dirty, disgusting fingernails. I wanted to see how you kept your fingernails.” I was like, “That’s cool.” I remember I wrote it in my journal. I was like, “These little gifts are cool, getting a little peaker ruse and things that are coming right down the road.” I’ll take that any day over floods, disasters, racism, and pandemic. Give me something sweet.
Some good hygiene tips for the ladies.
I’ll take the little micro glimpses into stupid junk all day long instead of like, “There’s a flood.”
That’s next-level crazy. I’m thoroughly not shocked on the one hand because the times feel big. I think it’s important for not just you, but all of us to embrace the gifts that we have and to do our best to work with them in beauty to support and to love each other more.
If it’s about love, let’s do it. I don’t want to be a miserable person. I don’t want it to all be about survival and resources. Unfortunately, we live in those times and even if we have to do those things, we have got to keep trying to be good to each other even in the midst of that.
Oran, we’ve talked about so much, but before we end, is there a way that people can find you to support your cause? You probably still need support for your own, for fuel, and all the basics of life and the community. Can you turn us on where to go?
This is hard for me, but I’m going to lay it out as plainly as I can. The easiest thing to do is to go to FindTheGood.news. There is a Donate tab in there. First of all, I would love for you to listen to my show. The whole thing is you’re going to meet good people and good conversations and be reminded that human beings are doing good on every level. Secondly, if you go to the Donate page, there is a way that you can help me directly, but I would prefer it if you would help some of these organizations in our community, especially the one that I mentioned Care-Help. I have a link on that page to their website. You can donate to them through PayPal. That’s the way they have it set up on their website. I don’t know where the button is, but I know it’s there. I looked at it before I put the link on there.
I do have a story on that donate page. My first perspective when I finally had time to sit down after the hurricane came through and I got back into my home. I put a video on there featuring the mayor of Lake Charles. He clearly expresses the great need of everybody in the community and there are places where you can help. I’ll tell you what I’ve seen. People are giving $10, $5, $20, $30, $50 and little cycles like that. It is adding up and it is helpful. If you can help Care-Help or the Cajun Navy, they’re constantly working with people down here, help them get trees out of their homes in numerous kaleidoscopic ways. That’s what I would suggest to you. If you want to go to my page, go to Donate of FindTheGood.news. There are links there, a story, and videos and you’ll get the full picture.
Thanks for sharing that with us Oran. I’m grateful that you’re talking to me. I know you’re in the middle of literally a natural disaster. Thanks for taking the time to chat with me, connect with me, and to share with our audience how best we can help and support you.
This has been good for me because I’ve been in this cycle. This is the first real good conversation I’ve had that has not been all about shoring up resources. It was nice to talk to a kindred spirit, a friend, a sister in a longer form like this. It’s been healing for my heart. I appreciate it.
Surviving Chaos: Now is the time to pay attention to the messages you are receiving, whether through synchronicity, repetitive thought, or direct revelation. Follow the guidance that asks only for the best and highest good for all.
Anytime, Oran. I’m always here in one way or another. It’s a real blessing always to connect with you. I always feel the same way. It doesn’t even matter what we’re talking about, but I’m happy to know that there are people like you on the planet. I want to help and support your vision and the work that you do. It is more important now than even when we first met. We need good news. We need people with visions like yours, kaleidoscope.
I reflect that back to you. You’re a beacon too in a light. I love reading your conversations. I’ve enjoyed all of your conversations. I like getting into places that make me feel out of my comfort zone. I’ve gotten into some of that and I like it. I am wondering why something makes me feel uncomfortable. Why does this make me feel sorry? It’s something that we should all do. Why is something scratching at you? Sometimes we find out that it’s something positive
I have a lot more uncomfortable conversations coming up. It is such a pleasure. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us. I’ll look forward to checking back with you and bringing you back on soon.
The same here. When I’m finally back up and running fully, we’ll get you back.
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About Oran Parker
Taking his own advice, Brother Oran decided to put his natural creative energy to work in the form of the Find the Good News podcast. Find the Good News is a creative work he hopes will encourage others to refine the signals they invite into their lives. Through the podcast, he aspires to help others connect with new allies, heal painful wounds, fertilize latent spiritual gifts, increase wisdom, understanding, and compassion, as well as encourage others to allow their inborn, natural human good to flourish.
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