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Monday, September 17, 2007

Compassion Please for all Children of the World

I have gone through divorce and bankruptcy; I have been robbed, several times, wrecked cars and bikes and was even in a crash on a trolley car,

lost a girl friend to Leukemia (she died when she was 27, a year after earning her Master's Degree from USC), set my hair on fire (yes, drugs ARE bad for you),

had two very serious injuries to my right arm (one playing basketball, one racing dirt bikes), played basketball with broken ribs, a broken finger, stress fractures in both my feet and (for some reason THE worst of all) a broken toe

had fifteen (15) broken bones in less than five (5) years, all of them ouchy plus

and I have seen my dreams of artistic success (which often seemed SOOOO close to actually happening) die over and over again.

I have been fucked with and fucked over a million times and when I was young had more death threats than I can count ("but I really thought--insert name here--would like me better"; their boyfriends evidently didn't think so).

I even saw my father die of a heart attack in the car (I was 22) while we were driving him to the hospital so for all my "Golden Boy" luck I have had quite a few bumps along the way.

But nothing--and I do mean nothing--comes close to the pain you feel when you lose a child.  There is nothing like it.

At all.


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The reason I bring this up is that in the world right now so much killing and chaos is happening, much of it due to our invasion of Iraq, and my feelings about losing my child are fundamentally no different than how a parent in Iraq or Palestine or anywhere else feels when their child dies.

All parents die when their children die.  Please try to think about what is happening in the world today from that perspective.  How would you feel if you had a child and your baby died?

Children in Africa and other countries around the world--including underclass children right here in America--are dying partly because of economic policies implemented by corporate interests in the United States. 

Young black and Latina children die because our system in many ways makes it harder for their parents to build a life that allows them to protect their children in the manner in which my child might have been protected had she lived.

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We are at a cross roads and it is time we stop to think about showing love and compassion to one another, not only our own children but the children of everyone else, as well.  This war, all this greed and bull shit--it has got to stop. 

All parents grieve the same.  It doesn't matter where you're from or what color you are or what language you speak; losing your child is terrible everywhere.

There is nothing like it.  Please think about how our actions impact children on this planet.  I lost my baby partly because I wanted to make as much money as possible on my big-ass contract and so I stayed in California and (not knowing any better) we let shitty doctors fuck up when perhaps had we left and gone back home things might have been different.

No matter what, though, losing a child is a pain one cannot really imagine unless you have experienced it.  So please take a stand for peace and fairness and compassion over greed and corporate control.

The world needs all of us--now--to stand up for one another.  Black, white, American, Mexican, Cuban, Iraqi, Israeli, African, Asian, European, it just doesn't matter.  We are all one people, spiritually connected.  It is time to choose peace above ego and greed.  Love is the only answer that truly matters.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Britney and the VMA's

Well instead of my usual fare of 9/11 Conspiracies, Economic Gloom and Doom and the evil machinations of a dark international banking cabal, I have decided to focus on something I know has relevancy and importance for the average American--Britney Spears' performance at the 2007 VMA's.

Britney Spears - Gimme More live VMA 2007

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Drunk, bloated, and crazy--personally I think it just adds to her credibility.  And while I agree that her "dancing" suggested either some hard partying or perhaps an inner ear problem, the one thing I can't understand is everyone going off on the poor child being "fat".  When I first saw this performance my first thought was not "oh you beached whale what is your problem" but rather a more succinct "honey".

So, seriously, even though I don't care about her much as a musician I do think it just ha ha hilarious that a young woman who looks this good should get shit from a bunch of fat out of shape critics saying that she is "too big".

She's not. 

I remember many years ago when I managed a New Age Bookstore when people would come in and want Health Books and basically give me shit because I didn't eat only this or only that but I was like 4% body fat and they were couch potato plus.  It is the same thing here. 

If you don't like her music, don't buy her CD's or watch her perform.  But, seriously, if this girl is fat then how can the average person (who perhaps may really be a bit on the hefty side) ever hope to fit in. 

Holding these young women up to some impossible standard is ridiculous. It truly is.

How to Live on Earth-A Native American Prophecy

may you live in interesting times

The world is fast becoming an interesting place, as in the Chinese curse sense "may you live in interesting times".

Brits standing in line to withdraw their money from the bank before it goes belly up, foreclosures on the rise and the dollar in what may soon be a virtual free-fall as the Fed pumps vaporware liquidity into a dying marketplace, and the latest in what is sure to be . . .

a fun new trend--trumpeting the Euro as the financial standard, THE international barometer going forward, a symbol of just how well a group of small nations with long histories of hating and killing one another can put all their differences aside for the good of a central all-seeing all-knowing World bank.

Good morning and welcome to your New World Order made to order Nightmare.

You've been fucked and not in the happy roses and kind words kind of fucked but rather the rammed up the behind with nary a kiss or caress and damn the torpedoes kind of fucked (oh, that's ouchy!) and all those lovely dreams . . .

about retiring and traveling the world, well I hate to tell you but the US will soon be a wonderland for EVERYONE ELSE to come to and we'll have Disneyland and NASCAR and trips to the Levi's Outlet Store to keep the rich nations of the world entertained. And not much else.

A gallon of gas: $14.69, a cheeseburger with real cheese: $22.50, Late Fees on your MasterCard: $245.00. Waking up to find a bunch of European bankers decided to piss on the American Dream (and you, too, while you were asleep): Priceless.

The World (and the New World Order that now controls it) is fucking you--Hard.

Iraq is a scam--designed, I believe, to accomplish three things: 1) steal the Iraqi's oil, 2) make money for the Banks making loans to the government to pay for the war and the Defense Contractors happily cashing the checks covered by the bank's usurious loans, and 3) destroy, from within, the United States and the United States military.

And it is only going to get worse as we start marching off to Iran and then Syria and then Lebanon and on and on and on.

Be sure to order the first, in what is sure to be be a long running series, "Imperialism Gone Wild" video--the Commemorative first "Mission Accomplished" DVD is free, subsequent DVD's of new Imperialist aggression will be shipped monthly, unless you do something for yourselves and cancel your subscription.

This is not a joke; the world is quickly (really quickly, I think) spinning out of control. It is time to seriously look at what's happening in the world, with the US Economy and the US Military and the state of the World in general.

The time is now before the American Dream is just a fading memory and the New World Order Nightmare is the only thing you see.

9/11 The Falling Man (full video)

I watched this film this afternoon; have a hanky or two handy if you watch it.  I think this film is really excellent and addresses at a very personal level the horror the poor people in the Towers must have felt when they discovered they were stuck with no way out.



J. P. Morgan, on Conspiracy

J. P. Morgan, on Conspiracy:
"Capital must protect itself in every way… Debts must be collected and loans and mortgages foreclosed as soon as possible. When through a process of law the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and more easily governed by the strong arm of the law applied by the central power of leading financiers. People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. This is well known among our principle men now engaged in forming an imperialism of capitalism to govern the world. By dividing the people we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us except as teachers of the common herd."

Morgan also said this: "A man always has two reasons for what he does--a good one, and the real one".

******

The housing "crisis"--and I do believe there is every reason to expect it will soon reach a crisis stage for too too many--is all part of an elaborate plan, in my opinion, designed to scare the masses into being good boys and girls and going along with the game. Nobody wants to sleep in their car or watch as the world they tried to build crashes around them.

But, mark my words, this is by design and it is one of the last pieces in a very interesting dark puzzle. As the economy tanks, and home prices drop, people will step to one of two different tunes: protect their home turf at all costs or attack the wolves at their door.

Henry Ford said, "It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."

It is time for all of us to realize that we are in this together--black white Latina Asian it doesn't matter. We are all in the mix together and the sooner we realize that the better off we will be.

The housing crunch is, to me, the final "test".

The Shock Doctrine

The following film clips are, to me, incredibly disturbing.  Famed journalist Naomi Klein postulates that psychological "shock treatment"--and notice the similiarities to tactics used on Iraqis at Abu Ghraib (I just watched another very disturbing film yesterday --"The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib" directed by Rory Kennedy)--is a tactic endored by economist Milton Friedman and others as a tool for inducing disorientation of the masses as a means for covertly introducing total "free market" capitalism into a society.

We have, and have had for a while, since the late 1940's, Nazi "Dr. Mengele" type experimentation and mind control happening in this country.  I saw in one video some months back where a CIA historian said something to the effect that "the Nazi's didn't lose World War II, they just had to move".  MK-Ultra and other state sponsored mind control tactics are very real issues, ones that all of us should be concerned with.

I am attaching film clips and decriptions below from myspace TV.  For more info on "The Shock Doctrine" you can also visit "http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine".

Naomi Klein, author of "No Logo", and Alfonso Cuaron, director of "Children of Men", present a short film from Klein's book "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism." www.shockdoctrine.com

The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein and Alfonso CuarĂ³n

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Acclaimed author and journalist Naomi Klein spoke about the 'privatization of the state' at a recent talk in New York City. Klein is a widely read columnist for the Nation magazine and the London Guardian and author of the international bestseller, "No Logo." Her forthcoming book is titled "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism."

She visited Iraq in 2004 and published an article later that year for Harper's Magazine titled "Baghdad Year Zero" in which she detailed the privatization of Iraq's state-dominated economy. She has continued to cover the issue and her forthcoming book on disaster capitalism is due to be published in the fall.

Naomi Klein

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The Gold Watch (or: why I stopped being a psychic)

Two little hands held tight like

a wet prayer. Paint cans whisper

hollow

tunes to her back; a tool bench, hands now idle, just

steps

away to her right

like silent sentinels.

The little red dress. Precious.

Just precious.

Black shiny shoes specked

with red and all is silent once more.


He spreads the photos

out across the dining

room table

Silence like a knife

It is his job

to take

these sprinkles of history and arrange

them, collage-like, into a pattern.

He is an archeologist of the dead.

The supplicants come heart in tooth

arms pasted loosely

to the left side

The mother's voice,

as always, is deep, throaty

like a wounded dog.

He sits

silent for a moment then gets up,

walks over

to grab a box of tissues.


She takes the tissues and blows her nose.

Phantoms on a carpeted walkway whisper to her as she walks.

The pictures will still come

to them both but no matter how they paint

the scene

the little red dress will never come

clean

again


the voice, like a wounded dog, he hears it

even

now


*  I wrote this poem originally back in the early '90's shortly after I decided to "retire" as a professional psychic.  I made an infomercial for a 1-900 number in 1992 and for about seven or eight months I worked on the phone lines for them and as one of their "featured clairvoyants"--clairvoyants are the Ferrarri's of the psychic world in that they can "see things" as opposed to other types of readers who go on impressons or feelings--I was usually the person who ended up working on any cases involving missing persons or criminal issues such as murder or abuse. 

Incredibly, to me, (as I had a baby girl of my own), there were an amazing number of cases that I worked on involving abuse with children--very young children (two, three and four years old).  Rape, physical and mental abuse, kidnapping and even murder. 

The poem above was written specifically in response to a case I worked on in my private practice for a three year old girl who was raped in her basement, a scene I described in great (and later quite verifiable) detail but it is applicable to all my cases back then involving young children. 

Eventually, after doing SO many of these types of readings I felt as if I had to stop.

Every time I tip toe back into the psychic world I remember those days and so I am sharing this poem from those dark days of mine all those many years ago.

FUBAR, Texas

I can't help but feel as if I have slipped into some "Twilight Zone/Land Before Time" thing because even though I think the world is beyond fucked-up and the current administration nothing but rouges and charlatans, the shit coming down lately surprises even me.

For example, did it not dawn on anyone that loading nuclear warheads onto a plane and then flying them from North Dakota to Louisiana was probably not a real "safety first" attitude? 

B-52 Mistakenly Flies with Nukes Aboard

Even more amazing--as if this fuck-up wasn't quite enough--during the 3 and 1/2 hour flight no one seemed to notice that five nuclear warheads were missing and unaccounted for.

Luckily a later bed check revealed the remaining nukes were safely in place but (a) how is it possible that they were loaded onto a plane in the first place--this is SOOOOOOO against stated policies that it is hard to imagine anyone in the Air Force doing this without orders from WAY up the command chain and . . .

(b) why wasn't anyone monitoring the warheads in the first place so they could account for their whereabouts at all times?  Why did they have to "go look" after they found out they were gone?

There are so many examples of things like this happening--incompetence or outright manipulation (which is it?  Either way is bad)--that in a perfect world one would expect some level of accountability and change if a continued string of failures of this scale impacted the good of the (insert group name here). 

But that's not happening.

And it is not going to happen either.  Here is just a short list of life in FUBAR, Texas:

1) The housing scam ("S & L II", we should call it, with a tip of the hat to Keating and the other Savings and Loan scammers from the 1980's who blazed a trail for the banks to follow);

2) the war in Iraq--how is it possible that we now have MORE troops on the ground than ever before?--some pullout;

3) health care totally in the shitter--truthfully do you have any real respect any more for a Doctor?  Marcus Welby is Dead, baby, Marcus Welby is fucking dead;

4) an administration so arrogant so above the law to say, basically right out loud, "fuck the Constitution, fuck the Geneva Convention, fuck Congress, fuck citizen's rights, fuck ANYBODY we decide TO FUCK (and it doesn't matter if you knew you were on the list or not because sorry to tell you you are on THE LIST) and just deep down FUCK the US".

Because I believe that is what is really happening.

I believe the current adminstation's GOAL is to dismantle and destroy the United States.  Sounds crazy but I believe that it's true.

I have thought about this and agonized over this and taken deep breathes and walked around the house many times but the only thing that makes sense to me is that the current administration--the people SOMEBODY elected--are not only not doing what is best for the US but are instead doing (according to a very strict design) what is best for a financial cabal outside the United States, a global corporate monolith who doesn't give a shit if they live in Northern Virginia or the South of France or in a fancy pad in Dubai.

So yeah call me a Conspiracy Nut but that is truthfully what I think.  I believe it is the only thing that makes sense.  For a similar viewpoint, please check out this video from Michael Tsarion:

Michael Tsarion on elite rulers

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This is not your grandfather's U S of A anymore.

And if you don't wake up soon it is not going to be yours much longer either.

Prophet and Loss

I'm sure you've seen the ads, 1-900-PSYCHIC, he was just like a friend. Maybe you've seen those infomercials, as well, you know, the ones where a bunch of old out of work actors and the cast and crew from General Hospital sit around and talk about their own personal psychic friends.

If you watched these back in the early nineties there's a good chance you may have seen me, too. I was on one of those myself—along with Erik Estrada, Jenilee Harrison, Stuart Damon, Richard Roundtree, and a host of others. My little blast with prosperity consciousness aired throughout the U.S. and Canada twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for about a year and a half, all the while serenading multi-billionaires to sleep with its sweet clanging song while simultaneously robbing lonely hearted waifs and welfare mothers who could not possibly afford the calls.

On TV my name was Obsidian, like the rock, and for just $3.99 a minute, you, too, could call and talk to me, or one of my caring professional assistants, from the privacy of your own home. Of course the sad part of it all was that for your $3.99 a minute you were more likely than not going to end up with some apprentice witch with a bad haircut, with no talent, no experience, no compassion and absolutely no idea what Pandora's Box her little song might unleash in the collective psyches of late night America.

The phone lines were populated--for the most part anyway--by a subculture of six dollar an hour aliens hooked up to an oral IV of the nation's secret ills. And these physicians of the soul were often times none too well themselves.

But, of course, the old adage "man who sleep with dogs wake up with fleas" seems to fit my role here pretty well. These lines were billed (and I do mean billed) for entertainment purposes only, although in my brief tenure there never once did anyone ask me anything that sounded remotely as it they were seeking entertainment.

Most of the people who call these lines are desperate for answers, any answer, and they are obviously willing to spend real money in order to find one. What is so sad about the whole affair is that most psychic predictions are based on probabilities, not absolutes, but this doesn't seem to sell quite as well as cosmic omnipotence so the real story gets pretty much swept aside.

Misery loves company and quite a few enterprising entrepeneurial types have capitalized on that notion in a pretty big way. Back when I worked on the lines, in 1992, a Prime Time Special aired on ABC and at that time Prime Time's "media expert", Ken Macaldowny, reported that these lines earn well in excess of one hundred million dollars a year. (I read recently that this figure has now gone up to Nine Hundred Million per year, just on the phone lines alone).

Add the millions that are spent on crystals, audio and video tapes, and assorted novelty items such as ouija boards, affirmation stickers and tarot cards to that figure--as well as books; people into metaphysics (no better example of that than me) are readers--and you can see that metaphysics is a much bigger market than people would initially assume.

Forbes magazine once estimated back in the early nineties, that the New Age market did 3.43 BILLION dollars in annual revenues with over a billion dollars being spent annually on New Age books alone. That number most certainly has gone way up.

The prophecy business tends to do well when times are tough and times were tough back in 1992 when King George I was still perched on his hollow throne. The early nineties, in my opinion, was the ultimate bull market of late night metaphysics, the IPO go-go years before the reality of just how bad some of the telephone psychics really were became known.

However, with an ever-growing social and economic malaise sweeping like wild fire throughout America, under the dauphin King George II and the watchful crossed eyes of the imperial regent Sir Dick, I wouldn't be surprised to see the metaphysical marketplace rebound a bit in the coming years.

The target demographic for most psychic phone lines are minority women, particularly women on some form of public assistance, and as a collective these women probably see America's social ills more clearly than all the psychics in the world combined. It may seem curious that an economic group so poorly equipped to absorb eighty-five dollar phone calls should form the financial backbone of a multi-million dollar industry. But they do.

Since I expect the ranks of those of us seeking public assistance to swell in the near future, the market base for supplicants at the house of what's in store for me next is likely to be strong for Round Two.

This is really pretty sick, don't you think? And since the money involved is so incredible, and the overhead for most of these operations so relatively minimal, the budding entrepeneur is awash in financial possiblities. (Bad karma aside) Like its bastard cousin, the "Busty Babe" hotline, the 900 number business is BIG business. But as the volume of calls escalate manpower problems become very important. The IP's (read: money men) who front the money for these lines are not just going to let the money set on the table, manpower shortage or not. So they hire whoever they can.

I've seen people come in, right off the street, literally. who taped interpretations to the backs of their tarot cards and read them off, card by card. Nothing more. Certainly nothing that anyone else with twelve dollars for a tarot deck couldn't do for themselves.

I agreed to do the infomercial because of one thing. I knew my appearance on national television meant money--serious money. Initially it was going to go straight into the till for the producers but I knew that all this TV exposure could also have a pretty strong trickle down effect for my own account as well. After all, if fifty million people see a bunch of TV stars sitting around saying I'm one of the premiere psychics in the world today, some of them are bound to believe it.

And when my accurate prediction that Jenilee Harrison, Suzanne Sommer's replacement in Three's Company, was going to start doing live theatre was included at the end of the infomercial, thus proving that these really were the best psychics in the world (better than that old Linda Georgian's), especially me, well it didn't take a marketing genius to see the kind of money I could potentially make.

All I had to do was change my name. No problem. Andrew is not my real name anyway; my first name is Rudolph, so I had absolutely no ethical dilemma about changing my name from an infamous Christmas icon to a big black rock.

At least that was the plan. But after I was there for a few months I began seeing that all was not well in the metaphysical world. People were being hired to answer calls who had absolutely no business doing so. I didn't care so much that they were amateurs but many of them were amateurs with bad attitudes. Neurotic cynical misanthropes.

And these neurotic cynical misanthropes were getting the opportunity, partly because of something that everyone in America had the opportunity to see me actively promoting, to plunk their little neurotic cynical misanthropic selves down right next to me and give absolute bull-shit advice to a lot of deperate people who truly needed help.

And then laugh about it when they were done.

So I quit.

I don't have access to the media buys for the infomercial in which I appeared but I can guesstimate that in the eighteen months it aired, at approximately 150 times a week, nationwide and in Canada, that the take from it had to be close to $75-$100 million, maybe more.

I don't know who calls these lines but I do know that they must have their phones conveniently placed near their TV. Since the average call lasts about nine minutes (at $3.99 per) and many callers call back week after week, sometimes three or four times, my guess is that somebody is making (or has already made and stashed away somewhere) some serious money.

Karmic debt meets Dun and Bradstreet.

"A man gazing at the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles in the road" -- Alexander Smith

For the past fifteen years I've vanished from the metaphysical world. Only now I'm back and my approach and understanding of all things "psychic" is much much different than before. Hopefully my TV legacy is pretty well behind me. It is the spiritual self that matters most. Love and compassion for others, sharing your kindness with others--that is what's truly important.

As we move towards more and more difficult times, it is important that we hold true to our spiritual nature. Don't let anyone tell you that you cannot make a difference. As a famous man once said "love is all you need."

Peace and love to all.

Psychic Baseball

Ted Williams, a pretty fair country hitter in his day, said "baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer." Perhaps that same standard should be applied to psychics, as well. Back in the days when I worked as a professional psychic, I had days when I was "zoned" and hit pretty much everything in sight but I've had even more days when the best I could do was hit a few weak nubbers back to the mound. Or else take the long slow walk back to the pine. That's not much fun, especially when there are people counting on you to crank a couple out of the park.

One of the biggest problems I had in working full time as a psychic was that so many people wanted to turn me into some turban clad ascetic fortune cookie, even though it seems fairly obvious, I think, that I'm a relatively normal guy into baseball and basketball as much as meditation and astrology.

One of my favorite hobbies is playing a game called Statis-Pro Baseball. It's a simulated board game that uses cards. I picked up my first game at a garage sale for 4 bucks about fifteen years ago-I got another one a year later at a Volunteers of America store for $.89-and I played through the 1985 season game by game, keeping box scores and stats for my team, the Oakland Athletics.

It was a great season, everybody got to play, even though Dwayne Murphy for some reason couldn't hit for shit, gold glove or not, and I spent hours blissfully finding a way to get Bill Krueger and Steve Mura a couple of innings of work. Everything turned out fine by season's end, even though our starting second baseman was killed before the season began in a tragic accident. (My dog ate Donnie Hill's stat card.)

There are dozens of these games out there and, believe me, they are truly a lot of fun. Many years ago, there used to be another baseball board game out called "Psychic Baseball."

Back in the mid-nineties I taught myself HTML and got a free web site on geocities that I called "Psychic Baseball". My version of Psychic Baseball (now at www.psychicbaseball.com) is devoted to the things in my life I enjoy most: sports, books, art, computers, and the Oakland Athletics. Like quite a few others in America with a modem and a tendency towards the obsessive, I tried to make a site that was fun--for me first, but hopefully if it was fun for me it would be fun for others, too.

Hence, the name for my page and an excuse, no matter how lame, for linking the terms "psychic" and "baseball" together.

But there is another reason, too. I think baseball fills a need, whether it is spiritual or aesthetic or just a way to blow off some pent-up testosterone, I don't know. But it gives me something, something in my heart, that metaphysics can never give me. Some of my most transcendent intense connected moments in life were not spent in church or doing psychic readings but playing basketball or fielding grounders by the hour in the hot summer sun. When I was truly on and the ball would go just where I wanted it to go it was like time turned to maple syrup.

Everything was slow, slow, slow, just the way you try to make things so you can do psychic readings.

And I could fly just like a bird in the sky.

What better definition for spirituality could there be?

When I was younger (and certainly more foolish) it was very common for people who met me, in the context of me being a professional psychic, to ask me about my spirituality, thinking (perhaps) that if I was so elevated as to possess "psychic ability" then I must be some highly spiritually evolved individual. My answer, each and every time, was this: "psychic ability has nothing to do with spirituality."

And, of course, I believed it was true.

I realize, now, that I was wrong. Very wrong. Psychic ability has everything to do with spirituality and when I decided to sleepwalk through ten years of my life in order to become a prognosticating robot, all I was doing was running on the steam from an engine that was running loose somewhere nearby.

Being a psychic is a wonderful wonderful thing. Choosing to take that into the marketplace can be a very foolish thing, especially if you are somewhat foolish to begin with. It has taken me a very long time to make my peace with the marketplace. Hopefully, as a result, I will become less and less the fool.

There is, as Carl Jung so elequently stated, "no coming to consciousness without pain." All the young pitchers look good in the spring. It's only after a few times around the league, though, that you know, really know, if the boy's got it or not. It's the same way with life. I don't want this to sound like some version of "Everything I Learned in Life I Learned in Left Field" but I do believe that the trials and tribulations of baseball serve as a very interesting model for the inevitable trials and tribulations of one's life.

But in realizing one's consciousness, one also realizes, as the mystics have always said, that it is through love that one finds God. Do those things you love, surround yourself with those people and toys that you love and you will be love . . . and God will be with you.

And so, once more, I come back to baseball.

The late A. Bartlett Giamatti, the commissioner of baseball during one of baseball's blackest days, the expulsion of Pete Rose, may have said it best: "It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone."

You can't hide on a baseball field. Sooner or later you gotta get it done because no matter where you are, someday, someway, the ball's gonna get hit right at ya.

Can you catch it? Can you make the play?

Can you make the play?

It is really strange to me now in looking back at all the hoopla and attention I received in my first go-round as a professional psychic twenty years ago when I look at it from the vantage point of all that has happened to me over the last 10 years. Everything in this blog before this specific paragraph was first written exactly 10 years ago, back in 1997, when I decided that I was going to put all this metaphysical silliness behind me and "go into business" and it is only now (truly) that I feel as if I really DO understand what my psychic abilities "mean" and only now, too, that I feel I can FINALLY live with them and the responsibility those "gifts" entail.

Back then I wanted to enjoy the perks without being true to the work; in other words, I got lazy. I always joked that yes it is true that all gifts come with a price; it is just that sometimes you don't realize how much they cost until AFTER you take them home from the store.

When I first "burst on to the scene", if you will, everything was cool as hell. I loved it. But eventually people began to take notice and over time I somehow became surrounded by a group of people who, well-meaning though I am sure they were, felt they had to "protect me" from anyone who would "use me" and ask me a question without first paying the requisite toll. Initially it was all fun; it was an absolute joy at first but then it became a struggle and then, eventually, it became something I hated--a lot like athletes who, over time, lose their passion for the games they once loved.

What was once something that flowed out of me like water was now "worth money" and I learned to ONLY let the cat out of the bag IF someone came cash in hand. It was the great French playwright Moliere who so eloquently compared writing to prostitution. He said, about writing, that "first you do it for love, then you do it for a few friends, and finally you do it for money."

It has taken me a long long time to make my peace with being a psychic--a "professional" psychic and I think the primary reason for that is that it has taken me so long to make any kind of peace with myself.

Finally, 52 years in to my journey, I believe I finally understand. All gifts, all TRUE gifts, only have meaning if they can be shared.

What good is the greatest toy if you have no one to play with? That, I believe, is my answer--finally, after all these years. Peace and love to all.