I really like how he puts it...

Is there anyone who ever remembers changing their mind from the paint on a sign?
Is there anyone who really recalls ever breaking rank at all for something someone yelled real loud one time?
Oh, everyone believes in how they think it oughta be.
Oh, everyone believes and they're not going easily...

Belief is a beautiful armor but makes for the heaviest sword.
Like punching underwater, you never can hit who you're trying for.
Some lead the exhibition, and some have to know they tried.
It's the chemical weapon for the war that's raging on inside.
Oh, everyone believes from emptiness to everything.
Oh, everyone believes and no one's going quietly...

We're never gonna win the world. We're never gonna stop the war.
We're never gonna beat this if belief is what we're fighting for...


So true, John! So true...

While people may not be swayed by the paint on a sign, or change their opinion because of something someone yelled real loud, I do believe that MUSIC has the POWER of Persuasion.

People are drawn in by the rhythms perhaps, are filled with resonating vibrations that are soothing or pleasing or uplifting or thought-provoking or some such thing. People tune in, people relax, people receive... and perhaps some deep place within them gets stirred. Some thoughts they've always held to be Absolute Truth do not seem as such, some questions come in...

Perhaps New Ideas are carried in by the sound vibrations and penetrate the fibers of our muscles, penetrate the blood that pumps in our veins carrying messages back to our heart, penetrate the grey matter that allows new neural pathways to form...

I believe in this. This is my Belief.

I attended a two-day gathering of resonant human beings to explore the Felt Sense Experience of "diversity" - two subsequent Saturdays, October 11th, and then yesterday, October 18th.

I drove home yesterday, filled to the brim and overflowing... I arrived at my home with a lot of love in my heart, extending outward toward each of the beings that were present with me yesterday (that includes 14 human beings and 2 small dogs :-)

At first blush, as it seems after any kind of diversity training or workshop experience, people leave exhausted with an overwhelming sense that the magnitude of the problem cannot be tackled by a small group of concerned citizens - and who can really fault such a conclusion made by well-meaning people? When you see how deeply they can feel, when you recognize how huge the pain is, when you can sense how ignorant/blind and or possibly malicious the perpetrators of such a system have been and continue to be? Who could possibly blame any good-hearted, well-meaning person to wring their hands and shrug their shoulders in frustration, walking away from such an experience and saying "the problem is just too big for me to handle... i have my own bills to pay, mouths to feed, etc. I cannot take this on; it's a losing battle."

Well! my esteemed colleagues and dearest, dearest of friends... I have a surprise twist in this story for you!

... My overwhelming feeling of the entire experience, my own felt experience and the energetic emanations I was receiving from the preponderance of energetic vibrations in the room as we ended the day yesterday was one of ALIVE-ness to the TASK at hand...

Yes, I am not joshing you. The energy was ALIVE. The collective energy of the gathering resounded in me.

This is my best attempt to translate what I "heard" in the vibrational resonance that I took into my body from yesterday's gathering:

The injustice of what we SEE, what we HEAR, what we FEEL... the injustice so foul we can SMELL it... the injustice so bitter we can TASTE it... we have viewed it, we have listened to it, we have touched it, we have inhaled it, we have eaten it... as we have digested this injustice in our bodies and broken it down and processed it in our cells, we have come to the conclusion that redressing these "wrongs" is VITAL for our very SURVIVAL as a species/collective...

I found this energy coursing through my veins as I left the session, pumping lifeblood into my heart and soul... this energy is still pumping vigorously throughout my entire being...

Which brings me to why I felt compelled to blog today...

The conversation among my colleagues is not over as I am entertaining thoughts in my brain....We are still gathered together at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.... We are dealing with an Institution that does not SEE itself as it is BEING SEEN by others/us....

....The Institution that is the United States of America... where a place like Hollywood, so full of liberal idealism and messages of equality and so on and so forth are packaged for our Saturday evening popcorn-and-a-movie lives, where black people make action movies or misogynistic comedies, where white people make sure to smatter their cast with a "side-kick" black or Hispanic man, or a "best friend" black or Asian woman, and where, to prove that America is a land of diversity, allows "ethnic" offerings from time to time (most often in the "dead" months after the Holidays and before the Summer Blockbusters)...

...Here's some "Thought Soup" that I would like to serve to the table for my illustrious comrades-in-arms to digest with me...

Wow...