I generally ignore the news.  Alot of it, I just don’t need to know; and I’ve found that really important news has a way of finding me anyway.

So it is with the shooting in Connecticut.

I haven’t read an official news article about it, yet.  I found out about it this morning, when I logged onto facebook.  I don’t know the details, but I watched US President Obama give a speech with watery eyes.

I did not close my heart to this news, and I allowed my heart to go out to everyone affected by this tragedy… which is a lot of people.  I thought about it, about the juxtaposition of violence and peace in the world.  Sweetie and talked about what it all might mean.  Was this meant to happen?  Why did it happen?  How could it happen?

Biggie answered.

Biggie, could you please help me with this?

Biggie spoke in emotion at first.  He shares in the grief left in the wake of violence.  I heard, “Too many,” and “Too much.”  I didn’t know what that meant.

He showed me the connection between the grief of the families of the children recently shot, and the terror of the kids who survived, and the awful experience of death it was for the children who died.

That is no way to die, not for anyone.

He explains that the contrast of violence against the bodies and minds of children is this corrupting kind of phenomenon.  We as adults have had all sorts of little traumas that have brought us to our maturity, but kids, kids are not supposed to know fear or grief.  It’s that innocence, it’s part of our connection to heaven and it’s part of their protection as children.

Biggie widens the picture and shows me that of course, children all over know fear and grief.  Parents in any places have mourned children caught in the crossfire.  He shows me weeping parents and mourning communities, in one case a little black girl who was caught in the crossfire in her own front yard.  I believe this girl died in Toronto, and I think I vaguely remember the story.  Her house was next to a crack house, there was a drive-by shooting,  and she died in her own yard.  Her mother was lost in grief, but fired with anger that the death of her daughter did not spark outrage in the community at large.

These kids in Connecticut, they’re white kids, aren’t they?  (I’m going to google to confirm before posting this.)  Biggie shows me children the world over who die by gunfire.  So many kids in Africa, so many in Asia, in Mexico and South America.  Kids with dark skin.  Where is the outrage, where is the proper grief for these kids?

He shows me little kids in Africa holding guns.  Child soldiers.  The violence against these children defies words.

Let the grief for those children (who died in CT yesterday) be the grief for all children who died (by gunfire, in war, in the sex-trade/trafficking industry.)  Let (the scope of our grief) expand to include all the children of the world (who need peace.)

Biggie just shares this incredible heaviness, this grief, and the understanding that it is felt by everyone on the other side, and it is felt for every child, not just those few who were noticed. 

When I asked him whether this was meant to happen, soul contracts; me, ever the seeker of the grim silver lining.  My Dad had this saying whenever he saw an intersection that needed a traffic light, or an unsafe practice that needed regulation:  he’d say, “How many people have to die for this to change?”

I wondered to Biggie, did these kids die to effect change?

The answer was so conflicting.  It was yes and no at the same time.

At first, it was no.  No one sets up to die like that.  No one.  He showed me all these threads of life, all these potential ways these kids could have lived their lives suddenly snuffed out, terminated.  No, this wasn’t planned.

And then he shows me the new changes, the new threads and futures resulting from tragedy.  Sometimes things are meant to happen simply because they happened.  Time is cyclical, in a way.  Because it happened, life plans can change retroactively.  The tragedy becomes incorporated into history, and culture.

The collapse of the World Trade Centre in New York was not planned either.  No one came in with the plan to die there.  This is something Christopher Reburn said on his podcast, and it’s a concept I had a very hard time integrating.  Something so huge, how could that not be planned?  And if it was not planned, how can there be any life plans at all?

The thing is, our life plans change.  Our soul contracts can and do change.  That’s why it’s so difficult to recover from certain losses, the loss of a child in particular.  You know in your soul that wasn’t right, that wasn’t meant to be.

And so, I ask Biggie, how can it be that these parents are creating their own reality?  How can it be anyone would want to live with such grief?

Because they are choosing to live.  (Shows me a parent choosing to follow their child to the other side, shows me how each mind is creating every moment since the, what he calls the Accident.  It feels like an accident, and so many angels struggling to save lives.  Shows me the origin of the concept of evil, a word created to describe the driving force around such events.  It’s an energy, like any other.  It gains momentum, like a tornado, and sometimes it gets out of control.)

Every day for the rest of their lives, those (parents) are going to choose how to live with their grief, or not.  That’s creating your reality.  Sometimes, it’s just choosing to live.

Biggie, this is so incredibly sad.  Is there anything I’ve forgotten to write?

The most important part, how do we answer this violence?  What future do we choose to create?  As a culture, as a country?  Children, the world over, die of violence, die of starvation, die of disease, die of (lack of love in their lives.)  Let our hearts go out to all the children all over the world, and remember – answer this violence with a call to create a better (peaceful) world for the children surviving today. 

(Shows me a hand putting down a gun on a counter, and a form walking out the door.)  Pray for those little kids.  Pray for those who hold guns in their hands to put them down.  You know what happens when you walk out that door to shoot the (man) who shot your friend – more people die, it goes on and on.  Answer the violence with a peaceful world.  You know where that begins. 

He shows me the heart connection, going all around the world. 

Part of this is from the comment section in the last entry, but it’s so awesome it deserves its own spot in the blog. There are also a number of subscribers who don’t read the comments as frequently, only what arrives in their email inbox, and I want to make sure they don’t miss out on anything super-cool.

Sweetie says:

A got a bit of a lesson in money from this guy last night/this morning. (Yesterday he’s said to me, "Your relationship with money is f*cked up. I’m gonna help you sort it out".

So first of all he calls up this book:

http://spiritualeconomicsnow.net/

"DON’T reread it. Just think about what it says".

I think he’s saying "don’t reread it" because she’s basically got it right but the angry energy, conspiracy theories and focus on debt ruins it.

"Right. Also you’ve learned what you need to learn from it".

Ok. So what the author is saying is that we’re sovereign spiritual beings. We can’t hold debts, only corporations can. Our birth certificates and other documents are "incorporation" documents that create a fictional "us" or straw man, and these straw men are the ones that hold debts. We confuse these creations for the real us, but they’re actually corporations that share our name.

(He thinks I’m still thinking about debt too much…)

Anyway, her other assertion is that all the money that is, is created through our signatures. WE create it. That’s why banks make you sign so much paper.

Now he’s telling me to forget all that, and just remember 2 things: 1) You are a sovereign spiritual being. YOU decide who you are. 2) YOU create your wealth. You create it out of nothing.

Okay. I get that.

"Now burn that book. It makes you angry".

It got more abstract after that. I was just waking up so that’s how it goes sometimes. He shows me a jewel-encrusted goblet. I recognize it from art history slide lectures, it belonged to St. Thomas Aquinas. (Of course I can’t find a picture of it). He’s like, "That guy had it right". I’m like, "In that beautiful objects help you contemplate God?". Him: "Yeah, I don’t know why people make a virtue out of poverty. (Shows me the Franciscan monk robe — maybe why he took exception to the Little John thing).

He explains that when you don’t have enough money you act out of fear. When your needs are met, you can act out of love. When you have more than you need you can act out of charity, you can be generous. Self-sacrifice isn’t a virtue.

He says, "It all goes back to Aristotle". He directed me to this article:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_theory

I’m going to have to tackle that later, though. Like after coffee.

Kate Replies:

Yesterday, when I was driving home, Biggie pops into the car. I feel this “What are you doing?” disbelief vibe and he says, “This car is F*cked up!” (I’m censoring for the sake of email filters.)

I just started to laugh. We do have the most messed up car I’ve ever seen. It’s a 1989 toyota tercel hatchback, 330,000 km and counting. The paint is all faded like it’s never seen wax. It’s tiny, it’s rusted all to hell. When I go over speed bumps, I worry something important will fall off. One day the rear bumper started to shift and I just punched it back on. The locks don’t work. It leaks so much oil I have to refill the oil almost as often as I fill the gas tank. There’s a crack in the windshield. The electrical’s messed up and the left turn signal won’t work.

I explained this to Biggie as I made three right hand turns to get home instead of one left hand turn. He goes, WHAT?? You drive a car that you can’t TURN LEFT? That is ridiculous, why you drivin’ this piece of sh*t?”

He then made it quite plain that we could be driving a better car. The poorest people in his home neighbourhood wouldn’t be caught dead driving a car like ours, even if it was given to them for free – they wouldn’t touch it. There’s this pride thing, like, if you drive a car like that you’re making yourself look worse off than you are, and the point of cars is to show off, have fun and have some pride!

I’d never owned a car before we moved out west – I always used public transit and rented cars for road trips. But somewhere along the way, I decided I was going to drive crappy cars to show other people how much we were struggling.

It was a stupid move, actually. I remember the day I made that decision; I was angry, and having a moment of ill-advised self pity. Kind of like the heroin addict decides to stick it to their loved ones by choosing to live on the street, I was going to be pissed off and as ugly-poor as I could look. When our first crappy car broke down in less than a year of driving it, our friends gave us their even crappier car, which we’ve been repairing and driving ever since.

Biggie says, When you not sure your car is gonna start, it’s time to get a new car. When you pray every damn time you drive it, it’s time to get a new car. WHEN YOU CAN’T MAKE A LEGAL LEFT HAND TURN – TIME TO GET A NEW CAR! Why you hangin’ on to this piece of sh*t?? Girl it’s not even funny, it’s just sad! You have the saddest car I ever seen! If this was a horse you’d have shot it a long time ago – you got to put this damn thing out of its misery. Put me out of my misery, riding around with you in this rusty coffin, what are you thinking about? Do you think you don’t deserve better? Do you think people goin’ look at you in a new car and think, “Damn, bitch be hidin’ money!” NO! They’ll be thinkin’ “BOUT DAMN TIME!”

An since when do you give a sh*t what other people think of you? You think I gave a sh*t what homies (back home) thought of me? HELL NO! I was showin’ them How To Be, showin them what it’s like for (a man) to hold money in his hand. (he’s laughing at me for what I just changed, dude I’m not writing that, then he’s like, “Dude, who am I, MC Hammer?” Well you do both wear big pants.)

So, Biggie, I promise you I am going to buy a new car. I will make you a deal – you help me find the money, I promise you I will buy that car. I know I already have the money – it’s just not in my bank account at the moment. But it’s coming, I can pull it in with my heart, like you showed me, and my mantra will help too.

I actually feel it’s important for me to pay my own money for this car, in order to feel proud about it. That fun car that I’ve been wanting for three years – an AWD Subaru hatchback wagon. (He thinks this choice is hysterically funny, and when I tell him it’s so we can go car-camping he laughs even more and says camping is a ghetto holiday, which, now that I think about it, it is a funny thing to do. Yeah, I’m going to go back into the woods and cook food over a fire and sleep in my car. Biggie shows me street people warming their hands over a fire in a steel drum; we’re doing the same thing, but in the woods. That’s a very weird thing to do for fun, for Biggie. If you sleepin’ in your car, you’ve got Problems, then he says, even the craziest homeless (guy) wouldn’t be caught dead in your car. He could get shot in your car and drag his ass out of there so he don’t die in your f*cked up car.)

Sweetie and I also realized last night that, in our hearts, we’ve been wanting very different vehicles. The car we’ve been attempting to manifest is really a compromise car that neither of us wants. She wants a standard, I want an automatic. She hates wagons, I love them. She wants something old, cute and ironic, like – I am not even exaggerating here – a tiny Shriners car or a vintage firebird convertible. I want something practical that can hold a lot of crap and drive really far. Really, we each want our own car, so we’re going to see who can get their car first. Ha!

In the last entry, Sweetie mentioned in the comments that Kurt had brought in Biggie Smalls to continue to conversation. It started with this song:

and the observation that Biggie was exaggerating the *actual* hardships he experienced, in order to tell his emotional truth, and to reach others. Kurt told the story of living under a bridge; while Kurt was homeless, he generally couch-surfed. Couch surfing almost sounds like a party, and it’s tough to describe the misery of sleeping outside on your buddy’s porch. When you say, “I slept under a bridge,” people immediately connect to your experience. So it was with Biggie, eating his sardines.

Yeah, I didn’t say that to make my Mamma sad, (Shows me his mother cupping his face in her hands, and this look on her face, like, “I should smack you but I love you; you’re grown.” Her son being grown and successful… He’s showing me this push-pull relationship with his mother that was full of fierce love and fear and gratitude and prayer. They communicated without words much more eloquently than what they actually spoke aloud.)

I watched the above video, and the next morning while I was biking to work, whispering my mantra, Biggie popped in. He showed himself as this really huge presence, with a gigantic smile. Now that I think about it, it wasn’t a smile on his face, it was the energy of a smile, the feeling projected when someone smiles because they’re happy to see you.

Biggie’s one of those people who take up all the space in the room with his energy, even when he’s silent – but when he speaks, he’s heard. His body backed up his presence, but it wasn’t the reason he dominated the room.

I also get this really sweet, warm scent. I think it’s the smell of his body. There’s this quietness and tenderness. I believe he treated the women in his life with love and respect… and there were quite a few women, but only one actual love: I think he knew that woman from previous lives, so their love had a different quality than Biggie’s other flings or romances. This one woman he had this on-again, off again thing, and they just couldn’t completely get away from each other. They were always drawn together. That woman he loved, he still visits her, and she smells his body. That’s really sweet, he says he still loves her. I wonder who that is?

Biggie was really quick to comment on all the pretty young women who work here at the hospital – he reminds me of John in that way! He notices and appreciates.

Biggie picked up the conversation from “The Wallet” entry, and most of the conversation was an exchange of concepts rather than words. Biggie I hope you can help me to remember and describe what you showed us.

First of all, you’ve got to believe it. That’s the point of that song, you can change anything if you believe it.

Ah yes, I remember now. I’m reflexively resistant to that concept, but I catch myself and I try to open myself to the ideas that Biggie is so passionately trying to get across:

The thing about bein’ poor, you start to believe it, an’ you can’t believe anything is going to change. You start to feel angry, you feel things have been stolen from you. That’s not true, even if you’ve been robbed, nothing has been taken from you.

You can change anything, you just need to believe it. Believe you can change it, and you will change it. You gotta believe it. Believe it.

Biggie, what about life plans? What if we come in with these plans for lessons through suffering – can we change it?

Hell YES you can change it – that’s what I’m sayin’ to you. (His voice is really powerful and certain, as though he was thumping his fist on a table top for emphasis.) Everybody comes into life with a plan – if you didn’t have a plan, you wouldn’t come into life. That would be impossible. (Your very life is created because you have the intention to live it.)

You can change anytime. You can change everything. You can go back and re-live parts of your life again, and do things differently, if you want that experience. There are absolutely no limitations. It’s fuckin’ beautiful, we are all creation.

Biggie, did you go back and re-live parts of your own life?

Yeah, some parts. (Sister. Did he have a sister? There was something when he was younger with a teenage girl that he re-lived immediately after dying – something he regretted. It doesn’t undo what he did, but it creates another timeline where something different happens. He doesn’t show me details, he just answers the question broadly that yes, he did go back. He’s really quite private and protective of his personal life – actually, it’s the private lives of other people he’s protecting. He’s a big protector, Biggie. He took care of people, he sacrificed for other people he loved. Big courage, big respect, big love. That’s Biggie.)

Biggie showed me the timelines, and when you die, it’s like this singular timeline joins beginning-to-end to form a circle. When you die, the timeline is no longer relevant. When you look back on your life memories, you can remember multiple things in the same moment – the experiences have been created and no longer require time for them to exist. Time is temporary. It seems redundant to say that, actually.

So, the thing about “believing it” in order to change it – that’s the key.

You’ve got to face your fear. Fear will keep you in prison (and he means that literally: fear, not poverty, drives many to crime and jail.) Accept it, when you accept into your heart the sadness, that’s one way to lose the fear. It’s better to hope, (I’m reminded of the skinny boy in a German concentration camp, who still believed he would survive. He did survive, he was one of the few, and it was because he chose to hope rather than despair.)

(Now he shows me an 11 year old black boy in a classroom, looking out the window. The boy is deciding whether to hope or to succumb to fear and join a gang.)

In that moment whether you decide to hold on to hope, or to succumb to fear or despair, that’s where the “believing it” comes in. You’ve got to believe it, if you’re going to change it. Because if you don’t believe it, it can’t possibly change.

I think this has to do with the story we tell ourselves in our mind, but Biggie’s shaking his head.

Nah, it’s got nothing to do with the story in your head. It’s the feeling in your heart, that’s your truth. (tapping his chest with his fist). That’s why they say, follow your heart. The fear, that’s in your brain. The hope, and the courage, and the love, that’s in your heart. (He’s got this way of nodding his head in slow emphasis to his words.) Connect to it. That’s what you believe in. That’s what it means to believe in yourself – to believe in your heart. Everything you create, it comes from your head, or it comes from your heart. Your heart won’t never (ever?) lead you wrong. That’s where Jesus is, (smiles and shows me his mother.)

I looked and looked for a photo to match the energy of the Biggie I was speaking to, and I couldn’t find a single photo with Biggie laughing, or even cracking a smile. I was tough to find pics of Kurt cracking a smile, with Biggie it seems impossible, for the moment. He just looks to damn sad in all of those photos. Biggie, help me find one.

The words he gave me were “Biggie is the best” and “Fun with Biggie”, which yielded the photos in this entry. Thanks.

So I was reviewing this entry before posting it, and my computer shuts down and Biggie says, Just fuckin’ send it! Alrighty, I guess I got it right the first time and he doesn’t want me wasting my time. Thanks again Biggie. (Shaking his head and smiling.)