Over the past 13 years, after a four-decade career that culminated as a chief executive in an award-winning company, I have written eight novels, hundreds of songs, as well as having tried my hand at becoming an oil painter. I suppose you could say it’s been a time of personal renaissance that has led me to understand that expression itself is the entire reward for anyone who lives the artist’s way. Such a notion flies in the face of those whose lives are defined by results, financial or otherwise. I must admit that these last years of painful metamorphosis have been a great challenge, one that has led to a complete transformation in mind and body.
Over the course of a somewhat tumultuous life, I have discovered the mechanisms of mind that interfere with our capacity for happiness and wellbeing. Guilt and anxiety, especially in the absence of awareness, are the enemy of contentment, because they undermine the natural child-like joy that is our birthright. After a long journey of searching for meaning, it has come to me that there is no other purpose than to feel totally alive in the flow of joy as life unfolds. It is when we stop feeling and get stuck inside the labyrinth of the thinking brain, that we are no longer grounded in the truth of who we are. Existing within such low vibration-al states—emotional attitudes lacking in sensitivity, compassion, and empathy—not only lowers the mind into unconsciousness but is also unnerving and uninviting to those we share our time and space with.
One of the other cardinal sins that contributes to such low vibrational states, is placing undue value on financial wealth to the extent that it can turn once good-hearted decent minded people into power mongering caricatures of their former selves. The saying, “money changes everything” is an unassailable truth that I have personally witnessed during the amassing of wealth by those who I have known to become the nouveau riche. There are certainly exceptions within the self-serving community of bloated billionaires, such as Bill Gates, who to his credit, has given away most of his wealth to good causes. For most, however, money is more like a weapon of ego than a symbol of worth capable of healing and changing the world for the betterment of all mankind. People like Elon Musk whose aspiration to populate the uninhabitable planet, Mars, personifies conceit swollen into aggrandized proportions. Rather than focus on conquering the lifeless dimension of outer space, or twittering away his time on fake corporate takeovers, a modicum of his obscene wealth would go along way to helping extinguish a plethora of social issues right here on our troubled planet. There is a profound absence of consciousness in those whose massive wealth reflects a self-same ego. Just enough” is the mantra of those on a path with heart be-cause they know that all the money in the world won’t fill the vast emptiness that follows the spiritual void of a essentially meaningless and unfulfilled life. Those who understand the true meaning of abundance do not strive to fill up an unconscious void of scarcity. Defining your value by what you do is the shallow pursuit of the insecure. Staying grounded in the truth of simply feeling alive is the true recipe for success, because in the end, nothing else matters.
“A DANCE OF LIGHT AND SHADOW”, A Journey Beyond Duality, is a meandering collection that shares an honest and uncensored account of my personal story to show how we are shaped by our earliest experiences that create relationships out of the emotional debris left in the wake of our childhood. No one escapes the effects of birth, infancy, childhood, and the many rigors of growing up in a family. If we could, what a boring world it would be. It is out of adversity that all the great expressions of art, discoveries of science and the slow-moving train of consciousness have emerged. It is a rite of passage within the human condition.
The unfolding of my personal story and worldview are framed in a cogent, scientifically coherent argument that explores what many in the field of neuroscience have discovered and I believe is the sought-after missing link that has eluded humankind since the beginning of recorded history. Uncovering that missing link is the ultimate destination of this book.