Come Alive is an amazing opportunity to test your aliveness.

I’ve taken it a few times as a participant and many, many, many more times as a intern, assistant and leader since the early eighties.

I love Come Alive.

Over the years I have studied and taken various programs and trainings. I read a lot and I love learning.

However, I still believe that the Come Alive program provides the best foundation for healthy living.

There’s so much more known about the brain, trauma and breathwork etc.. since Ben and Jock started Come Alive. So one could assume the foundamentals of Come Alive need to evolve as well.

But that’s what makes Come Alive cool. The structure, the building of community with each new group, and people who are joining, leading and growing together allow the program to continuely expand and include.

Truthfully, I think that is what living is all about. Growing and becoming.

The key lies in the belief that even though we are different we can live, breath, and share this planet if we want to.

We don’t have to stay reactive or in survival mode. We will be at times, but if we don’t get caught up in making someone’s mistake (including our own) right or wrong and instead stay curious and kind. Well, we can get through anything.

I know this personally because I have been through so many things and instead of staying in my story which I did for many years to survive, I have learned to share my current stories, make new ones and learn that death isn’t the biggest thing to fear – staying stuck in any old story is far worse.

Life and living is meant to be mystical, unknown and an adventure. We don’t have to be in it alone.

We humans have to always work at this because we so easily lose our connection to universal energy. We separate and enemy make. We think we can control and right any wrong.

But that really isn’t our job. Sure righting or reseting our own distorted thinking is each of our responsibility – but that isn’t about ‘fixing’ – it’s about shfting from fearing and dying – to living and loving.

That shift brings heart into our thinking and it’s amazing what a concious, coherent brain and heart can do any any situation.

Come Alive helped me figure out how to keep coming back to the present, inside me and between me and others.

Living & Loving Alive is my job now and sometimes I make mistakes. But I have developed much more compassion for myself.

I encourage to consider taking a Come Alive for the first time or just for a reset. There’s always magic and freshness in joining.

My next Come Alive is May 30 to June 4. But just pick a date!

I had to get this update out. AI is just too verbose. Was pretty sure you’d never get beyond AI initial response. So I asked for a summary in less than 40 words. Here it is:

AI: Humans’ distinctiveness arises from complex language, cognitive prowess, self-awareness, cultural structures, tool use, emotional depth, creativity, and symbolic thinking, culminating in unparalleled adaptability and innovation, setting them apart in Earth’s tapestry of life.

ME (edited) : Story-Telling and Story Making

Now for the main focus of this post – we need to change. Edited the rest as well.

We tend tell our stories as though we are the greatest.  We likely have trained AI to make us sound that way as well.

That we can remember and tell stories over time is awesome.  However, the degree to which we believe our stories as truths can and does cause a great deal of separation, pain, and suffering.

But what if we could dial back our need to be right, win, dominate, compete.  I didn’t say get rid of – just dial back.

Maybe if we simply dial back our certainty. 

It’s not what is known that is going to create sustainability;  it’s actually embracing and stepping into what is unknown.

However, doing that demands letting go of control, safety, and certainty.

We humans, we’re not very good at that.

Maybe we could be.

Wouldn’t that be amazing.

I am just back from an awesome Dr Joe Advanced Follow Up in San Diego. I am enjoying my days with Dr Joe and a couple thousand other people – meditating, walking and doing awesome coherent healing sessions.

It’s funny, in my first Dr Joe retreat, people were asking, “When did you start this work.”

My reaction was often: “What do mean by this work?”

“When did you start with Dr Joe?”

“Back in June 2023”.

“Oh so your new to Dr Joe.”

I so wanted to react. I monitor myself and say, “Hey, I guess”

Then stop sharing and, yes, have some judgemental thought.

These days that doesn’t cause a stir, nor even any judgement. I know I started the work to change my life forty years ago and Dr Joe is simply the most recent unknown opportunity in my growth and my becoming project.

His message is not all that different than what I learned at my first Come Alive.

Life is all about becoming present and staying present.

That really is the only path to rising conciousness and getting better at living well together.

It’s about wholeness and being able to relate to the world around me. Share my tears, fears, laughter and joy. Listen to the stories, songs and sounds of others.

I found this trip I knew a few regulars and that was cool. I met new folks and that was cool.

I openned my heart and gained some new knowledge. Very cool.

It was awesome and I am looking forward to how the experimenting there comes back into life here.

I am a new self. Because we are always creating. I want to be conscious in that process as much as possible and that takes a lot of willingness to be responsible for the reality and experience I am having.

You know that saying, “With power comes great responsibility.

Power does come in presence. It gives me choice moment to moment. It’s great when I am enjoying the outcomes and I think it matters even more when I am challenged and tossed into the uncomfortable or unknown.

I am growing to like the unknown. The mystical and magical moments. Those just aren’t possible when stay to much in the familar.

Take a step out of your box. You’ll come back and hopefully a little different.

That’s okay.