There is more than one way to create a diamond body. For example, Don Juan’s dreaming double and the Taoist’s diamond body are similar, each being bodies of consciousness that are independent of the physical body. However, the ways of creating them are quite different.

For Don Juan the dreaming double is created when we are able to be awake in our dreams. Once we can do this, our dream consciousness acquires an independency and a power of its own. It becomes us, although not us of the flesh. But it can operate in physical reality, and it will survive the death of the physical body.

The Taoist uses meditation to achieve this same end. In meditation, the Taoist circulates the light of awareness between two poles, the one of Spirit that is centered between the eyes and the one of Earth that is centered in the solar plexus. In this way, awareness begins to circulate between spirit and body, and from this circulation an inner child is born, a diamond body that will continue to exist after the death of the physical body.

And there are other ways to create a diamond body. I became a diamond body briefly when I died as a young boy, when a voice told me to turn the falling into flying. I did so and flew effortlessly and blissfully towards the Light. I was out of my body then, yet still me and still aware of what I was doing. The voice that told me as a boy to turn the falling into flying, that voice was my own voice from years later when I was a young man, a man who went back in time to help me as that panicked young boy. I remember when I did this as that young man, laying in my down sleeping bag in the high mountains, under the stars.
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For the Taoist, the life forces can flow either outward into the world or inward where they can be used to power the circulation of light. For most of us, however, our thoughts and feelings are usually directed outwards to the world, and our life energy, our seed, is used for pleasure or to create new life.

I have certainly embraced the joys of life. I have walked in beauty and love, and I have certainly helped to create new life. However. I have still spent much of my life alone, withdrawn from the world. I have turned inwards – dreaming and consulting the I Ching and meditating and of course doing medicine – and I have found my way back to my diamond body once again.
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The Taoist adept, once his meditation has become fixated, becomes in himself a true marriage of nature and spirit. Because his body has become conscious and pregnant with meaning, he will remain physically healthy and enjoy a long life. And because his consciousness has become infused with power and is pregnant with life, he will continue to exist as a conscious being even after the death of his body.

I’m certainly not the monastic sort of Taoist. I’ve always felt that since I was living in this world, in this body, I would be wise to explore and enjoy this world and this body. I have certainly done so. Although I have five children and have been a father for more than fifty years, I have still spent most of my life exploring the depths of consciousness and following the Tao. And now, almost 79 years old, I am still physically healthy and enjoying a long life. And when I do die, I will continue to exist as a conscious diamond body, an unlimited being with all the memories of this life that are worth saving.

I’m scared of falling, not all the time, but certainly whenever I’m at the edge of a cliff or on a narrow ledge. After all, it’s scary; falling is something that can and does happen in physical reality. But if I let it, my fear can become extreme, making me uptight and clumsy, making me more likely to fall.

But most of the time when I say I’m scared of falling, it’s because of what it means to fall psychologically. As a psychological experience, it is one of falling into the unconscious, often symbolized as a return to the womb. It’s a giving up, a surrender.

But I won’t surrender. I won’t just give up and fall into the darkness. I won’t mind my body dying, it’s wearing out, anyway, but I want to continue to exist as consciousness. This is why, like the Taoists, I have spent most of my life creating a diamond body, a consciousness separate from my body that will survive the body’s death.
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Of course there is another, deeper side to this. Actually fear of falling in physical reality is often mixed up with a repressed desire to jump, a repressed desire to give it all up, to end it all. I have felt this myself. I have stood at the cliff’s edge and have felt the desire to leap into the void. It’s exhilarating and scary, both.

However, on the inner, psychological level of reality, where the desire to jump comes from, we see that it is actually the desire to fall into the unconscious, to regress to an earlier state of being, one where we no longer have to deal with reality and its demands. It is a dangerous and unconscious yearning to be back in mommy’s womb, where all our needs would be met without our having to do anything ever again.

I’m not interested in this at all. I want to continue being an aware being well past the death of this body. And I know how to turn falling into flying.

I was sitting out in our backyard, enjoying the sun and watching all the birds fly free. They seemed so happy flying free – all the Robins and Grackles and Wrens and Ravens and Crows and more.

I flew once. I flew when I was a little boy dying on an operating table. As I went under the ether, I fell into the darkness. I was terrified. But then a voice said to turn the falling into flying. I did so, and suddenly I was flying blissfully towards the light. That was my first taste of flying.

I’m 78 years old now, going on 79 soon. My body is wearing out, slowly but surely. So I’m thinking about death these days and what it means. It’s not scary. I see it as a major transition of consciousness. And I know that, although my body is wearing out, I’m not wearing out. I expect that when I finally do leave this body – and it has been a wonderful body and has served me well – when I finally do leave it, I’ll be flying free again.

I’m not scared of dying, although I’m certainly not ready to die. I do want to stay around until my three boys are grown into men, another 20 or so years would work for me. Both of my folks lived that long.

What I’ve understood from my own experiences, as well as from folks like the Tibetan Buddhists, the Taoists, Carl Jung and Carlos Castaneda, is that, after the death of the body, we can continue to exist as consciousness. It all depends on the consciousness we have while we’re living. It depends, as the Taoists would say, on whether or not we have created our diamond body.

Am I ready for this next adventure in consciousness? Am I ready to explore a whole new level of existence? I’m trying not to have any unfinished business, although I am definitely not finished with Aspen and the boys. But living with them is so rewarding that I’m sure I’ll be able to stay around long enough to enjoy it. I’m working on it, and I’m still strong and healthy.

Most importantly, I’m trying to live cleanly so I won’t have to leave this level of existence with any hurt or fear left in myself or in those close to me. I don’t think I could fly if I had any regrets for how I lived my life. I’ve always tried to leave my camp cleaner than I found it. I’ll do the same when it’s time to leave this camp.

Years ago, Tim Leary said essentially what I have said in my most recent note, the one called “Wake Up!” And he said it in one famous short sentence – “Turn on, tune in, and drop out.” However, I would change the order of his saying. Today I would say that we first have to drop out and get out of our unconscious ruts before we can turn on and tune in.

For Leary, turning on meant doing LSD and the other psychedelics, including marijuana. However, there are many other ways for us to turn on – meditation, dream sharing, yoga, Rolfing, using the I Ching, walking in the woods, sharing ourselves with others, being in psychotherapy with someone more conscious than us, the list goes on and on.

Leary was right though, doing LSD could certainly wake us up, could help us find the light and be more conscious of who we are and our place in life. Unfortunately, it is illegal. And even if it weren’t, most of us are so unconscious that doing LSD could threaten to overwhelm us. That’s probably why we let it become illegal – because we’re all so afraid of ourselves.

For Leary, tuning in meant examining ourselves on all levels of consciousness, meant examining our lives and how we can use them to manifest our inner spiritual light. However, as I have said, there are so many other ways to tune into ourselves, most of which are much more benign, and certainly more legal, than the various psychedelics.

For Leary and the rest of us back in those early days, dropping out meant the natural response of our newly raised consciousness to retreat from the craziness of the world we lived in. It meant dropping out of the system and finding new ways of living our lives, ones that didn’t return us immediately to our previous state of unconsciousness or encourage us to return to the old and worn out ways of the straight world.

Unlike Leary, I don’t think we should drop out of the system and create a separate, counterculture reality. I think we need to drop out of our ruts first so we can find out who we are and become light bearers. Then we can create a new way of being for all of us, one that furthers all life.

We can’t let our freak flags fly if we don’t know who we are. We can’t know who we are if we’re not awake. And most of the time we’re not.

Most of the time we’re sleepwalking. I’m not talking about getting out of bed and walking around our houses in the middle of the night without waking up. I’m talking about how most of us are not really awake and conscious as we go through our daily life. Instead we live out routines and patterns, over and over again, without our being aware of ourselves, our needs, or what’s going on around us. We’re on autopilot, for God’s sake!

And most of our routines and patterns are orchestrated by the one-percenters, routines called work that are designed to keep us all busy being their wage slaves so that they can do what they want to do whenever they want to do it.

In a word, we’re stuck in our ruts, really the ruts the one-percenters’ have given us as our reality, ruts designed to satisfy their needs and keep us safely unconscious and out of their way.

Before we bring down the one-percenters, we need to find our own natural flows. We need to return to the Tao. We can’t do this without knowing who we are. And we won’t know who we are as long as we stay in our ruts.

So, we need to take time, all the time we need, to discover who we are separate from our routines, who we are once we’re out of our ruts. Once we can see who we are, we’ll know what we want to do with our lives – and what our natural flow really is.

We need to take a sabbatical from our routines, our ruts. We’ll never leave them behind as long as we’re unconscious most of our time. We need to spend our time meditating, walking in the woods, sharing our dreams with others, sharing ourselves with others, one way or another raising the level of our consciousness. We need to turn within, to the spiritual wisdom that lives in each of us. We need to see the light and wake up!

During the 60’s, those of us who wanted to create a more spiritual reality used various paths to become more conscious, loving, and kind.

We used various forms of dream work. This included analyzing our dreams and/or using active imagination, or visualization, to understand their messages. We learned from Jung and Perls and others what dreams are and how we could use them to become more whole beings. We learned that dreams speak in ‘God’s forgotten language.’

We discovered the I Ching, the ancient Chinese holy book, an extremely high spiritual book. We saw that the book was also an oracle that responded to whatever question we might ask by describing the situation that we found ourselves in at the time we asked the question.

Many of us began meditating in the 60’s, influenced perhaps by the influx of the many Buddhists who saw a golden opportunity and came to America to gather disciples. Many of us still meditate, just doing our own forms.

Many of us favored LSD in the 60’s. We weren’t afraid of it then as many folks are nowadays. We liked how it made us more clear and compassionate. We found that we could be completely open and honest with one another when we tripped together. We found that we couldn’t bullshit when we were tripping, not to ourselves or to each other. We called it acid honesty.
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Although I don’t think Stan Grof’s way, his LSD Psychotherapy way, is necessary – many of us have done it on our own, in our own ways – but it does work. The result of his LSD therapy, the sort of person one can become, is described in the following quotes from his bookLSD Psychotherapy (see pages 227 and following if your curious.)

“It (LSD) has mediated a profound spiritual opening in atheists, skeptics, and materialistically oriented scientist, facilitated far reaching emotional liberation, and caused radical changes in value systems and the basic life style.”

“Subjects free themselves from certain idiosyncratic perceptions, inappropriate emotional responses, rigid value systems, irrational attitudes, and maladjustive behavior patterns that are products of their early programming.”

“They suddenly see that their entire concept of existence and approach to it had been contaminated by a deep, unconscious fear of death.”

“The emphasis shifts from pursuit of complicated external schemes to appreciation of simple aspects of existence.”

“A selfish and competitive approach to existences is seen as ignorant, inferior, and ultimately self-destructive.”

“The western life philosophy, which confuses conspicuous consumption with richness of life is replaced by a new emphasis on “voluntary simplicity.”

“Another striking aspect of the psychedelic transformation is the development of intense interest in consciousness, self-exploration, and the spiritual quest.”

“The universe ceases to be a gigantic assembly of material objects: it becomes an infinite system of adventures in consciousness.”

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Those folks ‘in power’ today, those who are still trying to bullshit us so that they can ‘control’ us and the world, all those politicians and other leaders, were so afraid of LSD in the 60’s, afraid of how it was waking folks up, that they made it illegal and those of us who disagreed, outlaws.

Those bad guys are still out there. If we wish to overcome them, we have to be more conscious, more loving, and more kind. We can’t win by fighting them. We have to walk those peaceful spiritual paths again.

In my next note, I’ll share some of the positive results of our efforts in the 60’s, results such as environmental awareness, the growing equality of women and the feminine, the equality of gay men and women in our culture, the health and fitness movements that have led to organic foods and gardening, and the notion that it takes a village. I’ll look ahead too, wondering where we can take the current spiritual revolution.

We don’t need to wait until the current revolution is over before we begin creating our new world. We didn’t wait the last time a revolution was attempted, back in the 60’s. And we don’t need to wait until this one is over either. We can start now.
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In the sixties and early seventies, the counter-culture split into two main factions. Many of us stayed with our anger and fought against the establishment – in the anti-war, anti-nuke, and other anti- movements.

Some of us, however, worked to create a new world – a new way of being, a new way of relating to each other, a new way of living with one another. We became quite creative.

We created communities. We created the Rainbow Gathering, a spiritual gathering that brought thousands of folks together every year. We created the notion of non-hierarchal councils in which everyone had a voice and was listened to. We created men and women’s groups.

Instead of focusing on our anger, we focused on the spiritual. Most importantly, we created a new consciousness, using dreams, meditation, the I Ching, bodywork, and various psychedelics, all for personal and spiritual growth.

In spite of all the love and energy that we put into it, the 60’s revolution failed. The Rainbow Gathering eventually turned itself into a party, most of the communes failed, and folks stopped trying to be more conscious. Instead they began to focus on making more and more money. Most tellingly, over time we all stopped saying “have a good day” and began saying “take care.” Will “take cover” be next?

If the current revolution succeeds, and we wish to move on to new ways of being human, we need to create and share new visions for our collective future, visions that we can begin to actualize now. It’s so much easier to focus our spiritual energy if we know where we want to go with it.

In my next note, I’ll share some of the spiritual paths we took in the 60’s, as well as where they took us.

Like all families, we all have our various ailments and disabilities. Because of this, I ask every day for healing for each and every member of my family – for Aspen, Zane, Jake, Callahan, and myself too.
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For Aspen, I ask every day that she have no more migraines, never again, and no more debilitating colds either.

Lately however, she has shown a marked improvement with her health, thanks in large part to our doctor. He has gotten her to focus more on the health and strength of her immune system. For one thing, she is finally taking all the vitamin and mineral supplements that she needs.
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For Zane, I ask every day that his peanut allergy go away. Thank God that it’s mild and causes him to throw up instead of not breathing. But still! I also ask that his lungs and his immune system keep growing stronger, as he grows older, so he’s no longer so vulnerable to asthma and chest colds. He’s already growing stronger. He only had one asthma attack this year and fewer colds too.

Next fall, we’re going to start him in gymnastics at CATS, here in Boulder. He’s pretty tough and very strong for a five year old. He may be the one to follow in Ariana’s footsteps. She was awesome. She competed and went on to the regionals. If you’ve ever seen and appreciated her dancing, know that she learned to dance while she was at the gym called CATS.
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For Jake, I ask every day for a miracle, for no more Duchene Muscular Dystrophy at all, along with no more of its side effects – especially his depression, and his school problems. I want his DMD to go into remission, a miracle that is possible. It just needs another cosmic particle to pass through his dystrophin gene and set things to rights this time.

Already, Jake is very low on the severity scale. Most boys with
DMD are already in wheelchairs by his age. He’s still running around, sometimes he just can’t sit still. We thought we’d have to move into a one-level house by now because of his DMD, but he still runs up and down the stairs like they weren’t there.
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For Callahan, I ask that he overcome his fear and insecurity that were born of his very heavy, very dangerous, and very scary birth. He was stuck part way through the birth canal for six or seven hours. We finally realized that the midwife was a flake and was bullshitting us. So we called for the ambulance that we had reserved and had it carry us to the hospital where he was finally born.

His fear manifests today mostly in his inability to go to sleep at night. He sometimes lies in bed for hours, with wiggly legs, a nervous energy symptom that probably comes from the incredible fear he came into this world with. He’s still quite insecure and says “I can’t” way too much for an eleven-year old boy. However, in spite of his fear, he’s an awesome boy, soon becoming a man.
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For me, I ask that I be more compassionate, with no more anger left in me at all. It just brings me and everyone around me down. I also pray for no more pain. My shoulders have been damaged by all the military presses I’ve done at the gym. Oh well! But the pain does make it more difficult for me to have a good night’s sleep.

I’d also like to remain as healthy as I am now for the rest of my hopefully long and prosperous life. I wasn’t sick at all this past winter. “Knock on wood.” Meditation really helps.

Tonight I’m home alone. I just smoked a bowl of the good. Now I’m listening to Pianoscapes by Michael Jones. He’s awesome. I’m really enjoying this peaceful space. I love being dad, but the boys are not at all peaceful. They fight non-stop with one another, yelling, screaming even, and mostly arguing over toys, “that’s mine!” sort of thing

I told them they should copy the Merry Pranksters, that acid family from the 60’s, and put all of their things in a pile in the playroom. Then when one of them wants something, he can go get it out of the pile. And then, when he’s done with it, he can return it to the pile. They didn’t buy this at all.
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For now I’m alone and it’s peaceful. And when they do come home from the YMCA and Karate tonight, they’ll be going right to bed. I usually play Pianoscapes or maybe Ecstasy by Deuter for them when they go to bed to calm them out for sleep. I like to end their day in calmness and love.

I’m reading a book now by Scott Westerfeld, a science fiction space opera sort of story, a hard to put down sort of story too. Tonight I’ve read more than I can usually read in several days. Most of my reading, if any, is at night after the boys are asleep.

Sometimes I read when the boys are around too, mostly to distract myself from their energies, but still be there when they need me – with homework or a new drawing by Callahan or something on the computer that Jake wants me to see or listening to Zane tell me that he’s the other dad, that he and I are the dads here.
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So, every day I pray that I will continue to find this peace in my heart. So far, ever since the late sixties, I’ve always been able to find it. I first found it back then when I was alone for weeks at Dinky Creek, in the High Sierras. I found it then when I was vision questing with the help of acid and peyote.

Now I can find it by just turning my head off, by stopping my world, as Don Juan would say. Although, sometimes these days, I do have to isolate myself, maybe going upstairs to meditate or taking a walk or a hike in the nearby woods. But whatever I have to do, I have always been able to find the peace in my heart.
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However, finding the peace in my life has always been much more difficult for me. What I really need now for peace in my life is more money for my family. We’re living on the edge. And it’s scary, and it’s certainly not at all conducive to peace. I have always done poor well, Aspen has too, but I can’t ask this of the boys, not until they’re old enough to make their own choices.

And come to think of it, maybe having more than enough money would be interesting too, as interesting perhaps as it was traveling on the fly, finding work in one town in order to buy enough food and gasoline to move on to the next.

So yes, I do need more money. I also need more medicine for my work of exploring consciousness. I need more friends too, friends with whom I can share my life and my work, friends like Ramon and Paul and the many others I’ve had in the past. When these very real and important personal needs are met, then I’ll have peace in my life as well.
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Of course, I wish that there would be peace in the world too. But I don’t expect it. After all, look at what’s happening right now in the world these days, in the United States too, what with the right wing Christians and the mega-corporations at war with the rest of us and trying basically to enslave us in their subtle webs as they overthrow our democracy.

Don’t take my word for it. As Michael Moore says, ”Today just 400 Americans have the same wealth as half of all Americans combined.” He goes on, “Let me say that again. 400 obscenely rich people, most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer “bailout” of 2008, now have as much loot, stock and property as the assets of 155 million Americans combined.”

The first time I smoked marijuana was in the city jail in Roswell, New Mexico. Really! I was in the jail for drunk and disorderly conduct. I had been trying to hit on these two women in a restaurant, and I had been so drunk that I couldn’t take no for an answer. While I was in the jail, one of the other prisoners gave me a couple hits off his joint. It sure made it interesting, being there in jail

I’ve smoked off and on ever since then. Without it, I have found that I have a lot of trouble slowing down. I can’t even slow myself down with meditation. Once, when I had quit for a while and was getting speedy again, I had a dream in which the two dogs I was out walking ran away from me. I couldn’t keep up with their energy. I understood from the dream that when I wasn’t smoking, my physical energy would get out of control and run away from me.

Of course, during the sixties and early seventies, before it got uptight again, almost everybody smoked, even a president. I’d go to a UCLA party and everybody there would be stoned, professors and lawyers and doctors and students and all. And when I lived in Venice and later in Berkeley, smoking was almost a political statement, one that went like this – “if only everyone would smoke marijuana instead of drinking alcohol, the world would be a better place, certainly more peaceful and caring.”

The Rainbow Gathering was another place where almost everybody smoked. And, at least in its early days, it was a safe place to sit outside in nature, smoking the peace pipe, so to speak, with your friends. I made a lot of friends there, sitting around a circle and remembering that what goes around, comes around.
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These days, I have a medical marijuana card. I’ve had it for several years now. In addition to using smoke to slow down and to raise my consciousness, as I always have, I also use it these days to deal with my chronic pain, especially the pain in my shoulders. Sometimes I use it for headaches too. It helps.

I’ve heard it said that coffee makes you smarter than you really are. I know that smoke makes me wiser than I really am – which is really good for my writing.

If I smoke in the daytime, it’s mostly while I’m writing. But I usually smoke at night, after the boys are finally asleep and I’m done with all my household chores. I want to be off duty when I smoke.

Interestingly enough, I’m smoking less and less these days. Over the many years that I’ve smoked, I’ve found, paradoxically, that the less I smoke, the higher I get.

I sure have to work hard to keep myself strong and healthy. I have to do yoga every morning and then, three days a week, lift weights at the gym. I have to walk or else hike in the woods somewhere around here nearly every day. I have to ride my bike as much as I can. I have to meditate every afternoon. I have to watch what I eat, how much pot I smoke, how often I get off, things like that. I have to take conscious care of myself as body.

I get really tired of having to do all this all the time – especially the yoga every morning while the rest of the family is breaking their fast. But the truth is, I am much more supple than most folks in their late seventies.

Aspen and I lift weights at the gym three days a week, I am really tired of working out. I’ve been working out with weights for almost sixty years now, ever since I was 19 years old. However, once we’re there, actually doing our leg presses and pulldowns and bench presses and curls and all that, I almost enjoy it. Although I sure am glad when I’m finished for the day.

I have come to see that I will have to meditate, do yoga, lift weights and keep on walking or hiking for as long as I live. However, I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of the walking part. And I do love my daily meditations.
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It’s worth it all though. It’s like when I’m hiking along a trail in the woods; there’s always something new I want to see just around the next bend in the trail. And when I get there, there’s always something new I want see just around the next bend, the one up ahead. Sometimes I feel I could hike on forever. There’s always something new to see.

It’s the same with my life. There’s always something new I want to see just around the next bend of my life. So I keep on meditating and doing yoga and lifting weights and walking. I know that whatever is coming up around the next bend will always be worth the hard work.

Actually, I can see from here that there’s a new bend ahead in the trail of my life, and it’s coming up soon. And, being almost up to this coming bend, I can already see more money coming, some good acid too. I can also see from here more high and conscious friends coming into my life.

As I approach this next bend in my life, I’m looking forward to seeing how I’m going to support this wonderful family of ours on a higher level. I definitely have my preferences.

Looking ahead to this next bend in my life, I want to see that I’ll have more loving time with Aspen, lots of it. I’m hoping for another 25 years or so. I also want to see my boys become men. I think they will be splendid, definitely worth all the time and effort that Aspen and I have and will have put into raising them.

Looking ahead to this next bend in my life, I want to see how long I can stay strong and healthy. I want to see how long I’ll be able to rassle and hike with my boys, how long I’ll be able to play with Aspen too. Mostly, I want to see if I can live to be 111. When I was a young boy, a voice told me that I would live that long.

Looking ahead to this next bend in my life, I guess I’m sort of interested in what will go down on the collective level too. I don’t have much confidence in the human race, but I do continue to work for our collective rescue, hopefully moving us all away from the brink of disaster where we have placed ourselves.