One of several reasons why I don’t listen to current popular music, in addition to just being older, and not quite understanding its messages, is that there is such adventure in exploring music that I may have never heard before, whether new or old. There’s just too much music out there to waste time.
Good music is timeless to me. With music streaming services, Pandora, Spotify, YouTube Music & Videos, coupled with AI, I am exploring and enjoying new music all the time. Some of the new music is not so new, but it doesn’t matter.
In a prior post, I mentioned the analogy of our personal lives being like a movie, and that each of us is certainly the star of that movie. Everyone else is extras. By the way, I got that from watching a YT video.
Taking this analogy a bit further, the music that I listen to and discover becomes the theme music and soundtrack to my movie. My life is filled with music every day. I listen to music constantly, all kinds. I especially love international music that moves me. Often, I do not understand the language or dialects, but I can feel the rhythms and emotions.
I have shared music through my blog before, including gospel, reggae, South African, Senegalese, and even Depeche Mode. These are the sounds of my life. I also listen to jazz, especially Coltrane, and Miles. I even recently discovered Shirley Bassey!
I am fortunate to have been introduced to the Indian culture over 20 years ago. Indians are very dominant in the IT Systems field. This is where I spent most of my career. They are exceptionally brilliant people. We worked well together on many projects in some of the world’s largest corporations. I still keep in touch with several Indian friends that I’ve worked with within the United States, and abroad.
But what attracts me most to Indian culture is greater than their intelligence. It is their peacefulness and inner light that draws me to them. Their vibration is immensely powerful especially to those like me who have meditated for over 20 years, and who is curious and open to all cultures and faiths.
I have attended Indian weddings, baby rituals, and have been invited to dinner in the homes of Indian families, which was all a great honor. Every event and venue was full of love and joy and was quite colorful. I love colors. I see them as a reflection of God’s light in a myriad of God-created hues. Light is energy; therefore, colors have a power that can influence our spirit. The Indian culture knows this well, as I do.
Today Indians around the world celebrate the festival known as Diwali, the festival of lights. It is a festival that is based on an Indian god who defeated evil. Diwali is a celebration of good over evil. If there were ever an appropriate time to celebrate good over evil, now is that time considering the state of world affairs, politically, economically, and socially. We should all celebrate Diwali today and every day.
Yesterday, after working out at the gym, I played African music on my smartphone as I exited the building. A middle-aged White lady who was unknowingly behind me heard the music and said, “That’s nice music, happy music.” I had never characterized African music as happy music, though I agree that it evokes happiness.
I mentioned that the lady was White to contrast that many African Americans, and other races, are not familiar with the beauty of African music, especially West African music.
Many Latinos are unaware that Salsa music originated in Africa. Salsa is a set of Afro-Caribbean rhythms fused with jazz and other styles. The truth is that its origins have always been much debated, although as a general rule it is mentioned that it comes from a fusion that came from Africa in the Caribbean when they heard European music and wanted to mix it with their drums.
I have recently found more White people in tune with African music than my own people, in restaurants, in grocery stores, outdoor events, etc. Just last week I met a White young man who was very familiar with West African music from having worked in Africa, while in the Peace Corps.
I have ever since high school. He was very popular in New Orleans, and when I went to college in San Francisco, he was very popular there. When I lived in London, he had a cult following. He had a shop there, in Camden Town. I visited his shop and I appreciated him even more because his shop was full of incense, candles, and was very metaphysical, the kind of stuff I love. I’ve actually met Prince in person as well, in San Francisco at a record store. He had quite a following of look-a-likes at the Studio West dance club, in Embarcadero, San Francisco.
Studio West San Francisco: In the early to mid-’80s, this was one of the best clubs. It was along the Embarcadero with beautiful views. People used to come from all over, the scene was mostly rap, with some techno, along with the favorites back then including Prince, Madonna, Michael Jackson, etc. …Lot of young folks, especially Asians, Mexicans, & Blacks.
I’ve always liked Prince; I was like a Prince’s-head. I followed him from the very beginning with the first album that I remember, Soft and Wet. I’ve seen him in concert as well. He is amazingly energetic and performs nonstop for 3 or more hours.
I sincerely share this post to proclaim that Inner Peace is the most valuable gift that God has given us.
In Inner Peace lies Acceptance, Surrender, Trust, Belief, and Patience. These virtues are beneficial to the body, mind, and spirit.
Inner Peace was not always accessible to me. At a time when I earned six figures, I stressed my mind and spirit to keep money flowing. That was over 20 years ago before I became a new man. Today, friends and colleagues attempt to entice me to return to ‘the game’, to be it in IT, bitcoin investments, small business adventures, or money-making ideas du jour.
I have no plans to return to that noisy chaotic world again, though. I fear what money and chasing after it would do to the Inner Peace that I now have. I never want to lose this. I have no interest in going viral or monetizing for profit. Over a year ago, I deleted my Facebook, Linked In, and other social media accounts.
I do wish to reach more people but to do so, unfortunately, costs money. So, I reach who I can on my personal but limited budget. But I do, therefore, maintain my Inner Peace.
Achieving Inner Peace in the New World Order, in our new post coronavirus world, is essential. There are many human challenges that can distract us from this gift, and worse can bring out the worse in us.
I’ve said this before, but I will say it again as a preface to this post. I do so boldly because I am not afraid of talking about those things that no one wants to discuss or admit. I enjoy courageous conversations. Those who are so brave are often the pioneers of progress. We should all speak up and speak out.
With all the coronavirus hype, I believe that there is a great deal of mind control at work. It amazes me how it seems the whole world “Follows” whatever is popular in media, such as raiding shelves of toilet tissue, fearing the coronavirus, making hasty decisions without question or investigation, “Liking” Nas X’s depicted encounter with Satan, twerking, being a “bad bitch”, or whatever.
Most people are being programmed and don’t realize it.
Well, we all are, including me, but I realize it. It is mainly being done for profit. AI is now forming our perceptions and emotions. I know this! I am very connected with the latest AI, machine learning movements. I have an over 20-year career history in technology.
I promised to share my eclectic music tastes with you. I love electronic rock, especially from Europe.
Depeche Mode has to be one of my all-time favorite groups. I love their Euro industrial electronic rock sound., But more than that, I love that their messages, so bold and so raw. The messages resonate with me.
I’ve been a big fan of Depeche Mode. I think their 1st album was Construction Time Again. I love almost every song on that album. I’ve been into Depeche Mode for a long time but recently, I guess because of my membership in Spotify, YT Music, and Pandora, as well as other music streaming services, I stumble on old songs that I used to love, that I almost forgot about.
I don’t listen to new music much at all. Anyway, there is a remarkably interesting story behind me rediscovering how much I love Depeche Mode.
I have not posted lately for a reason. I have been so reflective lately on so many issues that surround us that I decided to take a break. Remember, since my writings are spirit deep, I only write when I feel the spirit.
I have also been faced with a challenge about following my passion (my Dharma) or following the money, based on what my corporate skills and expertise can attract. I decided against the latter. I refuse to chase money as most people that I know do. I am following with my perceived purpose because the freedom that it allows is priceless. I will write a post about choosing between Purpose vs. Money later.
With this post, I decided to return to music. The next few posts will be featuring some of my eclectic musical tastes. Not to worry, I will return to expressing many Life Seasons topics that I face, and that others may face. But for now, I choose to use music to bring our blog community together.
“We all have ability. The difference is how we use it.” – Stevie Wonder
This is a Feel-Good post. I hope that you want to feel better today. I do. We need it. I will try my best with this post.
The vibration in the atmosphere has been tense. I believe that the Lord wants us to have more alone time to reflect and reconcile our differences with The World, to perhaps lead us to reconciliation, inner peace, and Love. I have had to go inward and introspective on a daily to keep my vibe up high.
Today, my vibe is very elevated! I am looking forward to the new life that begins each day. I see sleep as dying each night and waking reborn.
But this moment, the new Season just before us, post-Lobster, post-COVID19, post-insurrection, post-everything 2020 is more eagerly anticipated by everyone. The unknowns and adventure of it all can be absolutely exhilarating, if you are imaginatively creative, and are vibrating higher than most. I am that way today. Are you?
I am looking forward to a more discerned and refined me, blossoming in this new Springtime. For I know that Spring always comes. Always, period point-blank.
We are on its horizon. I listened to Stevie Wonder’s music and watched his videos today, and I feel mighty inspired. I hope you enjoy it. Kevy
I am singing about Tomorrow. Let’s start singing of Love from our hearts.
Stevie Wonder – Ngiculela – Es Una Historia – I am Singing – Apr 18, 2007 – Crustybrown
Afrobeats make me move my feet, where I can’t sit in my seat.
There is so much on my mind right now. There so much on everybody’s mind.
You can only imagine how much we must be filled with thoughts, having to research all the things we hear, constantly tuning into media and social media.
The Truth can be shocking and a bit discouraging at times.
This may be one reason why so many don’t dig deep to find facts. Relying solely on media news and social media is the easy way out.
The events and uncertainties in life are overwhelming right now.
I know it may seem that I’ve been slacking on posts, but I really haven’t. I’ve been working in the background.
But also, I have days where I may have a little anxiety about the times we’re in.
Photo – Brut Carniollus – Unsplash
I wish more of us would admit that we’re going through shit. Because there’s a lot of stuff that’s going on. It’s a lot to comprehend. It’s a lot of uncertainty. It’s challenging our Faith, challenging our truth, and it’s challenging who we are. We should just admit that we’re going through things.
On my good days, however, I am creating. I have upcoming posts on the That Monkey. I have another post that’s coming up on Truth Decay. And I want to do a post on vaccines because that’s not for me when it comes out.
So, I thought I’d give you a little teaser for now, while I create more content for you, in the background.
The other day, I was just stumbling through my YouTube feed and ran across Common in a studio performance. And it was incredibly beautiful! It shows me that we share a common vibe. I’ve always liked Common. He shows me that what he’s saying is what I’ve been saying in most of my posts. …About this revolution.
Listen to it, especially the 1st, 2nd, and 4th tracks. Those are really good. I also put in a little Eryka Badu. I skipped Common’s video by mistake and discovered a quarantine performance by Eryka Badu. It’s also a performance video and it’s nice.
Kevy Michaels Video
Uplift Urself – Common Erykah Mr. MYOB & Denver Art – YouTube – Dec 5, 2020 – Kevy Michaels
This video is a teaser to lift your day until tomorrow’s blog post. I feature poetic artists that I like, Common, Erykah Badu, and Mr. MYOB, a Denver rap artist. I will also take you on a virtual tour of the Masters Gallery Denver, and provide supportive content on dealing with anxiety, depression, and uncertainly during the Revolution. I hope you enjoy it.
Those who follow my blog, Seasons As Our Teacher (KevyMichaels.Blog), know that I love to do mashups of totally unrelated topics. In this post, I mashup Janet Jackson and Beats, I mean Beets. Actually, I do a mashup of Janet with the veggie Beets, put to Beats contained in one of her most popular songs. The post emphasizes the health benefits of Beets in a catchy video that I created with help from other content creators. As a garnish, on the blog, I added a Janet photo slideshow, health beet recipes, including my mother’s simple New Orleans Beet Salad, and two of my favorite Janet song videos. Enjoy. Kevy
Janet Give Me A Beet! Kevy Michaels – Nov 19, 2020 – Kevy Michaels
I am fortunate to have been introduced to the Indian culture over 20 years ago. Indians are very dominant in the IT Systems field. This is where I spent most of my career. They are exceptionally brilliant people. We worked well together on many projects in some of the world’s largest corporations. I still keep in touch with several Indian friends that I’ve worked with within the United States, and abroad.
But what attracts me most to Indian culture is greater than their intelligence. It is their peacefulness and inner light that draws me to them. Their vibration is immensely powerful especially to those like me who have meditated for over 20 years, and who is curious and open to all cultures and faiths.
I have attended Indian weddings, baby rituals, and have been invited to dinner in the homes of Indian families, which was all a great honor. Every event and venue were full of love and joy and was quite colorful. I love colors. I see them as a reflection of God’s light in a myriad of God-created hues. Light is energy; therefore, colors have a power that can influence our spirit. The Indian culture knows this well, as I do.
I hope that most people who read my post don’t think that I’m full of rage and anger because I’m not.
I am simply a Black man who has been through a lot of trials, and who’s well-traveled, analytical, educated, and brave enough to speak my mind. I really don’t care if my reality has a dismal aspect. It is simply what I’ve experienced in my life, good, bad, and ugly.
Though many Black people don’t speak their true minds, I do my best to encourage them to speak their minds in response to my opinions, even if they disagree with me. I won’t shun them. Sometimes they do comment on my posts. Sometimes they do so in private. Many despise me because of my views as oppose to discussing why they feel differently. That their “monkey”, not mine. I will explain “The Monkey” in a future post.
But I am only sharing with you how I managed through The Revolution that we’re currently in. …And, through the trials that you may experience.
For one, I manage through practicing daily meditation. I’ve done so for about 30 years. I have posted on meditation, as well as on prayer, which too is a long-time daily practice of mine. I do grounding as well. All these things keep me at a higher vibration in spite of expressing frustrations with the things that I’ve experienced. …The things I experienced today. …The trials in which I’ve endured.
But this post is about music. Music is a big part of my life. I see it as the background theme music of every scene and mood in my daily life. …As if my life is video content. I use music to calibrate my mood and spirit whenever it requires calibration.
I am in a New Orleans mood today. It is kind of difficult to explain, but I will try.
As I’ve mentioned, New Orleans is a very magical city. In a way, it’s like The City of Oz. There are casinos, cruises docking, live jazz in the streets, enticing aromas of Creole food, and boiled seafood, and anything you can imagine to indulge, but only if you do it in excess.
New Orleans has a bar on nearly every corner in certain neighborhoods. They still call them barrooms. As single person, those barrooms are a savior because nearly every day of the week, they feature food. They may have fried chicken, red beans & rice, on Mondays, boiled crawfish (not crayfish) and crabs on Wednesday, and Fish Fry Fridays. A single person doesn’t really have to prepare dinner, because there is always a barroom that serves free food with a drink.
New Orleans is one of the few cities that allows 3 and 4-for-1 drink specials. When you purchase your first drink, additional plastic Dixie cups are placed top down on the bar for your next rounds.
New Orleans offers variety with excitement, ‘the best of’, in the most important categories: Food, Drink, Music, Dance, Gambling, Festivities, and Charm.
On top of all of that, because of its extreme humidity, no one ever really dresses up, except during the Mardi Gras ball season. You just come as you are. That’s why it’s the ‘Big Easy’.
But if you are not careful and disciplined, this Land of Oz, or Sodom and Gomorrah, as Pentecostal Baptists would refer to it, can get you in a lot of trouble.
“A really spiritual person will live life as an art, will create a deep harmony between the body and the consciousness. And this is the greatest art there is. His life will be a joy to see. And he will be fragrant, for the sheer reason that there is no split in his being. The very unity makes him organic; the wound of division is healed.” – Osho
“Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
What is Meditation To Kevy Michaels? – By Kevy Michaels
I am only joking about becoming Shakespeare, but I wanted to draw your attention to the power of regularly meditating. Apparently, I did.
I practice meditation passionately, as I have been meditating regularly for over 20 years.
It’s the biggest benefit of my life is that it gives me clarity and it elevates me, the latter of which is not very easy to explain, but I will attempt.
Meditation gives me the ability to interact with the physical world, but in a metaphysical way. It gives another dimension to my senses, in it’s truest, non-manipulated form. Meditation allows me to feel the energy, of people, nature, and the air even, from the perspective of my soul, not from the object’s perspective.
Its power in my life is hinted to in the tagline of this blog, Life Is A Teacher. Meditation transforms my experiences from being externally driven, to being internally guided. It takes me to the field of Pure Potentiality, chapter one in Deepak Chopra’s, 7 Laws of Spiritual Success, abook changed my life’s direction, many years ago. I am so passionate about it, that I reread it regularly, and have given copies of it to friends, family, and strangers in many parts of the world.
I will feature posts on other chapters in the future.
In the field of Pure Potentiality is where Divinity, Creativity, Healing, Nature, and God’s energy resides. It’s a sacred layer of existence, on top of physical existence. Meditation makes this energy in all things, accessible, in addition to its physical offerings.
I have found profound power in meditation because it separates me from myself, my ego, and from the character of who I am to the world. It takes me to my spiritual essence, therefore I see my spirit interacting with life, as opposed to my ego-self having the experience. It is quite powerful and its benefits have manifested in many ways in my life. Here are a couple of examples.
It made me more creative, though I never thought that I was. I can clearly remember when I would write songs (such as the one below) where the lyrics, rhythm, and sound would come to me vividly. Since I am not a musician, I would ask a close friend, who sang and played guitar, to give the song chords. Together, we would delight others, performing these songs (and poems) at the Unity church, schools, charity events, nursing homes, and for family and friends. I would eventually write over 200 songs, over 600 poems, and 100’s more finished and unfinished works. There were days where I would get what seemed like cosmic inspiration, writing over 10 songs and poems, in one day.
Being in the field of Pure Potentiality, through meditation, revealed that I had these unbeknownst gifts.
It happened again in the early 2000s, with Love Electra. Love Electra was a company I created that aimed to propagate the message of love through its products, presentation, and messaging. The name, theme music, and product designs all came to me vividly, and magically. The many products, including t-shirts containing messages of Love & Peace, were sweatshop free, were aura cleansed, contained color psychology, and messages and/or images that inspired. During this phase, creativity overflowed to the point that I had boundless energy and ideas. During this period, I meditated daily for at least an hour.
Those days were exciting! Our web and remote boutique set up at concerts, churches, raves, and festivals ignited every venue. In the San Antonio, Houston, and Austin areas, we had a cult following. I would see before my eyes at these events the power of the mind in making visions manifest.
I included my mother, in her late 80’s, in the excitement. She guarded the money box. She protected the money, like Pilate’s guards protected the tomb of Jesus. I can remember how thrilling it was for her to be adored by so many.
I believe that like changing a radio channel frequency from hardcore rap to spa music, meditation tuned me into a frequency where all of this potential was accessible to.
Unfortunately, due to having to surrender to life’s circumstances with health, the economy, and mainly having to solely care for my mother after she had a major stroke, Love Electra was dissolved.
But has it really been dissolved? I feel that with the Life Is A Teacher blog, I am propagating the same message, but doing so digitally, as opposed to doing it with physical products. Please note that I do not sell anything through my blog. I don’t directly promote anything either unless it has positively impacted my life. And, from those indirect promotions, I received no monetary benefit.
My goal now fueled regularly by meditation, is to convey to my audience my life lessons and wisdom, discerned through trials, errors, bad and good choices, successes, triumphs, and failure.
What I present today are virtues I’ve gained and discovered in my life, with the hopes of that others will be inspired, as well. Meditation not only makes this possible, it makes it insuppressible.
The videos below may be helpful in explaining meditation and Pure Potentiality clearer than I have.
What is meditation\to you? How has it impacted your life?
This week, Rev. Wendy begins a 7-week series based on Deepak Chopra’s book, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. In this lesson, Wendy covers the first law—The Law of Pure Potentiality—and the fact that we are all pure consciousness.
In this short teaching, Mingyur Rinpoche discusses the relationship between meditation and creativity. As he explains, meditation clears space in the heart and mind for the spontaneous, creative expression of one’s true nature. This video includes subtitle captions in English. This video was originally released as part of the Tergar Learning Community course of Rinpoche’s Monthly Teachings.
I often listen to spa, new age, or meditation music. In addition to doing so when I meditate, I listen to this type of music when I am creating and writing. Often my blog posts are written, while I listen to some of the music I now share.
Yellow Brick Cinema’s Relaxing Piano Music, Stress Relief Music, Relax Music, Meditation Music, and Instrumental Music includes relaxing Guitar music, Piano music and Flute music.
Our instrumental music can be used for relaxation, study, meditation and stress relief.
