Music and Thoughts from Mick

Hi. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Michael Neil Lee, but you can call me Mick. I am a recovering addict and alcoholic, and I believe in angels.

I realize that some of you will think my beliefs are antiquated and unscientific. I believe in science, but I think there are some things that science can't explain. Like angels, for instance.

I know there are some of you who will be like "let us be nice to the fry brain and we will humor his belief in angels" and you will say things like "yes, there are angels here on Earth who help people. Like nurses and doctors and your counselors in rehab."

I don't know about nurses and doctors and my counselors. But yes, I believe in angels in the flesh. My little sister Nicole is a for real earth angel. She believed in me even when I was on rock bottom. She was there for my kids when both me and their mom couldn't be there because of our problems. Even when I was at my worst with meth and heroin and drinking and pills she still loved her big brother and I am sorry for the times I caused her to worry that the next time she would see me is in the morgue. I am crying when I write this so I am sorry if it is not the best writing. Nikki, you are a for real Earth angel. I believe in you.

Nikki's new girlfriend Thalia who she met last year is also an earth Angel. They both thought they would never meet anybody to be in love with, but they met each other. They love their nieces and nephews like they were their own children. They are in love with each other like they thought they could never be with anybody. Also, now I have a new buddy to have (Clean and Sober) fun with and listen to music with and tease and play practical jokes with. To be fair, Tally, you had to know it was a Snake in the Can, but you opened it anyways. I'm still waiting for the payback.

Thalia introduced me to instrumental music like this. I still love my Rock and Metal, always and forever, especially my Crue, in case you can't tell by the picture on my profile. But when I need to relax and to chill out, I listen to this instead of lighting it up or shooting up or drinking, and it's way better. Now my kids know their Dad will be around for them and not dead in an alley or something like that.

Also, my friend Cie who has said to me that I can write and she will help me edit my story, you are also a real Earth Angel. My story is called Earth Angel, and it is inspired by some of the people I met along the way. The Angel in my story is called Katarin. She is a real angel who has lost her way and has been abused so much. I have met so many women who have been abused and used up. One of them had schizophrenia and she had been raped so many times when she was trying to get drugs to forget her pain for awhile. She had abortions and also kids that were taken away. She was homeless. I tried to protect her a little but couldn't always watch over her. One day they found her dead. 

I miss you, Karyn. I wish your life could have been better. I thought of you as my Sister, I really did. I wanted to be a good brother to you, the kind you never had. I am sorry I failed you like everyone else.

I believe she has gone back to be with the angels. I do. Even if she was messed up, she had a good soul.

I mean she is gone back to be with the Angels in Heaven. Because I do believe in them.

I know some of you think that is stupid, and it is unscientific, and maybe hypocritical, because I don't go to church. I believe in Heaven and Angels, and I believe in Jesus and that he is good, but I don't believe you have to think he is the Messiah to go to Heaven. I think he loves us all whether we believe he is the Messiah or no. I don't think Christianity is the only religion or the only way to be saved, and I don't think you even have to believe in anything at all to belong in Heaven. I think you only have to be kind and to try your best, and some people don't like that too much and they tell me I can't be saved if I think like that. I don't think they are right.

But I do believe in Angels, and I do believe in Spirits.

I have seen some shit in my life.

When I was a little boy, way before I ever heard about drugs and when I was going to church like a good little boy and believed what I was taught in Sunday School, I met a spirit one day in the attic at my maternal grandparents house. I was three years old and I would go in the attic and it was like a treasure hunt. And that day he was sitting there near the window. He was a boy who was older than me but still young, maybe like seven years old, and he was quiet and didn't talk, but he was nice and he smiled at me, and I stayed there with him until he faded away. I always thought it was about 20 minutes but It's hard to tell, it could have been more or less. I was never afraid of him. I never saw him again. But I always remember him. I didn't say anything to anyone because even that young I knew they would tell me to stop telling tales. I only told Nikki a lot of years later when she was 18 and I was 20, and she punched me in the arm for keeping such a cool secret to myself all that time. I told her it was fair though, because she didn't tell me she liked girls until about that same time, and we could have been liking girls together all that time but I didn't even know it!

So I believe in Angels and I believe in Spirits. And maybe some of you think that's pretty stupid. And maybe some of you think it means I am going to hell. I don't think so either way. I think there is stuff that Science doesn't understand and I don't think that too many people go to Hell. 

So this is my story about me, and sort of an introduction to the story I hope to write. Thank you for listening and for your support. This is the first time I have really told my story, and I am kind of nervous for it.

We are going to publish this post on a couple of blogs. My story blog, Earth Angel, is http://teamnetherworldsearthangel.blogspot.com

Thank You,

Mick

Living is the greatest revolution

Mind is held in a pattern; its very existence is the frame within which it works and moves. The pattern is of the past or the future, it is despair and hope, confusion and Utopia, the what has been and the what should be. With this we are all familiar. You want to break the old pattern and substitute a “new” one, the new being the modified old... You want to produce a new world. It is impossible. You may deceive yourself and others, but unless the old pattern is broken completely there cannot be a radical transformation. You may play around with it, but you are not the hope of the world. The breaking of the pattern, both the old and the so-called new, is of the utmost importance if order is to come out of this chaos. That is why it is essential to understand the ways of the mind...

Is it possible for the mind to be without a pattern, to be free of this backward and forward swing of desire? It is definitely possible. Such action is living in the now. To live is to be without hope, without the care of tomorrow; it is not hopelessness or indifference. But we are not living, we are always pursuing death, the past or the future. Living is the greatest revolution. Living has no pattern, but death has: the past or the future, the what has been or the Utopia. You are living for the Utopia, and so you are inviting death and not life.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Leonard Cohen - Leaving the Table

The way of meditation

Is truth something final, absolute, fixed? We would like it to be absolute because then we could take shelter in it. We would like it to be permanent because then we could hold on to it, find happiness in it. But is truth absolute, continuous, to be experienced over and over again? The repetition of experience is the mere cultivation of memory, is it not? In moments of quietness, I may experience a certain truth, but if I cling to that experience through memory and make it absolute, fixed—is that truth? Is truth the continuation, the cultivation of memory? Or, is truth to be found only when the mind is utterly still? When the mind is not caught in memories, not cultivating memory as the centre of recognition, but is aware of everything I am saying, everything I am doing in my relationships, in my activities, seeing the truth of everything as it is from moment to moment—surely, that is the way of meditation, is it not? There is comprehension only when the mind is still, and the mind cannot be still as long as it is ignorant of itself. That ignorance is not dispelled through any form of discipline, through pursuing any authority, ancient or modern. Belief only creates resistance, isolation, and where there is isolation, there is no possibility of tranquillity. Tranquillity comes only when I understand the whole process of myself—the various entities in conflict with each other which compose the “me.” As that is an arduous task, we turn to others to learn various tricks which we call meditation. The tricks of the mind are not meditation. Meditation is the beginning of self-knowledge, and without meditation, there is no self-knowledge.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Swami Saravapriyananda

Is there such a thing as a soul?

So to understand this question of death, we must be rid of fear which invents the various theories of afterlife or immortality or reincarnation. So we say, those in the East say, that there is reincarnation, there is a rebirth, a constant renewal going on and on and on—the soul, the so-called soul. Now please listen carefully.

Is there such a thing? We like to think there is such a thing, because it gives us pleasure, because that is something which we have set beyond thought, beyond words, beyond; it is something eternal, spiritual, that can never die, and so thought clings to it. But is there such a thing, as a soul, which is something beyond time, something beyond thought, something which is not invented by man, something which is beyond the nature of man, something which is not put together by the cunning mind? Because the mind sees such enormous uncertainty, confusion, nothing permanent in life—nothing. Your relationship to your wife, your husband, your job— nothing is permanent. And so the mind invents a something which is permanent, which it calls the soul. But since the mind can think about it, thought can think about it; as thought can think about it, it is still within the field of time—naturally. If I can think about something, it is part of my thought. And my thought is the result of time, of experience, of knowledge. So, the soul is still within the field of time...

So the idea of a continuity of a soul which will be reborn over and over and over again has no meaning because it is the invention of a mind that is frightened, of a mind that wants, that seeks a duration through permanency, that wants certainty, because in that there is hope.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Beyond Time

The conditioned mind, surely is incapable of finding out what lies beyond time. That is, sirs, the mind as we know it is conditioned by the past. The past, moving through the present to the future, conditions the mind; and this conditioned mind, being in conflict, in trouble, being fearful, uncertain, seeks something beyond the frontiers of time. That is what we are all doing in various ways, is it not? But how can a mind which is the result of time ever find that which is timeless?

The house of your beliefs, of your properties, of your attachments and comforting ways of thinking is constantly being broken into. But the mind goes on seeking security, so there is a conflict between what you want and what life’s process demands of you. This is what is happening to every one of us. I do not know if this problem interests you at all. Everyday existence, with all its troubles, seems to be sufficient for most of us. Our only concern is to find an immediate answer to our various problems. But sooner or later the immediate answers are found to be unsatisfactory because no problem has an answer apart from the problem itself. But if I can understand the problem, all the intricacies of it, then the problem no longer exists.