Chillin in my home 10 years old
Writing poems
On my dome
Got the phones
Mic is off I’m alone/

Unwrappin hard to earn
Learn to rap the bars and words
From the jazzmatazz star
That’s a Guru on earth

From the first verse I heard
I was hooked
Along way to go changed my tainted outlook

Never knew within a song such strong words could spawn
The long birth along a path toward the sun 8

5 percenter messages
Live within a pestilence
the 90s world of gangster rap
That lacked true excellence

Tears drip, beers tip, as it’s clear to me
That the years we shared with such a great emcee

Are solely captured in the music’s energy
The final clue he left behind for minds to be free
Now he rests above the clouds smiling down through our sound
And he’ll never be forgotten, cause he speaks through our mouths…

For a lot of you, this blog may be a little too esoteric or unbelievable; however, I have blogger friends (Wellis Fool-A Fool's Tale) who can back up a lot of these events and it's time that I put them down.

Upon deciding to move to Portland I made a little "pact" with myself that no matter how my mind felt, I would no longer ignore my intuition on the "left coast" and would attempt to further merge into the expanded consciousness with each passing day. Needless to say, the past two weeks have been absolutely mind-altering as a result of this experiment.

#1 Leaving Pennsylvania on Labor Day I had no set plan for trekking across the country other than stopping in Lincoln, NE to visit my Uncle Jeff who is a professor there. While for some this wouldn't seem like a problem, when one is broke it is a relatively large hurdle to overcome, considering any motel room could put a major dent into the budget. After about 4 hours of driving on Monday I received a phone call from a friend who happened to be calling at random. When asked what I was doing, I replied that I was on my way to my new home across the country. It was then that he informed me that he was attending medical school in Canton, OH and had a place for me to sleep for the night. Problem solved! Point: Universe.

#2 I fell asleep the next night in Lincoln, NE and had a dream: a certain friend of mine from high-school (who I was never romantically involved with, nor especially close to by any means) appeared in my dream and I gathered that we were in a West Coast City shortly after sunset. She was wearing glasses and headphones, and walking on the opposite side of the street, so I called to her. After several increasingly desperate attempts I realized that she wasn't going to hear me, and she walked on. The following day I decided to tell her via facebook that I had a dream about her. Upon receiving my message she told me that she had also had a dream with ME in it, and asked what it was about. When I elaborated, she said that she was supposed to move to the West Coast 3 years ago, and it never happened (that's why she couldn't respond!). Point: Universe

#3,4 (I'm realizing how long this blog is getting, so I'm leaving them out, but they were both astronomically unlikely due to "coincidence".)

#5 Earlier this week, while sitting on a bench in downtown Portland writing memoirs a late-20s, tall, somewhat awkward man sat a few benches down from me. His "Members Only"-type gray jacket and gray canvas pants would be atypical of someone I generally hang out with (not that I base friendship on clothing, but none of my friends dress that particular way, and he did not "stand-out" in any certain sense). A general feeling crept over me with a voice calling to me "Talk to him! Talk to him!" So I did. After minor small talk I mentioned a sensory deprivation tank that I had seen in his part of town. After explaining its mechanism and purpose he announced something VERY intriguing to me. In fact, THE thing I want to hear about: "did you know there are Ayahuasca groups in Portland?" he asked. There's the coincidence, I thought. (Ayahuasca or Yage is the shamanic brew employed in South America for divine matters. Its main active ingredient is n-n dimethyltryptamine--DMT--which is the ONLY hallucinogen endogenous to one's body and is released when YOUR BORN and when YOUR DIE.) Though I had smoked DMT before, I had NEVER taken ayahuasca. I asked him, "do you have experience with anything like that? "Yes," he replied, "I ate ayahuasca in a shamanic ceremony in Peru". WHAT!? This guy was the first person I have EVER met who has actually eaten ayahuasca. After further conversation, he told me that he was a DJ for the radio station in Portland and could get me on the air, as well. POINT, POINT, POINT: Universe.

So what's the point of all this? To me, my faith in my own awareness/inner divinity has increased everyday due to all these events. I simply cannot chalk it up to simple coincidence; I have direct, tangible evidence of a higher map or divine plan unfolding each day in front of my eyes. I make one suggestion to you: take time everyday and reflect or meditate. Stay off those habit-forming chemicals you've been taking since you were a teenager (you may be blown away by exactly how much they're covering up!). And most of all, listen to that voice inside your heart. It's your true Self, showing its mastery in every situation, every day. And that's my word!

Often, proceeding a philosophical discourse--or rant--of mine, someone will inevitably ask me the question, "What made you get into 'all of this'?" While an answer to such questions can never FULLY be traced to one single event in life, in this case it's easy for me to pinpoint one in particular that rises above the rest in my memory regarding my obsession with "the search".

On January 7th, 1994 my mother picked me and my sister, Shea, up from our soccer practice (I was just shy of ten at the time) and allowed us the "treat" of eating at McDonald's (I'm a vegetarian now, but I loved me some McDonald's as a young-buck). It strikes me that we were so hungry from practice that we actually ate in the car, despite the fact that my mom was and is to this day an absolute "clean freak". Rounding the windy roads of Central Pennsylvania a certain pain began to increase alarmingly in my gut. We got home, I leaped from the car, and ran to the bathroom, assuming that it was simple indigestion from the not-so-healthy food. After about 20 minutes, no bowel movement, and a continued rise in pain, I knew something was SERIOUSLY wrong; my mom strapped me back in the car and we rushed to the hospital.

I'll skip the preliminary waiting room experience (detoxing teenager screaming at the top of his lung, something a nine-year old usually hasn't experienced by this age) and the test experience (9 shots and two-hours later for an "inconclusive result") to cut to the chase. I had appendicitis. It was critical that I go into surgery immediately. What was to follow would change my young mind forever.

A needle struck my vein in the operating room and I quickly drifted off into the abyss. This didn't last long. Suddenly, my consciousness sprang forth and I realized that I was looking down from the ceiling in the operating room, watching the surgeons hover around a body. When the head surgeon stood erect to give an order the patient's face was revealed and... it was ME! I couldn't believe it! Here I was, floating around a hospital, unattached to my physical body. Something inside me told me that I wasn't dead, so I decided to explore. I noticed that if I concentrated on a position in the room (and eventually outside it) I could easily move to that spot, in order to change perspective. Eventually, I snapped back into my body and awoke.

I can't begin to describe the dissonance one feels at such a young age when something of such magnitude occurs. Keen on social expectations I immediately understood that I couldn't tell my parents, especially my father who to this day insists that NO human being (except for our mythical hero, Jesus) has ever perceived anything beyond third-dimensional consciousness. So I pondered what to do. It was from the exact point forward that my search began feverishly to understand the mechanism with which I left my body. Eventually I discovered that it was called an "Out-of-body Experience" and that as many as 1 in 4 people will have at least one such experience in their life. I also learned how to control it.

Often such traumatic and life-altering events propel us to unravel the nature of mind, despite the lack of road maps and clear pathways we are so used to in linear thinking. These events have happen to all of us in one way or another, and it's important that we don't allow them to reside in the shadows of our minds, wondering whether there was any meaning behind them. There is. If you allow yourself to open to the experience, the divine can plant its seed in your fertile mind and your search will begin fresh beyond your wildest dreams: seek and ye shall find. And that's my word.

A recent resurfacing motif in this holographic merry-go-round I refer to as life has been relentlessly enticing me to dance. So let's dance.

Fear. I have been contemplating its role in our everyday lives due to many currently occurring personal circumstances that would generate fear for most: loss of job, loss of relationship, loss of place to stay, moving across the country to a new city based upon the beckoning of intuition, and overall up-rooting of the past. As I see it, fear acts upon us in two ways, depending on which perspective we take.

1) Fear elicits a cautionary reaction to situations, facilitating our drive for survival during perilous circumstances, ultimately reflecting our inherent fear of DEATH/GOD. If we view fear in this way, it necessarily follows that we either don't believe in God (I know this seems paradoxical, but give me a minute) or we are simply afraid of the ultimate power we possess. Why, you ask? Well, simply put: if we are afraid to greet God through death then it necessarily follows that we don't believe in a true God, since God is said to be All-Loving of his creation, which implies that God must be truly beyond our ego-centric view of Good and Evil; in other words, God--an infinitely perfect being--created you and your existence (if you are a "believer"), so how could he have failed in creating you the "right way"? Therefore, our "sins" must be no more than human constructions, and each moment of our life--whether deemed good or bad--must be a moment of learning that somehow brings us closer to the embodiment of that perfect creation. As far as being afraid of the "ultimate power we must possess", let me explain. If the prior said statements are true, and we were truly created by a "perfect" being, each moment in our life must be total perfection which means...(drum roll, please)...we must be part of that infinite perfection! When we are able to assimilate this idea into our own worldview, then we will slowly shed our ego-based preconceptions of our "sins" and our life will be viewed with great mystery and awe as each unfolding moment yields eternally more understanding and bliss.

2) Fear, it seems, truly acts as the ebb to curiosity's flow (the yin to the yang) throughout our existence, so that we don't follow to the "holy grail" too quickly, before our fractured minds can comprehend or understand it. In other words, a little voice inside compels us to continue forward through life--despite its apparent hardships--because we cannot let go of the concept that there is something at the end of the rainbow. Regardless of our fears, we propel ourselves further into the fire with each passing sunrise, whether conscious of the fact or not, in order to learn more and further unravel our understanding of existence. From the beginning of this search we are generally afraid of many "irrational" things: the dark, the boogie man, witches, goblins, monsters, etc... As our curiosity propels us to further understanding through trial-and-error these irrational fears are replaced by more "rational" ones: bills, security, self-perception, social-perception, etc... However, most of us don't pause to take an overall look at the process, which brings about the realization that we are slowly preparing ourselves for something. And I submit that it's Death/God. Slowly, fear falls by the wayside as curiosity takes hold, and we march full-fledged into the depths of our Self for ultimate truth.

Remember this: as long as we view ourselves as inherently "sinful" and "guilty" we are off the hook--until death--for our meeting with God. Fortunately, some people slowly come to the realization that this idea is a farce, and the search will exponentially increase at that point, because fear slowly but surely becomes conquered. What do we find at the end? I'll save that for another post ;) And that's my word.

So...

Many of you may be wondering where I have disappeared to over the past few months. Valid question. May I recount for you briefly the disasters/chances at true metamorphosis I've experienced in the summer of '09:

#1) In Early June, STLP, otherwise known as the entertainment company owned by myself, windchILL, Apollo's Sun, Wellis Fool, Gard, and El*A*Kwents permanently disbanded after six years and a promising set of recent releases including Before the War, the culmination of all STLP stood for. The blow effected everyone deeply at the personal and professional levels, and created a sort of ebb that finally receded sometime mid-summer, once all parties were able to regroup and formulate new battle strategies.

#2) On June 7th (well into summer term), YBEC asked me to return to the classroom as the English teacher for the '09-10 school-year, adding that I must take two summer classes in order to maintain my teaching certificate. I immediately suspected an underhanded scheme to derail my career, which inevitably turned out to be true: once I had scrounged the money for class, it was too late, and I was notified of my termination. Seems like three years of radically improving young lives will never match up against a few blossoming egos hell-bent on familial domination (for more information, and bitterness send me a comment and I'll reply. Actually, don't, because I really don't care about political bullshit, anyway, and I'm no longer a slave to Central, PA or corporate greed... Then again, that's what they all say.)

#3) I had been living with my girlfriend--a somewhat neurotic, but excessively deep and loving hippie from York County--for the past two years. The dissolution of STLP seemed to be the solution for new and fertile ground in our relationship; we had been experiencing a beautiful and stress-free three-month period in our lives together that I erroneously attributed to a surge in my free time. But, alas, the facade crumbled as she unexpectedly announced to me three weeks ago that she no longer felt that a relationship was beneficial to either of us, and she wanted some time to think about her future, alone.

Homeless, jobless,and girl-less--yet ultimately free--I retreated to the confines of my subconscious for some necessary meditation and reflection. Friends offered suggestions or quick fixes. Possibilities revealed themselves only to prove shams. Finally, after a dreadful week, I received a phone call.

Emily, my middle-school/high-school/part of college/part of post-college sweetheart unexpectedly and bravely welcomed me to her home in Portland, OR. Of course, I declined. Who in their right mind would leave their girlfriend of three years to move 2,800 miles away to a new city with no job, no family, few friends, and a simple wish to succeed? Well, after two weeks of deliberation it appears the answer is: ME.

Next week I will drive across this vast machine we call America, and plant my flag in the middle of the Pacific Northwest, hoping for new endeavors and opportunities that could lead to true actualization. I apologize to those of you who have been wondering where I descended, but I assure you that I am back like never before. And that's my word.

I follow moonbeams,
Looking for center,
A lunatic, chasing
Mirrors.

I shadow box the aurora,
a danse macabre
sans death.

I am a pilgrim,
Returning home
Again and again
To masquerade in a world
Of mannequins.

For today's blog, I'd like to post a rhyme I wrote recently that attempts to explain the psychology behind the birth process; we divide from our mergence with the infinite, and slowly separate through birth itself, and the things we are taught in society...


The light hits my eyes
I awaken and cry
Taken from salvation, placed in a station, and tied
I'm on display as a patient
and I'm wasting no time
To gain some motivation, and ace it this time.

Life is confrontation in this matrix of mind
and my parents show me basics, while erasing divine.
I can't escape it,
but my hesitation is high
while I watch my parents argue
I think hatred is life.

Screams and cracks
in dream-like patches FLASH
I see myself in ego-self and laugh
When i be my Self, I see my Self in half
Can't redeem myself while freedom's in the past!



I'm taken down with the demons of a being believing
that he's the reason people scream and treat each other like heathens.
Not really seeing how I'm slowly being taken from freedom
by my thoughts that are leading with the notion of sin;

So begins
the road of the loneliest men
Only the holy see the coldness as a motion that ebbs.
I'm growing older, so are the fractures within,
fissures of a broken home cracking the kid.

My sister joins existence on the planet of riches
becomes a stitch sewing vision with the love she delivers.
My parents see religion as an antidote to venom
that they've spit into the lives of their family to end them.


I begin to see faults in the logic that lies
within the scriptures that the system provides, and relies.
Wonder why rocketships are etched in pyramid lines
6,000 years before Apollo in '69.

In the skies are dark vapors they spread on our lives
The water's packed with poison, so our daughters stay high,
while our father's think the television gives them the signs
on how to choose a President to lead us through life.

The teachers need obedience, so history is meaningless;
Columbus gets a holiday, Malcolm is a deviant.
The outcome is believing you've achieved the truly treasonness:
alleviated God with the doubt of your belief in him...

Ladies and gentleman, sorry for the delay on this month's STLP newsletter; the crew has been cruising up and down the Northeast, crashing stages for the new After.Words' album, Before the War. It went a little something like this:



The crew braved the shitty weather, and hiked up to NYC--loaded with blunts, and hip-hop (no stunts; sorry ladies)--to rock with Louis Logic. Apollo's Sun was diggin the "Harold and Kumar" White Castle we passed, as we shot up to Saratoga Springs to rock a DOPE ASS SHOW. Unfortunately, the first leg of the tour came to an end quickly, and we sadly trekked back to PA to rock in Lancaster (thankfully we got down on some burritos, and jammed with our homeys, High Life, at a quasi-local show). After painfully sparring "reverse culture shock" for a few days, we resumed our travels to Erie, where we were introduced to rocking beneath Christmas lights (at Easter), and disco balls (pictures of this will be uploaded on our sites soon enough). If any of you don't believe in "lake-effect" wind, I highly recommend a trip to Erie; it won't take long for you to commence ball retrieval and regress to your former "home". We bee-lined to Buffalo, where the locals welcomed us with praise, lots of blunts, and some other substance offers (these we passed on, but seriously: Buffalo mu'fuckas sure as hell get down!) Portsmouth, NH held it down for real hip-hop, where the "lyricist lounge"-like feel, coupled with the "live free or die" attitude provided the fertile ground for a really dope show. We crushed D.C. with our homey, Ardamus, rocking the Adams Morgan "brackish water" section of town (as one local referred to the cultural intermingling), and rolled to Allentown for our final tour stop with Reef the Lost Cauze and King Magnetic (Army of the Pharoahs). Here we were greeted like kings--a half gallon of Captain, backstage access, and the go-ahead to "smoke anything you want"--and we ended the tour with a serious bang. Many albums were sold, friends were made, and life resumed...


So now STLP has returned home to announce our latest and greatest upcoming events. First, Mid-Tempo Thursdays return MAY 7th with windchILL of AOI and After.Words, CODA, and Ladii J! Come get your hip-hop fix for free, every Thursday at the Mid-Town Tavern in Harrisburg, where the latest and greatest hip-hop artists around the country will showcase their skills each week. This month's schedule is as follows:


May 7th: WindchILL of AOI and After.Words w/ CODA and Ladii J


May 14th: J Bair


May 21st: Advanced Placement


May 28th: Phynite and Unit 13


*For more information on Mid-Tempo Thursdays please go to: myspace.com/midtempothursdays


Following the success of After.Words' debut album, Before the War, and his groundbreaking solo debut, I Have Arrived, windchILL (of AOI and After.Words) has announced Self-Medication, the sophomore offering from one of Pennsylvania's most recognizable underground faces slated to drop in September of 2009. The album features production from a slew of hard-hitting producers from around the globe. WindchILL intends to have the lead-single and video, "Live As it Gets," available for free download by July. Stockpile your sick days, because you're going to need some time to soak in chILL's musical remedies this fall.

*For more information on windchILL, please check out www.myspace.com/windchillofaoi or http://www.stlp.net/
Finally, Artists Over Industry (windchILL, Wellis Fool f.k.a. Inkwell the Biologic, and DJ Gard) has been nominated for Best Live Act for the 2009 717 Music Awards, and will be performing live on June 6th at Gullifty's Underground for the event. Pre-sale tickets are available at windchILL's myspace: www.myspace.com/windchillofaoi for $10. The night will feature all your local favorites, rocking for one night at one of the area's dopest live venues. Come out and party with the crew, as we celebrate six strong years of live show's for the greater Harrisburg Area.

Well, that's it for our post-tour ramble. Hope everyone is feeling the vibe as Spring has finally descended upon us. If you haven't already, check out www.stlp.net for the latest updates on STLP's summer plans, our new and improved "STUDIO", and our on-line store! We have plenty of entertainment for you in the months to come.


One,

STLP

www.stlp.net

Well, it’s Monday, and I’d like to start the week out with a little dose of humor to fuel the thought-fire on this rainy day. This weekend I had the distinct honor of attending my 7 year-old niece’s first Holy Communion. While I haven’t been to Mass in quite sometime (I was raised both Catholic and Methodist by divorced parents) there were a few instances of dogma and practice that made me chuckle throughout the morning:


First, I had forgotten how frequently the congregation is asked to respond, “Lord have mercy,” before the administration of the Eucharist. This may not strike some of you as funny, but after years of listening to reggae, it seems I have lost the ability to sing “Lord have mercy” the “white” way. Naturally, each time the response was called for, I belted my best Rasta “lawd ‘av mercy”, and found that this made mass much more enjoyable for me. Hopefully those around me weren’t too offended, but if they were I think such an injection of humor into their lives could be a great folk remedy for the “I take myself too seriously” disease plaguing contemporary America.

Secondly, it is customary throughout Catholic mass for the congregation to respond to certain phrases spoken by the priest with a pre-ordained mantra, as I alluded to earlier. Hands-down, the funniest of these exchanges occurs at the very close of the service: the Priest concludes mass by announcing, “The mass has ended. Go in peace,” while the congregation replies, “Thanks be to God!” I found it very funny that the close of church is announced and every one basically shouts, “Praise the lord!”; although, I must give some respect to the Catholics for consistently modeling the practice of counting ALL blessings in life, including the closing of a long church service.

While paths through our universe—and maybe other universes, too—are many and rather diverse, truth is always one. Though I would never proclaim to be an avid church-goer—or religious in the traditional sense of the word—I find that the divine follows wherever one is willing to look; and for a sinner like me that could even mean church.

One of my dearest and most liberated friends asked me to elaborate on what the Government is doing that would require a diversion of public attention, so here goes:

#1 The source of the problem is NOT the U.S. Government. I know this may shock some of you--especially my fans--but it is the truth; from an external point of view the source of the "evil agenda" is truly the financial system. Many of you may be unaware that the Federal Reserve, the institution that prints U.S. Currency, is a PRIVATE company. It lends the money it prints to the U.S. Government with interest. The government then owes the Federal Reserve more money than was printed, so the Fed simply prints more. This creates inflation; inflation is nothing more than the devaluing of the dollar due to the increased amount in circulation, lowering your buying power with each additional dollar bill in print. In other words, the Government can only pay its debt with more money printed by the debtor itself, creating a never-ending cycle with debt as its inherent principle. Your taxes truly go to paying the interest of this debt alone, nothing more. The rest of the "money" raised by the U.S. is debt owed to the Federal Reserve or foreign powers, so who really runs the government? The people who are in debt, or the people they owe the debt to?

#2 The TRUE source of the problem is YOU and ME. If you are not open to accepting this, then please skip the rest of this message until you're ready to look inside yourself. The Government and other institutions that seemingly control us derive their power from US ONLY. Buying into the false reality and illusions perpetuated by television, the internet, and the overall media limits the independent thoughts of a free-thinker, until his/her reality is simply a reflection of a belief-system born from what he/she is told. Our school system begins the manipulation by declaring schools-of-thought to be fact. This leads us to never question what we learn, never look up, and never see the overall system created for us, by us. The bottom line is that each one of us holds the keys to self-discovery and illumination within, though they can only be utilized when we are able to accept the concept that we know nothing. Unless you experience the truth yourself, it is not something that can be taught or learned. Truth is only accessible via experience, but we tend to let others tell us their ideas and accept them as fact. This perpetuates the false reality, and allows humans to be so easily controlled that the people in charge merely take an easy opportunity and capitalize on it for material gain.

So what's the answer to freedom? Freedom is the knowledge that you are an open-vessel that could experience anything at any given time. It is the knowledge that life is a mystery that unfolds before our eyes every moment, with every breathe; it's up to us to follow the flow, or else we will try to harness it and manipulate it to conform to our pre-learned ideas about truth, leaving us in the wind when its sudden shift uproots us from our beliefs. Truth is not stagnant; it is a perpetually evolving moment that is eternal in its change. Open your eyes and rise to fulfill your destiny, people. You are sunlight, so shine with truth of your being.