Speaker Identification
Speaker 1 - Errol Strider, Host
Speaker 2 - Errol Strider as Shopkeeper, performed sketch character
Speaker 3 - Rochelle as Person About to Be Born, performed sketch character

Speaker 1 - Errol Strider:
Hello, this is Errol Strider. Welcome aboard, partner.

After doing a few experimental podcasts, I decided to move in a slightly different direction. I want to approach this from the point of view of me, Errol, sharing some insights and discoveries I have made, many of which I have put into language that I hope speaks to you.

With that being said, let me play a little piece of music that will set the stage for where we are going today.

[Music plays.]

So you probably heard that song, "What's It All About, Alfie?" As it just so happens, after doing a lot of research and looking all over the place, guess who I found? Alfie. I am so excited. I asked him, "Well, what's it all about?"

What he said was, first of all, "Quite frankly, I thought you would never ask. But now that you have, let's not waste any time."

So, for starters, as far as you are concerned anyway, what it is all about is you. I mean, really, wouldn't you say that when it comes right down to it, life is about you? There is a lot going on in this little universe called you. So that is the quick-start card that comes with the owner's manual.

But then some people want to know why. As Werner Eckhart was remembered to have said, "Why is the booby prize?" Still, the why is looking for meaning. Yes, it is about me, but to what end?

Let's start at the beginning. In the beginning was the word, the reason, and the word was with God, and the word, reason, was God. It was a two-for-one deal.

But you may still be scratching your head. What is the reason? How would I know if I found it, and what on earth would I do with it?

Well, here is one way. You are dropped off on a tiny piece of universe dust with conscious awareness - self-awareness, in fact - and enough self-importance to want to know what it is all about. The reason lies in the answer to: Who are you? What is it all about? Where are you? Why are you?

In other words, the game begins with "me" and "the rest," and the enlightened question becomes, "How do we all get along?"

[Drum roll.]

The more we know what it is all about, the more value we will get from it, and the more value we will contribute to it. So what is real value? That which furthers our wholeness - our capacity to integrate successfully with reality.

Well, wholeness, I would suggest, is the reason. Therefore, it is also the destiny. Wholeness hides in tiny particles and starts to unfold, to evolve. It is hide and seek. Wholeness wants to extend itself.

Now here is the juicy part. When one little wholeness bumps into another, there is resistance. You can feel it. You either resist back or adapt. That is the reason: adaptation, forgiveness, integration, creativity. Two wholes finding a way to create a greater whole. And that, my friend, is what it is all about.

Now, Alfie has a lot more to say on the subject, but I thought we would take a little break and spend some time with a piece that gives us a comic break. Then we will come back and explore the question. This piece is called "Little Shop Between Heaven and Earth," and it is one of the sketches from our show, written by Lou Montgomery and myself, from our production of Family Baggage, the Recovery Show.

In this piece, Rochelle plays the person who is about to be born, and my character is someone who is showing her what is available when she arrives. Here it is: "Little Shop Between Heaven and Earth."

Speaker 2 - Shopkeeper:
Good evening. Good evening. Welcome. Nice to have you here. Let me ask you a question. Did you notice? Life is difficult.

Oh, you thought you were going to get the flowers, the standing ovation. But it did not happen that way, did it? You know what I will tell you? It is because there are a bunch of meshugenas walking around up there.

Oh, you do not know what I mean by meshugena? Meshugena means all the crazy people running around making life difficult. Maybe you are a meshugena. Anyway, that is why I have a little shop between heaven and earth. People stop by my shop, and they pick up what they need before going into life.

Life should not be so difficult, but oy, meshugena. So one of the things I give people are scripts. These scripts go in your head. They do not have to burn in your head, but the script tells you what to say. I have scripts for the mother, the sister, the father, the step-kids, the sister, the old kids who come in and make a mess.

I have a script for what the old white politician says to the new Black politician. A lot of scripts around here. I have another script about what the wife's lawyer says to the husband's lawyer. Now that is a very popular script these days.

Speaker 3 - Person About to Be Born:
Excuse me. I was told to come here for a briefing. I am about to be born. I hope I came to the right place.

Speaker 2 - Shopkeeper:
So this is your big debut?

Speaker 3 - Person About to Be Born:
Yes. I am a little nervous.

Speaker 2 - Shopkeeper:
This is going to be difficult. Well, that is why they come to see me first, with a list to give you some things so it should not be so difficult for you. It makes it a little easier.

First, let's take a look. Let's see what we have here. Let me see if I can move.

Speaker 3 - Person About to Be Born:
You are making me dizzy.

Speaker 2 - Shopkeeper:
The first thing here - in order to know what I can give you, I have to do a little experiment. It will not hurt. Just look this way. All right. You ready?

Speaker 3 - Person About to Be Born:
What are you doing?

Speaker 2 - Shopkeeper:
Right away, I can see you are a very reactive person, and you will never have an original thought, and you will not take responsibility for anything. Okay. Let's see what I have for you.

You will go down there and you will make mistakes.

Speaker 3 - Person About to Be Born:
I make mistakes?

Speaker 2 - Shopkeeper:
So what I give you is a formula for mistakes. You will like this. If you make a mistake, you have an excuse. If you have an excuse, it is not your fault. If it is not your fault, you are not responsible. And if you are not responsible, it never happened. Think about that.

Okay, let's see what I can give you. I am going to start by giving you scripts. Let's see what kind of scripts we have in your life coming up. Oh, we have some marriage scripts. We have one marriage script. Two marriage scripts. Oh my goodness, three marriage scripts. Easy, girl.

Another thing we have here - you see this, right? We have tapes. These tapes go in your head. You pick them up when you are a little girl, and they go round and round and round. You say the same things all through your life, over and over and over. So we have tapes.

And I have a special this week on excuses. These are excuses people will believe. All right. That is good.

Another thing is, you go down there, and sometimes you will be made to feel so guilty. You are guilty like that. It is a terrible feeling. Somebody has to be blamed. God forbid it should be you. So what I have is a list of people to blame. You can blame your mother, your father, the system, the government, the economy. Nobody knows. You can blame anyone.

And traffic. In fact, you can blame the Russians. Yes, the Russians are still good for blaming. Terrorists are great people to blame. Whoever you want to blame, this goes in here. And this little miss is your coping kit.

Speaker 3 - Person About to Be Born:
Coping kit? I thought I was going to get a happy kit.

Speaker 2 - Shopkeeper:
Happy? Happy? I wish I could promise life was happy, but for most people, life is not about happy, little miss. Life is about survival. That is why I have these bags with all these holes in them. You look at the holes in here, and the baggage comes through the holes. One thing you are going to find out when you get down there is that life is really mostly about holes. Things coming in holes, things going out holes. It is going to come in here: the mouth holes, the nose holes, the pee-pee holes, the butt holes. It is not enough we have all those holes; we make more holes to put stuff in.

Speaker 3 - Person About to Be Born:
Well, I do not know anything about this hole stuff. I am sweet and pure and innocent. I have not even been born yet.

Speaker 2 - Shopkeeper:
And we want to keep you that way. So I am also going to give you a little advice. Look busy. Busy, like doing things, going, coming, running, taking care, fixing, making a mess, cleaning up the mess, taking care of people, running around. Good. Very good.

Another thing besides looking busy: if you look worried and busy at the same time, they will never bother you. Try it. Worried, like you could make a mistake, like you did it wrong, like you will not get it done on time, like it will never be enough. Hold your shoulders as though the whole world is responsible. Good. They will leave you alone for sure.

Another thing is my favorite thing to give people. I have two lines. If all else fails, you say these two lines. The first line is, "I am sorry."

Speaker 3 - Person About to Be Born:
I am sorry.

Speaker 2 - Shopkeeper:
Have a little remorse. You have to act like you believe it is really your fault.

Speaker 3 - Person About to Be Born:
I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry.

Speaker 2 - Shopkeeper:
Very good. You will be sorry so many times that by the end of your life you will be completely sorry.

Now the other line is - you are going to love this one - "I am fine." It is especially good when you do not mean it. Try it.

Speaker 3 - Person About to Be Born:
I am fine.

Speaker 2 - Shopkeeper:
I am fine.

Speaker 3 - Person About to Be Born:
I am fine. I am fine. I am fine.

Speaker 2 - Shopkeeper:
You have the hang of it.

Speaker 3 - Person About to Be Born:
I am fine. I am sorry. I am fine.

Speaker 2 - Shopkeeper:
I think you are getting into the spirit of this.

All right, I have another bag. This is for when you are a little older and things do not go so well, in case this coping kit stops doing good. This is for when maybe there is hitting and screaming and rejection and things. What this is, is a bag full of addictions. You use these because you do not want to have the addictions, but this bag is to keep them from getting too stuck on you because the baggage tends to get stuck to the holes.

We have this bag full of addictions. And in the big idea, I have a special for you: a bottle full of denial. You use the denial with the addiction bag, and do not worry, you will not feel a thing.

Speaker 1 - Errol Strider:
Let's pick it up where Alfie left off. We were asking what it is all about. As he continues, some argue that it is all about orgasms. And if you are happy with that answer, you can stop here, go home satisfied, and leave something in the collection box at the back of the sanctuary.

But if you realize it does not end there, your orgasm is just the beginning. Now, life is messy. War is messy. Poverty, illness, even defecation - messy. So maybe that is what it is all about: cleaning up the mess.

Even I am a mess, and in my current work, I am forced not only to clean up my own mess, but to find joy in the cleanup: dirty pots and pans, the food to re-wrap, the sandwich station to clear. When I am done, I see everything clear and ready, and I give thanks.

That is what it is all about, maybe: reuniting the parts. Wholeness restored. Then comes choice - real choice, not compulsion, not addiction, but choice born of awareness. Every choice is growth fodder: growth in wholeness, in the capacity to integrate more and more of existence.

I think Alfie is on to something. It is amazing, isn't it, this whole thing about wholeness and being whole and connecting and making it whole? Of course, it is already whole. Fundamentally, I think it is our ability to recognize the wholeness that already exists.

Of course, it is hard to recognize if we are in judgment and if we are led by conditioning, opinion, or our emotions. What that does is cover over the obvious: the wholeness of things.

I heard this line from Yeshua, from the book Love Without End: "Love is the harmonic adaptation to the environment." Let me do that again: the harmonic adaptation to the environment.

In other words, there is the environment. Sometimes it is friendly, sometimes it is not so friendly. But as we harmonize with it, we begin to recognize more of the wholeness.

I see the intent of the universe - some people call it the will of God - as twofold. One is to move out through evolution with greater and greater diversity. At the same time, it is harmonizing all that diversity as it goes. Since neither direction ever stops, it is a constant dance, a constant ballet.

As a dancer, I can appreciate that ballet. I can appreciate how you want to stretch out and discover and expand, yet you have to keep the system in unity so it is not just chaos. On the other hand, you do not want to have the unity so tight that there is no room for discovery.

Speaking of discovery, now we are talking about the creative process. This is an area I love. I read the line once that religious living is devoted living, and devoted living is creative living, original and spontaneous.

I would be surprised if very many people thought of religious living as creative living, let alone original and spontaneous. I suppose that is a result of being in the now.

As a creative person myself, I notice when I am beholding the subject with which I want to create, whether a photograph, a dance piece, or a poem, there is a suspension of anything that is not in and as a result of that engagement.

To help with that, here is a piece that looks at one aspect of the creative process. It is called "The Creator," a poem I wrote many years ago. I hope you get some enlightenment out of it and are motivated to become, well, spontaneous and original.

The Creator

I jumped aside a moment today
and found, to my surprise,
a glittering gem on the sidewalk,
an unobserved creature trembling
with brilliance and unquenchable insides.

I jumped outside time today
and felt a vagabond image hovering in the air,
waiting to be realized.

I stood apart from space today,
peering inside to the undercurrents
of unrecognized conclusions,
possible actuals that exist
between the unseen
and the underside of what is.

I backed away from the traffic today,
from the sequence of events
connecting one expectation with another,
and discovered a kernel embryo,
slinking in a crevice,
dying for attention.

So I pulled it out with my mind,
noticed it,
and gave it life.

If I had not stepped aside today,
little gems would go unnoticed,
inventions unrealized,
and poems never written.

Before I let you go, I thought it might be helpful to hear one last thing from Alfie, helping us understand what it is all about.

Another way of approaching it is asking the question: What is real value? I would suggest that value is that which furthers our recognition of our wholeness. So wholeness is the reason. And guess what? It is also our destiny.

It is like wholeness is playing hide-and-go-seek with us. It hides in the tiniest, apparently independent little particles and starts to unfold, to evolve into the wholeness that actually is.

So all these individual wholenesses - that is us - in integrity with their own selves, naturally want to extend the wholeness. But here is that juicy part. When one individual wholeness thingy bumps into another individual wholeness thingy, resistance is often felt. Sometimes the resistance pushes back, and that ends up in all sorts of uncomfortable and painful plights.

And you, Mr. Individual Wholeness Thingy, have a choice. You can resist or adapt. The process of adaptation, sometimes called forgiveness, is how the resistant parts of the whole find a way to become reintegrated, to show up on the same canvas with their colors, shapes, and contours somehow woven into another beautiful wholeness.

So there you have it, my good friend. I hope you are consciously moving on the journey to awareness, to evolve, and to discover the wholeness.

Again, this is Errol Strider. You can reach me through TheLaughingHeart.org or email me directly at thelaughingheart.org@gmail.com. By the way, you can also check out our YouTube channel, Strider Entertainment.

Until we meet again, I hope you are finding your way into the wholeness of being, which is found conveniently right in yourself. Be with you next time.