Lyrics by Rage Against the Machine... their music sends waves, rushes of live and passion through my body even now... and when the song came on the radio just minutes ago, it brought it all back to me...

1996, 1997... all the way through 2002... when in the mornings before 4am I would rise and ritualistically get into my running gear... which included one of Rage's albums, usually the second or first... mostly the second though.

These were some of the toughest years... the years where I had to look deep inside myself to rise to face all challenges... and what better that the rebel music of Rage? In those days, my bread came from my landscaping business which taught me much about life, about honor...

"This is for the people of the sun...!"

That line was written in tribute to the Mexican people who dare to cross the border to find a better life for themselves... to earn it... and to honor all the forgotted ones who died or got killed trying.

Several nights ago, out of the blue, I received a call from an illegal Mexican immigrant... not just anyone though... this young man had been one of my best crew chiefs with my landscaping business back in the day. We talked like old freinds... we discussed work and business. He told me that if I ever needed someone to come work for me in any business I start, he would be there. I joked that maybe I'd work for him some day, and then what he said next in his thick spanish accent gave me pause... "No, Michael, you are my boss... forever... forever. You are good man. You are my boss, forever."

Got me to thinking...

I'd just treated this young man like any other person in my life, like a human being. Yet, in the US many immigrants, especially Mexican immigrants are treated like second class citizens.

Yet, the degree of honor they are raised with in their culture... the amount of pride they take in their work, their commitment to loyalty and integrity... it was unmatched by the countless American youth who tried their hand at manual labor in the sun with me.

Initially, I'd had a vision for providing crews of nothing but clean cut American youth, who could speak English well and relate to our clients. How few could last more than a single week! What a disappointment it was... to see so many youth today are growing up without a strong work ethic and sense of pride and honor in who they are, and how hard they work.

So naturally, when I would find young men who demonstrated integrity, a hard work ethic, honesty, loyalty and puntuality... their was instant respect.

They were almost always Mexican or from Central America. They had risked their freedom to be here in America, with an opportunity to make a better life for themselves, an opportunity to provide better for their families. Many don't see their wives and young children for many months and even years. They sacrifice that to create a way for their families to live with dignity, and possibly to have a chance to come to "the land of freedom and opportunity."

Then they get here, and they are looked down upon. They are somehow less than. Ha! In my eyes, it's your character that matters so much more than anything else... education? money? fame? Show me a person of character, of honor. That man or woman has my respect.

It's Saturday night... those of you holding a glass of wine, a glass of champaign... and everyone else as well.

Join me in a toast.

To all those who risk everything for a better life for yourselves and your families... to all those who take pride in earning through their own efforts... And especially to all those unnamed, unacknowledged... faceless heroes who are in large part the backbone of this country, and an inspiration to all of us born with silver spoons...

THIS... this is for the People of the Sun!

I honor you. We honor you.

May there come a day when all human beings are born into a world where we each seek freedom, where we each seek out great challenges worthy of our lives... a world in which we all recognize ourselves and each other as heroic beings... visionaries...

That day is fast approaching.

Let us rage not against the machines of conformity, confort and security...

Let us instead rise up and build machines which yield freedom, peach and prosperity for all peoples.

The health and fitness craze aint just a fad. Yoga, Pilates, spirituality, meditation, running, walking, natural foods, vitamin supplements... YOU AINT SEEN NOTHING YET!

The visionaries are coming. Yeah, we're talking about creators, people who create their live exactly the way they want it...

And not only do they want to be healthy, they want to be well. On all levels of their being.

AND if there's anything they'll be addicted to like the rush of passion and profound honor that comes with living at the level of vision and creation... they'll become "addicted" to what it feels like to be "well."

And what they define as wellness will keep increasing. They'll want more and more and more. Yes, wealth will take a turn in definition. The human race is beginning to evolve beyond the level of survival. We want more than money and material possessions.

We want an abundance of values--ALL our values. That includes our health and wellbeing.

And we, as visionaries, will increasingly become warriors for our wellbeing!

Yes, and who knows...

Life and living may become so great, so pleasureful, so rewarding, fresh and exciting that we may decide...

We want to live FOREVER!

Young and healthy, laughing at death... not growing old, but staying young with natural medical technology and breakthrough creates by us as visionaries. Naturally.

This is the wellness revolution... or a glimpse of it. Call in tomorrow for the live and lively discussion and vision via our conference call-style radio show. www.visionrevolution.org/radio.html

QUICK NOTE: The time has been changed for tomorrow's Radio Show recording via conference call, Sunday, August 21st. The call will be held 2 hours later than usual. Instead of 1pm Eastern, it will begin at 3pm Eastern. Everyone's invited, call in a few minutes early.

There are underground and little-known people and organizations who are lifting mankind to new levels of consciousness and freedom. Our next broadcast will feature a provocative discussion with yet another every day visionary.

See how these secret organizations of change will affect YOUR future, like it or not.

Please visit the Radio link above for call info, and subscribe to our newsletter for regular updates and notices such as this.

Two Sundays ago we talked about the rising generations, the youth, the visionaries and revolutionaries of tomorrow. The challenge for parents, teachers and all well-meaning adults in this world can be seen in the story of a boy and a man.

Just now I finished watching Al Pacino in Scent of A Woman. What a classic.

A young boy alone in the world, trying to rise up, to create a path for himself.

He struggles to follow his conscience, to find his voice and speak up for himself. He's self-conscious, quiet, hesitant.

Al Pacino is the bitter and blind Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade, who, by his own admission, took the easy path in life... a path of convenience and compromise. He tells how he stood up to people every chance he got, but it was for recognition.

He sees something different in Charlie, the 17-year-old prep school student.

At every turn, Charlie, while lacking confidence, takes a stand again and again throughout the movie. His courage and integrity saves the colonel from killing himself and inspires him to pick himself up and live again.

Then, of course, there's the speech. (If you've seen the movie once, you remember "the speech.") Let me set the scene...

Charlie's been cornered. He can turn in his friends, go onto a guaranteed scholarship to Harvard, be honored by the Head Taskmaster and avoid being expelled.

Charlie won't be bribed, and he won't be manipulated by shame or fear. He is willing to risk and even give up his reputation and his promised Harvard future for one thing. His honor. Not the honor code as interpreted by the head taskmaster demanding obedience. No his own honor.

To Charlie what is most important is how he views himself, his relationship with himself, who he sees when he looks in the mirror. He's not your typical Hollywood hero (his timidity urks me to no end... you want this guy to take a powerful stand, and he does his best but it's weak), but he's his own hero.

The blind retired officer takes a stand for Charlie. In the face of all who sit reverently in the hallowed halls of a school who's tradition lays claim to very definition of honor and leadership, retirel Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade stands up. And speaks up. He can't see the people he's addressing, but he can see how backwards the values are that the Head Taskmaster is effectively instilling in the minds of the future generation of leaders.

The young man witnesses a man standing for him, for his spirit, for his greatness.

And of course, there's the Hollywood ending...

(and while so many knock Hollywood for the happy Hollywood endings, at least we're still making some movies that honor true heroes and the human spirit, movies which inspire a positive sense of life, the idea of possibility, the expectation that it does all work out and it's worth trying.)

But imagine a different scenario... the school advisory board votes against Charlie, he gets expelled and all hopes for a Harvard education are lost. Will his spirit be killed? Will he lose hope that the man of integrity can win in today's world? Will he sink into the resignation, the perpetual "gray area" that so many of us live inside of today? Will he become another lost soul? Will he "learn his lesson," learn to follow and obey in order to become successful?

I can tell you this...

Charlie had one man, one person, one adult in his life, take a stand for him. One person saw his greatness, believed in him, and honored him for his choice to follow his conscience. That one man had a lasting impact on his life... and showed him that no matter what society says to you, no matter what the authority or majority are saying... the highest road is to follow your own heart and mind... to be true to yourself.

Now, one great challenge facing parents and teachers these days is that of the Head Taskmaster. Here is a man charged with turning these young men and fertile minds into great leaders. What shall he do when they disobey? The easy solution is enforce obedience. Train them to obey. Obey a certain code, obey the rules, obey authority, obey the law.

Not even a century ago the code was Naziism, Hitler made the rules and the laws, Hitler was the authority. Hitler gained control and total obedience of a nation of civilized people, and had them committing unspeakable atrocities. And how? Fear and shame, like the Head Taskmaster, but also the powerful emotions of pride and honor, like the Head Taskmaster... He gave them a code to follow, he gave them an identity to be proud of.

Whether your child will be faced with the decision or not to stand up to another Hitler is not the point, although consider that most all of our political leaders inspire us to war with the same tactics. (A topic for another blog!) Your child faces challenges every day of his life...

Your child can live as a sell-out, and do what Thoreau says most of us do... "lead lives of quiet desperation." It was these kinds of compromises that killed Frank Slade's will to live... he couldn't live with himself.

Every day, and every moment of every day, your child faces choices... to sell out on his values, his principles, his dreams... or not. Every day there are people, peers and authorities alike, who aim to subtly (or not so subtly) manipulate your child to conform to their wishes.

And who will your child be in the matter?

Who will YOU be in the matter?

This is a second great challenge facing teachers and parents today... to live an uncompromised life ourselves. To be true to ourselves, our values, our heart, our dreams.

And a third great challenge... will YOU stand for your child as Frank Slade stood for Charlie? Or will you conform to the pressures of society? Who will YOU be in the matter?

All of these challenges, of course, directly affect YOUR happiness, not just your child's.

Of course you want to raise powerful, confident children who stand for themselves and their values. Of course you want them to be free, courageous, happy, fulfilled.

Well growing up in today's world, that won't happen naturally. You've got to do something about it.

I invite you to consider... will training our children to follow and obey, to guide themselves by someone else's standards, to memorize the "right" or "true" answers... will this make them the be heroes like Charlie? Or will it leave them powerless, confused, resigned and silently suffering?

To raise the visionaries of tomorrow, we must become the visionaries of tomorrow. We must dare to walk our own path, to look inward and learn to trust and follow our own hearts and minds. No one can do it for us, no one can give us the answers. No one can save us. We must save ourselves.

Join us on Sundays... take a look at the Vision Revolution. It is already under way. There is nothing you need to join. It is happening. It will affect your future and your children's futures.

One of the ideas we talked about on the conference call yesterday was the power Hip Hop artists (and all artists) have to change the world, to make a difference.

Art gives us the power to create and see what can be... art gives form to imagination.

When I say art I am including more than the visual arts... poetry, music, etc.

Art gives us the power to express to ourselves and to others what we can't yet explain or understand logically.

A person could read a treatise on the mind and how so much of the limitations in our world are but the way we see the world... but you might not buy it, believe it, agree with it. That same person could watch a movie like The Matrix and suddenly "get it." Then that same person could go back and read the treatise and "see" so much more than they could the first time.

This is one of the powers of art.

Art gives us power to communicate our world view, our life, our thoughts and feelings to others in more of a wholistic sense. Using logical language it is as if we can impart but one new thought at a time, connecting it to the last thought logically. Yet art gives us the power to see more directly or suddenly those connections and the matrix they create... bypassing the logical proofs.

Logic is very important and a powerful tool, but if we want to evolve beyond our current understandings and our current problems, individually and as a society, it helps to be able to see beyond our current limitations... to jump to radical new perspectives, so we can bring new insights and understandings back to our reality and use them to make evolutionary leaps forward.

So many artists today are resigned to merely expressing feelings of resignation, defeatism, nihilism, etc. Worse, so many artists have began to glorify a world in which an individual doesn't have the power to make a difference. In the world of hip hop, for example, so much rap tends to be about the bling bling, the bitches and hoes, and the foolish macho violence. These are the ones who sell the platinum albums. Yet, these people have often led heroic lives, and risen to success in a world of authority and conformity. In this sense they are heroes. Children and adults often look up to them. They hold within their hands the power to change the world, to awaken people to their own greatness, to feed the Vision Revolution!

Reggae music was the music of revolution. It created a counter culture that fed the spirit of freedom, defiance and resistance. Rappers today in America and the world over have the same power. They can be the Bob Marley of their times.

There are spirited, heroic hip hop artists all over the world, yet they're not getting the big record contracts...
yet. The internet, blogging, vlogging (video blogging), and other technologies are giving more and more of these artists a voice, a mic if you will... The revolution is already underway, and hip hop artists are some of the great visionary leaders of the coming revolution towards true personal power and freedom.

(more later...)

This Sunday we'll have guests who will expand the vision for the Vision Revolution. We'll look at the influence of Hip Hop Culture and poetry on the future, specifically as it is feeding the Vision Revolution. Don't miss it!

And if you think you know someone, or you ARE someone, who'd make a good guest for the show, email us: radio@visionrevolution.org

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CONFERENCE CALL INFO:
DATE: Sunday, August 7, 2005
TIME: 1pm Eastern (10am Pacific)
NUMBER: 512-225-3223, passcode: 810254#
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