Welcome to awakenings.
I've collected notes about ideas, experiences, and realities that are important to me.

A friend once described Yes as providing "the sound track for your spiritual path ..." -- and thought there are many other fabulous artists and musiscians in the world, Yes has always been my deep soul-spiritual favorite.

My site name 'awakenings' has strong intentional resonance with one of their signature songs, Awaken.

The place to go on the web for info about the band is Notes From the Edge.

Last time I saw them was their 35 anniversary tour, in San Jose back in April '04 and then again at whatever they call the Concord Pavillion these days -- really enjoyed the rarities, Howe shredding "Rhythym of Love", and unplugged. Who knows if they will tour together again ...

 

			Wellness Center Portland
			Techno Dance Amsterdam

Not finding what you're looking for? Above are some links to other cool "awakenings" sites.

As I was updating this site today, I happened to flip to youtube and found on the landing page this clip, a quite lovely classic guitar piece named "Awakening". Interesting synch.

Another web project of mine is an "Alumni Directory" for employees of the former Santa Cruz Operation. (Not to be confused with the controversial "SCO Group". The original company has all but vaporized since splitting up in May, 2001). I'm currently employed at Quest Software , Inc. as Senior Product Manager for their Single Sign-on products.

As a sideline/hobby, I've also just launched www.bltcpress.com, an online bookstore for ebooks for the Sony Reader, my current passion.

From the fun stuff department: A while back I had the chance to play the lead in 'Willy Wonka and the Software Factory" and even, God Forbid, sang in it! Here's a whole page of stills from the video ...

Patronage of Rascals

One of the two pictures above is me, the other of a (random) one of the Characters of Theophrastos -- The Characters are classic "types" of (negative) characters: part of the multiple identities we all have bubbling inside us.

You can email me here

I also have a separate blog site which I almost never update, but feel free to take a peek.

Finally -- my apologies if snoozings rather than awakenings were provoked.

A central interest of mine is in Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy:

I have a brief note on Goethean Science. Also found here is Rudolf Steiner's lecture cycle The Relationship of the Diverse Branches of Natural Science to Astronomy (complete).

I'm also interested in Gurdjieff and particular ideas about the enneagram and law of the octave.

In response to a query about the Steiner/Gurdjieff relationship, Some years ago I created a preliminary sketch of some of my ideas of their relationship.

The interest in this dialog/tension has led to the creation of the steinergurdjieff.net web site. It's been difficult to maintain an active forum around this, although there is that possibility with the site to post dialogs.

Among the oddball assortment of material here is the fact that I'm the recipient of a liver transplant - actually, two now (May 25, 1995 and then April 12, 1998). Life is good, although way back then it was a bit of a bumpy ride, requiring five surgeries and numberless minor procedures.

Shortly after the second transplant I completed an account of my transplant story here for the benefit of those in similar circumstances. Here it is (BTW, it's rather long!) I get a lot of mail from people who are listed, just transplanted, friends and family -- I love to hear from you all, and always respond.

For info on end stage liver disease, organ failure, donation, and transplantation, I advise TransWeb - Transplantation and Donation at the University of Michigan. If you are a transplant candidate, you want to subscribe to the TRNSPLNT mailing list - info at the TransWeb site.

A quick word about organ donation: if you wish to be an organ donor in the event of your death, you must make this wish known to your next-of-kin. This is in fact much more important than having checked "organ donor" on your driver's license. My first transplant was at Stanford's Liver Transplant Program in Palo Alto, CA; the second at the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento CA; the also have a site for their liver program).

One consequence of my post-transplant medication regime was to accelerate my genetic predisposition towards diabetes. Person with diabetes and anyone at risk (which nowadays is just about everyone) might be interested in the video "Sweet Fire: Understanding Sugar's Role In Your Health" that I helped co-produce with its author/presenter. The site has a clip from it and other info, incuding how to order.

And last, I have posted a verse in rememberance of my donor's gift, and as a plea to get guns out of the hands of children and teenagers.

Having also studied Gurdjieff's teachings for many years, and I have always felt a resonance between certain central ideas of his teaching and specific threads within anthroposophy, although for me anthroposophy is ultimately the more all-embracing and complete vision. This has led me to see specific correspondences of the enneagram with other esoteric wisdom-teachings and to develop some, I believe original in the public sphere anyway, insights into the enneagram symbol. These thoughts are found in my article, Tone-constellations of the Enneagram: a Key to the Inner Hexagram. Other articles include The enneagram and the Kabbalistic Tree of Life and a third summary musing titled My Thoughts on the Enneagram: the Law of Seven and the Law of Three. It covers a lot of ground trying to further understand some of the underlying principles in the teachings of Ichazo, Gurdjieff and Steiner as they relate to number and vibration. It presupposes familiarity with much of the background; nevertheless, I am eager to hear any sincere critiques or questions regarding these thoughts.

Another important context for these thoughts is the tradition of speculative music. I've prepared a short bibliography of related titles.

These and other articles are also now hosted at steinergurdjieff.net as well.