Note from a friend, for a friend…

MICHAEL- The Man in the Mirror.

His Death as a Reflection of a Changing Paradigm.

I remember watching Michael accept an award, and while he gave his speech, different members of the audience (us) shouted, “We love you Michael!” and each and every time he’d stop, look at them and say, “I love you, too.”

Here’s what’s amazing.

Michael Jackson, for reasons we will delve into, was the perfect reflection, embodiment, mascot of our collective consciousness as a western society at the time that he lived.

We were celebrity-crazy, he lived to be loved.

We were racist, he tried to be another color.

We were homophobic, he tried to have a mainstream sexuality.

We were obsessed with an idea of external perfection- plastic- he plasticized. That was our addiction that he internalized.

Michael Jackson was a crystal mirror. He reflected us back. He was the purest innocent sponge, and absorbed and embodied our mentality.

We are confused about celebrity. It is our own beauty and ethereal royalty, it is what we all are. And whether internally or externally, we don’t know how to treat it, to hold it, to be with it, to be it. Whether consciously or unconsciously, we look for and forward to its downfall and confuse its motion for pleasure. We point. We laugh. We read. We talk. They’re going crazy, oh good, this ought to be fun. Look what a weird and messed up thing that one did now! We even sent our beloved Michael on that ride.

But why was he so prime for this job? He was a beacon of beauty, perfect in voice, a tiny little embodiment of light and sky high human potentialities. He had no mother, nor very loving parent. And he was a child. And so he sought his dose of unconditional loving from we, the public. We were the mother. We were the barometer of success and where that child was taught to seek approval. We took that role, and then, with all of our inherent neuroses, confusion, self-hatred, we raised that child and turned on him.

This is our relationship to celebrity, and the beauty within our own selves.

Michael’s passing, however, is a sign of a new era. He absorbed so much of our prejudices and ignorance. And he’s taken them with him.

We stand in a new and pregnant time.

We stand in a time of new understanding around homosexuality, a growing tolerance of what now, to many, seems like a most obvious part of our collective nature.

We have a president celebrated by the American public, as a African-American man.

It is time for us to deserve, to live up to and take care of the beauty among us. These people who we have chosen to stand for it, in it, as it- these “celebrities,’ are not separate from us. In our own disillusionments, internal hatreds, and dissatisfaction, we seek the downfall of this beauty. Their eating disorders, their depressions, their meltdowns, their falls. Now is the era that we get to see that that is what we are doing within as well. Our individual egos are seeking out and harping on our own downfalls and humiliations. We are living in so much fear. And one way out is beginning to notice how we are treating the talent and beauty that surrounds us.

It is an era that will not stand for the humiliation of others. It is an era of radical kindness. Susan Boyle was obliterated before her popularity even began, for as soon as she set foot onstage, she was jeered at and torn apart quietly, but obviously. The little light she appreciated in her moment of glory was not something that one should have to prove anything to get. Who are we? And what are we to be so mean? Do we really think that makes people work harder, and rise to their highest potentials? Do you think it does that for you? It doesn’t. What we do every time we jeer at someone or watch someone on YouTube being jeered AT by a crowd, we are paralyzing ourselves just a little bit more. We are impeding the beauty, the brilliance, and the talent that lives in you, in all of us, collectively and individually. Who are we to mock people even as they come closer and closer to suicide? It is a new era where we will not do this any longer. Not out of a “shouldn’t,” but out of an obvious deep-felt knowledge of what is true. We want to be free, individually and collectively. We want to shine and let loose all that we have within.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that to support freedom in each is freedom for all, and to support freedom for all is freedom for each.

We bow to Michael for living such a brave life, surrounded by unspeakable ignorance. It is time that our sexualities be unique, every single being with his/her own orientations and preferences. It is time that we let people live their childhoods when they are children – even if they are “celebrities” – so that they can grow up fully and with clarity. It is time for us to understand and live the results of our being inextricably bound. Your light is huge and you are afraid of it. It is time to applaud the people who are brave enough to risk, and step onto a stage, or into even one other person’s gaze. To open the mouth to speak, the throat to sing. Know that to be you and applaud yourself.

What else would you do? It is time to be us! We are not small and afraid. We are not our crazy and fear-based minds, seeking distraction, whatever and whomever the cost.

In the name of Michael, it is time we be so radically gentle with one another, and so, with ourselves, with our art, with our beings. Let him carry away our old and tired fear-based conditioning and leave space for the love he is.

We will overcome. Now. We will fly. You can. We can.

Pass by the magazine aisle. There is nothing for you there. The tabloids are death to your own expression. I promise.

Abandon hatred.

No more anxiously awaiting each other’s downfalls. It is the moment to insure each other’s rising up, the rise of us all, in reflection, in compassion and support of all others. It is up to us.

We love you, Michael.