Franklin Taggart's Unconventional Life Blog

Thanks for the supportive notes and calls after my video the other day talking about seasonal depression. I was telling a friend that one of the things that is hard when I'm feeling that way is that other people see it as a problem to solve or something broken to fix. That usually just makes it feel worse. Those of you who were able to just let me have the time I needed and my own process to work it out are appreciated beyond words. I've mentioned these people before:  Sydney Banks - The blue-collar Scotsman who spontaneously awakened and realized the relationship between thought and emotional experience. Lester Levenson - The skeptical physicist who dove into relentless self-inquiry after his second heart attack at age 42, discovering a way to release emotional resistance and experience incredible freedom. Esther Hicks - A spiritual seeker and experimenter who became an open channel for another realm as she learned to meditate. I've learned something from each of them abou...

Trauma. The relationship ends, the baby dies, the firing happens, the illness takes over, the collectors call, the accidents happen, the abuse, crime, and calamity all take their toll. The nervous system goes into hyper-protective mode, senses heighten, adrenaline courses through the body, focus narrows, and for the time being, my defenses are up. Strangely enough, the pain doesn't arrive until later. When the dust has settled, and I'm left alone to process what has happened, then the pain comes. My mind is flooded with thinking - thinking about the loss, thinking about an unknown future, thinking about who's to blame, thinking about revenge, thinking about how I can manipulate the Universe, thinking about putting a gun to my own head. All this thinking keeps the pain alive, and feeds it. Behavior becomes impulsive. I yell at my kid, I curse at my wife, I become self righteous, I power up, I justify my actions because I'm in pain. My compulsions ultimately become futile...

I believe that that core concern of our time is not political or religious at its root. I believe we are in the midst of a worldwide crisis of consciousness. If we look back over the relatively short history of humans on Earth, our recorded history is particularly minute. We've only been able to keep track of things for about 5000 years, but paleontologists are finding indications of the presence of humans that spans back into the hundreds of thousands of years, possibly even longer. Every generation learns more about our existence than the one that preceded it. Where 5000 years ago, myths and stories were used to relate histories and worldviews, now we have a much more complex understanding of where we've come from, where we've been, and where we're going. Even so, there are a large number of humans who are clinging to a worldview that doesn't take into account much that we've learned over the past 2000 years. In the course of my own lifetime I've experienc...

Long's Peak and Mount Meeker in the distance Yesterday I gave a talk at Unity of Fort Collins on the common thread that is shared by creativity, service, and thriving. I'll post the talk another time, but for now I want to share a parable that flew in as I was preparing. Before the Western U.S. was settled, an explorer made his way across the plains and found himself approaching the Rocky Mountains. He'd run out of water the day before, and he was looking for a water source. As he walked he met a trapper whose canvas water bag was full to almost bursting. He asked the trapper if he wouldn't mind filling his canteen. The trapper agreed. The explorer took a long drink of water, and he'd never tasted anything so fresh in his life. He immediately felt restored, and he asked the trapper where to find the source of the water. The trapper pointed at a faraway peak and said, "At the bottom of the highest peak there is a lake. That is the source." The explorer expr...

We have a rule in our house that whoever doesn't cook the meal does the dishes. While it seems fair on the surface, I'm not so sure. I'm a one pot kind of guy, and I tend to clean as I go most of the time, so that by the time I serve, there won't be a sink full of dishes other than the ones we eat from. My wife is a chef. The table is her canvas, and the kitchen her palette. We own three generations worth of cooking utensils of every variety, and I'm pretty sure that she uses most of them whenever she cooks. Now the bellywaddin' that I cook is comforting and filling. It won't show up on any Food Network shows, but for a hungry family it'll do just fine. Monica's meals are much more of a craft. She never uses recipes, except to bake, and she follows her whims and inspiration until there is a hearty, world class meal on the table. She's Italian, so most of the time it's Mangia! time around our house, which means that when she cooks, I do the di...

At Unity yesterday, Peggy asked me to give a short reflection on raising your vibration. I kind of giggled when she asked me because that language automatically taps on my woo woo button. I've had an ambivalent relationship with the Law of Attraction over the years. It seems to work really well for the people who teach it to others, but for those who are taught, I wonder??? In any case, I've had more than a few head scratching moments over the LOA. The idea that your vibration attracts your reality is an interesting one. I see friends who get so worried that having a low emotional state is going to wreck their entire lives that they don't realize it's the worry that's wrecking their lives. And the correlation that having a high vibration attracts to you all the stuff you want is also a bit strange. I know plenty of horribly miserable people who have everything they want. Their vibration appears to have nothing to do with it. So I decided to steer clear of the LOA in...

Yesterday when I was walking Vinnie, I realized that for the past several years I've been entranced by a fixation. This particular fixation is money. For at least the last 8 years I've been thinking about money, even when I haven't been thinking about money. Most of my waking hours are spent trying to figure out how to make more. It's the first thing I think about when I wake up, and the last thing on my mind as I go to sleep. This isn't the first time I've been fixated on something. In my late 20s through 30s I was focused on love and sex. My thinking was that if I just had love, my life would be OK, and love was translated as lots of sex. So I had a lot of relationships. I think the longest lasted about six months. Most were one date or one night. There was a flip flop pattern that went on for the duration in which I'd either be fleeing from someone clinging to me, or clinging to someone who was fleeing from me. I read a ton of books on getting and keeping...

A friend asked me what I believe. I had to think about that for awhile because over the past almost 20 years, I've not put a lot of stock in believing. I've been more inclined to let go of beliefs than hold onto them, and I can't say as I miss them. I spent a number of years learning how to articulate what I believed, mostly so that I could impress people with knowledge, and be seen as a leader in the evangelical circles I was a part of. It was a big game of approval seeking, both on a human scale and on the divine. Those beliefs have all been challenged to the core by life itself until I can say without irony that I don't believe in believing. That's one shade better than not believing in anything. I'm not an atheist, but I'm not convinced that believing in God is necessary. It would seem that God is self evident. Believing or not doesn't make it real, it just is. And I'm not agnostic either. I don't need to wait and see. I don't really have...

The Earth's atmosphere is a marvel. This layer of gases that are drawn close to the planet by it's gravitational pull makes life possible. It sustains and protects, providing aspiration to biological life, and shielding the planet and all of us from extreme radiation, allowing through just enough light and heat to make the planet habitable. Within the atmosphere, there is a constant fluctuation of pressure and temperature and energy. These forces manifest as different kinds of weather patterns. In Colorado it's not uncommon to see a change in temperature of 50 degrees or more in a few hours time. The weather can go from a blinding blizzard to calm, clear and sunny in a matter of minutes, and then back again. Atmosphere and weather patterns come to mind as a metaphor to understand the relationship between mind, consciousness and thought, and how these principles work to create our personal experiences of life. There isn't really a well defined boundary between the atmosp...

Vinnie is our Teacup Yorkshire Terrier. Four pounds of world domination that has me wrapped around his tiny paw. Up until we got Vinnie it had been many years since I'd had a dog, and I'd forgotten some of the perks. Of course the main benefit is the love. He's always happy to see me. And I'm happy to see him. Coming into the house feels so good, every time. He is also an amazing watchdog, though only as intimidating as a little guy can be. He thinks he's way bigger than he is, but his bark is loud and shrill enough to wake even me at the slightest strange sound. Tonight I'm appreciating another sweet aspect of dog ownership, a greater frequency of going outdoors. I wonder sometimes if half of Vinnie's body size is his bladder. Given how much he pees on his walks, you'd think that he might have more than one storage unit. Tonight before he goes back to join my early to bed wife, he comes and nudges me, his sign that it's time, and we go out to the ba...

I've always been a very deep feeling and emotional person, which has its pros and cons. As deeply as I can feel love and regard for people and situations, I can just as easily slip into wild bouts of anxiety, depression or rage. That's been a tendency for as long as I can remember. I've navigated the world by feel and have always thought that my feelings were a barometer of my circumstances, that they gave me an accurate read on what was happening in the outside world at large. Strong emotion has also been the root of my sense of being at the mercy of the whims of the world, and not completely responsible for my experience here. Recently I've learned that this was a misunderstanding, and not just a small one. About six months ago I was listening to the I Love Marketing podcast with Joe Polish and Dean Jackson. It's one of my favorites, and I recommend it to clients and friends frequently if they are in any kind of career where they have to learn how to market the...