Franklin Taggart's Blog

For their wedding, a couple decided to ignore the environmental concerns of the day, and have their guests release helium balloons as the couple was leaving in their limousine for the delights of their honeymoon. Each balloon was tied to a small bag of rice that weighted it just enough to keep from following it's natural inclination to rise and float away. The rice was thrown toward the couple as they left the church, as tradition dictates, and then all of the guests released their balloons as the limo departed. They each then went their own way and left the church. One lone balloon was left behind. Naturally it strained against the weight of the rice bag, but to no avail. The weight was too heavy, and the helium was beginning to lose its buoyancy as the balloon began to sag. Just then a small bird flew into the church driveway, and it spied the small bag of rice. Being hungry, it began to peck at the rice bag, repeatedly working its beak into the small lace package until finally o

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

In conflict, I take on one of three roles: Victim, Rescuer, or Persecutor. In Victim mode, I fixate on the injustice, the wrongdoing, the trigger; pointing my finger at the persecutor, avoiding responsibility for the emotional state that my own fixation is creating. In Rescuer mode, I step in to  help, overstepping my boundaries, and taking on responsibility for feelings that aren't mine, trying to fix. In Persecutor mode, I shift into anger; blaming, raging, powering up; heaping shame and contempt upon the Victim. As the drama unfolds, I dance from role to role, and as I dance the conflict grows, the pain that I'm attempting to avoid grows, and the elephant in my room shits all over the floor. All of it, every role, all the pain, all the drama are products of my own perceptions. They don't exist in an objective reality. They are purely constructs of my own mind. As long as I'm in the drama, there is no relief. Like the old movie War Games, where the hacker and the comp

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

The day I started first grade my Dad took me to my favorite store in the town where we lived, Scott's. Scott's was owned and run by a cousin of his, Scott Taggart. Scott's was a stationery store, but that wasn't all they had. The candy counter was world famous, or at least I thought it should be. The store clerk, Libby would fill up a small bag of whatever treats you wanted...Swedish fish, pixie sticks, cherry coins, Sixlets, and my favorite, Smarties. A quarter bought a bag full. But the reason for this trip wasn't the candy counter. The purpose of this excursion was to purchase something that continues to be one of my favorite things to shop for, school supplies. This first time is still etched in my memory because it was the first time I'd ever needed school supplies of my own. In preschool and kindergarten if you needed paper or something to color or paint with, the teacher had a pile in her tall cabinet by the rest room door. This time I was getting my

A couple of months ago I took my aging Dad to the DMV office to get a new state ID. He uses a walker now, and I'd gone to the door to hold it open for him. He was still quite a way from the door, and another man was coming up the walk at the same time. I motioned for the fellow to come on in since Dad was moving slowly. So the man went ahead and went to the desk where you get your number before going to the waiting area. He received his number and sat down. Dad made it to the number station, and I went to find a couple of seats, knowing that he usually wants to sit close to the counter. I found two seats together at the end of a back row of seats directly in front of him. The row was too narrow for the walker to fit through, but Dad started to push his way through, shoving chairs aside as he went. I had pointed out to him that since this was the back row, there was plenty of space behind the chairs to walk without obstacles, but he insisted on pushing through the narrow aisle.

"C'mon kid...JUMP!" the kids behind me on the diving board shouted. As their pleas became more urgent and demanding, I looked over the edge and trembled, partly because I was cold and wet, and partly because of the terror I was feeling in that moment. At 6 years old I was already a pretty good swimmer. I'd taken two summers worth of lessons, and I could easily get from one end of the pool to the other, but this was the latest in a growing string of false starts in my quest for conquering the diving board. I was the last of my group of friends to accomplish this particular rite of summertime passage. It wasn't for lack of desire; I'd wanted to jump off the diving board since at least the Summer before, and I'd been thinking about it almost to the point of obsession throughout the present Summer, which was nearing its end. I'd come close to jumping twice before this time, and I'd gotten as close as the end of the board before running back to th

I listened to a podcast the other day in which two women were talking about their success online, which apparently had something to do with something called content. In the course of the 50 or so minutes they were talking, the word "content" was spoken between 5 and ten times a minute. Content, content, content. Creating content, content marketing, content, content, content, more content. This generic term has come to mean less and less, and it leaves a taste in my mouth comparable to that brought about by the generic beer I tried after the high school football game all those years ago. I can still bring the taste to mind, and it isn't a fond memory. It used to be that people wrote articles, or stories, or songs, or screenplays, or they made films, or wore out their dad's Super 8mm camera, spending their hard earned lawn mowing cash on getting those films developed, then splicing their masterpieces together on the kitchen table with a pair of scissors and Scotch

Many astronauts have talked about the experience of looking at Earth from space, and a cognitive shift that has been called the Overview Effect. There is a great video that highlights this effect. It features one of my childhood heroes, Edgar Mitchell who died a few months ago. If you have 19 minutes to enrich your life, please take the time now, and enjoy!(full screen viewing recommended) OVERVIEW from Planetary Collective on Vimeo . This Wikipedia article has more information. There is one being. Our sense of separation from everything else is a thought created illusion. It doesn't exist. Our experiences of individuality, with a personal mind, personal awareness, personal thinking, identification with the body, and sense of self importance all fall away. They're sentient. Life itself is held within a greater context of being. That context shows us the folly of our quests to dominate, manipulate and control nature.

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