Kill Ritual Added To US/Rock/Metal Radio…March 2016 US Tour!
Hey gang Kill Ritual has been added to over 50 Metal/Rock stations this week alone with more to come for the Karma Machine release! Request us on your local Rock/metal Station please! We’ll also announce US dates soon for Spring 2016! Rock!
Embracing the Darkness
This is a subject that I talk about often with people… some can accept it, some can not. It’s ok because we are all on this journey together. Each one of us learning from another.
Ten years ago I was introduced to a set of books which answered questions that I had about life. About how some people just don’t get it and live in the dark and how some are full of light. I couldn’t understand living my life in such darkness. Maybe its my innate curiosity on what makes people tick? Not sure, but I wanted to understand more. I consumed these books with such veracity that I couldn’t wait for the next one to come out. These books, Conversations With God, written by Neale Donald Walsch were not well received when they came out. Almost like when Salman Rushdie published his book ‘The Satanic Verses‘.
The book, number one of three, starts with Neale having an actual Conversation with God. It was hard for me to at first to understand this because God, at that time in my life, was suppression. It was religion. God was a crutch for those that didn’t believe in themselves. After reading these I got a new, refreshing understanding of the God within us all. Today, my philosophy is this… we are all God. We are all light. We choose to separate ourselves from the light so that we can appreciate the light. Does that make sense? Let me help you to understand it a bit more…
Without Darkness we cannot have Light. The Yin and the Yang. One cannot exist without the other. For example… if you were always happy what would you use to gauge your happiness? This can also be for people in our lives. We all have that person we just can’t stand to be around. That negative person who just never seems to be happy, who always lives in what we perceive as hell. I’ve got a solution on how to deal with such people…. send them love. Yes, I said it. Send them love and be grateful that they are here to show you who you are not. When you can live with this concept it’s easier to live your life. Use them as a gauge for your happiness. This does not mean to look down on them nor feel sorry for them. Know that they are living their own life the best that they know how. Maybe they chose to be unconscious in this life? How’s that for a concept? Maybe we made an agreement before we came down on this plane to teach each other something?
I want you to read this short parable by Neale Donald Walsch called ‘The Little Soul and the Sun’. It will open your eyes to another reality that maybe you haven’t heard of before. Enjoy it. Embrace it. Take from it your own truth. And as Pilot said to Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar, “What is truth? We all have truths. Are mine the same as yours?”
Namaste,
David
The Little Soul and The Sun
A Children’s Parable
by Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations With God
Once upon no time, there was a little Soul who said to God, “I know who I am.”
And God said, “That’s wonderful! Who are you?”
And the Little Soul shouted, “I’m the Light!”
God smiled a big smile. “That’s right!” God exclaimed. “You are the Light.”
The Little Soul was so happy, for it had figured out what all the souls in the Kingdom were there to figure out.
“Wow,” said the Little Soul, “this is really cool!”
But soon, knowing who it was was not enough. The Little Soul felt stirrings inside, and now wanted to be who it was. And so the Little Soul went back to God (which is not a bad idea for all souls who want to be Who They Really Are) and said,
“Hi, God! Now that I know Who I am, is it okay for me to be it?”
And God said, “You mean you want to be Who You Already Are?”
“Well,” replied the Little Soul,” it’s one thing to know Who I Am, and another thing altogether to actually be it. I want to feel what it’s like to be the Light!”
“But you already are the Light,” God repeated, smiling again.
“Yes, but I want to see what that feels like!” cried the Little Soul.
“Well,” said God with a chuckle, “I suppose I should have known. You always were the adventuresome one.”
Then God’s expression changed. “There’s only one thing…”
“What?” asked the Little Soul.
“Well, there is nothing else but the Light. You see, I created nothing but what you are; and so, there is no easy way for you to experience yourself as Who You Are, since there is nothing that you are not.”
“Huh?” said the Little Soul, who was now a little confused.
“Think of it this way,” said God. “You are like a candle in the Sun. Oh, you’re there all right. Along with a million, gazillion other candles who make up the Sun. And the sun would not be the Sun without you. Nay, it would be a sun without one of its candles…and that would not be the Sun at all; for it would not shine as brightly. Yet, how to know yourself as the Light when you are amidst the Light -that is the question.”
“Well,” the Little Soul perked up, “you’re God. Think of something!”
Once more God smiled. “I already have,” God said. “Since you cannot see yourself as the Light when you are in the Light, we’ll surround you with darkness.”
“What’s darkness?” the Little Soul asked.
God replied, “It is that which you are not.”
“Will I be afraid of the dark?” cried the Little Soul.
“Only if you choose to be,” God answered. “There is nothing, really, to be afraid of, unless you decide that there is. You see, we are making it all up. We are pretending.”
“Oh,” said the Little Soul, and felt better already.
Then God explained that, in order to experience anything at all, the exact opposite of it will appear. “It is a great gift,” God said, “because without it, you could not know what anything is like. You could not know Warm without Cold, Up without Down, Fast without Slow. You could not know Left without Right, Here without There, Now without Then.”
“And so,” God concluded, “when you are surrounded with darkness, do not shake your fist and raise your voice and curse the darkness. Rather be a Light unto the darkness, and don’t be mad about it. Then you will know Who You Really Are, and all others will know, too. Let your Light shine so that everyone will know how special you are!”
“You mean it’s okay to let others see how special I am?” asked the Little Soul.
“Of course!” God chuckled. “It’s very okay! But remember,’special’ does not mean ‘better.’ Everybody is special, each in their own way! Yet many others have forgotten that. They will see that it is okay for them to be special only when you see that it is okay for you to be special.”
“Wow,” said the Little Soul, dancing and skipping and laughing and jumping with joy. “I can be as special as I want to be!”
“Yes, and you can start right now,” said God, who was dancing and skipping and laughing right along with the Little Soul.
“What part of special do you want to be?”
“What part of special?” the Little Soul repeated. “I don’t understand.”
“Well,” God explained, “being the Light is being special, and being special has a lot of parts to it. It is special to be kind. It is special to be gentle. It is special to be creative. It is special to be patient. Can you think of any other ways it is special to be?”
The Little Soul sat quietly for a moment. “I can think of lots of ways to be special!” the Little Soul then exclaimed. “It is special to be helpful. It is special to be sharing. It is special to be friendly. It is special to be considerate of others!”
“Yes!” God agreed, “and you can be all of those things, or any part of special you wish to be, at any moment. That’s what it means to be the Light.”
“I know what I want to be, I know what I want to be!” the Little Soul announced with great excitement. “I want to be the part of special called ‘forgiving’. Isn’t it special to be forgiving?”
“Oh, yes,” God assured the Little Soul. “That is very special.”
“Okay,” said the Little Soul. “That’s what I want to be. I want to be forgiving. I want to experience myself as that.”
“Good,” said God, “but there’s one thing you should know.”
The Little Soul was becoming a bit impatient now. It always seemed as though there were some complication.
“What is it?” the Little Soul sighed.
“There is no one to forgive.”
“No one?” The Little Soul could hardly believe what had been said.
“No one!” God repeated. “Everything I have made is perfect. There is not a single soul in all creation less perfect than you. Look around you.”
It was then that the Little Soul realized a large crowd had gathered. Souls had come from far and wide ~ from all over the Kingdom ~ for the word had gone forth that the Little Soul was having this extraordinary conversation with God, and everyone wanted to hear what they were saying. Looking at the countless other souls gathered there, the Little Soul had to agree. None appeared less wonderful, less magnificent, or less perfect than the Little Soul itself. Such was the wonder of the souls gathered around, and so bright was their Light, that the Little Soul could scarcely gaze upon them.
“Who, then, to forgive?” asked God.
“Boy, this is going to be no fun at all!” grumbled the Little Soul. “I wanted to experience myself as One Who Forgives. I wanted to know what that part of special felt like.”
And the Little Soul learned what it must feel like to be sad. But just then a Friendly Soul stepped forward from the crowd.
“Not to worry, Little Soul,” the Friendly Soul said, “I will help you.”
“You will?” the Little Soul brightened. “But what can you do?”
“Why, I can give you someone to forgive!”
“You can?”
“Certainly!” chirped the Friendly Soul. “I can come into your next lifetime and do something for you to forgive.”
“But why? Why would you do that?” the Little Soul asked. “You, who are a Being of such utter perfection! You, who vibrate with such a speed that it creates a Light so bright that I can hardly gaze upon you! What could cause you to want to slow down your vibration to such a speed that your bright Light would become dark and dense? What could cause you ~ who are so light that you dance upon the stars and move through the Kingdom with the speed of your thought–to come into my life and make yourself so heavy that you could do this bad thing?”
“Simple,” the Friendly Soul said. “I would do it because I love you.”
The Little Soul seemed surprised at the answer.
“Don’t be so amazed,” said the Friendly Soul, “you have done the same thing for me. Don’t you remember? Oh, we have danced together, you and I, many times. Through the eons and across all the ages have we danced. Across all time and in many places have we played together. You just don’t remember.”
“We have both been All Of It. We have been the Up and the Down of it, the Left and the Right of it. We have been the Here and the There of it, the Now and the Then of it. We have been the male and the female, the good and the bad; we have both been the victim and the villain of it.”
“Thus have we come together, you and I, many times before; each bringing to the other the exact and perfect opportunity to Express and to Experience Who We Really Are. And so,” the Friendly Soul explained further, “I will come into your next lifetime and be the ‘bad one’ this time. I will do something really terrible, and then you can experience yourself as the One Who Forgives.
“But what will you do?” the Little Soul asked, just a little nervously, “that will be so terrible?”
“Oh,” replied the Friendly Soul with a twinkle, “we’ll think of something.”
Then the Friendly Soul seemed to turn serious, and said in a quiet voice, “You are right about one thing, you know.”
“What is that?” the Little Soul wanted to know.
“I will have to slow down my vibration and become very heavy to do this not-so-nice thing. I will have to pretend to be something very unlike myself. And so, I have but one favour to ask of you in return.”
“Oh, anything, anything!” cried the Little Soul, and began to dance and sing, “I get to be forgiving, I get to be forgiving!”
Then the Little Soul saw that the Friendly Soul was remaining very quiet.
“What is it?” the Little Soul asked. “What can I do for you? You are such an angel to be willing to do this for me!”
“Of course this Friendly Soul is an angel!” God interrupted. “Everyone is! Always remember: I have sent you nothing but angels.”
And so the Little Soul wanted more than ever to grant the Friendly Soul’s request. “What can I do for you?” the Little Soul asked again.
“In the moment that I strike you and smite you,” the Friendly Soul replied, “in the moment that I do the worst to you that you could possible imagine ~ in that very moment…”
“Yes?” the Little Soul interrupted, “yes…?””Remember Who I Really Am.”
“Oh, I will!” cried the Little Soul, “I promise! I will always remember you as I see you right here, right now!”
“Good,” said the Friendly Soul, “because, you see, I will have been pretending so hard, I will have forgotten myself. And if you do not remember me as I really am, I may not be able to remember for a very long time. And if I forget Who I Am, you may even forget Who You Are, and we will both be lost. Then we will need another soul to come along and remind us both of Who We Are.”
“No, we won’t!” the Little Soul promised again. “I will remember you! And I will thank you for bringing me this gift ~ the chance to experience myself as Who I Am.
” And so, the agreement was made. And the Little Soul went forth into a new lifetime, excited to be the Light, which was very special, and excited to be that part of special called Forgiveness.
And the Little Soul waited anxiously to be able to experience itself as Forgiveness, and to thank whatever other soul made it possible. And at all the moments in that new lifetime, whenever a new soul appeared on the scene, whether that new soul brought joy or sadness–and especially if it brought sadness–the Little Soul thought of what God had said.
“Always remember,” God had smiled, “I have sent you nothing but angels.”
by Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations With God
CD’s, TShirts, Stickers, and Metal!
For those of you that have bought the CD we would really love it if you would post a picture of you holding your CD or wearing your Kill Ritual TShirt.
If you don’t have your CD or Tshirt, why not?
Here is where you can get yours…..
iTunes
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/karma-machine/id1028623790
Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Karma-Machine-Kill-Ritual/dp/B0130F8AR6
Scarlet Records
https://scarletrecords.bandcamp.com/album/karma-machine
eBAY
http://goo.gl/77Tnum
#karmamachine #killritual #newalbum #scarletrecords
Butterflies and Album Releases
Our album releases tomorrow (Sept. 18th). I’ve got that nervous, anxious feeling in my gut. This is my first release in a couple of years and I never really know what to expect from the fans, friends and family. In a way its like throwing darts at a wall with a blindfold on.
As artists, we pour our hearts out, we get vulnerable, and for that brief moment it gets captured for eternity for all to hear. Some bash the work, not caring about the sweat put into it, some praise it and some just shrug their shoulders and don’t give it a second thought. It’s part of the price we pay. No other job, and I use ‘job’ for a lack of a better term and for this context only, do you get paid less for working so hard. But, it’s the only job that I find rewarding to my soul. So it’s not about the money. Never has been. It’s about release. It’s therapeutic. We, as artists, do what we do because this is our therapy. Whenever I see somebody not following their heart, somebody doing the daily grind because they believe they have to, I thank the universe that I am blessed enough to have gotten out of the matrix. There is no ‘have to’. It’s your own limiting belief telling you that you have to. Anyway, I’m not here to talk to you about limiting beliefs, I’ll save that for another blog. So, I digress… The Album.
Tomorrow, Sept. 18th, the day I’ve been waiting months for will be here. This is a new road for me, uncharted territory, and I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t scared. But the road less travelled is always scary as it is refreshing. Kill Ritual has always been a Thrash Metal band, but with me now in it, it has shaken more than a few branches on the traditional Metal tree, as the reviews have been bi-polar… they don’t know how to classify this just as we don’t either. I’ll leave that up to you to decide. It is done.
I urge you to pick up a copy on either iTunes or Amazon. Watch our video and share it with as many people as you would like to. Request our song Rise on any radio station that you listen to that has a request line. Come see us play if you get a chance to. Our goal is global… we love what we do and we hope that you do as well.
Peace,
David
Getting Butt Hurt
You know… being human is funny sometimes. Take me for example; I can walk around being the Reiki Rocker, being all Zen and shit and still forget that I am actually a Human ‘Be’ing. Why? Why can’t I always be Zen, give advice and be the Spiritual ‘Be’ing that I aspire to be?
I have to constantly remind myself that without the Yin and Yang in this world I would never be able to see my spiritual leaps and bounds. According the Wikipedia – ‘Zen emphasizes rigorous meditation-practice, insight into Buddha-nature, and the personal expression of this insight in daily life, especially for the benefit of others. As such, it deemphasizes mere knowledge of sutras and doctrine and favors direct understanding through zazen and interaction with an accomplished teacher.’ So what does that all mean?
Being Buddha doesn’t come overnight. Like the definition exclaimed, ‘Rigorous meditation-practice’. That means every chance you get, you practice. When you are not practicing it is easy to forget and thus, we fall back into old habits, old programming. Every day I have to remind myself of this.
So why does the headline of this blog say, ‘Getting Butt Hurt’? Because, I let down my guard and I let someone get to me. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does it’s like I’m going back to square one. Everything you’ve learned, all of the meditation, seems to be for naught. And that makes me even spiral MORE backwards because I tell myself, “David! You know better. You know this shit. Geez!”. So what happened?
I got a super shitty review. When somebody says this about you, “He has a rather dull and monotonous voice and on top of that he sings false. Especially in the song “Karma Machine” it is hopeless, his wining voice sometimes makes me want to cry as well.” First, I wanted to crawl under a rock, Second, I wanted to pummel the bastard. It really did a job on me yesterday and I just needed to be alone.
How long did it take me to get over this?
It took less time than you would imagine really. A lot of it is because of my meditation practice. Some would take this to heart, living this negativity day in and day out, for years. For me, and because of my rigorous meditation and Reiki practice, it is very short lived. My problem is that when it’s happening I think it shouldn’t be happening at all.
Silly Human! 🙂
As I stated above… I see a lot of people who do take this kind of thing to heart and it destroys their whole month, or year, or even worse… their life! They recede into a hole, afraid of criticism, wanting to be liked by everybody. Let me tell you something… When you can be ok with being loved or hated then you’re on a good path, because not everybody is going to love you, and on a positive note, not everybody is going to hate you. And the biggest question would be, ‘Why do you need to be loved by everybody?’ What is missing inside of you? Why do you not have faith in who you are? And if you really want me to get all deep on you…. Who was the first person in your life that told you that you ‘can’t‘? Because that is what it all comes down to…
We are usually hurt most by things that someone told us a long time ago, and we relive it when it happens again. Please remember this though… we are Human. So forgive yourself and move on. K?
If you would like to get over some of your deep issues, hit me up for a Reiki Session or two. It works. It’s energy and we are ALL energy.
Namaste,
David
Kill Ritual Update
We’ve been getting quite a few good reviews as the album release approaches. Yay us! Yeah… we’re pretty stoked. We also have our first show with this new lineup at Vamp’d in Las Vegas, October 8th, 2015! We’ve created an event page and if you are in the Las Vegas around that time we’d love to have come along.
We’ll have the new CD ‘Karma Machine‘ on hand as well Tshirts and stickers.
Check out the chicks wearing their ‘It’s hard to be so hot’ T’s!
To get your hands on one of these shirts or our new CD please visit our Merch Store!
We’ve got a lot of cool stuff coming up so make sure you keep an eye out here, facebook or our Kill Ritual Website.
I know this was short and sweet but I’ll have more for you as it comes along.
Peace!
David Reed Watson
