Willie

by Willie Nelson

  When human beings can come to this point, the secrets of the universe are open to them. This is what is taught in Masonry—though the Masons are so secretive that my dad, Ira, a high-degree Mason, never mentioned any of this. This is taught in all the mystical orders that have come down from ancient times and given the great knowledge to mankind. Since the organization of the state and the churches, all religions have tried to squelch certain aspects of this knowledge. The knowledge has been lost century after century and comes back over and over again in different forms.

  Today this knowledge is being given back to mankind in the form of science and psychology. It is impossible for us to get this knowledge except from the heart, from the Christ, from God, from the Masters. And when the human race can understand this and begin to really live by it, then we will begin to get someplace.

  The whole purpose of religious holidays and observances is to convince the human race that the Masters exist and that the great Master of the Masters is the person called the Christ. The Christ, in the person of Jesus, manifested this great truth: that the lame shall be healed, the halt shall be made to walk, the persons who have leprosy can be cured, the persons who are deaf can hear, the persons who do not understand can be given understanding. And everything that needs to be done in order to correct anything whatsoever can be done because of the presence of the Christ in the world today. But the people who want this to happen through them must change their energies and their vibrations and their thought processes, and become one with Him. He cannot force us. We must choose to become one with Him. It has to be on our own initiative. This is the great secret. It is really the key to the kingdom of heaven.

  It is a matter of transformation of energy, like the energy that makes leaves green. What we call photosynthesis is really the transformed energy that gives life to the tree that bears fruit of a wonderful color. The human being is kept going by this energy. We call it grace. We inhale this energy with every breath. It flows through the lungs, though the vascular system, though the 100,000 miles of nerve fibers in your brain, through every part of the body. But there is another way the energy must work in human beings: we must become not just living bodies but living souls. Our consciousness needs to let the energy flow into the mind by means of the soul so that it will do for us what it is doing for that tree. It will give the consciousness illumination. It will give the consciousness knowledge and wisdom when it is needed. It will give the consciousness an open door into the kingdom of heaven. Where there is hate there can be love. Where there is ignorance there can be knowledge. Where there is tremendous ill health and weakness there can be great strength and perfect power on a mental and emotional and physical level.

  I know why I am here on this earth. I used to tell Ray Price that I owed him hundreds of dollars in education because I could just stand around and watch what he’d do, and then I would know to do the opposite. If people would just do the same with me, they would pick up a lot of shit, save a lot of steps. In Yesterday’s Wine I wrote that some people were put here to show how perfect a guy could be, but I was put here to show how imperfect a guy could be.

  We are all here to progress and learn and have a good time and be happy. I think the higher intelligence, God, intends us to love and be loved and work and sustain ourselves. As I’ve gotten older, I play music for my own happiness. I do it to keep busy, keep moving.

  A song I wrote last year sort of sums up my position on many things I’ve been talking about, like vibrations and the Holy Ghost.

  Still is still moving to me

  And I swim like a fish in the sea

  All the time.

  But if that’s what it takes to be free,

  I don’t mind.

  Still is still moving to me.

  It’s hard to explain how I feel.

  It won’t go in words, but I know

  that it’s real.

  I can be moving,

  Or I can be still.

  But still is still moving to me.

  My own guardian angels are always talking inside my head, chattering, arguing, carrying on a narration of what’s going on around me. Could be I’m just imagining voices talking to me. But it doesn’t make them any less real. Creative imagination is the way buildings get built.

  Another name for this is intuition. I listen to my intuition every time. The more you trust your intuition, the more you learn to believe the vibes you pick up are true, the sharper your machine becomes.

  How many times did your old man or old lady come in from someplace, and your intuition instantly told you they had been at the Lucky Motel with a lover? But then you would say, naw, they wouldn’t have done that, they only went to the dentist, everything is okay, you are paranoid. Months or years later you discover your intuition had been right that day. It happens to everybody.

  Intuition is just an attunement of your inner self with the universal mind. The average person ignores these higher vibes if they seem to oppose the distinct and familiar impressions transmitted by the physical sense organs—such as your eyes or ears.

  To develop intuition, the moment you ask yourself a question you must give credit to the answer. You must not permit reasoning or argument to take place and change the answer your intuition gives. As soon as you can abandon your willpower and anxiousness and tune your mind to the inner self, you will gain a wonderful bullshit detector. Batteries included.

  All right, you are thinking, if everything is so simple, how come the world is in so much trouble?

  The answer is we will never stop paying for our sins of the past until we change our thinking about the present and the future.

  Now you may be thinking, okay, but what can I do about it?

  Be idealistic. That’s how to start. Never mind if people call you an idiot. Just because your idealism can’t instantly cure all the ills in the world, don’t be cynical about it. Be idealistic and take a step forward.

  Obviously the three Farm Aids we have done have not cured the problems of the American farmer. Only our government and our major business and social institutions can really do that, and their leaders don’t want to cure the farm problems because they might lose their power or their wealth if they do.

  But with Farm Aid we at least took a step to say that a lot of people care what is going on. Farm Aid got started when all the musicians got together to do the We Are the World benefit for the starving people in Ethiopia. These people were starving because leaders of the state and big business wanted them to starve, and a bunch of musicians couldn’t stop the situation. But we did call the world’s attention to it, and what we did was good if we turned even one powerful head around to the right way of thinking.

  Ray Charles and I were talking at We Are the World, and I said this was great but wouldn’t it be nice if we did something for the people in our own country. Then at the Live Aid benefit, I heard Bob Dylan say part of the money ought to go to farmers. I put two and two together and figured out if we could do Farm Aid as well as we did those others, we would have something.

  James Thompson, the governor of Illinois, heard what I was thinking. He phoned me and said, “What can I do to help?” The governor gave us the University of Illinois football stadium for our concert. I talked to John Cougar Mellencamp, Neil Young, Waylon Jennings. We had a nucleus already. Neil’s agent, Eliot Roberts, called Bob Dylan. I talked to Kris and Alabama and Kenny Rogers. The next thing you know, we had a show going.

  The first Farm Aid mushroomed so quick—quicker than anyone thought it could. We did it in six weeks. So you know it had to be a popular idea. All this time people have been going out of business, getting a raw deal and getting screwed, but the American people were just now finding out about it. When people made $15 and $20 a week, beef was 37¢ a pound. Now it’s still 37¢ a pound and people are making $500 a week. It’s not right. A bushel of corn was $3.50 when a brand-new Chevrolet was $600. Now a bushel of corn is down to about $2 and it costs $3 to grow it.

  The people who
determine the price of the grain are the ones who furnish grain to the rest of the world. To compete with the rest of the world, the prices have to stay so low that our farmers can’t make it. With all of the embargoes we have, we’ve got a lot of grain stacked up and people hungry all over the world and hungry here. The Reagan administration hasn’t done anything to help it, but the trouble began back in the seventies. With all the excesses, surpluses, and embargoes, the farmer’s land value dropped so much that he couldn’t pay his bank loans. The banks are now owned by big corporations and not by the small family bankers and so they just said, sorry, pal, get out. The young aggressive farmer went for the loans because he wanted to enlarge and to build and he was encouraged to do it. Then the ones who encouraged him pulled the rug out from under him. There are a lot of good farmers, proud people used to paying their bills, who can’t make it. These are family farms owned for generations and now these farmers are losing them and feeling terrible about it. A lot of banks are going under too. Anybody who wants to come in and buy cheap land can get it. There used to be six or eight million family farms early in this century. Now there are only 600,000 left and in the next six months, 200,000 will be going out of business.

  I met with a lot of the senators about the farm bill and I tried to focus a lot of attention on it because no matter how much money we raise, it’s not going to make a dent in the farmers’ debt. It’s over $220 billion. If we raised $100 million, it still wouldn’t help for long.

  The farm bill would raise the price of the farmer’s product thirty percent. It would cost the consumers three or four percent. The guy in the middle would pick up the difference, but since he’s the one making all the money, he can afford it. It would also call for a moratorium on foreclosures and for restructuring the loans.

  After three concerts, Farm Aid is a year-round operation that has spent millions helping farmers with legal aid or direct payments or whatever we can do.

  Even though I’m not kidding myself that Farm Aid can bail out all the farmers who are in need, we have proven that a little creative imagination can bring forth dramatic results. Visualization leads to action and accomplishment.

  We create our own misery and unhappiness. Our creative imagination tells us to get on the ball and use the higher mind to create positive conditions. The purpose of suffering is to make us understand we are the ones who cause it. The possibilities live within each of us. “Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus,” is how St. Paul put it.

  The world won’t be changed by treaties or summit meetings. Physical conditions can’t change until our minds change. The sum total of the power of all the thoughts of all the people in the world is what will change physical conditions.

  After Jesus was baptized as the Christ by John the Baptist, Jesus was faced with three temptations. He could use his power to accumulate wealth, or he could use it to make a show-business circus out of his self-importance, or he could become the emperor of Rome. Instead he lived with his great power on the spiritual level, which is why we feel his power in our hearts today. The rest of us probably would have fallen for all three temptations—starting right away with the first one, worshipping the Golden Calf.

  If you have a lot of money, pretty soon you realize it don’t mean anything and that’s a big step forward. But I really think that I instinctively knew that to begin with. When I was young they called me irresponsible because I didn’t know the value of the dollar. Now that I have money and I still don’t know the value of the dollar, they call me something else.

  Money is energy. That’s what true capitalism is all about. Money is energy that should be used for the good. Just think for a moment how much good could be done for our people with the billions our military blows on showing off in places like Grenada or the Persian Gulf. We send five or six destroyers to shoot more than 1,000 high-explosive shells at one Iranian oil platform that is forgotten the next day. For that cost, we could have cared for all the homeless in, say, Seattle for a year. Instead of wasting all this money energy, why can’t we apply it to our real problems.

  There are people who have evolved higher than we are. Believe it or not, there are smarter people in the world than us.

  They are the Masters, and they’re out there walking among us now, going about their business, not interfering. A Master wouldn’t necessarily be a holy man wandering down the road with robes and a cane. He could be the guy on the telephone pole fixing the wires, or the guy driving the cab. There are all sorts of Masters. Potentially we are all Masters. Jesus and Elijah and Moses and you and me—we all come from the same source.

  Meanwhile I am just a troubadour going down the road, learning my lessons in this life so I will know better next time. In the field of love, some say I have loved too many people at the same time. They get confused and don’t understand that love is what I live on.

  WILLIE’S HOROSCOPE

  Reading by Diane Eichenbaum, 1987

  Willie is a Taurus with an Aquarius rising and a Cancer moon. Taurus rules the throat.

  He has Venus the ruler right next to his Sun, so that even enhances the throat, the voice, and it’s in the third house which is the house of communication. He is a born communicator. Taurus is the artist sign. It is a very grounded Earth sign. It has to do with primal instincts. Taurus people like to be safe. They like to be close to Earth and so their heart and soul really have a kind of magnetic quality. The Taurus has to do with Texas and cowboys and all that sort of thing. Parts of Texas are ruled by Taurus so it is apropos that he lives here. I always call Taurus people the princess and the pea because they are too sensitive to their environment, and Taurus men have a problem with that because they don’t want to deal with it. So they will be in a family situation and they will have a lot of anxiety because they are picking up psychically on what is going on around them and they almost have to close their mind to it. They actually need a lot of space and when they learn how to accept that part of their nature as a positive then it becomes a very nurturing quality. But they have to learn how to take care of themselves.

  Willie’s chart starts separating a little bit because he has an Aquarian energy, which is a totally different kind. Aquarius is the eleventh house, Taurus is the second house. Willie is a Taurus in the Gemini house, which is the primitive need to communicate through the mouth. Then we go all the way around to the eleventh house for his rising sun. The ascendant has a lot to do with how he projects himself to the world. Taurus is instinctive. Aquarius is abstract thinking, extremely creative and mental.

  There are several things in Willie’s chart that say that he is very intelligent, learns quickly, has almost a photographic memory. He is a quick study. Aquarius is a sign that is hard to know. They like distance, they like their space, and I would say that Aquarius people sometimes can’t say what they mean. So he had to learn ways to get around that. At this period of his life he would be more comfortable with these two signs and they would be blended more comfortably for him, but in his early life there would have been a conflict. Aquarius is eccentric, nonconforming. Taurus is conformed. Taurus is very family minded, say let’s be like my family, but Aquarius says I can’t be like my family. There is the inner conflict. Aquarius is an energy that has to do with electronics, so there we go with the singing and the guitar and all that.

  He has the planet Saturn in his first house. Saturn has to do with responsibility, it makes him more conservative and more private. Actually, psychologically, it could be somewhat repressed and Saturn in his chart squares his Sun and Venus so this says that no one ever helped him, he felt isolated, and that he had to take care of himself always, even as a boy. That pressure made him creative so in his chart there is a real longing to be integrated with friends and people and a real hunger for that. It has been one of his biggest lessons. Also, he doesn’t want anyone to tell him what to do.

  His moon is in Cancer. The moon rules Cancer. It is very strong in that sign, very intuitive. Cancer is the sign of the mother an
d when a man has strong Cancerian traits, it says he is extremely psychic and sensitive. So you have got the Cancer, sensitive moon, the Taurus on a primitive, emotional, creative person, and the Aquarius ascendant. That is the conflict of the chart. There would be a strong, emotional tie to the mother, and sometimes that is almost too much, to have your moon in Cancer. Also, he has a real love of women. A moon in Cancer loves women, and looks for a strong woman, who has nurturing, motherly qualities, but it could be a woman who is an authority, and he would have conflict with it. Willie has had a lot to work out with the women in his life. He would have to be married more than once. There is a kind of desire for fuel, something has to be happening all the time. Looking at his chart, we see compulsive energy. Like if you get tired, you can’t stop. Now that moon aspect squares his money out so it says that he has conflicts with his money house.

  He would be a person who would attract money. Taurus people do. The planet Jupiter, good luck, has moved into his money house this year. He has got a big enterprise and it takes a lot to keep it going. It is something that he likes, and yet it can run him, and he sometimes doesn’t know how to get out of that. He loves his home and he wants his home, but it is like he wants to have his cake and eat it too. A lot of Taurus people are like that. It is almost an adolescent attitude.

  Willie was born old, he is a very old soul, but his child in his personality is the creative part. It can still run him and get him into trouble. This is something he is learning. How to be adult without being negative, how to combine the adult with the child. He is getting to the age that he is more likely to do that, and actually he will be younger as he gets older.

  The chart shows that he would have a large family. He is two people. He is a down-home family man. And then he has got another side of him that comes like an alter ego, it has made his life exciting, but sometimes with a lot of conflict. He is under an aspect today that says he is going through an emotional change, and it is on his fifty-fourth birthday. The planet Pluto takes 250 years to go around the chart. Consequently it only moves about a third of a person’s chart, so this aspect has never been here before. Pluto is opposing his sign in Venus and when you get Pluto in contact with your personal planet it causes an emotional deepening. In some ways, it could be like a purge because it forces you to deal with your own feelings and because he is such a deep, emotional person with a Taurus energy, this might not be easy. But he is going to have a major emotional change in the next year and a half. This is very positive. It is changing his attitude about himself and certain areas of his life. It is like an opening up spiritually, and psychologically. He is going to go through a very productive, creative period in his music. He writes all the time, so this is a very profound aspect. He is understanding his place in the universe and not trying to control everything, going with the flow. He attracts some very positive work situations again.