Blog 11

"What at first is a bitter cup of poison, later becomes something very very beautiful" - Ram Dass on awakening through suffering

It took the sudden death of a dearest friend, to get my attention.

In a few hours from now, it will be a year ago when a being who lived by the name of Jon Bergen, and for over a decade was someone that I spoke with nearly every day and whose friendship transformed my life, was killed in a head on collision car accident while returning home from a weekend trip in Las Vegas.  Over that weekend he was reunited with some of his closest and oldest friends from childhood.  According to all counts, they enjoyed the time of their life together, not knowing it would be the last they would all see of one another in that very way.

I last spoke with Jon a few plus days before he left and never came back.  Our last conversation over the phone took place while I was eating a Fillet Mignon in a desolate steak house in a decrepit Vegas casino before I headed back to Los Angeles, missing what could have been my last sighting of Jon by not even a day.

We spoke so much and had become so ingrained in each others being, that I didn't really feel much separation, nor the "need" to see him in person, although for more than a few years, he had moved to Arizona and enjoyed a beautiful life there as I remained in LA.  We saw each other physically at least once a year, but by that time in our friendship, we had learned our collected mannerisms and expressions so well, that each time we spoke on the phone, it was like I could see him in the room.

During our last conversation (this part of it, over text message), he had tuned his "psychic" radar on me and asked if I had been meditating recently, as I had been so very angry that day (and for a long time now).  In his impeccable sense of humor he wrote "if you are taking anger mgmt advice from me, then you are really in trouble".... he was a former hothead from Queens and in the last few years of his time here, had accomplished an incredible personal transformation and let go of so much anger and rage that he had carried for so much of his life. 

Jon in the last year of his life, Jon had healed.  Ask anyone who had the privilege of knowing him, and they would most probably tell you, whether it had been for a half hour, or 20 years... that he was a remarkable human being and it was a gift to know him.

As Jon had asked me about the status of my dormant mediation practice, I looked up from the dead meat on my plate that I had ravenously been shoving down my throat to escape the saddening isolation, and what I saw was horrifying.

I literally at that very moment saw across the dark room, myself in 10 years from now.  I was looking at what appeared to be a 400 lb man, who had to be seated in a special chair, with a wife who was perhaps a few hundred pounds less, and two young teenagers, one boy, one girl.  The man with great ferociousness grabbed at the dinner rolls and violently jammed them into his mouth.  His wife, mortified, reached for his hand in attempt to slow down the process and he swiftly swatted it away.  The children looked away in a fantasy of wanting to crawl under the table and hide forever.

As I froze in the sight of this horror... I looked down at my plate and my ballooned stomach at a weight of nearly 320 lbs, all alone and then glancing back at my phone which displayed a text from Jon in that instant inquiring if I had been meditating lately... What he was saying to me was , "DUDE, MEDITATE".

What Jon had known, and what anyone would learn if they allowed it, is that I couldn't go on living my life, eating the way I had been eating, treating myself the way I had been treating, if I incorporated conscious awareness into my daily reality.

In a fever, I frantically texted Jon trying to explain that he had no idea how significant his words to me in that moment were and that I couldn't wait to talk with him about it.  He said we would speak Sunday night after he returned from his weekend, as we had already spoken for a few hours that day and had been all talked out.

Even with all that, I hung my head in exhaustion and proceeded to finish my steak, managing not to look up once for the rest of the meal and snuck out the door after paying my check without glancing once more into the vision of my future 400 lb broken self across the table.

Monday morning came around, and I hadn't heard from Jon the night before.  And although I remember thinking that surely he would phone me on his long drive home, he probably was exhausted beyond description from an amazing weekend and that I would soon enough hear from him Monday night. 

Over the weekend myself, I had an amazing time at the Rush concert, where on my way out, in a moment of inspiration, I decided to pick up a copy of Neal Peart's book "Ghost Rider" at the merch booth.  I had been meaning to read this for awhile now as I heard it was an extraordinary tale of healing as told from the legendary drummer of Rush, in how he survived the year after both his daughter and wife had died.  The book had been out for a decade, but something in that moment told me to get it right there and then.

What I didn't know at the time was that this book in the month ahead would be one of the only things I could comprehend.  Some how, my sacred self knew there was thunder on the mountain ahead.

As I was on my way to the gym around noon that Monday morning, I got a call from Alyssa, a friend from AZ that I had introduced Jon to years before, and who had since developed her own very close friendship with him.  I hadn't spoken with Alyssa on the phone for months it seemed, and I instantly knew she was calling about Jon and that the news wasn't good.

"I don't know how to say this, but Jon is dead.  I'm so sorry", said the quivering voice on the line.

Beyond the point of shock, I replied, "Are you sure... I mean are THEY sure?"

As Alyssa recounted the tragedy that had fallen the night before, I collapsed to the couch in the gym member's area as the reality of the moment was received.  Indeed 'they' were sure.  Jon had left his body, perhaps not even an hour and a half away from making it home for dinner tonight with his girlfriend whom he shared a home with.

And while at first I couldn't cry, the days and months ahead, there were too many moments where I had begged and pleaded with God to help me STOP crying.  There were moments of so many tears that my entire face ached as though I had been smacked across with an aluminum bat.

In this moment, as I turn back and take stock of all that has transpired since learning of Jon's passing, I am shook with amazement at the transformation in my own being that has unfolded. 

A year ago, I didn't know how badly things had gotten internally for me.  I was too busy stuffing it down with food and seeking escape at every turn.

The fact remains, at the time of Jon's passing, I was in severe trouble as my soul up to that moment had been compromised in too many ways.  I was heading for the cliff once again and much more terrifying in reflection... I didn't know how to slam the breaks.  It took the death of one of my very favorite people on my trip, to grind my self imposed destruction to a screeching halt.

In the immediate months after Jon left, I fantasized many times about how I could kill myself, as the pain in moments appeared too unbearable to withstand.  I didn't want to fight any more.  I had been literally sick of crying.  There comes that point after the memorial service and after what society would deem to be the period of grieving should be over, and you are still so captured by the abyss and feel truly and terrifying alone, that suicide appeared to be a viable option.

The problem for me at that time was that I couldn't actually figure out a way I could do it and "live with myself".  I sat with the pain that I was in, and remembered the faces of Jon's father, his sisters, his surviving business partner, his girlfriend, his MANY best friends and the few hundred other people that were at the memorial.  I then imagined the faces of my parents and all the people whom I dearly dearly love... and who love me in return.  There was no way that I could reconcile putting them through that grief which I had been agonizing with.

I was alone in a hotel room just after waking not two days later in learning of Jon's death.  I opened my eyes and immediately a waterfall of tears thrust out my eyes and I cried out in heart ache. 

I wasn't just grieving the loss of my friend.  I was mourning all the sadness and pain I kept buried so deep inside for so so many years under all the layers of attempt to escape.  The demons saw an opening and they pounced in that moment... more than I could bear.

It was then that I actually made my way toward the bathroom determined to literally end my life.  I couldn't stand to live a moment longer.

It was in that INSTANT that I felt Jon's presence and his very spirit, as alive as he had EVER been, GRAB me by the shoulder and SLAM me against the wall.  I bellowed in agony as the tears catapulted out of me.  His voice assaulted me in great rage and proclaimed in dense volume "DON'T YOU GET IT????? YOU GET TO LIVE!!!!!!!!!!! I DON'T HAVE A CHOICE. I DIED! BUT YOU GET TO LIVE!"

He screamed, "DON'T YOU THINK I WOULD GIVE ANYTHING TO TRADE PLACES WITH YOU?"

"I CAN'T.  I CAN'T.  I'M DEAD.  BUT YOU GET TO LIVE!  GO OUT AND LIVE YOUR LIFE.  DON'T YOU DARE BE SAD.  YOU GET TO LIVE.  I'M THE ONE WHO IS SAD.  I AM DEAD, BUT YOU GET TO LIVE. GO LIVE!!!!!!!!!!"

As if being dropped, parachuting out of a plane, I landed back in bed. 

My life had just been saved.  Although it was more than once in the months ahead that I had fantasized about finding a way that I could end it all, it had never been real as it had in that moment, and eventually all such thoughts fell away.

Like the Beatles sang, and whom I love to remind myself they said, "I'll Get By With A Little Help From My Friends".

More than he had ever been in his life, Jon during that morning had been there for me when it mattered most.

I was visited by Jon's spirit once more... months later.  This time, his being-ness was a total peace and had come to let me know that everything had worked out perfect.  At first he admitted, he was very confused and freaked out when he died.  It didn't make any sense to him how something like that could have happened to him.  But he really wanted me to know that he learned that it was all perfect.  It didn't have to make any sense to me or anyone else, but to trust him, it was perfect.  His last words in this moment were, "Dude, I got your back".

A wave of the most beautiful peace then showered me and remained for the majority of the time I thought of Jon for many months up until his Birthday in June, where I've shared the sadness that I felt in a previous post.  It was intense and it came out of the blue.  It lasted a few days until the U2 concert (Jon's all time favorite band), where I felt his embrace as Bono and the Edge played a special acoustic version of "Stuck In A Moment"... a song that was significant between Jon and I. 

Peace chose to return to me once again, and I welcomed its Grace.

It was back in January, shortly after receiving the last vision from Jon where I was able to make a huge breakthrough in beginning to realign with my health by giving up Gluten.  I received so much more energy and it was an important first step in what would transpire later in the year.

More months later when the greatest actualization of transformation had occurred in April, where during tea with Janabai, she transmitted the vibration of AHIMSA (non violence) which lept into my heart where I could receive its translation.  And after 25 yrs eating the way I had been, I instantly gave up the intake of meat and fish and within a month, for the first time in my entire life, gave up the intake of all animal products including Whey Protein and Milk.

Even during this awakening, so much of my awareness, and ego, was directed toward the "goal" of seeing those numbers on the scale go down.  I thought I would design my own "Biggest Loser" competition.  Clearly I see today, how off base I was in this mindset.  And although I signed on for "total transformation", I really had no idea what I would be getting into.  The agony AND the ecstasy that occurs when one truly makes lasting change in one's life.

When it is REAL.

Yes, by the time Bhakti Fest rolls around next month, I will probably be somewhere between 80 and 100 lbs down from where I was a year ago.... I have been prohibited from weighing myself from my guide Michael Baker, in the emotional healing work that I am doing each week (and really each day) on myself.

In June and July, I had been obsessing with the scale and it was destroying my being.  And very interesting, I wasn't losing much weight, although I've I had appeared to be staying on my eating program (although I had exercised A LOT less than when I first started, which should have been a clue to me right there).

But the scale and the impending "weigh in" turned to the forefront of my awareness.  I had lost the vision temporarily that this is about changing my life.  Making a severe course correction.  That it wasn't just my stomach on the line... it was my SOUL, which for so many years, I had been massacring.

When I was 11 and 12 yrs old, my father in an attempt to help what he perceived to be an escalating problem with my weight, would force me to have weekly weigh ins on Sunday.  He would stand behind me with a clipboard as I was made to what truly felt to be "walk the plank".  The terror inside of me, lie in that I had been out the night before with my friends, probably at McDonald's where I tried to eat and fit in like what I perceived to be what "normal" kids did... knowing full well that the next day I would be put on the scale.

My insides ripped out in silent excruciation in the mornings counting the minutes leading up to the moment I had to get on the scale.

If I were to gain any weight, the consequence per my father was that I would be punished resulting in being grounded and not being able to play with my friends, and feeling even further isolation.

These painful memories that I carried deep in my psyche with great shame have stuck with me.  And although I have long since reconciled with my father and we currently enjoy a loving relationship, there was severe damage internally that was done that still rears its head now and again in the form of self sabotage and deception.

I'm working with it and healing.

In one of my most recent breathwork sessions with Michael Baker, he said about this process of healing the body, heart, soul and spirit that I have undergone on this journey, "Shiva, you have to allow us to love you through all that you are unable to love about yourself".

I don't have much practice loving myself.  I've treated myself the way I would never treat another human being.  I'm learning now to do things different.  I am allowing the love into my heart.  With each step up the mountain, I learn to be better than I used to be.  Sometimes, it ain't much at all, but all of a sudden the change is quite remarkable when I gaze at it.

This journey of healing though AHIMSA, ending the war within myself, changing my intake of food to include the healing energy of Rawvolution's living plant based nourishment and moving my body once again.... it feels great to look in the mirror and see the difference.  It feels great when my pants that were once too tight have now fallen down.  But it has been revealed to me.... only recently, that the greatest transformation that is occurring is that of the spirit.

And while my ego agonizes over not having met the initial goals of weight release, my former measurement of what success is and looks like, during the months of June and July, even more interesting is that the weight now is FLYING off here in August.

Michael gets to say "I toldya so" one more time. : )

Once again, giving my trust to Janabai, my dear friend and co-founder of Euphoria Loves Rawvolution, as she intuitively knew that it was time for me to do a deep deep cleanse.  So for this past month, further than I ever have, I am cleansing and detoxifying my liver, kidneys, and stomach.  It is a very intensive process that includes not eating any solid food and I won't reveal too much more information, other than what you could imagine (two words... Coffee Enema - something I thought I would NEVER do). 

I will say, the rewards have been incredible as it is VERY doable and I truly feel my system "rebooting" itself through this healing process which is still VERY much going on.

I am learning to forgive myself.

I am learning new healthy paths of self expression and redefinitions of COMPASSION.

I feel a lightness of being more so than I have ever received.  There are some mornings when I awake and look in the mirror and it looks like I've shed it all and I can for a moment see a light at the end of the road, which was previously just imagined through my faith.

Through compassion in action, I am beginning to SEE.

Please know through out this all, that I love you so much.  As you read this and as we share in our experience of growth together, I feel your heart and I know that it is a privilege to receive your blessings... these are blessings that just by our being-ness, we give to each other and inspire us to live another day through it all...to get a little further up the mountain in each step we take.

I am learning to allow more and more light into my heart. 

A year can change a lot.  More than words could ever tell.

And although I would never "prescribe" it for anyone, I can look you in the eye and say I am grateful for my suffering.  It remains one of my greatest teachers.  I am learning.

See you soon on the path.

Yours in heart,

Shiva

Ps - Rawvolution NYC has finally opened in the East Village.  They also deliver now.  Please tell your friends, family and loved ones.  The fact is Rawvolution changes lives and saves lives.  I am a lucky recipient of their grace.  Their address is 504 e. 12th st (store west), NY NY 212-473-3990

pps - a live version of U2 singing "KITE", a song Bono wrote in response to the death of his Father.  Jon and I cherished this and it is one of U2's most spiritual songs.  I think of Jon every time I hear it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1i2gw4Sk88

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"You can want what you want, but you are only going to GET what you are 'vibrationally' committed to" - Rev. Michael Beckwith

I arrived broken.

As I walked up the stairs to my session with Healer, Michael Baker... all that came to mind was how broken I felt and how relieved I was to be there at his cave of healing.

I got on the table and we stared at each other in pure soul gaze.  More than a few minutes of timeless silence had passed before he spoke "It hurts doesn't it?"

The dam of tears I had been holding back collapsed as I replied "It's hurt for a long time".

The river continued to flow as Michael invited me to breathe.  I surrendered to the table and let gravity have me.  Michael placed the healing stones in my hand and began to guide me through the breath... reminding me how to breathe again.

Lately, I've been dying on the table.  In the midst of the breathwork and the deep trans-formative healing that is being facilitated during these sessions, I experience the total collapse of my concept of self and like the Dylan song says "I Shall Be Released"... I am transported out of my body into another plane of awareness.  It is in these moments I feel absolute liberation.  Indeed, "I" am dying.

With each breath, I am letting go.

What appears to me in these sessions with Michael that is actually dying is my concept of my "old self" or "ego consciousness".  The predicament as I've heard Wayne Dyer describe it, is that we are born with Egos that we cannot "amputate".  In other words, we can't have an "ego-ectomy" and remove our ego 100% all together.  What we can do, is become more skillful in learning how to "tame" our ego and perhaps not allow it to be such a destructive presence in our lives, if indeed it has been.

I recall that when I was in my 20's and from a business perspective "at the top of game", being a music executive VP, making the big $, my ego ran the show and I had ballooned to a peak weight of nearly 350 lbs, full on succumbed to an addiction to food.

Thinking back on it, I am so grateful to be alive today, as I remember many many nights of briefly nodding off at the wheel after coming home late night from seeing a band, sleep deprived and full of toxic food (prob a burger/fries/doritos/macaroni salad or the like). At least a dozen times during that period I had nearly run into the divider on the 10 freeway after the 405 crossing while attempting to exit on the Overland exit in a nod off.

I didn't sleep much those days as my weight had directly caused a near fatal case of sleep apnea that had gone undiagnosed at that time, meaning I had been suffocating during my sleep many many times per hour.

What occurred in the subsequent year after hitting that bottom was that I successfully sought treatment through a 12 step program that addressed food addiction.  Following, I proceeded to take off 130+ pounds over a two year period via a version of the "Atkins Diet" of eating no bread, rice, or pasta but heavily eating lean animal meat/protein and veggies plus exercise.

A part of me would love to share with you that I had kept it off.  However, we wouldn't be talking now if I had.  What transpired was I wound up moving temporarily from Los Angeles to Phoenix and I had stopped doing what I had been doing, so I stopped getting what I had been getting.

I allowed my program to fall apart and then weight gradually poured back on over the next few dozen months.  Years later I had been less than 20 lbs away from the peak of my rock bottom... and even more confused as to how it all had happened.

Some of what I have been facing on this current time of my journey is the awakening that so much of the stuff that I have been carrying around has been activated since I was a child... and I'm still carrying it til I allow it to fall away.

The falling away of "all that which does not serve me", is a significant part of my healing journey and so much of that "falling away" is being furthered in the breathwork facilitation sessions that I am undergoing with Michael as my guide.  Sometimes it can be terrifying to realize that "I" died and coming back to life with a lighter and new perspective has many times been quite disorienting, and yet I know this component of the process has been essential.

The "realness of change".

Awakening to the understanding and seeing the "light" on the specifics has been fascinating.  I've been able to hear and receive wisdom that at another time wouldn't have made real sense at all. 

When I was sharing with my closest friend/"twin bro" Chris Morro about my French Fry addiction, he immediately noted that it was a part of an attachment to a time during my childhood.  He asked me to remember when it was that I "fell in love with Fries".  The memory came rushing back to me of being somewhere between the age of 11 and 13 yrs old, and being out with my friends at the Pleasantville Diner in upstate Westchester NY, having snuck out late on a Friday night.  At the time, being out alone at 2am on Friday night when your parents didn't know, with your best buddies at the time, there was a feeling of connection with your friends, a bond... it was us against the world and yet there was total safety in numbers.  Like in the movie "Stand By Me".  I related to that movie A LOT.

I remember as my friends would sneak out for a smoke during the heart of the night on the Diner street corner in the New York suburbs, I would be drowning my thick steak fries in Heinz Ketchup.  Feeling high as the moon and that all is well with the world.

25 years later, I still get that "hit" when I eat French Fries (they gotta be extra thick though, ala Jerry's Deli and Fatburger style, for those of us who live in LA).  Same thing with Doritos and Macaroni Salad.  An awareness that came up during my study this year of NLP with Dr. Wyatt and Marilyne Woodsmall, was that my "attachment" and what often morphed into compulsion with the Dorito/Macaroni Salad fetish of mine, was that it had been all about my wanting to become closer with my father during my childhood years.  The link was crystal clear as I had a vision in that moment during the processes we were learning, of watching my father eat those things during that time.  Further in the exercise I had memories of the two of us later being together on road trips and eating both Doritos and Mac Salad together (I had been very young at the time probably somewhere between the ages of 6 and 10 yrs old).

This year I said goodbye to French Fries, Doritos and Macaroni Salad.  They have no place next to me on my journey ahead up the mountain.

It was the same with a huge part of my relapse when I had moved back to LA from Phoenix, I had developed a habit of stopping by every day at the McDonald's drive through for $1 cheeseburgers.  This was in 2003.  It was a part of me deep down feeling the safety in reliving those memories of being with my friends as a young teenager and even child, eating those "Happy Meals" and not feeling so isolated and alone.

When I see myself pulling up to the drive-through at the age of 30, scoring two cheeseburgers for $2, the "innocence" of my childhood had passed lifetimes ago, and I had cruised the fastfood windows like a sex addict stalks hookers on a desolate street corner.

I was massacring my soul.  Painful and heart shattering memories...

So often, the witness or awareness of these insights goes a long way in the dissolving of these habit patterns or aspects of compulsion.

I've learned that we don't give these things up... they fall away after we set and have allowed the conditions to take care of the healing.  With consciousness, we can set it up, and then allow for the miracle to "work itself".

This is the journey I have undergone and am still so very much in the midst of.  A great marathon.  I am learning to be an "endurance runner".

The rewards have been incredible (over 50 lbs gone since September and counting), yet the challenges have been agonizing.

For those who have been in contact with me and that I've seen over the past two months, know all too well that I've been emotionally split.  Hi HIGHS and low LOWS.... some moments 100% certain, and many moments not sure of anything.

Yet what has been so wonderfully mind blowing for me to observe is that not once since I began the path of giving up the intake of meat/fish/animal products and instead embracing a plant based plan of eating, is that I have not once at all desired to eat the "meat".  This has been so fascinating for me to see and gives me further inspiration to continue on in that this "shift" and awakening has not at all been a "fad" or a fleeting diet frenzy.

However, a LOT of "stuff" has come up the further I heal.

And Michael courageously reminds me that indeed I am "healing".

Sometimes a lot of what rises to the surface is not "ahimsa" (non-violence).  It was just last week that I reconciled a friendship with one of my oldest friends who I had not spoken with since last September during my most recent rock bottom at that time.  We had a beautiful conversation and mended our differences in return to loving friendship.  It was then later that very evening when I lashed out in rage to another friend, someone that I love dearly, over an incident/mistake that I had perceived them to make.  I blew it way out of line and was wrong to react in the way that I did.

For the following few days, I sat in rage-full poison that I manufactured in my vibration and it completely permeated my system.  It felt absolutely awful and pulverized my being.

I apologized a few days later and the peace was once again made, but I haven't felt "normal" on the inside since.  On my journey there has been so much self hatred that comes up and that falls away... self judgements about how did I let myself get so far out of alignment.  Why didn't I stop myself from letting my stomach grow so gigantic and on and on and on.  It's exhausting.

I don't know the "why".  And I'm too tired now to care or to keep blaming myself.  I just want out of the misery.  And really the only thing I can do is to keep moving forward.  Keep picking up my food from Rawvolution and eating each nourishing bite as an act of self love and self healing.  Learning compassion for myself by moving my body and going to the gym, drinking more water and being a kinder being than I was yesterday.

There is a long way to go and so much healing left on the journey home.

I am learning.

I've come to understand the problem and the challenge to be so much further and significant than I originally realized.  That's ok.  Most of the time ; )

It's so easy to have compassion for others, but compassion for ourselves is a whole new layer of practice.  I feel fortunate to be a humble student now.

Michael has been guiding me to say "no" to things I have been reluctant to previously... coffee, media of the lower conscious vibe, going out night after night as I had been used to.  Instead he has been encouraging me to pull back inward and "stay home" so I can actually heal.

Allow for the treatment that my condition and predicament deserves.  Heal now, so I don't have to later on years from now when perhaps I won't have the option... a time in the future where it may be too late.  The time to heal is now.

I am grateful for his courage in helping me.  I am just beginning to "get it".  One foot in front of the other up the mountain.

In this new layer of "sobriety" around my experience of eating, I feel tremendous joy and intense sadness and "alone-ness".

The best news is that I am actually "feeling".  In each step forward I am not cutting myself off from the experience and escaping into the realm of the abyss.  I world I once knew all too well.

I'm an adult now and I can't afford to go back to the childhood "candyland" of Fries, Doritos, and Macaroni Salad of my past.

I forgive myself in this very moment for having gone there and I love myself enough today to allow myself to leave it all behind.

There's a light up ahead.  I can see it in the distance.  With my feet planted on the ground, I look forward....

I am staying the course.  I absolutely know, even if it requires a daily reminder, Faith WILL Be Rewarded.

Transmitting all the love in my heart to the depth of your being, thank you for holding my hand.

Yours in gratitude,

Shiva

ps - In loving appreciation for Michael Baker, I invite you to contact him directly and utilize his gift as a precious resource for healing transformation to you may wish you to move forward with.  I couldn't have made it this far without his guidance and loving support: Please contact Michael directly at 310-592-7210 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .  His website is www.thebreathcenter.com -

pps - Rawvolution NYC is opening soon in the East Village! I look forward to sharing more wonderful news about this VERY soon.

and further, here is the most exquisite cover of angel Jeff Buckley singing Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Released" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOJ8M6LHQls