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Published on: 5/26/1999
Last Visited: 2/17/2001
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Biography of Michael Malone
Michael Malone was born in a hospital overlooking St Joseph's Bay Florida on the 22nd day of April 1965.He was raised in the same small town and at the nearby beaches of the Gulf of Mexico.Michael has always been everything but average.He has always excelled in some ways, and has underachieved in others.This alone is what can be said to be normal about him, he's human.As an emotionally over sensetive child Michael retreated from the harshness of humanity, and became powerfully allied with nature both physical, and multidimensional.Michael did however lose faith in the goodnes of humanity very early, and became more and more damaged and jaded throughout his youth.Michael attended small town schools, and played trombone in the marching, symphonic and stage bands through Jr. and Sr. high school.He was deeply inspired by the Gulf of Mexico, and was a regular beach bum.He never got excited about competition, but has been an avid surfer from the age of 17 when he discovered the sport, and still makes it to the coast for the occasional hurricane surf.
As he grew Michael became an avid reader of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and other surreal weavers of science fiction and fantasy.When questioned about his continued advocacy of the importance of seemingly fictional and sometimes mythological literature he answers, There are works of literature which although written as fiction, have a resonance with what is true that transcends our conditioned perception of the world and can inform us of a larger reality.Everything exists, Focus determines what has significance for any given being.Sometimes it is important to suspend the analysis of the rational mind as to the historical validity of a given event, and ask does this have purpose in truth?'.
Michael was not inspired by his studies in high school, and after being graduated in 1983 attended a community college in Panama City Fl. This was a confused time for the youth for he was without vision and purpose for his life.He did have a desire for comfort and position and enrolled in business classes with the plan of retiring as a millionaire by the time he was 30.Before the first test in the Intro. to business class, he dropped it with an irresistible aversion to business for business sake.The youth had nothing to believe in.He enrolled instead in Psychology 101 with the purpose of unravelling the mystery of his dispassion for the system.He did find passion for the study of the human psyche, but still no reason for suffering through all the indignities of living.He was graduated with an AA in 1986, and made plans to attend at his father's insistence The University of Florida in Gainesville.
This was the young man's first experience of a broader culture.It was as if someone had dumped him from his fitful slumber into a freezing cold ocean.In 1987 Michael Malone was reborn.The awakening could be attributed to any combination of many different factors, but the young cynical skeptic suddenly broke his shell, and opened his eyes to the light of day, and said, maybe there is something more. The process was and is long and hard but the something more which Michael awakened to was an entirely different way of being in the world.It is the way of the mindful, of the attentive, of the perennial student, the one who is ever in wonderment at the unfoldment of reality, and the one with responsibility to act.He went through a time of intense study, and change.He was introduced to the concepts of meditation, and the non-duality of consciousness.He became a vegetarian at first quite unwittingly as his body would no longer digest red meat, then poultry.He was keeping pace with his undergraduate work in psychology, with very little effort.He was getting through school on intuition and devoting most of his energy to the subjects of spiritual nutrition, subltle energetics, and cosmology.By the time he left the University in 1989, he had consciously opened a channel for universal energy and was irrevocably awake.
Still this was incomplete.He was not whole by any means, he was simply now awake and aware that society was placing it's hopes and dreams, it's youth and future on a dead end path of exploitative mechanistic thinking.His feet were on the path of consciousness, but he had no idea what to do about it.In 1989 he moved to Bradenton, and soon to a co-housing situation at Desoto Lakes Organic Produce farm in Sarasota Fl. Michael found insulation from the mainstream of humanity and an incubator for his consciousness by living and working in the natural foods industry.He soon became the produce manager for The Granary on Main St. In Sarasota.Michael found a purpose in being an advocate/educator for the organic foods movement.These were trying times however, at one point he was on one of his tirades to a close friend about some environmental issue no doubt when she vehemently retorted.Don't come to me with what's wrong unless you at least have a suggestion for what I can do about it. This resonated with the young man's mind, and he set out to find solutions.He worked for the Granary until 1991, and then felt the need to make a change.The corporate politics of the organization did not go unchallenged but his protestations went unheeded, and Michael quit his job.
His next move was to Raleigh NC where he planned to market his artistic natural stone jewelry, and to stay away from The organic produce business because his passion for the issues drove him to unhealthy work schedules.A close friend now lived in Raleigh, and had invited him to check it out.With some trepidation, after the jewelry market did not make ends meet for Michael he accepted a position as the produce manager of Noah's (natural foods) Co-Op.Once again his natural advocacy prevailed, and he helped the 1500 member organization to double their organic produce sales.Many of his customers were making a weekly trip from Wilmington NC 120 miles away, and reporting the almost total unavailability of organic produce in that area.Michael saw in this the oppurtunity to make a difference for that city of 60, 000 people, and to move back to the surf which he had now been away from since 1986.
In February 1992 Michael Malone founded The Organic Produce Resolve of Wilmington NC, and set out to expand the already substantial demand for organically grown produce.Over the next 2 years the business became well rooted in the community, and the organic produce resolve had been realized.At this point the advocate turned the business over to the natual foods retailers, and began to pursue his healing artwork again.The Organic Produce Resolve had proved to be quite a gift, but something was still missing.Michael was called back to a place he had visited in 1991, his first summer in NC, the Appalachian mountains.
There are things in life which are undeniably guided, this is one such event which precipitated an awakening of the primal connection with nature for Michael Malone.It began at the Franklin Gem and Mineral show in July, 92.Michael, and friend Hope were standing at a table selecting stones, when a woman walked up saying, I am supposed to talk to you.I don't know why... Turns out that Donna introduced them to a family who had just moved to a 390 acre organic farm in Madison county NC.This farm turned out to be Michael's home for five years beginning in April, 93.The Earth opened up and swallowed him whole.More than to any teacher, or spiritual master which has crossed my path I am indebted to the land at Burdock Holler, she opened up and took me in, she guided me down mossy paths into hidden grottos where my soul sat waiting to nourish the most basic to the most exalted of my needs as a human being. In the summer of 1998, Michael co-founded The Students of the Arts of Living an organization dedicated to the celebration of the wild mind of nature and humanity as ONE.Michael's experience of the community officially known as K&K Farm was an intensive course in the psychology of intentional community.There he was befriended by the visionary founder of K&K, Kirri Tamm Adam who never lost her faith in the goodness of humanity.She passed from this world in 1996 leaving many who miss her physical presence, but rejoice in her spirit.The farm was sold in Dec.1998.The community was required to leave by the new owners.May Burdock Holler bless them with her wisdom and patience.
Michael Malone now resides in West Asheville NC. in a Micro-community of dedicated visionaries focused on the reformation of our individual and institutional structures.He has turned his creative talents towards publishing in the form of www design and printing.He owns and operates Wildewood Printhause which s
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