One HeART at a Time

The truth is, I’m still baffled by the business of selling clothes. The concept of branding is even more foreign to an educator’s mind—we are in the business of un-branding, I mean, the teacher’s primary function is not to put a stamp on knowledge, but to create new knowledge through the heART-centered practice of building community where inquiry is the focus. I hear branding is about giving people the answer, but my business has always been to ask the questions to which the answers are deeply personal, impossible, and constantly changing.

What I know is this: “to wear is Human.” And to wear our heARTs out, divine. What I know is that having a purpose keeps alive all the music that’s inside us, and without it, we are at least 1/2 likely to turn ourselves into meat sacks made of stars we only notice once in a while. It can be that our only purpose is to hang out with our friends, and that is mine.

The original foundership of Be As You Wear was built on the premise that we would make love our aim, through the practice of professional friendship. Our model is intended as a laboratory that tests the limits of our thinking around sound relationship. Nearly every person who daily chooses life over drugs and booze has this one thing in common. Each admits we cannot do it alone. No way. No how.

The most ancient methods of healing are required in order to prevent or intervene. The research on effective ways to keep ourselves and each other safe and healthy is thorough—and quantifiable. A relationship with nature, opportunities for adventure, encounters with creativity, and purpose-driven community are the common cures for our common maladies. There is no brand for this, there is only a way of asking, a way of being the answer.

Addiction is not the addict’s problem, alone. The substance is the problem for the addict. Addiction is a shared illness, and it affects and is enabled by every relationship that the addict seeks in order to feed the craving, which is the addict’s problem with the substance. Without help, it is all too much, for the afflicted and the infected.

Our service model and our product sourcing has increased in quality and sustainability by 3x in the last 2 years—and all spread by word of mouth and promoted solely through community events focused on fitness and fun(d)raising.

When you purchase a hoodie this Holiday season, you give the gift of eternal friendship as well as the opportunity for a young person to connect with all aspects of “nature” through wilderness leadership adventure and recovery immersions. No strings attached, but the heART strings.

Clothes as Medicine

“In a murderous time, the HeART breaks, and breaks, and lives by breaking. It is necessary to go through dark and deeper dark, and not to turn” -Stanley Kunitz “The Testing Tree”

There’s no argument when it comes to this: we are living through a murderous time, though perhaps no more or less murderous than any other period in human history. The darkness now, is made darker still, however, because despite our deeper knowing of the danger than ever—as compared to the past—we continue to accept a standard of living where the suffering and death of young people by drug and alcohol overdose, gun violence, and emotional neglect has become the expectation rather than the exception.

Regardless of access and affluence, long thought to be the determining factors of a fulfilling life, 130 Americans are dying of opioid overdose every day. Every single day, 310 people in the United States are shot; 100 of them die, and 21 of them are children ages 1-17. Every 26 seconds, another kid drops out of high school. A lot of people like to tell me, “it’s all just…f*cked.” But here’s the thing—these are all statics we can change, and every day, for the past three and half years, Be As You Wear has committed to reversing them, forever.

Our approach has been to source and manufacture a basic outfit (starting with the Hooded Sweatshirt) that is ethically and sustainably made in the US (which means your dollar stays stronger by 40%). Our goals are to provide you basics that remain affordable, one a kind (choose the color your HeART is) and—they are so soft you forget you are wearing clothes at all!

Our mission is to smash the status quo by cultivating a market and building a brand that represents the majesty of the HUMAN HEART rather than profiting from the loss of individual and collective esteem upon which the fashion and pharmaceutical industries have built their empires. Our clothes manifest our mission, and our mission manifests undeniable interruption to the environmental and economic cycles of overdose, violence, and neglect which produce the rising numbers of senseless deaths and wasted lives.

We have learned how to interrupt these cycles systematically and universally, because we are committed to admitting and interrupting these cycles in our own lives, our own families, and our own neighborhoods. Our brand and our daily practice of following our HeARTs rather than the trends, provide the crucial connection to life, love, and the shameless pursuit of adventure. We have walked through fire, survived the darkest darkness, and turned towards the sustaining light that shines for us through all adversity.

Double the impact of your giving—give a gift and give a chance. Shop with solutions in mind. The HeART breaks, and heals by breaking. Wear yours out. Dare to care. The change is in your pocket. ‘Tis the season to un-f*ck it.

Sacred Sacrifices

"Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our greatest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure." -Marianne Willimason

At Be As You Wear, we are here to experience enlightenment, rather than read about it or preach about it (though I do like to talk, so call me, okay?). Our clothes, what they are made of, and where, and by whom matters a whole lot to us, more than anything, in fact. In our experience, what touches the skin, grows the skin we are in--this is not a idea, but a sacred way to dress ourselves in the unconditional LOVE that reflects the Earth's undying championship, whose sacred contract is to give us a place to call Home. The talisman is ATHENA's HeART; the Truth is LOVE. 

There are sacraments one must take in order to live in the full potential of her or his own greatness, and whether or not a person is conscious of it, greatness is within the power of every person to capture it. But it is not a hunt, or a show, or a chase that we must make after. What is sacred within is not something we are tasked with uncovering--what is sacred within us is the most evident aspect of our outward form. Just take a look in the mirror. Look into your own eyes and see there is no limit to your being--the only limit is the thought that your influence on this planet is marked by a single lifetime.

Yoga teaches us this, to look so closely, that we can't fear death because we know that it is nothing scary, but another sacred form of being. Yoga teaches that the breath is the source vehicle for the integration of our fear of living with our fear of dying. What is to fear? "We live, we die, but death not ends it" (Jim Morrison).

There is a prevailing notion, shared among many "spiritual teachers", that "we" are "in charge" of our personal potential, and that enlightenment is a matter of "choice" rather than experience-- here's an example. A lot of people these days like to riff on "Native" or "Animistic" myth structures, one of the most popular being about the two wolves inside us (good and bad) who grow based on what we "feed" them, mind, body and spirit. Now, this is a good story, just like a lot of stories that help us to "see" that we have tremendous power to free ourselves from the fear that we are, somehow, less than totally capable of being conscious of our divine nature. Alive or dead--we vibrate, if only through the way people remember us long after we are gone. Think about it--likely, you have lost someone you love. Stick around to miss them long enough and let life go on--and sure as the sun rises, they come back to us in some form--as a puppy, or a cardinal, or a lover of whom you only thought you'd dreamed.

You see, the Western world and its new age Eastern "spirituality" has conflated itself to manufacture what we call Modern Psychology, and as long as we stay tinkering in the Mind, we "think" we are in "control" of our reality. The root of mental illness begins with believing the thoughts that are generated by the mind and by acting on these thoughts, which are based not on objective reality, but on the evidence we have been given to suggest that we are somehow mistakes that must be corrected.

The first book ever published was the Bible and most of it was scrapped long before it hit the press--but much like the false read on the wolves, "religious" people like to claim that the Bible says we are all fallen people living in a fallen world, and that only a belief in God's one begotten son can "save" us. But here's the thing--it doesn't say that. It says that we are the ones begotten of the "son", who shines on us no matter how dark our imaginings of death may get. The teachings of Bible in totality are a collection of stories to guide us when we get tempted by the belief that we are somehow sinners and not blessings. We are cast out of the Garden of Eden by our own MINDS fallen from HeART into intellect, and we are forced to endure many trials until we find the Revenant Truth, which is that LOVE,  not fear, is the state which leads to understanding, not the other way around. To understand a person is not to love him. To love a person is to understand him, even when we disagree with his point of view.

Just like there are not two wolves inside us. In fact, there are no wolves in there at all and no sins--wolves and sins are ideas we have created to "keep it together" when the natural world and its cycles are--Tada! beyond our comprehension! When we choose to love something without needing it to respond; when we are moved to do something for no reason except the joy it brings or makes, the hope we generate leads us not to receiving the miracles of which the good books speak, but to making these miracles. 

I'll die, and so will you, but after putting myself through a lot of real hell on this earth, thanks to thinking my mind was a problem solver rather than a problem maker, I don't need to rush it. My only shot at loving what I'm made of without believing the hype that we are original sins, is to stick around--just to watch, not to judge.

The natural, the mysterious, the changing, the change, and the changed--we are it. There is no separate goodness from who WE are--what we are made of--stardust, water, wind, and fire. What we mistakenly allow to live inside is a tyrannical voice telling us that there is something "better or worse" about who we are, where we are, who we are with, than who we just are--purely seen through the infinite witness, who is also you and me and the great one WE.

Now, go on. Go wear those eyes out, everywhere! We got you. 

One & Only

When it came time to decide with which organization Be As You Wear would share our massive amounts of sisterly and brotherly love this Valentine's Day, it wasn't because we thought the threat of mass shootings in our schools was nearly done. It was because we'd never seen a threat to our children's safety increase so rapidly, in such a short period of time, despite the efforts of so many parents and teachers and students, Nationwide, to prevent the same crime. On February 14th, while we were pushing PromiseHoods with Hearts emblazoned on the chest and sampling cakes baked with love that can be tasted, Stoneman Douglass gave up 17 more to a country whose amendments have lost their way to "change" us. The worst we imagined, became another community's reality--there must be and is another way to educate, and to bring forth from each other the great good that is within every sentient being.

Thoreau's advice to "beware of any endeavor which requires new clothes," is the ironic, iconic, and guiding principle of Be As You Wear's unique brand of haberdashery, which seeks to usher in (gently) an age of slow and basic fashion that at once honors autonomy, supports anonymity, and encourages affiliation with the deepest and most connected parts of ourselves--the parts that are screaming out to be One with All and also, individual divinations free to travel through multi-dimensional planes. 

On April 20, demonstrations across the Nation are being staged to disrupt the status quo and to demand a higher standard of safety within and beyond our classrooms. Let freedom ring, and may every GoodHood stand up for what it's individual members share and ignore the rest. Be As You Wear is a proud sponsor of these efforts through our annual ONE & ONLY sale!

Starting tomorrow-through March 4th (which is a command) all hoodies are 20% off. Order 3 or more pieces for your Team and take 50% off each additional hoodie with code 5050.  

Give us This Thanks our Daily Bread

How about we keep doing it? Just keep being grateful--and maybe we can be grateful again the next day and all the days of the year. Like any repetitive thought or action, gratitude would build as a habit, and a habit of gratitude might just get us closer to that world where we could all be welcome--just being as we are.

I know it's a plain unreasonable idea to suggest that we, every day, eat when hungry, sleep when tired and full. It's lunatic to suggest that we use social media as an outlet to post irrationally passionate musings on the bliss of thankfulness rather than apocalyptic gloom and doom scenarios of a world fallen into sheer madness. Perhaps the world was fallen long ago, or never was fallen at all--it's only a matter of perspective.

Seeking status in the age of no standards, seeking certainty in a time of lies, seeking connection with the quality of nobility most often found in Nature, by collecting Instagram followers--will require a new world order--really and truly--. Enter, Gratitude, as the industry of the Millennium. Gratitude as the the parent of this current anarchy of forms in every industry from fashion to fitness also called, healthcare. Wouldn't it be--lovely? Gratitude as the guide-star of the age? What if all companies were as grateful for your LIFE as we were for your business? Good thing for us at BAYW--as tough as "retail" is, we envision a world where the things we need are worth the money and the things we don't need never enter the picture. I know, I know--I'm a dreamer. And so are you. 

You already know how our hoodies are like the sweet on your potatoes--the weave of your dream--the good inside you gives itself to LIFE--and life gets extremely loud, sometimes. It's our hope this holiday season, that you choose not to buy a bunch of stuff you don't need for people who love you for your inside bling and not the gifts you bring--and that if you are in the market for a hoodie, you'll choose ours for its protection in all weathers and for its connection to everything beautiful.

How the War Inside Us Dies

Chicksaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Comanche, Tonkawa, Puebla, Navajo, Hopi, Hualapai--the people Native to North America have long held the belief that ownership of the Earth is no Man's. Though there are variations in ways of thinking and celebrating among indigenous cultures, all agree on this thing about Earth as BossLady, and not the other way.

Regardless of Tribal or National differences, the shared belief is (generally) that we humans are temporary stewards of this blessed planet, and that our lives--our very DNA, expresses a covenant with Earth and the physical laws of the Universe, to pass on our Planet's waters, land, and air packed with the resources with which She was passed on to us. There are many elements of worship and devotion within the matrix of cultures whose economic fortitude depends on access to the free-flowing enterprise that "Mother" Nature is, but this One Law underlies all successful economic models, regardless of the variables developed by humans to "sustain" it. 

The One Law: Waste not, Want not. What does this have to do with hoodies? Well, you already know what we do. The hoodie is the global style Icon--I said it, and I'll say it every day for the rest of my life. Every day. All year. Find the one you love the most, and it's the garment that affordably solves inner and outerwear fashion dilemmas (there is a hoodie for every occasion), and Be As You Wear Hoods carry a twin message everywhere you go (we really appreciate twins as a creative phenomenon!): 

1. Affordable does not mean cheap. Expensive does not mean valuable.

2. Every Body has a HeArt & when we keep that in Mind, the War inside us, dies.

Regardless of our differences, this One Love is Same Law. Do every body good--starting with our own body--and nothing in the #goodbodyhood gets undone.

Your Brain On Love

Consider this: all the things we have ever been told about ourselves are lies, beginning with what we have been told about our soft boiled eggs for brains. They are REALLY soft-- and our hard as rock-candy skulls that carry the "us" we think we are, protect the brain from direct trauma to the extent that they can. But here's the thing--most trauma to the brain is indirect and self-perpetuated. The food we eat, the media we consume, the thoughts we think, and the things we buy, all have an effect of either growing or depleting our brains. Dr. Daniel Amen and his colleagues have conducted nearly 100k brain scans and each one tells the individual story of how we "treat" ourselves. When we "treat" ourselves with whole foods and clean water, fresh air, exercise, and healthy, joy-filled relationships, our brains grow! 

It's not crazy or selfish or abnormal to love your body and brain so much that you would never feed it garbage, never let it run on fewer hours of sleep than it needs, or permit yourself to think punishing thoughts about all the bills you haven't paid, or the homework you haven't done, or the phone calls you haven't returned. 

We live in a time when at least 150 people will die today of a drug overdose in a country that claims to love itself. This land is our land, and it loves us. Continuing to feed our brains bad information about how drug use and abuse begins and progresses based on "symptom clusters" rather than on individual symptoms of root causes for emotional illness and addiction is a dangerous business, causing massive deteriorations of family and community, while making hundreds of "treatment centers" very wealthy from keeping clients ignorant of the "treatment" required for any brain to heal from environmental trauma, direct or indirect. 

What does this have to do with hoodies? Well, your nut-strong skull will appreciate the softness and your neighborhood will appreciate the bold-digging genius of a company that leads the head by heart, fearless in its proclamation that we are each 100% Made By Love and deserving of individualized plans to grow collective greatness. 

Love Medicine & The Sax Machine

Only Love is real. Not Tinder love, or temporary romance for getting high-er, but Love as a sound. Love as the radiance. And the radiation.

Love is not an argument or even an action; Love is an energy underlying all things. Academics call it the Universal Mind. Religious people call it God. Indigenous people call it by 10,000 names and call it forth with as many sounds, but the thing we are calling forth, and the thing to which we are infinitely bound, is Love—which creates every living and non-living thing, whether we “like” it, or not. Love is not conscious of itself—of what it likes and dislikes. Love, itself, powers consciousness.

Only love is real. And everyone will die. The only thing we can do in the meantime, is tell the truth, no matter how inconvenient.

Only when I became entirely desperate to actualize my own personal radiance did my whole sense of “self” burn away in the aftermath of a 23 year long chemically induced death-dance—it was a battle I fought on three fronts, physical, spiritual, and psychic, and even after a long period free from chemicals that served my suicidal tendency, what I had been swallowing emotionally, in my relationships with everyone I “loved” began to bleed me from inside out—I have come to believe that there is not a more powerful cocktail than adrenaline fueled by inadequacy, and powered by privilege, and it finally punished me enough to change my diet--what I feed my body and what I feed my mind. Never have I questioned the goodness of my spirit, but I have often acted out unconsciously, called it love--called it all the kinds of love. The violence, the riot, the unquiet rage is all inside me and for each of us, I dare say,—safetyhood begins within, and within the cure for all dis-ease, we find Love's universal connection-- whether we "like" it or not, any thing your heart desires— will. come. to. you—

What's this got to do with hoodies? We put a heart where the head is--and as you already know, "it takes two to make a thing go right."