Moving On

So this will be my last post here. I feel that I may lose readers, but that is okay. I will gain others, plus those who are friends and want to support me and share in the conversations at hand, will follow no matter how many kinks in the road. Although I am loathe to leave my nice pretty 6-months of archives behind...the case however, becomes: if you want to continue reading about my various (mis) adventures, insights, stories, and life in general, you will have to adjust your channels. You will from here on find me at Somatique, and I'll tell you why... It's very simple. I feel that I have, here been stumbling for a place to find a firm footing. A means to finding my way out and not just around the corner in yet another hall of mirrors to falsely recognize myself in. Oh, there I Am! No, no. Hmmm. Ah! There I am, that for sure is me! I felt like I needed a fresh start. So Invitations all around. I look forward to seeing you on the other side of the looking glass.

The Last Bite

I had reservations about posting this because most of the niche I have carved out here is associated with Raw Food nutrition. And I was frightened (big surprise) about how I would appear if I actually put this out there… but I am always afraid of actually saying what it is that I am experiencing for fear of judgment, and this needs to stop, so my apologies if this dismantles anyone’s idea about me but the following is pure and sincere, and so must out. And thus...

I have become very annoyed by seeing that every cookbook on health begins with Hippocrates. “Let Food Be thy Medicine and Medicine, Thy Food…” It always appears somewhere, usually in the first twenty pages, if it wasn’t the opening quote. This concept attributed to Hippocrates, was what drew me into food and nutrition long before I knew who spoke the words. This goes to show how true and natural concepts become pervasive, especially when one is looking for it. And I know that this is a truth. That food heals. But so do our thoughts… and it has gotten to the point that no matter what I put into my mouth, I am in judgment about it. I rationalize, polarize, and vacillate into extremes out of the need to control something! Let me have control over one tiny part of something… let me get out of this fear that unravels and twitters behind every thought, every action: nothing is sincere anymore, or at least, sometimes, it feels this way.

Food has become so many things for so many people. It is not merely what provides sustenance, for many it is comfort, love, acceptance, a drug, an obsession, another means of control, another way to abstain from any sense of being, a numbing shot against pain or grief, pornographic gastronomy.

There it was, on the top of page 30 in Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions: my ultimate issue.

“The desire to abstain from animal products, found so often in those of a spiritual nature, may reflect a longing to return to a former, more perfect state of consciousness that was ours before our souls took embodiment in a physical material plane […].”

I find myself in this struggle of what I relate to in my spiritual sense and my fear and buffering against the joy and the sorrow of the physical body. The compassion for all living creatures, the love in their eyes and innocence, mixed with my craving for animal protein. Most of the time, meat tastes dead to me. But then I can remember a bacon-wrapped date that dissolved in my mouth with such exquisite sweetness, such tender, melt in your mouth, salty, crispy sublimity, it had a density which made the tongue giggle all on its own. And I don't even like pork. But there was such attention put into that meal, that night, in Marin County, under palm trees and lanterns, sharing wine amongst friends.

It’s not that I think raw food is not of benefit to my body, but I have developed so many food-rules for myself, that I feel like I am just using raw as one more way to control what goes in my mouth. I have a very bizarre eating disorder. I’m not bulimic, although I have made myself throw up …more in the last 2 years than ever in my adolescence. But I definitely have a binge-purge pattern going on, especially when I look at my food journal. I didn’t think I starved myself… but some days, I eat hardly anything at all… and wonder why I am so maniacally famished into downing too much pasta or potatoes the next: my body is screaming for quick glucose. I am realizing that I have royally screwed up my relationship with my body. I stopped seeing it as sacred: it was the enemy.

Whenever it comes to food, thoughts about said bacon-wrapped bounty are always essential (in what way, who knows?) … But I think it is also what thoughts and intentions I use in preparation. One of spiritual my teachers, a small Indian man with a gravelly voice would stand over his pot of rice or sautéing ginger garlic onions, and say: “You are so beautiful. You are the most wonderful onions. Look at you, look at how beautiful you are.” The tomatoes blushed in response. The same man also said that whenever you truly enjoy something… not out of craving-aversion-lust-compulsion: but genuinely enjoy – it all turns to soma. And no matter how healthy something else is, if your body is in judgment or in fear-hate-compulsion about it, it becomes ama … undigested matter = dis-ease.

Somewhere between nineteen and twenty-six years old, I had developed a love-hate relationship with food. A need to stuff myself with the most sublime things, coupled at other moments with anything that would do to make me numb, send me into a carbohydrate induced coma, just anything to not feel. Now, to be clear, this was not fast food or ice cream. I was a health foodie, all-organic everything. Whole grain, (spelt, buckwheat, barley, brown rice, quinoa) what’s-it and every manner of vegetable. I had an adventurous palate, within reason (no chicken feet stew or sweetbreads has made it past my lips, and I’m pretty sure that won’t change). But then again, organic pasta was always enough to send me down that dark spiral, where the fog rolls in on the east coast of consciousness and nothing but the blur and heft of fullness can be felt. Here, I didn’t have to think about school or sex or the unfairness I always associated with be female, I could just disconnect from any sub-sensual method of being alive and slip away into a useless stupor; a drug just as powerful as anything you could inject into the bloodstream, by needle, and almost as fast. I was addicted to not feeling. But like any addiction, it never really makes you feel good for very long, and when the fog cleared, the sun always rises the next morning and the pain (which I had pushed so deeply into my sinews, my feminine parts, places I knew that at least, I would never look, into cavernous brokenhearted hotels, muscles, curvaceous fatty deposits that I had never had before) was still there. I am a self-admitted food snob Spiritual egoist, South beach (tried it), Zone (tried it), Macrobiotics (tried it), Ayuveda, Vegetarian, Vegan(tried it), Raw food(tried it): glutton(tired of it). And am so sick of all the labels.

Someone recently asked me, have I ever tried just letting my body have whatever it actually wants? No judgments no second-guessing and after really thinking about it… no I haven’t. I have never actually let my body, not my neuroses, pre-programmed food-abridged rule induced conceptualized intellectualized rationalization, make a single decision in my life. I am beginning to suspect (har) that my issues with food will not go away with being thin or healthy, because they are 100% of the mind.

M has been on this wonderful kick of picking “intention” cards for the week – one of these for me was : I Love My Body.

…maybe I should just try that for awhile. And talking to my mom, she says: wow. I think you think too much. And she says, whenever I start to think too much, I should just breathe. Whenever you see yourself spiral into old thoughts, trying to find someplace in the head where its safe... just breathe. Ok. I will. I'll breathe. Love and Breathe.

Fastfood Footprint

This is kind of a shocker, well, for the uninformed fast-food nation, at least. But in the debate on global climate change, this especially concerns those from the side who choose to keep eye and ears closed, who believe that SUV's aren't capable of damaging the climate as much as scientists attest ... well they're partly right. The SUV consumer obsession in America just took a backseat to Wendy's, MickeyD's and the Whopper, watch how in Jamais Cascio's Six Degrees: The Carbon Footprint of a Hamburger.

How to Discover If You're a Girl

If you haven't had the introduction -- let me do so now: *ahem, everyone, meet Margaux of Size Ate:

A clip to inspire:


Some Background:

Changes, Changes

You might have noticed that I have changed the structure and style (and color) here on this episode of "this old blog" -- And it was purely out of a desire to make things appear more streamlined and clean. I am a colorful chamaelon, and needed to shed a skin, time to make way for new. I guess the little pre-spring heatwave has gotten into the blood already. And yet, this new look still feels like it retains the energy of the older colors and intentions, just quieter. And I feel like I need that right now. But there are lots of new things, so look around. One thing in particular: that I'm very proud to say that I am now an affiliate of Angela Stokes' Raw Reform and I so happy to be helpful to her and Mr. Monarch in any way. And now, for your daily (er.. weekly, uhm, monthly? Aha: whenever-I-feel-like-it) Thinking Man (or Woman)'s Excerpt.

The following is an excerpt from Gnosis & the Law:

"When the word personality is used by the Masters, it does not mean the I AM Presence but the soul as it was developed by man in his many re-embodiments and is manifested now in its totality as his personality. For a better understanding of this, let's bear in mind that man in each and every re-embodiment, creates for himself a personality--the conscience--which is the result of all the experience of that particular life. The soul is the totality of the conscience of all re-embodiments on this planet, since the The Fall of Man. This soul however, should not be confused with the I AM, which is man's real soul, and which was given to him at his creation, when he went through the Seven Spheres, but which was withdrawn later, leaving to him only a microscopic part of the original, and which he tries now to augment via repeated re-embodiments." (The Maha Chohan, in a special letter to his students, June, 1964)

Readjusting

So, yesterday, after reading my blog, my dear M informs me that it was a bit of rambling, wasn't it? And re-reading it, yes, completely unfocused and garbled and morose, really. But I'm glad I got it all out. Now I can sit down and readjust.

I spent yesterday afternoon reading and cleaning out my computer ... going through old documents, .jpegs, etc and wondering: do I really need this anymore? I come from a long line of pack-rats, and although I can be grateful that I don't have a garage with 40+ or even 10+ years of backlog; my computer does take on a lot of damage in terms of using it hide and tunnel old thought patterns. But sometimes I find good things too. Like Goal setting documents that I wrote one day and disappeared into my hard-drive, folder within folder. Like one of those russian dolls that has a smaller doll on the inside.

I also found old journal entries, spiritual experiences, dreams. I have always had journals, but I have never been any good at keeping them. This blog had tried to come into existence for 3 years before I finally started to actually post with any regularity or any vim.

Today I found a quote I had written in my journal in 2006, by Emerson, and he wrote:

The Gods we worship write their names on our faces, be sure of that. And a man will worship something, have no doubt about that either. He may think that his tribute is paid in secret, in the dark recesses of his heart -- but it will out. That which dominates will determine his life and character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshiping; we are becoming.

And this really made me think, as it must have back then, otherwise, why would I have written it down? I find myself asking: What do I worship? On what alter to I regularly offer thoughts and prayers? Do I prostrate, do I bleed or sacrifice? And I have a confession. I am a terribly egoistic little girl. I try to control things that are beyond controlling, I never ask for help, I don't breathe as deeply as I could and I am scared most of the time. That is all true. I use food and knowledge to distract myself from feeling and progressing. From moving forward. I am afraid. They make for wonderful excuses and mind-numbing apathetic body-gloom. But then again. I know all is well. My soul doth magnify the lord. Om, shanti, shanti, shanti. And because I am choosing it to be so, it will get better.

I have meditated since I was five. It was part of my daily routine and part of our community (TM, fairfield, etc.) and although I left TM behind almost eight years ago... I have always been an advocate of what finding time with one's self can manifest. I am ashamed to say, over the last 3 years, I have even let that slip and do it haphazardly, and boy -- I'll tell ya: I can tell the difference.

I tend to make grandiose promises. I'm really good at planning, tend to be poor at execution. I tend to talk and talk and talk until the desire snuffs out and then I don't have to do anything. Ay, there's the rub.

There are so many things I want to do, but one step at a time. Time to readjust. I am beginning to get so excited about doing the Juice Feast. I can't wait to start. But I am, because I need to prepare. I am trying to read as much as possible. Blogs, juicing, knowledge... I wish I could absorb it all -- just let my body lie along the pages and pore, by pore absorb it like a sponge... words and grace drinking in. *Sigh.

In A Course in Miracles it reads that "health is the result of relinquishing all attempts at using the body lovelessly."

And I am guilty of using my body lovelessly. What wonder could be seen, what gifts unfurled if I could just live and let go...

There's a Native American parable, but I forget which tribe it is actually attributed to, where the Creator (Grandfather in some circles: daddy-mommy-god in others) amasses the clans of his animals and offers the following:

"I want to hide something from my human children until they are ready for it. . . . It is the realization that they create their own reality."

"Give it to me. I'll fly it to the moon," says the Eagle.

"No," says he Creator. "One day soon they will go there and find it."

"How about the bottom of the ocean?" asks the Salmon.

"No," says the Creator. "They will find it there, too."

"I will bury it in the great plains," says the Buffalo.

"They will soon dig and find it there," says the Creator.

"Then put it inside of them," says wise Grandmother Mole.

"Done," says the Creator. "It is the last place they will look."

And so this comes to me while I am reading Rumi and nearly cry when I come upon shining nuggets, like the chants to the steps of the Sufi dance of Universal Peace:

"Come, come whoever you are. This caravan knows no despair.
Even though you have broken your vows, perhaps ten thousand times,
Come, come again."

So, all right. I will come again. Maharishi used to say: desire and let go, the universe will take care of the rest. Ok, that too. I am wake and I will look inside with more love and more patience, and promise that I will walk this path and again, have more patience. And Trust, which is the hardest of all: I will Trust the process. The light can take it from there.

Spring Mud & Letting Go

Good Monday to you all. I hope it was a fine weekend in your part of the world...I have so much going through my head that I don't know where to begin. So first things first: M and I are heading up to Jackson Hole the first week of March to take care of some wedding things: florists, caterers, etc. He is also planning on taking advantage of the 400+ inches of snow Jackson Hole Resort has been inundated with so far this winter. I am looking forward to a massage or two and maybe a little spa weekend for myself. This is spring break and we were going to head into the heat, but wedding agenda takes precedence, un/fortunately, so into the snow we go!

Another item of business beginning the first of March is the Global Juice Feast. This is the beginning of Kapha season in the Ayurvedic calendar (roughly the time from March through June), when we tend to be blocked, sluggish and congested. Not surprisingly, liver, kidney cleansing and support are recommended during Kapha season and it is not a coincidence that the Christian ritual of Lent evolved from a long period of fasting. This is the time when you begin to take in the lighter, more bitter foods. This is why spring shoots are so wonderful, they are astringent to the system - they help cleanse and remove excess toxins and wring out stagnant water from the system to help escort more oxygen, flexibility and lightness to the body in preparation for the summer season of activity. Mother Nature knows best. Thus, I am beginning a 92-day juice feast on March 1st, 2008. I am looking to completely re-set my body-clock. I am excited and yet, in all honesty, terrified. Even though I did a mini-juice feast (10 days) in October and knew within 3 days how wonderful it was -- my little ego mind is always so terrified to be out of control or to be moving forward up the evolutionary spiral. Once I do embark on anything positive, my body-mind does jump on the bandwagon, it's the beginning it that causes fear. I'm sure I should be on the AIM program and a million other "get-out-of-your-own-way" technologies, and I'm certain I will -- when the time is right.

I am having the hardest time "not-doing only being" -- my head goes into a tailspin wondering what I can do now, now, now to provide myself some purpose. Do I become an artist- writer- nutritionist- teacher- permaculturist-yogi-traveler-photographer-hippiecommune-ist-fill in the blank what-what? Yes, it seems, now that I have stopped chasing what I *thought* I was supposed to be, hoping I'd discover what I really am and who I really am, I am struggling with letting go of it all. And for those of you who know me, that's pretty much par for the course. Letting go Trouble? Nah, really? (har, indeed).

How does one move from the head into the heart? For some it maybe a simple decision, well, for anyone, it is just that, but getting out of the academic nature of the mind is difficult for me; I've been trained to operate this way, six and a half years of university work (BA and MA time alloted) will do that to a person.

Thinking is great, wonderful, necessary, but I wonder if its really as cracked up as its meant to be. I find that it gets me stuck in ruts, down back English roads deep with spring mud. And I can just see myself lifting the hood, checking valves, pushing, kicking the tires, trying to dig my way out, when a shepherd walks up the hill with his flock of sheep whistling a tune, a contented smile on his face and there I stand dumb founded, not realizing that in that moment I am standing witness to the solution. Which is this: you cannot solve old problems with old thinking, old methods of transportation or archaic reasoning...

The question is, why can't I just go and hoof it on foot like the smart ones? Just abandon the vehicle that is causing so much distress, let the elements take it down into its pieces, until rust and moss return it to its most basic attributes and go off on my merry way (** I do hope you all realize this is a metaphor, and that I would never just leave a car to rot in the middle of nowhere...) with a walking stick and a smile?

I still haven't caught on it seems, because I know I'm not walking, yet. I can tell because the scenery isn't changing much; its the same old thoughts, same ruts. And I'm stuck. Maybe you remember watching Winnie the Pooh as kids, when he eats too much honey and can't get out the hole .. er.. front door of his dear worrisome friend, Rabbit's House... but I'm not gorged on honey, I'm overstuffed with thinking, thinking, thinking. Painted into a corner, immobilized and _________, pick any cliché that suits you.

This is why I am looking forward to the feast -- I have no where to run to -- having dealt with compulsive eating in the past, I know that food is a very effective numbing agent. But I have to confront my fears about myself and so this spring is the year I am finally choosing to do something about it... did I mention that I was terrified?

Ok. Onwards. Habitat. Where do we find ourselves living? In the mind, in the heart? In our body? On the planet? Are we ever really in these places with any sincerity or, like destructive termites, we chew up and spit out our surroundings until we have to take over someone else's turf? In this case -- the deer have had their habitat chewed up and spit out by developers, lawnmowers and "civic landscapers."

I remember living in Iowa and walking through our 22 acre property before moving away at 14 years old, and in the long grasses under locusts trees and grand oaks, there would be deer beds. And if you've never seen one, it usually consists of folded grass and padded mounds of earth and droppings. You know when you've walked into one, because the energy changes. You're standing in someone's bedroom. I never get tired of seeing wild animals. Living in the mountains of Colorado I find a lot of jaded persons, who've seen so many, hell -- it's just another deer. I hope I never get like that.

Speaking of over development:

This is Moscow. Today. Someone mentioned it looked like Sauron's wasteland from Lord of the Rings.

When I see this, it breaks my heart.
It breaks my heart when I drive through Denver ghettos and see the bars on the windows of ranch-home developments. Their backyards fenced in from the highway and the open land across the road that could be full of local gardens or wildlife preserves is being pummeled by cattle that will become beef that's recalled too late, due to poor farming practices and a dull sense of human compassion...

So. This blog wasn't meant to be depressing and my apologies outright if it appears that way. It was more a chance to step back and look forward into something brighter. And we all have to do it our own way. For me, it's learning how to navigate my own mud. Learning from the earth how to heal myself is primal and integral, Now. Not later, no waiting, just Now.

So I am juice feasting. For me, for the planet, for everyone else who needs help getting out of a rut. And while I'm in Jackson, maybe I'll get one of those clay mud wraps and make it useful instead of letting my mind insist that life is a burden. It's not, it's just the darkness talking. But here comes the sun and here comes the juicy life and all the brilliance I cannot at this moment fathom. I know it's coming... like Matt Monarch says, the future is so bright...so, so bright.

love and light all. namaste

Blessings for Borges

... Phil Borges, that is. Who is he? you ask. He is one of my favorite photographers, and he specializes in Indigenous Portraiture. From Afghanistan, Kenya, Tibet and Thailand, to Native America and Mexico, Peru and Ethiopia; I just want to make sure you all know about him, as he continues to be an inspiration to me.

And his photos are exquisite. He is one of many things pushing me towards a new inspiration, stay tuned, I will soon reveal: my intentions.

But today, keep in mind that --

"[C]ivilization has ceased to be that delicate flower which was preserved and painstakingly cultivated in one or two sheltered areas of a soil rich in wild species […] Mankind has opted for monoculture; it is in the process of creating a mass civilization, as beetroot is grown in the mass. Henceforth, man's daily bill of fare will consist only of this one item. "

-- Claude Levi-Strauss

"They Starve in Their Splendor..."

I have to both apologize to Ali of Sunflower Eyes-Moonbeam Mind, for stealing her posting subject "Blankets for Land" and thank her so much for bringing this to my attention. Being a Canadian herself, Ali writes about the protests against the 2010 Olympics in BC, because of the mass deforestation occurring to make way for the impressive ski resorts and traffic-ready highways required for such a global feat. Which I am ashamed to say, I hadn't even considered. I, who like to think I am somewhat environmentally savvy, must confess I was in complete oblivion to the obvious destruction such a contractual agreement bestows into the hands of land developers. She further writes "that people (many of whom are native) are being kicked out of low income houses as rent increases and condos are being built in their place." In other words, that the millions upon millions of $ going towards new construction and design could be going to help the poor and mishandled, the evicted and the lost, yet, as is par for the West, we merely sweep them under the rug. And we have been doing this since we came and stole this country. Which, like Ali, I believe that we did. With tricks and massacres, false treaties and "blankets for land."


(Buffy Sainte Marie singing: My Country Tis of Thy People, You're Dying)

Again, like Ali, being Caucasian, e.g. of mixed blood from the Old Atlantic World, there is a guilty tug that comes from inside the sinews... I often feel responsible in a way. I want so much to be able to walk among them, to learn from them, to help in any way they deemed me capable. But I'm white, and because of this, an issue arises and so does a bloody history. Sometimes I just wish I had dark hair, just for my blood to be not so blatantly visible.

I strongly believe that the indigenous peoples of this earth are the Heart of the planet, no matter to where it is that we have shoved, dragged, relegated, buried & forgotten them. They are the ones still tied to the old energies. Their understanding of life is so much more complex than most have ever given them credit for. Or continue to ignore... because of our own ignorance (aha).

And this post from Sunflower Eyes-Moonbeam Mind, comes upon the tail winds of some other news I was so enthused to hear: that the Republic of Lakotah, being "the predecessor sovereign of Dakota Territory as evidenced by the Treaties with the United States Government, including, but not limited to, the Treaty of 1851 and the Treaty of 1868 at Fort Laramie [...] formally and unilaterally withdraws from all agreements and treaties imposed by the United States Government on the Lakotah People." Meaning that, as of December 17, 2007, they are beginning their secession process from the United States of America. I think this absolutely wonderful and amazing. And I am sorry to see as much white backlash as there has been about the issue and how poorly educated many are about the state of the indigenous peoples and the racist, bigoted mentality that infests too many of us like a crippling plague, spiritually, intellectually or otherwise.

So what can I add to this? Being white, being European. Do I, like Ali asks, apologize? Say: I'm Sorry...? Yes. I do. I kneel at the knee of elders and ask for forgiveness, for all the wicked and the thiefs that run in my bloodline. Most Natives act with the awareness of 7 Generations. Meaning, I can apologize for 7 before mine, which makes that approximately 140 years. It's definitely not the beginning of violence on behalf of the colonizing, imperial Atlantic world but if I can heal anything, I can only do so now, with the knowledge that I have and with the small trickle of grace that may be garnered in being a part of right action and the desire to heal and create a better life and world heart and mind, together. Maybe the first step needs to be stepping back, not into the past but just enough to see the larger picture, to seek the higher perspective and to abolish selfishness as a course of action. To choose compassion, instead...and when I read:

"If you live on this land, and you have ancestors sleeping in this land, I believe that makes you a native to this land. It has nothing to do with the color of your skin. I was not raised to look at people racially. What I was taught is that we're flowers in the Great Spirit's garden. We share a common root, and the root is Mother Earth." Oh Shinnah

It brings peace, and it brings me hope.

Thus, in this light, I have every intention to support their secession. This means that 5 states will be affected by the founding or re-founding of a New Nation: Wyoming, Montana, North and South Dakota and a large swath of Nebraska. They have extended their hand to any living in these states to come and join them in creating a new government, a new way of being and a new way of relating to each other, in general. This, to me, feels so indicative of the coming Shift in Consciousness, which is both ordained and inevitable but has so many running scared, while others are learning there is no where to run, nowhere to go, but up... up to a higher efficiency, energetically or relationally, by coming face-to-face with their s#^@ and realizing that it must be dealt with. I hope that this occurs. I hope that this brings the US State Department into some kind of integrity (fat chance, I know) and relinquishes what we have stolen back to its rightful owners...

Russell Means, one of the leaders of the American Indian Movement speaks out on this topic explicitly at the Lakota Pine Ridge, South Dakota-Lakotah in Oglala, SD at the Porcupine School.



Mitaku Oyasin! <<We are all related.>> I choose to be free and to be responsible.

Be a Light Unto Others

Woody Harrelson Interview from "RAW for 30 Days"



Woody Harrelson & Morgan Spurlock clip from "RAW for Life"

Saying Goodbye to One of the Men in My Life

Yesterday morning, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi passed on from this world.

Many may or may not know him, the Beatles knew him and so did upwards of 7,000 meditating yogis in the Midwest and California, additionally around the globe. He introduced TM to the West and helped to make Ayurveda, Meditation and Yoga the household concepts they are becoming, in many parts of the country.

I grew up in his "utopia" of Fairfield, Iowa. And he was the Guru of mine and my family's life for the first 14 or 15 years I was on this planet. And that, I am sure is conservative when compared to others in the community...

Which, I can only imagine is in mourning right now... Roundings, puja and prayer...

Om Namah Shivaya,
Om Guru, Om Guru
Deva Deva
Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti
Peace Peace Peace
rest in holy peace. Jai Guru Dev.

The Mystery of Beauty

Seek, all of you, after the Light, so that the power of your Soul that is in you may live. Do not desist from seeking by day and by night, until you find the purifying mysteries of the Light which refine the body of matter and make it a pure Light very refined. Do to all men who come to you and believe in you and listen to your words what is worthy of the mysteries of the Light, give the mysteries of the Light and do not hide them from them. For he who shall give life to a single soul and liberate it, besides the Light that is in his own soul, he shall receive other glory in return for the soul he has liberated.

- Book of Sophia

and a soundtrack to go along with it...



... that's all.

Two Weeks & Past Loves

I have now been to two Still Life Classes and one figure in graphite class here in town at the CCA. I don't know how I went so long without doing this...maybe a little background is in order.

My history with art goes back to age 2 when I, having gotten hold of a box of crayons, managed to draw a squiggly mural all over a white wall in my parent's first house, the entire length of the wall and as high as I could jump. It also (probably rightly so) garnered me my first spanking. I was forced to find smaller mediums to channel my creativity. **smile**

I began taking art classes, privately at the age of seven or eight. First grade I think. I did local art day camps in the summers and private study in the fall and winter (apart from bi-weekly art classes in school). I can still remember learning how to draw glass, candlesticks, light from a candle. Seeing reflections. I owe her my ability to compose still-life's and my eye, basketweaving, and pinch pots, gingerbread houses and putting Parmesan on my popcorn.

By age twelve I was in group classes with a local woman who had a large backyard and horses next door. There, I learned color study, aesthetics, oil painting and pen and ink. And continued there for three years, during the school year. until my family moved away from Iowa to Wyoming.

I was also studying weekly with local art teacher and the mother of a friend of mine in the class ahead of me. I wanted to be an Artist. I always wanted to be an artist. I even spent 6 weeks of my summer at the NCSA (North Carolina School of the Arts).

It wasn't until I was in college in Arizona that I realized I was detesting my studio classes but falling fast for Art History. When I transfered to Colorado, it would end with a Humanities major with emphases in Literature and Art History/Fine Arts. I think that part of the stall of my affair with studio was due tot he fact that Arizona wouldn't let me portfolio out of the Foundation classes. I had done drawing and color theory since I was nine. But they were of "we all start down here" mentality... which (to be honest) looking back at it, was fine. And probably needed, you can always need more practice drawing. I was just an arrogant little poop and thought I was above it. My art profs were either jerks or confused at what I could actually accomplish in texture and color with just a box of prismacolor colored pencils.

Anyway, long story short. I stopped drawing, period. I started focusing on photography in college. Which was fine, but I lost my hand-eye coordination...

This past October I took a fundamentals drawing class and despite my fear and my anxiety (what if I'd lost it and could never get it back? what if I was never ever meant to be an artist...etc. etc.), when I stood in front of the easel, despite my mind's loop-de-loops, my hand and body and heart knew how to proceed. I wasn't as polished as I'd been at 15 or 16 years old when I went to NCSA... but somehow, the body remembered all the training it had gotten beginning almost twenty years ago, and abandoned nigh-on completely seven years ago... don't be timid, just start putting something down. Focus the eye, soften the gaze. Squint if you have to. And time disappeared for 6 weeks, and I fell in love with this feeling again. It was magical. And so very needed when I was just barely treading water in my MA, grades were fine, but my Soul just wasn't in it. And it's been two weeks and I don't miss being in school like I was a month ago. At all.

Who knows where this will go, but I can promise myself that I will never let myself put art aside again. It is like life-blood. It is somatic and moving. Don't get me wrong, I still worry that I won't be good enough (I am highly competitive and a notorious perfectionist. But, I am beginning again and returning to an old love. It's subtle and thrilling. More later, of course...

The Life School

So. yesterday was my first official day of non-school. In that, yesterday spring semester classes began, and I was not a part of them. Instead I went to yoga during my lunch hour, and had a still-life drawing class in the evening. And I don't feel guilty or regretful or sad at all.

It was a bit difficult to let it all go though. At first, what was so interesting was watching every little negative thought come up -- "What will people think??" That I wasn't smart enough? That I couldn't hack it? I mean every manipulative ego trip that could be dragged out, every self-esteem lowering, cowardly, fearful judgment rose up for me to contend with. My usual action is to try and "think" my way out of it. Give my mind a "reason" that I was doing what I was doing, logically. I was justifying my decisions to myself!! Who do I think I am?? This time, due to some helpful advice from Dad, I just sat with all those uncomfortable feelings, I didn't try to sate them, or reason them away -- It was all very zen -- I allowed them to be, I noticed them, but did not provide them any other place to go and did not offer any other way for them to garner more power or feed them with more fear -- I just let them spin themselves out quietly.

What has happened because of this is a sudden shift in perspective. Once all the fear went away, it was only peace and blue skies. My Dad has been telling me this for years, about the Flip. Let me explain: because nothing in the world is actually linear, not time, not space, etc. It is always (100% of the time) connected with its opposite. Love, Hate, Fear, are the main ones that every other emotion stems from. When one does not try to run the other emotion off, but sits with it all the way through, without judgment of trying to reason with it... but just being aware of it and its Illusive nature -- eventually you will hit that part of the connectivity, where the emotion Flips, or at least your perspective of the experience does. And that's what happened: I rode that wave of fear all the way to the beaches of tranquility.

There is so much more I need to be doing right now. The world is going through massive upheaval and it is only going to intensify. I need to (like all other human beings incarnate right now) is rebuild and consecrate my relationship with my own divinities and also, the planet.

When I dropped all pretenses about what I would fill my time with now that I was leaving school, my little mind did a bit of a fear-flight and was racing to find things "to do" but what I am coming to understand, and would be helpful for everyone to consider sincerely, is that you don't have to "do" anything -- you just have "to be" and do so with intention and grace and presence. And everything else just works itself out from there... because we are all children of the same Father-Mother-Creator (wherever your theology guides you). Fear is at the root of separation. Every action comes back to Love, Hate, Fear.

And Love really is all there is, every other emotion is in response to lack, or judgment about, but it all comes back. For instance, hate and anger are often useful together. But hate is usually much more localized then we tend to use it. We don't usually hate someone, but we hate (or have intense anger about) something they did or said.

So let's say, a little boy runs into the street, into traffic -- he doesn't get hurt, but when the Mother drags him back out of danger she is very very angry (she hates what he just did) and she yells: "Don't you ever do that again! Ever!"

Why is she angry at her son? She is angry because she was scared. Anger often comes out of fear... and why was she scared? Because she loves him and was afraid she would lose him. Anger, from fear, from lack of love. See?

This is just a roundabout way of saying -- stop trying to DO things to justify your existence. Just learn how to be and all will be well. Remember -- You can have whatever it is you want. You are the mover-shaker-maker -- and you create your own world of experience -- so what world do you want to live in?

I have posted that little film about Permaculture and Greening the Desert in the past. This is my next step ( I mean I have lots of things I want to do but), this is what I want to put my energy towards. It is such an amazing and beautiful thing, and funny-enough, it actually combines all of my interests, all of my past studies: it is the perfect flowering of seeds I had planted long ago not knowing their variety. I want to help others re-learn what it means to be human. Part of this truth is becoming reconnected with the landbase and with their bodies and unplug them from a civilization that is crumbling. Not that civilization itself is a bad thing, but ours has been "sick" for a very very long time.

That is is my philosophizing for the morning; I am off to drink some nettle leaf tea.

Permaculture

This is a somewhat old, but wonderful video. This is what I have been into recently and am looking for ways to learn more about it, become certified. This seems so much more important than my Masters in Literature -- there will only be stories to talk about if civilization doesn't destroy itself. The more I look at things like this, the more I realize how much we have f#$^ed up in our relationship with the planet...

Please, enjoy this explanation of Permaculture with the Man who Began it: Bill Mollison

The Geometry of Light

The Avenue of the Giants, Redwood National Park: August 2007

Once Upon a January

I know I have been neglecting the blog recently. I am decompressing. I begin yoga this coming week. And as I become more accustomed to my body, I'm sure I'll have things to talk about.

But happy January! I'm doing wonderfully. I will return soon.

The Last Night of the Year

These are the last thoughts.... and you shone your love through the light of the stars...



Loreena McKennitt singing "Dante's Prayer"

Happy New Year Everyone!

New for New Years

I am, as of late, in the business of creating a New Me. I no longer wish to be nipped at the heels by past doubts, obsessions and down-trodden thinking. As the year of 2007 is headed for a close, it seems to be the perfect time. 2007, in numerology translates to an energy number of 9 -- a number of completion. and 2008, being a "10" (or a 1) is all about New Beginnings. It makes sense to close a chapter and start clean and fresh in a whole new way. 2007 marks my last year of school, it marks my last year of writing "single" or "unmarried" on taxes or other forms. I am 27 and I am also experiencing my own year of completion. I have decided that I am beginning a new Be-ing for New Years.

I have spent all afternoon cleaning out files from my computer and old emails. I even changed mine. I am throwing out old magazines and giving away books that no longer add to my understanding of the world. My Bookshelves are far too full and because of this, I am energetically blocking out new Ideas! I am going to give a lot away, I decided today.

I am making plans to go to The Tree of Life center in Patagonia, AZ sometime in February and March. I am planning travel and have signed up for more Art Classes. I feel happy just thinking about this... I haven't felt this way: this free for a long long time. I have found that I am no longer willing to be miserable for the sake of practicality and society's definitions of success. I want to be me to the fullest degree and so I am not going to settle a year, month, day longer.

When I step into 2008 I will bring with me only what is needed. No baggage, no clutter, and No Negativity. What you put your attention on Grows and so I am only willing to attract into my life those things and those people and those ideas which assist me in fulfilling my highest potential and purpose, everything else is merely road blocks and detours. I feel like I have stalled long enough. Whether I am have been fearful of failure (or success?), I feel somewhere inside that their is a bigger life for me and so. Here I go. I am seeking a new sense of Be-ing.

Mayan Calendar

So I know that the talk of the Mayan Calendar is really popular right now, but I feel that it's very important and the more I research and study it, the more accurate I find it to be. I am posting a lecture by Ian Xel Lungold who, sadly, died in 2005. Please sit and watch the whole seminar when you have time, and for more info, then track down Mayan Majix. He is very kind hearted, patient and makes this so easy to understand. Of course, he recommends, as I do, that you do more in depth research on your own. Here's the seminar from Whitehorse in 2004, and I apologize for the foreign captioning.

Part 1



Part 2