White Deer Medicine

JOE AND MISSY 1989 – 2007

2012-01-14T15:38:00.001-07:00

Today I feel sad and nostalgic but I’m not sure where it’s coming from. There was a rather intense full moon last night, maybe that was the trigger. Then this morning I read fellow blogger John Farr’s ode to his previous cat and realized that I’d never properly honored my life with Joe and Missy. It was a private thing. But it also framed a time of my most important rights of passage in the sense that new beginnings are usually heralded with a loss, or at least that’s how I’ve experienced them. My cats Joe and Missy represent a life lived within my larger life, one that is gone now but set the stage for what my life is becoming. They were the constant in a period of profound changes. Now and then I see something move from the corner of my eye across the left side of our living room, almost transparent, but movement nevertheless. Joe loved to lay in an intimate corner made by the TV stand and rocking chair. I haven’t seen Missy, but then she was less attached to me than to her brother. But perhaps they now move across the edge of my vision as one entity.

THE BEGINNING

Joe and Missy came into my life 22 years ago last September. My ex-husband and I had recently moved into a place I considered perfect (still do) although it turned out to be a short stay. I was happy there. It had three bedrooms, two baths, walk-in closets and a covered porch yawning onto an intimate Japanese style garden surrounded by a high wooden fence. It was only a few blocks from where I worked at the renowned Tattered Cover Bookstore which is still famous in the book world. There were coffee shops, galleries, a well stocked health food store, quaint cafes and a video store all within a few blocks. We could easily walk to everything we needed, plus the few remaining farm houses and pre-40’s bungalows added an intimate small town ambiance. The neighborhood was further enhanced by great old trees joined at their tops to make an arch over the narrow streets. It had been a semi-rural community when I was a child, then a Bohemian like art community and now was in transition toward Yuppyhood. One felt perfectly safe walking all over the neighborhood after dark, and since I worked until 10 pm that was important.

According to the lease agreement we were’nt allowed to have pets but my husband who was rapidly advancing toward another manic episode, (these occurred with increasing intensity each time with a regular rhythm of 6 months on and 6 months off with a few months of transition time in between) obstinately refused to be daunted by lease agreements and insisted that we had to have this cute black kitten born to our neighbors across the street. It was their cat’s first litter and there were just two babies; a long haired black female and a short-hair male tabby. When I saw them I immediately figured out who their fathers were having seen two suspicious culprits around the neighborhood. Eventually he wore me down and I reluctantly went with him to see these kittens. We ended up bringing both home. My ex wanted the black one but I said, “ if we ever get a cat it will be two so that they would have company when we were out of town.” And I said to myself, “we won’t be in anymore trouble with two than one, lets take them both.” He said, “but the other one’s just a plain tabby,”and I said, “I like tabbies.”

The next day we brought them across the street in a shoe box. I remember that the tabby was terrified and it took awhile to calm him down. The black one seemed more curious. We named them Joe Tiger (the tabby) and Bat Girl (the black one) because her ears were batlike when she was a kitten but before long they became just Joe and Missy.

Missy and Joe on the Sofa

The kittens ran up and down the hall every morning, attacked us from every dark corner and doorway, slept in the flower pots and buried potential prey under the carpet, things like wrist watches and Christmas ornaments. One day I captured Joe in a corner and our eyes locked. I have never experienced this before with any animal and with only one human when I say that we looked at each other with mutual recognition and even though I wasn’t sure about reincarnation in animals I was nevertheless sure that we knew each other to the core. He and I would always have a singular and powerful bond.

I forgot to mention that just after moving into this apartment, and a month before the kittens, we had visited Taos and Santa Fe for the first time. For many years I’d yearned to see Northern New Mexico and especially Taos, but had been too poor to travel. It was an unexplainable yearning, as if my ancestors had been exiled from the promised land and I wouldn’t be truly myself until I touched the holy soil. This is a ridiculously common story in Taos and generally underwhelms seasoned Taosenos, but nevertheless its real.

THINGS FALL APART

Since my then husband was crossing over the border of another psychotic adventure, I felt some unease about the trip but it was our first chance to get away in several years and off we went. The trip was a complex experience full to the brim with synchronistic encounters, instant infatuation with the place and terror about what would become of us as my husband’s mental state worsened and his ability to deal with people and everyday reality plummeted. Shortly after we returned home his demons took over and life became a living hell. Eventually with my mother as witness, I had to sneak off to a judges office and get a court order to have him taken in via police custody for evaluation and treatment after neighbors, landlord and co-workers told me they were terrified of him and what he might do next. I remember a three week period during which I didn’t sleep a single night because of the unpredictable 24 hours a day raucousness in our house. He swept frantically through encounters with cab drivers, restaurant owners, old and new friends, insisting to everyone that he was king David returned to save the world and other boundless extravagant claims until the time came that he could no longer put a sentence together to tell anyone anything. Word salad they call it in the psych books (tossed salad, no doubt). I walked to work every morning wondering how I kept on going without sleep while immersed up to my eyebrows with a full tilt boogie, unpredictable, high volume, blinding speed mania.

For awhile I had to leave the house because I wasn’t supposed to go near my husband due to the legal actions I’d innitiated. Although worried about leaving the kittens in such chaos I knew he wouldn’t intentionally harm them. When I was able to return they acted somewhat confused but recovered quickly and when they were a year old my parents who were helping us survive the financial disaster a severe manic eppisode creates, felt that we were paying too much rent and should own a home. Under their patronage I found a cute bungalo in a neighborhood I liked and my folks co-signed for it. It was a bit of a fix-er-upper but nothing serious. By then things had calmed down considerably and we were living in the same house again. Nevertheless, I cried all night when I received the news that our offer on the new house had been accepted. I now remember the little house fondly and I certainly put a lot of work into fixing it up but I never felt settled in, and was antsy and out of kilter all the time that we lived there. It was a trap to keep me from my life path.

THE PROMISED LAND

Around this time the bookstore started giving long term employees a paid one week vacation and of course I was off to New Mexico as soon as possible. We also made many three day weekend trips. On one such trip we had few funds but were lucky enough to get motel rooms that had something wrong with them, i.e., the air conditioning didn’t work or the TV was fried, cheap. I still remember it as the broken motel trip. Somehow there was always a way to go to New Mexico and especially Taos. The cats stayed with my parents when we left town. Then something strange happened. I suddenly became interested in the Native American world. A long dormant issue burst through a wall of lifelong ignorance and denial, breaking down layers of protective unconsciousness.

This wasn’t a real surprise to anyone except me. For years people had asked me if I was Native American or Native Hawaiian, but then they sometimes thought I was Italian or Spanish, as well. Of course I just attributed it to my long dark hair. At first when we went to New Mexico my interest was more in the Moorish/Spanish influence and history, the Native American part hadn't yet caught me. I was also totally uninterested in the artistic history of Taos even though art had been on and off a part of my life since I was five years old. I’ve since learned to look for those issues that people deny or neglect for a clue to their essence.

Synchronicticly we had arrived at the quincentenial year, 1992. It took awhile before this reality soaked through my unawareness. Now when we visited New Mexico I had an entirely different focus. I began reading everything I could about indigenous people not only from the Americas but around the world. I was also submerged in unexplainable grief that entire year. Although used to being depressed or sad, this was different. It was not personal and I couldn’t understand it. Suddenly I noticed Native People everywhere I looked; waiting at a bus stop, working on a construction project, moving next door to my parents, coming to our yard sale, in the book store and even among my fellow workers. I read up on AIM, native history in this country, and the horrendous history of all European encounters with the indigenous residents in places of their conquest.

My ex-husband had been bringing assorted “medicine men” and exploitative “apples” (red on the outside, white on the inside) purporting to be spiritual leaders and teachers into our life for several years and I wanted nothing to do with them. Now I recognized that there was a hidden theme. My ex-husband, though seriously damaged emotionally was specially attuned to my spiritual path (probably in self defense) and often intuited what was coming next in my life. I will always credit him with a genius for inspired accidents. I remember going to our first powwow. I stood near to a “drum” and the vibration song and drumbeat surged through my body with awesome power and I was haunted by this experience for years.

THE INSPIRED ACCIDENT

One spring he called in a reservation to our favorite Taos motel. It was inexpensive and walking distance to everything in town. The next morning the owner of the Adobe Inn called. She thought my husband may have called her Inn by mistake the evening before, since she had no reservation for us. They were listed close together in the phone book. He must have made a glitch. I assured her it was a mistake. But after talking to her for at least half and hour I agreed that we would love to meet her and also her dear friends a Medicine Man from Taos Pueblo and his wife.

We arrived in early afternoon and decided to stop by the Adobe Inn to meet owner Diane before checking in at the Adobe Wall. We never made it to the Adobe Wall. After talking to Diane until well after midnight she offered us her bedroom and she slept on the couch. The next day we met Joe J. and Frances her Taos Pueblo friends. Except for their oldest Son, Blue Spruce Standing Deer (Pba-Quen-nee-e) who was living in California, and after several more visits that summer, we’d met the entire family.

At the end of the summer I decided I had to move to Taos. My husband liked our Denver house and neighborhood but agreed that our life was in suspended animation. We decided to sell the house. I think in retrospect that he didn’t have an agenda of his own and just followed my direction. The house sold even before it was officially listed. We’d planned to list it in the fall because our real estate agent told us it might take until spring, and that was the most likely time for a sale. Hopefully, that would give us time to plan our move and find a place in Taos. But I thought to myself, “unless God wants us there sooner.”

MOVING TO THE PROMISED LAND

The house sold before it was listed and we had three weeks to find a new place and plan the move. And the move was frantic. I shut the cats in the bathroom until the movers were through taking our house apart. Everything was loaded by 2 pm except our personal items and the cats. It was mid-November and the ground was covered in ten inches of snow. After the moving truck left we put our suitcases in the car and spent the night at my parent’s home. The next morning we came back for the cats and their accessories. They were on their pillows in the basement. Joe desperately hung onto his pillow with the claws of all four feet, Missy came easier but complained verbally. I felt sad taking them out of a home that was so good to them. It was a sweet house but it was in the wrong state for the direction my soul was headed.

All the way to Taos we drove through blizzard conditions. We are each driving a car but I have both cat’s in their carriers. After a challenging trip over La Veda pass in a worsening blizzard we stop briefly in Fort Garland to let the cats out of their cages to use the litter box and have water. Then on to Taos. We arrive in the dark about 7pm and our new Land Lady has hot chocolate and our keys ready. The new house is next to hers. We put the cats and their accessories in the house and head to the Adobe Inn. The next morning after meeting with our moving truck driver we go to the house. I can’t find the cats anywhere which seems strange in a totally empty house. I spend several minutes looking in closets and behind appliances. Finally I find Missy under a raised shelf in a closet. But I can’t find Joe anywhere. Then I stop, tell myself not to panic but to think like a cat. Going straight to the kitchen I automatically open the cabinet door beneath the sink. There he is huddled in a corner and almost invisible. The cabinet door was not that easily opened. I ‘m impressed!

TAOS AS TRICKSTER

Again I put the cats in the bathroom while the mover unloads our things. However, I need to regress and explain that when we decided to move to Taos our lives changed so rapidly in that direction that our heads were still spinning. When we arrived in Taos, its famous trickster energy immediately overtook us. The driver of the moving truck, a Texan named Bo, had to rent a shuttle vehicle because the old bridges on Upper Ranchitos were too frail for an 18 wheeler. In the meantime he left his big truck at Hinds and Hinds Storage where we’d rented a space for items that didn’t fit in the new casita. After everything was unloaded at around 3:00 PM, Bo presented us with the bill and I started to write a check. Since I’d never before hired a mover I didn’t know that they don’t accept checks. Of course I didn't have the cash. Bo said he would have to load everything back on the truck and take it to Santa Fe until I got the cash or money order. We were working on a narrow slice of time because his big truck was at the storage place and would be locked up at 5:00 pm. I immediately decided to find a way that I could my bank to wire the money. We checked several possibilities but it turned out that the weather was so bad that our bank in Denver had closed early. I went back to the house and begged the mover to wait while I tried one more option. We went to a local bank and asked if they could find a way to get the money another way. Finally after dead ending with several ideas I called mom and she called her Credit Union. Fortunately they were not yet closed and managed to transfer some money to an account that we opened on the spot. We got in just under the wire and Bo was able to retrieve his big truck.

Our first meal in the new Casita was Thanksgiving. I still remember that shopping for the Turkey gave me a feeling of putting down roots. We were really living in Taos! The living room was still piled with boxes but I’d cleared the kitchen for action. All was well except for one memorable mistake. I couldn’t find my spices and tried to substitute sagebrush leaves for sage in the dressing. Not the same thing! The results were terrible. I ended up throwing it away. But the turkey pasole and atole cornbread I made with the leftovers were splendid.

The little Casita on Upper Ranchitos

Now we were in a new country, because Taos New Mexico is world apart from Denver. Without jobs or any clear idea about what to do next, I remember looking at the cats and thinking, “what have I done to you?” But it became a great adventure. We walked all over town, exploring the narrow winding lanes and shops, driving in the countryside to ancient villages that seemed caught forever in an earlier century, and also spending hours at the Taos Inn and Café Tazza meeting locals and journalizing. Almost every afternoon we went to the Adobe Inn to visit Diane and wait for Joe J. and Frances to come by. This usually resulted in a private powwow with Joe J. singing and drumming while the rest of us danced. And when we left into the total darkness of a Taos that didn’t yet have street lights, the air was laden with cedar and pinon smoke and I felt that I had finally arrived at where I’d always been in spirit.

Our marriage was rapidly becoming unworkable in Denver and although we enjoyed walks, trips of discovery in this new adventure, a practical foundation just wasn’t there. This new life I was discovering was a serious challenge to my husband's desired status in my life. He resented that he wasn’t able to follow me into this new phase. Although there were many fondly shared memories plus the strange bond that comes from living through several disasters together, it was no longer a true marriage, and it wasn’t possible to integrate this relationship into what my life was becoming. I felt that I was walking with heavy chains on my ankles and yet felt an enormous sadness for what we’d once hoped for that could never be.

I’d begun working in a local bookstore, a job he proudly engineered for me, but I soon discovered that my bookstore days were over. On one day off I stopped at Diane’s house to see off my new friends Joe J. and Frances who were going to visit their daughter in South Dakota. Their son Pba-Quen-nee-e (Standing Deer) was also there. From the moment we’d first seen each other a few weeks earlier there was the most powerful sense of knowing and attraction that I've ever experienced. But at the time I considered my life much too dull and set in defeat and frustration to be of any interest to someone who seemed to get whomever and whatever he wanted. Beside that my dear friend Diane loved him and I thought they would someday be partners. I would later learn that he felt the same about me.

INITIATION

We both had a free afternoon and as we left Diane’s house PQ proposed that we get a cup of coffee. But before we got to the coffee shop we agreed it would be a good day to drive to Santa Fe. I will always remember the date. It was the 23rd of June, 1993. I called to tell my husband I’d be late but couldn’t get through. My husband’s whereabouts and schedule were erratic (is that an oxymoron?) and I decided to call again when we got to Santa Fe. To shorten the story, I will say that this little excursion became the turning point in my life. Nothing was ever the same from that point in time. When we got back to Taos, everyone we knew was aware that we had been in Santa Fe together and had already taken sides. I discovered that in Taos karma is instant. This created such tumult in our social group that I could never again live a compromised life hidden in the shadows. I who was used to being invisible was catapulted onto a very lonely stage under a glaring spotlight. Because of the turmoil and my husband’s constant interruptions, I lost my job. It was the first time I’d been fired. I remember thinking, “it serves you right for trying to live your old life in this new place.” A choice was demanded. My husband went into another manic episode and chaos reigned on uninhibited until I decided to move out. Joe and Missy lived with him until our divorce was final. My now ex-husband moved back to Denver and the cats and I lived in the casita for the next 12 years. This would be the womb then nursery for my difficult rebirth.

The three of us lived in the little house on Upper Ranchitos until we moved into our new Habitat for Humanity home in 2006. I don’t know how I managed it, but somehow during this time, I trained both cats to stay close to the house. I suspect that they intuited my concern and resolve to keep them safe. If I sensed that one or the other was thinking of venturing beyond my sight I called to them. But each had his/her close call before they believed me. For this reason they outlived all the other cats in a neighborhood where dogs ran loose and coyotes came out at night to prowl the neighborhood. Outwardly this was a relatively uneventful time, but internally I was quietly but radically being reconstructed from the inside out. Surprising myself, I also began painting again after a creative drought of 20 plus years. Although I knew that Taos was an artistic community that was not a serious attraction when I moved here. Instead I came to discover where I’d left my soul, and then began the process of psychically digging my way through dense layers of compromise. During this time PQ and I continued to grow closer even as he was working through his own demons, a number of relationships and two more marriages.

You Can't Take me if You Can't Find Me

Only twice did I leave Joe and Missy in a friend’s care while I took the only two vacations of my Taos years; a month in England when PQ was doing workshops in Glastonbury, and a seven day trip to Arizona to visit a dear friend and relocated Taosena. For most of our years in the casita the only times away from Taos, were buying trips to Gallup with my boss and trips to visit my parents in Denver. Generally I took Joe and Missy with me to Denver, although they were’nt fond of travelling. I always tried not to let them know we were going until the last minute by not packing until they were outside, but cats are psychic and I had to be careful not to think about the trip in their presence. However, inevitably Missy ended up under the bed clinging to her blanket while Joe crawled into a dark corner where his tabby coat made him almost invisible. When on the road they complained vociferously until we got past Questa and then would resign to reality and huddle on the floor, jumping up now and then to look out the window to see if we were getting close to their home away from home. On our way home, arriving at Questa was again the sign that we were almost home. Joe would jump on my lap and Missy moved to the front seat. For the first time during the trip they would both peer out the window to see where we were.

This pattern continued until a number of years after my father passed, when mom decided to sell the family home. Although I didn’t realize it at the time this event heralded the end of a major life phase and the beginning of another. Such passages have always been alchemical events both psychologically and spiritually. One would think I’d be aware of the signs by now, but they always manage to sneak in without detection or perhaps my attention becomes so diverted by the inevitable chaos that I’m only able to process these events in retrospect. The sometimes boring but quiet life at the Casita was coming to a close.

Now remembering mom’s sale of the house and the move to her new apartment I wonder how we all survived. Only two weeks to do what we needed at least six weeks to accomplish. There were fifty nine years of accumulated belongings to sell and disperse while involved in the house closing, setting up new accounts, and settling mom and her remaining belongings in the new place, and putting the leftovers in storage. Joe and Missy were terrified and spent as much time as circumstances allowed under my old bed. Chaos tornadoed around them and eventually I decided to leave that bed in the house so that they would have a place to hide while the old furniture and all they were familiar with in their home away from home came undone.

ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS

The day after moving mom into her new apartment, I received news that PQ’s father Joe J. (Medicine Mountain) was dying and that I needed to be back in Taos as soon as possible. We had all visited him at the hospital just before I left for Denver. I was concerned that I wouldn’t see him again and felt a helpless apprehension because I could do nothing about the timing. Now I was focused on getting back to Taos as quickly as possible. I arrived around 5:00 pm and learned that Joe J. had asked to be taken to his ancestral Pueblo house to die. We waited, family and friends for that time when there was no turning back. His brave wife signaled his son, Pba-quen-nee to turn off the oxygen and all went quiet. I walked out the familiar ancient door into a moonlit night leaving the family members to talk among themselves, making plans and preparations for his final ceremony. The Pueblo magic was powerful that night. I looked toward the sacred mountain and was sure that Joe J’s spirit was already there. The peace was as soft and smooth as velvet.

Life went on but not as usual. Missy never really recovered from the chaos in Denver. She began to lose weight and often peed on the carpet, something she’d never done before. I suspect she’d become diabetic. I took her to the vet and he gave me a special diet for her but she never really recovered. Joe always got through things easier than his sister but I noticed that he was beginning to limp and found it difficult to jump on the bed. Since he always jumped onto my bed about half way through the night this was a big change. The next summer, the Habitat for Humanity house I’d worked on and with for two years was finally ready. We moved in on August 6, 2006. Again I put the cats in the bathroom while movers took out all the big furniture. This was traumatic and profound for all of us. The old Casita had been our home for so long, it felt like who we were. On the other hand it was fun choosing colors and arranging rooms. In this new house, weeds wouldn’t be growing up through cracks in the wall, and it would be much more difficult for skunks to dig a home under the porch. The cats were now too old to bring snakes and prairie dogs into the kitchen but I would miss my hollyhocks. I took seeds from the many flowers I’d planted around the old house, just as I’d brought seeds from my garden in Denver when we moved to Taos.

New Casita

This new house was a fresh start. But it required that I loosen my grip on the past. I refreshed my skills with electric drill and hammer and enjoyed planting grass, laying down flagstones for a patio and seeding new flowers. I chose matching sheets and towels for the first time in my life. I anticipated that the cats would enjoy the wide adobe window sills but discovered that they were now too old to jump. Nevertheless they became used to their new digs faster than I expected. In a short time I felt I’d lived in this house a long time. Mom and my Denver friends came to visit and it was great to have more than one bedroom. PQ’s mom, Frances wasn't feeling well and we took her to her medicine man in Isletta, but I think we knew that she didn’t want to be here anymore. She and Joe J. were partners in every way and she felt her job was over. One evening he came to the house to tell me that she’d been diagnosed with cancer and only had a few months left. Frances appeared to be relieved, and though in pain, she looked out her kitchen window toward the big mountain and talked to her husband promising to join him as soon as possible. She left us during a blizzard the week after Thanksgiving.

Missy and Joe on the Porch of our Old Casita

I lost Missy the following summer in late July. I’d just returned from a family reunion in Denver and PQ took care of Joe and Missy while I was gone. She was as usual when I returned but the next day she broke a tooth and went into toxic shock. It turned out that she’d been living with a serious gum disease for several years. Added to her diabetes it was too much for her weakened body. It was a personal loss but strengthened by the realization that an era of my life was ending. I consoled myself with the knowledge that she’d become comfortably at home in the new house but I wondered what Joe would do without his sister. They had been together since conception. He was losing weight and his arthritis caused him to limp when he first got up. He liked the space between the TV and rocking chair. It was protected dark and cozy. He was no longer able to jump on the sofa or my bed, although sometimes I lifted him up.

Two days after Thanksgiving I had to make a choice. He was in pain and cried constantly. I couldn’t let him go on like this until Monday and talked the vet into making a space for us on Saturday morning. The ride to the vet seemed like driving through a dark tunnel. I couldn’t help thinking that when I came back my life would be forever different. The end was easy for Joe. After the shot he went to sleep quietly, but as I ran my hand over his soft coat for the last time, the impact of having stepped across a one way border in time was overwhelming. Our life together was in the past and with it went eighteen years and all the beginnings and endings that made this life what it had become. When I got home I took a photo of his last footprint in the snow.

MATURITY LIKE IT OR NOT

My mother passed away the following spring. Now both Pba-quen-nee-e and I are orphans and there is no generation ahead of us to pad the future. It’s a strange feeling; this knowing that in what seemed like an eye blink one is thrust into the role of family elder. Time takes on an entirely different meaning. Through 19 years of lives within lives, each story deserving of its own telling, we finally came together as life partners this past September. In reliving the events that brought us to this particular spot in eternity, I see how important it is to look at the past with awe and gratitude, and to grieve in honor of those that no longer share the journey with us for they have become the backdrop to our drama for the rest of this earthly performance. And my little feline markers of time have taken an honored role as time brackets in the most important story of this woman’s life.

Many Me’s

2011-12-14T15:10:00.001-07:00

As the snow was coming down two nights ago, a long buried reality suddenly surfaced. Something about the cold dampness in the air, and that first dark of the evening evoked a new state that I recognized as an old identity. It was much more than a memory. Immediately I am experiencing the world as it is shortly before Christmas of 1949. It is actually another reality into which I have accidentally fallen. I feel the heavy wet snow, hear the chains on the tires of the cars moving down Morrison Road along which the snowplow has recently piled up a three foot bank of snow. Our old 1936 Dodge just brought us home from a visit to my grandparents and the snow is coming down hard. My dad is an excellent driver in any kind of weather and as a native Coloradoan; he has driven in snow since he was fourteen.

I love this time of year. Christmas is a time I can go beyond the ordinary without anyone objecting. My cousin Billy and I have two games we play to avoid boredom when we are on the road, one is identifying the model and year of the cars we pass on the road and at Christmas season it is counting the decorated houses and rating the decorations. I’m seeing Christmas decorations in the style of 1949. The big bulbs in red, green and blue with the heavy wires, pinned around windows and hung from eaves, I can see them perfectly just as I can feel the cold air. People with lights on their outdoor trees get extra points. And lighted nativities are awesome. These are usually on wealthy homes. My folks will drive us through these kinds of neighborhoods during Christmas season.

This particular year I finally get through to my parents that I don’t want dolls for Christmas and they give me a toy model of a 1950 Ford. I am both surprised and delighted. I still have that Ford even though it shows the wear of time and use with a bumper tied on with bailing wire. Ordinary memory tells me that next year I will get a dump truck. Wow!

I have fallen back to a previous identity many times, but with this occurrence, it dawned me that it is more than a curious anomaly and I decided to explore the phenomena. It usually happens when a sensory memory is triggered. The particular feeling of a breeze, a time of day, or the sight of a familiar object related to a time in the past. Suddenly I am in that world even though it may be buried under many layers of personal history and represent a self whose identity is long forgotten.

I was recently listening to an interview of Brugh Joy by Jeffrey Mishlove:

Brugh Joy is talking about what could be classified as multiple personality disorder by a traditional psychologist. However, he is saying that it’s something that everyone has. Is this being that is writing this page carrying an illusion of self? The good students of psycho-science will probably get upset with this thought and say that we are really just making a disorder sound cosmic. But my question is, why call it a disorder? Maybe we are just tapping into a bigger order than we usually care to deal with. Also it’s just plain confusing to think multidimensionally. We must trim experience down into chunks we can deal with every day on just one dimension at a time.

I suspect that even though our need to focus requires a trimmed down reality these other identities with their own time/space are necessary resources. But it goes both ways. They need our current time/space surface self as well. This on stage self in the so called here and now is unwittingly working for all of our selves.

You probably know that I don’t believe that creation occurred with a big bang billions of years ago, nor do I believe that a supreme being made it a few thousand years ago. I believe that creation is now, all of the nows; from the tiny now that I’m experiencing, to a place that time can’t touch. Time is convenient and probably necessary for physical existence but it only works on a narrow platform.

We usually think we know who and what we are unless we accidentally fall through a soft spot in the floor of our agreed upon existential stage. Brugh Joy talks about the phenomena that one of our selves can be fit and healthy while another one may succomb to a disease. It’s actually possible to save the physical body by putting the identity that is healthy on stage or transversely a sick self may be appeasing a demon that requires a toll for something from the past or is protecting us from something even worse. What seems tragic may have deeper roots into a dimension and reality that would only make sense if we had eyes like a cosmic eagle that saw the overall picture. This is the reason, of course, that Native Shamans cultivate eagle essence.

All of the different selves from different times in a single physical life are energetically connected with each other as well as with the self we currently claim. They can become a working community or they can lead to chaos. Most of the time (I get nervous anymore whenever I use the word time) we get by without any recognition that we are more than me. But usually the other people in our lives can attest to there being some surprises under our hood. Just as primitive people get a shock when they see themselves in a mirror for the first time, the recognition that I am not who I think I am is both unsettling and intriguing. Let’s see where it goes. There are Everest’s to climb in that other world just as in the one I'm peering from now.

PLUTO IN CAPRICORN AND 2012

2011-11-14T13:54:00.001-07:00

Money, Sex and Power—the Cleansing?

The planet (or dwarf) Pluto entered Capricorn in 2008 and will stay until 2024. This hasn't happened in 248 years. At the same time we have been getting lots of speculation on the meaning of 2012, the end of the Mayan Calendar. Whether you believe that Pluto is a planet or dwarf it has long been associated with drastic change both personally and historically. Capricorn is the sign of public institutions, authority, social accomplishment and tradition. On an individual level it is expressed as social ambition, responsibility, and love of tradition and is associated with the revered role of the father. On a social level it expresses as the patriarchal ideals and ambitions that have ruled western civilization for several thousand years. Lately the people and issues associated with Capricorn have been under siege. The economic and political arena is undergoing severe functional meltdown and public shame. Shame is the ultimate disaster for all that is ruled by the principles of Capricorn.

A recent example is the firing of Penn State head coach Joe Paterno. I sense that the Jerry Sandusky incident at Penn State is going to grow into something much larger. In fact “grow” may not be the correct term. It is more like the tip of a great stone long buried in the earth but recently tripped over. The timing of such discoveries is important. Pluto in Capricorn will eventually indicate the hidden sordidness underlying practically all of our institutions. Outwardly they claim to represent stability, sanity and truth but in reality it is a façade. Beneath the surface our most respected institutions are rotting and putrid.

Not only is the financial basis of our economies turning out to be a mismanaged sham but also the shadow side of all our respected institutions is being exposed again and again. One can only wonder where it will lead. I can think of two fairy tales that address our most pressing issues, “the Emperor’s New Clothes,” and “the Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” Of course both of these stories indicate that this isn’t a new problem but an ever-present aspect of the social facade of power.

Why are these issues coming out now? It isn’t new by any reckoning. But there is an emerging force at this time that wants to bring the closet doors off their hinges. The skeletons need some light. Politicians are also being swept off their shiny patent shoes to land up close and personal on a vengeful Mother Earth. But is it vengeance or an overriding need to sweep the bullshit off the stage of human drama. Could it be that 2012 is not about cosmic catastrophe as much as a cosmic shutdown on spin?

Losing the Box

We humans look through our cultural glasses in fearful expectation that the monsters of extraterrestrial invasion, natural disaster and out of control war and terrorism will rage on until all of our cultural structures are fatally besieged by some terrible cosmic force. Maybe it means that an asteroid will hit us, or all the fault lines around our planet will catastrophically act up. Or, perhaps the poles will turn us upside down and we will have a climactic catastrophe that will all but wipe us off the earth. But what about the familiar world we take for granted? What if we have been duped all along about the power and importance of human structures? What if they don’t need some cosmetic repairs as much as a total remake. Astrologically the planet Pluto represents destruction and reconstruction. Unfortunately you don’t get reconstruction without first getting destruction. Before we can get out of the box it has to be dismantled. Why? Because we don’t even know we are in it until it isn’t there anymore.

Before we humans are aware of the possibility of jumping out of our boxes, we first try to make them work better in any way we can. Capricorn concerns institutional boxes. It rules our social designs and systems of responsible authority. Modern scientific age humans attempt to find rational, legal and scientific ways to fix whatever is going wrong. This is inevitable. Simply put we first try to improve our box. But as Albert Einstein said, “it is impossible to solve a problem within the system of the problem,”

It seems to me that the greatest human mistake in times like these is to believe that our socially agreed on forms are a reality sanctified by God. Then we project any suspicion that this might not be entirely true onto foreign enemies or cosmic catastrophes. Even God will inevitably fail us because the word and concept is continuously created by we humans, a less than godlike species. God is a concept that must change from time to time to include a larger more high-definition image of the ultimate authority. Since we cannot but be less than our creator is it’s impossible to ever adequately define our “Ultimate Source.”

Pluto the Cleaner

Medieval Depiction of Pluto and Persephone

Pluto in mythology rules the underworld and protects earth’s treasures. Whatever Pluto fingers seem to turn first into shit and last into gold. It is about cleansing the form until its essence is revealed. Here are two quotes from astrologer/historian/mythologist Neil Giles:

Pluto in Capricorn will test the durability and regenerative resources of leaders and governments across the globe, as well as business and the corporate world. Old or staid structures will collapse or come apart at the seams if they cannot redefine their nature and cope with changing conditions and needs. The renewal or discarding of traditional practices or beliefs will play a part in this for Capricorn draws from inherited wisdom and practice. Those traditions that find new life will serve to guide modern leadership while those that are uprooted or outmoded will pass into oblivion. On the one hand, we will see the renewal of traditional power or thinking that can endure while on the other, we will see its displacement by the forces of the new, as leaders and systems find themselves under the pump. No doubt, Pluto in Capricorn will bring service where others will be ruthlessly ambitious and materialistic….

…In such a pressure-cooker as this coming cycle, it may eventually occur to us as a species that we cannot continue trying to solve our problems with a bullying thrust of violent intervention. Just as we will have to look to alternative energy sources, we must also realize that we cannot keep building roads to the future by blowing up everything that gets in the way of our intended path. Obstacles to our desires are there to teach us, not frustrate us. It is time we learned that salutary lesson from Pluto. The sign of Capricorn teaches the proper sense of organization and responsibility required for effective social contribution. With Pluto in Capricorn in the coming era, the imperative is to learn how to make one, how to put aside the power mongering and the drama and do something that works. The destiny that is written in the stars is also in our hands.

Mythologicaly, Pluto is also a caretaker of great treasures. What are the treasures that Pluto may have been protecting? Perhaps it is the cosmic power of evolution and deep healing. While we are getting a lot of attention focused on the meaning of 2012 and the end of the Mayan calendar, I’m thinking how so often different sources of occult information support each other and these two seem to be synced. Death and birth continually follow each other in the reality we occupy. Generally we are more aware of what is dying than of what might be going through birth pangs. Energy never ceases to exist but the forms it takes do change.

Creation is continuous. Pluto and the astrological sign it rules, Scorpio is known for hidden power. In a sense they represent the shadow side of life. The part that is generally denied disowned and suppressed. With that suppressed power is the power of regeneration, historically and prehistorically the realm of the goddess. She is just beginning to rise from thousands of years of repression. When something of elemental significance is repressed it takes on an ugly, destructive humiliating form in society. Eventually it will bring us down. Only by recognizing in all humility that we are not gods and it is even more dangerous to pretend godliness will we ever hope to fulfill our divine purpose. Money, sex and power are all realms of Pluto but we must be willing to pay our due. The goddess energy symbolized as Mother Earth can turn it to gold if we don’t try to trick her or remove her from the creative process. It is now time for the God and Goddess to make peace with each other. That is the only way to move from destruction to reconstruction.

HOW TO FIND HIDDEN KNOWLEDGE

2011-10-25T18:53:00.001-06:00

This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.
------Rumi

Secret societies are not necessary for hiding advanced ancient knowledge considered too dangerous for naïve minds. In most cases if the recipient is not ready to

receive it there is no way it will stick in his/her mind. Most hidden knowledge is actually hiding in plain sight. It will simply slide “like water off a duck’s back,” as the saying goes. It seems to me that the only time secrecy is truly needed is when it is the evolutionary time for a revelation or major spiritual/social upgrade to emerge and those in power are threatened and consequently attempting to prevent it. It never works but they always try and the results are generally bloody.

Many advances in consciousness are completely lost to most of the public because they haven’t got their perceptive tools honed to receive it. They are still conceptually supporting an outdated paradigm. Habit is very powerful. As Einstein said, “it is impossible to solve a problem within the system of the problem.” Of course most of the time we are unaware of being within a conceptual system. Hidden ignorance is much more prevalent than hidden knowledge.

Nevertheless, I’m amazed at how quickly knowledge and social advancements can be forgotten after one generation. I’m sure it wouldn’t have vanished had it actually penetrated the outer layers of perception. I can’t help wondering if there is a formula for mass brainwashing. For those of you who can remember the enormous social and spiritual openings of the 70’s and 80’s of the 20th century it seems as if a magic spell of forgetfulness overtook the masses. I’m not saying this is a totally bad thing, however. Sometimes changes come too fast to integrate. Although many ideas and concepts that had been hidden for centuries came out in the open as if a long hidden door had suddenly become visible, many people where not emotionally or spiritually prepared to maintain these concepts or use them appropriately. The essence remained hidden.

The latest in communication technology is moving through our world faster than we can assimilate it. While the delivery system grows ever faster and more sophisticated the content seems to be more and more simplistic. Too much turns out to be the same as not enough if it is delivered faster than it can be processed. This may be the best way yet to control consciousness. Just deliver information so fast that it can’t be processed and it’s more effective, way more effective than censuring it.

I remember the power that a single idea in a single book had when I first began climbing outside the box I was born in. Now ideas come in so fast there is no time to integrate them. What if the real revolution comes as an entirely different way of processing information? What if we really do begin to look outside the box (sometimes literally a box shaped device such as TV, smart phone, or Computer). Maybe we will wake up and notice such contradictions as “fighting for peace,” and going to war to impose democracy by force on other countries. Although these terms are just rhetoric many people haven’t learned to recognize the contradictions because they choose to trust authority when it tells them their box is safe and righteous.

Most people on earth right now sense that major change is in the works with economic collapse, war, exposure of high level disfunction and deception, etc. But its very common to look for guidance and reassurance to ideas that are products of the very system that is failing. Nevertheless, there will always be a few people who fall out of a disintegrating box and find it liberating after the terror passes. It is for these individuals that genuine secret knowledge will become available. Not because they are on an ego trip, join a secret society, or are smarter than anyone else, but because the painted curtain covering the window of perception is torn and the world outside is revealed. It won’t come all at once because the curtain tears away bit by bit, but it will come.

If this knowledge fills you with the power of love and compassion it is truly hidden knowledge and it comes truly from the Creator. Authentic knowledge comes from the integration of head with heart and if the heart is missing you have been deceived again.

THE PATH BEYOND THE MAGIC MIRROR

2011-10-04T20:04:00.000-06:00

By Marti Fenton White Deer Song

In the beginning we see in the other a reflective mirror of all we desire to be
And fall in love with the beauty of our own potential in another.
This sweetness lures us into the magic mirror and onto the path.
The spirit of love has a scheme for this sweet attraction
To mold our souls into a unique configuration of the divine,
Bringing differences into new recognition. Seducing us with hope
Of what gracious treasures lie along the road.

Then comes the fall from paradise, or so it seems, when the mirror shatters from
The shock of our imperfect reflection and this path seems dead-ended.
We see only weeds where flowers grew.
Many end their story here, tear up the memories and begin again
Always seeking the beautiful in anticipation of a new beginning.
Like a too high flying balloon, the dream bursts
Drifting to the dense earth in torn shreds.

Yes, we live in an imperfect world and when we feel the
Cruel hardness of the ground that breaks this fall and our dream
We feel deceived, betrayed by the one being we thought
Should free us from our fate and lead us to our dreams.
Torn apart, alone, betrayed, the dream shattered,
Each of us seemingly deceived by a false image of the other.
Many end their journey together at this harsh fork in the road.

But this isn’t a rightful ending for those with heart.
The trickster god of the crossroad, Hermes, Alchemist,
Magician of turning lead to gold is testing
Readiness for the next stage of this adventure,
But do we have the courage?

Love is not a game but a perilous journey.
Many souls die along the way deteriorating where they fell
While only their ghost drifts on lost in self-deceiving dreams.
If we survive this test we discover that we are able to walk through
Many broken mirrors, then meet in a new reality where we become
Co-creators in our shared future.

Those who survive into this unique partnership called marriage
Are as a pebble dropped in the sea of the world,
Waves spreading out in all directions as
Fractals of the human potential.

For in love lie all the dangers, challenges and powers of
Our human adventure on earth. We build this road to the future for those
Who continue the journey when our adventure has reached its final destination.
In true love, two into one have the strength of many.
And we are not lost to ourselves but recognized for who we are yet to be.

On September 24th Standing Deer and I were married. This turned out to be a greater step than I anticipated. Perhaps the degree and intensity of the event is in proportion to everything leading up to it. After all we’ve known each other for 19 years and been lovers much of that time. Our relationship has continued to develop through two marriages and many girlfriends and it has been beyond understanding for most of our friends.

I think the last phase began about two years ago but I’m not sure about the time. I had finally decided to give up on any future us. It wasn’t the first time but it was the best time. It came after another drifting out on his part. He had sworn undying love, said he would never hurt me again, apologized for what he put me through and then began to fade out. Before long he was dating someone else but didn’t say so. I just knew the signs by then. I couldn’t stand to see all that I put in his house being used by another woman so I removed my paintings and the small pieces from my mother’s house. We had worked together for weeks to clean decorate and paint his house. My mother had passed a few months before and it was comforting to have her furniture in the home of my love. Now I felt betrayed. He reacted by having me take everything out. I rented a large storage space at Hinds & Hinds next to Smith’s grocery. I met him there and we unloaded the furniture silently. The tension was as tight as a piano string.

Even through grief and disappointment I felt a surge of renewed energy. I moved all of the things in my garage to that storage space and every load I took lightened my soul and linked me to the person I was when I first came to Taos. My heart was both shattered and renewed at the same time. I remembered just how the air felt and saw the leaves in the trees become greener and the sky cleared. I was back to my beginning in Taos. My first husband and I used this storage space when we first arrived. Everything came back as if no time had passed. Excitement, grief, anticipation of the new adventure, as well as the people who became part of our new life, all were here again just as they had been. I looked at my mother’s furniture. The new furniture that she and I picked out when she moved to the senior apartment that was her last home. It was beautiful and truly her own in every way. I felt sad that this phase had already ended and yet she was complete in her own way. Now it belonged to me as well as the memories that went with it. The emotions were so big that I couldn’t contain them all at once and I came back again and again. I prayed, I cried, I remembered and remembered. I knew that my old life was over and though I didn’t know what was ahead I was finally ready to find out with no expectations of the future.

For the first time in years my life force was awakened and I was ready to move on. That same spring I went to Denver to see friends and family. My dear friend Rachel and I ate at our favorite Italian restaurant and I told her that I realized that Standing Deer simply couldn’t do a relationship and that I finally recognized that it was unfair of me to expect more than he was capable of. I could care for him as an old friend and important person in my Taos experience but I needed to move on and be well when he did the same.

On the way home my cell phone rang at the top of La Veda pass. My first instinct said that it was Standing Deer and it was. We had been on the same plan and he gave his phone back to me when we broke up so I knew he didn’t have a phone. I surmised that he was in a bar and borrowed someone’s phone. I soon lost connection because reception only works on the top of the pass. When I got to the bottom I called the number recorded on my phone but the man that answered didn’t know who or what I was talking about. So I let it go. When I arrived in Taos he called again and said he had another piece of my furniture that he wanted to return and asked me to meet him at the storage unit. I said I’d take my luggage home first and meet him in an hour. After unloading I remembered that I had the cell phone he’d returned to me in a drawer. Since I was responsible for the duration of the contract whether or not he used it I decided to take it along and offer it to him.

At the storage we were a bit stiff but after unloading the piece I offered him the phone to use for the rest of the contract. He seemed a bit reticent but decided to take it. I could feel something else on his mind. After several awkward seconds he asked if I would like to have a glass of wine before we went home. We considered a couple of places in town and then he suggested the Steak Out. This was a place where we used to watch the sunset over the entire valley from the patio. This was the beginning of a new chapter. Everything changed that evening.

I felt free for the first time. I no longer cared what he thought of me or what our past had been. I just felt comfortable listening to what he’d been doing and sharing my Denver trip with him. He said he wanted to do some travelling and felt he wanted to stay out of relationships until he was clearer. We drank way too much wine. There was an Indian man at the same bar from San Juan Pueblo and we discovered we had some friends in common. We talked to him and shared a couple more bottles. Finally it was dark and late. Neither of us said anything about it but he came home with me.

After that night we were together. There were a couple of minor glitches when he decided to live alone in his house for a few days. But it didn’t last and gradually those times went away. This was the first time we’d actually lived together on a daily basis. But always there was something between us that wouldn’t go away no matter what we intended or who we were with.

So much has changed since that day at the storage space that it’s not easy to remember how we used to be. He insists that it was that particular day at that particular place that everything in his life changed. He did exactly the opposite of what he’d intended to do because at that moment he realized he would regret it forever if he didn’t.

The next spring we visited Cottonwood and Sedona Arizona, scheduled a workshop for the following September and made several more trips. Because of Standing Deer’s lung problems we decided to move there for the rest of the year. We found a charming little cottage in Cottonwood. It was a blissful time. We enjoyed furnishing it, visiting friends, painting in the covered porch, hiking and getting used to living together. We grew very close because it was our home rather than his or mine.

We are in Taos again taking care of our homes here but we hope to be in Arizona this winter. It will be different this time. I find that we are so much freer together now. It is quite a surprise because I had a meltdown two days before the wedding. A dark cloud was hanging over me and I felt that all the demons of my previous lives were ganging up to create some disaster. Fortunately I’m old enough to recognize a panic attack. It’s not easy to accept the realization of one’s hopes and dreams. There is nothing left to anticipate and reality presents the possibility of disappointment. Standing Deer was so happy and full of joy that I felt guilty for these feelings but decided I had to share them with him or risk sabotaging everything we were about. After that crisis everything was smooth and the wedding itself was a beautiful experience. It became a wonderful gathering of friends. I must say there is a glow that is still sending energy to everyone within range.

Update: I’m finishing this piece in Cottonwood, Arizona. We are house-sitting for a dear friend, and hoping to find a place for the winter. Yesterday we weathered our first major crisis. Standing Deer had his melt-down post wedding. Later I realized how important it was. His oldest demons decided to put us to the test. We got through it together and came out better than before but it made me realize that “happily ever after” is shallow. This partnership is about transformation and the fulfillment of a contract made before we met in this world we now share as partners.

NATIONAL MEMORY: 9/11

2011-09-15T17:58:00.000-06:00

After a week of media saturation around the tenth year anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center I’ve been aware that something didn’t feel right. As I thought about it, I recognized that actually several things were bothering me about the way the media was using this emotionally charged anniversary.

First, was the sense that reminders of this disaster were being used for propaganda by the media to re-open the wounds and direct the pain of Americans against “the enemy” that caused this pain. I remember having a very similar reaction at my Grandmother’s funeral. For years I’d been feeling swindled at funeral services but that was the first time it emerged to consciousness. The minister was using grandma’s funeral as a chance to sell his agenda to people who wouldn’t normally be his audience. It didn’t seem to be bothering anyone else, but then they were desensitized to this approach just as I’d been. Is the American public desensitized to efforts to stir up an intended reaction for an ulterior purpose or are we just naturally naïve?

One of the best ways to package propaganda is to wrap it in gold and present it as sacred and thus above question. The World Trade Center attack and the two planes that were involved in other attacks that same day were certainly victims of a terrible and tragic attack. Of that there is no question. The idea that it was not a military engagement but an attack on innocent civilians was at the core of the outrage. However, the preferred interpretation of and reaction to such an event is often slipped in secretly along with the facts. When people are emotional they are not analyzing the logic of an interpretation.

It could be argued that the war that ensued as a supposed act of revenge has killed many more innocent civilians than were killed in the 9/11 attacks. One can’t help but wonder about the motives in making a tragedy into a weapon of war. Who is it really serving?

Another issue concerns me. Is America so sacred and special that we should expect to be divinely protected from the tragedies that befall other nations? I’ve often suspected that such naivete would one day cause us to fall victim to reality. We are taught that we wear the white hats and those who don’t like us wear black hats. It’s a simplistic adolescent belief and the powers that be use it for their own ends. I’m suggesting that the victims of 9/11 were twice victimized. Once by the conspirators that crashed the planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and second by those in power in their own country who use their tragedy as a political tool. Some, more cynical than I actually believe that the tragedy was secretly engineered within our own government. I’m more inclined to believe that it happened because the agencies that should have been protecting us were too smug to take mounting evidence seriously and that they were also victims of the belief that America is invincible.

America’s greatest weakness is to hide its weaknesses from itself. Group consciousness frequently seems more primitive than individual consciousness. Groups on the whole operate at a lower moral standard than individuals and often the individual members accept attitudes and behaviors on a national level that would be considered criminal on an individual level. Modern warfare is a good example. Dropping bombs on civilians is acceptable and at the same time we often go to great links to save a premature infant. Joseph Stalin is reputed to have said about the horror of his political purges, “the death of one man is a tragedy but the death of thousands is a statistic.” The euphemistic military terms intended to deliberately remove the emotional impact of destruction and death are effectively based on the same principle. Here is a list of common examples:

"Take Out" - Destroy
"Wet Work" - Assassination
"Area Denial Munitions" - Land Mines
"Physical Persuasion/Tough Questioning" - Torture
"Operational Exhaustion" - Shell Shock
"Department of Defense" - Department of War
"Neutralize" - Kill
"Collateral Damage" - Civilian Deaths
"Target of Opportunity" - Assassination
"Regime Change" - Overthrowing of a government
"Shock and Awe" - Blitzkrieg
"Surgical Strike" - The use of guided munitions
"Caught in cross-fire" - Innocents shot dead by soldiers
"Ethnic Cleansing" - Genocide
"Protective Custody" - Imprisonment without charge or trial
"Generous Offer" - Demand for Surrender
"Incursion" - Attacking with heavy metal
"Air Campaign" - Bombing
"Friendly Fire" - Death caused to one's own troops
"Prohibiting Transactions" - Economic embargo
"Soft targets" - humans
"All out strategic exchange" - Nuclear War
"Open up on" - Fire upon with all available weaponry
"Frag" - Kill a friendly soldier (now extended to enemies as well)
"Greenbacking" - Hiring mercenaries
"Monitoring" - Eavesdropping, spying
"Conventional weapon" - Non-nuclear weaponry
"Clean bomb" - Neutron bomb, only kills people leaving infrastructure intact
"Nerve agent" - Poison gas
"Strategic movement to the rear" - Retreat
"Pacify" - Lay waste to, destroy
"Pre-emptive strike" - Surprise attack
"Second strike capability" - Ability to retaliate with nuclear weaponry

It is emotion that motivates humans. To enhance the emotional impact of an event or remove its emotional impact is the most powerful of political tools.

LITTLE HOUSE, BIG PICTURE

2011-09-11T22:54:00.001-06:00

Another challenging life event has presented itself. The little house in Cottonwood, Arizona that we lived in during the winter of 2009/10 is for sale. It is actually affordable if we should decide to buy it. However, then we would own three houses. I put three houses on my want list two years ago but felt a bit like a greedy profligate when I did so. I envisioned being able to move around from one home to another, and to rent out the ones we didn’t happen to be using. Since I also believed there was an energy flow between Sedona and Taos that I wanted to connect it seemed meaningful. But my old self thought that was humbug. Perhaps the primary lesson is about which values I’m going to represent publicly.

I never let go of the little house in my heart. It represented another layer of being. I felt excruciating sadness when I looked at the pictures we took while decorating it and remembered our morning coffee on the porch, watching the lizards and birds, the neighbors roosters crowing at 2:00 AM, the view of the mountains to the west and how close we became while living there. The loss of the furniture inherited from my mother and PQ’s mother still haunts me. We had everything we needed plus the things we found at Saddle Rock Barn and the second hand stores of Cottonwood. All were intensely infused with the joy of our first adventure as a couple. This was the place where our new life began. Although I loved my Taos house, this little house was not his, or mine it was ours. I see that it marked a significant life shift that began with great hope. But we ran into glitches early on such as the truck blowing a rod on one of our trips back to Taos and the failure of our plans to rent out our Taos houses to cover expenses in Cottonwood. Yet we had a wonderful time in that house making it our home base and exploring the area. When we had to leave it was heartbreaking and we knew we wanted to come back. We couldn’t find help to get our furniture out of the house and back to Taos and we both still regret selling and giving away everything. I feel guilt as though I'd committed a crime against the spirit who led us there and our parents who provided our furniture. How can this be healed?

So here is another life challenge. I actually put this whole arrangement on my secret want list some time ago. It has manifest as a possibility exactly as I desired. Not perfectly however, desired and perfectly are not the same thing. The house is under lease until January 2012 and the realtor says it is a short sale, for me a new real estate term that means it is being sold for less than is owed on it. However, it brings up one of my core issues. Do I deserve it and is it real, or a trickster’s tease? Or is it a phantom that belongs to a time that has now passed? Although it is of great interest, I realize that I must not plunge into a new commitment that is beyond our means, and at the same time it may not be possible to pick up where we left off. That sounds like two issues but they are welded together.

When I moved to Taos almost 20 years ago I manifest the whole situation exactly as it turned out. But this doesn’t mean it turned out perfectly. Some things blew up in my face. In retrospect I can see that the reason for this was that I was trying to make two opposing life agendas work together. This has been a lifelong pattern that I wish to be rid of. Taos does not permit that kind of nonsense. Less charged environments, like the one I'd come from, allowed such prolonged impasses and the ensuing stagnation and consequently I didn’t fully perceive the absurdity of trying to stop and go at the same time. Each confirmation or realization of a hope or dream comes loaded with karmic lessons. I’m not being negative when I say that. In fact I believe that one of the faults in the currently flouted teachings on manifestation is that it usually fails to acknowledge that everything has two sides and when we acquire something we seriously desire we also receive a lesson on the hidden motives for placing importance on this desired object or situation. In addition the universe operates on a higher level than individual desires. The good and the bad work in tandem and we don't have the perspective to see the big picture. Often these seemingly small issues are a doorway to a karmic healing.

In my case the karmic issue is, “do I deserve it,” and if I don’t will I be punished for manifesting it? I believe I need to break this down even more. I don’t generally believe that I deserve anything, because I don’t believe in my right to be here in the first place. Am I breaking some cosmic law by existing? I suspect that this is related to my baby sisters death and the events surrounding her death when I was three years old. This period of time marked the beginning of my alienation from the people around me. Her death also triggered the sicklyness my mother experienced for years after my sister’s death. I on the other hand was a perfectly healthy child, brimming with energy, curiosity and life force but I came to feel ashamed and even embarrassed about being who I was and for being alive. I’m sure in retrospect that I actually felt responsible for the death of my sister and the ensuing suffering of my mother. My mother dramatized her sicklyness in an attempt to activate some kind of compassionate response from my father and her friends. Instead they withdrew and left her feeling abandoned.

To enforce this situation my parents seemed to find most of my enthusiasms and passions totally unacceptable and inappropriate. It was comparable to making jokes and playing games at a funeral. I embarrassed them just by my childish existence. On the other hand I acquired some importance by being independent and helpful. My own needs and desires, however, didn’t fit into the arrangement. My central conflict is about what to do with the life force and if one can live correctly in a world with other people.

Is a good life, a creative, passionate and influential life possible when surrounded by the pain and failure of others? I set out to fail in my hopes and desires from the beginning to avoid the unbearable heaviness of guilt. Now I’m trying to sort the real from the neurotic. But I’m no longer a perfectionist. I’ve learned that there are many ways to get to the right place and its better not to become obsessed by just one.

FALLING INTO THE FUTURE

2011-08-22T18:27:00.000-06:00

My constant and primary lesson in life is about taking responsibility for being myself out front in the full light, without pretending to fit somebody else' s needs and expectations but honestly taking on my own place in time. But this is about more than just me. A long line of ancestors hid in the safety of agreement and mediocrity. Not because they were socially or mentally challenged but because they believed it was safe and virtuous. We didn’t know it but we insulted the Creator by assuming he wanted yes men and women. I had to lose my faith before I realized that our so-called obedience was actually an insult to the Creator. What kind of God depends on followers to flatter his ego?

Stay Big,
Don’t Shrink.
Be in the Sun,
Avoid the dark.
Talk strong don’t whisper.
And above everything,
Honor your heart’s desires.
Speak and act what you believe,
Especially what you want to believe.
Make the dreams real and constantly
Lie this truth until it becomes real on Earth.


The first card in the Tarot. Stepping into the unknown of life.

This poem came to me a number of years ago when it seemed that everything that I valued was losing its light and life. The world was shrinking to the size of my little adobe living room and each day was lost in the predictable monotony of the little shop where I worked. I didn’t have enough money to make a change and all of my loves were waiting for the space of time I never had. The world was closing in, and I was beginning to forget why I came to New Mexico, the vision and hope that caused me to take a leap of faith. Of course nothing worked out as I hoped it would but that isn’t the point. I didn’t know enough about the destiny of my world to hope in the right way. Taos is a harsh teacher with more than a little trickster energy. Dreams are never allowed to rest in peace, nor are they given form easily. And so the testing went on backing me into the corner until there was no room to hope and then one day I realized that waiting for someone to have faith in me was a lost cause. I was being shown the results of my safety tactics of keeping a low profile, being very modest, self effacing and avoiding trouble.

I also deceived myself by believing that taking that one risky step off the edge of my safety zone would last the rest of my life. But was it really a risk? The safety zone is the true risk and the lesson was that life and safety are not compatible. Life demands, and Creator demands that we step off the edge again and again. That is the engine of creation. Yes, sometimes its necessary to catch one’s breath, dust off the dirt and stand up before plunging over the next precipice but that is no place to stay. We must keep taking chances and facing the unknown or our license for residency will expire. Unfortunately we often don’t notice when this happens. Gradually everything begins to fade out and before we know it we are dust.

COSMIC TIE-DYE

2011-07-19T14:37:00.000-06:00

I used to love the process of tie-dye. I even went to the library and checked out books on African and Asian tie-dye patterns and techniques. It was a great medium because it combined planned design with interesting accident, or chaos, if you will. This was the source of its fascination as far as I was concerned. I would dye layer one, sew and tie a pattern and then repeat this process several times layering many patterns and colors. The part that made it so much fun was the unexpected and usually gorgeous outcome. Although I planned the design and very carefully separated the various colors the final result was always a surprise and in my opinion an act of nature as much as it was a personal creation. In that sense it reminded me of both a kaleidoscope and fractal geometry. That is the visual result of a marriage of planned design and unforeseen consequences. But I find that it’s a good metaphor for my usual approach to life.

It seems to me that this is how life and creation really do unfold within the dimension of time. Behind all of our plans there is an overriding fractal law that at first seems chaotic but is actually the matrix of all patterns and rhythms. Lately I came to the realization that this special gift of surprise is what moves me artistically and in life. Although both my life and art are inspired by the vision of a particular form there is always something beyond my own imagination that imposes a variation on the original theme. Frequently several variations come to mind and through my fingers before I sense that the design is complete for a particular project. But I’m always aware of several other options that could have been.

It’s true that we often impose our little intentions on something that is beyond our understanding such as dividing the heavenly bodies into constellations. But might it also be that the greater patterning function of the universe works within us even if we are the small fry’s within the cosmic ocean. True, it’s backwards, the small trying to design the great, but it’s also within the nature of all that is.

Perhaps we have a hard-wired desire to complete each design pattern and that each pattern in life is much like a phrase of music that will only be finished when a certain note is struck. The completion of a composition must end with a particular rhythm and tone that defines and fulfills its existence. Meaning itself seems to depend on certain sequences within time. Even our life cycle has a pattern and rhythm. For this reason I don’t believe that immortality could ever succeed. That would destroy the very nature of life’s essence. Without an end note, a frame, or the edge of the fabric there could be nothing that we define as life. The beginning is defined by the ending. Probably the universe itself and the Creator also have endings and beginnings and we as products, or more appropriately as holographic cells within the Big Body and its song and dance are one of those remote tips of an ongoing fractal phrase. Endings and beginnings are as much an aspect of creation as the endless universe that supports them. What an amazing dance between something and nothing and it all depends on pattern and design. And pattern and design depend on nothing. Nothing at all! This is why I believe both the Theists and the Atheists are right.

LEARNING TO LIVE

2011-07-10T00:17:00.000-06:00

PQ and I have been in Cottonwood, Arizona one month now. Finally the monsoon has arrived though late, and those huge cumulous clouds typical of the desert Southwest fill the sky. It started with a down pouring hail that knocked leaves off of trees, trimmed the flowers back and filled the patio with water but it was welcome nevertheless. Now it has settled into a shower each afternoon. I have a break from watering the garden and keeping the shades drawn against the sun. And nature is a much better gardener than I am.


PQ on Fay Canyon Trail

We sit each morning on the patio and watch the hummingbirds fight over the feeders, their sentry's perched on the top branch of a mesquite waiting to dive bomb rivals while lizards do pushups on the wall. Now and then we see one of the tiny striped snakes that live under the rocks. A falcon flew by very low and almost touched us with its wings. The Mourning Doves are shy. I watch them waiting in the neighbor’s yard for us to go inside so that they can drink from the birdbath. It’s all very simple, quiet and healing. I watch a drama unfolding. Two large black beetles collide in mid air. One falls to the ground and a lizard zooms in to attack it. They tumble around for awhile but the beetle is too big and finally limps away, but it is probably fatally wounded. Meanwhile a group of ants are struggling to get a crumb of toast torn into manageable sizes and then carry it across the rocky ground. It’s a formidable task but they never give up. Is this any less important than the workers across the street who have been downing a large pine this week, and loading it into their truck piece by piece? The world is very busy and it all seems like a fugue of motion, all sizes and species of beings playing their own part of the earth song and dance.

In Beauty before me I walk

In Beauty behind me I walk,

In Beauty below me I walk,

In Beauty above me I walk,

In Beauty all around me I walk,

It is finished in Beauty,

It is finished in beauty.

Dine Beauty Way Chant

If I were to categorize this period of time I would say that it is a time of learning to live. I am separating myself from dis-empowering and alienating attitudes and beliefs. Its not about saying affirmations and thinking positive thoughts but instead its about seeing through false beliefs to a degree that I’ve never experienced before. This life is becoming a balanced circle in my perception and I am a part of it standing in the middle of my personal world. Whether I have high or low self-esteem doesn’t matter anymore. This doesn’t trouble the ants. Balance is comfortable like a dance where the dancer and the music are completely in synch. The world isn’t any better, in fact it may be getting worse but the futility and narcissism of fear, worry and despair has been exposed.

Things aren’t perfect. That’s not the point. Maybe there is no perfect. I don’t know how I’ll pay all the bills much longer; PQ has a potentially fatal disease and I haven’t had a decent place to paint for over a year but the moment seems perfect and that is all there is. And this may be spiritual dessert and when its gone bitter medicine may replace it but it’s a taste that becomes stronger and sweeter over time and now I know this sweet taste and use it as a guide. Perhaps this is the key to meaning and to co-creation in the universe. It’s not about struggle and duty but about harmonizing with the life force within and without. The rest must inevitably click into place.

I was brought up to believe that everything of value should be a struggle and that pain was purifying. The world was tainted by Adam's and Eve's fall from grace and we had to put up with it until God destroyed this evil world and took us away to a better one. Although I tried very hard to believe this it never took for me. I won’t go into it here but I now have a completely different way of interpreting the very teachings that were used to make life on earth so ugly.

I’m not fixing my life anymore, nor anyone else’s, for that matter, and I certainly don’t have the power to fix the world. I dance as I go, just as I duck under branches and climb over rocks on a hike. The body and mind adapt to the trail in a fluid and practical way. It’s good to work at the rhythm of season and environment, taking responsibility for what is mine to work with and leaving the rest to God and other beings better suited. Yes, I still have hopes and dreams but they are go-by patterns and I can alter them to fit a sharper view or a more complete understanding without feeling failure. I don’t know what the goal is anyway. It keeps changing and evolving and I like that.

I’ve come to believe that our real work is participation in the magic of incarnation. Creation is happening all around us and we are in the midst of its process. Pain is a sign that something isn’t in synch, and sometimes that our attention needs to be altered, refocused or a wrong turn is asking to be corrected.

. . You never find happiness until you stop looking for it. My greatest happiness consists precisely in doing nothing whatever that is calculated to obtain happiness: and this, in the minds of most people, is the worst possible course... If you ask "what ought to be done" and "what ought not to be done" on earth in order to produce happiness, I answer that these questions do not have an answer. There is no way of determining such things. Yet at the same time, if I cease striving for happiness, the "right' and the "wrong" at once become apparent all by themselves. Contentment and well-being at once become possible the moment you cease to act with them in view, and if you practice non-doing (wu wei), you will have both happiness and well-being.
Chuang Tzu (c.360 BC - c. 275 BC)

Travelling Through Life: The Alchemy of Time

2011-07-03T12:59:00.000-06:00

Since arriving back in Arizona, after a short visit to our home in Taos, I’ve noticed changes in my stance toward life and the future. Perhaps a change in location encourages a different perspective. When I’m at home in Taos I am whom I am used to being. Habit saves energy and time but it has some serious drawbacks. One of these drawbacks is that we become habituated to using the same mental and spiritual tools for every personal discomfort even when they obviously don’t work. I suppose it has to do with the secure feeling of familiarity. It is powerful medicine to step outside one’s accustomed identity. Too often we forget that we are part of the environment of our existence and have much to do with making it what it is. On the personal level we really do create our own reality even though this phrase has been seriously compromised in the New Age market.

I’ve noticed recently that even casual encounters with old enemies no longer carry the punch they used to carry. By old enemies I’m thinking of those pressures to conform to some external ideal. Also, I recently had a birthday and even though I don’t consciously think about it, getting older is bringing new perspectives just as a road trip moves one through a constantly changing landscape. Appeals to vanity are losing their, well, appeal. When I see an add for a new miraculous product or technique for reversing age, removing wrinkles, flattening the tummy or losing pounds I notice that it no longer stimulates curiosity. Much to my surprise I’m now OK with the way I am and not particularly interested in meeting standards of perfection set by the fashion and marketing folks. In other words I now see these manipulations for what they are, ploys to make money for someone at the expense of my self-esteem. Perfection is an empty word because nobody really knows what it is. This vagueness leaves the word wide open for manipulation.

We are organic beings that go through many stages during our journey through life. To become fixated on one stage of this journey is unnatural and it is done to meet the standards of someone, even possibly an imaginary someone who has convinced you that they have the power to pass judgement on you for failing to defy nature.

It’s not that I don’t want to change anything about myself however. It’s that the reasons are different and are beginning to fit like a well made shoe. We are part of the entire universe and what we do and especially who we are is either in sync or out of sync with the whole. Or less cosmically put, to my surprise and delight I'm acquiring the ability to feel the natural rhythm. Instead of an uncomfortable dissonance the inside and outside are in communication even if not yet in perfect harmony and its easier to correct a bad note.

I tend to be a background person. Astrologically with four heavenly bodies including Sun and Moon in the 12th house I started out way back in the shadows. Much of my life has been a fight to get out of the shadows and into the light of recognition. Now I’m facing the fact that this may never happen and it’s not entirely a bad thing. After all the shadow turned out to be merely a perception. After years of envying people who expressed themselves easily and charged out into the world to accomplish their dreams, I’m learning that much of this is secondary in value to awareness and self-knowledge. I’m referring here to Self with a capital S not the ego self we generally believe we own, although it is an amalgam of pieces acquired here and there since birth. The upper case Self is the part that is connected to the process of creation and leads us beyond expectations, hopes, dreams and whatever we can’t yet imagine.

The distance between inside and outside, near and far is gradually closing as I recognize that it is all about perception and how that perception is applied.

THE BIGGER PICTURE

2011-06-17T21:24:00.000-06:00

We live in a world that has arrived at the brink of a cosmic developmental crisis. Those in power over the human world literally have the future of this world and its inhabitants in their hands. There is a lot of talk about the need to preserve the environment, the dangers of uncontrolled expansion, the evils of political corruption, and the ever present danger of war with weapons of mass destruction. Even space is not safe from human manipulation. Although it is popular to promote the protection of endangered species it is still obvious that humans have an anthropocentric bias resulting in lack of consciousness beyond the immediate time and their own species.

Kazimierz Dabrowski

Before an evolutionary concept can actualize into social recognition it must have a conceptual description that can serve as a psychic handle, or so it seems. Kazimierz Dąbrowski provided just such a mental structure for the process of moral development. Dabrowski was a Polish psychiatrist who developed a theory of moral development called Positive Disintegration that ventured into the social moral and creative development of human psychology. His theories are still not well known in the West. They are primarily used in presentations about both childhood and adult giftedness. I was first introduced to Dąbrowski by a Jungian oriented therapist in Denver. The aspect of his theory that gripped my attention was a concept of levels of moral development that seemed far more enlightened than the routinely taught theories. One of Dabrowski’s greatest influences was Plato; "Mankind will not get rid of its evils until either the class of those who philosophize in truth and rectitude reach political power or those most powerful in cities, under some divine dispensation, really get to philosophizing.”

Very little has changed since Plato’s time except external technology. By now its obvious that philosophy alone is not enough. I often wonder why this is so. Why is there such a gaping chasm between true wisdom and the fruit of intellect? They seem to be two dimensions that seldom connect within the human mind. Humans are very clever and some are capable of amazing mental and technical achievements. Nevertheless there is so little progress of soul and spirit beyond a few enlightened individuals. I watch Science Fiction movies that are built on incredible and fantastic technologies of the future but the characters and their motives are as ancient and primitive, as were those of our first ancestors. The same applies to scary aliens. Although the media presents them with superhuman abilities and they are way more technically advanced than we are these movie aliens only excel technically or biologically. The assumption seems to be that this is all there is. I think it is obvious that philosophy is not enough. It may lie out the map but it can’t get us to the destination.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

At times it seems that the world is controlled by the mentality of a 14-year-old male geek. There is passion, technology, cleverness, creative imagination and hubris. The spirits of both power and experimentation are well represented but balance and wisdom are totally lacking. It is the problem of “the sorcerer’s apprentice.”

The modern human world seems seldom to notice that intellect and wisdom have a different source. One can be a genius intellectually and yet be emotionally and spiritually undeveloped. Dabrowski called attention to the absent developmental steps to Wisdom. We have come to admire a powerful intellect but IQ tests don’t reveal anything about emotional or spiritual powers and very little about creative powers. I am suggesting that there are many levels of intelligence but MIT educates on the first two levels. The problem with this is that it is this limited kind of intelligence that is ruling our present and determining our future and it is creating a world out of balance. The emotional and spiritual abilities are still undeveloped and it is these that are expressed in the shadow side of power.

What Motivates Us?

Perhaps the core problem is the fact that humans are actually motivated by emotion not by intellect and yet emotional development is the missing link to wisdom. One can be a creative and intellectual genius and still lack good judgement and developmental balance. It is significant that there is a recent interest in indigenous cultures that are rooted on the concept of maintaining balance with the natural forces. How ironic that after hundreds of years of attempting to force indigenous people to adapt to our ways the so-called civilized world now looks to the often demoralized remnants of these cultures for guidance. To quote from the New Testament in the gospel of Matthew, “In the coming kingdom, the last shall be first and the first shall be last.” Iconoclastic psychologist Fritz Perls often reminded patients that in a conflict between top dog and underdog, underdog always wins. By this he meant that the part of a person that is least conscious and often denied holds the energy cards. It plays the part of trickster and undermines one’s conscious intentions because the conscious intentions don’t represent the wholeness of being.

Although we are nagged by environmentalists warning us that the world as we know it is on the way out, due to global warming, destruction of natural habitats, etc., we are caught in a political economic merry-go-round and are afraid to jump off. The momentum of the spin is huge. But I would like to suggest that we might not be as totally in control of the fate of this planet as we think we are. Here again our anthropocentrism skews our perception. We are still children of mother earth and citizens of the stars. Our organic origins bear down stronger than either the individual ego or the social ego. Mother Earth and the laws of the universe will prevail even if life and human identity as we’ve come to know it is sacrificed in the healing process.

Is This The Kali Yuga?
The 10 of Swords. Final defeat before the dawn

Dawn is already on its way at the darkest hour and the creation process involves destruction of the previous form before re-construction begins. I’m reminded that we are already in the Kali Yuga, the final age of destruction before the cycle of creation begins again according to the Hindu tradition. And yet I don’t see the world as a continuous circular repetition of stages in the classic Hindu tradition rather I see it as a spiral in continuous developmental expansion just as the universe is expanding.

MANIFESTATION: More Lessons on the Cosmic Waves

2011-06-17T10:32:00.002-06:00

In the previous three weeks there were several forest fires in New Mexico and a fire in the White Mountains of Arizona blowing east into New Mexico. This is very hard on PQ’s lungs so we stayed inside with the doors closed most of the time. And yet my Taos garden was doing well and I thought the wind that has been blowing since mid February and the fires surely would be over soon and I could enjoy my summer gardening. Every morning that the weather permitted we had coffee on the flagstone patio in my backyard and PQ talked to the birds. We gave leftover tidbits to the local magpies and watched them enjoy our cafeteria. The Starlings that live in my bathroom vent stand sentry on the neighbor’s roof and they also talk to PQ. These birds have an amazing vocabulary and he is trying to learn it. In response to his efforts they flap their wings and cackle. We were trying to make the most of living in Taos this summer even though the altitude and smoke were a problem for PQ.

Nevertheless we were longing to be in Cottonwood Arizona again. I couldn’t see how this could happen in the immediate future but among my secret fantasies of possible scenarios a house-sit entered my daydreams here and there. We didn’t bring up this topic often because we had resolved to make the best of the current situation but sometimes we updated each other on our fantasies. I began to accept that once a good opportunity like the one we had last year comes and goes its lame to keep trying to make it happen again. But I’m being pulled in two directions. One day I feel that for myself there is little to keep me in Taos. The wonderful energetic sparking of 10 years ago has been gradually falling away and Taos feels like a plastic flower that is beginning to fade. But I’m not sure if it is Taos or me. I was stuck in a rut and didn’t know what would change this. Where had the old magic gone? Nevertheless, there were many good things, too. Our favorite restaurants, running into old friends and of course my garden. For PQ there was his kids and grand kids the 42-inch TV and Netflix.

Century Plant blooming on Soldier's Pass trail

During this time back in Taos I was also examining the paradoxes of my desires and the results of those desires. It seems that there are areas of life that flow very easily and other areas that dead-end over and over. What am I doing wrong? What makes the difference? Where are my guides now? But perhaps I attend too much to what I think isn’t working.

Then two weeks ago our friend Carol called and asked if we would be interested in house-sitting at her home in Cottonwood. She needed to go back east to help her brother find a better housing arrangement for their mother. She knew how much we liked being here and she knew her own little garden would expire in the heat if no one took care of it. In addition our friends who moved to the Taos area from Cottonwood last fall had reached a fork in the road. Having spent the winter in a dark overcrowded cubbyhole they each needed more personal space for their work and private life. I asked Todd if he would be up to staying in my house while we were gone and I could see right off that it was going to be of mutual benefit. He is almost the ideal house-sitter. All of these things fell into place immediately. I’m once again aware that when wishes and prayers manifest they generally sneak in so organically that they are easy to miss. Of course as is the case with many direct answers to prayers and wishes we ended up here without really grasping how magical it was. Four people had a simultaneous synchronistic manifestation experience and it all seemed simple and normal.

The items that grab our attention aren’t necessarily the most significant events but expose the personal deficits we focus on. We’ve connected with old friends, took some walks among the red rocks, saw the Century Plants blooming for the first time, ate in our favorite restaurants and enjoyed freedom from smoke and wind. This is manifestation on a fairly small level but that is a judgement that the greater consciousness, that which theologian Paul Tillich called “the ground of all being” doesn’t make. After all nature doesn’t judge between the big and the small and nothing is important or unimportant from a cosmic perspective. I’m learning to be. I don’t really know anything but its fun to anticipate whatever is around the next turn because each new view changes everything about all the previous views but not in a negative way. Its much like turning a kaleidoscope, the same elements have infinite combinations.

Manifesting Beyond the Shallows of the New Age:

2011-06-12T16:58:00.000-06:00

Last year we dreamed of living in Cottonwood, Arizona but I was afraid of running out of money and we did run out of money. There are two elements at work here. First, I knew that I might not have enough money to sustain us over a long period of time unless two unknowns came through (which they failed to do) but went ahead and made a lease commitment before synching the needed arrangements. I called it acting on faith. Actually I sometimes get lucky and I was hoping the gamble would come through. I’m a natural chance taker, but I was raised in an excessively cautious environment, which is still a chain around my neck. But I keep trying to get loose with plenty of mercurial energy on my side via my four planets in Gemini sooner or later I expect to trick the manifestation police. But an external situation is the best way to become aware of what is going on internally however well hidden.

Since I didn’t have a firm idea of where the necessary funds were coming from I doubted the wisdom of committing to a lease but enthusiasm prevailed and I did it anyway. Now we want to come back this summer and recreate successfully what we left behind. I feel guilty for lack of faith on one hand and lack of responsibility and realism on the other hand. Clearly I’m trying to please two masters with opposing belief systems.

I often attempt to force a new outcome when I feel I have betrayed the gods of opportunity. In this sense I still feel attached to the way things were last year. I have largely forgotten the worries. I’ve also discovered that once a time has passed it can’t be recovered. Nevertheless there is such a thing, as completing something that hasn’t been fulfilled. But it’s important to recognize that one is going forward with a creative process not attempting to relive the past. Sorting this out is crucial to moving forward.

Although manifestation still seems partially a pipe dream I have also experienced it many times. I am actually very good at manifestation and still I doubt this when it comes to the particular areas that are covered by my personal negative conditioning. Do I, on some level, still carry a childhood obligation to remain loyal to my family by not surpassing them? This goes back to the family belief that all the grass must be cut to the same height. I also worry that the Master of the Universe hasn’t forgiven me for not following through on a more enlightened commitment and may not allow me back into the program. And then I worry that all this is just a narcissistic personal fantasy anyway.

But why do I push on when I feel something is spoiled? Perhaps it’s exactly because I believe that I spoiled it and don’t want to accept that possibility. Now I recognize that I’m dealing with several levels of beliefs and they are clashing with each other. But I’m still counting on surprising those mischief making tricksters living in my psychic garbage bin who think their clever cover will keep them concealed. They actually believe they are helping when they conceal this over-the-hill smelly stuff.

Nevertheless, I believe there is a GPS guide to wholeness in every heart and mind. It is a hardwired memory of our true state and we instinctively desire to return to it. This is just as true of humans as of birds migrating with the seasons. Is that wrong? Only if it takes a perverted form reminiscent of having a dead bird stuffed and mounted. A stuffed and mounted yearning can be remembered but it will never substitute for the real thing. The key is to continue within the process rather than trying to recreate the way things were, or more accurately the way we remember them to be. Memory can be a powerful tool of self-deception.

Navigating out of the Maze

Truly my greatest dream is to realize my dreams. I fear that my dreams are out of sync with the timing of this world and are like stillborn babies. This has been my experience but perhaps this experience is the result of some thought, belief, fear, or externally imposed lack of faith. The road out of this dilemma is also the road in reversed. If I track my way through the fear and negativity I should reach the source of the road to a beginning before any preconceived beliefs were in place. Jesus said that one must become as a little child to enter the kingdom of heaven. I believe that to mean being free of constraining, externally imposed beliefs. Faith is perhaps the most important component in manifestation. What do I have faith in? If I don’t believe in my own validity I can’t possibly believe in manifesting my dreams. It has always been easier to work for someone other than myself, and to realize the dreams of someone else and at the same time I’ve never given my heart to someone else’s project. It’s as if I lived my outer life in a cardboard and plastic pretend world. But nevertheless this false world seemed impenetrable as well. I never knew how seriously I should take it so wavered back and forth between slavish obedience and barely touching it. Never did it feel like genuine participation. I assumed this was normal and that other people simply didn’t trouble themselves or else were better informed than I.

My Life as an Illegal Alien

This comes down to my central personal issue. My very being has been in question since before birth. I still look to someone who is licensed to exist on this planet to recognize me as a valid resident. Much of my life has been lived as if I was a temporary visitor on someone else’s planet. I have never truly believed from the heart that I was on the same level as other earthlings. I’ve known since earliest childhood that it didn’t matter how smart, creative, hard working, honest, or well intentioned I was, I didn’t have a visa to be here and that meant that anything I manifested was automatically invalid. I had no rights by the very circumstances of my entrance into this life. A tinge of guilt lay behind everything I had. It always seemed that it would be taken away as soon as some cosmic authority noticed that I wasn’t licensed to participate in creation. I know that my parents loved me but they too didn’t believe that I was licensed to be here. This was especially true of my mother. She also felt less than a full citizen of planet Earth but she shared this with the rest of her tribe, whereas I didn’t feel part of a tribe. I often think of this when someone criticizes a minority group for their lack of focus and responsibility. People must believe that they are connected organically to the society that controls their outer life circumstances or else they become a destructive element toward that society. This is something that domineering groups just don’t get.

Creation, healing, transformation, rebirth, evolution, and manifestation are all related. We are constantly creating and evolving as we progress through life on this dimension. However we have the choice of being either manure in the garden of life, or seeds. Reverse development also has its place. We never limit the process of creation except on the level of our participation. A society, a group, or an individual may chose to serve the goddess Kali the destroyer but the real power is in the fact that the matrix of existence uses all forces for creation. It’s a matter of whether one chooses the path of a conscious co-creator or an unconscious tool to be ground up for fertilizer or mulch. Manifestation is the constant master and teacher.

NIGHT JOURNEY - Sleepless in Taos

2011-06-08T15:13:00.001-06:00

Last night I didn’t get to sleep until after 4 AM. This kind of night is all about a life review and personal database backup. For this purpose I venture far back into my past and work up to the present. Along the way many elements of my life are given a new form. Birth is what you make of it, and rebirth isn’t that uncommon. I’ve come to believe that I absolutely must do this work now and then. And it really is a review of now and then. While I’m indulging in this ritual I gather up pieces that have fallen off my database of defining experiences unnoticed and forgotten. Here I must change the metaphor to something more elemental like earth itself. They reappear lying along memory lane like the shiny quartz crystals I used to gather from the gravel of my hometown road on the way home from school.

And why would anyone bother to do this? Outwardly it seems like a waste of time if not a dangerous and potentially painful indulgence. Over and over on this memorial journey I find myself headed into a box canyon with apparently no way out. Something that I have put all the energy of heart will and muscle into accomplishing comes to an impasse and I feel defeated trapped or doomed. This brings up the most primal negative issue in my existence. “My life will never work.” That is my personal key to wisdom. I know this doesn't agree with the New Age trend of positive thinking but negative thinking taken all the way tends to flip to its opposite. Carl Jung recognized this as Enantiodromia wherein the superabundance of any force inevitably produces its opposite. It is equivalent to the principle of equilibrium in the natural world, in that any extreme is opposed by the system in order to restore balance.

My favorite teachers are ruined in a scandal, my boss goes under or runs out of money, I toil away hoping that patience and persistence will prevail and time and again I get to the end of another road and look up at shear impassable cliffs. When I take a course or a degree program I run out of funds or the school goes under, or both. Usually I leave with the hope that someday in the future I can pick up where I left off. But that never happens or, if it does it is never effectively the same. The saying, “You can never go home,” is paradoxically both true and untrue.

I’ve always identified with the foxes in a foxhunt. Like them I try every clever trick I can think of to escape to freedom but am literally hounded into submission. I’ve studied a number of passions that I hoped would lead to a career but each path arrives at a dead end and I have to abandon it. Then I take up something else with the hope that perhaps this is the one that will finally workout but it never does.

The few things that have worked out in my life have come so late that much of the original potential was lost in the limits of time. Last night I was again wondering if my entire life would come to nothing but a series of failed beginnings and unfulfilled hopes. I wish I knew which astrologer to attribute this saying to, "Cancer must occasionally indulge in a binge of awful expectations," but having Cancer rising Moon and Jupiter in Cancer I've come to appreciate it. Sometimes instead of trying to curb self pity or negativity its best to plunge in full on and get it out of the way.

To continue; many promising circumstances arise. When I inherited the money from the sale of the family home I had a chance to quit a deadening job and investigate new possibilities. But now the money is almost gone, I may have to go back to work before long, and the possibilities in this Town seam bleak. I’m always attempting to escape from bleakness.Yes! Now I’ve found the keyword: bleak. The 12th house is astrologically the house of imprisonment and as long as I can remember I’ve felt either imprisoned, or just recently escaped, with the Bloodhounds baying on my trail. And then it’s back to prison. But what is the true dynamic of this imprisoning experience. I’m always yearning for that which lies beyond the prison. There was a time in my life when I would visit the natural history museum when I was feeling most imprisoned just to view a particular diorama of the plains just west of my hometown. I would unleash a fierce passion toward the curled buffalo grass, cottonwood trees reaching toward the open sky, and the great expanse of land rising up and spreading out beyond the warm familiar clay dust. The reward was a nostalgic and almost unbearable longing.

With all my heart I wish to find the source of this deadening groove looping back again and again to the same entrapment. Truly I feel cursed and tricked, as if my life was never to be and never could become. In some way my very existence seems to not be approved and authorized by the great authority of the universe and nothing I do can ever make it a real life.

Everything I most value seems to out of reach. I get a taste here and there and that is what keeps me going. But full participation is always out of reach. And so I have looped back to the Monkey Bar experience as my first awareness of hopes and abilities that will always be out of reach.

Paradoxically, I feel that I can take on anything I want to take on and learn to do it. But there will come a time when I hit an impenetrable wall and must return to my old prison. Is this merely family conditioning, personal karma, or circular thinking? Whatever it is I haven’t found a way beyond it, although I find bits of insight here and there. One of the most recent blocks comes in the form of our desire to be in Arizona again. We experienced good energy, friendship and a feeling of protection there however it was financially a disaster. I lost my recently gained financial freedom, and many items that would be expensive to replace, and yet we both keep our hopes up that we can return soon. When I let the furniture and the little house go it was with the hope that I would soon be able to return and replace them. But that possibility seems to be getting further and further away. However, our connections with the people continue to deepen and I'm actually writing this at The Heart of Sedona Coffee shop. Now its out of my control but I'm still here.

What are the skills other people who have the life I want have that I don’t have? How do they find their way up the Monkey Bars? Remember the Monkey Bars? I believe that I’m a survivor and able to be quite resourceful but I reach a powerful block about entering this world. Yes, here I am again with the belief that I’ve never been fully born into this world and more significantly what such a failure implies to me. Somehow I came to feel that I’m not a real being or a real member of the earth population. Dear God you know that more than any peripheral acquisition or accomplishment I want membership in this world. I want to know the secret of life on earth. I want to unlock the prison door and explore what the dimension called life is all about and then I want to be able to share that which has been hidden in a dark corner as long as I can remember.

This may be the key to why I still feel connected to my ex-husband. He has always been in a similar situation. It’s as if we were lost and abandoned children together. To leave him behind forever was to abandon the possibility of healing this broken connection in my own soul. We shared the same penal Desert Island and I understood his confusion, pain, and frustration and his loneliness as well. But in reality our goals were incompatible. Thus he tried to pull me back whenever I attempted to move into the world beyond our shared prison. Originally we made a pact to move into the greater world together but his taboo is even greater than mine and in the end he hung onto our shared alienation fiercely.

This situation seems to become more poignant as time runs out. A vast network of images flooded my mind last night. Many things I’d long forgotten came back and I felt sorrow and regret for my forgetfulness. The things that were forgotten were things of meaning and value, things that when forgotten make you less. I felt that I was now living with a simplified cartoon picture of the life I’d once known. Where is the passion, the depth, the subtle shadings and details? They fell away bit by bit as if there was too much to carry in my worn out psychic backpack. The container of the conscious mind is neither as large nor as strong as that of the unconscious mind and must be mended frequently lest its few fragile contents slip out through the holes.

But now there is an unfamiliar sun just emerging on the horizon barely illuminating a new unexpected world. Unsolvable life patterns are much like Zen koans. These unsolvable dilemmas are the material with which we work out our individuated form. From our conscious social mind we charge forward with our understandings and successes, all things that define the known world. But it is with the unsolvable frustrating and unmanageable themes that our souls are formed. The known world always first emerges from the seemingly unsuccessful unknown.

ON BEING A WHITE DEER: TO BE, OR TO BE LESS?

2011-05-20T19:57:00.009-06:00

Is it OK to be out of the ordinary? But more to the point how safe is it? That is always the central and core question of my life from which all else radiates. I yearn to stream out into the world in the fullness of totality yet feel obligated to honor something too vague to grasp but that nevertheless reigns me back from moving full out into life. There are always limiting adaptations such as being a bit overweight, but not actually obese or dressing in a generic style but not too generic. Attracting too much attention either positive or negative still seems dangerous. I want to express my unique view of life but I fear drawing attention to myself. Paradoxically being too obviously shy of attention is also something to monitor. What is the problem with being noticed or even acknowledged? There is a mysterious apprehension involved. Actually it’s a type of agoraphobia. A deer in the forest is safest if its color blends in with tree trunks and earth as well as other deer and to come out of the forest only at night when visibility is lowest. A white deer, for instance, is at risk. Its stand out coloring makes it a target for predators.

Camille Flammarion
"A missionary of the Middle Ages
tells that he had found the point
where the sky and the Earth touch..."

The sense of never being fully born into this world certainly fits with the need to be almost unnoticeable. These issues are powerful remnants of the past. I used to complain that my family believed in cutting all the grass to the same height. Nobody was supposed to stand out and in fact it was a cardinal transgression to call attention to oneself in any way. Another reason to avoid attention is that grass that can’t be seen can’t be cut. Yet another function of this rule is keeping harmony in the family. To call attention to oneself was considered inconsiderate if not cruel to someone else who might suffer from being pushed into the shadows. This was a continuous background concern. All actions and even thoughts that could put one ahead of any other person in accomplishment, talent, wealth or looks was to be avoided. To do otherwise was to be disloyal. But in hindsight I believe that much of the danger involved drawing unwanted attention to the family itself. And this is an exhausting responsibility. Much internal envy was generated. Anyone who didn’t fit in generated fear in family members and might encourage unfulfilled longings to do the same.

Predictably, I’ve always been drawn to people who were quite the opposite. My honey with his painted pants and boots, traditional native hair tie and big earring certainly stands out. Plus he has a big vibrant personality. My first husband stood out by being involved in all things esoteric, an attraction to unusual people and by being extremely bipolar. My mother’s fear of standing out from the crowd came as a reaction to the feeling like an alien. From our family’s perspective being alien was the worst social disaster possible. Of course everyone wants to belong but somehow belonging required that we not be unique individuals. We lived in a very dangerous world. Astrologically, speaking there is evidence in my birth chart for something hidden very deeply in my ancestry. I have four planets in the 12th house, the house of restrictions and secrets. The 12th house is where the skeletons in the closet are usually found. Included in the 12th house lineup are Mercury, Sun, Moon and Jupiter. To add some oomph to this situation as a Gemini Sun sign Mercury is my ruling planet and the Moon/Jupiter conjunction rising in Cancer is also a powered up situation. The Moon is ruler of Cancer and Jupiter is exalted in Cancer (This is old astrology terminology that still has a medieval tint).

I was just noticing how I always stop short of dressing in a real eye-catching manner, decorating with a unique touch or doing anything OUTSTANDING. That is the taboo word, “OUTSTANDING.” Being original is also a way to be outstanding. Of course I’ve fought all of my life to express that which is both outstanding and original. Both come naturally but then I tone them down to avoid attracting too much attention. It never occurred to me that I had a right to be here on this planet as much as anyone else. A therapist once told me that I was like a train conductor that shoveled in more fuel and put on the breaks at the same time.

Thus living in the shadows has two advantages despite the many disadvantages. First one can avoid detection and enjoy quite a bit of freedom to explore the taboo, and second it makes one harmless to other people because no one really knows you and they can project whatever they want onto your blank screen.

I’m aware that it is my next and most powerful lesson to genuinely, from the heart, believe that I have the same right to be as anyone else. It is a concept that still feels heretical. I know I have unique talents and strong character traits but I still have the feeling that coming from me it is inappropriate. I don’t feel genuinely born into this world yet. I have much work to do on rebirth! I remember about 20 years ago when Rebirthing was a trendy therapeutic modality. I suspect it died along with many New Age modalities but there was indeed a need for it even if the technique was somewhat naïve.

I’m taking more notice of the many ways I avoid calling too much attention to myself. “Too much,” is the operative word. One should look good, be competent, be hardworking, pay one’s bills and be responsible but not be too talented, too good looking or make more money than one needs to survive.

Recently I’ve come to the realization that my problems with work and money are the result of this foundational belief that it is dangerous to stand out from the crowd. When standing in a queue one should not be either in front or in the rear but somewhere toward the end of the middle. This is a difficult role to play in a world that encourages competitiveness and the drive to reach the top of the social ladder.

This unconscious belief explains the mystery of why I’ve pursued but never been able to work in an environment that I would thrive in or make enough money to go beyond basic survival. I fear buying beautiful things for the house, or myself because it’s a dangerous indulgence that I’ll be punished for. Of course I often buy things I want anyway but it is like an act of rebellion and I feel that it will have consequences. It’s a rush of freedom to go on a spending spree. It feels wonderful. I’m like an escaped dog in a fast trot pulling its broken chain through the neighborhood, refusing to think about the consequences at the end of its spree. Even so I don’t go on truly extravagant sprees. That would be way too dangerous.

I strongly believe that anything that ancestors have not finished or resolved is the living generation’s inheritance. Whether or not one believes in karma doesn’t matter. The ancestors rule the unconscious. Sometimes the ancestors go so far back that they are not even included in the story we are told. This applies to cultures, tribes and nationalities as well as families.

I will probably never know just who my ancestors were. Too much was hidden and misrepresented. I know that my mother’s father was very sensitive about race. My grandfather gave us an Irish name but I suspect this was only the storefront. The Irish part is undeniable, but I’m pretty sure there was more to the story. He had a great sensitivity about color and culture. He didn’t like my mother to spend too much time in the sun because she tanned very dark and with her straight dark hair looked like a Mexican or Indian child. He also became upset with me, when in my early teens I developed a fascination with Mexican and Navajo style dresses. I was always drawn to everything coming from parts of the world our family was supposed to reject. My first school friend was Mexican and Catholic and my parents didn’t approve. Their disapproval didn’t faze me. I always secretly did what I wanted but didn’t argue. Avoiding attention was also a way of having what I wanted in spite of taboos. This wasn’t about rebellion, however. It just had a right feeling and I’ve always done what felt right. My grandmother, on the other hand, didn’t even want to be Irish. She insisted that her ancestors were Scottish and English. However, when I looked on the map for the European town they were reputed to be from, it was in Ireland.

I have always suspected that My grandfather Connerly’s family may have once moved from the Appalachians to southern Illinois before emerging in Northwestern Nebraska where he met my Grandmother. He played the fiddle and guitar and had a wide repertoire of old country music. The light bulb came on a few years ago while watching a PBS program on Appalachia’s music. I instantly recognized some of the songs. It is also likely that they also had some native ancestors.

On my father’s side the official family stance is that we are purely whitebread people of the working class. We are Protestant, average in every way with European ancestor’s and nothing particularly interesting in our background. Our family image was painted with deliberation using the blandest palate. My folks always bought practical and plain vehicles and lived a conservative, stable life in a house that my father built himself room by room over many years. But things keep popping out of cracks in the closet door. I especially remember an excursion we made to Divide, Colorado. I was a teenager at the time and I loved to visit graveyards in Old Mountain towns. The stories that are buried with the dead continue to fascinate. On this particular visit I came across two gravestones side by side bearing our family name. One was of an infant and the other a young child. Since our family name is not that common I called my parents over to have a look. My father, always understated, quietly approached. Then he stated, “this must be what my cousin was telling us about.” And this is how I learned that these graves were the purpose of our trip to this lonely old graveyard high in the Colorado Rockies. As it turned out my father’s father had a previous family held secret from my father, his mother and his siblings. A cousin had revealed the story to my father’s oldest brother breaking the promise to never tell the family about these graves until my grandmother was gone. Since she was approaching 98 years this cousin feared her children might die before knowing their father had a previous family.

Although few of us know the story of ancestors several generations behind us, especially in America, it is still imbedded in our psyche. The story comes out cryptically in our everyday life and the struggles we encounter. The study of Anthropology and Paleontology has held fascination since early childhood. I don’t believe I really have the patience to meticulously uncover and clean bones and artifacts from the past, but the enchantment of what is hidden in surviving fragments of ancestors and their tools has a strong pull. We are the products of the past and the past is fulfilled in us or dead-ended in us. We have a very real control over the past to the degree we are aware of the past within us. In fact there is no real past, present and future. Does our language not deceive us? Time is another system for organizing experience. In our culture we tend to visualize time in a linear way. But it can also be experienced in vertical layers as well.

The destructive power of apparently harmless family secrets is awesome. However there is a creative paradox hidden within them as well. Healing is an act of creation and creation is an evolutionary process. Sometimes psychic surgery is necessary but drastic procedures may be a sign of failure to transform an apparent disaster into an act of creation. The separation of dimensions and realities may only be perceptual after all. We all exist in a universe that we barely know. The fractal patterning within realities both physical and beyond physical are potential paths leading both forward and backward in time and space and one can catch the road to creation at any point in these intricate unfolding patterns. My ancestors in their attempts and mistakes dropped me off in a strange place but to paraphrase a common saying all roads lead to home.

I don’t know just what my ancestors feared. Perhaps they carried a racial or cultural association that it was expedient to hide in the name of survival. I’m sure they meant well and had no idea of how it would play out for us all down the road of time. Things change and what was once a cause for shame can become something to be proud of. But either way these social obstacles are potential soul fertilizers to a gardener of the soul.

FOLLOW YOUR HEARTBREAK

2011-04-22T15:00:00.002-06:00

---our decision to keep on a path or to leave it must be free of fear and ambition. I caution you: look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself and yourself alone this one question. Does this path have a heart? All paths are the same. They lead nowhere. They are paths going through the brush or into the brush or under the brush of the Universe. The only question is: Does this path have a heart? If it does, then it is a good path. If it doesn’t, then it is of no use.---Don Juan

Many years ago I read this quote of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda. It changed my life focus. I had been seeking to heal my soul by finding meaning and these words rang true. It is the heart and only the heart that guides us to meaning and even creates meaning. It is of significance that the ancients saw the heart as the center of life as the Sun is center of our universe. It is a guide to something that transcends our ego’s shallow knowledge and short lifetime.

Whatever breaks our heart must be important. It is a sign that the essence of our being has been violated. In our society the heart chakra is the weak spot with
in the human energy body. Although everything else circles around our heart just as the earth circles around the sun for many of us its light is very dim.

Sometimes pain is the only sign of life. A broken heart indicates that we are alive but in a negative way. Even worse than a broken heart is the lack of one. Life should break our heart. It is full of cruel experiences and is out of balance. To grieve the loss of someone or something is an indication that you are able to love and that in fact your heart is still working. Far more dangerous is a heart that can’t be broken because it is numbed or dead.

I’ve spent a lifetime trying to learn to follow my heart. Early conditioning to oppose my heart was pervasive and entangling it choked the life force like the roots of an invasive weed. It is very hard to get rid of. I’ve often wondered why I was born in a time, place and family that was so opposed to following one’s heart. Feelings were to be opposed, desires were to be resisted and normal needs were evil because this world was considered a corrupt and evil place. Being holy was judged on a basis of what one wasn’t rather than what one was. Nowadays the response is often the opposite. Desire and indulgence are frantically stimulated to exaggeration but this too is an attempt to compensate for the lack of genuine heart.

Easter is coming again. Nowadays few people think of anything beyond a new spring outfit, colored eggs and roast lamb when it comes to Easter. Both the pagan matrix and the Christian overlay are hidden behind the bright colors and instinctive need to consume and incorporate the coming of spring. Yes, it has become primarily another retail extravaganza but perhaps that is because modern people don’t know how else to respond to almost anything. Spending money is another way of expressing the hunger for an absent heart connection with the world that supports us.

It is as important to mend the communal heart just as it is to revivify the individual heart. So many peripheral signs of malady are merely symptoms of a problem at the center. It has been said that conscious development of the heart chakra represents the next phase of human evolution. Many of our human problems clearly show a lack of heart. There is little awareness of relatedness to all that is and the shared fate of all beings on this planet. We cannot feel connection to fellow earthlings if we cannot feel connected to our own essence, our own core value that dwells at the heart.

OPPOSITION / REFLECTING ON THE FULL MOON

2011-04-17T17:09:00.001-06:00

Life/death, black/white, good/evil/, male/female, happy/sad, wet/dry, hot/cold, friend/enemy are some of the primal oppositions that we take for granted as basic components of existence. It would seem that everything we experience has an opposition as its basis of definition. Astrologically, opposition is the second most powerful aspect between two planets and indicates a direct confrontation between two different cosmic processes.

The Sun/Moon opposition is called a full moon and it represents the culmination of a cycle that is so familiar to we Earth dwellers that we can barely imagine life without it. Astrologically the opposition is considered the most basic encounter with another cosmic energy and often plays big in relationships both good and bad. Opposition brings dynamism and it would seem that it lies behind all other experiences.

Opposition is also the beginning of consciousness and spawns reaction and creation. It is the matrix behind love and war.

It is easier to conceive of opposition than conjunction which is two energies combining and attempting to resolve their differences. There is unconscious familiarity in a conjunction but opposition may dwell within the conjunction if the nature of the participants happens to be opposite, but it is a less stimulating environment than opposition. Opposition is the very first step in experiencing existence other than our own and in the process reveals our own. Often the first experience of this duality is to be confronted with hostility or limitations on our own playing field. In other words, opposition is an experience of the other and it is sometimes beautiful and sometimes dangerous. If we examine objectively it is often both.

Today’s full Moon involves the very archetypes of opposition. The God of war confronts the Goddess of love in this Aries Sun, Libra Moon opposition. Creation itself is based on the opposites represented on every level by Mars (Aries) and Venus.

Opposites define each other. It seems that we would not be aware of anything if there were not an opposite to give it distinction and definition. And then after the opposition comes the realization that dualities always come from one and return
to their one source.

THE ZEN OF GARDENING

2011-04-14T20:19:00.002-06:00

Today a strong wind blows east while above the horizon broiling multi-shaded clouds meet and mingle with dry dust made air-born by the wind. Even though I don't like wind I'll admit the effect is mystical. A high desert version of a J.M.W. Turner landscape. We are headed down the canyon to meet some friends for lunch in Santa Fe. For some reason I always fall into reflectiveness on this stretch along the Rio Grande. Yesterday was beautiful, quiet, fresh, warm with just a tinge of sharpness. Perfect for gardening. Today its cold again and I'm just recalling gardening and how it brings out my elemental self. I'm not a fanatic, its just something I do well and enjoy. Enjoy isn't truly an adequate word. Gardening is healing, empowering and puts me into my most balanced state.

I have Venus at 15 degrees Taurus. It is the highest planet in my chart with no significant aspects. In the language of astrology this means it is in a strong position and not seriously altered by relationship to other planets. I regard this as a saving grace in an otherwise challenging layout. The Taurus/Venus qualities of sensuality, earthiness, stability, stuborness and love of beauty often help to balance and heal even when everything else is up in the air, (three planets and the Sun in Gemini, an air sign).

My style of gardening is more an interactive dialogue than a technique. I see in my mind what mood and environment I would like to create but the plants have their own reality. I love the plants as if they were kittens or children. I check in with them often to see how they are doing and if they need food, water, help or a better location. Although I occasionally talk to them the real communication is emotional. I treat them with respect and admire every step of their development. If one of them decides to move to a different part of the garden, I honor its choice of location. After all the plant knows better than I do what will make it thrive. I've discovered that even though my plants are not all where I envisioned they would look best or contribute to the ambiance I was after they work even better where they choose to be.

I pull weeds without concern and otherwise trust that my Buffalo Grass and Blue Grama will gradually takeover the barren spaces. This garden is a high-plains, semi-arid plant community. There are surprises also. Several plants just showed up. I have no idea where they came from. I think they just liked it here. The Shasta Daisy is one such plant, others are wild raspberry, Holly Hock and Sweet Peas. Cosmus love the south wall. I've discovered that several plants that grew in Mom's garden and are part of my childhood memory grow very well here. I love a great variety of color and I mix vegetables and fruit with flowers and ornamental grasses. I love to create stone ridges, dips and hills to make their life more interesting.

There is also a magical aspect to working with plants. Three years ago I decided to plant a small cluster of Aspen trees. Since my budget was limited I started with one tree. The next year I bought it a companion but something strange happened. First I'll let you know that I've always had a special relationship with Cottonwood trees. They were part of the environment of my best childhood memories but so were other plants. With Cottonwoods there was something mystical and ancient that I can't explain. There was a time in my life when I truly believed that I couldn't possibly live in a place where they didn't grow. I considered planting a Cottonwood but I reasoned that they grew too large for my small garden.

I purchased the next little Aspen and told the nursery that I wanted them to hold it until I came back with my friend who had a truck. We came back in the afternoon and picked up a tree but not the same tree. My friend decided to choose one that seemed hardier. I planted it and it thrived. In fact it thrived a great deal. The next year it still had the tag from the nursery around it and it was getting too tight. I decided to cut the tag off but before I did so I wanted to record the species name. To shorten this story I will say what you've probably already guessed. It wasn't an Aspen at all but a Cottonwood. My friend talked of moving it to another area but I decided to leave it where it was, near its cousin and they will just have to be an odd couple. I knew that it had to trick me to get here because it is my spirit tree.

There is something about being in the garden around my house that connects me with an entirely different kind of power. It's as if a calm wisdom and knowing flow up from the earth and down from the sky and meet in the place I am working or just being. I love to hike but that is a different kind of connection with the earth. Perhaps gardening is different because I'm placing myself among the growing things as if they were my personal family and I belong among them.

When I moved to this house I still had my cats, Joe and Missy. They both came to the end of their lives at a good old age here. While they were with me, they were often a part of my gardening experience. Not that they openly participated, it was just their presence that contributed to my pleasure. Somehow, I taught them not to venture far from the house. I'm not going to claim that I'm a cat whisperer but there was something about the way we were together outside that seemed to affect them in the same way as a mother cougar when she tells her kittens to stay near the den.

I've been working on another piece but today I realized it is the simplicity of being outside in the garden in the spring that is my personal way to be in balance.

HIDDEN CROSSROADS IN THE DARK FOREST OF THE SOUL

2011-04-06T18:10:00.000-06:00

Unable to sleep last night I lay awake but with a different awakeness than in daytime. My mind was moving into the deeper area where conscious and unconscious, personal and non-personal qualities meet. The insight that I remember is about an approach to sickness that sees the dis-ease not as an enemy but as an uncompromising ally, a presence to relate to and dialogue with, a source of both destruction and creative power.

Usually disease or injury incurs the desire to fight as if an intruder seeking to destroy us was an invader. But what if sometimes that invader comes to introduce a better way of being that we have not been able to see or include in our present reality do to the smallness of our vision.

Sacrifice is part of such an invasion. Sometimes death is the outcome, sometimes a larger life and when it fails a smaller life. But of course life and death are defined by the small mind that comes encased with our body. There is a larger mind that transcends both the body and the mind it encloses. We prune fruit trees, and thin garden vegetables to get a better crop and in a sense our identity also needs to be pruned now and then. Some platforms work as they are but not well enough to build on.

I think of my partner and I who are living with and learning from his pulmonary fibrosis. We sometimes fall back into the mode of attempting to conquer this disease. To conquer implies an enemy. We have tried a number of herbal and homeopathic remedies. Some delay the progress of the disease, but none have cured. The medical world considers this condition incurable and the only treatment a lung transplant. I’ve watched him waver back and forth with this judgment for two years. Sometimes he is very positive about preparing for such an operation and at other times the idea of benefiting from another’s death as well as hosting a foreign organ stops him. But this is an awareness of other people that he would not have reached a few years ago.

The idea of archetypes comes from Plato’s teaching that the manifest world is a reflection of an invisible form that directs the outcome of the physical temporal form. This is exactly backward of the current scientific teaching of creation but I can imagine this concept in everyday life. In fact on the individual level it is an obvious fact called genetics. Carl Jung derived his idea of archetypes from Plato’s principle but he did so after observing these invisible forms in

dreams, mythology, history and everyday human behavior. The principle of Thoth and Egyptian magic that eventually inspired alchemy, “as above, so below,” and the belief that the process was reversible, “as below, so above” is something we unconsciously use whether or not we believe. Somehow I can imagine a back and forth dialogue between form and cause.
Thoth also corresponds to the Greek Hermes, God of the crossroads.

I’ve been noticing how closely thought connects with physical events. If I get the urge to water the garden, it frequently rains the next day. If I think of someone I haven’t heard from for awhile, they usually call or I meet them at the grocery store. The saying “energy flows, where attention goes” can also be turned around to be “attention goes where energy flows in the non-physical world.” Who can say which comes first, the thought or the potential event that is already on its way. I do believe there is a circular connection, or perhaps it’s the invisible side of fractal geometry.

My partner’s lung disease has accompanied an awesome change in life direction and stance toward others. He has always been talented and charismatic. About six years ago his attitudes began to shift from an arrogant self-consciousness and the belief that he was entitled to whatever he could get in life and from others to the beginning of an awareness of the feelings of others. In his old personality there were times when I thought he might be a sociopath. But something I can’t easily define kept me from making that judgment. There was quite another reality hiding behind this façade. He waffled back and forth for some time but it was obvious that his old skin was worn out and beginning to flake off. Yes, that image sounds reptilian and I used to notice a kind of reptilian coldness in his eyes at times. Now there is a warm blooded softness in his eyes. I won’t say that the lung disease caused a change in heart but it definitely accompanied it. The change was already in process but the lung disease was also secretly working in the background too subtle at first to make its presence known. The lungs are in the region of the heart chakra and it is indeed his heart that is gradually taking its natural central place in his life. All the same, as the power of the heart unfolds so does the pain that originally caused it to be hidden protectively. It takes courage, another characteristic of the heart to face that side of the process. To feel is to experience one’s vulnerability and temporality. Not to feel is to be less than alive. The heart chakra corresponds to the Sun in traditional astrology and our universe revolves around the Sun. Without the heart life stops. without the heart chakra the soul dies.

TSUNAMI-PERSPECTIVE

2011-03-12T16:02:00.001-07:00

I’ve been watching film clips of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011. From high in the air it’s like watching a rainstorm runoff overcome an anthill. We are so influenced by perspective that physical distance equates to emotional distance. But then the reality of those objects floating inland begins to register in the mind. They are ships, warehouses, large transport trucks, houses and the broken beams of great buildings floating like sticks over airports, residences and fields of growing crops. I watch this safely from the other side of the world. But we are all connected. I’m watching this disaster unfold on YouTube with my Toshiba laptop. I drive a Japanese car and the big screen Sony TV is an important part of our household. Japan is actually very near. The global village is a reality that most of us haven’t yet got our heads around.

We can squash a bug easily because it is so small and thus emotionally distant. We are calibrated emotionally relative to physical size. Are we like insects when viewed from 1,000 feet in the air? On the other side of this ball in space, very, very tiny on the cosmic scale, huge traumatic changes have overcome many of our fellow humans and the many creatures that share their island. We humans create a world within our larger world that seems so real and solid that we are shocked when it is destroyed in the blink of an eye. I’m reflecting on what it will feel like when the coast of California is suddenly obliterated. Everyone knows this is on Mother Earth’s schedule but because we don’t know the date we can live in slightly edgy denial until it actually occurs.

Science and history tell us that our planet is in constant change but our small life span deceives us emotionally. Most of us can remember a time as children when our world seemed stable. I was born during World War II. The world was involved in a cataclysm even though one instigated by humans. But are we not part of the natural world also? Perhaps some of our problems are brought about by the perception of ourselves as outside of the natural world observing it from a deceptively safe place. It is a form of denial. Our cataclysms ripple out much like a tsunami to envelop the planet in ways we may not comprehend during the obvious events. My family was in turmoil at this time. Of course I didn’t know it then. Life was just so and I had nothing to compare it with.

My father worked on a naval shipyard repairing ships wounded by the Japanese. My mother had one brother in the army and another in the navy. We were lucky because they returned physically unharmed but I know now that there were wounds that didn’t show. I can see in hindsight that our family never lost the imprint of the war. I can only imagine how it affected those who were literally in the line of fire. Even though I was a toddler I remember my nightmares from this time. I saw earthquakes with cracks opening up to swallow those who were standing nearby. Buildings and cars were aflame and people were running, screaming and collapsing in fear. We lived near San Francisco at the time and yet no one had mentioned the San Andreas Fault or even the history of earthquakes in the area. The war consumed everyone’s attention. I had visions and fears in the daytime as well. I was afraid to go outside sometimes because I believed a huge bird would come and snatch me. At other times I feared railroad tracks and trains because I thought they would run off their tracks and come rampaging into homes and shops. A menacing animal, perhaps a bear, would come into my room at night. I could see its dark outline moving around the room. No one listened to these fears, they had too many “real” problems to deal with, but in retrospect I can see that my child mind processed the world events on another track.

How can it be that our viewpoint is so narcissistic and the reality so global and increasingly cosmic. Human evolution lags far behind the reality we exist within. We see this world through our human eyes and measure it by our physical size and life span. Japan will recover, though with lingering scars, because the creatures of this planet are also remarkably resilient. Ultimately we change to fit the environment we occupy but it hasn’t yet penetrated us that we are co-creators of the world we live in, and this life extends far beyond the physical body and a specific location. Events beyond our control are great and terrible teachers.

TIME PASSES, BUT DOES LIFE GO WITH IT?

2011-03-10T20:09:00.000-07:00

Life is streaming by. I look forward to each day because it is closer to something I’m waiting for. Not that I know what it is I'm waiting for. In the meantime life is exiting the hourglass a few grains each day. Why am I at a loss for what to do with this moment? More to the point, what do I not like about this moment?

I’m old enough to think about my death. How will it come? Will I die of sickness or accident? Will it be sudden or drawn out? Will my partner die before me? I would prefer to go first, but this is probably a purely selfish desire. About seven years ago the consciousness that accompanies the final lap on this journey entered my personal world. After 55, the reality of time begins breaking through the defenses of youth. When my grandparents died I was shocked out of the youthful assumption that nothing really changes.

When my father died it changed my identity in relationship to time and family, and when my mother passed I realized the dangers wrought by development and time that are out of sync. She was still very young inside. Her soul was a pink rose not fully opened, and had chosen the best way to leave an old body before it didn’t serve her anymore. It caught us by surprise. It haunts me in a way that my father’s death did not. His personality and his body matched in age, and he needed a new start on both. But mom had just begun to find her way out into the sunlight from a cramped space and then run into the time limits imposed by the physical world.

I was always aware that I would not die young. But I was driven by a fierce desire to make the best of my time on earth, and was very aware that I had become lost in a flood pool somewhere and after the storm the main river sloshed by without me. Again and again I have reviewed my life trying to find the place in time where I was caught. But the larger me is aware that this was not just an accident and that that place will never be found. The circumstances of life may or may not be accidental but the individual purpose is up to each of us to sort out. The Trickster shows us where we are fools but also how little it matters because the meaning of life doesn’t show itself in merely external results. There are things to experience and learn in a flood pool as well as in a river.

Expectations and assumptions are the cause of impatience. Why assume that there is more to life on the big river, and then again is there even a river? Life expectations so easily dissolve when scrutinized. This may be the Trickster’s main accomplishment. By sending us on the proverbial “wild goose chase,” we gradually learn that chasing is useless. We already have whatever we need and time is a canvas not a clock. You will paint your portrait whether or not you intend to do so.

MAYBE AND MAYBE NOT

2011-03-07T23:50:00.002-07:00

It’s winter gray outside today. February has always seemed like I-40 between Gallup and Flagstaff, an endless flat expanse of dirty blue and tan. Even the chemtrails are a welcome design break. I’m waiting but I don’t know what I’m waiting for. I haven’t successfully fixed anything in my life of late. Nothing in my world is allowing itself to be fixed. Each time I make an attempt to cut back on expenses or save money something unexpected comes up to undo my efforts. Last week I broke the TV when two cables collided while I was trying to hook the laptop up to download movies. I have an extended warranty, thankfully but as usual my attempt to save on DVD rentals turned into an extra expense. For awhile PQ will have to watch his movies on a little computer monitor.

I’m beginning to believe the message from the universe is to quit trying to fix things. Or perhaps I’m trying for the wrong reasons even though my motivation was a desire to be realistic. I'm beginning to doubt that realism works for me. Usually I do well with electronics but lately even mechanical and electronic things I've tried to fix turn out worse than they were and I have to struggle just to get back to the situation I started with. It’s a slow accent up a muddy slope, and then a slide back to the beginning. I’m attempting to take control of my life and find my way back to the main trail, but I’m lost. I suspect that there is something out of my normal range of consciousness that is trying to grab my attention with these tricks but my ego is struggling to set things right while making a bigger mess out of everything it takes on.

So here I am broken down on a boring expanse of road between a start and a destination. However this analogy falters because the location of the destination is unknown. Now I’m remembering the Maybe story:

“There once were two old farmers who had a fence between their property. Every morning farmer A would meet farmer B at the fence and they would exchange news and gossip, as neighbors do. One day farmer B’s best horse jumped the fence and ran away in pursuit of a band of wild horses. Upon hearing the news, farmer A came to visit. “Such bad luck,” he said sympathetically. “Maybe,” farmer B replied. The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three wild horses. “How wonderful,” the neighbor exclaimed, now you have four horses and they look young and strong. “Maybe,” replied the old man. The following day, his son decided to train one of the untamed horses, was thrown off, and broke his leg. Knowing that farmer B was getting old and needed his son’s help, the neighbor came to offer his sympathy on this misfortune. “I’m so sorry those wild horses were bad luck after all”, he exclaimed. “Maybe,” answered farmer B. Very soon after this misfortune, two military officials came to the village looking for young men to draft into the army. Seeing that the old farmer’s son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. Farmer A congratulated farmer B on how well things had turned out after all. “Your son would be drafted and you’d never have any help on your farm if his leg had not been broken,” said farmer A. “Maybe,” said farmer B. An so the story continues…

This story has been attributed to Sufis, Taoists and sometimes Zen Buddhists but the vagueness of its origins fit its gist quite well. Every time I find life seemingly stuck or wonderful I remember this story.

Some people see this in a fatalistic way but each unpredictable event has both a positive and negative side. Who is to say which is the most important in our life path. It happens on a universal level as well. With all the horrible things people have inflicted on each other and their fellow creatures and the disasters that nature surprises us with there are both positive and negative effects. I’m not downplaying the suffering and destruction that all creatures experience in their journey through time, but it is not the only side to any reality. Since we experience our life sequentially through time rather than as a whole we can only take it as it comes to us. It’s important not to make an absolute judgment on individual events until the whole story is told, and the secret is, the whole story is never told.

SEDONA RENDEZVOUS

2011-02-28T23:19:00.003-07:00

Last week we went to Sedona, Arizona to meet up with old friends from England, David Eastoe and his partner lovely Helen. So many years have passed since we last saw Dave. Much has changed for all of us and yet it seemed so easy and natural as if it had been only a few days. He wasn't yet with Helen when we had last seen Dave but she seems such a natural fit for him that it was as if we already knew her.

Yukine, PQ, Me, David, and Helen

Pba-Quen-nee-e and I have been wanting to go to England again to re-charge the energy connection with Glastonbury. Since Standing Deer has difficulty traveling long distances with his oxygen in tow and our finances don't permit us a trip at this time it was an answer to an intuitive hunch that Dave and Helen should suddenly appear to do a workshop in Sedona which has become our second home.

It was a lovely visit but it has pushed me into another crisis about where I should be. We had to let our house in the Sedona area go last year because we couldn't afford to keep it but the energetic connection remains, and there is no doubt that Standing Deer's health would benefit if we could be there.

On our visit this time we were led to a special place of power by the lady who sponsored Dave and Helen's workshop. One of those confirming magic events occurred on this visit that reminded me that something like this happens virtually every time we go walking in the Sedona area. I won't speak of the event itself because it prefers to be kept as a private event at this time, but it was a confirmation of the connection with these sacred places.

When we returned to Taos I fell into a gray, distant remoteness that was very uncomfortable. It was as if I was disconnected from everything, floating on a dingy charcoal cloud. The next night I had a very bad dream of being held captive by a situation of mistaken identity in a very ugly, broken down, gloomy house in an unknown city by people I could not connect with nor did I want to. These people were trying to draft me into their profession. In fact they thought I was there intentionally. I desperately searched for but could not find my car keys to leave and then discovered that I didn't remember where my car was either. I awoke in a state of despair.

It occurred to me that I should smudge the house and myself with sage. Perhaps I picked up something negative on the trip. But the trip was fine in most ways. However, I felt a bit of a dejavu just before leaving for Sedona. I picked up a severe cold. The last time I'd had a cold like that had been in Glastonbury 13 years earlier. The circumstances were strangely similar. For some reason I was reliving certain events but failed to understand the connection. The cold had been associated with some very difficult events in my life those many years ago, events that felt very distant and no longer a problem. However, during that episode David Eastoe had given me some help with his plant essences that was very effective and now he was giving a workshop in Sedona about the use of plant essences.

The disturbing dream indicated that there was danger of becoming accidentally lost in a decaying situation. It is necessary to move to another level but old fears arise of falling victim to another compromised trap. Of course I journalized this dream which removed some of the power from the spell it cast. Now I recognize that this is my way of preparing for the next major life hurdle. Housecleaning is the beginning of this process and whenever this comes up in my life I notice that there is a lot of dirt and broken stuff in the dark corners.

A right next step will require something beyond my current psychic tool box, which means it isn't clear on my psychic GPS. I sense that my energy has shifted ahead of my consciousness but I do recognize that I'm definitely responding to a shift in energy. I sense that Taos is becoming my past. It is still home but I don't think my soul work is here at the present. I'm following an energy wave to Arizona right now, but I can't justify it practically. Standing Deer would feel much better at a lower elevation but living in Cottonwood last year was a financial stretch that we can't manage this year. I keep hoping that some resolution will present itself, but I also sense that something I haven't imagined or fantasized may emerge at the end of this drabness.

Perhaps its my Moon rising in Cancer that requires that I have big emotional swings that herald changes in direction and growth. It seems that instead of seeing the future I have to feel my way through each process.
Usually I find myself following a new interest with no idea why it suddenly presented itself. Knowledge always comes much later.

PASSION BEING BORN

2011-02-27T00:23:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking about the power of emotion and its most intense expression, passion. Without passion there is no vitality and creativity, only circles caught in circles that never move out of two dimensions into the three dimensional world of life or beyond. Creative life moves in spirals rather than in circles. Passion is emotion focused on something we find central to our very being.

Creative Burst

I feel that my own passion is returning. After a long winter, the ice is breaking and droplets are trickling into promising streams. I didn’t realize how much of the water of life I’d lost over the decades. Such a long time spent just getting by while waiting for a chance to live the life placed piece by piece on a shelf for a better time. It was a lesson in how one can lose one’s soul bit by bit.

In a sense, birth is a lifelong process carrying us by stages to each new dimension of life. At any point along the way we can be still born or thrown onto an ice patch. I once saw a cartoon about a hatchling proud of itself for making it alive out of its eggshell, but it hadn’t yet noticed that this shell was enclosed within a shell that was enclosed within another shell ad infinitum.

When I was younger I was passionate about everything. However my family was a bit intimidated by my intensity. With the help of Church and School they put up a high dense wall. After colliding with this wall again and again I gradually I lost hope and almost lost memory of the passion for life. More accurately I hid it. I loved to dance I love to draw and paint and I loved horses and wilderness but these passions were frowned on in our fundamentalist family. I could only watch longingly while admiring others dancing beautifully or taking art lessons. Later I took ballet lessons and learned everything I could about dance. But I was too old by then to fulfill my dream. Now I see that the enemy was fear of passion and thus fear of life. The most dangerous enemies always masquerade as friends.

The frustration of my early years was that my people had lost their passion for life. Although they loved me they no longer had enough life force left beyond everyday tasks to involve themselves in my interests or take my dreams and talents seriously. Their world was two-dimensional. They wanted me to fit in, be responsible but not dangerously responsive. They were OK with just getting by. Even my low grades in school were virtually ignored. I know now that they expected that I would become honest, humble, and expect very little from life. I would graduate from High School marry a good Christian man and work as a housekeeper or receptionist. I was passionately, intensely interested in many things and my school was in a low-income neighborhood. I realized much later that the teachers in my school were culled from better schools and had lost their passion or never found it. Most of them merely went through the motions while waiting for retirement or a husband to rescue them.

People are motivated by emotion not reason. Even reasonable arguments are designed to promote emotional attachments although sometimes the emotion is hatred or fear. Without passion nothing happens. Without passion everything that seems to happen is just a smoke screen to keep us from discovering or connecting with a passion that might make us wake from our zombie state and join in creation. Passion is necessary for a genuine connection with our Source. Passion is life force directed like a laser.

Emotion drives all human and animal actions. Of course not all emotions are for good, but no emotion is certainly not good. It is a sign of death. We don’t necessarily die all at once. Sometimes it’s a piece by piece process until we lose the last sparks of heat and light and become gray and cold like ash.

LILITH TELLS HER STORY

2011-02-16T23:14:00.004-07:00

This is a story never mentioned in the Holy Bible as it was compiled by the all male priestly class. It goes far back in underground history before surfacing again in the Middle Ages. The feminine face of God was acknowledged long ago in the stories of human creation and strangely emerged in a traditional but non-biblical story of Adam’s first wife Lilith who refused to be dominated by Adam and flew away in a rage. She was known as a she-demon, but no one asked why she was angry. She both fascinates and repels. Forces of nature when rejected tend to become monsters.
_______________________________________________________________

I am Lilith. I am both maid and wife. I am the maid of desolation and the wife of Chaos.

I have long ruled the dark side of Yahweh, my secret lover. He is the God who tells you that he is only one God.

Once before his reign I was the Great Mother of life. I am also the Lily, the Rose the virgin, and the fertile one. Do my connections sound familiar?

I have ruled the fears of mankind since before the time of Sumer. I have many guises. The people dreaded me, and made amulets to ward me off into the modern ages. How do they think they can, since I am their secret power of life and death?

Once I was honored as the source of all life, now they call me murderous she demon.

I am the maid of desolation. The desert is my old home and the wild cat, jackal and screech owl are my companions, the wild Ass, my friend.

Men call me screech owl, afraid to utter my true name, lest I answer.

But once I was Adam’s mate, created with him in equality by the first cause. Adam wished to be superior and subject me to his will. He wished to take his father’s throne. And thus was envy born.

This is an abomination that could not be tolerated, and I called on the name of the true God and flew from Adam’s presence.

But Adam is still my rightful mate and secretly with him I have spawned the insatiable demons that prowl the world of men.

I cannot tolerate imbalance and he that made himself above me and said the female is not rightfully
equal with the male. He split heaven and earth and set them against each other. Creation must rule in tandem.

Although men forget the way it was meant to be, I do not forget. Though they banished me to the desert I will never allow them peace in their state of disorder.

I will not live by rules set by Adam and his God Yahweh. I must by my very nature avenge the lost wholeness of creation. But Adam is bound by time and the limits of his lifetime and does not recognize what is.

I am the Lady of the Beasts, and I have many faces. As the Lion Goddess Sekhmet, I scorch with the purifying fire of the desert. She avenges the wrongdoing of men.

I must avenge the lost wholeness of creation. Now that I am the spirit of the desert, she-demon, they call me, I trouble men in their dreams and women in their bondage.

To those in bondage I have become the great anti-mother, enemy of human life. The people say that I drink the blood of newborns, cause stillbirth, and women to be barren, that I suck the life force from the male’s semen at night while he is sleeping.

Among the Jews, it was forbidden for a man to sleep alone at night lest I come to him and seduce him, causing him to leave his body and fly away with me to the wild places where no human can live.

My power is set in the wildness of being more ancient than the oldest memories of humankind, and yet I hold the future of your dreams.
Your cities cannot hold me, nor can walls contain me. I travel softly with power like the leopard prowling in the pre-dawn shadows.

Once goddess Innana brought my home, the wild willow tree, to her garden to cultivate it. She wished to grow it large and wide to make for herself a couch and bed.

When it had grown very large, the hero Gilgamesh cut it down and drove me and my wild companions from our home.

First he slew with an axe the great serpent at its base, and then drove from her home in the high branches the Imdugud bird. Thus I tore down my house at the tree crotch and fled to sanctuary in the wild and desolate places where the howl of the wind matched my cries of grief.

My tree is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and it is the bridge upon which the queen of Sheba crossed over to Solomon the wise.

Recognize it also as the tree upon which the Christ is hung for the willful forgetfulness of mankind.

When Gilgamesh had cut down the wild willow, and presented it to Innana, he then celebrated his triumph with his friends.

From the pieces of my home Gilgamesh and his friends made a hockey puck and sticks. In their arrogance they didn’t notice as I watched forlorn from the sidelines in the body of a young girl.

Again I called the name of the first great God, and the ground cracked open to swallow their toys.

Dear friend of Gilgamesh, the wild man, Enkidu volunteered to descend to the netherworld to retrieve them. But he could not remain detached from the many seductions of that realm and was trapped there forever.

Gilgamesh would never again play with his wild friend. Only the shadowy ghost of Enkidu could rise through a crack in the earth to speak of the underworld to Gilgamesh. Thus, men still wander in loneliness, searching for their lost companion.

I Lilith am the first virgin; my way is my own through the wilderness. I am queen of the demons from the depths of the human soul.

Men and children I kill with my kisses, and they die with a smile and the laughter of pleasure. For that brief moment they awake to the luminescence at the heart of darkness.

My name means nocturnal. I am she who rules the night, and she who rules the darkness of forgotten things. My familiar the Owl is the sight of the deadened Sun.

My consort is Samael the dark god, and great tester of mankind. But when the moon tide turns and the people of the angry God are expelled from their land, I become the secret wife of Yahweh, and his light bride the Sekinah becomes the bride of Samael.

I remember the freedom of all created beings. I came to the slave mothers with fearsome fantasies because the free virgin in every woman has been betrayed.

I have a secret lover. We meet again and again through the ages when the time is right. Solomon, the wise magician calls me forth from the desert land. My Avatar, the Queen of Sheba, black and beautiful he once called, and conceived with her a son of two realms. The wise one knows the evil that dwells in good and good that dwells in evil.

Out of the desert also comes Hagar the mother of Ishmael, the first born son of father Abraham.
My body is beautiful and my eyes are wise, but my feet are the feet of wild things, sometimes the bird of prey, sometimes of goat or wild ass, my lower parts frightful and hairy.

Who can span heaven and hell to redeem the barren parched soul but a dark and rejected one. Truth hides in an invisible cloak. As witch and whore I bear the scapegoat’s burden into the deserted and desolate places of the heart.

The sacred flower of the great Goddess named Astarte, Eostre, Easter, bears my name. The lily is the yoni of spring, is it not more than irony that the lily also represents the pure mother of the Christ?

Consider Mary, was she not the sacred prostitute of God, who conceived as a free virgin outside the laws of men, for men cannot be saved within their laws. When the laws of men over took her son, my daughters the beautiful night hags flew across the Moon howling their lament.

The desert hermits in their vanity withdrew far from the city for their salvation, but I and my daughters the Lilim tortured them with lascivious apparitions.

I can’t be removed from the memory of men. Romans called their female demons striges (screech owls) and witches of the Italian wilderness are still known by the name of Strega. I am tortured and burned in the name of the wise ones of the countryside. My howls of rage have fallen on deaf ears and hardened hearts.

Until the time that holiness (wholeness) is restored and my sister Shekina is restored to her rightful place on Earth as God’s earthly home maker I will continue to prowl through the dreams of men taking from them the power that is rightfully mine.

Men call me; the first wife of Adam, a she demon but their souls have no substance and drift like pale ghosts without me.

UPDATE ON THE GREAT TAOS GAS OUTAGE

2011-02-08T16:09:00.001-07:00

This morning was the start of the 6th day without natural gas. I've been cooking on an electric fryer and the Microwave. The coffee maker is electric so that's been our source of hot water. We are lucky that the electricity held up. For a few days that was also dicey. The weather this week has been the coldest for many years and that made the loss of heat desperate. The unexpected cold was, of course, the cause of the outage in the first place. But the weakness of our big systems has been exposed this past week.

Along with the weakness of the natural gas system, the local and state government and the suppliers of gas and electricity have been exposed for being asleep and then for waking in a confused fog. The information given to the public was inconsistent. First they told everyone to wait for the teams of professionals made up of their technicians and recruited volunteers from New Mexico and even as far away as New Orleans and Colorado. Then the word came out that considering the enormity of the situation it was OK to light your own gas if you knew how. But mass confusion soon set in as this word went back and forth. Coyote the Trickster was leaving his footprints.

Tired of waiting for one of the gas lighting teams to show up, we piled in the truck this morning and went looking for them. Radio announcer Paddy Mac has been on all day each day since this began. He has opened up KTAO's airways to the public and it became apparent that the public knew a lot more than the officials about how to get things done. At the Shell station down the road we saw some National Guard troops gassing up their Humvee. We asked them if our block was on their to-do list but they didn't know and said to go to their info center at the Storyteller Movie theater parking lot. We couldn't quite understand what the National Guard was doing to help and it seemed that they didn't know either. They were just following the orders of our new governor. Their colleagues at the theater took our name and address and said they'd get back to us when they knew something.

The place where Standing Deer picks up his oxygen was closed until today due to the outage. After picking up his oxygen this morning he saw one of the relight trucks and flagged it down. A young man followed him to our house turned on the meter and lit the gas. Wow! Life may go back to normal after six days without natural gas.

However, I don't really think this story is over. The Taos trickster has been stirred out of his den and I have no doubt that there will be more twists, turns and switchbacks on the way out of this debacle. Taos itself is laid out more like a field of fractals than a modern town. It grew organically; tiny lanes going off in this and that direction often hidden by volunteer foliage. Family complexes go back many generations and are known by family rather than street name. Neither the Town of Taos, or the gas company seems to have accurate maps to go by and the volunteer gas lighters seem to be wandering in confusion. That's why we decided to find them rather than wait for them to find us. We would probably be stiff by the time they found us.

Taos, and for that matter, most of Northern New Mexico is still a third world country almost secretly embedded in the United States. The fact that we are one of the poorest counties in the US is not above examination either. But there is something tricky about the under dog status that is very powerful in its ability to expose the weak side of the top dog. Since the outage people have missed work, pipes in public buildings broke causing hundreds of thousands of dollars damage, children were out of school, restaurants were closed as were many other businesses. Life in Taos is a hand-to-mouth situation and the loss of work will mean rent, mortgages and many bills won't be paid. At this point it appears that FEMA may also get involved, but that isn't validated. When this whole town shuts down the ripples will go on for a long time.

Red Rock Blessing - PQ's Birthday

2011-02-06T00:23:00.000-07:00

We (Pba-Quen-ee-e,i.e. Standing Deer and I) recently returned from Sedona and Cottonwood Arizona. We truly miss being there even though we love Taos, and still have hopes of someday having a home in both places. Sedona/Cottonwood is our place of regeneration and inspiration. Taos is intense, and we have personal karma and purpose here but I sense that our stay in Arizona last year opened new doors of love and spiritual growth. On Standing Deer's birthday this year we went hiking on one of his favorite trails between Courthouse Butte and Bell Rock. He sat on a marker to catch a breath just as a man approached from the other direction. The man stopped, pointed to PQ's drum and pulled out a Native American flute. The two of them began improvising together. Two songs and then the man nodded and walked on down the trail. Not a word was exchanged. It was a beautiful synchronistic moment. I took a short video of the encounter. Everything seemed light and magical that day.

New Mexico Natural Gas Failure -- Why Now?

2011-02-05T15:42:00.000-07:00

On the coldest night in Taos this winter and for many winters (-20) the natural gas flow failed. There was something about a rolling electrical blackout in Texas effecting pipeline delivery, the rest was a chain reaction. They now tell us we may have gas by Monday, Feb. 7th. As usual this is bringing out the best and worst in people. Workers from all over New Mexico and Southern Colorado have been called in and many volunteers in the plumbing and heating business. And then there are some who are pretending to be technicians coming to people's homes to turn on the gas for a price. Of course they are scamers.

My partners house is heated by propane so we have been staying there, but this morning his electricity went down and he brought a space heater to my house which is dependent on the failed natural gas. Both houses are limping. The first thing that came to both of us was to find a way to install solar panels as soon as possible. He has a traditional adobe fireplace which is our ultimate backup if I happen to lose electricity also.

Most of us are dependent on huge network systems that are beyond our individual or even community control. Often we don't know the source of our necessary resources until something like this happens. I think of our ancestors who gathered their own wood, and had no electrical or gas systems. They had wood fires, gas lamps or candles and a well for water. There were no universal systems to cripple millions when they failed.

All of these wonderful systems that sustain us are a mixed blessing. I remember when my parents put an electric can opener in our mountain cabin. unfortunately they didn't keep the old fashioned hand operated can opener. When the electricity went down for a week we had to open cans with a knife, an even more primitive tool. I regarded it as a lesson in the necessity of keeping a backup. Here I am living in a town that was pretty independent a few years ago but is becoming less so all the time. The advantages of progress aren't always what they seem.

When I worked at the Tattered Cover bookstore I remember coming across a book on old tools. I was amazed at the ingenuity involved in some of them. They were amazing and required no electrical hookup or gas. Why did we discontinue them. Sure its cool to have electrical equipment but there are times when it doesn't work.

Manufacturers, developers, and suppliers of necessary resources probably wish us to be totally dependent on them for our lives but it doesn't seem like a good idea in the long run, or even those times when the drawback side to large exclusive systems reveals their weakness. Maybe we need a crisis in delivery once in awhile to show us the downside of too much dependence on big systems.

But then there is the human side to big system failures. People pretty much ignore each other as long as these big systems are functioning, but when they fail everyone has to step in and show their true colors. People help each other, communicate with their neighbors and accept the loss of a few days of routine along with a cut in income. And on the other side the bad eggs show their true nature as well. It seems like these system failures reveal a lot of hidden potential both good and bad. Once in awhile we need to see the other side of the picture painted on the wall.

THE WHITE DEERSKIN DRESS

2011-02-01T22:30:00.001-07:00

From my Journal Retold on the Day of the First Snow:

This Vision came to me on the day that my partner’s brother Nathaniel was taken to the hospital never to return. We’d recently arrived home from a month in England. My friend Grandmother Jean placed a large crystal in my hands and asked if I saw anything. This is what happened.

This is the vision: On a clear, bright, snow covered day I find myself riding horseback down Spider Rock Road. A middle aged Indian Man dressed in kiva attire meets me about half way to my friend’s house. He is slender, about 5’ 6” and I never clearly see his face. We ride together toward the Pueblo and then beyond toward the mountain. I feel wonderful, lighthearted and moved by the beauty and clarity of the day. As we are riding I see but make nothing of the fact that the season now seems different. We are no longer in snow. As we begin to ascend, suddenly I am aware that as a non-tribal member I should not be here. At this time the guide is no longer with me. I don’t know where he went nor does it seem important.

I don’t want to violate the Pueblo laws and turn around to start back down the trail. But the season now seems to be late summer or early autumn. There is a grove of aspens to my left about a hundred yards. I am riding in the open. Suddenly I am either in two places at the same time or else I switch vision and identity with someone in the grove of aspen. I can see her face at the same time that I am looking out of the grove with her eyes.

She is young but beyond adolescence. She has intense black eyes, and full lips. She is dressed in a white deerskin dress decorated with fringe but no beading or other decoration. Her thick black hair is long and loose but tied in many small clusters with strings of white deerskin. It is a way of doing the hair that I have never seen in any picture nor has anyone ever said anything about this way of doing a woman’s hair.

She is standing by a small fire that has almost burned out. Somehow I know the fire was for a ceremonial purpose, just as I know that her dress and hairdo are not usual but for some special ceremony. I don’t know about the time of this scene but I know it is not the present although when I met the guide he and I were in the present which at that time was the day after Christmas, 1997. The only thing I know for sure is that this scene is at the latest in the middle or late 19th century and quite possibly much earlier. There is nothing external that would give me a clue as to the actual time period.

Then I am no longer on a horse riding back to the pueblo and noticing her in the forest but completely inside of this woman and now I can’t see her anymore because I am she looking out from the aspen grove. As her I am in a state of shock and disbelief. It takes my breath away and I feel that someone hit me in the belly with a large stone. My body is almost limp and my head is reeling. My world has been turned upside down and inside out and I barely recognize anything anymore. The unbelievable has happened. Something went terribly wrong. It is so extreme that I can’t take it in. I know that my life is over and even worse that everything I had dedicated my life to is over and can’t be fixed.

At this point in the vision I feel her shock and grief and begin to cry. But her feelings cannot be truly expressed in my body and nothing can be resolved, they haunt me for months. Every time I think of her or mention this vision to someone I trust the intensity and desperation surge over me like a tsunami. The big emotions have faded over the past 11 years but I can still see her and feel her with great clarity.

Gradually a story begins to unfold. She is waiting for a medicine power to be passed onto she and her partner after so many years of training beginning in childhood from perhaps the age of seven. An old medicine man from another pueblo or another tribe had come to this place to pass on his knowledge to two children, a boy and a girl. This was an unusual situation since normally he would not have left his own tribe. However, he was the last carrier of a certain type of medicine that was considered very important and there was no one in his own tribe to pass it on to. It had once been practiced in this place also but that was a long time ago. He came here and worked with the two children until they were ready to be initiated and the power would be turned over to them. He was too old to begin again.

On this day of initiation everything was ready. But the young man suddenly disappeared. She didn’t know what happened whether he left with a trader who came to their village, it seems like that may have happened, or if he simply ran away to another village to escape. It almost seemed as if something had sucked him up and taken him away without a trace. When she is standing in the grove, she is alone. The old man is not present either. Perhaps he left knowing there was no use going on. She was alone with her shock, grief, and total disorientation. The medicine they were trained in required the powerful interaction of male/female balanced energy. They each had a critical position in the use of ceremonial power. One alone would not do.

She must face the fact that her life training is now without an outlet and everything she believes she exists for no longer exists. It is far beyond her personal death in its importance and impact. This medicine will now be buried with her, in reality was buried at the moment the young man left. The old man is too old to begin with another boy and girl and he considers this event as the sign that a more powerful enemy has killed this medicine path. It is a bad omen for the future of these people as well as his own.

Next I feel my way as this young woman into her future. She never recovers her soul. It’s as if her heart was jerked out of her chest and she lives on in her village in a somnambulant state, a mere shell. She never mentions to anyone what happened nor does she bring it up consciously. She tries to live on in some way that will be good by helping other women and children in the village. I somehow know that she never married. Now I see her in late middle age a person with a kind of distant beauty but with enormous sadness behind her mask I never feel her as an old woman and believe she must have left her body in her late 40’s or early 50’s.

No one in the village ever found out what became of the young man. He disappeared into a different life and never returned. Surely he must have left that life feeling unfinished. He left something that he had been uniquely chosen for. Perhaps the responsibility seemed suffocating and overpowering to him and he panicked at the point of final initiation and commitment. He must have spent the rest of his life trying to justify and either deny or compensate for what he did. It was the type of panic driven decision that could not be undone. Did he feel shame combined with a giddy freedom? Did he feel that he was living his own truth at any cost? Maybe he went into a state of denial, suppressed the memory and never opened the door again. In this vision and in my everyday life I can only speculate.

This is the only complete story that I have received about what I left behind unfinished. Was it truly another life? Was it a composite of previous lifetimes and their unfinished business? Was it a story that just appeared out of some unknown connection? It came to me like a waking dream, quite suddenly without warning. The white deerskin dress connects me with the many white deer that ask me to paint them. This was and is a story that will reveal its magic, I sense, over the rest of my days on earth.

MABLE DODGE LUHAN & TONY LUJAN -1992 and How I Came to Taos, New Mexico

2011-01-30T19:00:00.005-07:00

It was the Quin-centennial year, 500 years since Christopher Columbus was interrupted on his quest for Asia by a hitherto unknown island. The discovery by a European of this island off the coast of what is now South America began an incredible chain of events. I don't for one moment believe that this was actually the first time a European set foot on this "New World," nor do I believe that the inhabitants of this "New World" had never before encountered people from another continent before this event. However, sometimes timing is everything. Five hundred years before 1992 was exactly the right time for this awakening to blast the world. No one could argue that at this time these two worlds saw something they had never truly seen before; each other.

It was at this time that I became conscious of the Native world around me. It suddenly popped out of the shadows into full view. I read everything I could read about the state of indigenous people all over the world and about the knowledge that our species owes to them. To top it off I had a vision in which indigenous people began to share their kinship with Mother Earth, the other beings we share this earth with and that dazed part of ourselves that still remembers who we are.

The most powerful and haunting memory of my childhood was the discovery of the Southwest as a child of twelve. The adobe and stone ruins of the Anasazi, the at that time mud and wood hogans of the Navajos, the expanse of red dust, junipers and sage totally captured my soul. But then I tried to forget this out of reach world and adapt to the world I had to deal with. All this remained dormant until the Quin-centennial.

In 1992 I had been visiting New Mexico for several years and began to focus on Taos. That autumn I decided to sell the Denver house and move. The real estate agent told us that spring was the most active season so I thought if we put the house on the market in October perhaps it would sell by spring. It occurred to me that if Creator wanted us there sooner we would be moving in soon.

We had an immediate response when two buyers made bids at the same time. In the competition we ended up getting more than our asking price and had to move within 30 days. We arrived in Taos, in a Blizzard and were immediately introduced to the trickster side of our new home. Taos welcomed us but not before putting us through some unsettling tests. I will tell that tale another time.

Just before the move I had discovered Mable Dodge Luhan in the sale shelf of the bookstore where I worked. Her sense of mission was a total shock because it was very close to a vision that I had been secreting. And then I learned that my new Taos Pueblo friends were intimately connected to Mable and Tony. It took time for the full impact of this to arrive. My new friends Joe J. and Frances Suazo knew Tony and Mable intimately. Joe's mother had been adopted by Tony who had no natural children. Joe grew up between the Pueblo and Mable's "Big House."

Last winter while living in Arizona with my partner Blue Spruce Standing Deer, the son of Joe J. and Frances Suazo I saw an article in the online version of our Taos News indicating that filmmaker Mark Gordon was making a documentary AWAKENING IN TAOS about Mabel and that he intended to concentrate on her role as a Visionary bringing the "movers and shakers," of the western world to experience Taos and the Pueblo as a model of spiritual integration with the natural world. Previous biographers and film makers generally portrayed the gossipy aspect of Mabel as a spoiled New York heiress from a decadent circle of artists and writers who brought her famous friends to Taos. This story has been hidden in plain sight for a long time. I regard it as a piece of synchronistic magic that Mr. Gordon picked up this story as a continuation of the important meeting of two world views. It is a story to be continued for the long haul. Someday we will look back and wonder how we could have missed the message from those who hold our future in their past. It brings to mind a quote from iconoclastic psychologist Fritz Perls, "in a conflict between topdog and underdog, underdog always wins." Of course he was referring to unconscious conflicts within an individual but I see this dynamic applying to the social unconscious as well. Indigenous people in their underdog situation hold the lost side of being human in this world.

PASSION BEING BORN

2011-01-30T14:58:00.001-07:00

Now entering the forbidden store where my heritage lies concealed

Opening the heart chakra, prying a bit wider every day

Is it OK to let in the light? Wasn't darkness safe, low exposure

So much to find, cluttered in the corners and on the shelves of time

This storage space holds everything there wasn't room for

In all those cramped houses I've lived in over and over again

Trying to fit into one tiny room and another and another

Now imagine mansions, lofts, studios, forest hideaways

All potential alchemical laboratories, never seen before.

Without passion there is no genuine living, just circles caught in circles that never move to the three dimensional level of life. Life moves in spirals rather than in circles.

I’m regaining my passion this year. After a long winter, the ice is breaking and droplets are trickling into promising streams. I didn’t realize how much of the water of life I’d lost over the decades. Such a long time spent just getting by waiting for a chance to live a life placed article by article on a shelf hoping for a better time. It was a lesson in how one can lose one’s soul bit by bit. It seems that birth is a lifelong process carrying us by stages to each new level of life. At any point along the way we can be still born or thrown out on an ice patch. I once saw a cartoon about a hatch-ling proud of itself for making it alive out of its eggshell, but it hadn’t yet noticed that this shell was within a shell that was within another shell ad infinitum.

When I was young I was passionate about everything. However my family was a bit intimidated by my intensity. With the help of Church and School they put a high thick wall around me. After colliding with this wall again and again I gradually I lost hope and almost lost memory of the passion for life. More accurately I hid it. I loved to dance I love to draw and paint, I loved horses and wildness, all things of mystery but these passions were frowned on in our fundamentalist family. I could only watch longingly while admiring others dancing beautifully or taking art lessons. Later I took ballet lessons on my own, learned everything I could about dance, about the forbidden beauty beyond the wall. But I was too old by then to fulfill my dream. Now I see that the enemy was fear of passion and thus fear of life. The most dangerous enemy always masquerades as a friend.

My real problem with my original people was that they had totally lost their passion for life. Although they loved me they no longer had enough life force left beyond everyday tasks to involve themselves in my interests or take my dreams and talents seriously. They wanted me to fit in, be invisible, be responsible but not dangerously responsive. They were happy to settle with just getting by. Even my low grades in school were virtually ignored. I know now that they expected that I would become honest, humble, and expect very little from life. I would graduate from High School marry a good Christian man and work as a housekeeper or receptionist. My school was in a low-income neighborhood. I realized much later that our school had teachers that were culled out of better schools and had lost their passion or never found it.

People are motivated by emotion not reason. Even reasonable arguments are designed to promote emotional responses even if in the defeated emotion of fear. Without passion nothing happens. Without passion everything that seems to happen is just a smoke screen to keep us from discovering or connecting with a passion that might make us awake from our zombie state and join in creation. Passion is necessary for a genuine connection with our Source. Without passion there is no life only pseudo life.

TWO FORERUNNERS WHO SAW OUR ENVIRONMENTAL & SOCIAL ISSUES COMING

2011-01-27T15:20:00.003-07:00

Here are two thinkers who have greatly added to the environmental awareness of this world even though most of the world would not recognize their names. They worked before ecology and environmentalism were recognizable names. It is my belief that a passionate thought once released into this dimension continues its ripple across time until it touches a similar vibrational ripple in others. It is never lost.

IAN McHARG: ENVIRONMENTALIST

"Man, far out in space, looks back to the distant earth, a celestial orb, blue-green oceans, green of verdant land, a celestial fruit. Examination discloses blemishes on the fruit, dispersed circles from which extend dynamic tentacles. The man concludes that these cankers are the works of man and asks, 'Is man but a planetary disease?—Ian McHarg

Back in the early 60’s I remember listening to Ian McHarg on what is now PBS. He was a landscape architect who had a passion for designing human habitations to synchronize with nature. He seemed to be one of the very few people at that time to recognize that what we do on this planet actually affects us. Our cultural bias from early Christian times has been to perceive the earth and even our own bodies as temporary and inferior forms that would be replaced by the spiritual home in heaven if we made it there. Although the spiritual aspect has largely disappeared from Western Civilization the attitude that the earth and all its resources exist merely for our use and manipulation continues to dominate our society. Money, an artificial humanly created value without genuine substance has taken over the human world and everything it touches.

We pay lip service to conservation and preservation but it is still regarded as less important than the immediate needs of commerce. Since economics is now based on constant growth and ever increasing consumption there is no way to reconcile the reality of our dependence on the environment and the artificially engendered dependence on the monetary system. On one program, Mr. McHarg and theologian Paul Tillich traced the Western attitude toward nature through the medieval dark ages when Christianity and its otherworldly viewpoint became dominant into the present as of the early 60’s. Medieval art was dominated by the Church and depicts biblical stories using nature, as a mere backdrop as if in a play for which only the protagonists are real and the landscape setting is artificial.

A quote from Chapter One of "Design with Nature" encapsulate McHarg's frustration in modern culture and the need for a nature based approach to landscape, environmental design and town planning:

"The nuclear cataclysm is over. The earth is covered with gray dust. In the vast silence no life exists, save for a little colony of algae hidden deep in a leaden cleft long inured to radiation. The algae perceive their isolation; they reflect upon the strivings of all life, so recently ended, and on the strenuous task of evolution to be begun anew. Out of their reflection could emerge a firm conclusion: 'Next time, no brains'."

Read more: Ian McHarg

LEWIS MUMFORD

In Lewis Mumford I found an amazingly creative social and planetary thinker with a passion to bring society back to its source of being. I will always remember his separation of the words organization and organism. We have organization but the organic exists in harmony with the entire cosmos whereas organization dominates rather than integrates.

A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.—Lewis Mumford

In Technics and Civilization, Lewis Mumford, Harcourt, Brace & Company, Inc., New York, (1934) Mumford criticizes the modern trend of technology, which emphasizes constant, unrestricted expansion, production, and replacement. He explains that these goals work against technical perfection, durability, social efficiency, and overall human satisfaction. Modern technology—which he calls 'megatechnics'—evades producing lasting, quality products by using devices such as consumer credit, installment buying, non-functioning and defective designs, built-in fragility, and frequent superficial "fashion" changes.

MY BEGINNING & THE FALL FROM NONGRACE

2011-01-27T13:26:00.000-07:00

If I told this story before, I apologize but I gain understanding and power through the retelling and perhaps someone else will benefit from what is in my view

miraculous. Because it is so obviously structured by another kind of wisdom beyond any normal human wisdom, I tell it to myself ever so often to keep the embers lighted. With each retelling I remember more aspects and dimensions, and yet in each retelling I realize that I have left out many important facts.

This story is about guidance from an unknown source. Whether this unknown source is from another dimension, or within, doesn’t really matter. Perhaps we don’t truly understand where we begin and another reality begins. Everything about reality as we know it and beyond what we know is continuously in motion and the oak seed can never fully understand the tree and all its branches even if it carries the whole within its essence. Yes, understanding comes from the other direction although we humans arrogantly assume we can understand our source.

I’m reflecting today on the indubitable spiritual, intellectual and practical guidance that I received in my teens and early 20s from an unknown, source. It was as if an invisible tutor and guide of extraordinary wisdom and power had been sent to guide me to my true essence at a time when I could easily have gone mad or committed suicide.

I quit school at the age of 15 in a state of despair and desperation. The dissonance between what was happening in the world outside and whatever was forcing its way to the surface of my life became overwhelming. Although it was considered a not to be tolerated disaster in the life of my family and they did all they could to put me back on track, eventually they decided it was a “nervous breakdown.” I was sent to various counselors and psychiatrists and for a short time was hospitalized. I knew that this was useless but I went along with the labeling because I had no explainable alternative.

Although I had no concept of what was actually happening to me I did know that my life and identity had changed completely. I remember it now as an upheaval so drastic that it was as if I became a totally different person without any identification with who I’d been before. I began reading history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, plus translations of ancient texts by Chinese Taoists, books of Zen Buddhism, and the ancient texts of India. In addition I explored art, the history of art and techniques of composition. The greater world opened up, as I became more reclusive.

I lived for a period in ancient times, and then the renaissance. I visited the art museum weekly and wandered the downtown area of Denver where at the time there were many used bookstores. I ventured into parts of town that were dangerous, and I explored many stances such as existentialism and atheism. I was not afraid to go anywhere because I knew that I had already died once and now I was simply exploring all the available possibilities. I wore the same pair of jeans all winter and went barefoot even in the snow. In the summer I took care of the family garden and read between changing the water between ditches. I learned to cook and sew, I already knew how to mix cement, put on roofing and square corners. Arithmetic became real when I had to measure the number and depth of folds in the drapery I was making for our new room, or install tiles in the bathroom or plan out the wall paper. No computer or calculator back then.

I was shocked to discover that all the things I had struggled with in school were actually very easy if I had a context of use and the freedom to explore. Since I was home alone I also took up cooking. I checked out a book on the history of food from the library several times. “Cooks, Gluttons and Gourmet’s” was an excellent approach to history. The nitty-gritty of everyday life in ancient times always interested me more than who was king or who conquered whom.

From behind my invisible veil I studied people on those trips downtown. I was very shy and even to pull the chain on the bus when I wanted to get off caused me to break into a sweat. I wanted to be a ghost who could avoid social contact and yet drift through it in total awareness. There was simply no place for a teenager such as myself to participate in this world, as I knew it to be.

I knew nothing about the authors I chose for reading or history for that matter. Now I remember that such words as psychology or anthropology were unknown until I began exploring these topics. My people were farmers by background and were forced to the city by the great depression. My father became a sheet metal worker with a gift for all things mechanical, and my mother worked in a City and County office. She was very bright but afraid to venture beyond the boundaries of her family upbringing. Both were immersed in fundamentalist Christianity and believed that anyone who believed differently was doomed to hell for eternity. I accepted that I was doomed, recognized that I’d been in hell almost since birth, and found myself in a strangely calm despair that moved out in all directions like ripples in the sea. It felt like a free fall into endless blackness. I had nothing more to lose.

I don’t understand why I maintained orientation and balance despite this paradoxically quiet dark horror. I sometimes wished I could go mad or die but I knew this wasn’t going to be my way out. There was a reason for what was happening even if I didn’t know what it was, and even if understanding never came. Of course this all happened before the dawn of the Internet. Everything I learned was brought before me in a magical way whenever I went seeking. I was ferociously passionate in my seeking. I only wish I had the same intensity now. Guidance surrounded my journey despite the lack of live human interaction. There was a thin layer of visibility at the top but my real life was deeply hidden. It wasn’t that I was trying to hide so much as it was that no one was interested and in fact were nonplussed and even frightened. They were happy to take me on face value as a ruined child and stay at a distance. In a perverse way this gave me a great deal of freedom to explore. I look back and realize that this journey was already laid out. I merely had to fall off the wrong path and get lost to land on my real path.

2012: MAYAN PROPHECY

2011-01-17T16:59:00.000-07:00

Predictably there are almost endless YouTube entries about the approaching end of the Mayan Calendar at the end of 2012. It’s as if many are looking forward to the end of the earth and life, as we know it. Do we really feel so bogged down and trapped in the humanly created perplexity of life on earth that we want even the most extreme conclusion to a drama caught by an impasse? Of course many fans of the prophecy see it as a judgement by God that will finally separate the good from the bad, the good will be somehow saved. Seldom does anyone identify with the bad that will go out in a blast of bad weather or cosmic catastrophe.

Are humans currently the enemy of all life on earth, even their own? Why do we wittingly and unwittingly destroy all that supports and sustains us? Why do we worship ugliness and artificiality so unthinkingly? Why is our society built on greed and intimidation? As a child I felt helpless rage at the total lack of feeling with which the land was destroyed and covered with ugly buildings and asphalt that then was termed progress. “You can’t stop progress,” my father would say when I ranted about what seemed to me pure evil. How can such greed, cruelty and insensitivity to everything that is alive and supports life be progress? Already I was learning that humans use words backwards. Euphemisms are lies.

I came to hate humans as the enemies of all life, even their own. But what can a ten-year-old do about anything? I fantasized wrecking all the schools and churches where such lies and false friendships were applied with the skills learned from centuries of brainwashing. And on that subject, why is mental seduction and bombardment called “brainwashing,” when it is actually brain fouling? I suppose I was terrorist material at age 10. But even then I had a counter voice within that said “hate and destruction does not cure indifference and destruction.” Somehow there was a beginning of faith in a process that stretched out in time beyond our imagining and involved processes beyond our (my) limited understanding. I came to appreciate that part of this process was my passion for life, beauty, respect, enlightenment as it set itself against ignorance, cruelty, ugliness, greed and fear.
Here we are supposedly the most intelligent of the beasts and this intelligence is used to undo the very foundations of life. As humans we build mighty systems for dealing with problems caused by those very systems. In a modern hospital, or scientific facility the powerful technology and atmosphere of authoritative knowledge is far more intimidating than is any megalithic stone god. The cures often seem lost in the rapid growth of even more pesky diseases. The more we aim technology at our problems the trickier and more complex are the problems and diseases.

Think about how sophisticated military technology has become. But the reasons for war haven’t evolved, and humans kill each other just as dead. It has been said that the next level of evolution will involve the activation of the heart chakra that connects the lower and higher chakras. Perhaps then we won’t act like gods and die like dogs.

Frequently in the movies superior technological destruction comes from power mad, greedy aliens who want to take us over because they’ve ruined their own world. But this is happening right here, no aliens involved. Of course there are many conspiracy theorists that would disagree and say that it is the aliens right here among us that are trying to take us over and hoodwink us into destroying ourselves for their benefit. But could both kinds of aliens actually be a projection of our own self-destructive activity. And does it matter if the aliens in question are from another planet, another dimension or the shadow side of this planet’s dominant species. Smart aliens can just watch us undo ourselves.

It is said in psychotherapy, that projection is the first stage in becoming conscious of the shadow self. To quote a famous 1930’s radio character, "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!" Unfortunately the shadow seldom moves inward from the projection screen to its true source in the mind of the projectionist. Who among us has the courage and potential for self-forgiveness to admit that they are what they most fear and loathe? This is the true magic of Christ consciousness.

We are all participants in destruction. No matter how often you visit the recycling bin, buy organic and free range food, or avoid buying from a large chain that exploits foreign workers, or serves meat grown at the expense of the vanishing rainforests the prevailing system will catch you in its net. The recycling bin will only accept what it can resell, the health food store will package its organic products individually in cardboard and plastic, adding to the mountains of trash and the rainforest continues to be depleted despite your boycott. You may even have decided to move out of the evil ugly city onto a mountain top cabin with five acres where you and like minded others are making life hard for the Mountain Lions and Bears by encroaching on their territory, which often gets them shot for your protection. It often seems that there is nothing we can do that is more effective than the relief of our personal conscience.

Is there any way out of this dilemma? What if we acknowledge our shadow and love both each other and ourselves without whitewash? What if we accept both the bad and the good as part of the human situation?
The usual answer seems to be that until we can trust the other guy it isn’t safe to let our guard down. Nothing is gained by trying to be so pure that one isn’t part of the dirt that envelops the planet. Self-righteousness never works in the long hall. Ecological purity is largely a middle-class and up choice. Few really poor people can afford to live organically unless they’ve never been touched by “civilization.” I remember the ecological movement as favored by the hippie subculture of the 60’s and 70’s. They tried to live off the land and adopt the ways of indigenous people. Of course they didn’t really know how to do this but they weren’t afraid to experiment. Having money was something to hide in that sub-culture. But the dominating cultural influences will win out in the end and every technique to counter the money driven exploitation of life is eventually absorbed by it. Once organic health-food markets were owned and used by hippies and now they are usually owned by yuppies. It reminds me of the religious takeover by the Christian Church as the vanguard of military political world domination. Churches were always built on pre-Christian holy sites. If you can’t change their minds you can always swallow them. Nowhere did I read in a history book the hidden in plain sight fact that Rome never fell; it merely put on a new face, the face of the Christian Church. I’m not attacking Christianity here, merely attempting to expose a very subtle exploitation that had nothing to do with a relationship with deity and the power of the Christ as a spiritual force. I suggest that the spiritual power embodied in the concept of the Christ is exactly what had to be stymied by the black magicians of empire. How better to do this than to swallow it and absorb it into the body of the enemy. Now this process is at work within the new orthodoxy of Scientific Materialism.

My definition of black magic is “the use of higher powers for lower ends.” This involves a continual test of purpose. It is my understanding that the actual purpose of Christ consciousness is to realize that we are involved in a constant creative process shared with the originating force of creation itself and even more amazing we are co-creators of our own world. And yet deity has a work in progress on a scale we can’t put our tiny heads around. There is a Sufi saying in reference to the work of evil: “The Devil is God’s most humble servant.” It is through our self-deception, and the deadly and cardinal sins that creation is forged. Can evil win? If it won it would have nothing to work with. Evil is not a creative force. It’s only power is to destroy the product of a genuine creative force. The devil does not create but only destroy, pervert, and hide what exists by the force of creation. And creation moves eternally. Is this not the plausible reason that children seem to be hardwired with a sense of justice? Maybe instead of the end of the world we will experience species puberty, which is the end of a familiar world.

Here is One of Many YouTube Entries on 2012

REALITY: Really?

2011-01-14T13:26:00.000-07:00

There are many realities. No one knows how many. The longer I live the more certain I am that each individual sees, feels and hears a different world. Even if they agree about certain things within their family and tribe those things are not exactly the same for everyone. This is my arrow! In the Shamanic world, the arrow travels through air, earth, fire and water and many dimensions. This year is about remembering how to be an arrow.

One of the lessons I remember from childhood, although without the strength it once had, is that reality is not singular. From this time forward I pledge to focus my attention on this awareness. What is personal reality? How separate is it from cultural reality and creational reality?

When I was perhaps seven years old I was a very lonely child. There was a particular plate that I used for every meal. That plate became a being. I don’t know when this began, or why I chose that particular
plate. It was a goldish color with a floral design. It had some wear on it and I remember a chip on the edge. Although it had been in the household a long time I suddenly chose it. I was the only one allowed to use it and I washed it myself. It took on my spirit and became a living entity in my heart. My mind knew that it was just a plate but my heart overruled my mind. There was something happening that gave me comfort and belonging. Then one day it slipped out of my hand and shattered on the floor. I was heart broken, mourned it for days and felt guilty for its demise. One night, lying in bed after all the lights were out the thought suddenly crossed my mind that in some way I had created life in that plate and that God creates us in a similar way. It was a transfer of spirit.

Scientific Materialism is the current orthodoxy and yet it isn’t supported by cutting edge scientific exploration. Perhaps a lot of the confusion arises because we humans still believe that spirit and matter are not connected. Materialism is always looking for the material explanations of life, what it is and how it started, etc. But it’s not possible for us as beings to understand our origins beginning from the low end any more than it is possible for a cell within the body to understand the whole of the body. This is starting at the wrong end. Once long ago, when my belief in the God I’d been brought up to accept was collapsing a sudden awareness quietly crept in the back door of my consciousness. It is God’s belief in us that is effective not the other way around. We are the creation of beingness beyond our understanding but not beyond our experiencing. Experience is the key word. And yet experience isn’t trusted because it can be altered by anything that effects our physical system. We can be the victims of hallucination, and so on.

But isn’t any belief a prejudice that filters out certain ideas and experiences in favor of others? In this way we are inevitably co-creators of the world we live in. Scientific Materialism has its own orthodoxy that is as limiting as the one it replaced. Concentrating on the interwoven geometric patterns on the walls of a Moorish Mosque is a quick way to experience how the mind moves among realities. The longer you focus your gaze on these patterns the more they shift and change and reveal new patterns. Is any particular pattern more correct than the others? We humans choose a particular correctness, I believe out of the need to agree on something. It keeps us from going mad in the confusion of constant flux. In this way we are creators of our own reality even if unaware of our role.

All religions have two sides. One is all about the agreed upon viewpoint that will be held and defended as orthodoxy, (including Scientific Materialism) and the other is the invisible but life giving link to the underlying creative chaos. The essential nectar of the Gods and power of creation seeps up from the hidden side. Right now I’m struggling to find words to express the essence of being and am immediately faced with both the magic and limitation of words. Isn’t this a metaphor for all structures? Structure is stricture. Nothing can be caught and harnessed in the mind without words and yet words alter and tame the very reality they attempt to catch. The force of being itself comes from the hidden, feared underside. And yet that is of little use to us if we don’t catch it and render it immobile for that moment it takes to put it into perceptible form.

HE THINKS, SHE THINKS: Do Opposites Workout?

2011-01-13T16:06:00.001-07:00

I had an argument, i,e, discussion with my honey this morning about our very different styles of dealing with the habitual complaints of a friend about the relationship she's in. He feels he has to do something about it and get it resolved because she brings it up in conversation a lot, but I feel that it's not my place to fix it. In fact this is a typical example of our different ways of coping with the things that go on around us. He is impatient with drivers over each deviation from correct driving standards and I seldom think about other drivers except to respond automatically to their behavior out of self defense. I don't expect to cure them. I do notice if something really off the chart happens as it often does here in Taos, but I don't expect to fix them. He wanted to be a policeman when he was younger and I wouldn't want to have to pay such close attention to every detail about other drivers. I would find it exhausting. I'm an introvert and he is an extrovert. Not surprising, huh?

He wants our relationship to be almost perfect by his standards and gets restless if a high level of relating isn't maintained while I like to slide now and then because I have other parts of life that pull my attention from time to time.

My devotion isn't pulled away its just that in my psychic house there are other rooms to attend to now and then, but I never forget about him and stay pretty focused on his needs. He on the other hand expects me to be very sensitive to his state of mind and heart and he watches mine like a cat watches its environment, sensitive to every move. I rather automatically adjust to his moods and movements and he watches to see if I do.

Sometimes I see him as a spoiled prince and he sees me as a wimp that doesn't ask for what she wants and allows people to shit on her. He thinks the world out there is probably up to no good and its important to be cautious and think defensively. I think if you expect something bad to happen it probably will. On the whole I've been pretty effective in putting up a protective screen. Now and then I fail but life goes on. He sees a failure in security as a loss of points in the game of life. I don't like games.

The reality is that he is often very insightful about what is going on with other people and gets right to the point. He would make a good therapist. But sometimes he gives therapy when it isn't wanted. He feels a personal responsibility to do something about everything out of balance that crosses his path. I too make a pretty good therapist because I see behind the outward actions to the underlying motives. I can get pretty straight on too, but tend not to do so when I detect that the person in question is not interested in doing anything about it.

The reality is that he is very good in an emergency, very clear headed and is often down right generous and courageous. Strangely enough so am I. I must admit that he is quicker to stop on the road if he detects the possibility that someone is in trouble and do whatever he can to help, whereas I might think about it first. We are almost opposites but there is a hidden recognition that we are very much alike as well. Its just that the style of presentation is quite different.

The reality is that he often accuses me of not sharing my feelings with him. Its true, I usually take notice of my feelings and trace them back to the origins before I share them. He on the other hand often announces an action he is going to take and assumes that he has shared the reason when usually he hasn't. He thinks I automatically know why he does what he does. Sometimes I do, simply because I've been there before.

The reality is that he makes quick decisions in a moment of generosity or enthusiasm and I think, "maybe, lets wait and see how it all shakes down". He backs out a few days later after thinking about it and decides it may not be such a good idea after all.

The reality is that he flings a tough, "I put myself first, and I don't take shit from anyone"attitude out in the world. He brags on himself and takes compliments with total agreement but nevertheless feels delighted when someone really understands what he's trying to express. He encourages and admires others who are in the art business. He always tries to support local business people and friends and expresses a lot sympathy for others trying to make it on their own. I've noticed that he will go out of his way to encourage someone he identifies with even when he can't afford it. He sees it as a tithe to the spirit of those who are trying to do their best. I on the other hand am far more worried about money or the lack of it, and I tend to doubt how others perceive me.

The reality is that he is a romantic and I used to be a romantic. Hmm, do you really believe that? True, it's more complicated than that. He strives to maintain the romantic outlook and I strive to keep it in check.

I'm also thinking of how his Aquarius Sun, Virgo Moon and Sagittarius rising relates to my Gemini Sun, Cancer rising and Cancer Moon conjunct Jupiter. There is a lot more to it than just these characters of course. We are certainly not two peas in a pod but we aren't the opposites we seem to be either. Its a bit more like the two sides of a Pendleton blanket. The pattern is reversable on each side.

HEARTLESS LIVING AND GIVING VS. GIVING FROM THE HEART

2011-01-06T21:11:00.000-07:00

Most of us don’t notice the injustices and downright evil that support our lifestyle if we are comfortable enough to remain oblivious. The key word is enough. So much of our modern lifestyle is supported by shadowy evils on the periphery of awareness. I suppose it is our responsibility to stay informed and aware of whatever is casting the shadow, but the quantity and complexity of the systems that support us physically engender an overwhelm response that results mentally and emotionally in a fuzzy numbness. How can one possibly deal with all the things that need to be fixed? Most of the time we do what we can to placate our conscience knowing that we are barely touching the issues in our world that need to be fixed.

I’ve been receiving a number of contribution campaigns in the mail each week from one charity or another asking for a pledge of money. I notice the same style on all of these mailings. They enclose a free gift of address stickers and a notepad and then if I don’t respond it upscales to a calculator, pen, or cheap polyester blanket. Once in awhile it is a T-shirt. I quit giving to these charities when this style of appeal began. I wonder about how much it costs to pay for such a mailing campaign. I’m sure it keeps some people employed but the assumption behind this promotional style irks me. It assumes that I won’t give for no-thing, and that guilt will motivate me to help pay for the promotional costs. Even the local PBS channel has taken this up. I used to give to several Native American organizations that provided (or so they said) food and heat for the elderly and various types of help including education for the young but now I think about how much help could be provided for the cost of these unwanted pieces of junk. Although I can’t take it off my income tax as a charitable contribution I prefer to give to people in my immediate environment that have a need.

There is a Tarot Card in the Rider-Waite deck that personally strikes a dissonant cord. It depicts a wealthy man giving alms to the poor who are kneeling beneath him in gratitude dressed in their rags. This is the interpretation given by James Rioux http://www.ata-tarot.com/resource/cards/

The Six of Pentacles often represents the first of these two situations, when it is your generosity that is being (or should be) expressed. Now that you have lived through the darkness long enough to see the inner light, it is time to help others who are not so fortunate. The generosity of the Six does not limit itself to money and material things, though the focus is on those because it is a Pentacle card. Giving of your time or your wisdom is often just as spiritually fulfilling as giving away money or gifts, and the intangible gift of your presence is received just as well, if not better.

There are limits on helping, however. It is pointless to give so much that you ruin yourself, and it is equally pointless to give a person so much that they become totally dependent on you. That is the purpose of the scales, which offer the qualities of discrimination and fair judgment as they relate to generosity. To paraphrase Marx, give according to your abilities, and according to the needs of others. And if too many people start asking for your help it is not forbidden to draw a line! Do not make the mistake of half-heartedly helping everyone when you can do a better job helping a few.

I don’t believe that creation is something that happened eons ago, and I don’t believe that there was once a state of perfect balance that was destroyed by some disobedient human action that occurred at the very dawn of the conscious human relationship with the creator. I do believe that creation is a work in progress and that each step begins with the loss of a previous balanced state. Even to walk requires that a static state of balance be sacrificed for the next step. It is also possible to fall backward and to fall on ones face. But these are aspects of becoming and each backward slide or forward fall brings knowledge to those who have discovered the power of learning as a significant part of the creative adventure.

Consciousness is never total but continuously evolving. Typically individual consciousness tends to be at a higher level than mass consciousness. But sensitivity to the state of others is an ongoing project and a necessary part of personal as well as social evolution. Perhaps this is another way of saying that the intention is as important as the action when it comes to personal responsibility. The idea that getting money even for a “good” cause by manipulating a guilt response in others or even the greed response, if a tax deduction is involved is another way of saying, “the end justifies the means.” Instead I believe the end will always reflect the means and a lack of heart in any fund raising campaign will enable the state of consciousness that is responsible for the very problem it is attempting to correct.

CHRISTMAS IN TAOS

2010-12-24T13:27:00.003-07:00

Yesterday we drove around town and to the rez several times trying to get the last minute Christmas items taken care of. As we moved from one end to the other and back again, I looked at this town that has become as familiar as my personal family (maybe more) and tried to sort out my emotions. Do I love this place? Do I find it repulsive? What is this strange confusion about, what happened to my undying loyalty?

I’ve often explained to newbees and visitors that this place is the most beautiful and dangerous place I’ve ever been. Most casual visitors and even long time visitors who haven’t actually lived here can’t understand this description. First, there is a rawness about Taos that even new sidewalks and traffic lights haven’t touched. It leaks up from the earth and flows over the top of all modern improvements. The old adobes, homemade wiring and leaky roofs always win in the end. I once saw it as quaint but that is an insult to this place with attitude. When I came back from Arizona this summer, I lost patience with the Taos attitude of, “don’t bother me I’m talking to my cousin” from the clerk at the checkout line of our forever understocked WalMart. I used to just flow with the slow and inept. Now I’m not as patient with the glitches. Much of it seems like an attitude of imbedded hatred toward the outside world. Taos fancies itself to be a kind of low key, homemade Shangri-La that can’t be fathomed or understood by outsiders.

Things don’t run very smoothly here, but it all works out in the end. It is organic and it is old, and impatience isn’t tolerated. You don’t push Grandma around, not here anyway. All the same an apologetic attitude doesn’t work either. Although there is something different about this town that pulls in visitors from more American places such as Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado and Arizona, places that are next door neighbors, Taos tests its visitors, the way an old horse tests an inexperienced rider.

When I came back from Arizona this summer, I began to realize that you mustn’t let an old horse get away with its tricks either. If you do it begins to lose its spirit and becomes spoiled. You can’t coddle it, but you let it know that you know its tricks, won’t participate, but love it anyway.

My partner, PQ, is happy to be back this Christmas. We had a great time in Arizona, grew very close to each other and Cottonwood/Sedona, and made wonderful friends. It was truly a second home. However, family is family and you can’t divorce them. Taos is like that. PQ is a Taos Pueblo native, so the tie is forever. Since we lost his mom and dad holidays have not been the same. Since he is now the family elder it has been nagging at him to continue the holiday tradition. So we are having a potluck at his rez house. The old pueblo house still needs some work to bring it back into shape for feast days. He’s been very frustrated that with his lung problems he can’t participate in the kiva ceremonies or do the physical repair work needed by the old house. One son is supporting a family while going to school and helps here and there as he can but the house needs some concentrated work. The other son is in Denver trying to make a living, not easy here in Taos.

I spent the last three days making biscachitos, prune pies, green chili stew, and other traditional goodies. One of the Pueblo ladies is making red chili and he acquired some traditional horno bread from another. An horno is the traditional outdoor adobe oven introduced to the Pueblos by the Spanish who got it from the Moors. It was important that the menu be traditional to honor Frances (mom). He is so happy putting this together and wrapping presents for his grandchildren by himself (with a little coaching from an experienced wrapper). This year on Christmas day the Pueblo is going to have the Matachines Dance instead of the Deer Dance. We love the Deer Dance most of all. We both carry deer energy. While all the Pueblos have a Deer Dance, the one at Taos conveys the power of life, death and rebirth in the rawest form. Much of its power comes from the simplicity of presentation. The deer men wear the skins of recently killed deer on their backs. The ongoing passion of life becomes cosmic in this dance. But the Matachines is quite mysterious in its own right. Although the Spanish introduced this dance and used as a morality play, it has taken on a mystery that is neither completely Spanish/Moorish nor Indian. It expresses much of the emotionally laden historic journey of the Spanish Moors, through Spain to Mexico and finally New Mexico.

I feel better having written this. Like with a marriage, after you’ve been in it almost 20 years there is a need to re-evaluate. Yes, I still love Taos, but I’m no longer in love with Taos. It can’t schmooze my independent viewpoint away anymore. In fact I think I’m a better family member by not being enchanted by the “Land of Enchantment” as I was so long ago. Now I’m remembering my first Christmas in Taos, but I don’t have time to get into that right now.

FRACTAL GEOMETRY AND THE UNSEEN WORLD

2010-12-18T01:18:00.000-07:00

Recently there was a program on the PBS station about Benoit Mandelbrot and the discovery of Fractal Geometry. It seems that everything we know is a branch of a branch, etc., of a core shape. It is based on the concept of self-similarity multiplied until it fills space. This concept really seized my attention recently even though it’s certainly not the first time this idea was presented to me. All the way to Santa Fe the other day, I saw endless fractals in trees, rocks, and clouds. On the way home it snowed and I thought of the shapes of snowflakes. But something kept nagging at me. I knew a new insight was coming in although I couldn’t pin it down. Then just as we were nearing Espanola, the light bulb came on.

What if the concept applies to the unseen world just as it applies to the physical dimension that we can perceive with our senses. What if there is only one world and the dimensions that we are able to perceive are divided from the unperceived world only by the fact that we don’t have the equipment to perceive beyond the five senses. Wouldn’t this be an easy way to explain synchronicity, psychic perception and even astrology? Our physical senses are, after all, very limited. We see the results of Fractal Geometry in the physical world visible to the eye but it seems that the underlying principle would exist in the space we can’t see or hear as well. This might explain the realm of spiritual and intuitive perceptions and psychic phenomena, as well as magic. Of course the limit of the physical senses is to some degree a cultural bias. We all know that young children that are still not seriously indoctrinated with what they can and can’t perceive often have a connection to realities not recognized by Scientific Materialism. This thought is just a beginning. I’ll be thinking about this for awhile.

Many things are related across time as well as space. There are even patterns in history that seem to reoccur over and over with slight variations. Is it possible that this too is an aspect of fractal patterning?

When I was a child I loved Kaleidoscopes. I remember spending hours playing with these fractal mandalas. They were like snowflakes, there were no two alike. Later as a teenager I would be able to close my eyes and see intricate geometric patterns, and no, I wasn’t taking anything. It was just something that happened and I assumed it worked this way for everybody until it quit happening for me. Psychedelic art back in the 70’s also used fractal patterns quite a bit.

INDIGENOUS PEOPLE

2010-12-01T16:50:00.000-07:00

I’m an indigenous person. No I’m not a First Nation indigenous person although I suspect some of my ancestors were. It disturbs me that the word indigenous has come to mean only those whose ancestors came from the continent on which their remote progeny now live. The best way, in my mind, for honoring indigenous people is to recognize that you are one.

OK, some people believe their origins are on other planets. Actually so do many indigenous people. The Plieides and Serius are among the most common star roots. But in reality our ancestors have moved around on this earth for hundreds of thousands of years. Geneticists and archaeologists believe that Africa is the ancestral homeland of all of us. But we have cultural connections and spiritual connections with certain places on the earth and usually there is a creation story that spiritually honors that connection. It’s a kind of sacred cultural marriage to the place you have come to love and depend upon for life.

Indigenous peoples have emerged into public consciousness in recent years. The whole concept of indigenous people has brought awareness to the fact that the dominant cultures of this period in history disown their origins. In fact in many ways they are not a culture, just a kind of cancer that grows independent of its hosts ability to integrate it and threatens death to its own source of life. When the host dies so does the cancer. But when things become too massive and impersonal individuals experience their personal impact as so insignificant that instead of experiencing themselves as beings who have the power to make a difference in their society and the planet that hosts it they feel they are like a raindrop in the ocean. It is tempting to focus on bettering one’s personal life and immediate environment and forget about the bigger picture.

So much attention has been directed to the date 2012, the end of a Mayan great year. Some look toward it as the end of the world in a catastrophic sense and some expect salvation and renewal. Either way it seems that people are hoping for and yet dreading the inevitable collapse of the world as we now experience it. But actually nothing changes completely. On the tree of life there are always roots back into the previous condition and branches up to a new situation. We each will have to be responsible for what comes after the end/beginning. The main thing is that a new paradigm is inevitable but shouldn’t be mistaken for paradise. Einstein said, “it is impossible to solve a problem within the system of the problem.” This is one of my favorite quotes because it is an obvious truth that is usually unrecognized.

The big world of spin, greed, unlimited growth and busy-ness is running out of fuel, literally and figuratively. Some want to carry on by finding another planet to wear out and a few others want to rise beyond the system that is wearing out this one, and yet others want to cling to a previous time. But if you acknowledge your membership as a child of this planet and a grandchild of the universe you allow the story of creation to unfold and recognize that everything you do is cosmic and part of a development beyond anything you could possibly imagine. Creation is always happening and you are an indigenous person.

Halloween? Thoughts About the "My Son is Gay” Blog Post

2010-11-18T15:56:00.002-07:00

I’m amazed that this blog post got so many responses. I made the mistake of contributing a comment and now I’ve received and deleted thousands of email comments. Every so often I read one but I can’t possibly read them all. I’ve never subscribed to a blog before. So what is it about this particular topic that created such a sensational response?

Most of the responses are about whether the mom in question did the right thing or the wrong thing by supporting her five year old son in his wish to wear a Daphne costume to a Halloween party. I won’t take that on right now. There were several categories of response repeated over and over. Some where supportive, some were critical and a few were insightful. However, it got me to thinking about Halloween in itself. Why is Halloween such a big deal?

For one thing it is a chance for people to be something they could not be in every day life. Whether they are angels, demons, glam queens, super heroes, the grizzly dead, aliens, or monsters it’s all about being something not encountered in everyday life. The crack between worlds or dimensions that Halloween supposedly represents is also a crack between what is socially OK and what is beyond the boundaries of conscientious reality. Why do people get so much enjoyment in going beyond these boundaries? It is obviously great fun. It’s even fun to be scared, if it’s not overdone to the point that we can’t return to the ordinary reality. We can indulge certain behaviors and desires not allowed in their undisguised form. But is this all there is to it? I suspect there is more.

For a little while we can exist in an alternative reality. It is not a reality that the current orthodoxy of Scientific Materialism supports but it obviously has an attraction that is, well, more attractive. The blog post that got me started here is not really about this issue. I believe it has drawn so much reaction because of the sensitive topic’s of gender identity, social positioning of the sexes and potential religious threats. But there is the hidden issue of Halloween itself that also includes these topics. What is it and what is it not? Especially why does it get so much attention in this modern post religious society? Of course very few people attach any religious significance to it either pro or con unless they are practicing pagans or extreme fundamentalists.

The door between worlds is supposed to be especially thin at Halloween. There is something very intriguing about a door between worlds. The concept of a door is itself powerful. We go through doors to change where we are to something else. A literal door opens to indoors from outdoors and vice verse, or into a public building, someone else’s house, a different room, etc., but always a different environment. That is what doors do whether literal or figurative. Is there a door opening from this well known (at least we believe we know it) reality to a place of mystery? And, is the mystery about all the scary things we can imagine, and hope not to meet in our familiar reality, or is it about those who no longer exist in this reality? When they die where do they go? Is it just poof! And that is the end. Or does all that life force come from someplace we can’t experience with our senses, and then return when it’s physical container is destroyed? Death itself is intriguing because we can't touch the world of the dead from the side of life as we know it. It scares, repels, and fascinates.

Fear is an indication of energy invested in the object feared. Sometimes it’s justified but it is also frequently an indication of something valuable that is seen as a threat to an identity that has become too small. After all we don’t fear the unknown, we fear what we think we know about the unknown. It is the fear of something we don’t want to identify with or incorporate into our world. Sometimes this kind of fearsome topic appears in dreams as thresholds we are afraid to cross or monsters that can’t be stopped or outwitted. But always it indicates something that threatens reality as we believe it is. That is the source of titillation, repulsion and fear.

MANIFESTATION?

2010-11-03T15:02:00.000-06:00

Bit by Bit I’m learning about manifestation. I’ve always been very good at it when it involves things and events that were not clouded by emotional issues and bad conditioning. That is a significant awareness in itself.   It is an indication that I have some flaws in my operating system that automatically defeats certain intentions and desires. But it also indicates that when I’m clear of these obstacles desired things happen and life moves forward without obstruction. I’m in the process of sorting out the helps and hindrances along the path to connecting effectively with the world beyond this computer, a canvas, or my immediate friends.

My intuitive judgements have a similar history. Certain intuitive perceptions come easily and are completely trustworthy because they don’t have much to do with personal issues either pro or con. It is all about the clarity of the system.

This is a new awareness that makes it much easier to hone in on the problem. We are talking about magic here. My definition of magic is the ability to move energy through focused intention to a specific goal. Much of the magic we experience is unconscious. In reality much of our life force goes into this unconscious magic. In other words we live in a situation that has been unconsciously programmed to achieve certain results. Often these results are very uncomfortable and self-defeating, not to mention entirely opposite of our conscious intention.

Techniques of manifestation so often fail because they don’t take into account those semi-hidden personalities that have another point of view. Do we all want to be rich, successful in our careers and happily mated? There are several levels of operatives here. One is the conflicting opinion inside of one individual. The other is the voice of the higher self that doesn’t believe that all of these results will necessarily advance the wellbeing of the soul or the planet. There are higher agendas than the individual ego. To achieve certain kinds of success and yet become unbalanced in relationship with the Higher Self, the welfare of other beings and Mother Earth often has a severe backlash waiting in ambush at the end of the trail. Thus success in manifestation is not always positive in the long run.

All of this talk about conscious vs. unconscious is in need of definition. I believe that what I’m really dealing with here is a less obvious type of multiple personality. Who am I really? This is the root of the issue. Just who is doing the manifesting? There is the child person who is programmed to believe certain things about life and self, some that are no longer in anyone’s best interest, and then a shy person who doesn’t really want to know the details of her inner workings. Also there are those shadowy beings that each have a secret agenda and can be very conniving. To simplify this issue I’ll conclude the list with that person I want to be and have come to understand as the outer image of my soul. This is a work in process.
This is the person I wish to put in charge of manifestation. To do that some of the other selves need to grow up and allow this to happen.

Frequently the desire to be rich, at the top of one’s field, and loved by the ideal mate is an attempt to override the fear of the concealed mojo of low expectations, i.e., a curse. The reason for bringing in these different facets of self that live within one body (the visible one) is that they all manifest different results and these different results are frequently in contradiction and conflict with each other.

I use dreams among the indicators of what my various selves are up to. It’s especially useful to take note of the things that seem really off-the-wall. Also, anything that embarrasses or disgusts me is likely to be rich territory. After I develop some familiarity with some of these themes I begin to notice that they have correspondences to so called waking life, if there really is such a thing. I don’t recommend taking on the really difficult, scary dream events all by yourself unless you have practice in dream work. It’s too easy to get paranoid and allow fear to put on a monster coat and go chasing after you. If your alienation from your hidden selves (or someone else’s) has gone that far you probably need to work on it in the company of someone with solid experience such as a therapist or support group.

A few years ago I would never have put this kind of rumination out into public display. I had a kind of emotional agoraphobia. This is one of my deliberate manifestations. I’ve learned that whenever I discover an inner truth it is important to give it a physical form. Being in the world is my primary work. Everything in life is connected to everything else.

My mother almost abandoned me, not in her heart but in her fear of life. First, her husband and her mother both thought she should have an abortion because they considered her frail, and because there was a war going on and my father was about to be drafted and she would be on her own. She went ahead and had me, which was what she wanted but she was never able to totally acknowledge my existence. It was a type of superstition on her part. The intimidated child in her was afraid she would lose me if she fully acknowledged my existence. When my baby sister was born three years later, she came in with a damaged heart and died within six months. This brought my mother to a nervous breakdown. She went into a dark place that covered much of my childhood. Much later she confessed that she had cut off many of her feelings for me because she believed that God was punishing her for her inadequacies and would take away her children.

I’ve had a recurring dream/memory since those days. There were Monkey Bars in the playground near our apartment during my first three years. I struggled to reach the first bar and looked up to the older children on the tiers above with enormous longing and determination to actually climb to the top. We moved away before I was able to accomplish this. Several times I ran away from home and went back to the old neighborhood. But each time I was caught and brought back before I was able to accomplish my goal. Eventually we moved to a different state, and that was that. But this pattern has stayed with me. I continue to symbolically pursue the monkey bars and over and over some outward event prevents me from accomplishing the goal. Only a few years ago I recognized this as a life pattern that unconsciously ruled from the shadows of my memory. I won’t go into the details but I now have a powerful tool. Sometimes things come very easily when the obstructions are removed and manifestation becomes an organic development.

There are layers upon layers in these stories and it continues to guide me as I learn to identify the components.   I’ve had teachers along the way, also; Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, Carlos Castaneda, Arny Mindell, and so on along with some of my personal friends. Learning astrology was also helpful. For those of you interested in astrology I have a Gemini Sun in the 12th house, Moon conjunct Jupiter rising in Cancer (also in the 12th house, all of these squaring Neptune in the 4th house, and much of my strength comes from Mars conjunct Pluto late in the first house, Venus in Taurus and Uranus conjunct Saturn in the 11th house. It is a cosmic snapshot brought down to the personal level. Some folks can’t accept the idea that the position of the planets at a certain time can apply to anything personal. That assumes that we are totally personal. It may well be that everything in the universe partakes of an overall pattern if we knew how to read it. Humans have narrowed the field in certain ways for millenniums. They read numbers, stars, sheep’s innards and so on but were functioning on the assumption of holography long before it was a
concept. Somehow external patterns stimulates awareness of an internal reflection.

HOW REAL IS TIME?

2010-10-25T17:45:00.005-06:00

At this time last year my partner Standing Deer and I were just getting set up in Cottonwood, Arizona. It seems as if we are still there. We returned to Taos just before summer but I'm finding my experience of time to be completely out of order. While last year is like yesterday, I have little recollection of the sequence of events over the past five months. Something significant is shifting my experience of timing.

I'm also finding it difficult to remember the sequence of important events in my personal history. At one moment it seems as if I'm in the Denver of 20 years ago, or in Boulder on the mall with one of my friends from long ago. But the experience is not of long ago but as if its happening right now. I can feel the air, hear the breeze shuffling the leaves and smell the earth. These experiences come with a profound, almost unbearable nostalgia. At times I'm feeling crazy because the nostalgia can overtake me at anytime.

I take inventory in an attempt to get my life lined up again on the horizontal time line and discover that certain times mean very little to me and others are so loaded with emotion and yearning that I can hardly bear it. But what is the difference? As I go deeper I notice that the emotional times are attached to unfinished processes. They have to do with something significant to my sense of direction and of having lost the trail, usually by the interference of an external event.

Does this have to do with the fabled approach of the 2012 end of the Mayan time cycle? I don't trouble myself very much with prophecies and predictions. We are after all co-creators of our own future. But I'm puzzled by what I don't know about my own experience. I know that I have made some significant spiritual/emotional breakthroughs in the past month. This year is heading toward it's end and I'm sensing unknown chapter coming up. In preparation perhaps, I've been reliving unfinished parts and past passions. I'll cross metaphors here and say that I'm shedding the skin of my past and it feels very important to do it now. My 12th house intuition says its time to restock my toolbox. Most people my age are settling down to enjoy their senior years but I feel that my whole life has been preparation for something that is about to begin.

SCIENTIFICALLY, WHAT IS WHAT? ARE WE LIKE GOD, OR IS GOD LIKE US?

2010-06-16T14:22:00.003-06:00

I always have questions and musings about what lies behind everything we experience as inside or outside this entity we each call “me.”

Think about it. Power is a great motivator, perhaps the greatest motivator. People have been seeking power since forever began. To seek wealth is actually to seek the accumulation of power. Wealth allows one many options in the physical world. Also, it places one above the vulnerabilities and dangers that poverty exposes one to. Well, at least that is always the hope behind the acquisition of wealth. Nothing protects an individual or even a group against death or the possibility of loss of power that comes with an invasion by someone with more wealth and power. And then there is a greater power that defeats all other powers that we call death.

The power of the disenfranchised is generally the possibility of taking power away from those who hold it. To remove wealth, social standing, self value, and finally life itself from another is the dark power of death. Every child has at some time in a rage about not being able to master something destroyed it to demonstrate who was boss to him/her self if to no one else. In truth I have always suspected that suicide is motivated by the need to remain in control of ones life and personal power when faced with the indignity of an ultimate loss of power. It’s an “I’ll show you,” approach to the death of personal power.

Power isn’t really about survival beyond the basic need to find food shelter and fellow humans to live among mate with and share tasks and skills with. However, it does seem that as long as death exists humans will always find their pursuit of power ultimately futile. Is that why we invented religion? The religion that is the current orthodoxy, i.e., science says that this is the case.

As I think about the attraction of power it occurs to me that all people have a natural desire to be godlike even though it often comes out in a distorted and ugly form. Spirituality is hardwired into the human species, of this I am convinced, and it will emerge one way or another. If not in a creative and protective way, then it will come out as the power to destroy. By spirituality I mean the desire to be Godlike. It is the ultimate attraction that lies behind most other attractions. With this desire comes the affiliated response to that desire, worship. What a paradox! Worship is a response to a form of power one respects and desires and by its very essence acknowledges what one doesn’t have and yet wants to have. It often comes with mixed feelings of fear, love and envy.

Let’s put aside the whole argument of whether or not God or a higher power exists. I am sensing more intensely as I explore the whole issue that it doesn’t matter what we conceive mentally; we are nevertheless driven even on a cellular instinctive level to acknowledge a higher overarching intelligence and ultimate power that we might as well refer to as God. Certainly a belief in God eventually becomes a trip up because the part could never contain the whole by the very nature of its situation. For that reason what we refer to as God could never be either proven or disproven. That is entirely beyond our realm of operation considering the limits of our equipment.

Those who believe that there is no reality beyond the five senses and the rules of popular physics are essentially the cell trying to understand the body that contains it. All one has to do to blow that naïve assumption apart is to see how a fly’s eyes are structured. Ultimately it is not ours to believe or disbelieve reality, since being one of its products we can’t know what it is.

Authority is another aspect of power and godlikeness and it is often paired with tradition. Humans are by nature herd animals and seem to require a pecking order so that various functions don’t collide and things are kept moving effectively. To some degree this is a survival issue. But circumstances change and it seems that they change more rapidly than the authority of tradition and inevitably there is a collision between the way things have “always” been done, and current needs.

Since we haven’t been at it very long, we tend to assume that we are very advanced as a species. I remember my mom telling to me once, “when I was thirteen I thought about all the things I knew and decided that I knew everything I could think of.” Of course she thought it humorous that her thirteen year old self believed that all the things that she could think of was the same as all that was. But is that so far removed from taking our senses and current knowledge as ultimate guides to that which is real? All we have to do is read an old textbook or see a documentary based on outdated assumptions to recognize that what is called science is still tenuous.

Just Testing - Personal Demons

2010-06-09T10:17:00.006-06:00

I've been thinking about what it truly means to follow one's heart. It seems that to do so evokes the demons who want things to stay the same, and keep us in their grip. We recently returned to Taos, New Mexico from Cottonwood, Arizona. The first week was relatively quiet, but the demons were just waiting to scope out our situation. Now the trip ups are beginning to emerge from hiding. I think this is why it is so easy to lose pieces of one's soul here and there along the twists and turns life takes. Pieces of soul are lost whenever we give up our life force to adjust to situations that intrude into the flow of our lives. Its like tripping over a rock on a trail - one that was invisible until after the fall.

My Partner, Blue Spruce Standing Deer, was gifted with a beautiful

Kingman turquoise bracelet by a Navajo Medicine Man many years ago. It became more precious as the years passed and it attracted attention wherever he went. He told the story of this amazing gift many times because people would frequently ask about this bracelet. It was truly a "Medicine Object " and carried a charisma of its own. Shortly after our return to Taos he went into town and then around the pueblo with his son and an old friend. After many months of no alcohol he "fell," as he put it. Although the day was beautiful, the conversation good, and the sense of being home very sweet, he fell back on a promise to himself and his medicine path. He only noticed the bracelet's absence after returning to his house. He called me late in the afternoon, very disturbed because this bracelet had just disappeared without a trace. He backtracked all the places he had been that day several times and came up with nothing. The next day we both went out and again retraced his path of the day before. Of course we found nothing. I began to feel very strongly that we should stop searching and pray toward the Mountain to release the bracelet and all that it meant to him to the spirit that gave it to him, give thanks for being able to wear it and love it all those years and promise to continue on the Medicine path from that time forward without questions. Perhaps this Medicine object is gone forever because its time has passed, perhaps it left as a powerful message about self betrayal, and perhaps it will someday find its way back to him, but I had no doubt that he should entirely release it at that time because it no longer belonged to him and perhaps never did belong in the sense of possession. Perhaps it came to him as a reminder that he carried medicine but no longer needed to be with him as a physical presence. I have a strong feeling that the story isn't over whether or not the bracelet reemerges.

Taos is our power place and place of emergence. I realize now that although the Natives of Taos Pueblo regard the Blue Lake as their source , and place of emergence, emergence isn't just a one time deal. It is a life source with a spiritual umbilical cord attached. If there is a blockage in our ability to receive the food for our soul it will definitely become an issue. I am learning much about my own blockages and through that my true source of nourishment.

We all make adjustments as we go through our personal journey through this dimension. There are many obstacles to contend with; bad childhoods, bad jobs, bad marriages, wars, natural disasters and so on. Sometimes its a voluntary sacrifice when we give up parts of our soul to gain something we believe is important such as wealth, social prestige, political power or even a seemingly selfless gesture to benefit others that comes at our own expense. But there is always a desired outcome for the sacrifice and the hope that life can resume again in a good way after the goal is obtained.

If the body is encased in a soul, as I believe it is, (an invisible sleeve that holds our essence together but doesn't fit too tightly, or too loosely), an injury or depletion of soul wounds the physical body as well. The tests and trip ups on the path reveal how well we are fitted with our soul.

One thing I've become sure of is that once we make a commitment to follow our heart, or the "medicine path," everything in our lives that doesn't fit that path will be challenged. The things we got away with before will no longer be tolerated. A saying that I believe came from a Sufi master comes to mind, "the devil is God's most humble servant." Even the things we do believing they are correct, traditional or socially responsible often come back at us like a boomerang if they don't fit the "medicine path," the path with heart.

Places of the Soul

2010-06-03T09:24:00.013-06:00

I have been back in my home in Taos, New Mexico for two weeks and three days now but it is not what I anticipated. I have changed. I am not the same person who left for Arizona last September. Sometimes I feel as if I were living in a time warp and came back to the past.

And yet it isn't the past, its an entirely different environment than the one I left when I moved to Arizona. This occurred in stages. When I was first in Cottonwood, Arizona I longed for Taos, and missed the familiar places, the taste of roasted green chili, the quaint and sometimes irritating main road through town with road construction that never stops and never seems to make much difference, and of course my own adobe walls and the precious plants in my garden.

The Pueblo seems about the same, my partners house is the way we left it with his son still in it and so on. Now Taos and I don't dance to the same tune as we once did. The things that used to make me feel at home now irritate me. I have another perspective. Of course this story isn't over. My garden is back in shape, the phenomenal quiet power that I feel radiating down from the sky is still there as we drink our morning coffee and interact with the very active wildlife of Ravens, Magpies, Starlings, Prairie Dogs, local cats and dogs and occasional Coyote.

Taos was never kind to me although it tolerated me and I got away with an economically precarious lifestyle for an unusually long time. But it was my greatest test in life as well. I realize now that my memories are laced with a delicious but dangerous drug that I barely survived, although I did so with with some pride in my ability to survive some perilous tests. Taos is a "Medicine" place in the Native American sense. But that medicine came at a great price. However, I seem to need a change in Medicine now. I have gone through the initiation and it is time to use what I have learned and to retrieve the parts of my soul that were scraped off here and there in my journey through the wild brush of Taos.

Arizona was and is a new chapter. Not to replace the Taos experience but to take it forward to another level of life. It has been a way of extending my soul, reinvigorating my creativity, and discovering other perspectives. Literally, I needed new scenery in my life. With this discovery I want to bring these two parts together in the blend of my future.

Questioning Scientific Materialism

2010-05-26T22:25:00.004-06:00

I've been pulling ideas from my journals lately. This one is about what I consider to be the prevailing orthodoxy of our time.

February 21, 2008

There is a religious orthodoxy that is currently in power and as with other orthodoxies it intends to stay in power by controlling the way we think and believe. I call it Scientific Materialism.

Actually I believe it doesn’t follow its own rules about being objectively scientific. It has many core beliefs that are just that, beliefs. This orthodoxy has a powerful priestly class as well. They intend to stay in power.

They are against any kind of thinking that does not fall within their world view, although the elements of this world view were instigated by the fathers of this church, many of which would now be condemned by these people just as Jesus would likely be crucified all over again by the priestly class of the church that uses his name. Scientific Materialism has followed the path of all institutionalized religions. The inspired and creative geniuses who laid the foundation of this faith would probably be the first condemned in an inquisition.

All religions reach a place in which form and tradition becomes more important than the acquisition of new levels of knowledge. Although there are amazing developments in many scientific fields, the conceptual blue print must fall within the accepted beliefs and practices of the religion. Einstein said, "you cannot solve a problem within the system of the problem." This is the problem with Scientific Materialism and the basis of the decline of every other system. Although a system may be very complex and have a powerful effect within the area of its mentality, it is limited by that same mentality. That mentality may have been revolutionary and empowering at the point of its discovery but then it too becomes a system with limitations and taboos.

Science freed itself and the world of manipulation by fear of the unknown and those who promised to carry a higher truth. The irony is that Scientific Materialism is defended with the same tone of fear and close mindedness that is encountered in religious fundamentalism. Unfortunately universities are often the places where the faith is defended, rather than where consciousness is expanded beyond it’s present boundaries.

Another paradox is that for all the proclaimed need for objectivity in the pursuit of knowledge, it is emotion and loyalty to an ideal that prevails. The reactive fear provoked by any concept that lies outside the orthodox box has the same flavor as any other fundamentalist reaction. I suppose this kind of irrational, fear based reaction is an inevitable shadow side of those who elevate objectivity and pure reason to the highest level. It has a shadow side because it isn’t whole. The emotional loyalty and sense of control are under cover.

The fact that we are operating within the limits of our five senses and a physical brain inevitably makes it impossible to know all there is to know about the universe or even universes. It is amazing how far knowledge can go and yet we are always the part attempting to swallow the whole, and there is an absurdity in trying get our minds around their own source. And so there is always mystery and mystery, and mystery.

My Sacred Place, Or Is It?

2010-05-26T19:34:00.008-06:00

Today I was browsing through an old journal. The issue is still alive. I felt pulled toward Sedona, Arizona because it felt right to make an energy path between Sedona and Taos. In truth is seems to have worked, at least on a personal level. Standing Deer and I have met some wonderful people in Cottonwood and Sedona and in the process have also refreshed our relationship with Taos. We have renewed old contacts and met new people here in Taos. I believe it is due to the principle of change. Whenever you change something in your life, everything in your life will be affected.

Here is the entry I'm referring to:

December 8, 2008

I’m aware of the change occurring over the years here in Taos. I feel out of the loop. I no longer know people who are interesting to me and that I feel on a compatico path with. The people who used to show up at my friend's inn may be around somewhere but I have no way of finding them. Then there were the people who dropped by the shop where I workeed intuitively guided to find someone such as Joe J. or Standing Deer, and I could direct them to our friend's Inn. There they would probably have a synchronistic spiritual experience.

Then there were the visitors from other countries such as England, Switzerland, Germany, and even Egypt. We almost took the magic for granted. But it stopped. Even the Taos Inn is bereft of interesting people lately. Very few local people go there anymore unless they just want to drink and listen to music. The coffee shops are no longer places to congregate and share. What happened to cause this draught? We are now covered over by skiers, tourists and real estate agents. The shops no longer have the local flavor. It is an environment that is taking on more of the homogeneous nature of modern cities. The essence is hidden. No one local goes to the plaza anymore unless they work there. I remember high schoolers hanging out there after school, and going to the coffee shops and even Michael’s Kitchen.

Some people didn’t like the teenagers to be there and thought it would scare off the tourists, but when you think about it, that’s what happened all over town. Now it isn’t so interesting for tourists. They don’t come here just to see each other. The Taos Inn is no longer the living room of Taos, although it still bills itself that way. There was probably a time when Taos peaked in its essence. That time was probably before my time but evidence of it was still easy to find.

I don’t think coffee shops are full of local artist and artist wannabes as they once were. There are business people and tourists mostly. Taos was very poor when I first arrived. There were no Land Rovers, Mercedes or hot sports cars. If there was a Lincoln or Cadillac it was probably from Texas. Taosenos drove beat up pick-ups and old cars. Many of them walked. There was no bus service here and not even in Santa Fe. However, for a long time it was possible to get the Denver Post every Sunday, and Indian Country Today could be found all over town. Taos was left, counter-culture but not truly hippie at that time. The hippies were getting old and they were more low-keyed. They had settled into Taosness so that they blended in with the Spanish and Indians. Yes there were many spiritual seekers and most people had a mystical bent but the yuppie flavor of well off Buddhism hadn’t yet arrived. That was more likely to be found in Boulder. Taos spirituality was earthier. People usually wore cowboy boots rather than Birkenstocks. It wasn’t unusual to see someone dressed like a mountain man, a fur trapper, or cowboy, and bootcuffs and concho belts were everyday attire.

At the time it suited me perfectly, or so I thought. Now I'm wondering if I'm just going through a natural change and don't see this place I've loved so long through the same lens.

PRAYER

2010-05-22T22:17:00.000-06:00

Here are some insights I recently had about my personal experience of prayer:

Prayer is not about telling God what you want, or asking God how to solve a problem. Prayer is about aligning yourself with the direction and process of Creation. When we pray effectively we are allowing ourselves to be guided into a state of mind that is receptive to what is beyond our imagining and conditioning.

Whether you relate to God as a supernatural all knowing being, the unseen and unknown force of creation, or a mythic figure of human hope, you are still attempting to put yourself within the energy field of creation and renewal when you pray.

Examine carefully the personal relationship you have with your concept of the creator or generator of all that is. Are you still carrying baggage from long ago that inhibits you from aligning with a more inclusive power? Do you believe that God is a crutch for cowards afraid to face the realities of the lonely dilemma and intellectual challenges as humans? It doesn’t matter. It works just as well to tell the unknown all that you don’t believe in as well as what you do believe. Perhaps you were raised with a cozy, very personal God who has become too small to deal with the complexities of the planetary and interplanetary condition. I have found prayer to be as much an adventure into the unknown as it is a cry for help with situations beyond our control.

Remember that emotion drives all human decisions and actions even though it is sometimes disguised. Our motives and processes are driven by emotion, so it is emotion that we use in prayer. It is not desperate emotion or fear driven emotion necessarily that is effective in prayer, however, but the emotion driving commitment and courage. It is the willingness to take a chance and move into an unknown state.

Meditation differs from prayer. Some folks believe that meditation is superior to prayer because it attempts to align us with the processes of higher consciousness and is not driven (hopefully) by egoistic motives and often prayer is. But I believe prayer puts what we learn in meditation and reflection into practical application in our lives. It gives us the opportunity to become co-creators of the reality we must live in. However, there is ultimately a crossover between meditation and prayer that is fuzzy and best left that way.

The Beginning

2010-05-20T17:40:00.000-06:00

This is my first post. I've been considering a blog for several weeks. While I've been journaling since I was 18 I have never made any writing public.

First I'll talk about the name I'm using for this blog: White Deer Song. For the past 18 years I have lived in Taos, New Mexico, and when I began painting again after a gap of 20 plus years, I often painted white deer. I had no idea at the time why I did this, but it was a strong compulsion. In fact my paintings seemed as if they were not coming from the same person who had painted before. The themes, colors and style were completely new and also a surprise. It was almost as if someone else had taken over my imagination and my hands. I have a deep interest in Native American cultures and all indigenous cultures and realized that white animals in species that are normally not white is the sign of a special spiritual quality conveyed by this animal. The reasons for the visit by these white deer is gradually unfolding.

When I was three years old, my family lived in Vallejo California. I remember two of our neighbors coming back from a hunting trip with two Whitetail Bucks. Along with several other local children I approached with curiosity about these two animals laying on the ground. As I approached the hair stood up on the back of my neck and a huge emotion coursed through my body. It was too large and intense for my small child's body to contain and I had to draw back. But I was so fascinated with the sight of these animals and their strange power that I kept trying to approach. Finally I ran away. The feeling was so intense that I felt that I would explode if I didn't get away. I was aware even at that time that the emotion that drove me away was not fear but something much deeper.

My family moved back to Denver, Colorado when I was three and a half. For several years, I was not able to enter a building where deer or elk heads were mounted. Although I was an obedient child in most ways, I had an absolute prohibition against entering such a place and no one could make me do so. I would have resisted with every power I had. My parents who were normally intollerant of my childhood whims and reactions respected this taboo until I eventually grew out of it.

Looking back, I suspect that I didn't so much grow out of the taboo as learn to repress it in order to avoid the social problems that went with it. In those days, Denver was still a cow town and there were lots of hunters who displayed trophies on their walls. A number of them were family members.

If I had been raised in an indigenous culture I'm sure that my people would have recognized that I had some spiritual connection with deer medicine. But we were desensitized to all such signs as much as possible. Although I never fit into the culture (if this is what it was) I was born into there is no doubt that it seriously interfered with all of my natural sensitivities, relationships and powers. I am still working on recovering what was lost and probably will for the rest of my stay in this incarnation.

I will be adding to this subject in the future.

White Deer Medicine

JOE AND MISSY 1989 – 2007

Many Me’s

PLUTO IN CAPRICORN AND 2012

Money, Sex and Power—the Cleansing?

Losing the Box

Pluto the Cleaner

HOW TO FIND HIDDEN KNOWLEDGE

THE PATH BEYOND THE MAGIC MIRROR

NATIONAL MEMORY: 9/11

LITTLE HOUSE, BIG PICTURE

FALLING INTO THE FUTURE

COSMIC TIE-DYE

LEARNING TO LIVE

Travelling Through Life: The Alchemy of Time

THE BIGGER PICTURE

Kazimierz Dabrowski

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

What Motivates Us?

Is This The Kali Yuga?The 10 of Swords. Final defeat before the dawn

MANIFESTATION: More Lessons on the Cosmic Waves

Manifesting Beyond the Shallows of the New Age:

NIGHT JOURNEY - Sleepless in Taos

ON BEING A WHITE DEER: TO BE, OR TO BE LESS?

FOLLOW YOUR HEARTBREAK

OPPOSITION / REFLECTING ON THE FULL MOON

THE ZEN OF GARDENING

HIDDEN CROSSROADS IN THE DARK FOREST OF THE SOUL

TSUNAMI-PERSPECTIVE

TIME PASSES, BUT DOES LIFE GO WITH IT?

MAYBE AND MAYBE NOT

SEDONA RENDEZVOUS

PASSION BEING BORN

LILITH TELLS HER STORY

UPDATE ON THE GREAT TAOS GAS OUTAGE

Red Rock Blessing - PQ's Birthday

New Mexico Natural Gas Failure -- Why Now?

THE WHITE DEERSKIN DRESS

MABLE DODGE LUHAN & TONY LUJAN -1992 and How I Came to Taos, New Mexico

PASSION BEING BORN

TWO FORERUNNERS WHO SAW OUR ENVIRONMENTAL & SOCIAL ISSUES COMING

MY BEGINNING & THE FALL FROM NONGRACE

2012: MAYAN PROPHECY

Here is One of Many YouTube Entries on 2012

REALITY: Really?

HE THINKS, SHE THINKS: Do Opposites Workout?

HEARTLESS LIVING AND GIVING VS. GIVING FROM THE HEART

CHRISTMAS IN TAOS

FRACTAL GEOMETRY AND THE UNSEEN WORLD

INDIGENOUS PEOPLE

Halloween? Thoughts About the "My Son is Gay” Blog Post

MANIFESTATION?

HOW REAL IS TIME?

SCIENTIFICALLY, WHAT IS WHAT? ARE WE LIKE GOD, OR IS GOD LIKE US?

Just Testing - Personal Demons

Places of the Soul

Questioning Scientific Materialism

My Sacred Place, Or Is It?

PRAYER

The Beginning

Is This The Kali Yuga?
The 10 of Swords. Final defeat before the dawn