Strong Spirits Leave

It is said in many native ways that the strong spirits of shamen and healers trouble the Great Spirit more when they leave the tribe open to dire illness without them. So saddened the gods become, the heavens cry rain. When five spirits, all strong leave this earthly realm, finding their way along Creator's path, it is well to remember that their leaving marks new beginning as well. Today, at least in my neck of the woods, the sky is crying. It is well to remember the old ways, not just from the last hundred and fifty years, but back through the ages, where cultures developed that still surpass our imagination in their intellect and engineering skills. We often think of past ages as "primitive" or backward, but often they had a more solid sense of their own freedom, their willingness to listen to stories, or create stories themselves.

This artwork is a miniscule portion of one of the Beehive Collective's works. It is in the creative commons. We must feel the power of manatee's drum to turn around the corporate land train that threatens life on the planet.

I am a storyteller and I had always felt a great selfishness, as if I did it for my own benefit. In the past moon, a great hero and mentor of mine stated that the story exists for only one person and that is the listener. I can say, ball or horse or book and What I may mean is what those things are for me...however when the assemblage is recreated in your mind, it is your ideas of them that create the story...it is entirely inside and made up by you! The rewards as well, for me are miniscule...no matter how obscure a story I may choose, I may have told it a dozen times in different ways before. My "real job" as a spotlight operator and stagehand compares somewhat to the storyteller's craft. The light tells you where to look, what you see is from your own unique perspective. The storyteller may use the same words each time a story is told, but from those select words, all manner of different perspectives can and do occur.

Think of it, like a Popsicle. The storyteller lays out the vessel's dimension and puts in the stick, which later becomes like the skeleton of our freezer pop. then, the fruit juice is added (this might be like the chance you get to change the flavor an infinite number of ways, through your interpretation), but the real work is done by you, the listener, freezing the entire lot into a crystal vision made solid by your changing the phase of the information through your apparatus. This is why spiritually strong people begin to resemble one another. They always seem easily amused, plain spoken (omit needless words) and thoughtful. Trying to find words that convey timeless truths of our existence without "flavoring the raw materials" too much takes great care and concise  precision. You can feel the love pouring out of them, endlessly.

The fish trap exists because of the fish, once you have gotten the fish, you can forget the trap. -Ha Fiz

Like the love that the sky has for her divine creatures, all creators, even the storytellers feel the need to give others something. If any of this was done for solely one self, the perpetuation of the species would stop. The most hopeful act one can unleash on the world is to plant a tree, but the second is talk to strangers. Finding friends we have not met yet involves a transformation from inwardly focused and independent to one of community focus and integral to a larger tribe. Many powerful "spirits" will be falling, great dislocation may follow. When buggy whip manufacturers went out of business, they only had a few employees, so the economy could absorb their numbers seamlessly, but when finance, or the military are no longer needed, or we just stop paying the price for petrochemical domination by the oligarchs, whole cities will crumble, much like Detroit, and a new way of thinking about community will emerge. People who love their place and sanctify mother Earth in the spaces around them will find ways to persevere, those who do not will have a much more difficult time.

The greatest spirits that we encounter can teach without being preachy, lead us to inner dimensions that even we may not have known existed within us and have infinite compassion for how we may be perceiving the world around us. The best teachers and guides know a bit about our inner world and the perception of it as well. A great friend flies out for an adventure today and losing proximity weighs like a mini death on me. Rites of passage require that we let go of the person whose transformation we honor and respect, allow them to go completely into their new personage and not hold them to their former limitations or expectations. Upon the rebirth, we must acknowledge the newness of who they have become. Learning in a moon what you may have missed for ages changes the time signature of life forever. I have had many life changes in my first half century, some took place within moments, while others took years of development and practice. Even my Great Lakes Bike Trip, which only lasted eighty days, brought back a deeply changed man.

When spirits leave, part of us goes with them, perhaps the rain comes to knock down bits of our spirits (that otherwise might follow our beloved to the afterworld) to keep those bits earthbound where we can recover those most essential things from around us. This is why, whenever a bird shits on someone's head, I think of my father and why flowers put me back in grandma's backyard. We can reabsorb that part that gets cleansed from the air by the rain. Our spirits can be renewed and nourished as the flowers around us break bloom, the skies clear and the air, cleaner after the storm begins to feed the springs and wells not only of our environment, but our hearts as well. An age old remedy for feeling displaced, rejected or overlooked is to collect and drink the morning dew. Perhaps this is a way to reawaken dreams and let moon energy enter your body. I'm sure that there is a physics to describe what our ancestors knew implicitly. I'm just not sure that I will live long enough to see it proven so. The way things seem to be going, even scientific proof would be rejected by flat-earthers and conspiracy theorists for decades more.

We do not have time to cry over spilled milk. The oligarchs have poisoned our earth air and water, the time has come for change and we must all do what we can to create the lives we desire, the lives we hope for, even the ones we pray for...they just don't happen, we must make them occur. Turn off your tee vee, get to know your neighbors, plant some seeds, nurture them and they will grow. Releasing the energy of those who depart is the only way to make sure that they arrive whole on the other side anyway...why hold someone back if you truly love them? Right?

The Memorial Day of Awakening

I often write that the revolution is not being televised. In The U. S. of A., the battens are down on all the hatches, the wealth bubble has been pierced and the old ways (see and read new ways, meaning just the last hundred and fifty years) are losing ground faster than they ever gained it. People worldwide are beginning to realize that what helps the energy companies, the multi-nationals, the "investment banks" and oligarchs that present the most real and present danger for worldwide ecology. Any hope of our species learning to adapt to changing conditions will require evolving back into native understanding that Gaia, the ecosphere or in scientific terms, our soil, air and water will be known as sacred. Squandering the petrogeologic fossil record that took hundreds of millions of years to put by, in just three hundred years, (which we have been projected to do) will reintroduce every BTU collected by the ferns and fens, the dinosaur residue, the carbon sinks of earlier ages in planetary history.

Many ages have come, and gone, several mass extinctions and the Earth seems to always heal, life is tenacious. The question now is, how do we produce zero waste? How do we consume zero energy? How can we behave as every other organism does, where the only thing they produce is useful materials for other forms of life?

Worldwide, people are confronting the very real fact that however we look around us, the vast majority see decrepit, falling apart infrastructure, massive amounts of potential, but contraction of the economy in every sense. There are no longer enough people making enough money to consume. There are always corrections when we find that we are no longer in need of certain things. Certainly, more and more people are understanding that to buy money for a time has very real costs, savvy investors and those who are just trying to stay afloat don't need that kind of weight around their financial neck to make treading weater any more difficult.

Many people, simultaneously are coming to grips with what we need and what falls into the category of want. It is evermore blatant the way some commercial interest just grab you by the wallet and unleash their suck machine, with you standing right there looking! It seems that if they know that they have you, on their hook, they will feed you any line to land you. Anyone who knows fishing knows what happens next. At best they kiss you and send you back into the water for another "chance", at worst, you are dinner. Everyone that I speak to about these issues admits to feeling cheated on a regular basis by the fewest, the hidden the wealthiest among us. We know who they are, but they operate in such elite circles that we would never know them if we saw them (god forbid) on the street. We are seeing the fact and the writing on the wall: This Emperor has no clothes!

In the U.S. of A. 38% of all resource and material consumption is used by the U. S. military. This is well above 1/3 of our entire use characteristic, just to supply and keep up our military. This is what I reflect on every Memorial Day. The facts behind having the largest army by far, are unsettling and knowing that the vast majority of combat missions are designed to support trans-national corporate infrastructure and viability, not anything to do with our "freedoms", we begin to get the more full effect of grief that this holiday represents. I do not want the lives of those who have died, supposedly for one thing to rest uneasy because the real outcome is preservation of a world that none of us wanted. Block after block in my country is pockmarked with about thirty percent either bank owned or foreclosed properties. Less and less people are able to move out on their own, and any sort of recovery is just a pipe dream, until we collectively agree that businesses can afford to pay more wages. Heck, if more than 1/3 of everything we make or use, as well as 1/3 of the energy is being squandered "keeping us safe", then we all can look forward to paying 1/3 more for everything, anyhow. What are a few more percentage points on your mortgage, another few percentage points on your credit card or the few dollars per month on the cable bill?

It seems that collectively, we have all been transitioning from a state of denial to one of understanding the magnitude of our brain washing. Outrage is a tame word when used to explain the hostility that arises when you fully integrate the meaning of the "recovery" that we have been seeing in the most recent past. The top 15% of earners have captured 90% of the "new money" that has been floating around. I was in a public place a few weeks ago and heard someone tell a friend, "I have the greatest job in the world now...I just set people up with mortgages, even if they can't afford them, we get them in and sell that off the very next day. It's sweet..This after we supposedly fixed the problem with the banks and their mortgage schemes. There is a feeling of sickness, of utter revulsion, that pervades us when we start to learn the multi-faceted truth behind our oligarchy and their hold on us.

It seems that the duping of the public, through false claims, like: that our freedom of speech somehow flows from the barrels of guns, or that we have been threatened in any way by the myriad foe whom we regularly, self-righteously, and in support of the largest corporate welfare recipients, bludgeoned either to their knees, or to death. Who we see as "enemy" seem to make no sense. Largely, the complexities of world events melt down into a radioactive core of greed, deceit, favoritism and angst that no one should have to deal with. It is my deep and abiding compassion for the soldiers lost that compels me to speak out for their memory in the most decent way possible. The largest percentage and most outspoken peace activists have lived through war, they know that it is terrible and terrible mistakes are made. They suffered at the hands of the experience. Most have seen the inept, those who have risen to the level of their incompetence and the tragic results of attacking both people and infrastructure.

The best way, in me estimation, to honor those who serve is to make decisions that will keep them out of harm's way and secure a more liveable planet for all people, not just enhancing the wealth of the one percent.

Mosaic

There are a lot of similarities between this work and the ways in which we conceive of the world around us. Each tile is a solid field, a group of pixels in today's language. The ratios between colors in any field within the portrait are based on the Bezold effect, one of the visual "revolutions" that took place when weavers, limited in pallet by their threads found ways that the eye could mix a series of differing colors into a more full palette. Much like this we try to make clear ideas and inspirations that defy words by mixing meanings of words that we already know, positioning concepts adjacent to one another to gain shades of meaning and trying to introduce information that blends with other ideas into new ways of thinking.

 

Spiritual Giving

Spiritual giving is one of the things that kept me sane in my darkest hours. Sharing the gifts of spirituality with others paves the way for all the more physical and less rarefied, realms of experience. Often, when the darkest hours are upon us, the only thing we have left to illuminate our lives is the spirit within us or that which resides within others. Cultivating a relationship with our spirit, nurturing this guide within us and honoring the gifts that come from our soul's search for fulfillment may be the only thing that can keep us sane in a world thrown out of balance by those who would abuse and neglect not only the people of the planet, but the planet herself.

A spiritual gift can be as simple as a smile or as complex as compassion. It can manifest as a back rub, a restorative hug, or even putting whatever you were thinking about doing on hold long enough to hear the words of another. spiritual gifts are often the easiest to forget about but they also have the most profound power to transform and the most crucial for changing the course of development of other organisms and creatures. When our spirit is beaten down, ignored, abused or neglected, it has ramifications in all other realms. Our physical body begins to break down or rebel, our thoughts become contaminated with fear and doubt and our emotions become less stable and reliable. Like driving a car in which every nut and bolt have become loose, we founder amongst a rattling contraption that cannot hold direction or effectively move forward.

So many people become debilitated, through lack of understanding about this crucial component of our being that it is hard to fathom how to re-introduce spirituality into their lives. Lord and Lady know that churches frequently fall down on this account. The spiritual forces that they frequently peddle lie outside of us and requires parishioners to come to them for their weekly (or daily) "fix". In my experience, this powerful element of our being pervades all of out thoughts, all of our actions and all of our relationships, whether we know it (realize it) or not. Giving on this level simply requires us to get our egos out of the way. If we can completely forget about how this (or any particular interaction) might benefit us, we are most of the way to sharing a spirit to spirit bond that will enhance our lives forever. Spirit realm completely surrounds us all of the time, we just need to get over trusting only our senses to inform us about the world around us.

When one begins to appreciate this realm, profound changes begin to occur. Events that we may have chalked up to fate or chance become stories about how and why we do the things we do. The riches and power that sounded appealing fall away like so many masks. The tenderness that we were born with finds space to return and the childlike clarity of vision returns to clouded eyes full of expectations. Allowing spirit to move us and inform our actions, all we need to do is get our sense of self out of the way. Easily said, but it is relatively difficult in practice. This is why I wrote the sidebar, I Am Not Who I Think I Am. Whatever perceptual matrix we use to define or describe our selves is a sham and a show. We are nothing but a collection of smoke and mirrors aimed at getting us to appear as something or another to ourselves and others. What we truly are is a manifestation of lord and Lady, trapped by perception and a net of descriptors that pale in the light of who we really are. Understanding the myth that we have created around our "selves" can serve to open the doors of perception a crack, but throwing the door open wide is the only way that many will find their true spirit.

Nothing in this realm is done by half-measure, it is all or nothing. This is why I frequently say that beauty begins on the soul level and radiates out in all directions. Some people say, "She/or he smiles with his/her eyes." or that someone seems so full of light, or life. These are a recognition that their spirit is active, clearly demonstrated or close to the surface, where all can see it. When we give from this level, it never depletes us or our stores of energy, resources or abundance. Giving on this level fills us with the energy of the thousands of spirits that came before us, the millions of spirits that share the compassion for all of humanity with us at any moment and the billions of spirits that have come before us as well as creating a bridge tot he future for peaceful loving people to find their way as well. It is a calling that we cannot come back from because once you have taken your first step along this path, there is no returning to our prior conception about who we are (or were). My own work as shaman or guide has been founded on the principles of giving on this level as well as all of the others. Without the ability to be a living example of this crucial aspect of our lives, we cannot hope to fathom or navigate the turbulent depths to which we might sink. Neglecting the spirit has led to wars and conflict that have unleashed every sort of il that we have been able to imagine upon our fellow inhabitants of this planet.  My hope here is not so much to bring my readers to understanding of just what this realm is all about, but to inoculate my readers with a seed of interest that each of us will nurture and allow to grow within us. My gift is permission to explore this realm more deeply and if you ever need to discuss it further, I will offer my stories and experiences to hopefully guide you to finding your own way through this amazing realm of possibility.

It Is Time

Funny, but we often hear the saying that art imitates life. What we may need at this point is for life to mimic art. It seems that in several plays and movies, just before the resolution, the words are explicitly said, so the audience knows, "It Is Time!" Each of us necessarily needs to come to our own realizations, our own growth, our own learning curve and our own levels of insight along a unique path. Having been trained as a teacher, I know that not everyone can be open to all learning or information at the same time, nor should they be. Some of us are too tired at the end of the day to listen to another word. Others spend so much time posturing and keeping up appearances that no understanding can come to them. In point of fact, there are innumerable ways to estrange ourselves from matters at hand, ideas worth understanding and information that has the power to change our lives forever.

In the theater, using the three words, "It is time." produce two things in the audience. Immediate suspense, because we want to know what it is time for and a certain excitement, much like when a fish latches into your bait and tries to take it to the bottom. you know that the ride is about to get serious and the process is going to be the crux of the whole production. Much like the staging lights at a drag strip, when the first light is illuminated, you know that the moment of reckoning is about to take place. In our culture, we are so insulated from all things natural, that we forget our place in them. We keep waiting for the lights to change, yet day after day we hear the same news and the same stories. Even though it really is time, we are often placated, distracted and/or frozen with fear over trying to do anything to make the world more stable. more hospitable, more sustainable or more habitable for future generations. It is time for real life to reflect the wisdom of understanding that we have to wrap up this phase of our cultural life.

Today, the internet is awash in posts about the "Western" Antarctic Ice Shelf collapsing. It is melting away far faster than any scientists dared to predict, but that is not all. The largest area of warm water ever to be recorded in the South Pacific is setting up to push the extremes of climate worldwide. Instead of reacting to these occurrences like intelligent people, many of us are continuing to allow business as usual to destroy even more land and water than ever before. The corrupting influence of those who deceitfully rule our nations has been evident for generations. It has only been since the advent of mass media that their lies could be so carefully crafted as to keep us both submissive and tolerant of their abuse. If one has not seen the writing on the wall yet, perhaps there is nothing that will sway them to understand that their efforts are not only important but essential to changing the current state of affairs. Who we speak to, what we say, who we throw in with and what we commit to are what separate us from the rank and file that oligarchs and corporate elites need so desperately to prop up their lies.

If we each choose just one thing to make it clear that we will not stand idly by while our species is pushed to extinction, it may not be enough. Taking in stray dogs or restoring old cars may feel good and I applaud the accomplishments of those who would be or feel like nothing without their hobbies, but the future of our species is too important to forget about. We cannot afford to sit in the audience and watch our own actions continue to strangle us in our beds, silence us at work or keep us out of the state houses across the nation. Before it is too late, we must make significant steps toward sustainability or we may all perish. I used to wonder about those among us who hoped for the apocalypse, spinning their tales of the dreaded end times. now I understand that the whole concept only exists as a pressure release valve for those who might otherwise blow up, apart or out under the stress of knowing that our current system has a date with their own destruction. Perhaps that is also why so many people love to speed, take risks, abuse drugs and drink too much. Is death at our own hands any more benign than dying at the hands of corporados? What can be said about those of us who are willing to sacrifice our planet for the continued rule of the oligarchs?

Update!

Green Bay Garden BlitzThis is why I have been silent during this first week or so of May. Hundreds of great folks got together to install 111 four by eight foot (1.5 X 3m) garden beds across the city of Green Bay. A new generation is upon us and a new way of meeting our needs has got to be on all of our agendas!

Blessed are those who work with Ma Nature, rather than continuing to live at odds with her.

An added benefit of my own participation in this large scale give away, is that I have bonded with my first official herbalists apprentice! My work for future generations keeps exponentially growing and for that I am humbled greatly. Another very important bit of wisdom that I have come across recently is that even a snail can rock it, they just do it a little slower.

Keep on keepin' on! With agape love, thank-you for taking the time to care.
Ubuntu

Psychic

This is perhaps where this writing may get harder to follow. Some people limit their definition of psyche to mean the Id, Ego and Superego. In my estimation, having learned about "psychic realms" and become a shaman, my understanding has grown to include even more dimensions than what most (or at least many) people include in the realm of spirituality. I include, in this realm, all things that are in place (or play) beyond mere physicality. Psychic giving lies beyond the realm of our choosing, it is the relationship between the orbs of space, the influences of  nature that many refer to as metaphysical. I make a distinction between this sort of giving and spiritual giving because I feel that there is a self aware part of our spirit that precludes the psychic. Truly tapping into energies on the psychic level require our self aware spirit to be obscured by greater pools of resources, greater harmonies amongst the universe (multiverse?) The resources that come into play beyond our conceptualization of even Lord and Lady are apparent to me and even what I have come to understand to be spiritual seems to be circumscribed by most who delve into their spiritual practices. The difference between a good Tarot reader and a great one for instance, or a pretty good astrologer and an excellent one for example is the clarity with which they can refract this psychic realm. The spirit is what takes us to the place where we can see beyond our mere physicality, but for me, the psychic is light years beyond even this realm. Beyond time and space, our psychic influences pass through all realms, all dimensions and are capable of being one with all without any sort of feelings about, or estrangement from that state of that oneness. To describe what I mean by this psychic level, one would have to either have experienced this profound state or realize that there is a state of BE-ing verb that transcends language, giving at this level is as timeless as the stare of the Buddha, as non-physical as the remnants of the Big Bang, and as enigmatic as the existence of the pyramids. This sort of giving lies outside the realm of give and take and is simply the way it is, free from any and all experience, perhaps even beyond the realms of even perception.

Tough love on the physical or emotional level have their corollary on the psychic level. Abiding in this state is infinitely gifting the cosmos with a deep and abiding sense of bliss. The place beyond want or need reflects an abundance beyond our ability to fathom. The psychic gifts that we all enjoy are as inexplicable as the universe itself and although some have the ability to unleash the fearsome power of that level of gift, many do not recognize it when they are recipients. Our myriad vessels are incapable of holding the wealth of information and the organized chaos that lives there. My Easter wishes for a friend included the admonition that no matter how broad a net we cast to try to make sense of the universe, we are still inside a cage. This is a good starting point for understanding the level with which this sort of giving occurs. If we have ever felt realization, or the blossoming of insight into new truth, we have felt fleetingly this infinite force, but it lies beyond our conceptualization of the cosmos. If I were to say to you that it is anything, the words would betray the meaning that I was attempting to convey. Harboring any concept of this state of being, or "understanding" about it, necessarily takes us out of the realm, so let us not continue to undermine the nature of this realm by trying to describe it.

Abandoning all realms to pour yourself into the now just begins to exemplify this universal state. It is the lighting of a fuse that sparks a living explosion that exists at zero point time. Being the big bang gives birth to new universes, of which we cannot imagine. At this level of existence, there is no worry about lack, no reflection of limit and no parameters to guide or limit our gifts. This is the realm that I can only call psychic giving. The gifts that flow at this level are beyond all time and space and refute the existence of duality. We are one with this ocean of possibility and frequently what comes to us in this realm is beyond perception and rational assessment. There are no greater gifts than those that flow from infinite abundance.