Whom Will We Serve? (part two)

I cannot adequately tell the story of part one. I was not even conceived when it took place. Beyond my lifetime, in days of old, the "world powers" had faced off and decided that mutually assured destruction would help the world to be at peace.  The dawning of the nuclear age created many mad men, the likes of which the cameras were never pointed at. We are, encouraged to not look too closely at Einstein's horror when he realized the awesome destructive power that his E=mc2 equation would unleash on humanity. The millions of people exposed to radiation, the billions of organisms obliterated from earth. Whoever the first person to imagine vaporization of the "enemy" was, woe to the rest of the planet. How others were cajoled into believing that an entire nation could remain morally superior while simultaneously threatening all of humanity on the entire planet is beyond me.

However, we are writing part two today. In my lifetime, we will either turn away from mutually assured destruction, absolutely, completely, forever, or we will continue to live under the black cloud of threat that nuclear weapons create amongst all people of the entire world. The "concerns" that terrorists world wide like to point to are the possibility that a rogue state will have nuclear capability. not the terrorists that we are told to believe in, but the "big ones". The U. S., primarily. Only a tiny few think that Iran would be stupid enough to launch nuclear warheads at their enemy. Their entire country could be obliterated within minutes if they tried that sort of thing. Those who control the vast majority of the world's nukes would not hesitate a moment to quell that sort of threat. The fact is that every country who overtly said that they would pursue the nuclear "option", has warheads within a few years. The fact that Iran made a big deal out of finally being able to refine medical grade radioactive material leads most who understand the process to realize that weapons are not being pursued by Iran.

Think, for one moment about the vast amounts of energy that must be expended to spin hundreds of centrifuges for years. Like going swimming with a millstone tied around your neck, the last thing Iran needs is a giant hole in their electric grid, sucking, sucking, sucking power day and night, for years. The "classified" nature of much of the information about nuclear weapons is a joke. I could explain with relatively precise detail, the procedure, the percentages of yield of fissionable material from high grade ore, etc. Rest assured that without massive subsidy and economy crashing investment, such undertakings are highly unlikely, especially in a country that is experiencing effective sanctions from the rest of the world. Those parties interested in keeping to the status quo have exhibited no moral character, the powerful interests that push for ever more ridiculous scenarios to be prepared for and  ever more subsidy to the pursuit of out of scale responses to non-existent threats have secured an additional 80 billion dollars for the development of a new generation of nuclear devices. The old ones, and the waste that has been created by them will burden our economy forever, but we are unwilling to face the truth of this deadly path.

In times that have the lowest violence rates calculated since the beginning of recorded history, living within the parameters of a lie needs to stop. The truth about nuclear energy and nuclear weapons needs to be understood and considered well before we succumb to the fear and lies that gobble money and spit out death. If you have a child, a grandchild, or know someone who does. Try to look them in the eye and tell them truthfully that you are willing to sacrifice them for the pursuit of "national security". We are all victims of the nuclear age. It is estimated that over 400,000 premature deaths are still occurring annually worldwide because of our nuclear heritage. We are still going to be living with this burden in thousands of years, if humans are still here. When will we stop the subsidy of the death industry and demand that our leaders protect our rights to clean air, clean water, and unadulterated soils? When? The death industry has compromised all of these. Yet we continue to do business with them through the taxes we pay. When will we learn that it is not productive to spend money on anyone's destruction? Most importantly our own!

Three Times Three

Giving thanks for our blessings must always be in our hearts. This one day event that Thanksgiving represents is nice enough, but we absolutely need to bring awareness of life's miracles to each and every day. I would like to give thanks for some of the most enlightening reading, insightful authors and crucial information for making reasoned headway into the Age of Aquarius. Although I could write pages and pages about each of these titles, I will leave it to you to make up your own mind about the information they contain.

Our Twelve Senses -How Healthy Senses Refresh the Soul by Albert Soesman

Nature's Due -Healing Our Fragmented Culture by Brian Goodwin

The Heritage Of Trees -History, Culture & Symbolism by Fred Hageneder

All three of these titles help to gain insight into the form and grace with which we may tailor our existence to the greater good of the planet, her creatures and find a more equitable path forward amongst our changing landscape. These titles are not spiritual fluff, be prepared to think deeply about grand designs and our part in them.

Understanding Water -Developments from the Work of Theodor Schwenk
by Wilkens, Jacobi & W. Schwenk

Water Element of Life  T. Schwenk & W. Schwenk

Energizing Water -Flowform Technology & the Power of Nature
by Schwuchow, Wilkes & Trousdell

As we come into the Aquarian Age, it has been said that we are to follow the water bearers. Finding our own relationship with this critical element and raising our understanding of it to a higher level can bring both respect and insight into the vital role it plays in our life as well as the life of the planet.

Sacred Geography -Geomancy: Co-creating the Earth Cosmos and

Turned Upside Down: A Workbook On Earth Changes & Personal Transformation, both by
Marco Pogacnik

Climate -Soul of the Earth by Dennis Klocek

As important as the water bearers are, the earth is ripe for a healing touch from the human inhabitants. Learn some of the basic ways to caress our planet rather than punch it. All creatures fare better when they are loved and these texts are full of ides and techniques to exist symbiotically rather than at odds with the forces that rule the natural world.

Blessings this and every day. I have no interest in the selling of these texts, but am encouraging their messages for the sake of our species and future generations. Without enlightened beings taking responsibility for our care of the planet, we threaten the futures of all of our children. I urge everyone to read these out of love for you all. My readers are my family and I hope for you all the best today and throughout the year.

These and other excellent titles can be found at steinerbooks.org

Bio-dynamics and The Coming Age

Organic production methods, healthier diets and local food systems are a great and growing parts of the current changes sweeping across developing nations. The "green revolution" that involved massive debt being heaped upon developing nations, huge corporate welfare for equipment, seed and agricultural chemical manufacturers  has failed to improve the quality of life for the billions of people that it was supposed to lift up. Now, we face a sad fact. The "developed" nations that exported this idea of conquest of the land, subjugation of nature and monetizing all aspects of the crippling food production system have had to face the truth of what they have done.

Feeding the world with subsidized commodities has led to skyrocketing illnesses of all types and kinds. Aquifers that had been stable for millenea are depleted, surface waters no longer support life or have dried up completely and the heartbeat of the land itself has been drowned out by the whir of machinery and the thumping diesel engines that wrest the last few calories out of a toxic Earth. I have long written of the fallacy that is the "scientific" approach to agriculture. N, P & K were the holy grail of agriculture just a few short generations ago. Farmers were told that by focusing all of their attention on these macro-nutrients, they could increase harvests and profits, cover their debts and make millionaires into billionaires. now the chickens, so to speak, have come home to roost.

Like in dust bowl days, the soils have left. not so much in the vast black clouds of the last depression, but only because there was not even enough soil left to blow away. The subsoil that many farmers continue to plow are so bereft of organic matter that what blows away is no longer black. The wind carries away fine particles scoured away by the ice crystals of winter and suspends them in water with each heavy rain, choking streams, transporting the building blocks of soil to the great rivers and ultimately the oceans, never to be seen again. times are tough for the agricultural industry because the truth of the matter is out. The masks which the demonic and despotic industrialists used to hide their interests and intent have slipped away, and the public is demanding real food instead of science projects. the last thing we need is poisonous concoctions that render soil inert, our bodies unable to assimilate and the economy dependent on bankers and their extractive methods. We need to transform our food systems to be more humane, to farmers, the land they are charged with caring for and ultimately the people who consume the foods produced upon it.

Bio-dynamic agriculture is, as the term implies, full of life and always changing. There are great thing to be said about organic approaches to agriculture but if we think of it as a child rearing method, perhaps it will make more sense. Let us take two parents and two children, pair them up and imagine one parenting scheme that was based on the word no. Organic agriculture approaches the production of food like this. "No" to chemicals, "no" to pesticides, "no" to herbicides, "no" to poisons of all types. While these are all great things, they must be put into perspective, balanced with what we could do and if we were to raise a child on nothing but "no", what kind of child and what kind of adult would they become. As further foil to this limiting idea, turn your attention to the second parenting example. In this example, the parent allows their child to make up their own minds. 'If you do this, that will happen"..."I feel such and such when you say or do so and so"..."have you noticed that when you_____, it affects others like this. I realize that these techniques may not be appropriate when the child darts out into traffic, but our relationship to the land unflods over much larger periods of time than raising a child. We can have foundational learning based on this culture of no, but we must balance that with the other part of being a well-rounded person. The other approach is to say..."When this happens, that is the result." or "If you really must do such and such, this is how you can do it without the negative impacts." Bio-dynamics has remedies for your ailing soil, nourishing preparations for sick ecosystems and whole life approaches that farms need to re-establish both soil and the life that thrives when it is given a chance.

Remember when we were young. Nearly everyone can remember that creepy uncle that you didn't want to hug you, or who you would never sit upon their lap. Heck, many of us have relatives that would send us running to a closet to hide from until they were gone! the Monsantos, Cargills and Nestle's of the world are those creepy uncles. It is more important to understand that they are dangerous than it is to understand exactly why. The emperor has never had any clothes on, but we have just heard the innocent child say so, how we move forward from here will dictate whether or not we are able to survive as a species. I certainly don't want to devolve into a discussion of religion, but whatever gods or goddesses you believe in, I'm sure that they love you, I'm sure that they want you to not only survive, but to thrive. Bio-dynamics offer the last best hope for this to be the case. The Earth, Air, Fire and Water offer us infinitely more than the corporate giants want us to have. The abundance that is possible if we work with nature, rather than against it is possible only if we honor and respect the forces that are alive within us, the land and the spirit that has been oppressed by corporate forces for generations. further information about bio-dynamic agriculture can be found at my link to Sacred Agriculture.

Sacred Agriculture II

When we begin to honor life, everything changes. This morning I got to have a brief discussion about the difference between extractive agriculture, which is being practiced worldwide at an alarming scale, and bio-dynamic agriculture which is growing rapidly but still represents a minute fraction of our food system. Industrial agriculture is a culture of numbers, of subsidy, of finance and of debt. Bio-dynamics is the opposite on virtually every count. It was explained so clearly yesterday that I should be able to share it in one sentence.
What we have come to know as "organic" agriculture is like the foundation of a great pyramid. It sets a beginning point for loving the land into production.
Bio-dynamics fall into another realm altogether. Using the Demeter standards begins to codify sacred agriculture that is directed toward realization of the Earth's potential in ways that are not addressed or delineated within the "organic" model. Think of it this way...This week, one of the largest coal companies that uses a technique called mountaintop removal has said that they will discontinue this method of "harvesting" coal. This is a great step, don't misunderstand me on that point. However, finding more and better ways to not have to use the coal at all is the best step that we can take. The race to do everything we have always done, but doing it a little better only leads to a new place that is only partway to where we want to be. Put another way, imagine how long it takes to run a marathon, then recognize that to do it requires us to fly part of the way, with both feet off the ground. Then, imagine how long it would take if we went the same distance shuffling our feet.

Now don't get me wrong. For some, pushing their envelope to the point of accepting organic standards would be a massive give back to the planet and her creatures, but without going the extra mile and revering the systems upon which all life either flourishes or meets it's demise, we will continue to shuffle our feet when it is really time to fly!

For some, these words will hold no meaning, for without basic building blocks of understanding it sounds like fiction or wishful thinking, but for those who honor and respect the critters we share the planet with, even those we may not be able to see without microscopes, I'm sure you will catch my drift. All life is sacred. The naturopath knows that we are an integrated complex ecosystem. Most doctors do not. The critters in my gut, on my skin and thriving on virtually every nook and cranny on and in my body are experiencing lives of their own. the ways I choose to treat myself affect them and their environment. Approaching a balance point, where everyone is happy and my systems are not under assault is called health in my book. Dis-ease comes from out of balance forces be they nutritional, enzymatic, caused by overabundance of certain microscopic critters or perhaps even lack of certain others. Remember that 85% of bacteria is either helpful for our bodies or has no effect at all on us that we know of. Only 15% is capable of being harmful.

Just as I refuse to use anti-bacterial soaps on the principle that they kill indiscriminately, it is time for our food system to step away from eradication of all life in the quest for more commodities. Most of the land upon which our food is grown has, at most, a fraction of the life that exists on a forest floor. Bio-dynamics presents the opportunity to heal even the ecosystems that we have a hard time seeing. the infinite can live right along with us, in harmony and abundance right under our feet! but we need to learn the ways that the unseen can speak to us. Only thorough us, the land's "managers", can we hope to sow the seeds of change. The process of Sacred Agriculture actually turns the tables still further. when we literally worship the ground upon which we walk, the land can be felt managing us.

When Rudy Steiner gave his ground breaking lectures in German, back in the Twenties, the hallucination or infatuation that we are having with and about chemical approaches to farming were not fully formed. The massive subsidies and monopolies of the "green revolution" had not yet come to pass. Some relegated him to the trash bin of history before his ideas could take hold. After all, what sane person would defend the rights of microbes? Well, after seeing the poisoning of aquifers, the choking of streams that used to support life and the rampant ecologic catastrophes of doing business as usual on farms around the world. I am here to say that something has to give.

With each morsel of food that we consume, we must begin to make a choice. Do we want that food to flow from the tailpipes and smokestacks of production facilities or from the abundance of intact ecosystems? Sacred agriculture offers humanity the chance to avoid shifting wealth into the hands of fewer and fewer faceless corporations and to build a sustainable community that emulates Eden. The masks have come off corporate interests. Those who are willing to believe that the Emperor is wearing clothes are getting fewer and further between. We are rapidly coming to the end of an age. If you have questions...that is a great place to start. Students rarely learn unless they come to a place where they are able to ask the right questions and have cultivated their mind's garden to accept new seeds. Blessed Be and namaste'.
Bio-dynamic Agriculture

Terror and Treason

We have held our citizens hostage, threatened them with all manner of scary lies and subjected them to a variety of inhumane treatment at the hands of the largest banks, the insurance companies and "traditional" institutions. Those who hold the wealth have had a free ride in our economic system, dictating their own levels of taxation, their own interest rates and in some cases the standards of living that the poorer classes will have to endure.  The legal casinos that are the "markets" routinely strip wealth from the less experienced investors and shuffle the aces to the top of the deck for those with the most to lose. The "too big to fail" are deemed so for a good reason, they have been getting their way for too long to have to learn how to actually produce something of value.

Big money let their fortunes ride on Republicans in the most recent elections in the U.S. of A. They were handed their hats in spite of spending massive sums to tear down our President as well as the recovery that is underway. These billions of dollars could have had a significant effect on building the economy, but through all manner of treachery and deceit, it has evaporated back into the hands of a select few who control media. When our nations sustain repeated attacks from the wealthiest and most powerful individuals, governments seem to not notice. In fact, the most wealthy and most powerful are given massive subsidies, freedom to pollute and legal routes to exploit workers, families and those less able to defend themselves against their attacks.

The Rethuglican approach during this election cycle was to blame the poor for their lot, claim that government spending is out of control and put forward the idea that all of our problems could be solved by loosening the reigns on the most powerful forces and the top 1% who they called "job creators". Luckily, the general public kept their heads. In spite of over six billion dollars being spent, mostly by the wealthiest amongst us, truth won out. Terribly, the mass media continues to accentuate the differences amongst us, rather than informing us about where our opinions are being created. hundreds of billions of dollars are being held out of the economy by the wealthiest players, "earning" returns on investment that dwarf the average wage earner's income. Meanwhile we are told that taxing the wealthy in a progressive fashion would be a dis-incentive to work. Truly hogwash.

Wen agents act against the interests of their fellow countrymen, it is called treason. When, for instance, the Germans work to put Greeks into servitude with their extractive economic policies, this flies in the face of "economic union". The same is going on across America. bankers collect obscene profits while homes are foreclosed daily. Lives are thrown into chaos at the same time the top earners are given huge pay increases. In addition to being told that we are going to lose our jobs if we stand up for human rights, or that if we do such and such, there will be hell to pay, we are simultaneously told that we do not qualify for any help because we exhibit true and pressing need. but those great exploiters and the greediest amongst us are given more corporate welfare than ever before. It is past time to stand up for justice and get the word out about the truth behind the lies that we are force fed by the top 1%. World-wide, we must all stand together, or we will surely all hang separately.
 

Saying Goodbye

This week we have had several events that have proven the need to bid adieu to the way we were. On the one hand, the pagan high holiday, Sowen respects the thinning of the veil between this world and the Otherworld, where our ancestors reside. We have been presented with an annual opportunity to bid them well on their journeys and speak our piece directly to those who gave us life, inspired us through their deeds and who have added to our resources of strength and insight. This festival, the last of the harvest season, signals the start of lean times which need to be not only respected but revered for the lessons they hold. Many pagans consider this to be the true new year festival, time for making resolutions and for allowing our less than optimal traits to pass. Saying good bye can be practiced on many levels. We only need to look to the chakras of Eastern thought to think about the levels of goodbye that we can practice at this time.

Much has been said about the election, both before it took place and since. I do not want to bore you with even more hyperbole and hype, but this election coincides with a growing realization that we have to say goodbye to the tyranny of the rich white male, the "powers that be" and their stranglehold on both the economy and our ways of life. The abundant and giving nature of Mother Earth is being realized by more and more folks along the path to our collective future. we cannot take the path to sustainability without saying goodbye to a few things along the way. I know that in the past, I have made reference to the short story, "The Things That They Carried" by Tim O'Brien. Collectively, our culture and society have lots of things that we hold onto, not just for their utility or their eventual use, but for psychological and shamanic resons, thinking that one day they will secure a future that will be better than the one we would find if we just left those things behind.

Approaching what has been called the "Fiscal Cliff" in The United States of America, we will surely hear much rhetoric about what we cannot afford to lose. Many economists are already claiming that the disruptions and change that will occur on the first day of 2013 because of tax increases on the wealthy and incremental cuts in government programs could spur another bout with declining economic activity and lead to another dip in growth for  our weak economy. Those who have been paying attention understand that the worldwide economic collapse has been caused by listening to economists, but that certainly isn't bothering those preaching gloom and doom. I have some of the most excellent friends on Facebook and just yesterday one of them sent a link to a video that i want to share here. It points out the need to say goodbye to an entire thought experiment that we have played out for centuries in our relationship with the planet, our fellow humans and the society at large.

Look here for a short video Now, I'm not sure about moving objects with our minds, but...
The reason that I have chosen to include this video in this post is because the eternally sacred feminine energy has been discounted and overrun by our male dominated culture. this process of cutting ourselves off from half of our true nature has, for the most part, left us strangling ourselves with nowhere to go but backward. Pagans have, for ages, believed that a meeting between the Horned One and his consort has led to the spark of life that all of creation represents. We do have to say goodbye to the male domination of the planet if we are to step into the "new age". Whatever the power brokers tell us, we can rest assured that they are going to try to continue to drive their "tanks" straight over us. To effectively encircle our wagons against them, we need to reach out to whatever communities we have left, share, nurture and encircle those we care about with love, affection and care for them in ways that defy the linear approaches that have characterized the past.

Even the hardest of sciences, Physics is finding that reality is more often about relationship than direct causation. In fact, the terminology that is slowly making headway in the field revolves around charm and relationships between particles and sub-atomic matter as well. Until we look for certain things, they may not even exist, how is that for magical thinking? On the opposite end of the human endeavor, I planted six seeds, this summer and by fall, they had grown to nearly twenty feet tall and created a living roof the size of a two car garage. Miracles abound in the natural world and creation and productivity spiral ever outward influencing life and abundance in other areas that we may not expect. If we look closely, the non-linear relationships outnumber the linear ones by a huge factor. It is time to perhaps not "say goodbye" to the Cartesian Coordinate System, but to at least put it in perspective. Life is not a chart. The sooner we say goodbye to the idea that we can understand and achieve all things through linear thinking, the sooner we can take hold of the true abundant nature of our planet, her people and social structures that reflect the value of the whole over and above the parts. This week I have been fond of saying, "There are precious few buggy whip manufacturers." Perhaps in the future our economy will not revel in an endless barrage of cheap plastic crap from China, the crushing weight of our need for dirty coal and oil to move products across the surface of the planet and the exploitation of human beings and the world's "resources". In a future that more and more of us envision, the gifts that we receive directly from nature and the hands of compassionate individuals will gain importance as physical "goods" that have dominated our ideas about economic activity.

The trend toward distinguishing between wants and needs has led to a blossoming of a new cultural model, one that breaks with traditional values. We have countless examples, proof of concept, showing that "more" is, most often, not "better". The relationship between giving and hoarding is far more fluid than any mathematical "rule" can represent. This year we had a relatively tiny 4 X 8 foot bed (1.3 X 2.6 meter) devoted to tomatoes. So far the produce has been shared with half a dozen households. opening a jar of home canned salsa in the depth of winter has a value that some economists would have difficulty quantifying, but for anyone who has had homegrown tomatoes in the dead of winter knows, the infinite bliss shared in love, defies quantification. The Horned God and Mother Earth have infinite love for all creatures and finding our place involves finding a way forward that honors both. We do need both energies to thrive, but the time has come to say good bye to the idea that one has power over or controls the other. united we will find a way forward, divided against ourselves, we can only fall prey to the old ways of doing business. Just as human beings never bring a new life into existence with the intention of their child have to put up with more pain and strife than we have experienced in our own lives, god and goddess do not want each successive generation to have lives that are worse off with each successive generation. We have the power to change our lives for the better, but we must say goodbye to the childish ways that have brought us to the brink of destroying our (human) chances of survival. By taking time to cultivate a new type of soil and planting new kinds of seeds in that living organism, we can give birth to a culture that will exceed our expectations.