65 laps around the sun

Today I finish my 65th time circling Sol. Well, tomorrow afternoon actually. Tomorrow is my 65th birthday.

I took the day to reflect a bit, and to nap a lot because life has tired me out.  I was hoping to feel elated and connected with everything as I "be" with this, but that's not what I feel.  

The place I am in is beautiful and offers endless awe.

The information about what is happening with humanity brings so much sadness and frustration and disgust.  The utter insanity of the greedy violent oligarchic class, their cruelty and violence, must be stopped.  They must be contained.  Enough is enough.  It is ridiculous to allow these people to cause so much harm, and that they do it for money and ideology is just proof that they are insane.

Today on the eve of my 65th anniversary of being here in this body I call out to all of humanity to say "no" and to stop cooperating with this madness. Soldiers put down your weapons!  Stop being tools used to kill innocents for the profit of insane people. Just stop.  Every one, every cop, every ICE agent, you too are just being used.  You are sacrificing your humanity in order to be part of something that is truly evil.  Stop! All of us, unplug from the businesses that profit from all this killing and cruelty and oppression. Find creative ways to disconnect from and to not cooperate with the forces that are also bent on owning and/or killing us all. It's not too late!

Happy Birthday!

❤️

Looking at what humans have constructed our world to be, all of it, it would be easy think that we are trapped and there is no way out of this mess, but it isn't true!  All we have to do is behave differently.  Be kind. Be honest. Hold each other accountable and when someone is not kind and honest, name it! And those who presume to lead, if they are not kind and honest then they are out! It's not complicated.

A cell in the body

There's a body awareness exercise that I learned from somebody years ago in Vermont and they learned it from some great teacher whose name I can't remember at the moment. But what it is is that you move across the space focusing on a particular body system for instance, walk across the room, just being aware of your bones or your blood, or your nervous system, your skin, your muscles, your organs, etc. Each awareness is different and then at the end you bring them all together and move in space with awareness of all of them together and it's a powerful experience.

Often I have images of people around the world and what they’re experiencing, the people being bombed in so many places, all the distress. And today I thought well what if I just focus on the kids for a moment? Think of all the children in the world at once, and what so many of them are going through that's horrendous and should be completely unacceptable. Think about all the women in the world all of the women and what their lives are like all the different lives. Think of all the men, all the men in the world. We are each part of this Humanity. 

In my spiritual tradition, one of the things we say is that the work is to love yourself in all your parts. So what if we loving all those people, and hold them all in awareness with love. We are each a cell in the body, right?

What will it take for Humanity to stop hurting ourself?  If Humanity were my therapy client they would be considered to be profoundly disturbed. Humanity is traumatized and keeps traumatizing ourself. It is possible for this cycle of self abuse to come to an end, and not only by our extinction, but by facing our collective mental illness. The models of leadership currently pervasive in human societies are psychopathic because they do not value life above all, and quality of life as essential for the common good.  Amassing power for it's own sake is psychopathic, lacks conscience or empathy or a sense of connection to others. 

As long as Humanity continues to embrace this model of power and organization, whenever we feel our Humanity by doing the exercise above, we will encounter suffering and brutality. Don't be afraid to face it and feel it.  How else will we change it unless we all feel that to the point that it becomes intolerable?

Ugh...today...

 I awoke in despair.  Right now people are being brutalized, tortured, murdered, for money, religion, political ideology. I am so disgusted.  The VAST majority of humans would say no to all of this, but it keeps on going.  No one stops the monsters who are steering the ship and so they keep taking us into these insane killing sprees. It's been thus for such a long time.  I can't wait to leave this planet and I am never coming back.

Cosmic Recycling

There is a belief that in death, the single flame of the individual soul joins with the infinite light each individual soul comes from. A person is, with each step in life, moving towards that joining, where we become part of the great cosmic light of Is-ness, and shine on the embodied, until another candle is lit from the great light, to live a life on Earth. Cosmic recycling, if you will. Energy is neither created or destroyed, it is continuously transforming.

Imagine what that looks like. 

#Soul #Reincarnation

Emotional Permaculture

#Permaculture #MentalHealth

If we apply the Permaculture concept of "zonation" to our mental health, this can be especially helpful for empaths!  An empath may be feeling what's going on in Zone 10, and that may be some gnarly stuff halfway around the world.  That experience can be helpful in terms of informing, but it can also be debilitating when it shows up as intrusive thoughts and feelings. Sometimes we need to be able to reel our awareness in to Zone 5 or 3, closer to home, simply as a way to avoid overwhelm.

Fascism is "In"

Check this out:

https://www.commondreams.org/news/corporations-trump-inauguration

I just deleted my Uber and Uber Eats apps.  I rarely shop at Amazon but now, no more.

What are our priorities?

A man who kills someone on a subway, in cold blood, is not convicted, but the city of New York is turned upside down, and millions of dollars spent, looking for the killer of a man who made millions by causing suffering and death to thousands. What do you think about that? And how many murders of "regular folks" are never investigated at all because the victims are not rich?

Less than 50% of voters chose the incoming President, and we already know he is going to pillage the treasury for every penny.  Plans are to cut health care for everyone starting with veterans. Education will be cut, budgets for safety inspectors for our food, transportation, and industry, will be cut.  Pollution regulations will be cut.  By 2028 the US will be a MORE polluted country, the populace will be sicker with less access to health care, the food supply will be significantly less safe, industrial accidents will happen more often and be more severe with no accountability, but certain people will have grown their hoards.  What are our priorities?

20 years

Today is the 20th anniversary of my mother's murder.  The killing blow was struck on August 22, 2024, she died on the 24th. I miss her.

We just had a family reunion.  Not all the family could attend but there were 9 of us, nieces and nephews came.  One of my nephews I had never met before.  I love them all!  Each one is a great person I am glad to know.  Being with them made this month so much better.  In the last 19 years, August has been rough for me, to the point where sometimes I literally would see the world in black and white, no color.  This year none of that happened.  I was with people who also are affected by what happened to my mother, and that made all the difference.

Why share this?  Because being with people whom we love, who love us, who "get it" whatever "it" is, matters.  It makes a difference!

If you are suffering and can connect with others who understand, it helps.  If you can't be with people who understand, know that somewhere in this world they do exist!

We see the suffering of the people in the world who are under fire, whether it's Gaza or Ukraine, the people of Myanmar, the people of Yemen, Syria...women in India, Afghanistan, the United States...the list goes on and on, people who are being oppressed militarily, politically, culturally.  We see, we feel, we hope and work for Peace, it is the ongoing work of humanity to learn NOT to be violent, cruel, oppressive, greedy.  

Everyone can do their part by practicing self-awareness, by practicing kindness, by deliberately NOT seeking power over others, but instead sharing the beauty of power-with. 

On the metaphysical side of things...

There have been times in my life when, through meditation or ritual or just for no apparent reason at all, I have experienced what Ganesh Rajagopalan calls "the other dimension," a different reality.  I have been in a place where everything is made of light.  I have been in a place where time was nonexistent.  That may sound strange to some, others may relate.  The point is, though, that in my "regular" life, neither of those qualities are prevalent if they are present at all. So being in "regular" life, the world can seem very dense, and slow, and dull.  That doesn't mean I don't experience beauty and inspiration, I do, but it's all pale compared to being light in a place that is all light.  "Regular" life can be depressing when remembering these other experiences.

When I was in my late teens I was living in San Anselmo, California, renting a room in a house.  The guy whose house it was, in his mid 30's, told me he'd had an experience 10 years earlier, a spiritual awakening, and since then he'd been waiting for it to happen again.  He had a job, but he did that job and he waited.  That seemed really sad to me at the time, it still does.  I don't see myself as waiting.  I do see myself sometimes as trapped in a place that is slow and thick and dull, not joyful or ecstatic, but tolerable, and sometimes just barely so. I know others who have similar experience.  Today I am thinking that part of the task is to learn to live in the slow thick dense dullness without being diminished by it.

Politics this week...

Part of the strategy of fascists, not just the Republicans in the US but Hitler, Mussolini, Ceaușescu and others, is to overwhelm their opposition with propaganda declaring their victory and greatness, even when they are not great and are not victorious. That is what the Republicans did this week at their convention. Lots of fanfare, lots of self-congratulatory speeches, behaving as if they have already won. They haven't.

It is critical that we not buy into their narrative. The DNC is coming up. It looks more and more like Biden will not run. Whether it's Biden or not we must stay focused on anti fascism, on exposing the Republicans disastrous plans for the US. If Biden is going to step down, or be deposed, the focus has to be on who can run and win, not on hand wringing or circular firing squad or any of that.

It is not a foregone conclusion that Trump will win, far from it!