Category Archives: Difficult Truths

Sep1

Meeting the Trickster, Part 1

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Meeting the Trickster, Part 1

So, the trickster visited me a couple weeks ago, which was during a monkey wave, naturally. : )

BTW… I follow this great calendar called the Keeping Time Calendar. I’ve mentioned it on this blog before, and basically it is a calendar that blends Western Astrology with modern archetypes and the Mayan time cycle, called the tzol-kin. I’ve been using it for a couple years now, and it’s amazingly spot on. Actually, a great way to learn more would be to check out my Interview with Stargazer Li.

Anyway… waves last 13 days, and this happened to be a monkey wave. Monkeys represent the playful trickster, and I certainly have been having a trickster adventure!

So, this was a Thursday evening. I was moving, was supposed to get the keys on Wednesday, and had to be out of the old apartment by Monday (or the Sheriff would come, blah). So, I picked up keys on Wednesday, but they were the wrong keys. Not only that, but at that same time, my van wouldn’t go into reverse so I ended up being temporarily stranded! Then, on Thursday, I swung by the landlord’s office to get the right keys (they knew I was coming) and they had left early for the day! I hadn’t been able to make it there sooner because of stranded vehicle situation, and as a result, I missed out on day 2 of the moving days I thought I was going to have! So, this left me with Friday and Sunday because Saturday I had a big all-day event I was co-hosting.

All day Wednesday and Thursday, I had tried to contain myself, and stay calm and centered. But, Thursday evening, my frustration boiled over and I started crying. I cried really, really hard. I was so frustrated that I had so little control over the situation (and especially after the events of the weeks before). I had thought a 5-day move would be perfect, because I could pack and unpack as I went, and adjust myself, Joy and Moxa pretty smoothly. But, things weren’t going at all like I had hoped, and I just couldn’t hold it in anymore.

Finally, after a very long and very hard cry, I calmed down and realized something. I recalled that I was in the monkey wave, and I realized that this was happening to help me learn how to let go of control. I realized that my desire to make things happen exactly in a certain way keeps me from being spontaneous in the way that I want to be.

I also realized that the reason I keep myself poor (somewhat unconsciously, but sometimes I seem to outright reject or sabatoge prosperity), is because the work of trying to survive in poverty keeps me distracted from having real encounters with life, and with people. I get scared that if I get too close to people, I will lose my autonomy, and I will have to hand my will over to them.

So, interestingly, if I can learn to be less rigid about wanting to control every encounter and situation I face, and if I can free myself up enough to accept prosperity so that I’m not struggling for basic survival, then I can learn to have a more trickster-playful energy myself, and I can learn to encounter life in a fun and spontaneous way. This is always something I’ve wanted to know how to do, but not known how, and at this time it is unfolding itself to me!

This story continues. More tomorrow!

Aug8

Have you seen the Carlin video yet?

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Have you seen the Carlin video yet?

It seems that this video has gone viral lately, but if you haven’t seen it yet, here it is, in all it’s amazing-ness!
(warning, adult language)

George Carlin “American Dream” Video

He really hits it on the nose here, huh? The rumor is that this is the last 3 recorded minutes of his career or life, although I have no way of confirming that. I am so glad for this 3 minutes, though.

Jun24

A Letter to my Great-Great-Great-Great-Great Grandchild

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A Letter to my Great-Great-Great-Great-Great Grandchild


Dearest child,

There is a Native American belief which states that every action should be considered with an awareness of its impact on the next seven generations. This ideal has been lost in our current culture, however, I am choosing to contemplate your future life so that I can gain a compass reading on my own life. I hope to do well by you.

If you get this message, it means that you (and the human species) exists, and that is good. Whether or not you get this message, I hope that you are happy, safe and healthy. I hope that the culture you live in is much more balanced and healthy than the culture I have grown up in and still live in.

I live in difficult and confusing times, so much so that many people don’t realize them as such. Our culture is so deeply inbalanced that many children are abused, many women (and men) are raped, racism exists at subtle and overt levels, and we are raping the Earth at profound rates to feed our addictions to wasteful lifestyles. Large corporations seem to have more power than people, more power than elected officials, and again, the Earth is raped repeatedly for greed and our modern consumerist addictions to “stuff.” Especially in the United States, many people have bought the lie that we are consumers more than citizens, and because of this, passivity and apathy are the general state of things. Even amongst people with the will to care, everything seems so hopeless that it’s not worth the energy or heartache to do anything about the things that are wrong. This mood of helplessness is fostered by those in power to keep us passive. Also, divisiveness is fostered by people in power to retain their power. Racism is one example. When poor white people resent poor black people, we are not rising together to address our common oppressions.

If you study world history, you can learn that whoever controls the information controls everything. That is true in my time as well. Corporate interests own most media outlets, and therefore few Americans have access to what’s really going on. There are independent media sources, but they are struggling a great deal financially. I think this is part of how the whole system works… artists with real visions and independent journalists both are marginalized in our system, because they cannot make a living without “selling out.” Our consumerist culture has essentially made spiritual slaves of many people, because it is nearly impossible to exist outside of the system. This was not always true, because the means of basic living used to be in the hands of all people. Now, even the basics need to be purchased, and to get back to a more natural, sustainable way of living takes some (often financial) resources.

Movements are happening, however, to do just this. Transition Towns is one example. It is a re-localization movement in response to the twin problems of peak oil and climate change. Surely, seven generations from now, you have heard of peak oil, and think of it in the far past-tense. However, many people today haven’t heard of it at all, although we have likely passed it. Right now, we are facing an awareness crisis. Many people don’t realize the extent of the real problems facing us, many others don’t realize the causes of the problems, and many others don’t see any way to change. There are lots of examples of change in history, change is possible, but I feel like many people just don’t see it.

I hope your existence means that I, and/or others like me, succeeded. I hope that you can look back on my lifetime and see that this was the time we turned everything around, we stopped the speeding freight train and ensured humanity’s survival. The ego part of me hopes that I had a big role in changing humanity’s trajectory, but I realize this is a shallow dream. What’s really important is that I did what I could, and that somehow, all together, we achieved the necessary and yet seemingly impossible challenges before us.

Right now, there is an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that is gushing crude oil and methane. The gas company BP is adding toxic dispersants in the millions of gallons in an effort to decrease the visibility of the spill (in order to make themselves look less bad). The total effect of all of this is not known, and yet we do know that a lot of death will result, of wildlife, ecosystems, and people. 11 people died in the explosion that caused the “leak,” and as of today, 2 clean-up workers have died, although no link has been proven yet. Because of exposure to toxic oil, methane and dispersants, more people could die, especially because in many cases BP is not providing proper safety gear for clean-up workers. The travesties go on and on, but I will stop listing them now.

I hope that if you have heard of this spill at all, you heard of it in the context of this is the time that people woke up and changed things. It is hard not to feel helpless when a huge corporation like BP is calling the shots and making horrible decisions. It’s easy to feel like the world is ending when we see the early effects of this disaster and still people in the government still want to perform more offshore drilling. But, I believe, more than ever, that we can make changes if enough people rise up together. I hope that is the story I will get to tell my daughter, grandaughter, and maybe the story will trickle down to you. I hope that this is the time that not only did we step up to corporate abuse of power, but also reclaimed our power as citizens. I hope that we, at this time, end our addiction to fossil fuels and stop raping the Earth for her last bits of fuel. I hope this is the story that you eventually learn of my times.

Great-Great-Great-Great-Great Grandchild of mine, I wish you the best, which is why I am taking this all so seriously. It’s not just our relationship to fossil fuels that is our problem, its our entire relationship to power, and relationship to ourselves. We have not yet learned how interconnected we all are. Our society’s roots are in domination and separation and conquer, and these ideologies persist still. If the world and human race is to survive to you, I think we will need to learn that we are all One.

I hope you have had a better life already than mine has been so far. My parents were both abusive, and I had a difficult start. While I do hold them responsible, I also think they are products of a highly toxic culture, and I hope that the toxicity has been washed away long before your birth. I hope that humanity has a spiritual awakening soon, in my lifetime. I have spent much of my adult life healing, which I feel has given me perspectives on the great healing that needs to happen in the world. Just in the last few years (with the birth of my daughter Joy) have my healing efforts turned from inward to outward. Because we are all connected, I had to heal myself first. Because we are all connected, my healing does not end at myself. I am part of the larger world, and so I feel I must be part of the healing. It starts with reducing my own oil dependency and becoming more reliant on local networks for food and other needs. It also includes speaking out about the problems I see and singing out about the hope I feel.

By the time of your birth, I hope that humankind has long been peaceful and the Earth’s ecosystems have been restored. I hope that your life is free, peaceful, in balance with nature and all life, and full of love. So may it be, because after all, I am doing this for you!

Love,
Your great-great-great-great-great grandma!

p.s. I have included a picture of my sleeping daughter, Joy, your great-great-great-great grandmother. She is 2 years old at the time of this writing. I look at this picture, and I can imagine it’s of you. Children are born into this world with whole and shiny spirits. Joy gives me hope for living. She was born into difficult times, but has not been touched by them. She is still so connected with her spirit, that she is really an angel. All children are this way. As humans, it is not our nature to be destructive, that is a result of conditioning. It is our nature to be pure loving spirits. Even as adults, when we have lost our sense of connection to the divine, we are still pure and loving spirits, we just are disconnected from our source. May we all find our way back again! Love-Love!

Jun23

River Walking: Flow is My Answer to our Problems

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River Walking: Flow is My Answer to our Problems

In these troubling times, sometimes its hard to know how to function in the world and stay open and present. With the oil and methane continuing to gush into the Gulf, where it is mixed with toxic dispersants, and cover-up efforts being as extensive as clean-up efforts, it’s becoming clear how much power corporations really have in our country. This is as if Citizens United hadn’t already make this power distribution plenty clear already.

It’s easy to want to shut off and tune out. I have heard from many friends that they are in so much pain from the Gulf situation that they have turned off entirely. I can understand this perspective, even as I think it’s detrimental. People in the Gulf are surrounded by a lot of silence, some silence from those who are indifferent and some silence from people are in pain. When we show solidarity with the Gulf, we show people there that we care and that we understand we are all connected. What happens to a whale in the Gulf, or a fisherman, effects me. We are all connected, and if we can come into this awareness, we have a chance to work together to make this world the world we want.

On June 21st, Obama made a speech about the proposed climate bill. Click Here to See Speech. One thing from the speech really caught my attention: “Real change is only possible when ordinary Americans are willing to organize from the bottom up.” This is true. Although it sometimes seems like our government is owned by corporate interests, to some degree, we can influence the government by speaking out. Obama has said this before, as have past presidents. If we want our government to represent our interests, we need to be very vocal about what we want. It’s a start anyway.

So, how do we stay open and aware to the difficult situations in the Gulf (and other places) without becoming so cynical we close down and give up? That’s where I think spirituality comes in. Not spirituality as in religion, or dogma, that tells us what to believe, but spirituality in the sense of connecting with Spirit, the life force, our own internal divinity or wisdom. When we come into a sense of greater connection with everything, painful events can’t overpower us. When we can live with the flow of life, we can live with peace in our hearts at the same time that we are able to respond to the pain of others and speak out about abuses of power.

Here’s a metaphor I’d like to share with you about how to live open in this way:

When I was in college, I loved to go spend time at the Kinnikinnick River. I did a lot of hiking, but sometimes I also did what I called River Walking. Here’s a sample of that experience (written in present tense for immediacy):

Breathing in the fresh woodsy wet air, I push through foliage for a nice flat place to put my shoes. My breathing slows down and I feel peaceful as I listen to the river rushing, talking to me, soothing me. I set my shoes next to a distinctive tree (so that I remember where I left them), and I ease my feet into the icy cold water. The sun beats down on my head and my breath quickens as my feet get accustomed to the cold. I shift my weight onto my bare feet, listening to my feet. With my tender soles, I feel where the rocks are shifting or holding steady, I feel the rush of water and the cold creeps up my legs.

Carefully, listening to information from the skin of my feet, I creep towards the center of the river. My mind quiets as I discern whether rocks are steady enough to bear weight or not. Occasionally, a rock slips, and because I feel it as it happens, my weight shifts to the other foot and I continue to search for steady rocks. As I get closer to the center of the river, the water rises higher and higher until it is well above my knees. The water pushes against my legs, threatening to throw me off-balance, and I counter by slowing my breath even further and listen more deeply with my feet.

I exist in a state of balance as the water rushes against and past me. The top of my body is hot from the sun as my legs are getting numb from the cold. I can hear nothing but water rushing over rocks, and my thoughts dissipate to near silence. A cool, steady calm washes over my brain, washes over the anxiety I brought with me. Soon, I am aware of only the cold wet, the sound of water rushing, my tender feet on the rough rocks, the fresh air cleaning through my steady lungs, and the conscious choice to shift weight, test a rock, steady, shift weight, test a rock, steady… My life is this… this motion through the water, this union with the river, this motion, steady, testing, motion, steady…

After a little while, insights start pouring into my mind… answers to my life’s problems, clues to my internal puzzles, ideas about new directions to go. I can’t help but get excited as these new insights start pouring in, but when I try to hold onto anything, I lose my balance a bit. A rock doesn’t hold as steadily as I thought it would, and I scramble a bit on the slippery rocks to regain my balance.

The struggle floods me with adrenaline and clears my mind for a moment as I focus my energies on not being carried away by the rushing waters. Soon, I am centered and balanced again. I decide to let the insights come… and go. As insights flow into my brain, I let them arrive, and then let them go just as the flow of water flows past me.

Whenever I try to hold onto an idea, the experience repeats itself. It’s just as if I am trying to catch the water flowing past me instead of letting it flow by… the resistance created by holding on creates drag and I lose my balance. Eventually, I stay in a state of complete openness, letting information flow into me and back out again. I stay in a state of peace and balance as I walk my way upstream. I make an agreement with my subconscious that these ideas will come back to me later at a time I can use them. My conscious and subconscious mind work like this, together, with ease.

Eventually, I turn around and head back downstream to where my shoes are. By the time I climb onshore, I feel cleansed through and through, as my spirit and mind feel clear and light. In walking with the river, I became one with the river and the insights that flowed through my mind enriched me even when I didn’t hold onto anything.

This is a way to move through life, not just rushing water. I chose to try to stay open, let life flow through me without resistance. In this way, I can stay open to the problems, solutions, joy and pain of life without getting carried away. Flow is my answer.

Jun19

The Effect of “Calling the Earth Sacred”

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The Effect of “Calling the Earth Sacred”

Here’s a great article about what the oil spill teaches reflects about the consequences of our beliefs about the Earth. When we view the Earth as a machine, the article says, we do not plan well for things going wrong, because we expect predictability to be high. In fact, the Earth is a very complex system of systems, a big ecosystem with many smaller ecosystems within it, and it rarely is predictable. As the article states, “Calling the Earth ‘sacred’ is another way of expressing humility in the face of forces we do not fully comprehend. ”

Yep. That’s exactly it. A great example of how paradigms effect actions. That’s exactly the kind of thing I am interested in revealing in a lot of my work… how ways of looking at the world impact how we act in that world. That’s why all art has political consequences, because art (visual, music, film, etc) impacts the way we see the world. This is why artists should be culturally supported more than they are here, because that power is very real. This is also why it’s important that people develop visual and media literacy, to understand the messages that they are bombarded with, and have tools to create resilience around resisting messages that are toxic. Yes, when we think of the Earth as a predictable machine, we feel less hesitation to mess with it however we want to. What other messages lead us to irresponsible and destructive action?

Jun15

The Real Situation in the Gulf

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The Real Situation in the Gulf

Here is an interview with Natalie Pierce and Summer Burkes, activists in New Orleans dealing with the oil spill:

Natalie and Summer Interview

Topics:

* The Current Oil Spill Situation in the Gulf
* The mood in New Orleans
* BP’s restrictions against press, scientists, and people wanting to help
* Effects of Corexit, the highly toxic dispersant being used
* Ways to demand accountability from BP and the government
* Things people can do to help the Gulf
* Ways to stay positive in the face of catastrophe
* Oil Spill Solidarity Movement in Asheville

If you ever want to check out old interviews on my radio show, go to SystemicEffect.org. If you are on one of the rare computers that won’t recognize that website, please let me know. I don’t know why this is happening, but I hope to sort it out. : )

Jun11

Spirit of Togetherness (Invoked by Tragedy)

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Spirit of Togetherness (Invoked by Tragedy)

So, I have been following oil spill news very closely lately, and posting articles to my Facebook page. I have gotten several comments from friends who say that they think what I am doing is good, but that they themselves are not following very closely because it is hard to deal with.

It is hard to follow all of this stuff. I can understand that sentiment at the same time that it frustrates me, because the silence of the people who are hurting about it blends in with the silence of the people who don’t care, and it just adds up to a lot of silence.

I think a lot of people battle feelings of helplessness about it too. Huge corporations have so much power, and the US government is complicit in letting them have so much power. However, I personally believe that we have to fight the corrupt power system if we want to stop it from destroying the planet. I have a fantasy that this oil spill will trigger critical mass of people waking up to the corruption and want to create something different, a future that includes more egalitarian power structures, re-localization and a much decreased dependence on oil. I admit that it’s a fantasy, because I don’t have any real proof it will happen, but I think it’s time and so I am doing everything in my power to help create it. If enough people wake up, we CAN take back our power and create our future.

In world war 2, there was a lot of solidarity about the war movement. People really pulled together. There is an American spirit of togetherness, that if re-invoked, would be powerful enough to end our dependence on oil. in WW2, the press and government were working together to invoke this spirit, so they had stuff going for us we do not now. Both the government and media seem determined to circumvent truth and reason. However, I think if a movement was created that was big enough to get enough attention, people might wake up on a mass scale and pull together in a way we haven’t for a long time.

Jun9

Connecting the Dots

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Connecting the Dots

I’m really seeing how everything is connected. Reading this speech helps me to see that what I’ve been seeing about the world is right.

Martin Luther King Jr. talked about how racism, poverty and militarism are connected. Click here to check out his speech.

Here’s an excerpt:

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. n the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Wow. Yep. There we are, still. A revolution of values is what we need. The issues are a little different, partly because some time has passed, but it comes down to the same stuff. That’s why I’m so interested in blending the spiritual and the political… spirituality (for me) is all about realizing the interconnectedness of all life, and that kind of realization is what we need to happen on a global scale if we are going to survive. It’s not just one political issue or another, it’s everything, our whole value system that needs to be revamped!

Jun8

Oil Consumption

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Oil Consumption

So, one of the things that I’m hoping comes out of the current oil spill crisis is an interest in ending our oil addiction (and fossil fuel addiction). Some tout clean energy as the solution. I’m uncertain that this will fix everything, although I don’t actually have the cold hard data on that.

We need, as a country, to stop consuming so much. Almost everything we use is either made with or shipped with oil. Aspirin, even, is made with oil. Food is shipped with oil. Our entire lives are created with oil.

Lots of people (especially in Asheville) are trying to become more conscious about their consumption. People are trying to bike more, use less packaging, eat locally. I am trying to reduce my carbon footprint as well, although I have to admit I struggle a lot, and I am hardly the poster child for green living. As with everything, however, it’s a process and I’m working on it.

Oil is not as plentiful as it used to be, of course. That’s the whole concept of peak oil. Oil production runs on a bell curve, and we seemed to have hit the peak. After this, oil becomes increasingly expensive to use, and increasingly difficult and dangerous to extract. Hence, giant oil gusher in the deep, deep sea. We need to curb our addiction to oil, so that we can stop these dangerous drilling expeditions, and protect our planet. Maybe this oil spill can be impetus? Is it time to kick the habit?