Magic in the Everyday

Imaginal Fragments

2012-02-07T17:07:00.001-08:00

Just string things together,

Disco balls, fortune, lust, December,

Until I remember and know you.

With the magnetic moon,

Pull me to act authentically,

Call me toward my destiny,

To land wherever that may be,

Possibly in the shadow hand,

Of pen on ruled paper,

Or amid the golden memories,

Of sloppy crayons marking,

On childhood coloring books -

Spread out toward fantasy,

In floods of magic ink,

Of purple pinons bowing

To blue coyotes howling,

As everyone transforms into pink

Fringes of the Western sun,

As stars greet the Earth,

And hearts meet the lightness,

And darkness extinguishes

The distinguishing of anyone.

Poem from the end of the evening

2012-02-04T19:46:00.000-08:00

How important it is to keep expanding the heart. Letting anything in to my heart that is causing negative emotions. To picture the person or situation that is causing negativity, to picture them in my heart and to really feel them there. Its a giving of that thing from my mind to my heart, because my heart can hold it, but my mind will only spin on it. And to give it whole heartedly to my heart (or your spirit guide or whatever works for you) and not pick it back up again.

The more my heart can hold the things that irritate/anger/sadden/hurt me than the more open I am to presence/connection with mystery/god/source/etc. I'm excited to be practicing this and feeling it work, not just reading about it. I greeted today with the intention that this would be an expanding of the heart day and a lightness of the heart day. And it has been.

"Prayer is an awareness and very often a waiting"

Poem from the end of the evening:

I think I hear thunder,
But it must only be a plane,
A painting of a lightening storm
Hangs on the wall,
Of the place I am housesitting for,
February chill stalls outside,
Solitude redeems the space,
I do not wish to fill it,
With anything but poetry,
Listening, and light-heartedness.
What wants to form?
What is waiting to be born?
From this well of stillness,
That was here all along?
Pay attention, expect to find,
A story in the void,
Waiting to arise,
Beauty in the abyss,
More than ready to shine.
More than ready to shine.

Notes from the week (from Jan 30)

2012-02-04T19:35:00.000-08:00

"You're never going to get it altogether" - Pema Chodron

Where I am is good, okay, a fine place to be. What I have is worth appreciating! I know my direction is to make peace with where I am at. To surrender to being here. The difference between surrender and complacency (acedia - falling asleep). To allow myself to be here, no matter how painful, uncomfortable, boring or whatever.

How do I be more light-hearted in this situation? and open the channel to you? How do I know when the direction/guidance is coming from you and when from ego?

Just decide in the morning: Hello day! I am going to be light-hearted today. I am going to find joy in the little things. Go for a walk in nature and express gratitude first thing.

I went to a Green Tara Meditation this evening and am so glad I decided to check it out. The talk was given by a Buddhist nun named Robina Courtin. She was a hilarious, had the best sense of humor and light-heartedness about life. She said to remember that "I am enough. Where I am is enough. What I have done with my life is enough. What I have done today is enough" and to know that this is true. And it is. I can feel it.

She also said to stop focusing on what doesn't exist. That's not reality. Focus on what does exist, reality. Be present and honest with reality and in touch with what is real. And be grateful for it too.

I am grateful for it all, for how it wakes me up and teaches me and stretches me. I am grateful for my sore back and everything. This allows me to see the bigger picture that all of this is. Where I am meant to be and where I am and where I have been. I trust in where I am and the way things are working out. I am wide open, not tunnel-visioned on what doesn't exist.

I'm so grateful for my life and to be in Santa Fe with a great community of people and living situation and family and for everything that has come into my life to date.

Most important bit of advice: Don't limit myself!

Follow what excites me. What excites me so much right now is the idea of contributing my design skills to a spiritual, healing, or alt. health type of organization, center or publication. Where my effort and work will go toward a movement I am passionate about and where I will be among like-minded people. I am also excited about creativity and healing. I think, eventually, when I have the life experience and credibility, I'll do some kind of spiritual/healing work.

At the same time, I am willing to go where ever I am guided.

Where I am right now is a good place to be! I know I am really lucky. My task is to notice when I forget this, when I start taking things too seriously and not seeing the light and the bigger picture of situations. I can always return to feeling the abundance, just like that. Aligning myself with abundance and enough, not with lack. Remember the humor in life and to not cling to the abundance, but let it flow through. Keep realizing, (with surprise every time!) Wow, I really do have enough! That's tough to do, but so crucial for happiness, satisfaction, contentment.

From David Whyte poetry c.d.

2012-02-04T12:13:00.000-08:00

“Poetry is the freedom to be in the experience and discover things you didn’t know you knew.

Poetry is the creative courageous act of articulating reality wherever you are. Releases you from prison. Gives inner sense of spaciousness.

We need a relationship with the silence and a relationship with the unknown.

Have faith in the longings you feel. There’s nothing wrong with the longings – they will mature and lead us into the place we are attempting to make for ourselves.”

Vision Collage for 2012

2012-01-28T15:07:00.000-08:00

I went to a gathering at Adonna's with about 8 other women. After potluck dinner, we started ripping out magazine images that we were drawn to to use in our individual vision collages for 2012. My dual words for the year are "Guided" and "Light-hearted". The idea for an abstract vision collage of colors and textures and light started emerging as I kept ripping out those things from the pages - intentionally not choosing anything identifiable. I wanted to convey the mystery and the unknown and the feeling of light-heartedness in the darkness that comes with feeling guided. The beauty in the darkness. I also wanted to look at the collage and be reminded of the energy and the ability inside myself to validate my intuition and listen to it. I chose black poster board for the back ground and incorporated gold foil I gleefully found in the pile of magazines. I wanted to do something that would surprise myself and others - that would be different from the usual way of making a collage - there's a challenge and a thrill for me that comes with being able to do that.

Nature and the Human Soul Conference Day 4, Sunday, Jan 22nd

2012-01-28T14:37:00.000-08:00

Sunrise Sunday Morning

Iona Mass in the Cottonwood Pavilion Tent

Nature and the Human Soul Conference

Day 4, Jan 22nd 2012 Sunday

Bill Plotkin and Fr. Richard Rohr

Hyatt Tamaya, New Mexico

1,000 Attendees from around the world

My Notes and Musings

7am Iona Mass with Fr. Richard Rohr. Beautiful ceremony. This was the first time I took communion and felt the meaning of it. The sunrise walking to mass was astonishing. Everyone was noticing it coming up.

9am Bill Plotkin

There is a crisis at the end of each stage. The crisis at the end of the Wellspring (stage 5): you've been using the form/craft and one day you wake up realizing the delivery system walls are just too small. What you have to do next will feel like a betrayal of your teachers. Fear of being absolutely humiliatingly ridiculous. Because you have to go out on your own limb. But, you know you have to do it.

The truth is, you leave home at the beginning of every stage. Stage 6 means leaving the home of your teachers/mentors. Stage 6: Artisan in the Wild Orchard

We all have our unique fruits that want to come through in stage 6 (in the beginning, we'll feel like a fruit!)

The passage into stage 6 is called Induction. Time to assume full obligation of cultural leadership. Creating new cultural forms. Healthy culture evolves. Has to keep evolving.

The never before seen ways and gifts in culture come through in stage 6.

Antonio Bachato poem "You Walking"

"You make the road by walking"

Task: create and implement innovative delivery systems.

There are people who are primary doers and people who are primary be-ers. (Western society tends to have a bias toward the doers)

Task: the advanced cultivation and integration of the 4 selves

Bill Plotkin's new book that he is working on is about the nature-based map of the human psyche and he is thinking of calling it "The Wilding: The South"

We're each born with a whole self. But often we just embody 1 of the 4 facets. We get a free ride with that one, the others, we have to work with to integrate and develop. The one that is the easiest for us is opposite to the one that is hardest for us. Each self corresponds with one of the 4 cardinal directions.

North: The nurturing and generative adult, healer, spiritual warrior, make things happen, leader, protector, benevolent. Knowledge lives in the North (there is a bias toward this one in Western culture)

South: The Wild, indigenous, magical, sensual, emotion-loving, erotic, one, in the body, knows "I am from Earth - my body in particular is completely at home in nature"

East: Innocent sage. Innocence and wisdom are very closely related. Wisdom lives in the East. Innocence: pure presence of being. Trickster and fool. Non-attached (not detached) sees the bigger picture and is able to lighten up and have easy conversations with mystery.

West: In love with the sacred darkness. Sees that dark is as sacred as light. Its a profound place to live in. (There is a bias against this one in Western culture) Read Rilke's "Love Poems to Darkness"

We start developing our facets. By the cocoon, we need to be in conversation with all 4 facets. By stage 5, we need to be online in all 4 facets. By Stage 6, we need to be able to integrate them all and be in all 4 facets at once.

[I'm not entirely sure which facet comes easiest for me and which is hardest. North and South both seem fairly neutral - with some things coming easy and hard alike in both of those facets (nurturing, generative easy; leader - difficult; south feels very familiar. The fact that one is opposite the other should help though. My guess would be that the West comes easiest to me, which would make the East the one I've had to work the hardest to develop and this makes sense. I've been working on lightening up, not taking things seriously and becoming more at home with not taking myself seriously and being able to be a trickster or a fool. I wish Bill had said more about the west - guess I'll have to buy his new book when it comes out! But darkness has never seemed like darkness to me, and, yes, I guess I've always had a pull to it - which would make sense too with my enneagram 4, but who knows. I bet Bill Plotkin's easiest one is the West too because he told that story about Death telling him on one of his vision quests that it wouldn't have a conversation with him anymore unless Bill embraced Death's wife, Joy.]

Gerard Maley Hopkins, poem about everything in the world being unique. Relationship between soul and spirit. "As Kingfishers Catch Fire"

"What I do is me, for that I came"

That life is relational.

A human can't play their instrument until they go through initiation into adulthood (and they have to be integrated in all 4 facets to do this)

The being we all dwell within is Soul.

Elderhood

This stage feels vaguely familiar because you're moving back into the east hemisphere, the being half, you were here once already in childhood.

Beginning to give up the striving and the making things happen of the 4 previous stages of life you have been in: 3,4, 5, and 6

Stage 7: master in the grove of elders. Confirmation of mastery of your soul work, celebrated for developing your own forms and bringing gifts into the world.

Retirement is an ego-centric western phenomenon "We don't need you anymore" message. "Now I get to have a good time finally!" sadly, you weren't doing that all along then when you could have been. 77% of Americans HATE their jobs. "You mean, you weren't having a good time all along?"

In healthy culture, the highest status are the elders. In our western culture, they are the lowest.

The original sacred meaning of crone is wise woman, magic. The word has been wrecked in Western culture.

Crowning - a kind of royalty to someone who has had an adult life of mastery, gender unspecific.

In terms of your conscious intent, leaving, being tugged to leave the delivering soul work beyond in a sense. Going to cosmos-centric. Experiencing yourself as a member of the entire universe. Pulled by larger context to the work of caring for the soul of the world (not focusing on your soul work so much anymore)

Our soul work doesn't stop at crowning, its so in our psyche by this stage, that its on auto-pilot so the energy that had been used for keeping that going can now be redirected.

Tasks: Now you are paying attention to:

- Defend and nurture innocence and wonder of children (in ways even initiated adults cannot)

- Mentor and initiate thespians and wanderers (some adult's soul work has also called them here) Think of true elders as birth control!

- Mentoring adults whose soul work iso in the elder's general realm

- Guiding the evolution or transformation of culture. They get together to guide it and are called a council of elders. In a healthy culture, the politicians and united nations would be elders and they wouldn't be elected because they would be ignited. Not elected, earned, grown into!

How do we maintain the balance of human and more than human world? Elders are looking out for this balance. Speak with voices of great authority and everybody respects them.

Stage 8 - Sage in the Mountain Cave, implies a place outside the village, but pyscho-spiritually they are in the mountain cave. Their consciousness has shifted to the cosmos. The goal-oriented ego has surrendered attachment to outcome. It happens, like it is taken away from us.

There are no developmental tasks in stage 8. The universe carries the tasks. Both children in stage 1 and elders in state 8 don't have tasks. Its the opposite of naming in childhood; as elders, in a way, we forget our names. We return to stage 1, but now with the consciousness of whats going on.

The sage is the human archetype of stage 8. Its the wildest human being. Lives a life of spontaneity. Role-transcending vivacity. Moved beyond the active leadership of stage 7. A humble hermit consultant.

When you come into the presence of stage 8 elders, you are in a wild place. There are galaxies in the elder's eyes. Elders can only answer questions from the largest possible context. Presence of stage 8 elders in society have ceremonies stoked by elders.

Universe tasks for stage 8:

To tend to the universe. Keeps universe from being diminished. Elders anchor the capacity for ceremonies of whole community that keep the universe going.

Tomas Berry, stage 8 elder, Sharing wisdom. There is a universe because existence communicates itself.

Presence of elders coordinates human realm with cosmological realm. Evokes experience that human is integral, bound, controlled and given by earth. An enduring imaginal presence even after death. "When they're gone, then they're everywhere"

Final passage is Death.

Who dies? book by Steven levine

Who dies based on what stage the person is in when they die? In stage 8, nobody dies - what's ending has already merged with the universe, but the universe suffers a great loss.

Gifts of the stages:

Stage 1: Luminous presence

Stage 2: Wonder

Stage 3: Creative Fire

Stage 4: Mystery and Darkness

Stage 5: Visionary action and inspiration

Stage 6: Seeds of cultural renaissance

Stage 7: Wholeness

Stage 8: Grace

Each gift does not go away; it gives birth to the next gift.

"Wholeness in the world supports the presence of grace"

We begin in innocence and end in grace.

Final break out group meetings:

To have a sense of whats possible. Where are you? Where do you find yourself? Continuing the conversation. An affirmation/confirmation of where I've been, where I am, and the possibilities for where I can go. Where is your attention going?

Show up with where you are and where you're at with the best, authentic you. By doing that, you will be helping those you are around be who they are and see the possibilities too.

Challenge: be where I'm at as much as possible regardless of acceptance or judgement.

Not having as much of a problem letting go because there is so much beyond.

Remember your emotional foot print on others - your potential all the time either to project your wounds on to them or to be in the present moment in a healing, authentic space instead.

11:30am Fr. Richard Rohr

There are seeds in the pot at the front of the stage, on your way out take one and place it in the urn as a way of sealing your commitment to this process of development.

[My thought just now, when we make God small, we make ourselves small]

Narcissism. No more time for it.

We are the embodiment of mystery. But we have to fall in love with it and struggle with it.

Divine Allurement - Brian Swim

Cosmos itself is moving toward salvation. Led toward union. We are the first generation that is aware we live in a still expanding universe. It will go into a retraction, which involves a union, which will only take a few seconds.

Aetheism and agnosticism are by and large a product that exists only in wester culture. Western culture created it, did not exist in indigenous cultures.

Trust your inner experience and go into your inner experience. Bill just gave you all a bunch of tools for interior journeys. A lot of us don't know how to go there, don't want to go there, or don't think its necessary to go there (have substituted belonging systems for inner experience that you can then trust instead of the inner experience!)

The people that get bothered by the "forms" in the church are often the ones who have inner experiences so they have experienced the "formless". Its not that they feel compelled to throw out the forms, they just know that you don't walk with either one or the other. You learn to walk with both the forms and the formless. And this is non-dual thinking.

How to observe the natural world and how to be vulnerable and open. When the head, heart and body find freedom in the same moment, its presence and you are capable of unmediated inner experience. And you can go back to the forms with greater understanding and compassion and humility.

Nature is the first bible and the second bible came 14 billion years later.

1/2 of the world does not have clean water.

Spent too long worrying about who's in bed with whom instead of who even has a bed!

[Guided walk on my own Sunday afternoon and continued delving into questions. I felt like going to the original wound/abandoned dump pile spot again to say thank you and good bye. When I got there and after I said thank you and sat in silence for a while, there was nothing more to say. It told me to go wander on until I came to something that called me to have a conversation. So I did. Not soon after, a beautiful purple/rose colored round, smooth rock caught my attention. I said hello to it and introduced myself and told it why I was drawn to it. These are the words that came, which I later recorded as best as I could remember them:

Communion with a Rock

Your sparkle in the sun caught my eye,

Your pinkness, new-oldness,

Your smooth, calm lake basin,

Unwounded, solid moon.

How you are in Earth,

On all sides and underside,

The top of you above the surface,

Catching my attention.

I ask you if I can take you.

I promise I will keep you.

I promise. I wait.

I hear you say, "Leave me.

Know that I am here,

And there is a chord of connection,

between us, that grounds you down,

Into Earth, as I am.

Solid. Calm. Unwounded,

alongside the wounded place."

So, I leave you, rock, here.

I know you in my heart.

What are my tasks going away from this conference?

- Keep meditating

- Do a nature wandering experience at least 3 times a week

- Journaling and listening to voice

- Poetry at least once a week

- Practicing present mindedness in the everyday routine

- Solitude/withdrawal

- Yoga

- Go to meditation centers with others at least once a week

- Hiking/walking

- Dance

- Really avoid low consciousness situations and activities (violent movies, t.v., drinking/parties without a reason for celebration, negative or high drama people, limit internet and Facebook)

- Put self in unfamiliar, place self to be exposed to new things outside comfort zone and conversations with strangers

- Really listen to intuition/voice inside/outside in nature

- Be quiet when I want to speak and speak when I want to be quiet (especially in group settings)

- Positive affirmations to self of self

- Eat healthy, take good care of body

- Gratitude everyday

- Expect to be guided and remember that I am guided!

- Kindness to self and others
- Be where I am authentically as much as possible

Nature and the Human Soul Conference Day 3, Saturday, Jan 21st

2012-01-27T22:12:00.000-08:00

Nature and the Human Soul Conference

Day 3, Jan 21st 2012 Saturday

Bill Plotkin and Fr. Richard Rohr

Hyatt Tamaya, New Mexico

1,000 Attendees from around the world

My Notes and Musings (there are a lot of them today)

8am Bill Plotkin

Confirmation might end with a leave taking.

Cocoon/tomb-wound

When you emerge, your ego is an agent for mystery.

Purpose: facilitate experiential encounter with soul - your unique place meat to take with earth community. Finding your path to destiny. The iniatory process is not a straight line, its windy road. Inception is the point of entering into that process, a type of imitation. Only mystery determines when we make the shift. In every moment of our life, we are in some part of some iniatory process that ends with an iniatory passage.

There is no recognizable form of the caterpillar in a cocoon, it liquifies, caterpillar soup. There are cells in the caterpillar, called imaginal cells, which know how to transform into a butterfly, imagining flight.

Wanderer incessently crossing borders psychologically, spiritually, geographically, doesn't now exactly where to look. On her own looking for clues and destiny. A hide and seek - looking inside for it and in the outer world. Putting yourself in places to be exposed.

Developmental tasks:

1) Leave the home of adolescent personality and social scene. Bye.

2) Hello. Exploring mysteries of nature and psyche. Striding deeper and deeper. How? Its really difficult in western society. How do you put psychological distance between yourself and mainstream american society?

What can you do/how can you wander given the limitations (population density etc.) A small % of college students are in stage 4. [I know I have been since I made the decision to transfer to College of the Atlantic when I was 20 and major in Human Ecology] In stage 4, the center of identity expands, a human among other humans.

Have to spiritually self-reliant. Wandering great distances geographically because we are often alone.

Relinquishing attachment to adolescent personality. Relinquishing one part of life without yet knowing what is coming next. Somehow, you have to get across this territory.

- Need to spend time addressing developmental defects from previous stages. Soulcraft work is where its at. Its counter-therapeutic. Its not therapy anymore. Therapy can be counter soul-craft.

- Adress any addictions like obsessions, the addictions that are keeping us stuck and attached

- Sacred wound work. Each of us is born with a particular vulnerability where we will be wounded. Something that wounds one person wouldn't another who didn't have that particular vulnerability. Its a wound that cannot be healed and isn't meant to be healed because its the entry to the depths, to the soul, to opening and allowing mystery to penetrate. The ego is not the problem - the problem is a rigid, immature ego. The goal is to mature the ego so it can be flexible enough and grow down into the soul. Its a psychological or spiritual sense of vulnerability, fragility inside.

We tend to experience ourselves as victims, but the core wound is a different kind of wounding, sacred, numinous.

Core vulnerability, 1 or more wounding events. The places that are most tender hold great treasures. The wound becomes sacred when we can go back experientially. Starting in stage 4 it becomes possible and even necessary to go there (don't go before stage 4)

To relinquish attachments to adolescent ego:

- learning to choose authenticity over acceptance (in stage 3, it was learning to balance acceptance and authenticity. In stage 4, its practicing authenticity over acceptance, whenever possible)

- Making peace with past. What is left incomplete? Who do I need to forgive that I haven't yet? Take care of it now. [I know, I need less and less social acceptance as I move through this stage]

- Learning the art of misidentification. You misidentify from the life of the earlier 3 stages. How? Practicing meditation and being in the present moment. Developing a witness that is not attached to the previous life. Because parts of your personality are going to get really scared as you stride deeper and deeper, but as things come up, you have these skills of non-attachment.

Exercise: Leaving Home Walk on the Land: Wander aimlessly until you have a sense of mystery in and around you. You're surrendering, submitting yourself to the extraordinary mystery. Then wander more until you're drawn to another non-human that feels to you as if it too has left home. Be with this. Praise it for the way it is for its having successfully left home. Then tell it out loud your own deepest feelings about your own leaving home. Talk about ways you've left home (or about ways you've never left home and having been polishing your adolescent personality if that is the case) Listen at the deepest level to what is calling you toward something else. What do you really want in life? Even if it requires you to leave what you have now. Dare to claim it and wait it. Meet back in break-out groups to share at 10:20 in one hour.

[There was first a little road to the right, with footprints, or a place farther ahead that looked intriguing to me. I had to wander down that little road to the right, just to make sure it wasn't the right one. There were too many footprints and it deadened. So I went back toward the original place of intrigue in the distance, wandering through the brush to get there. Another road to the left came up that looked interesting, but I didn't need to take it to find out it wasn't right this time. I knew. And I kept going straight. I climbed a hill. At the top, I spotted a golf ball lying far from the field of golfers below. Was this the non-human object I was called to talk to, the one that had left home? Litterally it had, but it did not feel right. I bent down and picked it up. The words on the golf ball read: "Top Flite. Tour Range" so I pocketed it and continued touring the range. A few minutes later, I saw an abandoned road sign on the ground. Was this my object that had left home? Again, no strong feeling. The sign, however, said, "Keep Right" so I did. And I saw to my right about 100 feet ahead, what appeared to be a metal frame. I walked toward it, and came to a dumping site in a pit, strewn with metal carcases, barrels, and broken bottles. It reminded me of an abandoned foundation I used to adore exploring across from my house as a child. I walked around it seeing if any object in particular called to me. Then I realized, it was this spot of land itself that was calling to me. It was the land itself that had left home. The essence of this land had gone beyond the abandoned objects piled on it. The land stretched deep into the earth and far into the distant mountains. The land mingled with with the air and went up to the clouds. The energy of the land had left home in the sense that it had gone deeper and was not just the land of things dumped on it, but the land that spread all around nourishing itself from the undamaged parts of the world still in existence, gone deep into itself for validation and knowing of who it really was. The wound of abandonment was only a part. The metaphor of this place began tying into my own and mirroring me, talking to me: To bring beauty to where there are scars and dump piles and feelings or appearances of abandonment, in the spiritual sense, through either the physical transformation of abandoned objects into art (as I have done in various art/land art projects throughout my 20's or through shifting/transforming the unseen and intangible places of abandonment to beauty/healing. My longing is to make this my life, to embody this somehow - but I don't yet know how. I do have a sense of peace, just being with you, land, knowing that we are where we are and thats simply all we can be right now. I have a desire to keep entering into dialogue with nature, opening up, being receptive. You have more to teach me, the metaphor that is nature and how that mirrors myself. Life as an actual unfolding of mystery.]

11:30am Bill Plotkin

We are always leaving home. Allow yourself to be completely gripped by mystery.

The 2nd task of the wanderer: Exploring mysteries of nature and psyche. Stage 4 is, as much as possible, a withdrawal. (Stage 5 is back to society with a gift to embody, back in a different sort of way)

Subtask: Aquiring and using soul craft skills. Techniques for soul encounter. That we might have a glimpse of the image at the center of what we were born with.

Soul Encounter: an experience of the mystery that you have a unique relationship with. A revelatory vision of the image or story you were born with to live into the world. Glimpse of the primary theme. The largest conversation you can have with the world. The promise it will kill you to break. You know you have to embody this.

[Mine has something to do with Web - to connect the dots, to draw the lines of relationships, to catch the drops and support them, hold them, transform/heal them, relate them into something that gives them wholeness and beauty. Over the summer, was given in a dream, the assignment Web. Then talked to a spider weaving its web about a month later and wrote a poem about it, glimpses coming, but still not clear]

Skills: Dreamwork: (not interpreting) but it wants to change/crack the ego open. We do our best to assist the dream and be open to the dream doing its work on the ego.

Self-designed ceremony - if the mystery has called and you feel like answering back.

3 steps: 1) my ceremony is starting, draw a circle and step in 2) an action that says to the mystery what you want to say to it, generally a yes, I am willing to surrender and be at the mercy of that which the mystery has told me. Your knees will likely get week if its a good ceremony. Another way you know, is if the results are unexpected, a surprise, something that helps you wake up.

- Vision Quest

- Poetry/music/dancing

- sacred sexuality

Cultivating relationship to all of life:

- solitude

- nature wandering

- shadow work

- praising the world

- art of being lost

- befriending the dark and death

- developing relationship to spirit

12pm Richard Rohr

Ritual substituted for reality in religion, example: confirmation - even the expectation that it would really change you has been lost in the church. Very well disguised egocentrism - this is not any soul awakening or encountering its just glorified self-interest and its still "all about me"

We are being led and guided by forces, but you only receive that guidance if you open to it and expect guidance! If it is not a gift to the bigger than you, than it is not a gift to the community.

You expect to be used, you expect to be an instrument, and you allow it!

You do not rush toward closure and answers. You awaken subtlty, allowing and hearing the little sublets. To balance saying with not saying. To balance knowing with not knowing. To be at peace with not saying and with not knowing. You won't move to further stages if you don't have this peace with not knowing. Spiral dynamics and Ken Wilber.

When you move from one stage to the other, you have to go through a dark night because you don't know the next stage and you're going into it not knowing.

You have to have compassion for those who still "need to know" and be able to detach yourself enough to not care what others think of you. That is the bigger response. Being able to distance yourself enough to be okay with them not being able to hear you. You are able to hear them and feel compassion for where they are at and not need to change them.

If you really are initiated, you are able to turn your wound into a sacred gift.

People that don't or won't struggle with their core wound, won't go deep.

What you do with your core wound, which invitees you to the rest of your life, but never goes away.

2pm Bill Plotkin

Poem by William Butler Yates (poem about his soul encounter) written in his late 20's or early 30's. He also wrote a book called "A Vision". This poem is called, "The Song of Wandering Angus" It predicts what Yates did his entire creative life. Angus is the Irish God of Love, Beauty and Youth (not a cow!) Hazel is a magical tree, suggesting a magical place.

A time in your life when there is a fire in your head and you go out to the magic place that opens heart and belly and there you go fishing in the depths. At a magical time, dawn/dusk. Called by your true name. The true name. Poet spent the rest of his life plucking apples from the sun and the moon.

There are 3 phases of descent.

How do you recognize an encounter with your soul?

Soul Encounter Traits:

- experienced during a non-ordinary state (fast, dream, illness, substance - plant allies in sacred ceremonies)

- experience is very deeply moving (not just interesting) tend to feel a violation of who you thought you were.

- Uncanny, erie, numinous, mysterious,

- shakes whole world to its foundations

- accompanied by synchronicities

- evokes profound emotions of hope, gratitude, joy and grief (grief for all the years lived without knowing) and fear for living with the burden

- boundless desire to live its and equal terror to do so

- to embody the image, would serve the whole community

- ecstatic, rapturous, beyond reason, lifts us out of ourselves

- relationship between this soul encounter and earlier unexplained mysterious experiences (the same theme that showed up then)

- you get a confirmation vision/dream/encounter about a month after the first encounter

- they end up being confirmed by the joy that comes through living them!

Exercise: Stage 4 practice: Outside. Bring journal. Prepared to offer gift. (Fears: nothing will happen and something will happen) could be a poem, tears, expression of yearning or joy. Consciously cross a threshold upon entry and return. Human crossing into sacred consciousness. A consciousness of mystery. A crossing such as crack, stream, branch, rock.

3 taboos during sacred practice: In the sacred time between thresholds, no eating, no speaking to humans, no human shelter.

Wander aimlessly until you feel called by something, that really catches your attention! a place or thing. Once you feel called (if nothing calls, just have presence wandering) Wait until you're chosen. Observe the thing that chose you for a length of time. Record senses. Might offer a gift. Go very humbly. Then, introduce yourself out loud using words or sound. Tell this other being or place the deepest truth you can possibly tell right now about yourself. Why you've been wandering around waiting to be called. Might speek about your greatest doubts, questions, fears, yearnings. Can also speak in body language, song, poetry. Then tell the other about it. Describe its features and what it is about it that has interested you or repelled you. Keep going that way until it interrupts you (with a sound, strong emotion, etc)

Doing this is different than fabricating metaphors (like the last exercise for me) This is actually waiting to see what it has to say to you, not your mind fabricating metaphors. Have the conversation. Don't interrupt it. Keep going with conversation. Finally, express gratitude. Then cross over your threshold again. You're not necessarily going to learn anything about yourself here. Be back in breakout groups at 3:30.

[I wandered into an arroyo. Things like trees and rock mounds keep seeming interesting but not really grabbing my attention, so I kept going. Then something made me wander down little hill/mini canyon where I noticed miniature arches carved by rain in the earth. 3 arches. I peered in one, and saw what was calling me. A little round ball of earth that looked for all the world like it had a face, like Buddah. Senses recorded: awe, birth, some discomfort, fear, difficulty finding a comfortable place to sit and keep eye contact because of shifting sand and feet falling asleep, childlike, bringing back memories of childhood making miniature landscapes and houses, rough, cool sand down back, tiredness. Oooh, delight. Throughness. Entering. Penetration. Solid. Still. "You are out there and I'm talking to you out there feeling like you are also in my soul, in here. You are outside and inside at the same time. The line, the barrier, between us is imagined. When I put my hand into the archway and close my eyes, I can feel energy. It is only when I touch physical earth of the archway that I forget and think there is a barrier because I feel a barrier with my body.

Afterwards, writing about it, Little ball of dirt budda face, you pulled me over to talk. I offered it the two golf balls I found on previous wanderings. 1 golf ball said: Top flight, Tour Range. The 2nd golf ball said, "Practice, top flite, infinity" They symbolized for me the gift of willingness to wander and "Tour the range" and to practice constantly having presence and conversation with infinity, or mystery. At the end, when I was saying my gratitudes, and looking for another gift to give or words for a poem, I was instructed to take back one of the golf balls, the one that said "Pracitce, top flite, infinity" as a remembrance for the practice and the experience.

My threshold was a crack in the road.]

4pm Bill Plotkin

Stage 5 "In the beginning, all you have is a dream" The shift between south and north hemispheres, starting the 2nd half of life. The youngest person in the western world Bill has seen at this stage was 25.

First half - world is in service to us. In the 2nd half, the ego is in service to the soul and the world. We are serving the world in a way we are only able to after soul initiation. Shortly before soul initiation, still experience soul as voice inside yourself or in nature, that voice, intuition, not sure why you have to do it, but you know you have to listen. After soul initiation, the world is reversed and the mature ego recognizes its in service to the soul, mystery. Its the greatest fulfillment.

Poem: "Revelation Must be Terrible" by David White

"You thought you were just going to keep learning stuff?"

"knowing you can never hide your voice again"

Soul apprentice at the Wellspring

Its a mystery bubbling up from the depths, coming to our consciousness now. Apprenticing to those mysteries and to a craft that will allow you to deliver those waters to your people.

Danger: you could become so enamored by these insights, dreams, etc. that you don't do anything with them. Or Danger: you start building your irrigation ditches etc. and get caught up with building the delivery systems to the point that the ego gets inflated. And you lose track of where the wellspring even is.

Delivery system: craft, art, career, profession. A job is not a delivery system until you realize the soul gift you are delving.

The soul doesn't care what delivery you use, it just says "embody me"

Tasks: Determine 1 or more delivery systems that will work well enough for you and your gift. You say, "Give me a clue for my delivery system" Soul says, "Thats not my job" You have to figure that out, maybe with the help of muse or mentors. Some things you don't know how, you just know.

The soul provides: Knowledge, abilities, values, the skills, talents you are just born with, no explaining why. Soul initiation is when an answer fully claims you and you accept your calling. There is a radical simplification of life. Problems that aren't relevant anymore, simplify.

Task: How do I transform my personality so I become an effective vehicle for soul?

A sacred wedding between soul and ego. A match made in heaven. Ego says, "Without you, I'd have no idea what my purpose is in life, soul you have given me that gift of embodying you, soul"

The specialty of the strategic mind is implementation not in knowing what to do or how to be in control.

Soul says back, "I am completely incapable of embodying myself in the world. I don't have the hands and skills. You can make me real. I wouldn't be without you."

Task Cont.

Continuing exploration of relationships to soul. Still heading down in soul encounters.

Exercise: Come back at 5:30, sunset is at 5:24.

Let yourself be pulled to non-human being that feelings like a wellspring of itself. Something that is manifesting. Look, feel and intuit its soul powers. What are the truths it makes everyday with its own body? Tell it about what you know about your soul image/story/power (or that you don't know and how you feel about that) What are you naturally good at? What are your qualities that people are inherently drawn to? What kinds of situations do you keep attraction? What life stories do you keep telling?

[I wander to a beautiful cactus who holds the setting sun in its arms. Cactus with Gold flowers. Beauty. Preciousness. Open arms, but prickly. Blooming. Opening. Holding light. Cradling rays along spines. Surviving desert dryness, heat, cold, wind. Surrendering and lifting up at once. Moving ever so slightly with the breeze. Unique.

I try to answer the questions in the exercise: stories: These are the ones I told in my spiritual autobiography for the Center of Action and Contemplations Internship Application. The stories of growing up in a loving family in nature in the Maine woods on a farm with horses, of transferring to a small liberal arts college on an island in Maine and majoring in Human Ecology, of taking 6 months off to volunteer at a camp hill community that turned out not to be the spiritual healing I wanted/expected but a spiritual growth experience that challenged me greatly and which I feel grateful for, trip to Chile to make land art in the desert, Lots of Travling, The intensity of grad school, the need to do something creative and study something creative and totally challenge myself there despite the stress and pressure, Falling in love twice and what that taught me, and now the CAC internship has to be added in. The patterns I see myself going through - lots of ups and excitement, followed by periods of withdrawal/recharging/refinding direction. Soul/image/story/power/what I know of it: That it has to do with the place I'm most vulnerable to being wounded in: [abandonment, lack of validation/affirmation/attention/lack of validation for my intuition/feeling worthless/loss of identity/not capable] Something about bringing beauty to those places or through transforming those places. That its more than just the physical transformation of abandoned objects, but that it goes deeper than that into the transforming of unseen wounds. Maybe? I'm not sure. My dream about mindfulness vs. mindlessness. Web/connection. Communion with a spider building its web. The reminder to be the connector of the web and not the one caught. People have always said I'm good at bringing people together and holding friend groups together, creating situations that bring people together. People have admired my adventurous spirit (which to me, just seems natural and is not something I'm being brave about, its just the way I am. Travel sense and enjoyment. Sense of timing and pacing and focusing in creative projects.

Not much time left, sun is going down.]

5:35 Richard Rohr

"You can't see until you're there. Until you see what you want to deliver, you just get caught up in the delivery systems. You've made the means, the end. Its a constant temptations, to make the medium the message - and often times, they're not the same thing. Stage 3 people accessorize the medium, protecting and defending it. Stage 3 church is preoccupied with minutia.

There's some work here. Preocupation with "Is my delivery system better than yours?" and no asking if there's any soul even to deliver!

Don't be too sophisticated about your delivery system either! Don't dismiss it immediately. Be prepared to be surprised. And don't judge a book by its cover. Sometimes there is a soul in there in that person. Instead ask, is this person a loving person? Is this person a happy person? If you're flowing, you're flowing and it doesn't matter what label or identification you have.

Appeal to courage, integrity and authenticity.

Yes, an individual journey. Its individuation that leads you down to a place thats communal and connected to all, that goes deep enough to connect you to those outside of your delivery system.

Any person operating from soul level bears fruit no matter what they do.

Its gonna happen and you know its gonna happen. If you have discovered your soul, it will be drawn out of you, others will notice it and help to draw it out of you.

Nature and the Human Soul Conference Day 2, Friday, Jan 20th

2012-01-25T19:33:00.000-08:00

People wandering off on their wandering exercises

People working on their life maps and journals

The Hyatt Tamaya Hotel and Sandia Mountains

The arroyo during my "Baby Praise Wander"

A tree noticed on the return from my "Baby Praise Wander"

Sunrise

Nature and the Human Soul Conference

Day 2, Jan 20th 2012 Friday

Bill Plotkin and Fr. Richard Rohr

Hyatt Tamaya, New Mexico

1,000 Attendees from around the world

My Notes and Musings

8am Bill Plotkin

Early Childhood

How do we welcome/support a newborn child in a way that they will grown into an authentic adult? - to increase the chance that they become themselves and are able to embody God or the mystery in their unique way?

Goal: to sustain/develop child's trust in self/family/community/world

Tasks: child doesn't have any tasks at this stage. The parents carry the tasks:

1) Preserve child's innocence (present centeredness)

2) Formation of intact, culturally viable, healthy ego. Acquire basics of language and social skills.

Parent's task is to balance these two tasks, which have a natural tension. Preserving and embracing child's natural wildness and curiosity, celebrate from infancy to age 4 or so, saying yes to needs (at this point there are no wants, infants only have needs)

How? Careful observation and mirroring of personal qualities. Infant receives the message "We see you! You belong here! We're glad you're here!"

"I, thou relationship to world"

To bring back in current life stage involves: Being purely, innocently present to the now, encouraged through meditation, yoga, dance, music which enhances your capacity to be present in all relationship.

Also, solitude in nature - outside the human -colonized environments, also expressive arts - working with materials, allowing to come through you (not with any intention to sell or impress) just, what wants to show up? Funnel through. What allure you? Apprenticing to own intuition. Hang out with infants and be present with.

Praise Walk Exercise: Praise each thing or place in nature that calls to you, out loud, drawing, etc. Embodying, not just appreciating, but praising. Be back in 45 minutes, by 9:30am. Then work with your life map anything to add to first life stage.

9:45am Richard Rohr

No one gets perfect mirroring. No parents know how to mirror perfectly. Wounding at the same time as mirroring. We're very vulnerable.

An unitiated parent still wants the child to mirror them!

We all carry an original wound. Unmet needs keep recurring in the 20's and 30's (affection, validation) Sometimes revert to childish acting where you then pass on your wound to another.

10am Bill Plotkin

Middle Childhood

Wonder

Book: "Living by Wonder" by Richard Lewis

Naming - the transition to having conscious self-awareness. We know what a name is at that time. There is often a really big dream that shows up around age 4 or 5. That becomes an essential key. If you are a parent, keep note of these dreams for your child. Do any of you remember a dream from that age?

Garden/explorer Stage 2

Goal: learn the givens of nature and culture

Tasks: balance gradually shifts from the parents to the child

1) learn enchantment of natural world and feel fully at home in it

2) Learn cultural ways of your people, necessary to learn one way of being human first in order to become fully human later.

Becoming at home in body, in our imaginations, and in our emotions. As much outdoor playtime as possible. People who had natural childhood and free playtime outside are those who find/see the metaphor they are during a vision fast/quest.

Book: "Last Child of the Woods" by Richard Luve, also Book: "Saving our child from Nature Deficit Disorder"

Discovering enchantment of human body. Imagination cultivated in childhood and onwards is the single most important faculty in the descent to soul later on. Imagination is rooted in nature play in childhood. "Imagination is nature" William Blake

Every emotion has a treasure in it. Each tells a child (and parents) about that child. Taught to celebrate all emotions and find the jewel in them.

How much were you as a child exposed to these dimensions of healthy culture? [an extraordinary amount. Especially imagination and out door play, that was my childhood]

Social practices - languages, how to celebrate, grieve, how do you support someone else in grieving? Prayer

Values - Children in stage 2 need to be taught values. Because they don't know what they are yet. Need to know what they are first before they can tinker with the values and make them their own later in life.

General knowledge: Computers and television do not aid in knowledge!, especially in stage 2. Stage 2 is not the time to teach a child how to save the world. First they must learn to love the world and feel at home in it and learn their relation to others. Important for children to learn history of their ancestors. Important for them to have an ethnic identity.

Mythology - stories that suggest reciprocal relationship with the world help us pose big questions, enlivening metaphors.

Cosmology - the big story of the world. Where did world come from?

Education in stage 2 - essential in and out of school to learn about the natural world. Thinking is only one way to know the world. The four windows of knowing are:

1) Thinking

2) Feeling (including emotions)

3) Senses (observation, sensing)

4) Imagination (most ignored and repressed in western society) Why? Because thats the one most essential to grow up. Why doesn't culture want you to grow up? Because its bad for business! Imagination is the way to find out what is real that thinking, feeling and sensing can never get us to.

[imagination is real and where it brings you is wonderful connection to the unseen]

Tools to bring you back here and complete unfinished tasks from this stage of life:

- multiday solo wandering

- Celebrating and cultivating imagination

- Apprenticing to dreams so they can work on you

- Creative writing, playing, gardening, dance, music, poetry, places to muse, basic crafts with hands

Exercise: Go for a walk/adventure as a 7 - 10 year old. Travel back in time to childhood. Sense as you did then. Feel as you did. Think as you did. Imagine as you did. Collect treasures. Draw. Let go of adult agenda. Pretend. Explore. Build. Observe. Wonder. Skip. Allow world to be new again. Bring a treasure back with you and share it and your experience with someone. Be back in 45 minutes.

[I lay in the leaves and looked up at the sky and rolled around and got covered in leaves. I tried to play an imaginary game with leaves and sticks. It was hard to believe in it like I did as a child. I looked around and spotted a perfect, white see shell or snail shell, the size of a grape. It was my treasure for the day. Where did it come from? I told the person I shared it with that it reminded me of a sea shell my dad gave me when I was 9, which I still have. Inside it is a note of appreciation of who I am and who I am becoming from him.]

12:15pm Richard Rohr

Its not what you say to your kids, but the energy you say it with. Your child will be excited about what you're excited about.

"Growing up is bad for business" We live in a culture, and sadly a church, that doesn't really want us to grow up.

Find what you can be excited about! Where your energy can naturally flow!

The western world is pretty ritually starved. No healing rituals for those coming out of war or out of middle childhood or out of any of the stages of life.

2:30pm Bill Plotkin

Robert Bly Poem: "One pice of Bad Information"

Stage 3 Early Adolescence, Thespian at the Oasis

"The whole world is a stage" especially applies to stage 3. Pscychological stage, usually begins between 10-13.

In this stage, we begin experiencing ourselves as members of a peer group (sex, society) that goes beyond nature and family. Puberty is the first passage where we're conscious of ourselves on both sides of the transition.

The parents are losing a dependent child, or a child actually. Instructions in sexual identity and puberty rights are extremely important.

There are 2 stages of adolescence between childhood and adulthood, stage 3 is early adolescence.

Goal: Fashion authentic social identity, social individuation, cultivating a unique social presence, becoming yourself socially. Discover that life is a kind of drama and we realize "Its up to me to cast myself in a role that feels good to me and that everyone else is doing the same" What role do we want to star in?

It is a stage that is most gender-differentiated in social roles. After stage 3, gender differentiation lessons because part of stage 4 involves cultivating the gender side that is weaker and balancing that out. Societal archetype for masculine: societal entrepreneur - emphasis on competition and achievement. Feminine societal archetype: Communal Gatherer - emphasis on direct care cooperation, the fleshing out of what already is, wants heart connection and warmth of relationship.

World becomes more personally constructed and chosen.

Task: To create secure and authentic social self that generates both social acceptance and self-approval. What parts of my persona are acceptable to peer group?

- value exploration and principles. Adult parent needs to say, "I enjoy/value how my life is. I see you becoming something different. I am proud of you"

- Emotional skills get more sophisticated, there are 4 phases of emotion:

1) Feel it, let it happen and run its course

2) Go inward, what was that about? What did it tell me about me and my values? (not to criticize self)

3) Action - how will I act on it to make the world or my relationship to the world and others better?

4) Illumination - step back and look at the whole cycle and say "Well, that was interesting. What did it teach me about begin human?"

-Art of conflict resolution.

- Status assigning skills - getting good at determining what place in peer group (friend, relationship, avoid) Not being too passive or too aggressive.

- sex and sexual relationships

- sustenance skills - how are you going to provide

- Studying of human/nature responsibility

People in a healthy society will not accept those that damage the web of life.

- Welcoming home the loyal soldier, a lot of inner critics and inner flatterers

Education

Book - "My name is Chelus and I'm in Recovery from Western Civilization"

There is another passage often necessary in western culture, but that did not exist in indigenous culture. It is the passage, called awakening, from ego-centric early adolescence to eco-centric early adolescence. Not to be confused with the passage from early adolescence to late adolescence.

Choose one of these two exercises, do the first one if you can and are up for the challenge.

Exercise1 : Teenager Diad Walk - go for a walk with someone else you don't know. Tell each other about your teen years, first experiences. How well is your authentic self doing now? How are you with conflict resolution? Emotions? Sex? Relationships? How are these issues showing up now? 15 min. each.

Exercise 2: Wound Walk: Go out on land and let yourself be drawn to something that looks or feels wounded to you. Look at it very closely. Let your emotions flow. Tell it out loud about your own roundedness. Feel/sense/imagine your wound or roundedness. Make/create something for/with the wounded part, forgive, accept, hold that wounded part. Record any discoveries. 45 min. then meet with breakout group to share.

Musings: Amazing diad walk with a lady in her 60's. I knew I wanted to challenge myself to the died walk. But I knew I wanted an older woman for where I'm at in my comfort level. It was so incredible to share so much with a stranger and have her share with me. We had a connection and a lot of similar experiences to share. I learned some wisdom from her, which reaffirmed what I already knew: "Opening up to your wound and being able to live vulnerable to it is directly related to your bringing your gift into the world" "You do the best you can with the resources you have and next time you will have more resources and will do better" For me, I shared about desire for validation, appreciation, affirmation, wanting my intuition to be validated, when in reality, I am the one who validates and honors my own intuition. I also need to learn to live with not having my intuition validated by anyone else but me and opening myself to the vulnerability and criticism that may come with that. Learning to live with following my intuition regardless of how people respond to me, good or bad. That will allow me to be more present in relationship to others and the world. We also talked about how no mirroring is perfect and no wounds process is perfect either. I was still grateful to hear an honoring of my intuition from the lady I partnered with who left me with the words, "Its young people like you that give me hope for the world. You will have a good relationship and you will be able to raise a child to become an authentic adult."

5pm Bill Plotkin

He gave the current western growth stages (notice nothing beyond stage 3, yikes!)

Stage 1 - Obedience training and entitlement Training

Stage 2 - Primary socio economic training

Stage 3A - Conformity and rebellion

Stage 3B - Secession (well, I was hoping there would be another game, another way, but I guess tho is it and I've got to play getting a career and getting settled and moving up in the world)

Stage 3C - Capitulation (suppressing soul and inner voice)

Stage 3D - Management

Stage 3E - Pasture and Playtime (retirement)

Stage 3F - Failure (Grandma's failing again)

Lack of feeling a personal authenticity leads to a willingness to give up and play these roles. Role and impersonation (mask) in order to be socially accepted. Leads to an undermining of present-centeredness, which leads to a diminishment of wonder, which leads to not understanding our place in the more than human world, which diminishes the capacity for relationship with others and ourselves, which leads to a lack of presence.

How did we get here? This is the sacred wound of the human species. Yes. This is the only way it could happen.

The solution is to address the latest task of where you're at. The symptoms are there because of developmental business that calls to be addressed and worked beyond. Wildnernes therapy is a major solution.

Going back to the Awakening passage that seems to be a modern phenomenon of western culture.

What happens to a large group of westerners is a passage called Awakening from egocentric to ecocentric early adolescence in stage 3, where people cart addressing the unfinished business as if they just woke up realizing, "The American dream is something more like a nightmare - to work harder and make more money so I can buy more stuff" Awaking from the trama of industrial society. Moving from viewing the world as a collection of objects to viewing it as a communion of subjects as Thomas Berry puts it.

The awakening is often triggered by tragedy/loss, knocks us off sideways enough to take an objective look at where we are and what we've been aspiring too. Radically change their lives and move from ego to eco centric stage 3. Awakening is the passage westerners are most in need of, more even than the descent to soul.

In an ego-centric stage 3: Person believes or acts as if the goal in life is individual self-improvement and believes the capitalist society is sane. [thank my parents and God, I was never here]

In an eco-centric stage 3: person believes and acts as if self improvement isa means to an end, is in service to something greater, to serve the more than human world. The ego is not understood as the central character in life. The ego is seen as a member of vital community. Has not yet begun descent to soul and doesn't quite know yet what soul is. [this was where I was at, probably from 13 or so until 20, when I left home spiritually]

Bill says, a very small percentage of Americans, like the entire indigenous cultures, do not go through this awakening phase, does not exist for them. These are the ones who had lots of access to outdoor play in nature, imagination, and ignited adults raising them. When Bill asked for a raising of hands of who did not have to go through the "Western Awakening" very few people raised their hands. I did, but was shy to raise it all the way up because of how few people did! I was shocked. I know I never had to go through this awakening phase, but had never realized how lucky and rare this was until now. How lucky and rare to have access to nature and imagination and initiated parents that raised me to never believe from the start in the american dream or the industrial society climb, to know that that was false from a young age and to know that developing a relationship with the divine and following my own excitement, no matter where it led, was completely acceptable and encouraged in me from my parents. What an awful lot of gratitude I owe to them and my brook-side child hood home in Maine and to my undergraduate degree in Human Ecology, which stressed the exploration of relationship between humans and the environment and making that relationship better in whatever field you go into.

Stage 4 ego understands itself in service to the world.

A person in stage 3 doesn't understand what stage 4 is about, what the descent to soul is, but they may think they do. Analogy of a 9 year old not knowing what sex is, but thinking they do. [Haha, I had no idea what sex was at age 9 and did not presume to know. I knew that I would know later on when the time was right and I wasn't going to worry about it until then]

Awakening involves a type of dying to consumer culture agenda. An agenda we're all steeped in every day of our lives. A type of dying not necessary for those raised by initiated parents in eco-centric environments. Very few people don't have to go through this awakening. [I know that I didn't and don't have to go through this, because I never believed it and fell asleep. Boy, is it hard not to though!]

The passage from stage 3 to 4 is called Confirmation

Poem "The Journey" by Mary Oliver

"Must go out into the storm. It has your name on it. You know what you need to do."

You heard a new voice that you recognized as your own. "To save the life of your soul" That is enabling you to be born. The soul waters are flowing under your everyday life and one day, you will go down deep enough, through the opening your wound creates, down where there is an opening"

What is being confirmed? Mystery is doing the confirming. You hear call to spiritual adventure and you know it involves a descent. [Yes] You have healthily completed an adolescent identity [Yes]

The only purpose was to build it, not to live in it. [Yes] You've done well enough, have an adequate adolescence. You're ready for the descent to soul. A shift in the primary question - who am I beneath my social persona? Deeper. What is life really about? Beyond getting a job and establishing a primary relationship, traveling, raising a family, volunteering? What is it beyond? What for me is he difference between sex and romance? Between social network and real community? Between companion and real friend? Between job and real soul work? Between ambition and real vision for life? [I've been asking and searching these questions since mid-teens I think]

Most Americans have accepted having compensatory ambitions rather than a revelatory vision for life.

What is soul? Consciousness? To be fully human?

A large number of teenagers come up against these questions and they find no ignited adults or elders to guide them, so they bump off, maybe to return later in their early 20's late 20's or mid-life crisis, or not at all.

Marten Prechel Book [haha, I'm reading one of his books right now called "The Toe Bone and the Tooth" that my room mate recently let me borrow]

Confirmation is the shift in what your world is, what it means to be human. An utter mystery. Understood that ego is meant to be the servant of mystery!

"The shape that waits in the seed of you to grow and spread its branches against a future sky" - David White

Dance. Express Unique relationship with Mystery what has been stirred in you?

Musings: At the end of today, I went back and did the stage 1 childhood/infant exercise, the praise one from yesterday. Yesterday, I was not up for doing it at the time and went back to my room for quiet and meditation instead. Today, on my own and with a greater chunk of time at my hands, I wandered pretty far out into an arroyo. I crossed through culvert (something I used to love doing as a child) and began to imagine myself as an infant, fully present to the world. My praising came in infant talk, no words, only sounds and chirps, like an animal, crawling and walking wobbly and unsteady. It was so much fun! I wanted to praise and gurgle at everything! When I crossed back through the culvert, I entered back into my own stage, but the presence of the infant carried with me for the rest of the night. In the hot tub and talking in the hotel room with people, I found myself, very alive and funny and amused with life.

Nature and the Human Soul Day 1 (Thurs, Jan 19)

2012-01-24T20:14:00.000-08:00

The start of my life map

Nature and the Human Soul Conference
Day 1, Jan 19th 2012 Thursday
Bill Plotkin and Fr. Richard Rohr
Hyatt Tamaya, New Mexico
1,000 Attendees from around the world

My Notes and Musings

2pm Bill Plotkin

Questions for us to ask ourselves as we go through this conference and in life:
1) What's on the current trajectory? How would you describe in your own terms the life stage you are in? What are the greatest joys and challenges? Your deepest values? Tasks?
2) How would you describe your own path at this time in your current trajectory?
3)What's calling you? Desire, opportunity, symbol, place, relationship, soul, a way of being in service? (even if you're ignoring it)
4) What, if anything, is ending in your life right now? (job, suffering, relationship, etc.)
5) What, if anything is being born in your life right now?
6) What is your deepest longing? Are you willing to tell yourself the truth?

Now, take the next 10 minutes to journal on those questions and share your answers with someone near you who you do not know.

My answers in brief:
1) Like a time of transition and waiting, feeling something on the tip of my tongue that's about to unfold and the need to be patient and open so it can unfold. Listening. In its own time, not my own time. Torn between waiting and wanting to do more/give more/be more in my life. No regrets I have not forgiven and cannot live with in peace right now. I've really given myself the last decade to explore and learn and enjoy life. Challenges: routine, supporting myself while not getting caught up in the corporate rat race. To support myself enough, while still setting the time and priority for self-exploration, travel, whatever comes up so I can follow it without being impeded by lack of funds. Joys: People and community of Santa Fe, nature, family, even more than those - developing a relationship/conversation with the divine, expression through poetry, creativity, design, photography. Learning and daily surprises, learning to let go and not be in control and finding everything flowing. The unfamiliar gives me great joy. Tasks: Being light-hearted, remembering that I am guided and cultivating ways in my day to feel that guidance more and more (meditation, yoga, solo hikes, poetry, creativity, stillness, being around like-minded, positive thinking people, gratitude, books on the subject and conferences like this one, journaling and listening in my journal and then writing down what comes from the depths), following and trusting intuition, also a big task is developing of my ego enough so that it can be small enough to be guided by God/soul.

2) Life path changing shifting more and more to listening to voice inside. Finding equanimity, giving back to the community. Not traveling for traveling's sake, but if it serves my spiritual growth. Seeking things out that stretch me. Going outside my comfort zone. Willingness to do the opposite of what I want to do (remain silent when I want to speak; speak when I want to be silent; travel when I have a good place of settlement and am starting to feel like staying; settle when I am feeling restless)

3) Desire for connection. The word web/connect that came to me in a dream last summer and again during my conversation with a spider and its web. To love and be happy - to find love and be able to do that in my vocation. Desire to listen to voice inside and not be swayed by the external. Creativity and poetry.

4) Endings - No desire for romantic relationships unless they involve spiritual growth and deepening (well, I've kind of always had this desire and knowing, but its even stronger now. I'm officially committed to it now). An end of going along with anything inauthentic for me. An end of the desire to make it in a high profile design or otherwise career. An ending of feeling or trying to be in control (really came about over the summer during my solo trip to canyon de chelly)

5) Beginnings - more and more following voice/inner guidance, dreams, trust in unknown, strong sense that I want to give up ego/self agenda and give it over to the service of something bigger than myself. Opening my heart wider and wider.

6) Deepest longing: My deepest longing is to listen to the voice within as much as I possibly can and to be at its service not my own any longer. To be as much as I can be and give back to the world. To create beauty in this world through creativity, poetry, art/design and also through transforming and healing work. Something to do with connection and Web (as in connection).

3pm Bill Plotkin

Goal of first half of life: to become an initiated human. In western cultures, Bill guesses that only 10% of the population ever actually reaches authentic adulthood. Humans need a healthy, mature culture to deepen into adults. Healthy cultures need a representative sample of all the stages.

Initiation into adulthood. Healthy human adulthood starts with healthy human adult parents.

How do we help children and early adolescents reach adulthood? (not how do we help a child compete/get into Harvard/make a million)!

Definition of an adult: someone who has what is in essence a mystical relationship with the world. An authentic adult is a human that experiences him/herself as a member of the earth community, as the web of life, and... has had revelatory, mythical experiences of their mythical, poetic place in that community, and...is embodying that place in the earth community (doesn't just know it, but is embodying it)

All are born with the capacity to discover our true nature. Each has a mystical story to live into the world. We're a poem wanting to be read/lived into the world. We are born with the capacity to live as if we were that poem through a delivery system (profession, craft, career) for something mystical.

Life-actualization over time of the "Truth at the center we were born with" - David White

Vitality, life force, quickening, translated through you into action. You are unique and if you block your gift from coming through you, it will be lost to the world. It is your business to keep the channel open - to keep open to the urges that motivate you.

Humans can understand ourselves as metaphors. We have the capacity for conscious awareness.

Enter journey to soul. (in western society, often doesn't happen until mid-life, (often mid-life crisis), which is 42 years old! In indigenous societies the journey to soul happens in the teens!

Becoming an adult is not chronological! Going through any of the stages of life is not chronological!

Process of soul initiation (into adult) spans several months to several years. Requires a good deal of preparation for people to be developmentally ready and mature for soul initiation. It is a descent. You go down from the workaday world to soul, it involves dying to the self you were. Then there is an ascent back to the workaday life.

Soul initiation and adulthood is reached and earned from having made the descent into soul, out of the workaday world and back into it.

"To be human is to become visible while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others" - poet, David White

Definition of Soul: Soul - ultimate, deepest, truest place in the world, place meaning the niche, true purpose, gift you are born with to bring into the world. [so I'm having a conversation with my gift every time I'm having a conversation with that voice inside me!]

Imagine that each one of us was born to take a certain place in our ecosystem. Soul is the key to our destiny. (why we were born, larger story you might live, your particular way of belonging, the largest conversation you can have with the world0

Each human being has 3 identities (learning to integrate and operate in all 3 at the same time):
1) Upperworld identity: identity with the sacred, great mystery, the divine, the non-dual experience, the experience that we are the divine in human form.
2) Middle world - everyday human identity - profession, my parents daughter, traveler, etc. Who people see you as
3) Underworld - your true self in the soul sense, mythologically, your soul purpose identity, the unique gift you have to bring into the world and the way you do it

What good is it to you to be an authentic human adult? It sounds like a lot of work! and it is!
You will experience yourself belonging to something larger than yourself, a sense of purpose and meaning, involved in projects that matter to you.

Why are authentic adults of importance to culture? Your presence contributes to healthy communities, deeply serves the culture and helps it evolve, can't become a true elder without becoming a true adult.

How are authentic adults good for the more than human world? Without healthy human culture, then the world is in danger.

Healthy children and adolescents are just as important as authentic healthy adults and elders.

4:30pm Bill Plotkin

How do human beings best mature? Why are some ready for the descent to soul and others are not? What's the difference? Why do some come out of vision quests making the descent, while others come out with a sense of healing and wholing, but not ready to make the descent yet?

Ego-centric vs. eco-centric
Life is about maturing an ego which serves the world. A healthy ego is one that experiences itself as contributing to, serving, and participating in the world.

Difference between rights of passage and iniatory processes: Western culture has been rediscovering the importance of rights of passage. Rights of passage are secondary to what happens between them. They only work for someone who has been developmentally preparing for the initiation in the interim. Its very rare that a right of passage actually moves someone from one stage to the other, from adolescent to adult for example. Rather, a right of passage is a celebration of a life transition that has already recently taken place. It is also instruction of whats happening in your new stage of life.

A full human life has 9 major life passages, beginning with birth and ending in death. In the western world, 80% of humans experience only 4 of the 9 passages! Most americans don't go past the 4th stage life passage, which is called puberty.

Every stage brings absolutely essential gifts to the community. A healthy being at any stage is a blessing to the community. The stages are not less to most spiritually developed, but less mature to most mature. You have to love the stage you're in.

Draw your own life map at this point. Make a circle, divide up like the wheel of life. Draw or write in each of the stages anything that really stands out - what questions you have about the stage, any confusion/questions.

[Musings: Everyone is absorbed in flickering flames of the heaters and fires, working on their life maps, by mountings and plains and duskscape, outside the conference center]

There are always tasks left incomplete in each stage. You are always still working on these left over tasks, which are dealt with differently later on then when they were worked on in their original stage of origin. You cannot meaningfully work on the tasks of stages that are in the future, that you have not been through yet and are not currently in.

Exersize: Let yourself feel/imagine etc if this map is actually accurate. What does it mean for your life? How might it change what you do? Your relationships? Your children's lives? Your communities?

Parent's task: mirroring the child and helping the child develop its ego. Celebrating the child's qualities as they emerge.

Good journal exercise: Imagine yourself as the mature, nurturing parent of your 4 year old self. You would be telling the infant that you were about their loving, beautiful toddler qualities and celebrating those qualities that were notable in you very young. Hold that child spiritually and psychologically in your heart and mind. "This is how you were at a young age"Preserve the child's innocence. Practice present-centeredness to what your world holds with eyes open, being present to world, emotions, body, sensing.

6pm Fr. Richard Rohr

Adulthood is a sense of the whole. A person who is universally connected sees the connections and passes on the connections. When you're around those people, you feel allowed access too, encouraged to see your own potential and soul.

If spirit ascends, soul descends into the wound. Soul people can find meaning there. Too much in either direction is not good. If you can put the two together, you will fly high, while being grounded.

Who you thought you were is not who you really are. Constantly being open to this. Your "thinking" doesn't make it so. You start protecting/defending your thinking about you you think you are, which is not who you are. That is what marriage/relationship and any true friendship can do for you and open you up to learn.

If you can keep realizing with regularity "I'm not who I thought I was" you have a program for growth and soul work.

People who can't do this, can't admit they're wrong, can't admit they're not who they were thinking they were, those are the people that stay stuck where they are and who do not grow. You've gotta have the willingness for ambiguity and following the butterfly.

Often career/job is confused with soul. "Because you've got a job, you've found yourself." No. You will have to bear the criticisms of those who don't want you to stay in the other stages, even at the cost of a pay decrease or job status decrease.

Soul is a combination of grounding down and "falling upward"

When you discover the unloved and uncompleted tasks, feel the humility there, to be soundable, to go back where those wounds still are and to the state where they still hurt you, is usually the only way to heal the wounds. Wounds never go away - they become transformed, they become the doorway, the opening to your soul and resurrection itself.

Oct 28 - 29 2012 CAC conference in Santa Fe "Franciscan Mysticism - I am that which I am seeking" [I'll be there if I'm here still!!]

Couchsurfers in Town

2012-01-16T11:56:00.000-08:00

I had fun tonight by getting out of the familiar. I went to Body Cafe and played Bananagrams with two couch surfers, Ben and Mary Pearl, who are staying with us right now. They are an inspiring pair, traveling across the US building greenhouses out of trash, wwoofing (willing workers on organic farms) and creating a documentary film. When Body closed, we went to the Underground bar at Evangelo's. I don't think I've been in there since my very first summer in Santa Fe. It was just great to sit and talk with them and a few other girls, one of whom lives in Santa Fe now, but went to college with Mary Pearl in NC. I felt light-hearted. The journey is meant to be enjoyed. The thing about being on the other end, hosting couch surfers now, is getting to see sights for the first time again through their eyes.

When I stepped outside at the end of the evening, big, fat snowflakes greeted me on a deserted W San Francisco St. Simply magical, reminding me in another slant how I love Santa Fe. I am grateful to still see it freshly after a 3 1/2 year on-again, off-again relationship with the place.

Earlier today I went for a lone wander hike in the Santa Fe Canyon Preserve at the end of Canyon Rd. It was my first time on that particular trail. I laid on one of the observation benches for a while soaking up the sun and looking at blue sky through bare branches. Putting myself out there in the unknown heals, as simple as that.

Couchsurfers in Town
Seeing Santa Fe again,
As if for the first time,
Through their wide eyes,
Freshly re-opening mine.
Feeling alive in the unfamiliar,
Like that original summer,
Of wounds healing,
Forgetting and letting them be,
So immersed in exploration,
And knowing new people,
No need to pick at scabs,
Just enjoy the freedom.
Stepped out of the bar,
To snowflakes smiling down,
And the remembrance came,
This snow is falling in Santa Fe,
For the first time in this way,
The only instance it will,
Ever arrive quite like this,
Unique to the moment,
Touching the lives who notice,
Different from flurries before
Or snow to come next storm.

Inviting Mysteries

2012-01-09T14:46:00.000-08:00

Nectar on my tongue,
Whispers, thick and smooth,
Wake up while you're young,
Patch the patterned grooves,

Before they sink in deeper,
unforgiven, hidden, rigid,
Becoming your keeper
Of confinement, my friend.

I simply do not know.
I only just arrived.
I am willing to give it a go.
That is, being a butterfly.

Can you give me some advice?
How to land gracefully?
Is it the luck of dice?
How to pass mindfully,

Narcissus to sunflower?
When to open wings to wind?
When to put in hours?
When to rise from midnight spin?

How to become a dancer,
Partnered with the sun?
Wait, please don't answer,
Not knowing sparks the fun.

Jeanne - while eating Nutella "nectar" in her room, after welcoming the day with 7am meditation at Upaya Zen Center, Teahouse oatmeal with Ingrid, Body yoga with Emily, and a sunlight soak, ahhh, then a rested, poetic mind awoke.

Also:

"Inspirit": meaning to inspire by or with one's spirit

Inspirit, a new word,
Created by happenstance,
as gmail edited,
automatically, the mistype,
of "Inspire" in a note
to my mother. Mom,
you not only inspire me,
you "inspirit" me too.

The stages of life

2012-01-08T14:37:00.000-08:00

1/7/12 Saturday am

I am feeling wired. I guess that’s a good word. Lack of deep sleep I think. Caffeinated even though I’m not. Excited for life and possibilities on the tip of my tongue. Also apprehensive, cautious about not taking on anything that is going to lead me astray. I need to remember to relax and take things easy. It is hard to maintain a balanced awareness once I’ve kicked into gear. Its hard not to go all the way into overdrive. I can’t last at those overdrive levels if the motivation is just coming from me and my ego. I can only last if the energy is coming from Source and I’m aligned with source. I already learned this in grad school, so if that’s what the job is meant to teach me, I don’t want to relearn that!!! On the other hand, if I can move beyond that and be present in such a situation and have fun and it has other things to teach me in terms of furthering my soul work delivery system skills and preparing me to give back to the world, than I will gladly be put to the test. I ask to remain unattached to the identity the job tries to confine me in. I ask to maintain awareness of source through out the challenging times of the job. I ask to keep an attitude of play and lightness, remembering the bigger picture when things are deadline driven and stressful.

There is no right or wrong way. All ways will lead me to the place I am meant to take in this lifetime.

For now, I will use my current job and life as the gifts they are to be in the moment even when the moment seems monotonous and repetitive. Cultivate my connection with the people and the horses. Be kind to myrself by being present. That is a huge accomplishment and learning experience right there.

“This wandering in the darkness is a wrestling with angels, a struggle the healthy ego hopes to lose” (Plotkin, riffing on Rilke's poem)

That’s exactly it. I want to stop struggling, surrender and lose this fight.

"As a wanderer, you apprentice to the unkown, to mysticism. You long to be initiated into the fully embodied life of your soul, but you will have to wait. You’ll have to place your faith and love and hope in the waiting. But you will be anything but idle." (Plotikin)

"A sound man by not advancing himself, stays the further ahead of himself. By not confining himself to himself, sustains himself outside himself. By never being an end in himself, he endlessly becomes himself”

"Abide at the center of your being; for the more you leave it, the less you learn."

"Search your heart and see."

-Lao Tzu – Tao Te Ching

"Always be aware of what you lose as well as what you gain"

"What is done for profit and what is done for itself"

"The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects"

"To know how to approach something is so terribly important, but generally people don’t learn this until later in life."

– Thomas Berry

Key aspects of adulthood – capacity to appreciated the complimentary of opposites. Opposites like men and women attract one another because they are complimentary (not contradictory)

Cocoon skills/tasks:

1) leaving home and relinquishing attachment to adolescent identity

- addressing developmental deficits from earlier stages

- giving up addictions

- exploring the sacred wound

- learning to choose authenticity over social acceptance

- making peace with the past

- learning the art of disidentification thorugh the practice of meditation

2) Exploring mysteries of nature and pychye

A. acquiring a set of soul craft skills (dreamwork, self-designed ceremony, nature dialogues, deep imagry work, sensitivity to signs and omens, soul poetry, fasting, tracking)

B. Cultivating soulful relationship to life

- art of solitude

- discovering nature as a mirror to soul

- wandering in nature

- living the questions of the soul

- confronting own death

- the art of shadow work

- the art of romance

- mindfulness practice

- service work

- advanced loyal soldier work (walking into the fire)

- developing the 4 dimensions of self

- praising the world

- developing personal relationship with the divine

- the art of being lost

- befriending the dark

- withdrawing projections

Soul Apprentice/Wellspring

Passage/soul initiation: when we commit utterly to the embodiment in the world of our soul image/story/powers

Gift: action, hope, inspiration

Task:

- aquairing and implementing a delivery system for embodying soul in culture

- identifying 1 or more cultural settings for soul work

- developing skills of soulwork and performing them in our community

- further exploration of soul image/story/powers

- the soul-rooted individuation of personality (differentiating the ego in relation to soul, as opposed to its earlier differentiation in relation to society)

Four dimensions of society:

1) North – nurturing parent or generative adult, capable of providing loving care to oneself and others, offering empathy and sevice. You develop the North by things like: leadership development courses, non-violent communication work, negotiation skills, conscious loving and intimacy, creative expression

2) South – wild self. Sensual, erotic and enchanted relationship with the world. Indigenous and instinctual. Develop through: wildnerness retreats/programs, sacred sexuality, yoga, music, rhythm and dance, natural history courses

3) West – anima or animus, the guide to soul or muse. Reveals mysteries and qualities of the soul, underworld, destiny. Continually dying to old ways while giving birth to the never before seen. Develop through: dreamwork, artistic process, deep imagry, depth and archetypal pychology, ritual, poetry, myth, creativity and soul craft

4) East – sage, fool, trickster, innocent and guide to spirit. Most at home with mysteries of the divine, upperworld, light, enlightenment, laughter, eternity and the non-dual. Leads us up to pure consciousness beyond distinctions and striving. Awakened by: study of meditation, prayer, yoga, Taoism, Buddhism, Kabbalah, Sufism, humor and comedy

Gifts of the stages:

The cocoon: the adolescent’s fire eventually transforms the ego itself, sparking a romance with the mysteries of the world. The incinerated self, or ego, reduced to ashes, transforms into a phoenix or butterfly, that mates with the world.

The wellspring: our romance with the world gives birth to the love child of our soulwork (which inspires others and generates hope)

I just had a strange thought: just as every individual can go through 9 stages from birth to death encompassing childhood, adolescence, artisan, master, elder and sage, does the collective humanity or collective universe for that matter, go through a similar set of 9 stages from birth until death? Starting and ending in the same place, and as T.S. Eliot says, “knowing it for the first time?” over and over and over?

Its so important for me to be reading about all the stages of life (and all the enneagram types for that matter) not just the stage I’m at right now or the type I most strongly convey energies of. Its vitally important to read about the whole because that instills a sense of not only where I am at right now, but where I have been and where I am going! And how exciting that is! The constant changeability/mutability kaleidoscope of life! I ask to go forward into the new year guided in my vocation and relationships toward what best serves by soul, not my own interests.

New York City in 4 Nights

2011-12-31T19:28:00.000-08:00

I arrived on Canal Street in NYC after 10 hours sitting on a bus from Bangor, Maine. I was tired. But as soon as I met my friend, Debbie and her friend, Charlie, at a bar near Union Square, a second wave of energy from the city itself arrived. Afterwards, we went back to Debbie's Brooklyn Apt. near Prospect Park and talked and talked and she gave us Tarrot card readings. Uncannily, even after shuffling, Charlie and I were delt nearly an identical hand, but all my cards were upside down and his were rightside up. Whatever that means.

Tuesday, it rained. I worked on some contract graphic design work and took it easy, processing, writing, meditating, reading. When Debbie got home, she, Charlie and I went to a really neat Slavic Soul music show at a venue called Barbe in Brooklyn. So many young, artsy people. The place was packed and the music was great. We walked home through Prospect Park.

Wednesday dawned sunny and I took the free ferry to Staten Island to see what that was like. Beautiful views, good to be on the ocean. When Debbie got home that night, I read her a poem I'd written and she said she had to read me something. She read Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. I need to keep reading that book. I fell asleep feeling truly blessed.

Thursday, I walked and walked and loved every minute of it. Through Central Park, along Lexington Ave, to Columbus Circle and concluded in a cafe waiting for my friend Katie. When she arrived, we braved the insane crowds to catch a glimpse of Rockefeller Center and Times Square. The line for Madeleine's famous bakery where we ate last time I saw her here, was just too long. So we went to a donut plant instead and then on to Pho Grand for delicious pho and spring rolls. Such a nice, cozy atmosphere. It was so good catching up with Katie!

My last morning in NYC this time around, I got to see the matinee showing of Hansel & Gretal at the MET Opera for free because Katie had a ticket and couldn't go. The set design alone was steller and so was the show. I sat outside in the sun watching the pigeons and the people, soaking up the sun and the atmosphere for an hour afterwards before making my way to the airport.

I arrived back in NM at 11pm and spent the night at a friends so I wouldn't have to drive back to Santa Fe so late. The book beside my friends bed, where I slept, was called Writing Down Your Soul. Interesting, I thought. So I opened it up. The quote on the page I opened to read:

"Things are not happening to you, they are happening for you. If you want to ask, 'Why is this happening to me?' ask instead: 'Why did my soul call this forth?'"

An incredibly meaningful and fitting note to go to sleep with. And to begin the New Year with!

Listen

2011-12-28T16:47:00.000-08:00

Who am I? I am that place of stillness and love at the center. I am not the careless comments. I am not the expectations and images placed on me. I am not the chatter in my head. I am not the negative feelings or the positive feelings that sway back and forth like seaweed with the high and low tides of the day. I am not the books I have read, the tests I have taken, the degrees I have undertaken. I am not the good poem I wrote or the bad poem I wrote. I am not the stylish clothes people may notice me for sometimes and I am not the reserved, self-absorbed bad-hair-day person people may judge me for at other times. I am not any of those things although I can identify and be identified by them. I am deeper than all of those projections and reflections, as are we all. We are the stillness, presence and love simply being underneath, always, steady, grounding.

Listen
NYC is not the hustle and bustle,
The Honking horns and clamor,
Raised voices across street corners,
Glitz and glamor, skyline, poverty,
No-sleep-heart-beat.
New York is not even
The statue of liberty,
The big apple, the place to be,
Although we identify New York
As all of these things.
What is New York then?
New York, like you and me,
is the serene presence,
steady love, simple stillness,
Underneath that surface-sense.

Guided

2011-12-23T09:54:00.000-08:00

I flew to Maine for Christmas. My brother came too, from Bellingham, WA. My sister is already at home, since she goes to College an hour away from my parent's house anyway. This is the first Christmas in 3 years that the whole family is together and it is wonderful. There are great meals galore - hungarian mushroom soup and polenta made by my sister yesterday, romatoff chicken and vegetables, Buffalo meatball stew, French Toast, brussel sprouts and kale from my parent's garden, and we are still a few days from Christmas.

It is snowing today. We were supposed to visit my grand-mother an hour away, but we will go tomorrow instead when the weather is better. It looks like we will have a white Christmas!

Today is Friday. I spent Sunday night in Albuquerque at Teresa's the morning before flying to Maine. I am grateful to live near one of the interns from my 11-week spiritual retreat this summer. I went to dinner with Teresa, and Andee - another friend who works at The Center for Action and Contemplation where the retreat/internship happened. We ate at Baily's on the Beach, my new favorite restaurant, voted 2011 best new restaurant in Albuquerque. The food is eclectic and affordable and the coconut cream pie is so delicious. Despite all of this goodness, I couldn't quite summon my normal, cheery happy self to the table because of a very recent and kind of unexpectedly quick ending to a relationship I was more hopeful about than any other I have been in. There is a saying though, "Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want." I've had relatively little experience with relationships and I have suffered from them less than most people my age. There is a certain flatness that permeates life for a while after a disappointed ending like that, maybe its due from chemical withdrawal in addition to the severing of emotional and spiritual chords that have been formed invisibly between two people.

I know that the best and most dependable healer is time and the ability, with time, to willingly give all those negative emotions: disappointment, anger, sadness, self-sabotage, confusion, pain, all over to whoever you relate to as your spirit guide. It just seems to take time to relinquish all of that, realizing in the process of letting it go, the clarity and resolution that were invisible when you were still attached and clinging and trying to explain it all to yourself, the other-no-longer-half, or friends.

The plane ride, I knew, could either be a time of peace or a time of obsession and the choice was mine. I chose peace, meditated, read healing books and wrote poetry. I love traveling and it has always made me remember and feel that I have no control, that control is an illusion, and that my life is in the care of larger hands than my own.

Monday night, my oldest friend from my first year of kindergarten, Jenni, picked me up from the Portland airport. It was wonderful to see Jenni in a really great, happy, stable place in her life. We still have such a soul connection after knowing each other a good 23 years. She is a counselor now, so it was especially helpful to process things with her. On Tuesday, we went shopping together in Freeport and Portland. I am pleased a Trader Joe's came to Portland this past year! Then, Jenni took me to the Concord Trailways bus station and I took the bus from Portland to Bangor, ME. Mom picked me up in Bangor and drove me the final leg to Mariaville, to the same house I grew up in. Pop, Vivian and the dogs welcomed me. My brother, Joe, and his girlfriend Lauren, arrived the next day, Wednesday.

Last night, Thursday, I met up with six friends from high school in Bangor. I see a few of the friends once or twice a year, but a few of them I hadn't seen since high school. We concluded the evening at a cute and cozy piano bar downtown called Nocturnum where they serve pear cider and coffee mead. It was very good to see everyone and to feel the kindness and bond we still have for each other. And it was good to get out and be refreshed with different perspectives of living and looking at the world.

Lately, I've been feeling, for the first time in my life, the desire to put down roots instead of wander. I will always love to travel and I know I will do it throughout the rest of my life, but it has ceased to be the priority and motivation for my journey. Something else is taking shape and I can feel my life being redirected. I am open and excited for the redirection and I believe that, as John O'Donohue says, "There is an unseen life that dreams us. It knows our true direction and destiny. We can trust ourselves more than we realize and we need have no fear of change."

I woke up today feeling the abundance of good friendships and loving, wise family in my life. The world looks bright again. Last year, I didn't have a word starting the year, but looking back, the word could have been "Experience." My word for 2012 is "Guided."

Out of My Hands

2011-12-23T08:39:00.001-08:00

PART I

To write through this haze,

It is winter, the darkest days,

The soltice in three, then brightening,

To stay with any object, thing,

That reminds me, charged with emotion

Until it holds no charge over me.

The book lent, in my hands,

The keys still in purse pocket,

The couple kissing in line,

I choose peace on this plane.

There is only engine hum sound.

We are above cloud-compressed ground.

PART II

I hold it gently, lightly

In the palm of my hand,

Maybe if I make a wish,

And blow my will like an eyelash,

Love will land somewhere quietly

And sprout into reality,

Feathers taking roots,

And growing down,

And roots taking feathers,

And flying forth unbound.

- Jeanne, on the plane home

Tributaries

2011-11-26T18:05:00.000-08:00

To see, really, reality.
Snap. Bolt. Thunderclap.
To ask authentically,
Not only to notice the gaps,

About ourselves, our thoughts,
But with equal intensity,
To find where we are caught,
In our minds, justifying,

Denying. Lying. Asleep.
Regarding the exterior goings on.
A world view we cling to keep,
A structure we don't believe gone,

As if truth were a thing we could mold,
Or dreams were a body we could hold.

Remember, the dynamic
Of sunrays on a child,
Playfully dancing, frantic,
Lit-up eyes, delighted, wild?

The shadows on the wall have shifted
From potted plant to silhouetted window blind
My mind has wandered, drifted,
Restless imaginings uncollected, unwind

Down the roots of trees,
Along streams and veins,
Into Earth and memory,
Through untested terrain.

Transitioning to repetition,
And habits of being,
Yet longing for vision,
Of what is there, but unseen.

Navigating the solitary,
Necessary, tundra inside,
Arriving at a tributary,
Fed by something greatly alive.

Extending a toe toward the moon,
And finding the stars applauding,
This gesture, intention to move,
The wildflowers gently nodding.

From stationary stance,
To gusty, liberating slide,
Down those dramatic glances,
Into honey comb and hive,

And nonsense and fragments,
Strung together like lies,
Revealing the butterfly of descent,
To be in the rise.

The Way of Jellyfish

2011-11-21T10:56:00.000-08:00

A raft of trust,
In a sea of unsettlement,
In the gusts of thought,
What, if anything, is meant
By the turbulence of words unsent?
All of the unheard jellyfish,
A floating pink array,
Wishing with their tentacles,
For her to find her way,
Not to somewhere safe, respectable,
Not to shore as you might guess,
Not to any certain place, in fact,
But, gracefully, with lightness,
toward steadying her craft.

Wonderings

2011-11-18T07:53:00.000-08:00

I am re-remembering, again, the extreme importance of being excited with life. Of being thrilled for the possibilities. Life has soooo much to offer. The surprises and discoveries, the harder things to learn, even, the limitless wonders and unexpected simple pleasures, the weaknesses that are also the strengths - they are enough to keep us humming inside and out all day if we only knew and re-remembered them more!

I opened up a book about poetry this morning and a quote jumped out at me:
"What is to give light must endure burning" - Viktor Frankle (author of Man's Search for Meaning)

"Gift from the Sea" Notes from a year and a half ago, found now

2011-11-14T21:20:00.000-08:00

I am looking back at the beginning of my journal as I am about to use up the last pages and start a new one. In the first few pages of this old one, I notice my notes from reading the wonderful book "Gift from the Sea" by Anne Morrow dated March 2010. Those notes were written when I started this journal over a year and a half ago. Then, I was still living in Austin and reading that book at my grandmothers in Wimberley; it is one of her favorites. I lost the journal a few pages in and I started a new one. I found this lost journal and started writing in it again a few months ago, and now I've almost used it up because I go through journals quickly. Its interesting to have a journal with some entries from over a year and a half ago alongside entries written within the last few months - and to have the older notes line up so much more perfectly with where I am at now then where I was at then:

"What makes us hesitate and stumble? It is fear, I think that makes one cling nostalgically to the last moment or to clutch greedily at the next...But how to exorcize it? It can only be exorcized by its opposite, love. When the heart is flooded by love there is no room for fear, for doubt, for hesitation" (106)

"A larger rhythm, a natural swinging of the pendulum between sharing and solitude; between the intimate and the abstract; between the particular and the universal, the near and the far" (106)

"When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility, yet this is exactly what so many of us demand." (108)

"We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity, when the only continuity possible in life, as in love, in in growth, in fluidity - in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

The only real security is not owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping even.

Live in the present relationship and accept it as it is now.

For it is only framed in space that beauty blooms. Only in space are events and objects and people - unique and significant - and therefore beautiful" (115)

"Patience - faith - openness, is what the sea has to teach. Simplicity - solitude - intermittency" (127)

Playing with Fire and Water

2011-11-14T15:08:00.000-08:00

Ocean eyes I can dive deeply into
Finding myself reflected back
Inside an obsidian center,
My gaze intersected by meridian blue
And the sound of the sea within
The nautilus maze of my ear.

I am writing by a stream,
Now, Dear, do you know?
Water rushes clear under ragged snow,
And over glistening mica sand.
I recall your heart flushing,
Equally alive, rising, falling,
Beneath my fully opened hand,
As I breathed the words in jest,
"Don't even play with fire."
Maybe what I meant in earnest was,
Let the flames burn faster, higher,
Lighter, brighter, not consuming us,
but renewing, lasting through us.

Thoughts and Feelings

2011-11-14T14:52:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was one of those floating dream days where every moment seemed inspired and as new as the light green shoots of grass passing up through the old ones. The hours were all that much more magical because I woke up not knowing or having planned a thing that would happen in them. The day could therefore become itself, created spontaneously. Malleably. Unfolding. I awoke in downtown Santa Fe seeing the sun strike through the line of wine glasses on the window ledge. By late morning, we are sitting in conversation and sunlight at a French cafe taking bites of delicious pear and mixed-berry claffouties - the namesake of the cafe. Later, still in sunlight, we are talking on the apartment patio, traffic and pedestrians pass by out of focus to me as I am wrapt up in communication - verbal and unspoken. An hour later, inside to use the restroom, he says: "Control is not real." I feel thats it exactly that I've been struggling how to bring to the surface. Yes, control is an illusion.

The conversation has built an energy, tangible almost.

Later, the sun is going down. Energy has been spent. I want to go for a walk before the beautiful day turns to night. How about going somewhere for a glass of wine? Soon we are walking to Maria's New Mexican Restaurant, a good walk that uses up the last of the daylight. I realize we have not eaten anything, but air and words, since the pastries this morning. During some point in the walk, he states: "There is no meaning." I am startled for a second, though I don't know if I show it. Then I realize what he means and that I have come to the same conclusion at one time or another. There is no meaning, but the meaning you create. I decided a long time ago that I love meaning and I love creating meaning out of everything that happens in my life. Everyone creates their own meaning. Or they don't. You will only have as much meaning in your life as you create out of it. This day has been so special partly because I have found so much meaning in the simplicity of it. We settle into a new conversation over pina coladas, enchiladas, tamales, chile rellenos.

After concluding the night with a witty, funny comedy, newly released and titled, "Arthur", I feel a tinge of sadness that the day is over, accompanied by a rush of gratitude. Bittersweet.

I remember another comment he made during the day, when we were outside still talking on the patio. He said, "Thoughts and feelings are the same thing." Do we think they are separate because we have been brought up thinking this way? A thought comes to me now, later, not in his company anymore, maybe thoughts and feelings are the same energies just at different stages of development...

I take a while to process and reflect. If I speak too soon about something, the thoughts will come out only partly formed. Writing always helps me with the development of feelings to thoughts and vice versa. Maybe that is one of the reasons why I write.

The challenge becomes to be moved

2011-11-14T14:17:00.000-08:00

Nature always moves me.

Walking.
Behind my house.
Up sand and scrub.
Through arroyos and gravel roads.
The sky at my back, stares dark grey,
weighted and waiting to spill.
But only a few sprinkles press my cheeks.
And I walk further still, alone,
than I ever have before.
Past even the lone gates
with security enforced signs.
The heavy slate sky arrests my breath,
I stop to take it in,
before I turn.

Transition to Winter

2011-11-08T19:25:00.000-08:00

Above: Snow Clouds in New Mexico

Transition. Life is a transition. Sometimes, I feel more like I'm in a transitory state, but even when I don't feel like I am, I still am. We are always transitioning from one stage to another. Right now, I seem to be pausing in my life and I am trying to wait patiently for knowledge of which way I am meant to turn next. Waiting can be uncomfortable because of the insecurity that uncertainty invites in all too easily.

I don't want to be waiting around wasting energy and creative opportunities. Life is too short. Once again, the best thing to do is take a deep breath and remain aware of the connection to Grace that is always there and to stay in that alignment as much as possible.

It is easy to get discouraged and to question oneself. To question one's abilities and talents of actually finding a sustainable career that one loves and that one can make a living from and still give back. I guess there comes a point to settle down and do that. Is that where I'm moving toward? I trust that I will find work which will allow and challenge me to use my gifts to create beauty in this world...

We can only be at where we are at.

Transition to Winter

2011-11-08T19:22:00.000-08:00

Transition. Life is a transition. Sometimes, I feel more like I'm in a transitory state, but even when I don't feel like I am, I still am. We are always transitioning from one stage to another. Right now, I seem to be pausing in my life and I am trying to wait patiently for knowledge of which way I am meant to turn next. Waiting can be uncomfortable because of the insecurity that uncertainty invites in all too easily.

I don't want to be waiting around wasting energy and creative opportunities. Life is too short. Once again, the best thing to do is take a deep breath and remain aware of the connection to Grace that is always there and to stay in that alignment as much as possible.

It is easy to get discouraged and to question oneself. To question one's abilities and talents of actually finding a sustainable career that one loves and that can make a living from and still give back. I guess there comes a point to settle down and do that. Is that where I'm moving toward? I trust that I will find work which will allow and challenge me to use my gifts to create beauty in this world...

We can only be at where we are at.

Notes from the week

2011-10-27T17:05:00.000-07:00

I went for a hike with James, Adam and Christina last weekend to the top of Pedernal, that flat-backed mountain portrayed in Georgia O'Keefe paintings. So, so beautiful! We camped out along the chama river the night before. In the morning, James and I woke up earlier than everyone else and visited Christ in the Desert Monastery, driving down the dirt road beside the river and the turning cottonwood trees under blue blue sky. We arrived in time to sit in on 20 minutes of the service, followed by silent meditation. I felt like it was exactly what I needed. We noticed a tarantula migrating on the road on the way back.

Poem from earlier in the week:

I'm back to staring at the yellow walls
that bite me if I touch them.
Release me from the halls
running from one end to the other.
Send me peace of mind
and surprises to discover.
I realize I am restless,
Consuming chips and chocolate.
Close those eyes and go to sleep,
Falling deep below the blips of thought,
The requests to know not what,
Into gratitude for the resting and the letting.

From 10/26:
I dreamt last night. I was fashioning little log float rafts for 20 people. We were going to head out across the ocean for the next 6 weeks. I hid my camera and belongings up in a palm tree. The place of departure was the same place in a dream a few months ago in which a tsunami slammed ashore and I held onto to a tree, underwater, submerged, until it passed.

I just finished the profoundly thought-provoking book, "Love is Stronger than Death" by Cynthia Bourgeault. Its an incredible account of conscious love and the bond that continues to develop beyond the grave. Here are just a few of the many memorable quotes:

"Hence, the core of all spiritual practice lies in teaching us not to identify with our psychological reactions to everything" (107)

"Dying to self...awakening to self: the two paths exist in creative tension within us" (134)

"Soul work with an authentic soul partner can be messy, untidy, frequently turbulent. The beloved holds a key possessed by no on else, which allows him or her to plunge deeper into the other's psychic realms than any other human being, to unlock dungeons that even the beloved cannot open alone" (138)

"True love demands sacrifice because true love is a transforming force and is really the birth pangs of union at a higher level" (147)

"The very intensity of the desire they have to give all to the other will become the bridge on which they cross from passion to compassion" (150)

"I want it because I think it helps him; he wants it because he thinks it helps me. After a while, who gives what or why doesn't matter anymore, only the giving itself matters" (172)

"Love remains and deepens, but its form changes...it renews itself in a different way. What you really do today is to put your lives in the service of love itself: to let the material of your own selves - your hopes and fears, imitations and shadows, your intimate jostling up against each other - become the friction that polishes you both to pure diamonds" (188 - marriage sermon)

"If the way is opening, keep on walking" (209)

I'm in.

2011-10-20T21:43:00.000-07:00

Today, I worked at the dressage stable, as I have now for the past month. As always, I enjoy being near the horses. The work fits perfectly for where I am right now, in transition. In the most peaceful, accepting beautiful transition through the unknown that I have ever experienced in my life. Gone is the doubt, anxiety, restlessness that seemed to be lurking behind closed closets of my mind. It took a lot of closet cleaning during this past summers' spiritual retreat to sweep out the uncertainty - or a lot of the future anxiousness anyway. I learned that as long as I maintain awareness and live my life in as conscious a connection to Source/God/Sprit as I can, all is well and will continue to be well.

Two months ago, I was in the midst of exploring Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. Now, I'm living in the best house in my favorite little city of Santa Fe, with the most amazing house mates. I'm working part-time with horses and part time with design. Eventually, the design work will grow, but I'm happily enjoying the free time right now.

Tonight, I went to a Santa Fe business/networking meeting with the owner of KLA Concepts whom I do some contract work for. I met a nice writer lady. As we were talking about poetry, she said, "Oh, there's a reading at Collected Works [bookstore] right now. Michael Dickman. Want to go?" I really did, so I headed over there with her and I'm glad I went. Now, as I often do after listening to someone pour out poetry aloud, I feel inspired to write in my journal.

Tonight, I caught up with my housemate, C. We joke that we always have a daily update. But we've missed the past few days, so we were so excited to see each other in the house at 7:30 pm, with no one else about, so we could catch up on life. Over the best bluebell ice-cream flavor of course: banana pudding, complete with vanilla wafers. A boy nicknamed her hot pants. I told her she should call him hot dish, since he is from Minnesota. Soon, there will be a hot dish/hot pants birthday party for him!

I myself am in love! For only the 2nd time in my life (the first time was a year and a half ago in Taiwan) It is the most beautiful feeling in the world, isn't it? I was completely unprepared to meet anyone I would fall in love with in Santa Fe. And now it is happening. Isn't that how it works?

My heart somersaulted when I got a text from him a few moments ago: "I am in love with you." Perhaps its that poetry reading that guides my response: "I'm in. I'm in love. I'm in love with you. You."

I am listening to Andrew Bird now. On this listen, for the first time, I realize how similar this band is to another of my favorites, Breathe Owl Breathe. All of my 4 house mates are home now, in the kitchen. I smell pizza. My room is cozy and warm from the space heater. I am overwhelmed with gratitude for life. This love I feel transcends all, wraps itself around my feet, making it easy to walk on clouds, on water, on parched earth, on dirty floors. I imagine the mist of it enveloping others - friends, strangers - and lifting them a little too. Someday, if I'm really lucky, I will feel this love for everyone.

Kindling

2011-10-12T07:28:00.000-07:00

Imagine, two hummingbirds,
Building a fire together,
Delicately selecting kindling
of straw and spider web
and horse hair, and those
nearly translucent aspen leaves,
creating that base,
attentively adding the logs,
the breath of their wing beats
igniting the flame,
that leaps, alighting, ahead
into ruby-throated blaze.

Slumber awake

2011-10-09T09:49:00.000-07:00

Cream curtains draped in light. Its morning. As I look closer, I notice tiny creases and window pane shadows on fabric. The curtain length lingers on the floor, too long to hang completely. I've woken up on a soft leather couch, quieter and warmer than usual, at my friend's house. We had a girl's slumber party, eating salad, cucumber sandwiches, cake, drinking ginger and watermelon elixirs prepared by Sarah, talking until 2am. No one else is awake. I cannot sleep later than 8:30. Not with the energizing sun streaming hello through blank slate curtains, as if saying today is open to possibilities and whims of the imagination, to hiking in the mountain magic of snow and aspens, to reading with tea near a fireplace, to taking some time for journaling, to talking to my sister.

The girls are up now, murmuring in a bedroom. The dogs too, barking playfully in the back yard. Already, so much joy in the day.

I woke up feeling officially settled back in to Santa Fe, a month after moving back. A cohesian of friends and social time, work and creative pursuits. Funny how it takes a while to develop that rhythm that determines the quality of fitting in a place, of belonging.

Fall Folliage (in the Northern Hemisphere)

2011-10-03T22:34:00.000-07:00

We hiked to Lake Katherine, by the Santa Fe Ski Basin and Baldy, on Sunday -14 miles total through turning aspen and warm sun. I had never been all the way to the lake before. After a picnic lunch at our destination, a few of us meditated on rocks, but unfortunately had to put up with intruders who did not respect the inherent silence of the space. Still, things were still, for the most part, in my mind and my heart felt awake.

A new friend and fellow hiker lent me the movie "Howl" starring James Franco as Allen Ginsberg. My housemates and I watched the film when I returned from the hike. Really, all I felt like doing after 8 hours of tramping (as New Zealanders say), was watching a movie and passing out. Howl, along with the mountain-climb, however, required me to write this poem before falling asleep:

Fall Foliage

Not to be dulled
But to be polished!
To reflect the gold
Of sunlight intersecting
Autumn aspen, to hold
Palms open, inviting.
To brush dust from
Hearts, brightening.
To notice a leaf,
Part from a tree,
Alight on air, hover,
Settle in front of me.
Not to be muted,
But to live life full-color!

Leaping in Dreams

2011-09-30T19:09:00.000-07:00

Last night, I dreamt. I awoke with the dream on my tongue. I was an observer of myself in the dream - as if I were being filmed inadvertently by a video camera. I could see half of my face in profile up close in the screen - like I was standing right beside the filmer. We were both watching the action unfold on a snow-capped peak before us. A spotted, shaggy mountain goat entered the screen and leapt from the cliff's edge! Why? Why? Why? It fell out of range of the camera as a snow leopard entered the shot. The leopard leapt after the goat, but realizing its peril, twisted in the air to land safely back on the ledge again licking its lips. No! I don't want this.

The scene rewound. This time I see the goat running and leaping, but, this time, the goat realized its predicament and twisted in the air to land safely back on the ledge again. The snow leopard leapt full-force after the goat and fell. The camera panned down to follow the leopard where it landed on all fours on a ledge far below, without injury.

The entire dream feels paused in my mind, surreal and realistic. The scene of the mountain definitely derives from the album cover, depicting a mountain, for a band called Painted Palms that will be couch surfing at my house tomorrow night. http://paintedpalms.bandcamp.com/

And, strangely, their ethereal music played in the background of this dream filled with snow leopards, mountains, goats and leaping into the abyss.

AIGA Webinar: Reinventing the Magazine Experience for the Digital Era

2011-09-30T18:55:00.000-07:00

With Callie Neylon, Colin Fleming, Lindsay Powell.

My Notes:

Digital Publishing. How does digital change books and the authorship process? From scroll to screen, the book is shedding its corpus. Digital is changing the process - making it more liberating and approachable. The shift to the new medium isn't scary, its just managing the workflow that is probably the biggest challenge.

Pre-artifact: writer + ideas + readers
Artifact: dynamic screens, maybe codex
Post-artifact: social media, global

You can now publish without the middleman - the publisher

Integrating, sharing + content. Not adding interactivity unless it enhances the story on another, more personal level. The new medium allows us to reach new audience members. Publishers really want to be on tablets.
- huge consideration about workflow
- also the opportunity to review how we do things!
- the conversation is now about what else do we add to headline + copy? Bringing the idea of User Experience. What is your communication about navigation of where your content is?
- All of these base design skills of telling the story need to be retained and translated to the new technology.

DPS - Digital Publishing Suite, using InDesign CS5.5 to design the layout. But with a single click, you can add video, movement, a slide show, cross-fades with no programming needed. Building these types of interactions is really easy in InDesign. Using the new DPS tools in InDesign creates beautiful, interactive digital publications! So Exciting!!

- designing a visual language with consistent icons for tapping and navigation, etc. The translation to digital is more tightly related to the horizontal spreads in a magazine. The ability to tell the story through motion as well!

InCopy is a sister application to InDesign, which allows editors to edit copy, but not the layout.

Tools: Image-sequence tool. There is a tool called folio builder in InDesign to build/construct layouts and assemble the files into folios for publishing digitally online. Go to AIGA website and look at resources for posts and writeup to questions from prior webinars to learn more of the tools/technology.

What is right now like?

2011-09-25T17:28:00.000-07:00

What is right now like?
The walls are yellow
Like lemon merengue pie.
The house sounds quiet,
Most room mates are camping.
My lips feel dry.
My throat seems scratchy,
as if tickled by grass.
My mom says to imagine
My throat coated by matted
Soft, green, enzyme-giving grass.
So I do, and I wash the image down
With honeyed chai rooibos tea.
Right now is peaceful.
I am right where I would like to be.
Right now is happening to me.

I Won't Find Myself When I'm Looking

2011-09-25T15:16:00.000-07:00

I won't find myself
when I'm looking for who I am.
My mind is not the place
from which to understand
what number represents me
on the enneagram.
When I pick my head up
When I become present again,
When I stop the search,
My self will be silently observing,
Lying still on a dock between water and sky,
The pylons locked down into earth for support.
The purple-fringed clouds passing by,
Bringing apple-smell and fall forth,
Soon darkness telling stars to light,
And owl calling some of me to flight,
While part of me is always resting, smiling,
On that dock, planted, between water and sky.

Inspire

2011-09-24T21:55:00.000-07:00

I went to an AIGA workshop this morning at the Santa Fe Complex. The topic was "Expiramentations in Typography"and it was a kind of photographic typographic scavenger hunt for letterforms around the rail yard area. Each of us had to look for and photograph the 3 letter forms, which we drew from a pile on the table, around town. Some of the replicas people found were surprisingly identical in font, color and composition. We shared everyone's around the table in conclusion.

In addition, we were asked to form a chosen word through photography. The project example given was writing the word orange with a bunches of oranges in the supermarket and photographing the result. As a group, we decided the word of our workshop would be "inspire". These assignments all sounded quite familiar to me and off I went feeling like I was doing my MFA coursework again. I found the letters inspire in shadows. Shadows of grass stalks and bike parts and fence posts. I could almost have done the entire word in bike parts and would have had there been time or if my piece had been for a bike company.

Afterwards, I migrated to a cafe with a few of the other participants. One woman I talked to a lot was from Northern Ireland, has operated a successful graphic design studio in London, sustains herself on design work in Santa Fe now and satisfies herself with sculpture and art work. It was great to talk to them all. We bounced around the idea of starting a design collaborative studio in Santa Fe. How necessary this is! And members could be any kind of designers, not just graphic designers. There are so many freelance designers in Santa Fe. It would be fantastic to share a space, maybe one of those modern lofts over on Second Street. We could all share ownership of the building and work stations, help each other out, bring clients in, collaborate on fitting projects, pass along work to others who would be better at it or when we were swamped. There would be a healthy competitiveness and motivation, but no possessiveness. I want to be involved in creating such a design co-op and I think it will happen! It would also allow designers to have a base to come and return to when they need to travel and recharge (me!). I don't know why, but I feel incredibly idealistic and full of ideas today. A chandelier suspended from the ceiling of the world.

Oh, and I found some awesome awesome shoes on sale today during my "inspire" search! There was a 70% off side-walk sale at "On Your Feet" and I could not resist Fly London shoes made in Portugal, regularly $163 on sale only for today for $52, and so comfortable and different! Look, see:

Two times to meet someone

2011-09-18T17:17:00.000-07:00

I went to a mix event for young professionals in Santa Fe this week. It took place in a train car with pizza for all. The rain started coming down hard outside. I didn't really meet anyone.

The next night, I went to an art reception at a young, contemporary gallery at the Eggman & Walrus. Immediately I made a new friend. The funny thing is, she was at the mix event the night before at the exact same time I was, but I did not see her there. We are going to meet again soon to share design portfolios and ideas. She's a graphic designer too and recently graduated from a diploma program in Vancouver BC, where I just visited and loved. Collaboration and inspiration and sharing will be good.

Today, I went for a solo hike. I started at the Borrego Trail up toward the Santa Fe ski basin. And went to the left to Bear Wallow. It was so beautiful walking along the creek. I decided to go on a loop. I assumed it would circle back around to where I started, but just to make sure I asked a nice couple and they confirmed my hope. So I continued. But somehow I missed the turn-off and found myself going back around the same circle where I ran into the same couple again. They recognized me from before and were heading the way I wanted to go now so I talked and walked with them the rest of the way back. I think I made another friend or interesting connection. The lady I walked with studied at RISD 20 years ago and she and her partner just moved to Santa Fe 8 months ago. She told me about her spiritual quest and the energy work that she does and how nature called her to it and time in massage therapy school helped her to not only see energy, but also set boundaries. When we got back to our cars, she gave me her business card. It reads "Intuitive Reader/Angel & Guide Portraits."

It took me two encounters to meet these two people. Interestingly they both represent my dual paths: design/career and the spiritual/life.

After hiking, I went to the cultural, art event happening at the rail yard park. I love how there is always something like this happening in Santa Fe for me to do. Up and coming artists presented innovative booths. I went to the Art See booth to get my free pass to see the last day of the current exhibition at Site Santa Fe. Biology/art-like hand-made flowers, mushrooms and other botanicals were pinned to black walls. From a distance, they reminded me of reindeer lichen on a rock; they also made me think of jelly fish in the depths of the sea or cells under a microscope.

I just picked up a c.d. C at my CAC internship this past summer gave me. Its been sitting on my shelf. And I just looked over and thought I should listen to it now so that's what I'm about to do. Its by a poet David Whyte and called "Finding Courage and Clarity through Poetry."

Today is another Monday...

2011-09-12T14:13:00.000-07:00

...and I am laying in the sun on some hay bales in the yard by the horno. Thinking, I do indeed feel called to do design work infused with poetry. I went for a long walk this morning, up behind the house. There is no one in that expanse, only scrub brush, sand, a random pile of ash where someone had a fire. There are markers to find my way: a line of rock and stumps, a barbed wire fence, a tattered, faded prayer flag stretched from one pinon tree to the next, a chain-link fence - downed in one part so I can pass over, a green, metal, pad-locked gate that I climb to reach the tarred road. Only a few cars pass me by the whole time on the main road. When I've walked down it far enough, I retrace my steps and follow the landmarks back home. I don't want to to get up from these hay bales in the sun. The sky is blue, the air crisp with an autumn breeze already. I'm enjoying the free time while I have it.

AIGA Santa Fe Design Lecture Series w/Justin Ahrens of Rule29

2011-09-12T13:59:00.000-07:00

Justin Ahrens of Rule29, 42 miles west of Chicago, speaking at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe Saturday, 9/10/11

My notes:

You can live anywhere and be great at being a creative

As creatives, we are aware of stores of our lives, whether we know it or not.

Importance of seeing the stories. There is something about your story and the way you grew up that you apply to your creative work.

How many of you think design can change the world? How many of you think you can change the world with design?

To See - to notice something you weren't looking for.
How do you keep that feeling of seeing something for the first time, of seeing things you weren't looking for, in your life?

Look back, when can you recall someone doing something that made you see differently?

In our career path, we all get to a point where we want to do something bigger. "I want to do something bigger, something more, there's got to be a way I can use my creative skills to make a difference"

Life in Abundance - organization in Africa Justin went to work with

Before we can act/do, we first have to see the world differently. To "be the change you wish to see in the world" (- Ghandi) we first have to see differently

* We can and NEED to help other see

Part of seeing and being open gives you opportunities. How design can change you and those around you. How can we do things that will feed our soul in our day to day work?

Design Matters. We are able to see things differently as creatives in terms of concepts and strategy.

Being thoughtful gives dignity. And dignity is often all the poor have left.

www.thisismynormal.com

"seeing" keeps you open to the unexpected.

Concept of story, seeing and doing things differently, how can we help tell the clients story differently and help them see their story differently?

Creatives have the ability to "see" into the future.

Practice PAUSING everyday to force yourself to get into the space of seeing something differently.

Blog: rock, paper, ink

Practice everyday, finding a partner and each taking a picture of something mundane to share with one another and step outside yourselves. Its about taking that time to see the things around you.

Don't ever stop having FUN!

www.everybodyshouldjust.com

Inniative: stories matter...go out into your community and find a story, this helps you to become a better story teller. Under 5 min. story.

Justin shares a story/video clip of an artist named Wendy. She talks about art and about loosing her sight to retinitus pigmentosis. This is the same disease my dad suffers from.

The Give Inniative

Not just seeing with your eyes, but with your heart! Every day goal of seeing differently and pausing. Ask your self, have you done this, daily. You should have a personal project to express your own creativity.

Threadless - T-Shirt Co. in Chicago

Don't forget, you are awesome! (seriously!)

[I want to do something big. What does big mean to me though? Big can be small. Doing the small things with an open heart is huge! Big comes from the simplest things so much of the time.]

Sometimes its the really small adjustments that bring everything in line. Its the minor.

A year from now, if you actually do all this, you will be different. You're design will be different.

Albuquerque Rescue Mission - mentioned by audience member

You can't own all of what needs to be changed in the world, all of the tragedy. Incremental processing

Part 2: Where Life and Creativity Meet

Designers are traditionally really bad business people. Do you remember what got you into design? into creativity? [for me, writing poetry and being the author/illustrator/creator of little books in k-5, I still have a lot of those]

Remember what you dream about.
work hard and have fun! make out, laugh, dance.
Make lists, set criteria. Write pros/cons of things you're struggling with. You need to create space for yourself to listen. What really matters to you? When you're naked, its hard to hide who you are. Be that transparent with the things in your life you really want or with the things in your life that aren't working. Be honest. Are you in your work?

How can you be more you?

www.speakhuman.com
blog - speak human

WISDOM
Have a group of counselors
Get life perspective
Learn, network, reciprocate
Have quarterly updates of where you are with your goals

Who is on your personal list of advisors?

Make specific criteria
Open yourself to your advisors to give you advice.

Read book: Linchpin by Seth Godings
www.sethgodin.com

DECISIONS
Have a set of rules you stick to and make decisions based on. Have some criteria at the start so you don't go where you shouldn't

From a prof. standpoint, Justin's 3 criteria for taking work:
1) Will it be profitable?
2) Will it be fun?
3) Will it attract other work?

Has to fit at least two of those criteria for Justin to take the project.

[define profitable. In monetary terms, experience doing something in my field, learning, establishing relationship, gaining experience]

Check out 37 Signals
www.37signals.com/rework

BALANCE
Balance is a state of mind; its your perspective

What guides you? Professionally? Personally? Are you living that life to honor those things?

Balance is unique for each person.

Make choices. Maybe you're going to make a little less $ for a little while. We can have fun and love what we do.

Book: Love Both Ways
www.debbiemilman.com

SERVING
"Sometimes we just don't know what we are trying to change" - Stuart Wilde

Take time to become a student of yourself.

You want to gain a new perspective? Take time to interact with someone different than you. You have to constantly change your mind about things. Experience new things. Sometimes, you think you know what you want and that you have it all figured out. Get out of your comfort zone.

If it is something that interests you, chances are it is good to do.

What do you want to change? If you could change anything in the world, what would it be?

Donald Miller, book: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

Start when you get home!

Just be you!

When do you think you became a designer?

Book by Justin Ahrens: Life Kerning

* For us to be EVOLVING, we need to be PURPOSEFUL.

The community part of AIGA is magic. If you have true passion for what you are doing, things will work out in the end.

Oregon, the end of the trail...for now.

2011-09-09T20:35:00.000-07:00

Where I left off: with my friend, Kat at the crumpet shop in Seattle! Yes, well, after delicious crumpets (I tried the Vermont maple butter with walnuts and ricotta and Kat ordered the orange marmalade with blue cheese), Kat left for work, so I explored Ballard - the neighborhood in Seattle where she lives. Its such a cool place! I walked down to the Locks to see the fish and the 100-year-old gates that open and shut to moderate water levels for boats to pass. That first night, Kat and I caught up over Vietnamese food. It was wonderful to see her again after eight years! As she said, "it is amazing when you can meet someone after not seeing them for a very long time, and you don't miss a beat." With Kat, as with Diana, I could talk about and feel understood/listened to regarding spiritual conversations.

The next day, Kat and I went to the Wallace Creek Falls area, about an hour from Seattle for a hike. The waterfall reward at the top looked magical in the misty rain. I'm sad for such a short trip in WA, but my amtrak train to Portland awaited and Kat dropped me off there.

My friend Freddie, who I met 3 years ago in Santa Fe, met me at the Portland Amtrak station and right away took me to see the views for happy hour at the Portland City Grill. Afterwards, we migrated to Huber's for Spanish coffee. Yum. Freddie always knows where to go. The entire time with him, I was treated to a different kind of lifestyle, that I wouldn't necessarily want, but that I can definitely appreciate and enjoy. Its always good to be with company that works hard and plays hard, doesn't get bored, and knows how to share their good fortune. We certainly covered a lot of ground in a couple of days since Freddie was off for the most part from his job at Intel.

One day, we went on a tour of all the falls. The area hosts the biggest concentration of waterfalls in the world, including the famous Multnomah Falls. So the bright and sunny day consisted of cruising the gorgeous winding, landscaped roads, stopping to hike a short ways to a fall, and then driving a little ways to the next one, maybe stopping to sample some shilled white wine. I think we saw 6-7 falls in total, yet the day did not feel rushed at all.

We made it back to Portland in time to watch a free Portland Symphony Orchestra concert on the waterfront, complete with canon fire and fireworks. But this is not all! After the music ended, we went on to the Hawthorne Theater, where Freddie had planned for us to see a Burlesque show. I had somehow never seen one before, and probably wouldn't have chosen to see one. But this is the thing about traveling and knowing so many different people, you get a glimpse into their taste and get to see things you would not normally. The Burlesque show was highly entertaining and full of talent. And then, after this, we met up with a few of Freddie's friends at a nearby bar before calling that the end of my first FULL day in Portland. I thought I have a tendency to pack things in, but Freddie more than matches me. And after my internship this summer, I don't think I have such a tendency to do that packing in on my own any more. Doing a lot is great fun for a sprint, but not a long-distance time-frame.

The next day, Freddie took me to the Oregon coast! It is filled with such amazing rock formations! I felt like I was in New Zealand again, around the Haystack rock area. Even thought the day was sunny, the wind on the coast blew very cold, yet we walked along the sand of Cannon Beach for about 45 minutes. That seaside walk was one of the nicest parts of the day. Then, we went on to the very touristy town of Seaside, and then on to Astoria, where one of my favorite movies was filmed - The Goonies. Here, I also got to climb 164 steps to the top of a tower to view the amazing vista of sea, land and bridges. I loved being near the ocean, soaking up the sun, salt, spray. My fix until I leave New Mexico again.

That night, we went to a couchsurfing meet up at The Kennedy School. This venue is a large, prep-type school buidling that a local brewery has turned into a series of restaurants and bars within the existing classrooms. There's a boiler room bar, a detention room bar, a soaking pool, a room for smoking pipes. I met some really awesome, friendly couchsurfers. Everyone in Portland seems to want to be your friend. Its one of the easiest places to start a conversation. Here, it seems like people have no fear of saying their thoughts aloud for a stranger to engage with if they want.

The next morning I said good bye to Freddie and many thanks! I spent some time at the Portland Saturday Market. And had to make a stop at the famous Voodoo doughnuts, just to see and sample the novelty of their doughnuts, which in all truth, taste just like any other doughnuts. The difference is in the presentation and creativity of such things as fruitloop and oreo cookie covered doughnuts or maple bacon. Still, the best taste-wise doughnut place I have ever been to is in the Mission District of San Francisco.

Then, I took a bus to my friend E's house in the Alberta St. neighborhood. I met E. last fall at a Glitter party in Santa Fe. He's from Portland and has since moved back after attending St. John's College in Santa Fe. It was good to see him happy in his home turf and experience a glimpse into a complete opposite lifestyle from Freddie's. All of E's room mates were at Burning Man, so E invited me along to a Burning Man celebration party at one of his friend's houses. His friend's name was "The Craw".

Before, I embarked on this unknown adventure however, I wandered about the up and coming Alberta St. district while E ran some errands (and yes, his real name is E). This was a cool area with great shops and good places to eat. I happily found a pair of black leather, waterproof and insulated winter boots made in Canada for $20! I've been searching for some for so long and at every Buffalo Exchange I've been to in the Pacific Northwest, so one mission accomplished on Alberta St. I wandered into one of the best icecream places I've ever been too, both presentation-wise (old-fashioned style) and taste (I ordered one scoop of strawberry honey balsamic and one scoop of salted vanilla with strands of home-made caramel!).

Okay, now on to the Burning Man party. I had already decided to take a cab back when I was ready to go, but luckily I ended up being able to catch a ride with someone else leaving early at 1am since my flight was leaving the next morning. We arrived early at the party at 8:30 for some reason. Soon people started coming in in costume. E lent me his shiny silver pants, which fit surprisingly well, and someone else lent me their bunny ears, I wore my magenta shirt, my new black boots and one of E's belts. I would have been much more dressed up had I had my own stuff. Unfortunately about an hour in, a girl kindly told me my pants were ripped! so I changed into an extra pair of shorts and apologetically told E. He relieved my guilt by telling me that the pants had already previously been ripped by him, so it was just the poor patching coming undone! Anyway, at about 9:30, we all watched the burning taking place live on the giant projector in the living room basement. It was cool to see, since I'd heard so much about burning man and have been tempted to go for the experience, but had never actually seen any live footage. It was also interesting to be there watching the streaming with so many people who have been there multiple times and who have multiple friends there this time around.

After the finale, everyone kind of migrated to the back yard where a bunch of talented individuals were slinging and performing with balls of fire. I enjoyed some interesting conversations and then left before the craziness really began. I got a great night sleep and was surprised to see E walk in the door at 7:30am when I was trying to meditate. He gave me a ride to the airport and filled me in on the expected late-night happenings. So I got to the airport with someone who had not slept for 20 hours and that was my exit from Portland, as crazy as it began.

But all went well, other than my 4.5 year old macbook pro finally deciding to die on the plane ride home, and now I'm back in Santa Fe believe it or not with the intention of simplifying things, twice-daily meditation, and trusting that all will be well, listening, going through the doors that open to me and not banging on the ones that close.

I went to the Santa Fe burning man last night, called Zozobra. This event way precedes the Burning Man people think of today, as it has been a Santa Fe tradition for 89 years! I sent out my glooms to leave behind and set my intentions for this fourth return to Santa Fe.

Being in Vancouver, Bellingham and Seattle

2011-08-30T19:57:00.000-07:00

Today, I am in Ballard, a funky, residential neighborhood of Seattle which feels a little more like Bellingham and Fairhaven. I'm staying with Kat, a friend from my first year and a half at Lake Erie College in Ohio who I met when I was still studying Equine Science. I haven't seen Kat since 2003. We both ended up switching our careers from equine science because neither of us were feeling fulfilled with that as a calling. Now, Kat is in the Physician's Assistant field and I'm in the creative field. We have both done a great amount of traveling and exploring since 2003. Kat is headed to a month in Nepal soon.

It is funny how I can look back at 2003/2004 and see one of those important crossroads that changed my life and made it what it is today. I'm so grateful not only that the foresight came to me to transfer to College of the Atlantic that year, but that I was aware enough to listen and follow that direction. Now I feel like I'm in a real discerning/cross roads place again where possibly another big shift in direction could happen in 2012, 8 years later!

It is interesting to be traveling during this period. I'm very happy I decided to complete/continue this trip I started, even though I had second thoughts about its being excessive. I had an amazing time seeing Vancouver. When I arrived at my first couchsurfer's (her name is Katie) place right near the ocean, we immediately headed out to a BBQ at one of her friend's houses. I rode her bike with her cat in a crate on the back and she rollerbladed in front of me. I had so much fun biking for 40 minutes at night in Vancouver. The BBQ was low-key. Two of Katie's friends were from Taiwan and the 3rd was married to one of the others so our dinner conversation focused on our shared love of traveling through that awesome country.

The next day, Katie took me paddle-boarding in the bay for 3 hours! What a blast! Perfect blue skies, passing by tourism, but not getting sucked into it, getting super exercise and all for free because Katie had access to the paddle-boards through her job.

Katie worked the next day, so I explored Vancouver on my own. I walked about 6 hours all the way from her house near Kit's Beach, up the coast to UBC and back. Then, after saying thanks and bye to Katie, I hopped on a bus and headed to my new couchsurfer's in a different part of town near Nanaimo and Broadway. This couchsurfer, Christina, was so cool and welcoming. She was dressed in all different colors, sparkles and funky hair things getting ready to go to a show. We had time before she left for a great home-cooked dinner together in her back yard over interesting conversation.

While Christina worked the following day, I took her advice and passed quickly through downtown to spend the majority of the afternoon in Stanley Park amid tall mossy trees, sunlight, lily pad ponds and random sculptures with ninja-like black squirrels and sedate Canadian Geese.

My brother and his girlfriend, Lauren, drove up from their home in Bellingham to meet me and Christina for a dinner of sushi and gelato in a park. Then I gave my thanks and goodbyes to Christina and headed off with Joe and Lauren to find a camping spot in the Canadian Rockies for the night. Of course it was Friday and everything was booked! Somehow, we ended up down a logging trail trying to follow directions to a campsite. We stumbled across a modern university campus in the middle of the woods before re-entering the logging road. To our delight, we found a trailhead pull-off with a side trail that dead-ended with a flat mountain top where we set up camp for the night. It was so perfect the way that worked out and we avoided a crowded RV infested public campground and stayed somewhere for free waking up to quiet and a snow-peaked mountain view.

For some reason, my brother was in an unsociable mood the next day. Lauren and I ended up hanging out and talking a lot, determined to enjoy the beauty surrounding us nonetheless. We all went for a couple-hour hike on Four Lakes Trail around Alice Lake and went swimming briefly in the cool water. We stopped by the free Lynn Canyon Suspension Bridge on the drive back to Bellingham. Lauren and I picked up some food for the grill and made a really good meal at the appt. That, and watching Pineapple Express cheered my brother up. Lauren went out for an hour to see a great little Bellingham band, The Librarians, play at a The Wine Bar in downtown before calling it a night.

In the morning, Lauren made delicious blueberry pancakes and Joe applied his genius to helping me wish some computer problems, which was incredibly nice of him. Lauren and I went thrift-store roaming for a little bit then all 3 of us had a relaxing, lovely lunch in the sunshine at a cafe in Fairhaven before I had to leave for my bus to Seattle. I wish I could have stayed longer! But my friend, Diana, who I went to school with at College of the Atlantic, was expecting me.

And it was great to see Diana again, and again, I wish I could have stayed with her longer. She made a flavorful Indian meal for us when I arrived and we talked for a while. She recently got back from seeing her family in India. In the morning, we went to my favorite place for breakfast, The Crumpet Shop. I had a nice day walking around Pike's Place Market and the sculpture garden while she worked. We got to go to a restorative free yoga class in her appt. building gym in the evening. Then the yoga teacher brought us to a Kirtan assembly at an amazing community house in the Columbia City neighborhood. We stayed at the Kirtan for 2 hours and it was a very spiritual yet intense singing/prayer experience with a group of people who were extremely bonded already. I am grateful to have shared a window into such a community again, having just left a very bonded yet very different spiritual community myself. I could feel the same sort of intentional energy to "be who we really are" in this group as well and I could feel the experience helping to keep my own candle burning. It was a necessary match.

Alaska Travel Poem

2011-08-29T11:54:00.000-07:00

When you are traveling, what it is
to delight in the little things,
the sight of a familiar blue mail box
to send your postcards out,
the fireweed flower covered in dew,
the lost match to your smartsocks,
attached by static to your t-shirt,
the moose in the heart of the median
paying no attention to you,
the unknown couchsurfer saying kindly
to make yourself at home,
the gift to be awake, to roam freely,
to stand at Denali, the "Great One"
realizing the transience of Autumn land,
the rolling reds, greens and golds,
the unfolding grey to sun skies,
and all of it encompassed in your eyes.

Alaska - Aug. 14-23

2011-08-24T20:55:00.001-07:00

Day 0:

Sitting in a park in Denver. I’ve migrated here from the airport during a time lapse before Alaska. It is hot and humid feeling. I couldn’t resist gelato. I took a nap in the park because I was so tired. My clothes still smell like New Mexico rain from hanging on the line my last night at Stillpoint with the other interns.

I notice a difference in myself after this internship. Most notably, I am grounded and I am more consistently conscious of the personal and often humorous connection I have with God. Again, my desire is to experience life with joy, gratitude, energy and freshness. My passion is mixing elements up in delicious, unexpected interactions – whether with words, images, clothing and jewelry, or groups of people. My calling is to create beauty in this world.

“From these texts we see that in meditation we should not look for a “method” or “system” but cultivate an “attitude” an “outlook” : faith, openness, attention, reverence, expectation, supplication, trust, joy.” (Thomas Merton: Contemplative Prayer, pg 34).

I said goodbye to Stillpoint this morning and the interns. Very sad. Theresa drove me to the ABQ airport where I caught a $56 flight to Denver with Southwest Airlines. My flight leaves for Alaska at 10pm.

Day 1:

Looking back on day 9 at my time in Alaska, the time was well spent and flew by. My flight arrived at 1:30a.m. in Anchorage. For the first 6 days, I stayed at Erin’s brother David’s house with Erin and Morgan. Erin is from Alaska, but I met her in Santa Fe through a Craigslist roommate search 2 years ago. Morgan is from Minnesota, but lives in Missoula, Montana now and I met her in Santa Fe 2 years ago through another friend who has since moved away.

Not much happened the first day in Alaska except a trip to REI where I met a cashier from Taos, NM. And dinner at a Korean restaurant with Erin and Morgan, Erin’s twin brothers, Doug and David, David’s wife Heidi, and their friend Dayyon. Doug treated us all to dinner. I went for a long walk in the morning around their neighborhood and along a bog trail by myself, which gave me the contemplative time I needed.

Day 2:

We began the day at the locally owned Kaladi Bros. Coffee for breakfast. Doug, David, Dayyon, Morgan, Erin and I drove to Hatcher’s pass and an abandoned gold mining town. The land here is incredible. It reminds me of the South Island of New Zealand. We lucked out with a sunny day. We went climbing up a mountain past glacier-blue lakes. We drove back the Willow, Alaska route, the small Parish town where Erin grew up in. This road also took us past Wasilla, where Sarah Palin was Mayor. Wasilla could be a beautiful lake-side mountain town, but instead it is a strip-mall filled sprawl, which Erin calls the armpit of Alaska. When we arrived back in Anchorage, David made us all delicious cheeseburgers on the grill.

Day 3:

We drove to Whittier. On the way, we stopped at the gorgeous resort town of Girdwood. We spent some time admiring the elegant artwork and details of the Seven Glaciers Hotel. We stopped at the Bake Shop for lunch and we all ordered the soup of the day: African Nut. I took a photo of the ingredients so I can make my own version later. The entrance to the Bake Shop is covered with colorful potted and hanging flowers of all kinds, jeweled with raindrops and framing the glacier-filled mountains rising behind.

To get to Whittier we drove through possibly the world’s longest mountain tunnel to emerge in a depressing, grey town docked with gigantic cruise ships. 2 residential, communist-style buildings stood in town. One was grey, haunted-looking and abandoned. The other was tan, haunted-looking, and lived in. We were told some people have not come out of this building in years. What kind of life are they living?

We were on a time frame to get back to Anchorage for dinner at Heidi’s mom Penny’s house. We were in for a treat! Erin calls Penny the best cook in Alaska and I can see why. Penny started us with smoked Alaskan salmon, capers, green grapes, cucumbers soaked in vinegar (not quite pickles) and bread dipped in garlic olive oil. And all sorts of drinks. Morgan and I shared the best blueberry beer and all the girls also had highly drinkable moscato desert wine. Next came fried clams! Delicious! Then the main course of Alaska king crab, sweet corn on the cob, marinated and grilled mushrooms, peppers, broccoli and cubed rosemary tenderized beef. Penny is also one of the most entertaining and funny hosts. We were all so happy, well-fed and content at her house and the dinner was a highlight of the trip.

Day 4:

The girls get the beamer! David was kind enough to lend his to us for our drive to Seward. The drive was stunning, following the ocean most of the way. Around the first curve of the bay we stopped to take in a pod of beluga whales breaking the waves close to shore!

In Seward, the rain drizzled and the sky remained grey, but the town was still pretty, quaint and artsy. I did my morning sit (meditation) in the car while Erin and Morgan toured the Sealife Center. I decided I did not need to spend money on a Sealife Center when I recently saw an incredible one in Taiwan that will probably satisfy me until/unless I have children! We split amazing, fresh halibut for lunch. I would love to return to Seward sometime in the sun! On the way back, we stopped for Morgan and I to hike in to Exit Glacier and back. My only other time touching a glacier was in New Zealand. The walk in was great and I saw a little red-backed vole scurrying around. He was too fast for the camera. Could have stayed here a lot longer, but we were on a time constraint of sorts. When we got to Anchorage, Dayyon was just pulling delicious home-made pizza out of the oven; he is a great cook!

Day 5:

Erin, Morgan and I took the old spare car to Birchwood, only 15 minutes from Anchorage, where Erin’s childhood Methodist church camp is located. Her two friends, Steven and Marie, run it. Marie grew up in Glorieta, NM and Steven is from Georgia; Erin helped get them their Methodist camp job in Alaska about the same time they helped her get the Methodist church job that brought her to Santa Fe! Morgan and I canoed on the lake while Erin caught up with her friends. We saw Pacific loons and a lake meadow of lily pads. Pacific loons sound and look different than the common loon I grew up seeing in Maine. They are grey and have more of a call than a haunting cry.

After Birchwood, we went shopping and wandering about downtown Anchorage. First things first, we ordered reindeer dogs from the best street vendor on 4^th st. near the Federal Building. We went to Octopus Ink, which has some of the neatest printed organic apparel. I could not pass up a skirt (which doubles as a dress) with 2 Native-design-inspired puffins silk-screened on the bottom. We also found a store which sells the growing “ak starfish” label. Too bad they print on American Apparel gear. They did however have very beautiful designs and some of the most comfortable yoga pants (with all the yoga I do, I’ve never bought any real yoga pants) so I bought some and a hooded long-sleeve tee with a pink raven on it.

Friday night happened to be girls night! Heidi, Morgan, Erin and I made our way to Crush – superbly recommended by Heidi who knew the great waiter at our table. We each ordered a “flight” 3 samples of wine. We each got a different flight: I ordered the most Malbec-like one; Morgan got a dryer red; Erin the Riesling and Heidi the Rose. This was the only splurge meal for me and I got truffled white bean dip followed by the best spinach, sun-dried tomato polenta followed by shared rum-raisin bread pudding. Actually it was all pretty reasonable and so worth it for the fun, laughter-filled, light-hearted silliness that followed us to bed.

Day 6:

What brought me joy this morning? Going for a walk by myself before everyone else was up despite the rain, eating Alaskan raspberries on the trail, coming across a bunny farm – looked like there were chickens running around the yard until I got closer and realized they were rabbits, remembering Stillpoint and coming back into presence multiple times during the walk when my thoughts strayed. We slept in! So did the boys who recovering from a Bachelor party (the wedding was coming up Sunday). Heidi, Morgan and I went to the weekend downtown market. The market was fantastically filled with all sorts of culturally diverse food stalls including Korean, Russian, Polish, Japanese, Italian, etc. I met a very nice young artist who paints funky designs on wooden panel necklaces. Seeing all the entrepreneurial artists in Anchorage has me tossing around my own future endeavor. Its wonderful how well printed apparel and recycled/found object art sells.

We stopped in Snow City Café for lunch – Heidi’s suggestion, but I was not hungry and only ordered a salad. Snow City is a cool and hopping café. The wait would have been an hour if Heidi hadn’t called in our reservation. According to Erin, many businesses in Anchorage that were small beginnings when she was little have greatly expanded by 2011.

Heidi and Erin dropped Morgan and I off at the airport to pick up our rental car, a very cute silver Nissan Versa and the two of us were off two Denali. On the way we took a short detour to Talkeetna, a pretty arsty town. So much good food! What to choose? We opted for the Heidi-recommended West Rib pub, home of the famous 4 lb. burger eating challenge of which we did not partake. We both ordered a cup of seafood chowder. Morgan got ceviche and I got a schooner (half a pint-size) of Alaskan Nut Brown, very very good!

We camped in Denali State Park at Byer’s Lake Campground, $5/night each. After setting up the tent, I took a nice solo walk around the lake and meditated on a tree stump. Funnily enough I heard someone singing and there was Morgan coming in the opp. Direction. She didn’t see me so I gave her a fright by accident! A beaver slapped its tail at me, ptarmigans froze silently thinking I couldn’t see them, a grieb propelled itself across the water, and a squirrel carried a mushroom like a bone in its mouth. A hairless patch of skin adorned its back, perhaps caught by a close-encounter with a carnivore. It felt so good to be out in the wilderness! We had a nice picnic dinner in the tent before sleeping.

Day 7:

Morgan and I stretched the wet tent out in the backseat to let it dry. Then we continued into Denali National Park stopping at the Visitor Center to recharge our electronics. Morgan found a great 10-mile hike with a view – Mt. Healy Look-out. Happily the sun came out more and more throughout the day, making it my 2^nd sunny day in Alaska. We ended up splitting off for the hike to go at our own paces. I needed the quiet time and it was great! The colors were changing all over – reds, oranges and golds. Meditating on a rock off the beaten path, I was still interrupted by several chatty travelers. I do miss the quiet chapel at Stillpoint and sitting with a group of like-minded people, but I know this will come back into my life sometime soon when I’m settled again. Its funny how I don’t really feel the need to be traveling right now. I’ve never had that feeling before!

Morgan and I met up back at the car for our 15 mile drive into Denali – as far as personal cars are allowed to go (without a limited lottery ticket); the other option to go further is an expensive guided bus tour. This is a great strategy for preserving the wilderness and our 15 mile trip deeper was all we needed. For 15 minutes we got to watch a 3-legged grizzly bear eating blueberries, drinking from a stream, scratching its back and seemingly posing for the cameras.

As we drove further, just as Morgan finished uttering the sentence, “Now all I really want to see is a sheep and a moose!” I saw a moose on the side of the road and yelled my discovery to Morgan who saw it too just before it disappeared. That was so funny! Then, about 5 minutes later on our return drive, we came across a gigantic bull moose out in the tundra. We stopped to watch him eat for 10 minutes. We were so excited to be presented with such a finale to our Denali experience!

The drive back was filled with sunlight through clouds and lots of drunk black spruce tree and red tundra photos. The land in Denali (Denali means “Great One”) feels very sacred. I was more aware of my connection to source here. From that solo hike onwards, my mind and outlook shifted and emptied and I didn’t think about anything on the ride back, just tuning out the static radio, my congested sinuses, the engine, the anciness of sitting in the car. Let things take care of themselves. Do not be stressed by the little things – those are the most dangerous, stress-inducing things to worry about Morgan told me – things like paying your bills or arriving to dinner on time or whether the couchsurfer you are staying with would still let you in over an hour past your expected time.

Our couchsurfer Edra had lost her phone over the weekend so we had no way of reaching her except via email. When I found her address, no one answered the door. I saw no lights on, so I left a note saying we’d gone to find internet access to see if she’d written us anything and we’d be back to check in an hour. It was 9:30 p.m. I knew it would be alright though; Morgan and I could car camp if it came to that. Luckily, Edra lived right downtown around 12^th Ave. and F street, but all the coffee shops and malls were closed on Sunday night. Then we found a bar named Bernie’s with free wireless. I logged in and saw that Edra had found the note and written that we were at the right location, but that her door was in the back of the house! So, we went back and she let us in. We talked for a little bit and then went to bed, Morgan and I in our own room sharing an air mattress! It was quite possibly the quietest central city location I have ever stayed in.

Day 8:

Morgan left before I even got up to fly out and return the car. I slept in, caught up on journaling, emails, postcards, future travel arrangements, job searching. I have a few interviews lined up for when I return to Santa Fe, so I am sure something will work out. It is both scary and exciting to be traveling without a job, to be trusting all will be well, challenging and rewarding to find myself staying in the moment. The Italian traveler who started talking to me during my mountain meditation in Denali said that you have to enjoy every good travel moment when it is happening. He has to head back to a job it doesn’t sound like he enjoys and he has had 13 days of being in the moment in Alaska.

Edra woke up not feeling well and she slept most of the day, so I did not get to know her very well. I walked around her very pretty neighborhood and then along an Oceanside pathway for 2 hours, then around downtown getting some more gifts for people. Everyone seems so friendly and cheerful in Anchorage. I walked back to the apt, which Edra left unlocked for me. I took a wonderful nap in the rain – something I miss doing back in sunny New Mexico. Then I took another small walk around the neighborhood to mail my postcards before going back to my now private room to meditate. I felt some nostalgia, missing the other interns and the spiritual conversations to come home to, which happened every day during the summer. I read some of Thomas Merton’s “Contemplative Prayer” book and wrote to all the other interns, right after Michael wrote to us. So more than one of us was thinking/missing the others at the same time! I miss them all so much!

Day 9:

I woke up early and took a short walk in the rain. I wrote a thank you note to Edra and left her an assortment pack of Numi teas fittinely titled, “Endless Journies” Then I walked seven minutes to the People Mover bus station to catch the #7 to the airport. I only had a $5 bill and the fare was $1.75. The driver kindly pulled out his walled and gave me change!

In half an hour I was at the airport. I bought a few more postcards there and sat writing them. The store owner said she would mail them for me since otherwise I would have to go through security again to mail them from the airport post office. Have I mentioned people are nice in Alaska? My flight Vancouver via Seattle is on time. I wouldn’t be on it without the free flight I got to Alaska by signing up for the Alaskan Airlines credit card. It has been a beautiful journey around some of this vast, 1959-founded state. Next time I come, I think I’d like to take a road trip through the Yukon in the NW territories of Canada, see Nahanni Nat. Park, and go to south Eastern Alaska, the small islands off the coast and Juneau. I could happily go back to Santa Fe now. I don’t need to do any more traveling right now, but my flights are booked and have since gone way up to change them. So off I go to Vancouver, Seattle, Bellingham and Portland. I’ll just try to keep the rest of my trip as simple and contemplative and nature-oriented as possible. I booked all this before my spiritual internship this summer, before my time in Guatemala, before my Europe trip when I was, I think, a person with a different outlook. I am looking forward to a settled time in Santa Fe this fall. Nonetheless, I am grateful for this time to travel and curious to see what will unfold in it.

Communion with a Spider

2011-08-15T19:08:00.000-07:00

Hello, scary, quick spider
suspended on your web
above the running water
laying lines of entrapment.
Your spun creation is beautiful,
strung with prism bead droplets.
I watch you catch a little creature,
and wrap it up with spindly legs.
You have a magical, transient space
to live and work,
and you are.

Smooth, alive cracking water,
moths and dragonflies
of irredescent blue and creamy white
pass by your table.
When I met you,
you were hungry.
In this moment,
you are satisfied.
You do not wonder
who you are.

I am, every moment,
the potential for being
all that I am.
I am a creator also,
and it is my work to spin
such a shimmery connection,
to be hungry,
to be satisfied,
to build the web back up
when wind and water
sweep it away.

My job is to be the
weaver of the net,
the connector of the dots,
not the one caught,
but the one waiting,
listening, with stillness,
in the center.

Bill Plotkin/Richard Rohr talk on "Nature and the Human Soul"

2011-08-07T18:24:00.000-07:00

I attended this webcast in person in Albuquerque. 11 countries and many states were also watching. This has probably been my favorite talk of the whole internship. The nature and pycho-spiritual direction fascinates me and resonates. Nature has always been one of my deepest teachers, as it is to many.

Here are my notes from the talk:

Bill Plotkin speaking first:
There are nine initiations in life. The first is birth and the last is death.

Healthy cultures provide iniatory processes and rights of passage.

What is a true adult? A person who experiences him/herself as a member of the earth community, of the more than human world, who has gotten to the point in their life where they experience themselves as this member in almost every moment of every day. A true adult is also someone who has had a revelation of their unique place, through a mystical experience, in more than the human world. The third part of being a true adult means acting on that unique place and carrying that gift they are born with to the community.

How do we get there?

- we need a healthy culture. Just as a young elk need a healthy elk culture to succeed and become an adult elk. The need for culture is true of all mammals and birds to become healthy adults. For the other 98% of life on earth, a culture is not necessary. A caterpillar will become a beautiful butterfly without needing to learn how from a butterfly culture. We on the other hand need a culture to weave a phycho-spiritual cocoon for us to emerge from as an adult.

Only 10% of humans in contemporary western culture actually reach true adulthood. And those who do reach it are often in some sub or counter culture.

How do we weave a cocoon? (that works for contemporary western culture)

The way is embedded in our psyches. Healthy, evolved elders are needed to help children/youth grow into healthy adults.

It is about applying yourself to the stages of life between the rights of passage. Rights of passage 1) celebrates what is happening 2) lets the rest of the community know what is happening and that they will be called upon to support the young person who has had to let a part of him/herself die to pass to the next stage. 3) orients the iniator into what this new stage of their life will be like.

The rights of passage itself does not create change, it celebrates the change that has already happened.

Initiation 1) ends with a passage or transition 2) must go through some process before your being shifts 3) process is several months at the least and usually several years (the diagram of it looks like a ball of yarn not a straight line)

The initiation of the iniatory process is called inception. Types of initiation can be social changes such as going from single to married or the types can be psycho-spiritual changes such as child to adolescent through puberty because their entire world changes consciousness and their way of being in the world has shifted.

No process, no passage.

Most people only go through 4 of the 9 passages in life (including birth and death). Only birth is an age-dependent passage.

1) Birth is the first passage of course.

2) Naming. Naming is when a child can say "I". Autobiographical memory shows up. Naming is a change in consciousness. Its a crisis and a change in what the world is. It is not easy for the child and it is not easy for the parents. Every single transition is a crisis because we are dying to who and what we were.

3) Puberty. This is often the last passage that many people in our society go through before death.

We are going to go through these first three passages even with culture failing us. The next stages take culture to help. There are two developmental tasks of each stage. One is culturally-based and the other is nature-based.

4) Confirmation. In adolescence, a person must develop a persona that is both authentic and socially acceptable. Confirmation means you have consciously created a way of being socially present that works. So much of our society is about creating an image that is socially acceptable, but not authentic!

5) Soul Initiation. Where the individual is helped to die to everything that they thought they were meant to be. They find out their place in the ecology of the world they are meant to take, that we are born to take a particular place in ecology that is not culturally or job defined. You don't find out you are a phychologist or a teacher for instance [or a designer]. These are only the delivery systems for the mystery. We need to find the mystery. Its like the poem we were born to be, to live in the world, the conversation with the world.

This marks the shift into the second half of life. The second half of life is being the gift, to contributing to the evolution of the world. If we don't become true adults, there is no give-away and no give back. [that is why our world is in such a dire state]

After soul-initiation is a stage of developing the delivery system for your gift back, to learn how to give of yourself to the world.

6) Induction. The crisis in this initiation is about having to betray some of the most important people in your life. You realize you can't depend on your teachers anymore. You are being called to bring something into the world that does not yet exist. You will feel like you are on your own as you have never been before. You are creating a never before seen delivery system.

In a healthy culture, the elder is the most evolved status. In our contemporary western society, older people are the lowest in social status, and age no longer indicates their adulthood.

7) Croning. Soulwork moves through you, but now, your focus has to be on holding the soul of the world community. So that it sustains the community and helps it to evolve. Its again a crisis of consciousness.

8) Surrender. The crisis is now you have to give up any desire and ambition to do anything. You are a sage. Consciousness begins to be absorbed by you as you embrace universality and you do all kinds of things just by your presence here. Thomas Berry is a stage 8 elder.

9) Death.

Richard Rohr Talking:
Words and books can keep you from the authenticity and deepening of experience. Original participation in nature, from watching and being. From knowing you belong. From experiencing the natural cycles of dark and light, growth and death. Birth and death are the natural spiritual teachers of society. If you've never been present at birth or death you are missing integral experience.

How does transformation happen?

Pre-axial conscousness - pre 800 b.c. Seeing God in everything, seeing anima (soul) in everything. Pagan literally means those that lived in the country. Nature is not an object for consumption. Once you grant subjectivity to the natural world, it changes everything. Nature as subject existed in the Pagan world.

What is axial consciousness? Between 800 b.c. - 200 b.c. The zietgeist in the world at the time was starting abstract, conceptual thinking. Axial consciousness gave the world self-critical thinking, rational thinking, which led to industrialization and also to the birth of self-consciousness. So called civilization became about urbanality.You have to know yourself in order to die to yourself. You have to have created your boundaries to let go of your boundaries. And this is what is necessary to move to the second half of life. When you don't have the mystical levels of religion, you will always define things in moralistic levels such as saying for instance that you are better than them because you are heterosexual and you have not had an abortion. You can't see what you aren't told to look for. When all you have is words and not experiences, all you can do is argue about the words. Salvation itself started to become how "I" get to heaven. This way of thinking reflects individualism outside of the collective we are all part of. If you don't know how to live in crisis, darkness, ambiguity, the unknown, which many of us do not know how to do, we stay in a patho-adolescent culture.

The 2nd axial age: happening as recently as the 1960s. Until then, all was diverging, moving apart for 2000 years. Through globalization, convergence started happening. What is grounding all of us is that we are all standing on the same ground, breathing the same air, that is our connection. Thomas Merton in the 60's asking contemplative questions of creation. The rainbow is the covenant and reminder to God that he is in a love relationship with all that she has created. God creates things that continue to create themselves toward the divine image. This materialization began 14.5 billion years ago! Matter and spirit are friends, two sides of the same coin.

Question and Answer:

Q) Am I in the mystery? How do I get to the winter of life dying as I am at age 60 when I'm not there chronologically?
A) you are there just by the nature of your question. You are in the river already. Don't push the river. Its never too late to delve deeper into the mystery. We are never done learning.

Q) What do you mean by matter and spirit coming together? What is an example?
A) Matter and spirit have never been separate; that is the lie. you can't put together what is already together. Everything is an example. All is the convergence of matter and spirit!

Q) Are there any cultures we can learn from that are maturing their elders?
A) The answer is Yes. The cultures most intact are the ones most remote from the dominate western society. Martin Partel grew up in reservation and Guatemala with Mayans. If we know about the cultures well, changes are our western society has already undermined there integrity. We need to honor, learn from and respect what largely does not exist anymore, not necessarily go back to that way of living, but synthesize that way with western culture. We can't be indigenous people anymore so there is no point in romanticizing it. Don't want to settle for nature romanticism, but to transcend and include.

Q) What books can you recommend that will "gently" explain this to people?
A) Luve - "Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder
Also, books on the universe story as told by contemporary science with the sacred theme.
Books by Brian Swim and Thomas Berry: The Universe Story; The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos; and The Journey of the Universe
The first part of Bill Plotkin's book "Soul Centering through Nature"
Read "Soul Encounters" by Johanna Massey

Q) Give/describe an example of the identity of someone who has found their mytho-poetic identity.
A) Bill Plotkin: It is a series of phases where mystery is always unfolding. Bill's experience doing a 4-day wilderness fast in which a butterfly flew past and he heard his name/title/calling: cocoon weaver

[I think mine has to do with that dream I recently had, about Grace, and it encompasses environment, web as in network, and story design.]

Q) How do we find support in a society that is missing a high percentage of its true elders?
A) We have our own human nature. There are true elders and support in all cultures and societies. The primary teacher is the wild/natural world. Healthy cultures come from nature and we still have nature and wildnerness and our own deep souls. Find our feet in the natural world again and the doors begin to open. All things that God has made support our journey. Only in nature can you find the metaphors to find yourself, to name yourself.

Q) What is the difference between transrational and pre-rational?
A) Prerational has no critical element to it. Might set imagination loose. Can't go back to being 5 years old though, but you don't have to crush it. Transrational means having gone through complete consciousness; knowing things with a combination of rational and transrational.

Closing:
Bill Plotkin recites from memory the poem "Prospective Immigrants" by Adrien Rich, a contemporary American poet.
"Please note, the door itself makes no promises. It is only a door."

The year beginning conference January 19-22 will be "Nature and the Human Soul" with Bill Plotkin and Richard Rohr in Albuquerque.

A fellow intern shared this with me

2011-08-07T16:52:00.000-07:00

It means a lot right now. Reminds me many of us are going through the same. And we come out all right. The threshold is never easy to pass through.

Here is what was emailed to me by C:

"Seeing ourselves clearly

When we begin to see clearly what we do, how we get hooked and swept away by old habits, our usual tendency is to get discouraged, a reason to feel really bad about ourselves. Instead, we could realize how remarkable it is that we actually have the capacity to see ourselves honestly, and that doing this takes courage.

It is moving in the direction of seeing our life as a teacher rather than as a burden. This involves, fundamentally, learning to stay present, but learning to stay with a sense of humor, learning to stay with loving kindness toward ourselves and with the outer situation, learning to take joy in the magic ingredient of honest self-reflection"

excerpt from Rejoicing in things as the are, teaching by Pema Chodron, pg 57

And I get all of this. Last weekend in Red Mesa, I watched myself going back to old habits of withdrawing and not wanting to be around anyone. I felt like I was back in that time in Chile once with a group of people making landart. I had to shut my eyes and pretend to be asleep a lot of the time so I wouldn't get overwhelmed and so I would have the energy/resources for creativity. And I did, and the projects came. But what if they could come without the intense desire for solitude? Or is that just the magic ingredient where the incubation happens?

Anyway, in Red Mesa, I walked along on my own in the opposite direction of everyone else. Then I ran as fast as I could. Then I sat in the car alone and wrote for a while. Why the sudden shift from happy morning to troubled evening? Was it all too much to absorb? It was certainly a lot and I was tired.

I had been in Santa Fe just that very morning waking up so happy to a cool morning in the mountains and beautiful walk where 3 coyotes ran in front of us. From Santa Fe, I went directly into a Deep Time workshop in Albuquerque for 3 hours and wished that I had more time than 3 hours - because I needed way more time than that to go deep. It was more like surface time that gave me glimpses of what was underneath. The course began with the lovely question, what brought you joy this morning? I offered my story of the walk with coyotes in Santa Fe.

I'd had such a great previous night saying bye to some friends leaving NM, sitting on top of La Fonda at the Belltower Bar with the sun setting. There's a certain, strange feeling I have when I go back to Santa Fe now, because there is such an unknowing, but hopeful feeling about returning or ever going back. I'm not attached though, I'm just enjoying being there while I'm there in gratitude. Not being able to take it for granted, certainly does keep my relationship with it fresh.

Once I got to Red Mesa, all I wanted was solitude and to be somewhere no one else was exploring, where no one else knew where I was. I was in that kind of mood and I knew it. And no one else was that way, they were a social way. At least, I just kept quiet and did not say unkind things to people I would have only been projecting those things on them. As they always do, the feelings of irratability passed with time, with surrendering bringing me into a centered place again. The beautiful horses and the much needed rest, since I was fighting off a cold, quickened the process to only being out of sorts for a day.

A Different Way of Knowing

2011-08-07T16:25:00.000-07:00

You think you know, but you never do
even when you think you do,
what will unfold for you.
Trust that where you are,
is where you're meant to be,
especially in times of uncertainty.
Reside here beyond fear.
Give up the clinging for security.
Open your heart wide,
and listen from there.
The visible unknowing
is a reminder that
You are never in control.
The phases of vulnerability
come and pass.
Let them
bring you into abundance.
Accept them
as blessings of humility.
Healing
lies in surrender.
Slow down
and let go.

- Jeanne 8/4/11

Dreams, Grace and Music in the Biopark

2011-08-05T23:03:00.000-07:00

I did have a symbolically packed dream last night after either weird anxiety dreams or no dreams at all for a little while. Here's my dream:

I am sitting in a big ballroom/lecture room with all the other applicants for the Chronicle Books design fellowship in San Francisco. We are given the instructions to come to the podium to sit when we see the sign to do so. However, there are only 3 chairs at the podium and only those 3 who are in the seats will be selected. Everyone is watching a famous designer speaking near the podium. My sister is sitting next to me for support, not as an applicant herself. We are sitting in the very back of the room. I wonder if there will be a mad dash, like musical chairs, when we are given the sign. Suddenly, in the back, I see a beautifully attired woman in a black and gold dress and I know she is the signal to move forward. I walk along the side aisle toward the front. As I near the stage, two women in the 2nd to front row also see the woman in black and gold signaling. They get up and continue with me and we all sit in the 3 chairs near the podium. No one else has noticed the woman in gold and black, or us. There is no fuss or rush for the front when the rest of the applicants do realize that the seats are filled.

Next, the three of us have to have our minds scanned. There are small screens in front of us so we can view the scans and the visuals also pop up on a large projector in the front of the room. I look at my scan. I notice one large compartment (and I think 3 small ones, which are part of the larger one, I'm not sure); In the large compartment is written in typed small-caps, the word GRACE. This is also the case for the scans for the two women next to me. I am aware that they have known each other for a long time.

Audience members who ask to see their mind scans see a different image on the screen. The largest part of their brain component reads in typed small caps: MINDLESSNESS. In the dream, I know this means lack of awareness and GRACE means integration and unity.

Next, the 3 of us on the podium are led by one of last year's fellows, a man, into another room with cocktails and then into another room where we are told our work assignments. The 3 assignments are: Environment, Network and web (where the other two women are placed) and Story Design, where I am placed. These titles surprise all of us because we know that the placements we applied for were different [and these are real life placements outside my dream world] and included: children's book design, marketing, and book design. Another surprising thing happens when we are informed that the fellowship begins in only a few weeks, in September, instead of January - as we had anticipated from the application materials. I had travel plans for the fall already and I change them to fit the new dates of this new opportunity. At the end of the dream, I am driving to San Francisco.

The dream left me with a very happy, optimistic and purposeful feeling. (especially since before having no dreams for a while, I kept having dreams that left me feeling irratable or discouraged). I awoke feeling like there are surprises coming and I need to be flexible and open to them. The most powerful point in the dream was the word GRACE in my mindscan. I think this setup of the mind as a pattern of unity comes with awareness and mindFULness and goes to compartmentalization with mindLESSness.

The evening before I had this dream was a very happy, care-free and also meaningful and unexpected one. My plan had been to go to see music in the biopark with T and M. We were about to leave when C surprised us by saying she was coming too. M teased her about actually getting out of the house. We were all in the dining room at this point so C took the opportunity to share what has been going on with her to the group. It was a very moving, humbling and connecting experience. R had the idea for to bless her with anointed, rosemary scented olive oil. We ended in a group hug with C in the center.

I realized just how powerful it is to be the one sending deeply felt prayers to someone else. C turned the night meaningful very suddenly. I didn't care about going to the concert anymore and was surprised again when there was still time to go and M, C and T were still up for it. So off we went. We had such a fun rest of the night listening to a modern, young band in the biopark and sharing stories about risks we have taken. Then we came home and made popcorn and stayed up talking, watching silly Saturday night live parodies on youtube, and laughing before going to bed, when I dreamed that dream.

Indeed, I feel like my whole intention has come back into alignment this week and that feels great!

I am grateful A encouraged me to watch my dreams this week and reminded me that intention is everything.

From July 18th, time with Family in Maine and Clint and Emily's Wedding

2011-07-27T21:59:00.000-07:00

I got to drive up from Boston Logan International Airport to the middle of no where town of Mariaville Maine with my brother. We rented a car. I hadn't seen Joe in over a year and a half. I'm grateful for the time and conversation in the car, through the traffic cones and the rain storms. My brother's efforts to find a job in his field in the NW have finally paid off since he moved there two years ago. He just started a job at an architecture firm in Bellingham under syncronistic events.

I had a few days to unwind with the whole family together in my old bedroom, listening to the brook behind the house, picking blueberries down the road, sitting around a campfire swatting a plethora of mosquitoes on a full moon night, kayaking out to the loons on the lake, cooking dinner with my mom, walking with my sister, going to the beach and meditating together. Wish I'd had more time with my dad though, next time :)

Then we met my brother (who'd disapeared for the bachelor party and rehearsal dinner) in Boothbay Harbor, Maine for the wedding of a mutual friend. Clint, my class mate from Kindergarten, and Emily, a wonderful woman he met in Australia on study abroad, got married on the ocean. A few of my other classmates were there too, some I hadn't seen since 8th grade graduation! We had a smart class! Most are doing such interesting, ambitious things. I love how weddings bring people together. Sometimes it seems like it is more of a gift to the relaxing participants than the bride and groom who had to do all the organizing and financing and remembering of sometimes traditional/expected recitations and rituals. Thought, I'm sure the bride and groom enjoyed the sense of this gift and the relief of the planning/waiting phase being over through a ceremonial transition in front of all the witnesses they love.The wedding was beautiful and was indeed a gift to be part of. Thank you Clint and Emily for inviting me and bringing everyone together! Thank you for the bonus lobster dinner, dancing into the night and thank you source for the happiness and blue skies presiding.

Conference: God as Us! The Sacred Feminine and the Sacred Masculine

2011-07-25T22:40:00.000-07:00

Title: God as Us! The Sacred Feminine and the Sacred Masculine

Notes:

Friday:
The cosmos is too small to fit God, but when a heart is open, God will fit in it easily. An open heart is bigger than the cosmos!

The soul as an aura around us, growing that soul energy.

The union between male and female is dynamic: 2 parts with 1 flow, 2 aspects of underlying, seemless unity. That unity is beauty.

Doubt divides the heart, leaves you in the "maybe this, maybe that" paralysis.

How you relate to the world is how you relate to the divine.

If it doesn't connect you to the whole, its not sacred, its not God.

The point of marriage and sex and relationship is to allow the mirror of the other to reveal your problems and direction needed for spiritual growth.

Knowing who you are apart from the other, knowing your relationship to God first.

Love is when two solitudes protect and touch and greet one another!

Even between the closest human beings, there is infinite distance. Because each does not yet know him/herself and is still learning.

Respect - when you can respect this distance and don't presume you know the other...

Succeed in loving the distance between.

Essential give and take between solitude and intimacy.

You must choose to be alone first. Who am I now? Without other?

Friendship is the deepest kind of way. Can we be friends with others?

When two love, a third is created. The higher image of this self is held in the relationship.

God can never be an object. God is the subject of love.

The way to give yourself to God completely and love God completely is to give yourself to life completely.

Its not love that divides the heart; its the passions that divide the heart.

Read: Ken Wilber's "Grace and Grit" - required reading on love

Passions - egotism, clinging, dependency/neediness

Love unites the heart, the passions are dealt with by letting go - through kenosis.

Sometimes, it can be very good in marriage to see where a chosen period of celibacy can lead. It can do wonders for clarity and newness of relationship.

A path of kenosis - a letting things come and a letting things go without clinging.

[the only thing to do is to stay on the path and to get back on when I get off]

Male and female energies are most different at their immature levels. And the energies are most alike at the mature levels.
Saturday:
Kenosis is the opposite of clinging. The practice of letting Go, of opening. Then you will know all you need to know about the path. It begins in your body. From unclenched to open.

It brings the experience of uniting with the whole, which you separated from by clinging. You're not renouncing something; you're simply allowing yourself to let it go.

The clinging to the emotions and possessions:
- the past
- knowledge, intellectual identification
We think we know where we are going so we don't know how to be helpless.
- feeling/entitlement
-victomhood
-self-righteous

The fastidious discipline of letting go. Going through the physical process of clinging to open allows the brain waves to align. Voluntary moving from being stuck to something to being unstuck from it. Allowing space where you are co-dependent and needy.

Active Practice:
The energy of construction draws that energy to us.

"Christianity isn't a failure; it just hasn't been tried yet"

Through that very practice of letting go, we participate in putting the mind in the heart. The energy of awakening is actually a ray of graces that changes and transforms the physical world into the kingdom of heaven. Bringing into being what is.

AbunDANCE!

"I am one with my source in so far as I too act as a source by making everything that I receive flow again"

Giving is receiving. Go through a day atuned to your body of when you're constricted and when you're open. When you notice the constriction, relax it. Notice how your reality changes.

You can practice kenosis in any form. Being in relationship can help because there's a lot more of that polishing and mirroring happening.

Richard:

A human consciousness is simply ready for what its ready for.

Look up Brian McClaren

For celibacy to continue as a gift...
1) person has to have had in their childhood unconditional love from mom and dad. If that doesn't exist, the psychological foundation isn't there (and that is true for married or unmarried people too)

2) there has to be the beginning of an affectionate relationship with God. God can't simply be a belief. Divine union that really satisfies the heart because "I have been touched by God" as an emotionally satisfying experience.

3) In your whole life, you have to have a job/ministry/occupation that is creative and exciting and involves interacting with people. It can't just be a drudgery kind of job.

Cynthia:
Even expectation is a resentment waiting to happen.

A foundational experience of enoughness. This is more than good, it is all I want, It is all I need!

A positive stance of appreciation. Everything else is pure gift. I didn't deserve my health, I didn't deserve this internship. Its all grace, kind of attitude.

Centering prayer is a daily practice of letting go. Our mind feels its job description is to comment on everything, non-stop narrative commentary on everything in life. To move from the first to the second half of life involves necessary suffering and shadow-boxing. Consciousness and kenosis - using relationships to make us more conscious.

To use every frustration in relationship as a deeper way of seeing. Each holding the other to their highest self. True love demands sacrifice - is the beginning of union at a higher plane. It follows the path of What Is.

The subject of your own deepest originality. To recognize the beloved is not absent, but lives in you - at your own deepest originality. But you can't have that with untransformed eros or as the object of desire. Love without rejecting, denying or clinging. The more one loves, the more one longs to love. The deepening of the heart by the participation of the heart. The more we dare to open our hearts, the more we are broken open. And it never stops.

Cannot have by intensifying desire, only by letting go. Clinging is never satisfied. You can only release.

Richard:
How do you distinguish between the essential and the non-essential? Between what really last and what doesn't. We cannot not be present to birth and death. But these spiritual events are becoming medical events. The people at the two ends of life have the truth. Many religious people fight death more than the non-religious because of their idea of God is fear-based. Conscious birthing and conscious dying. The giving of energy (love) is the work of spirit.

When the old ways don't work anymore, the old game has failed. This happens aprox. every 7 years. In need of teachers during these gaps, to fill in the gaps. Its in these periods of liminal space, when your needs and emotions are not being met and your mind is dissatisfied, that we need teachers. You know you can't maintain the honeymoon. Must move to next level. When you don't progress, you actually regress.
Read: "The Philosophical Baby"
Suffering is the one thing you can't choose to program. You can either resist or go into the Cloud of Unknowing. Can last 2 months to 2 years.

Cynthia:
Have I ever loved anybody as myself?

Purity being singleness of heart. Head and heart working together

Passion is constantly creating a hole within you that wants to be filled. The indwelling holy spirit. Ticking time bomb. We're not there yet, but its coming. A thirst/yearning. There's something good about wanting it all. It still means you will suffer.

"My deepest me is God that without doubt is where you are being led and that human love/relationship leads you to that. "I love you even more than the relationship with you" attitude. This is where passion leads us.

Richard:
Profound body bow - keep head lower than the heart. To put your head into your heart space and see as one.

Are you capable of friendship with another who you are not sexually attracted to? Respect your own emodiment as a woman or as a man. An initiation is always when you know your eternal name. Everything is an initiation. God does not waste anything and certainly God is not going to waste something as powerful as romance, sex, and love itself!

Cynthia:
To find God in Everything. Passion: energy of life pouring through you. "Most of Christianity talks about being aware of your passions as dividing the heart (7 deadly sins) to there is that terminology of passion. So the same word is used for two different terms that actually fight with each other and we just have to recognize which meaning and term we are referring to.

Sensation - through the body use attention to become present to aliveness of body.

Feeling - my heart is making me feel sad/heavy

Emotion - an energetic charge revolving around a sad story of self, ego

Passion - an emotion of self that has become stuck/fixated on the story of self. We have to move through passion and emotion and only there do we find feeling - "the love that moves the sun and the stars"

"Beauty is the beginning of a terror we can just scarcely bare" - Rilke

To suffer, in ancient terms, meant to allow. There is a lot of pain that can become less when we consciously allow.

Cynthia, 3:30 sat.
"Beyond right and wrong, there is a swimming pool. I'll meet you there." - Rumi

"There will come a time when her [Mary Magdelene's] tower will stand alone by mine"

Magdelene means tower, watcher of the flock.

"You can't touch without being touched"

"No conscious act if ever wasted"

Moving in the direction of loving your neighbor as yourself. If there is no communal salvation, there is no salvation!

Sunday
Question and Answer Period

Question: Are the paths of conscious loving different for men and women?
Answer: R.Different events precipitate the transformation of each. Males [typically] more energized, excited; women [typically] have little growth insight experiences with details and subtlety. Again the beginnings of the journey have the greatest differences between genders.
C. What's raw and real connects all of us. A lot of contemporary spirituality is too clean. Living in both archetypes. Contemplation being the new in word, if you're not practicing non-dual thinking, you're not contemplative. The presence of 3 makes a fourth in a new dimension. Masculine and feminine are constantly changing places like a kaleidescope! The 3rd something moves into the 4th.

Question: Is there a danger with trying to enter the 2nd half of life early (under the age of 30)?
R. Often, suffering will lead an under 30-something to non-dual thinking(both/and)/2nd half of life. Age is not a determinant of whose in what half. Many old people are still in the first half of life dual thinking phase (either/or). There is no danger in entering non-dual thinking early as long as it is not false nondual thinking and we have succeeded in dual thinking first (logical, consistent, practical thinking). After all, all children under 7 are dual thinkers and many people at death. At a certain point, in life, you hit a high ceiling. And you can't process what is above the ceiling with dualistic thinking. So you must start renewing your mind so you can understand. You can't enter into dual thinking too early.

Question: talk about GLBT in relation to all of this?
R: in India, there are very clearly 3 genders. With the 3rd being all those that don't fit neatly into dual thinking. In many people's lives, pain/wounding comes from our own gender more than the opposite. Don't be fooled by the easy male/female categories. Its never been true.
C: There are 2 stages: 1) is to acknowledge, bless, receive gratefully the identity of all gendered people. Many love fitting other people into a neatly fitting box, then they love the box more than the people who are trying to live their lives. 2) Any identification about you ultimately gets in the way and there's a point beyond the identity, do not cling, even when your identity has been so strongly fought for. Let go of both intense wounding and intense identification. Foundational, essential truth. Your gender is part of the false self. Its secondary, not foundational. It will pass away. Its first half of live stuff. Its only a metaphor we hold in our bodies. People who already begin to experience that in this world can be compassionate to all people because they know gender is the false self. Asissi, Italy is a little town with immense spiritual energy.

Cynthia: closing
The new redwood tree can't grow without the bed of the old tree. Its the common sense of wanting to grow out of the nurse tree for all of us. Thank you for the space for free inquiry, thank you Richard for modeling what a transcended man looks like.

Reflections on childhood From July 9 2011

2011-07-25T15:29:00.000-07:00

In my first session, I told Sister Vinnery, my spiritual director for this summer internship, about a specific moment I recall from childhood. I was in the 4th grade and I was around 10 years old (because I stayed back a year in kindergarten to play). For the first time, the work I was doing in school was not only challenging me but not interesting to me. I remember distinctly the thought I had upon passing in my homework: "If 'I' didn't do it, it wasn't going to get done. I realized I had a conscious choice to do the homework or not. It was a very uncomfortable feeling. I chose to do the homework. From that moment onward I continued doing things with the underlying feeling that it was all up to me to get them done or not. I took the control, I took the independence, I took the weight of that realization I had when I was ten and I have been carrying it.

I also told Sister Vinney about a piece of artwork on my childhood bedroom wall that I remember. It depicted a squirrel smiling with its eyes shut hanging from a branch. Underneath the suspended squirrel read the word, "Faith"

I said to sister Vinney I wish I'd had that realization about faith then that I do now. She said, "But you weren't ready" I am grateful that now I recognize the support I receive in all my undertakings from source. And its okay, if things don't get done. The most important aspect is maintaining a space to listen and just be.

A few days later, I was reading the book "Centering Prayer" by Cynthia Bourgeault. The quote directly relates to my conversation with Sister Vinney:

"Our cultural conditioning tells us that we must be in charge, that we must carry out our own agendas, that we must make sure our affairs are in order, that we have to invest in our retirement plan, because if we don't, who will take care of us?

If I don't, who will? This is the attitude often referred to as 'taking care of number 1' self-reliance." (page 2)

The issue at stake here is trust. I trust that I am reliant on source for all the abundance in my life. Credit for all my accomplishments goes to that source of creativity. Out of trust and letting go, the strength will come and the insight about what to do.

The book goes on to say: "Our spiritual journey as a whole has the same fatal flaw - seeking God as if [s]he were absent. God is always within us. To assume that we must do it all is the major obstacle to spiritual development. Spiritual surrender is not passive, but, rather, the active exercise of a receptive power" (page 3)

"The cure for this willful wrongheadedness is an opening of the heart that softens us into willingness. It can come about by hitting 'rock bottom' or, if we are lucky, it can come about through contemplative practice." (page 10)

I am reliant on God to stay connected with God and to soften my heart.

Then, I opened the page of the book "Letters of the Scattered Brotherhood" I was also reading. And the line that jumped out at me was, "The greatest thing to help you is the habit of being in the presence of God" (168).

I told sister Vinney that I felt like a wobbly baby deer. She reminded me that the mother deer is always there to nudge the baby back up when it falls.

From June 30th Notes from a talk w/Chuck Hosking

2011-07-25T15:04:00.000-07:00

Notes:

Direction and Intention are what matter. Opening the space to let the intention source has for you in and to act on it.

For me, that intention has to do with being joyful and loving and giving to others through presence and also by creating more beauty in the world through creativity.

It does not matter where your position is, but that you continue to move toward that.

Recognizing the essence of personhood in all people.

Sharing the same values of intention with life partner.
- knowing your own values and intention

When you deprive people of those material things their whole life, the first thing they will try to do is get those things.

Watch on youtube "The Story of Stuff"

In Gratitude for Good Food: 7/14/11

2011-07-15T18:05:00.000-07:00

Thank you chefs Carrol and Teresa!
and influences from South Africa and Kansas
and love and peace infused in yummy fare.
We come together to share this feast,
There is always more than enough.
The good food does not cease.
This is the stuff
We are in the mood for!
Cous cous piled high
with sauteed zuccini and pecans
We smile at hot pepper prawns
and sigh for rosemary aparagus
We eye the orange garlic squash
and ask it to be passed
Sit and enjoy dinner with us!
Wash away fears and tension
with aromas of roast chicken
and sweet corn smothered in butter.
It is our intention...
Enough poetry, let's eat!

Formation: 7/6/11

2011-07-15T17:28:00.000-07:00

Here we all are gestating,
developing, kicking, relating,
in the amniotic fluid of the center.
Protected from, confronted by the chaotic,
in this desert - once sea - of Albuquerque,
We are fed and watered
with quiet time and kindness
with sublime conversation
with renewed heart and midnfulness
Look at our little sensors forming!
Tuning our vibrations to the greater channel!
Feel the awareness
of this later-half-of-life, full-moon mind.
We will not leave behind this warm womb.
It is born within and has been strengthened
By all we are integrating outward and inside.