Sensory Poverty?

 "The further we distance ourselves from the spell of the present, explored by our senses, the harder it will be to understand and protect nature’s precarious balance, let alone the balance of our own human nature."

 DIANE ACKERMAN

 A few weeks ago I went with friends from out of town  to a rather pricey Indian restaurant.  We were enjoying the wine and the ambience.........exotic hanging lamps and sitar music in the background.  At a nearby table a young, well-dressed couple sat with  wine and a candle between them as well. Each had a  little box in his and her hand, and with heads bowed, they were each tapping away.  We wondered if they were discussing what to order with each other.......maybe they were having a conversation?  Oblivious to us as they peered into their crystal boxes,  we wondered if this was a new version of the dating/mating ritual?

What will happen,  as the time of computer implants looms in our evolutionary future........will people talk and tweet to each other in some kind of informational/vibrational code, freed of such unhygienic nuances as facial expressions, vocalizations, physical gestures, smells, auras?  What about empathy, not just for the human world, but the sensory world of nature?  


I ran across a great article by DIANE ACKERMAN,   thanks to my good friend Joyce, that expressed these thoughts so well.........I can't resist excerpting from it here.

June 10, 2012, 8:33

Are We Living in Sensory Overload or Sensory Poverty?

By DIANE ACKERMAN

 IT was a spring morning in upstate New York, one so cold the ground squeaked loudly underfoot as sharp-finned ice crystals rubbed together. The trees looked like gloved hands, fingers frozen open. A crow veered overhead, then landed. As snow flurries began, it leapt into the air, wings aslant, catching the flakes to drink. Or maybe just for fun, since crows can be mighty playful.

Another life form curved into sight down the street: a girl laughing down at her gloveless fingers which were texting on some hand-held device. This sight is so common that it no longer surprises me, though strolling in a large park one day I was startled by how many people were walking without looking up, or walking in a myopic daze while talking on their “cells,” as we say in shorthand, as if spoken words were paddling through the body from one saltwater lagoon to another.

As a species, we’ve somehow survived large and small ice ages, genetic bottlenecks, plagues, world wars and all manner of natural disasters, but I sometimes wonder if we’ll survive our own ingenuity. At first glance, it seems as if we may be living in sensory overload. The new technology, for all its boons, also bedevils us with alluring distractors, cyberbullies, thought-nabbers, calm-frayers, and a spiky wad of miscellaneous news. Some days it feels like we’re drowning in a twittering bog of information.

But, at exactly the same time, we’re living in sensory poverty, learning about the world without experiencing it up close, right here, right now, in all its messy, majestic, riotous detail. The further we distance ourselves from the spell of the present, explored by our senses, the harder it will be to understand and protect nature’s precarious balance, let alone the balance of our own human nature.

Strip the brain of too much feedback from the senses and life not only feels poorer, but learning grows less reliable. I’m certainly not opposed to digital technology, whose graces I daily enjoy and rely on in so many ways. But I worry about our virtual blinders. We’re losing track of our senses, and spending less and less time experiencing the world firsthand. At some medical schools, it’s even possible for future doctors to attend virtual anatomy classes, in which they can dissect a body by computer — minus that whole smelly, fleshy, disturbing human element.

When all is said and done, we exist only in relation to the world, and our senses evolved as scouts who bridge that divide and provide volumes of information, warnings and rewards. But they don’t report everything. Or even most things. We’d collapse from sheer exhaustion. They filter experience, so that the brain isn’t swamped by so many stimuli that it can’t focus on what may be lifesaving. Some of their expertise comes with the genetic suit, but most of it must be learned, updated and refined, through the fine art of focusing deeply, in the present, through the senses. Once you’ve held a ball, turning it in your hands, you need only see another ball to remember the feel of roundness. Strip the brain of too much feedback from the senses and life not only feels poorer, but learning grows less reliable. Subtract the subtle physical sensations, and you lose a wealth of problem-solving and lifesaving details.

As an antidote I wish schools would teach the value of cultivating presence. As people complain more and more these days, attention spans are growing shorter, and we’ve begun living in attention blinks. More social than ever before, we’re spending less time alone with our thoughts, and even less relating to other animals and nature. Too often we’re missing in action, brain busy, working or playing indoors, while completely unaware of the world around us.

One solution is to spend a few minutes every day just paying close attention to some facet of nature. A bonus is that the process will be refreshing. When a sense of presence steals up the bones, one enters a mental state where needling worries soften, careers slow their cantering, and the imaginary line between us and the rest of nature dissolves. Then for whole moments one may see nothing but the flaky trunk of a paper-birch tree with its papyrus-like bark. Or, indoors, watch how a vase full of tulips, whose genes have traveled eons and silk roads, arch their spumoni-colored ruffles and nod gently by an open window.

On the periodic table of the heart, somewhere between wonderon and unattainium, lies presence, which one doesn’t so much take as engage in, like a romance, and without which one can live just fine, but not thrive.

"Touching Gaia" - A Solstice Ritual of Attunement

We humbly ask  Gaia to be among us.
 
To be with us on this day, the longest day, 
when life is full. Gaia, this shining, white and blue planet

circling, a living jewell
in the Great Dark of space.
Gaia.

Her waters are Her blood,
Her valleys and mountains Her bones,
the forests Her breath,
the Clouds, Her moods,
and we are Her dreams

and the fourlegged,  the ones that swim,
the winged ones,  the two-legged....all,
Her eyes, Her ears,
the mind of Gaia.

I invite you to feel the presence of Gaia,
a living, breathing Being.
Dancing as we are, in union
with the sun, the moon,
the stars:
Gaia's family, Her grove.

Feel your feet on the Earth.
Feel the heartbeat of the Earth.
Feel your own heartbeat
and attune.

Feel your arms like branches,
the crown of your head
the leafy crown of a tree, opening to the sun:
an aspen tree, or a flowering plum,
or a medicine tree, a eucalyptus.
An apple, a poisonous hemlock,
a rowen tree offering fruit to greedy sparrows.

A Boji tree, in the red lands, the dry lands,
a tree of bones
dreaming only of water.
A tall pine in snowy winter
dreaming of the sun's return......

Feel your hands like twigs, your feet like roots.
Feel the sun in your leaves.
Feel Gaia's heart
beneath your feet,
beating like a drum.

And feel your roots
go down from your feet, your hands,
down into fertile darkness,
into secret waters,
past pottery shards
and the bones of ancient antelope,
past cities long forgotten,
past stone and crystal
into the darkness,
into the dreaming Earth.

Go down,  into the heart of  Gaia.

Your roots are a web
of  intertwined roots
that sustain the forest,
strong, keeping you firm. 
Roots that touch all beings.
Go down, feel the fibers that touch each other,
this circle, this land,  the sky, the waters.
Feel the flow of contact, sustaining each other.

And reach out, expand your awareness.

Somewhere in the East a woman rises
to make bread for her family.
Somewhere in the South a child plays in the dust.
Somewhere far west a girl in a red sari
prepares for her wedding.
Somewhere in the far North a painter
stands before an empty canvas,
trying to remember a dream he had the night before.

Follow your roots.  Attune. 

Somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere a forest is burning,
somewhere in the West
poisons are pouring into a river,
and the river is dying, the land is weeping.
Somewhere in the North a song bird is gone
and the fields are silent.
Somewhere in the East acid rain falls into a barren lake.
Feel the sorrow of the land, the pain of Gaia.

And somewhere in the South, winter is beginning.
Somewhere East, the sun is rising. 
Reach out along your roots, feel the beat of life.

Attune, and return.  Follow your roots
back to your heart.  Feel that love, that light.
All one.

As we rise and stand, breathe in the breath of the world.
Take that  light, that pulse, that beat,
and gather it
in your heart, your hands.
Gather from your roots.
Gather and become
a vessel, a tree, a beating heart.
Gather to touch all beings.

And send it down:

Into the Earth, the best of us,
into the Earth, our roots,
into the Earth, our dreams,
into the Earth, our source.
into the Earth, our love.
into the Earth, our light.

Spirals

The first Monsoon came with great celebration to Tucson, and to Nogal, New Mexico, yesterday.  It looks good for Anima too...........wanted to share an article Jesse Wolf Hardin sent me recently.  

 Spirals In Nature… and Our Lives

Walking The Spiral:  Fern Heads, Replicative Patterns, Conscious Participation

by Jesse Wolf Hardin,  Anima School and Sanctuary

 We exist in a world of patterns that we are an unending part of.  I don’t mean just the patterns of individual and cultural behavior we call schedules and habits, the patterning of apartments in building or houses on blocks.  Notice or not, all around us are natural shapes and forms patterned according to design repetition and balance, and a thing’s gifts and functions, purposes and propensities, none of which are obeying some “laws of nature” or “laws of physics” so much as inhabiting and playing a part in systems of replication and enhancement.

Under the intuitive eye of the mystic, the artist, the aesthetic, these patterns have always appeared manifest and childishly obvious, a clearly sequenced repetition of forms that interlock like puzzle pieces, building bridges of content, beauty and meaning between the supposedly dissimilar, and between the micro and macro.  From the scale of the stars in the sky, down to the  repeating shapes that make up the landscape, the balanced eruption of branches from a tree trunk, the mountain and valley texture of its bark and the composition of fingertips and fingernails when viewed really, really close.  They cannot help but sense or assume, that this trend continues down to the invisible, down to fluctuating but largely predictable and wholly amazing arrangements of minute organic cells, sensed molecules and imagined atoms.  And now, these patterns are revealing themselves to the discerning scientific eye as well, as fractals defining the replicative roughness of expanding borders, mathematically measurable, mappable, extendable and therefore to some degree extrapolatable; as natural forms to be copied by human inventors in a process they call biomimicry; as time-lapse captured lightning mirroring the patterns of veins in one’s own hand; and as mysteriously similar galaxies, whether summoned to view through the ocular of an electron microscope. or the polished lenses of a telescope racing through space on the nose a satellite.

The organic blueprint that all things follow, is that of rivers making their way through the mountains to the sea, the patterns of turbulence witnessed in the roiling of bubble-laden streams and the swirling of sunlit smoke in the morning’s air currents, the topography of coastlines and radiating petals of flowers.  Because these patterns are ever growing, transitioning, evolving, moving, we might better describe their pinnacles and valleys, peaks and drops, their waxing and waning, build-up and climax in the terminology of music, the patterns of motive visual forms themselves being rhythmic.  All rhythm, no matter how complex, involves a repetition of patterns that could be drawn out as leaf shapes and snowflakes, coastlines and twisting vines.

Rhythm made visible to the eye, is symmetry… the correspondence of exact or similar parts facing each other, or extending from a measurable center or axis.  And is the propensity of energetic nature to symmetrize.  The ubiquitous fractals are geometrically symmetric, as can be mandalic plant blossoms and crystal formations, but there is also a symmetry expressed in curling wisps of cloud, the lime green coils of a plant’s outreaching tendril, and especially in the spiral… the spiral fern head and spiral snail and sea shells, the inner ear’s cochlear nucleus vortices and the spiraling of Earth’s atmosphere as seen from space, all spinning out from a common center “eye”… a mystical “golden spiral” suggestive of a dance with no possible beginning or end.

“It is only slightly overstating the case, to say that physics is the study of symmetry.”

-P. W. Anderson, Nobel Laureate

The “known” universe is also repeating a pattern, as exhibited by its discernible elements, and moves or unfolds in a spiral orbit, with repeating patterns resulting in ever greater superstructures that apparently repeat themselves infinitely (Joseph, 2010).  The search for a “theory of everything” could be likened to the search for a unifying symmetry, in which repeating, spiraling patterns help connect us to, thread us into and propel us through an infinite universe that may well prove as eternal as it is limitless.

The perceiving and experiencing of this micro and macro patterning can lead to a feeling of rooted connection, of a kind of immortality by extension.  It can help us recognize the motion and direction of individual and species’ intent, and to find beauty and purpose in what might otherwise have been dismissed as ordinary and purposeless.  It can be a tool in our healing of ourselves and others, by helping us recognize and visualize patterns of constitution, energetics, gifts and challenges, perception and direction.

For several years now, Kiva and I have been developing our Anima Medicine Wheel for use in energetic understanding and diagnosis.  More like the Chinese five-element model than the Native American Wheel, it features not only the four cardinal directions or “sources” but also a fifth in the center.  While it makes perfect sense to us conceptually, when I’ve tried to draw it out on paper there has always appeared to be something lacking.  Everyone begins their life embodying the energies, gifts, challenges and propensities of one of the five “directions” or points, yet usually we are moving at one speed or another towards or through other directions as part of our integration, growth, and becoming whole.  This motion, we realized, might be best conceptualized as a three dimensional spiral rather than a two dimensional circle, in which form and being are forever reaching back to their source point, origins and earth, and simultaneously reaching outwards in progressive or widening arcs that weave together as they encompass.

….

We naturally exist in and are inevitably factors in the patterning of the world.  And it is impossible for us to remain securely immobile and unchanged no matter how much we might try.  If we are not integrating and moving forward on the spiral, then we are sliding down it.  How much better it is, then, to walk the spiral consciously, deliberately, purposefully, taking in the lessons and crafting our effect, not only participating in but helping design our contribution, a song worth repeating, a pattern worthy of being extended beyond not only our immediate beings but our finite lives.

It is to honor both spirals and plants that we share with you these photographic images of natural, human and botanical spiraling, visual reminders of that beauteous pattern of corporeal as well as energetic continuation that no amount of dying can ever remove us from.

synchronicities

Tuesday night I attended, for the first time, an Art Salon group that met for dinner and then to share their work.  There were 6 people besides myself, and for my part I brought a Power Point presentation about my "Spider Woman" project. I received a fellowship from the Alden Dow Creativity Center in Northwood University in 2007 for the project, and the show was at the Midland Arts Center, in Midland, Michigan.  In 2008 the Creative Spirit Center, also in Midland, Michigan, did the project as a community arts project.  And in 2009 I was  resident artist at the Henry Luce Center for the Arts at Wesley Theological in Washington, D.C.

Of six people at the Salon, one woman was from Washington, D.C. and knew Deborah Sokolove, the Director of the Luce Center, and another woman was from Midland, Michigan!  What are the odds?

"The Feminization of Poverty"

"At the same time that women produce 75 to 90 percent of food crops in the world, they are responsible for the running of households......Furthermore, despite the efforts of feminist movements, women in the core [wealthiest, Western countries] still suffer disproportionately, because they are paid less than men, and because the vast majority of heads of single parent households are women who must support their children.  This is leading to what sociologists refer to as the “feminization of poverty,” where two out of every three poor adults globally are women. The informal slogan of the Decade of Women became “Women do two-thirds of the world’s work, receive 10 percent of the world’s income and own 1 percent of the means of production.”

....Richard H. Robbins, Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism, 

The term “feminization of poverty,” coined in the 1970s by Diana Pearce, refers to the global problem, both in "third world" countries and the industrialized west, of the gender inequity of wealth.  Women are not the only ones who suffer as a result  - their children do as well.  

Last night I attended an "art salon", where  a young woman artist was excruciatingly apologetic about sharing some of her art because it was "feminist".  All of my efforts to get her to affirm the feelings that went into the work failed........I felt like she, and the group in general, saw me as a "strident old feminist", with all all negative trivialization that comes along with that.  Darn.  The battle is far from won.  Trivialization of women, and their concerns, and the Goddess, Who is no less than Mother Earth.... is the essence of the problem, politically and spiritually. 

In a previous Post I remembered the Suffragettes, who struggled to give women the vote some 50 years after freed male slaves were given the right to vote. This past week, Senate Republicans voted unanimously against a bill designed to reduce the persistent pay gap between men and women  in the workplace. The bill would have increased protections for women filing gender-discrimination lawsuits, and put would responsibility on employers to prove that wage disparities between men and women (who typically earn  77 cents for every dollar a man earns) are not in place.  They voted unanimously against the same bill in 2010 as well. 

I wonder if this kind of unanimous filibuster to deny legal resort for prejudicial hiring would happen if the concern was for black people (men), or Jewish people (men), or Hispanic people (men).......I suspect the bill would have passed.  So why do we so passively accept this, along with the recent efforts to deny women birth control?    Well worth thinking about, because ultimately everyone suffers.  Because most people begin as children with mothers.

"More than 45 years after passage of the Equal Pay Act, the pay gap shockingly persists with women still earning on average 77 cents to every man’s dollar. According to the National Women’s Law Center, “This persistent pay gap translates to more than $10,000 in lost wages per year for the average female worker.

Women are half of all U.S. workers and mothers are the primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners in nearly two-thirds of American families. The Paycheck Fairness Act would be critical to strengthening the economic security of these families. The bill would have updated the landmark Equal Pay Act of 1963 by closing loopholes, strengthening incentives to prevent pay discrimination, and prohibiting retaliation against workers who inquire about employers’ wage practices or disclose their own wages. The act would have also addressed pay secrecy, which is a prevalent problem prohibiting employees from knowing whether discriminatory practices are occurring."

  (http://current.com/community/93796631_republicans-vote-unanimously-against-equal-pay-for-women-bill.htm)

 

President Barack Obama commented that,

“I am deeply disappointed that a minority of Senators have prevented the Paycheck Fairness Act from finally being brought up for a debate and receiving a vote.....As we emerge from one of the worst recessions in history, this bill would ensure that American women and their families aren’t bringing home smaller paychecks because of discrimination.” 

(Source: Raw Story (http://s.tt/1d81K)

The Rainbow Bridge Oracle

  "I've always conceived of the Rainbow as actually being a circle. Half disappears into the ground, into an underworld realm, hidden, but present. Like the Goddess. Perhaps what she gives us now is the means to seed a rainbow vision."

Christy Salo, Artist

“Rainbow Bridge consciousness is a way of thinking and acting that allows us to hold multiple perspectives in our minds simultaneously....As the saying goes, there are always two sides to a story. Rainbow Bridge consciousness is unity consciousness.”

Brent N. Hunter,  The Rainbow Bridge

I'm pleased to announce that I've published my book about The Rainbow Bridge Oracle  !

I've been working on these cards on and off for about 20 years.  Originally I wanted to make my own Tarot deck, but it became apparent that the ideas were diverging from the Tarot after a while, so I just made what I wanted. A lot of friends have asked about them, but publishing the cards was never affordable, until recently, when I discovered a site for people who make games.  They print card decks on demand! So now I can offer the deck of 52 cards, with a velvet bag, for anywhere between $15.00 to $25.00.......I'm still sorting it out.

THE RAINBOW BRIDGE ORACLE

Softcover   $27.95
Hardcover, Dust Jacket   $41.95
Hardcover, ImageWrap   $45.95

118 pages

 Limited edition text and artwork - book only available through
Blurb.  For a preview of the book visit this LINK!

                                                      ***********************************

"In the Tarot, the Higher Arcana is a progression through what mythologist Joseph Campbell called the "Hero’s Journey".  The first card in the traditional Tarot deck  is The Fool .  The Fool represents the utterly open innocence with with we incarnate into this world.  The Arcana progress through different  experiences, revelations, trials and initiations. The last card of the Journey is 
The World, the return Home. 

The journey is a Circle.

*********************************

Some New Cards:

          WEAVER

 "What might we see, how might we act,  if  we  saw with a webbed vision? The world seen through a web of relationships….”

Catherine Keller

A weaver  takes threads of many colors and skillfully weaves them together into a beautiful  tapestry.  We talk about "spinning a tale", meaning a storyteller takes "threads" of different characters and weaves them together into a good story with many inter-woven events. 

The name "Penelope" originally meant "with a web on her face", a term that was probably a title for an oracle, or perhaps a Goddess of Fate. But "webbed vision" can also have a contemporary meaning as  a way of seeing the world with a unitive eye, all people connected and in relationship to each other.  That kind of vision enables you to be a "good weaver" in your community, family, and life.  You are a person who helps others to "connect the dots" -  a true instinctual networker. 

Reversed:  You  may be having a hard time seeing the connections between people and/or events in your life, partly because you feel so disconnected  and isolated from others.  Get back "on line" with your life, and reach out to re-connect with whatever it takes.

 MANIFESTATION

"Remember that not getting what you want
is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck."

The Dalai Lama

"Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it" is an old folk saying that has much truth to it.   We have all dreamed of having great wealth, or being with the best looking boy in school, or any number of  wishes.  And sometimes we do get what we think we want, but ironically,  happiness can soon turn to misery and disappointment.  Sometimes getting what we think we want can be the worst thing that can happen to us, because what we want is concentrated on desires that are  immature, addictive, vindictive, greedy, or even unconsciously self-destructive. And sometimes getting what we don't want can turn out to be a great gift.

 The "Law of Attraction" demonstrates that we attract that which we focus upon,  and consciously (or unconsciously) what we  concentrate upon can manifest.  Loving and generous wishes attract loving and generous results. Negativity and pessimism generally manifests more negativity and pessimism, creating a self-fulfilling cycle.  Bearing all of this in mind, now is an excellent time to begin to manifest!

Reversed:  You're not able to manifest what you want because of either a lack of belief in yourself, or you are too negative in your worldview. 

VISION

In this immeasurable darkness,

be the power that rounds your senses

in their magic ring,

Rainier Maria Rilke

Among the Lakota, long preparations were made for the Vision Quest. Those who sought initiation fasted, prayed, and prepared themselves to "call for vision". They then went to a special place in the wilderness. When a young man returned with a vision it was shared with the tribe, and sometimes examined to see if it had prophetic or ceremonial significance for not only the individual, but for the entire tribe.

This is a tool we have largely lost. True visionary experience is "soul language"; like dreams and synchronistic experiences, a vision has multiple layers of meaning, and transcends time as we understand it. Visions, like dreams, communicate universal and personal truths, and whether unintended or intentionally induced in some way, can catalyze a spiritual path or a life's work. You are encouraged to "call for vision" in your own way. Do it in a sacred manner, and share and discuss your vision with others of like mind.

Reversed: Visions can be profoundly significant.......but sometimes there is a fine line between spiritual revelation and highly subjective schizophrenia. Practice discernment.

Instant Redial: New Peace Activists

  "When people in a democracy are not educated in the art of living --- to strengthen their conscience, compassion, and ability to question and think critically --- they can be easily manipulated by fear and propaganda. A democracy is only as wise as its citizens, and a democracy of ignorant citizens can be as dangerous as a dictatorship."

 Paul K. Chappell

The above portrait is of former solder and peace activist Paul Chappell.  Being a  portrait painter,  it caught my attention in some blurb from AOL yesterday shortly after posting about ETHOS the movie, and I liked it as a work of art, so I checked it out.  It's of peace activist Paul Chappell, who has stepped up to the issues of war touch on  in ETHOS.  It's good to see someone from his generation coming forward like this.  I've posted a video of his talk below - he's so clear and eloquent......and his comments on the psychology of warfare are well worth listening to! As someone who was trained extensively to be an officer, there's much to learn from his words. (And I do have to say, I hope the largely gray haired audience is not the norm for this important philosopher and activist.)

Lately I seem to get "instant redial",  sychronistically speaking........I just posted the previous article about the very important film ETHOS, the forfeit of democracy and the ecosystem to Corporatocracy (and me grousing about my good ole  days as a peace activist and how apathetic young people seem now, etc., etc.) when a young student from the U.A. came to the door collecting signatures for Arizona FairShare  and a conversation ensued about the organization he was collecting signatures for, and the film.  Encouraging! 

"Making critical investments in roads, bridges, rails, clean energy and education will put millions of Americans back to work while making life better for all.  We need our leaders to advance policies that will start creating jobs.  The American Jobs Act now in Congress would be a strong step forward, but many corporations and lobbyists are pushing back.  We can afford to create  jobs through smart investments if we make big corporations pay their fair share." (www.ArizonaFairShare.org)

 OK!  Thank you Universe!  I'm encouraged!