Raukkadesa

Out beyond ideas
of wrong doing and right doing,
there is a field.

I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down
in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language
- even the phrase "each other" -
do not make any sense.

From The Essential Rumi, Translated by Coleman Barks.

When you do a lot of driving, without a radio or tape player, you either find yourself becoming very, very bored, or you make a meditation of it.  I guess, being such a nomad over the years, driving has become my form of meditation, and I do some of my best thinking with the white line unrolling before me.  It's a good metaphor, isn't it?   

I found the word "raukkadessa"  often popped into my  mind this summer, and I've made notes for an entry that never seems to be able to be finished.  "Raukkadessa" is a shamanic  concept, one that I was introduced to in 2004 by singer and songwriter Kathi Huhtaluhta.   The word came from a song on her album  Beyond Love  (Sami Records, 2004).  Kathi  lived in Finland,   where she studied "Yoik" traditions of Sami chanting.  But she also became very influenced by Sami folklore and spirituality while there.

Kathy told me her song, Raukkadessa, derived from a word she learned  which meant "beyond love".  Meaning, beyond the pairs of opposites, beyond loss, conflict,  history, the constructs of personality and culture, beyond even our temporal experience of love (or hate)....."there is a field". 

And perhaps the purposes of that  exchange, or that experience, are unintelligible in temporal terms, lie beneath, or above, the surfaces of our lives............I don't know.   I think of my friends song, of  "Raukkadesa", and sometimes it  has helped me to let go of anger, regret, blame or loss, and accept the mysteries of my life, to appreciate, if not always understand, the evolutionary pattern.  

I remember an artist  I met in California who told me, quite seriously, that she believed she had been collaborating creatively with a man in New Jersey for 40 years.  She said she had never met him, and probably never would.  

I've often found that people have given me gifts that take time and maturity to understand. 
Recently I had a month of conflict with a roommate, which was, of course, very uncomfortable, and full of the judgemental polarization of "she's wrong, she's crazy" etc.  It was exhausting. As it turned out, she really did need her own space, and we were a poor match as roommates.  But for me, she provided me with some important growth and self-understanding, because I had to come to grips with ways that I was being unsympathetic, judgemental, possessive about the space, and unkind to someone who, I began to realize, was quite fragile.  After all the blustering, I had to take a look at that very uncomfortable place of  remorse for my behavior.  When I finally got it, I decided I needed to do what I could to put things right, and I helped her in various ways to find a new place.  Ultimately, we parted in a friendly manner.  And I have some satisfaction that it was a win-win situation in the end.  A gift.

What we call "forgiveness", I find, mostly has to do with forgiving myself.  It's much easier to forgive others.  The word "fore-give" means to give the energy forward, to not constrict oneself in time and place.   At some moments, one sees that what happened was a  node in the Web, and they were there, co-creators,  all the time.  The threads others wove for and with me become an important motif in the tapestry of my life.  But the pattern is only visible with an overview, if it's ever consciously visible at all.     I don't like the term "guidance", I prefer the word "Conversation".   Beyond the immediacies of our  sequential lives, "there is a field"  where the Conversation goes on within the  stories of our lives. 

 I STOOD POISED UPON THE EDGE OF TOWN,
AND HEARD THE BLUE STARS  SINGING

Weary ideas rise and fall
into blessed exhaustion.
I touch that essence,
that blood-red honey wine,
this strange distillation.

I entered a lucid dream,
I found a lucid life.

Through my open window, I see
a black, far horizon,
and I hear the blue stars singing
memories of memories

I wish I could tell you
what I have seen
in the homelands.

Perhaps, in that country,
we are of each other at last......
You take my hand, we walk together
in that green and splendid
meadow.
I offer you a glass,
you raise your cup to mine
a butterfly rises between us,
flies into the morning
from the other side
of forever.

Through an open window,
I hear the stars singing.......
But I write this in a small, dark room
here, and now,
wishing I could be young again,
wishing I could feel
something other than foolish.

I will always remember you
between
always between

(2002)

Climate Change is Unequivocal says IPCC

 

In keeping with the previous post,  I feel I need to post this important summary from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  We need to remember and re-invent and inspire all the good things that are being done, all the people who are developing grass roots programs, alternative energy, activism for the Earth, and new paradigms of spirituality that encompasses nature, justice for all beings  upon the Earth, and justice for our children, who must live into a changed and troubled future.   But there cannot be room any longer for denial.............

'Unequivocal' says IPCC

Global scientific consensus says the planet is changing in ways unseen in thousands of years and if something 'substantial' not done, and soon, the results will be unthinkable."

- Jon Queally, staff writer

 If the public and policymakers want a single adjective to describe the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's new assessment report that's the word.
Released Friday, the IPCC report states, that "warming in the climate system is unequivocal and since 1950 many changes have been observed throughout the climate system that are unprecedented over decades to millennia."

"Our assessment of the science finds that the atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amount of snow and ice has diminished, the global mean sea level has risen and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased,” said Qin Dahe, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group I, responsible for this first stage of the IPCC's report on climate.  Read the full report here.  Headline statements from the IPCC here (pdf).  The report reaffirms that the human influence on the planet's dramatic warming is clear and beyond reproach. According to a press statement accompanying the release of the report:

It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. The evidence for this has grown, thanks to more and better observations, an improved understanding of the climate system response and improved climate models.

Thomas Stocker, Co-Chair of the working group behind the report indicated that in order to prevent the worst case scenarios presented in the report for the century ahead, governments will need to take aggressive action. "Continued emissions of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and changes in all components of the climate system," Stocker said. "Limiting climate change will require substantial and sustained reductions of greenhouse gas emissions."

The IPCC document—officially labeled as IPCC Working Group I assessment report (AR5) and titled Climate Change 2013: the Physical Science Basis—was approved by the world scientific body on Friday in Stockholm and is the panel's official statement—made after hundreds of the world's top scientists reviewed thousands of studies—on climate change, ocean and atmospheric temperatures, and global warming.

“As the ocean warms, and glaciers and ice sheets reduce, global mean sea level will continue to rise, but at a faster rate than we have experienced over the past 40 years,” said Dahe.  And its other key findings are startling. They include:

• Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased.
• Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850. In the Northern Hemisphere, 1983–2012 was likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1400 years (medium confidence).
• Ocean warming dominates the increase in energy stored in the climate system, accounting for more than 90% of the energy accumulated between 1971 and 2010 (high confidence). It is virtually certain that the upper ocean (0−700 m) warmed from 1971 to 2010, and it likely warmed between the 1870s and 1971.
• Over the last two decades, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have been losing mass, glaciers have continued to shrink almost worldwide, and Arctic sea ice and Northern Hemisphere spring snow cover have continued to decrease in extent (high confidence).
• The rate of sea level rise since the mid-19th century has been larger than the mean rate during the previous two millennia (high confidence). Over the period 1901–2010, global mean sea level rose by 0.19 [0.17 to 0.21] m.
• The atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, and nitrous oxide have increased to levels unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years. CO2 concentrations have increased by 40% since pre-industrial times, primarily from fossil fuel emissions and secondarily from net land use change emissions. The ocean has absorbed about 30% of the emitted anthropogenic carbon dioxide, causing ocean acidification.
• Total radiative forcing is positive, and has led to an uptake of energy by the climate system. The largest contribution to total radiative forcing is caused by the increase in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 since 1750.
• Human influence on the climate system is clear. This is evident from the increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, positive radiative forcing, observed warming, and understanding of the climate system.

“The world’s scientists have spoken," said Sarah-Jayne Clifton, climate justice and energy coordinator for Friends of the Earth International, in reaction to the report. Clifton said the report once again reaffirms "now with absolute certainty" that climate change is caused by humans and "that it poses a severe and immediate threat to our future and that of the planet."

"Communities around the world are already being devastated by extreme weather. It is untenable for our political leaders to continue their inaction," she said. "The interests of humanity must be prioritized above the profits of dirty energy corporations through an urgent and dramatic transformation of the world’s corporate-controlled, unsustainable energy system."

Follow Up on International Conference on Women and Climate Change

‘The World Will Be Saved By The Western Woman’

....The Dalai Lama, 2010

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S EARTH AND CLIMATE SUMMIT, September 24, 2013 www.iweci.org .

 Women Form an  Unprecedented Alliance,  Declaration and Action Agenda to Take on Climate Change and Promote Sustainability Solutions  in  New York— Unlikely partnerships, meaningful policy, reaching beyond the choir, gender equality and a commitment to bold action were all on the agenda as 100+ women from around the world gathered in New York for three days of dialogue and deliberation at the International Women’s Earth and Climate Summit.   Emerging from the gathering, a burgeoning collaborative of organizations with a combined reach of 33 million women and men is now poised to become a major force in the climate and sustainability movements.

From indigenous leaders to former heads of state, from scientists to pioneers in fields of renewable energy, business and policy, the Summit was a who’s who of women leaders from the Global South and the Global North. This diverse cohort of delegates found unity around a ‘Declaration Statement for Urgent Action on Climate Change and Sustainability Solutions’ and laid the foundation for a Women’s Climate Action Agenda to be finalized in the coming weeks. The Agenda builds upon the core concepts of the Rights of Women, the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Rights of Nature, and the Rights of Future Generations, addressing issues ranging from the protection of oceans and fresh water to divestment from fossil fuels and putting a high price on carbon. See the full text of the Declaration here: http://www.iweci.org/uploads/cke_documents/IWECI_declaration_FA.pdf

“Women have the knowledge to create the change we know the world needs. We are framing our own powerful Women’s Climate Action Agenda, working beyond the United Nations and other policy structures to reach new constituencies committed to protecting the earth and future generations,” said Osprey Orielle Lake, Co-Founder. “Women are gathering in great numbers with an unstoppable resolve, because what’s happening at the international policy level on climate change is not equivalent to the urgency we are facing,” said Sally A. Ranney, Co-Founder of the IWECI.

 “We are putting the world on notice: no more delays.  Violence against the earth and future generations is no longer tolerable: It’s time to stop the chemical warfare against nature,” Ranney said. “We represent a constituency of 33 million women and men, already mobilized and ready to take action. We vote, we march, we petition, we have purchasing power. We will be heard and we will make change, so that future generations can have a livable planet,” Ranney added. “Our Summit delegates included accomplished leaders in their fields who, though lesser known outside of their home countries, are major figures who rarely have the opportunity to converse together at this level. The result is an unprecedented collaboration, representing 33 million women and men around the world that are fiercely dedicated to a just transition to a clean energy future and to transforming how we are living with the earth and each other,” Lake added. The IWECI Summit occurred at a critical juncture in the debate over addressing climate change, with Climate Week and the United Nations General Assembly sessions in New York, and as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) prepares to release its much anticipated 5th Assessment Report.

 Summit delegates committed to building momentum for substantive action on, increased funding for and the meaningful policy changes necessary to address the global climate crisis. Ranging from small regional groups to large organizations with constituencies of hundreds of thousands, the combined reach of Summit collaborators represents a substantial boost to civil society movements mobilizing around climate change with a commitment to gender equity. In addition to the Declaration, Summit delegates took their first collective action yesterday, committing to a Women’s Global Day of Action on Climate in 2014. Additionally delegates signed a letter to US President Barack Obama urging him to reject the Keystone XL Pipeline (http://tarsandssolutions.org/member-blogs/global-women-leaders-send-president-obama-a-clear-message), an appeal to United Nations and World Bank officials to reject REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) http://no-redd.com/oppose-redd/, and calling on Ecuadorian leaders to protect the Yasuni National Park and uphold its Rights of Nature provisions (see www.amazonwatch.org). Over the coming weeks Summit delegates will finalize the Women’s Climate Action Agenda and plan for collective actions in 2014.

 Our goal is to stop the escalation of climate change and environmental and community degradation, while accelerating the implementation of sustainability solutions through women’s empowerment, partnerships, hands-on trainings, advocacy campaigns, and political, economic, social and environmental action.

Richard Martini, past lives, and "Flipside"

 I've been interested in the work of Dr. Michael Newton for many years, and was pleased to learn that on Thursday, October 10 at 6:30pm  Unity of Tucson will feature Richard Martini, author of Flipside, A Tourist’s Guide on How to Navigate the Afterlife.   Richard is also an award winning film producer and director. His mystical experiences initiated a search that led him to study, and eventually make a film, about his experiences, past life regression, and the work of Dr. Michael Newton.   His documentary, also titled Flipside, is a chronicle of his investigation. 

I found his video discussion about his  journey to "Flipside: a Tourist's Guide on How to Navigate the Afterlife." (below) fascinating, very personal and genuine,  and funny as well.........there's a companion video, with Scott De Tamble doing a "between life therapy session", which is very interesting as well.  Mr. Martini's  book  contains transcripts of between life sessions, and interviews with therapists who have trained with Michael Newton, as well as therapists who never heard of Dr. Newton's work, but experienced similar results.

In the 80's I did some past life regression work, both individually and with a group that used the tapes of Robert Monroe.  I've often speculated on the experiences I had.  Perhaps what made them seem credible was the "mundane-ness" of them.  I have an excellent imagination, and consciously or unconsciously I'm capable of dreaming up scenarios even the Syfy channel would like.  But my experiences under hypnosis were very simple - among them, a lifetime as a young foot solder, somewhere in the Middle East, whose most important memory was drinking beer with an admired older Captain.  He was speared and died at about the age of 17.  Another lifetime concerned a maid/nanny, poor and treated as very expendable, in 17th Century France.  Perhaps these very humble, and rather sad, certainly powerless, lifetimes were shown to me in the course of that work because I needed to address the emotional issues involved in this lifetime, as the persona I am now.  

I remember only one "regressive" experience I thought was inexplicable.  I seemed to be a kind of primitive tribal shaman, who lived in a hut with a lot herbs and stones.  I was old, and my sex didn't seem to have any meaning, I  couldn't discern if I was a man or a woman.  We were visited by a tall woman who was dressed in black, and she was paler than we were.  I was in awe of her.  She was a teacher of some kind, and essentially she showed me that pretty much everything I believed was not true, was naive.   One thing she demonstrated was to take a very large crystal, and dematerialize it, as well as herself - and then reappear in a flash of brilliant light!  

Perhaps the most surprising part of this "regression" was at the end of the session.  I was in a room with a lot of other people, and the woman I revered so much was lying on a bed.  She was dying, and I could hear her thoughts...........which were about regret that her work was not yet finished.  But I myself, along with the others present, were no longer physical, so "I", the person attending this gathering around this dying woman,  must have been dead myself.  Strange experience...............

I'm looking forward to hearing him speak.

https://youtu.be/xK7vndjaUJg?si=LC-Ln5wYUeFCRq-a

(Black) Butterflies revisited.........

who is arguing with the storm
passing over oxen in a field
not me just a butterfly
whose eyes blind my shabby self

"Old Pajamas", 2010

"The Ancient Greek word for “butterfly” is “psuché/psyché”(ψυχή, 1st.declension) which is used in the meaning of ‘butterfly’/ ‘moth’ by Aristotle and Theophrastus, though its usual meanings are :
breath, spirit, life, soul, departed spirit, ghost, living being, person.  In Ancient Greece the butterfly was a symbol of the soul, because it changes from caterpillar to a beautiful winged creature. Plus it has a shape of a double ax which was an Minoan symbol of the Great Goddess. Greek paintings often showed a small butterfly - "soul" - flying free from the mouth of the dead."  Yahoo Answers.com

Lately I've been thinking about butterflies again (maybe because I've been painting them), and felt like re-examining this post from 2010.  Butterflies are a universal symbol of transformation.  BTW, Antero Alli has recently finished a new film, THE BOOK OF JANE, which will be premiered in the Bay Area of California this coming month.  As with all his previous films, I'm sure it will be beautiful, fascinating,  and well worth seeing.

I think this is going to be a wandering/wondering post, because what I'm trying to approach with my capture net of words is the magical butterfly, a black one at that, a creature that clearly exists on such an elusive multitude of dimensions and metaphors........that it's impossible to consider her mysterious flight without a "holographic" approach. Butterfly is a creature that flies right into the Dreamtime as she so chooses. So, I'll begin by slipping, momentarily and gratefully, back into mythic time and mythic place, the life-renewing, fluid land of the Fey, the imaginal** (!!!).......for any hour I can spare.

I recently had energy work with a healer. With eyes closed, lying on a table, she did something similar to Reiki, running energy, helping me to connect with different areas of the "subtle body" that are blocked. Within this holistic approach, mind is viewed as being not only in the cranium. We perceive through at least 7 or more different "brains" - energy centers, symbolized by the Chakras, which represent different ways of receiving, experiencing, perceiving, responding to, and expressing consciousness. For example, the Base Chakra, identified with the color Red, is about physicality, the interface with nature and the planet; the Heart Chakra, Green, is associated with the ability to love and experience com-passion; the "Third Eye" Chakra, violet, is associated with psychic perception and visioning.

In energy medicine, practitioners help patients achieve integration between the chakras, the different "brains". Much of the work is surprisingly psychological, and is often concerned with helping clients to identify emotional "blockages", accessing, while in an altered state, old traumas, environmental issues, or erroneous belief systems that have caused an individual to close the heart or the doors of perception.

I had a vivid vision throughout this energy work of butterfly wings (not butterflies, just wings)...........folding, unfolding, before my closed eyes. I cannot help but feel that this was a kind of Grace, the wings offered were, perhaps, mine.

The butterfly has much significance to me, as personal archetype, and a sometimes visitor from the angelic realms, fulfilling the angelic role of messenger. Of course, I'm not alone in this. I've spoken with many people over the years who have had mystical Butterfly stories, among them my friend Fahrusha (her name, in Arabic, actually means Butterfly), who recounts an amazing synchronicity with a black butterfly in her blog.

Out of curiousity, I looked up "Black Butterfly" on Amazon.com recently, and was stunned to find there were 27 books with that title. I think a black butterfly is about the transformation that happens when the Shadow, in Jungian terms, is also given wings, transmuted.

I have met many people who have told me about butterflies appearing in connection with the loss of a loved one, or at times of personal despair. I list below a site that is devoted exclusively to "miraculous butterfly experiences". **To me, and I'm no psyche-ologist .....but to me, butterflies wonderfully participate in the interface between dream and waking life, flickering on the wings of synchronicity with their multi-dimensional messages, disappearing into the field of dreams just as mysteriously. A "Butterfly Experience" can be utterly intimate in the meanings they bear, and equally, universal and impersonal. For me, dealing as I have been for years now with therapy, and caretaking my mother and brother.........there is great personal meaning in my vision, meaning that has to do with karma, long patterns of family dysfunction, the work of emotional and psychic transformation.

Perhaps the most dramatic "butterfly experience" I had occured 10 years ago. Since this experience had to do with both dream and synchronicity, I don't know if I can tell it very cohesively, but I'll try.

It began with a disturbing dream. I dreamed I was on a ship, and on the deck many people sat in deck chairs, all of them playing with masks, taking them on and off. I seemed, in the dream, to be two people at once. I knew that there was, down in the lower decks of the boat, a demon. One of the women that I was was a kind of priestess or missionary - she was about to descend into the depths of the boat, where the demon below would torture and kill her. She thought that if she did so, offering herself as sacrificial victim, she could save the people above.

The other "me" was a cynical observer who thought she was a ridiculous martyr, and knew everyone, especially her, was doomed. I woke up as the "martyr self" began her descent.

Without going into the many circumstantial and psychological meanings of this dream, I'll skip ahead in real time. About 6 months after having this dream, I actually found myself, with a lot of actors, and a few masks, on an old decommissioned ocean liner (the "art ship"), which was anchored in the industrial harbor of Oakland. I was acting in a movie, and the writer and director of the film, Antero Alli, had decided to do his filming in the very bottom of this 5 level boat; the old, cold, dark, dank, cargo bay.

Descending into the bottom of the boat brought my dream back vividly, and every superstitious notion of prophetic dreams I ever had came right to the fore. I didn't like it there! Between shoots, the cast hung out in what must have once been the crew's cafeteria - located in a middle deck, it had round portholes, all of which were closed because it was a cold day in March. As we waited, the Director offered everyone a card from his own fascinating deck of oracular cards (with his artist wife, Sylvie Alli), and there was lively interest as each person contemplated his or her card.

I took a card from Antero with trepidation, and sure enough, damn if it wasn't the "DEATH" card.

Not five minutes later, as I stood with the card of doom in hand, a small orange butterfly landed on my shoulder.

There was absolutely no explanation for how that butterfly could have gotten into that closed room. I had lots of witnesses - and after the miracle revealed itself, several of them helped to catch the butterfly and get it upstairs where it could be released.

As a kind of synchronistic post-script, in 2005 I was back in the Bay Area for a two-person show (with Rye Hudak) at Turn of the Century Gallery, in Berkeley. I was surprised that, of all the works in the show, the gallery owner chose to put on the card announcing the show the one above, "The Butterfly Woman". When I came to hang the show, I went to nearby Cafe Trieste for a cup of coffee. Two stacks of cards were on the table there, side by side.

One was the card for my show with the image above. The flyer next to it was an announcement of the premiere of a new movie by Antero Alli called "The Greater Circulation" (a gorgeous film inspired by the life of poet Rainier Maria Rilke). The image on his announcement was a face encased in a skull - a Death's Head.

-------------------------------------------------------------

***"The caterpillar spins or weaves the cocoon, and in that cocoon, what the caterpillar is creating is his own tomb. We don’t know if he knows that or not. And he crawls into it, and his body liquefies. Complete disintegration of caterpillar. But in that caterpillar soup are these cells that have been in the caterpillar’s body all along, called imaginal cells. Isn’t that a fabulous word? Imaginal cells. It’s called imaginal by botanists because the adult form of that creature, the butterfly, is called imago. So these are imaginal cells, but to me those cells are ‘imagining’ flight. And these imaginal cells know how to take the soup and reconfigure that into a butterfly, an adult. I believe nature has designed us humans to go through a similar experience."

Imagine your Imago - Liberating the Imaginal Cells of the Human Psyche

 Bill Plotkin

http://www.animas.org/
http://www.alternativesmagazine.com

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** The Butterfly Website - miraculous stories
Alan Moore and the Butterfly Gardeners Asso.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE BLACK BUTTERFLIES

The black butterflies of night
Clipped for sleep to nightshade and widowgrief,
Or in shaking luminous flight
On paired and silver wings, are rare,
And rarely seen by human sight.

Yet, they are there, surfacing
Out of range of neons and streetlights,
Preferring underleaf
And the dark offshores of air
To man and moth-maddening glare of things.
Tonight, As crisis after crisis
Cracks our skies like lightning,
I think of death,
Of different ways of dying,
And of Egypt and the myth
That once held black butterflies
Sacred to Isis.

They lived forever in flight
In her private groves, compelled like
Flickering minutes
Never to touch leaf nor stone,
Never to rest, except upon her nakedness
When she turned to love.
And here is death to be envied;
To be crushed to a personal breast
Between goddess
And whatever bird, beast, lover
Fell to her lips.
We are something else. . .

Myth and love will miss us
When the night is suddenly turned on,
Turned blank white,
And the black butterflies
Appear against that vellum sky
As far, flitting, burnt-out stars.

Frank Polite

Mabon - the Fall Equinox

I am a lover of the steady Earth
and of Her waters

"Let the light be brilliant" She says,  
"for those who will cherish color."

From "Verses at Powis" by Robin Williamson

Mabon is traditionally the 2nd Harvest Festival of three (Lammas in August, and Samhain in October being the other two) and falls on the day  of the autumnal Equinox.   A time to give thanks for the bounty of the harvest,  to give thanks and celebrate all that nourishes us. The Day of Balance,  a time to consider what we have harvested this year, to give thanks for all of that harvest, the bright Blessings and the dark Blessings from which we learned wisdom, patience, or compassion. On this auspicious day of Balance, when day and night are the same duration, may we experience the grace of Balance within our lives, and in the greater life of our common humanity.  

Apple trees in Avalon, the "Isle of Apples" (the Chalice Well garden) 2011

When I lived in the country in New York, I remember a Mabon with hot cider and new apples, and honey mead that was opened for the occasion.  

I also remember an Equinox when I lived in New York City in the late 80's, and was invited to be part of  a performance organized at a small theatre in the East Village.   She asked me to do some kind of ritual for the  occasion. I couldn't think of anything,  and felt quite intimidated with the prospect of creating a ritual for an audience of New York sophisticates. 

I was visiting a friend upstate at the time, and I  happened to be standing near an apple tree by the road.  I can still see the green grass under the tree, and a brilliant  circle of ripe, freshly fallen red apples,  lying in the grass around the tree.  I picked up all the good ones, and took them back to the City with me.  

When I gave my short performance, I took out that basket of apples, and said something to the effect that "This is Gaia, ever generous, ever giving us what we need."  And then I invited those present to come and take the apples.  I was amazed to see that the audience took every one of them and ate them right there!

As I sit writing, the sun rises over the Catalina mountains that surround Tucson, where I live now.  Many years and miles away from that theatre in Manhattan.  I look up to  orange, magenta, violet, mauve, and a continually changing pale, cerulean sky, the canvas for this magnificent painting the sky makes, created anew twice daily.  I'm grateful indeed for this moment of Beauty, and grateful for the stories of my life.  Especially, today, those that are about Mabons.  

This is one of my favorite songs, Robin Williamson's love song to Mother Earth.  Seems a good time to share it again............  

https://youtu.be/yK5IWgsdqCg?si=SrIbBPp728FMXERs

John Steele, Kali Yuga, and Temporal Density

"Kali is the Goddess of the dissolution of time and structures.  She clears the way for those impediments of evolution that have arisen.  The Tibetan translation for "Kali Yuga" means literally the  "dregs of time", the bottom of the barrel of time.  Time has acquired such "temporal density" that it can actually be felt in the body.  And the definition of "Temporal Density" is that we have too many units of events in each day to fully or effectively assimilate them.........Another aspect of Kali Yuga   which is related to temporal density is that there is seasonal disequilibrium.  The climate and the seasons go out of whack."

John Steele

I've been wanting to post this talk by John Steele for a while now.  I met John Steele in 1989, at the Symposium on Art and the Invisible Reality at Rutgers University, sponsored by Dr. Rafael Montanez Ortiz.  I wish there was another such conference!  I presented a performance piece called "When the Word for World Was Mother", and not too long after John kindly sent me his amazing book Earthmind: Communicating with the Living World of Gaia, in collaboration with  Paul Devereux and David Kubrin.  It remains a very important book for me. 

John J. Steele is an aromatic consultant, archaeologist, author and visionary.  His work, whether with aromas or philosophy, engages questions about the nature of memory, time, consciousness and being. He has worked with Terence McKenna and Paul Devereux (The Dragon Project).   Steele  explores Vedic culture, Kali Yuga,  geomancy and what he calls "geomantic amnesia", geobiology, time out of balance, shamanism, the effects of geological formations on human consciousness, cross state retention, and the importance of sacred sites and spaces. EARTHMIND explores ways of interfacing with the earth for planetary healing. And Planetary Healing is also our healing.

 In this collection of audio recordings and seminars, John Steele gives an overview of how geomantic traditions have influenced human awareness, psychology and ways of life. He explains how sacred geometry can grant us access to "Present Time", the great and infinite place where silent knowledge flows into our consciousness unrestricted by the objects that surround us, and in many ways, "own us".

"The memorial capacity is the key to the strength of a computer, and our computers are valued by their increasing capacity to store memory.  There is an emphasis upon the acquisition of memory that can be stuffed into a computer..........What happens after a while is that the system becomes constipated by too much hoarding of memory.  This hoarding of memory (in human terms)  sets up a kind of psychological density, and as the system becomes clogged it becomes brittle.  That is to say it cannot react quickly to crisis situations because it is overloaded with information."

"The density of objects in the environment creates a corresponding density of memory necessary to record objects, and this density of memory creates temporial density.  Temporal density is a function of memorial density and memorial density is a function of object density.  You will notice that those cultures that have the fewest objects live in the dream time.  You look at the Australian aborigines with their minimal object array and you see that they live in a completely different time frame. The Bushmen the same.  As temporal density occurs it sets up this extended unconscious array of time - time is generated."

As I listened to the above, I thought of an article Geomancer Sig Lonegren wrote a year or so ago, in which he commented that he believed the great Megalithic structure of Stonehenge was a "last attempt" to retain right brain, or "dreamtime" consciousness, as human culture began to change during the Neolithic.  In a sense, he was saying that a greater contact with "the collective mind of Gaia" was gradually being lost.  Perhaps it is now time to regain that contact, in a new way.

I feel John Steele, and his colleagues, are so important in understanding our place on the planet, and as always, I'm saddened that they are so little known.

(I saw that the original utube interview I posted here has been removed from Utube.  I found something similar, and post below.)

http://youtu.be/r1h4fB5HCd4




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‘Earthmind: Communicating with the living world of Gaia’ by Paul Devereux with John Steele and David Kubrin 

 "The authors make much of the effect on mind of the electromagnetic properties of the Earth and its rocks. They believe that communication with the Earthmind or anima mundi can best be achieved at sacred sites, facilitated by the crystal structures within the dolmens there. However, the authors believe there are hopeful signs of a revival of belief in paganism and in Earth’s spirituality, which would contribute to lessening our desecration of our planetary home. The key to such a consciousness revolution rests, in the opinion of the authors, with acceptance of the existence of a universal field of consciousness and our spiritual integration with it – what Peter Russell (The Awakening Earth)" described as the Gaiafield and which Devereux calls Earthmind.

for a great review:   http://greenspirit.org.uk/bookreviews/2013/05/earthmind-communicating-with-the-living-world-of-gaia-by-paul-devereux-with-john-steele-and-david-kubrin/