Cats...........

Lucy and Lulu demonstrate symmetry

Walking Dogs...........

Walking Cats........

Dogs making friends

Cats making friends

And of course, Henri the Existentialist Cat's thoughts about the approach of Halloween:

Energy Medicine Conference in Tucson November 8 - 10

 Sometimes synchronicities can happen in funny ways........it's as if our thoughts go out and get a response in the Big Conversation with instant gratification! I was grousing to myself because a Conference I want to attend  costs a lot to travel to and attend.  To tell you the truth, I can't afford it.

So I was pleased to learn when I opened my email about a fascinating conference coming up soon in my own home town in November........and the Producer has made a point of making it very affordable, recognizing that many people who work in the field of alternative healing are,  not unlike artists, often "financially challenged".

Two of  Tucson's own visionaries,  Dr. William Tiller and Dr.Gary Swartz, will be speaking.  If you register before the 20th of October, it's only $99.00 for the full three days.  I'm excited!


http://www.naturaltucson.com/TUCS/October-2013/Understanding-the-Science-of-Energy-Medicine-Conference/

Understanding the Science of Energy Medicine Conference

Dr. William Tiller

The Science, Spirit and Health Symposium is holding their second annual conference, "Understanding the Science of Energy Medicine" , from November 8 through 10, in Tucson. The symposium intends to take a sizeable step in taking Energy Medicine further “out of the closet” and into the mainstream, featuring Dr. William Tiller, who appeared in the film, What the Bleep Do We Know? and University of Arizona scientist Dr. Gary Schwartz, as well as other nationally and locally known presenters, researchers and energy medicine practitioners.

The film, The Living Matrix, and the keynote address of the 2011 ISSEEM Conference on Energy Medicine’s History and Future by Bruce Lipton, a cellular biologist and author The Biology of Belief and Spontaneous Evolution, will be screened, as well.  Tiller will present: The Experiments that turned Orthodox Science on It’s Head! and Schwartz, author of The Sacred Promise: The Energy Healing Experiments, will present: The Energy Healing Experiments.

Art Giser, founder of Energetic NLP, will speak about "What You Absolutely Need to Know About Your Energy Field." Dr. Melinda Connor, a neuropsychologist and internationally recognized researcher, will present: "How Music Heals Your Brain".

Earlybird pricing: all three days for $99 until Oct 20. Register at NewGroundEvents.com. For more information, email JoshuaDanHorner@yahoo.com.

This article appears in the October 2013 issue of TUCS

Kandinsky on Art, Art as Magic...............

 

Kandinsky on painting (1903)

"Painting is an art. And art is a power that should be aimed at developing the soul.  If art does not do this job, the abyss that separates us from God is left without a bridge. The artist owes his talent to God and has to settle this debt. To do this, he has to work hard, know that he is free in his art but not in his commitment to life. Everything he feels and thinks is part of the raw material with which to improve the spiritual atmosphere around him."

"The Magician stands with his arm raised in the classic gesture of inspired invocation.  He draws the white light of universal energy (the Above) through his  skilled hand, his will, and then through his heart, to manifest on the physical plane (the Below).  As his creative energies manifest, they are broken into the "rainbow" components of the physical world in all of it’s lovely diversity.The Mage is an artist in every sense of the word, for his magic arises from a skilled and disciplined understanding of the tools he has to work with, his intention, and connection to the infinite realm from which all manifestations originate. The Magician card urges you to remember that you are the artist - the  Mage - of your life."

From "The Rainbow Bridge Oracle"

              The Card Deck may be ordered from:  www.rainewalker.com -   order form  

To purchase the accompanying book visit:  

THE RAINBOW BRIDGE ORACLE:  A Divination System

All artwork is copyright Lauren Raine MFA (2013)

 

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