A River Runs Through Us

"Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River. Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. "

Norman MacLean, "A River Runs Through It"

These years I support myself with a successful AIRBNB/B and B.  I am now busy in ways I never imagined I would be.   "Home" used to be a van with a travelling cat, and in the complexity of my life now there isn't so much time to "call for vision" as I once had...........and when they do come, it too often seems  I have to put them at the bottom of the laundry list. 

I may have finally reached an age where I don't  inquire any longer about "the purpose of my life".  I reflect that if I have a "purpose"  at all, it is the sometimes  gathering and transmission of vision, the effort to communicate it.  I do feel that this is the sacred job of artists, although many would argue against that rather mystical idea.   We are all many layered, the world speaks to us in a multitude of ways,  and our depths run dark  and invisible most of the time.  And  a "river runs through us".  

I have a good friend who recently left me  a long message on my answering machine.  Almost 65, she wondered if we came into the world with a destiny, and if so, she is going through that threshold where she wonders if she might have "missed"  hers, not done whatever it was she was supposed to do, leaving behind her a wake of dissatisfaction.  To me she is an extraordinary, beautiful, accomplished woman who has led an adventurous and creative life.    How can I respond?  Why does it seem we no longer live in a world where such a profound conversation can be had over a cafe table, and a bottle of wine, deep into the night, instead of squeezed into 2 minute answering machines as we each rush, rush, rush through our ever complicated and busy lives?  I think I finally understand the Chinese curse:  "May you live in interesting times."    Sometimes I think distraction and busyness is the curse of  "today's world" and I determine to change that as I now fully push the  borders of old age.  

"Dreams.  They are never where you expect them to be."  

                                                                                                              ........From "Shirley Valentine" (1989)


Thinking about that conversation, I wanted to say that I no longer believe in "destiny".  We Americans are so materialistic, and grandiose, that the idea has come to mean some "great thing" -  so  if you aren't having a retrospective at the Met, or running an orphanage in Uganda, or in the Fortune 500, or married to a movie star, people somehow feel they've "failed", discounting all the glorious, beautiful, soul deepening experiences they've had. 

Perhaps a real soul  "Destiny" was to learn to love someone very  hard to love, a difficult child perhaps, or to learn to have patience with yourself.  Perhaps you met your Soul Mate, and your destiny was not to be together, but to experience the gift of loss.  Perhaps suffering was even one's destiny, so that empathy and compassion for others was deepened, the template of a healer.   Perhaps "destiny" is to do something difficult, and fail, never knowing how many lives you touched and enriched in the process, and not knowing until much later how you were  evolved by it.  Perhaps it's to connect with others through the mesh and warp and woof of synchronicity, never knowing consciously what gifts you've given each other, what waves and ripples of creative force you've sent out into the world.  We're dreamers and dreamt, and ultimately "a river runs through us", unfathomable, ineffable, splendid.

The quote at the top of the post  has always been so beautiful to me that I wanted to meditate on it for a moment, take a look into the depths of these waters.  It is from the novel that became also a movie, "A River Runs Through It", and the quote occurs in the end of the movie, as the lead character, now an old man, is fly fishing alone in a beloved river.  Perhaps Norman Maclean is speaking about what  storyteller Clarissa Pinkola Estes * called "Rio Abajo Rio, the river beneath the river of the world". 

Perhaps "El Rio" is also what Jung called the Collective Unconscious, I don't know. But Estes' speaks of the great River of Story, the universal waters flowing beneath the surfaces of all things, an image that moves me to imagine the deep underground rivers of the planet, and of our lives.

In her book Women Who Run With the Wolves *** she writes,

"Each woman has potential access to Rio Abajo Rio, this river beneath the river. She arrives there through deep meditation, dance, writing, painting, prayer making, singing, drumming, active imagination, or any activity which requires an intense altered consciousness. A woman arrives in this world-between worlds through yearning and by seeking something she can see just out of the corner of her eye. She arrives there by deeply creative acts, through intentional solitude, and by practice of any of the arts. And even with these well-crafted practices, much of what occurs in this ineffable world remains forever mysterious to us, for it breaks physical laws and rational laws as we know them."*

"Endarkenment", Lauren Raine, 2009

 Why must we evaluate the value of our lives, our "destinies",  in such material terms of "accomplishment" and "achievement"?  I have tortured myself mightily with those magic words, rushing, rushing, rushing to do the "great thing", and meanwhile, missing so many tender and miraculous moments.  What a tyranny! 

Even in terms of  "enlightenment",:  as if there is some ultimate and permanent state of spiritual "light" and  "accomplishment" we are supposed to reach.  And if we don't, we are failures?   Why not think also of what has been our deepening   "endarkenment", the field of creative unknowing we have drawn our lives from?  Whether tapping, if only briefly, the wellsprings of El Rio in grief, creativity, meditation, or through the sudden psychic upwelling that can happen when the so-called ego cracks and splinters, it is always a blessing when the waters are revealed, for they remind us of the greater life. 

In her book Meditation Secrets for Women, Camille Maurine writes,  

  “The realm of the soul is not light and airy, but more like mud: messy, wet, and fertile. Soul processes go on down there with the moss and worms, down there with the decaying leaves, down there where death turns into life. Deepening into soul requires the courage to go underground, to stretch our roots into the dark, to writhe and curl and meander through rick, moist soil. In this darkness we find wisdom, not through the glaring beam of will, but by following a wild, blind yet unfailing instinct that senses the essence in things, that finds nourishment to suck back into growth.” (p. 211)

If the river of story has a voice, it's a voice that contains all voices, human and planetary, and the song it sings may be Om, may be "Nameste", I am Thou.  What we ultimately bring to that song cannot be measured or valued in any terms we might try to wrap words around, try to put into some kind of list, some kind of materialistic order, heirarchy, or, heavens forbid, monetary  value.  If there is anything such as a "destiny", it might be found,  as Estes (who is a Jungian psychologist) believed,  within our instinctual participation in the Great Web of being, and in so doing, the ways in which each of us can open a channel,  a well spring, for others.

"...[W]hat Jung called 'the moral obligation' to live out and to express what one has learned in the descent or ascent to the wild Self. This moral obligation he speaks of means to live what we perceive, be it found in the psychic Elysian fields, the isles of the dead, the bone deserts of the psyche, the face of the mountain, the rock of the sea, the lush underworld - anyplace where La Que Sabe breathes upon us, changing us. Our work is to show we have been breathed upon - to show it, give it out, sing it out, to live out in the topside world what we have received through our sudden knowings, from body, from dreams and journeys of all sorts."

Perhaps the individuality of each one of us, our uniqueness, is a gift we can only experience in the embodied here and now, a great adventure that occurs like a bubble on the surface of the River, shimmering in the sun, then merged again with source,  the  River beneath the River of the World.

 "The deep parts of my life pour onward, as if the river shores were  opening out.

   It seems as if things are more like me now,  that I can see farther into paintings.

   I feel closer to what language can't reach." 

             Rainier Maria Rilke

Untitled, Lauren Raine, 1972

* (p.30, below)
** (p.96, below)

*** Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Hardcover, 560 pages, Random House Publishing Group, 1992

The Roswell UFO Conference 2019

Stanton Friedman ((July 29, 1934 – May 13, 2019) gave up his prestigious  job as a nuclear physicist to become a full-time ufologist  (Photo: Rex Features)

I have always found New Mexico a strange place , full of artists, mystics, and dreamers.  Odd towns that seem to have fallen off the edge of the world, vast unpopulated  and awe inspiring distances, old bones, bright colors, and endless mystery.  Although not the most scenic place in the "land of enchantment", Roswell fits nicely into that description.  I like Roswell, not only for the UFO Conference I've attended a number of years, but also for its quirky character, and of course, the Roswell Artist Residency and its beautiful museum of contemporary painting.  

In 2010 I was staying in Carrizozo, a town that is, like many N.M. towns, half-way to becoming a ghost town, but with a small enclave of artists and available studios.  I never thought much about UFO's.  I guess I thought it was some kind of legend,  like Bigfoot or Atlantis.   But while in 'Zozo I met a number of locals who had stories to tell about what their fathers, or aunts, "had seen".  Then, around the 4th of July, I drove into Roswell, some 75 miles away across a spectacular mountain road, to buy art supplies.  I landed right in the middle of the annual UFO Festival (it is quite a circus, and that year included a "Miss UFO Roswell" contest).  And the annual Conference was going on at the Roswell UFO Museum downtown.  Two days later I emerged with a very different worldview, which is enlarged and clarified every time I attends the Conference.  

Famous "weather balloon" photo

I greatly admire the dedication of those I've seen here, perhaps the most prominent being  Stanton Friedman * who died this year, and there were a number of memorials dedicated to him.  Panel and discussions included long-time  investigators Don Schmitt, Frank Kimbler, Kathleen Marden, Donald Burleson, Thomas Carey, Paul Davids, and Kevin Randle.   I particularly enjoyed this time hearing the "old timers" speak, because it gave me perspective on the tremendous amount of interviews, field trips, discoveries and many misleads and dead ends that they encountered in pursuing the Roswell Incident and government cover-up for all those years.  They  have been coming back and investigating at their own expense for 20, 30, even 40 years, doggedly dedicated to finding the truth, and the story they have to collectively tell is important.  

 For any who don't know the story, not too far from where the first atomic bomb was exploded lies the little ranching town of Corona, somewhat north of Carrizozo.  In the mid and later 40's, the New Mexico desert, with the development of atomic warfare in Los Alamos, was a  "hot bed" (no pun intended) of  military testing.  The first atomic bomb was detonated on July 16, 1945 in the Trinity test in New Mexico; Robert Oppenheimer remarked that it brought to life a quote from the Bhagavad Gita: "Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."*  In the 40's, the most important and powerful military testing in the U.S. was going on in New Mexico.  It is not impossible to imagine that not only the Germans and later the Russians were interested in what was going on there.  

In early July in 1947 a ranch foreman named Bill Brazel working  at an isolated sheep ranch  near the small town of Corona, some 75 miles north of Roswell,  found a field of debris on his land where a UFO had crashed.   Debris included pieces of metal with strange inscriptions, and an aluminum like material that could be crumpled up, but when placed on a table, unfolded itself and became perfectly flat.  

He contacted local police, who contacted the military in Roswell, the nearest large town, and also where there is an army presence.  Within a day, a large military operation converged on the site, and artifacts, including a presumed crashed vehicle, were taken to a hanger in Roswell, and shortly after that transported to several other possible sites under the greatest secrecy.  It is also believed that among the "artifacts" were several alien bodies.  One of the reasons this has been included in what we know of the Roswell Incident is that an undertaker in Roswell, as well as several other witnesses,  were apparently employed to presumably assist with preserving and transporting the bodies, and there are other reports from people (who are now, because this happened more than 70 years ago deceased) that say they saw  bodies as well as debris.  

The story was quickly covered up, with a story about it being a "weather balloon", and witnesses went silent, presumably because they or their families  were threatened with repercussions if they spoke out.  The trials that investigators like Stan Friedman and Don Schmitt have followed are convoluted and complex, and it's best to read some of their books or  watch their discussions or interviews to get an idea of the scope of the cover-up - I cannot do it justice here in this Blog.  But as Don Schmitt said at the panel this time, he kept coming back because "It's just about the most important story of the millenium - it has an alien vehicle, alien bodies, and a massive cover-up by the government.  It won't let us go."  I've listened to them for a number of years now, and I believe what they say.

I remember when I was in  Carrizozo I met an artist who had a small shop there who told me that her father was a janitor on the military base hanger in Roswell.  She said that he told her he saw "little people" in storage there, and he told her to never tell anyone else.  Did he make it up to impress his young daughter? Did she make it up to impress me?  That's my own small encounter with this mystery.  

A  speculation that interested me as well was that the UFO's were affected by electro-magnetic phenomena, and early July in New Mexico  is famous for the violent electrical storms they call the "monsoon season".  One thing is clear, and that is that the military in 1947 covered the crash up exhaustively, from informing the public that the problem was a downed "weather balloon", to threatening locals and their families who had any information or first-hand contact with the event.  Where are the bodies and/or artifacts now? When is disclosure going to happen?  No one knows, and this is a subject of debate among the dedicated men and women  who have been coming to Roswell for so many years. 

One of the presentations I found interesting in previous years was by Robert Salas  who co-authored a book, Faded Giant, about a UFO incident that he personally witnessed when he was a missile combat crew member monitoring the missile silo in Malmstrom AFB, Montana, in 1967. This was the height of the Cold War, and he recounts that he witnessed a number of UFO's apparently investigating the missile site.  During that sighting  all 10 of the missile systems went down, and inexplicably remained down until the siting was over!  I was impressed with Mr. Salas' humility as he told his story, and his belief that the UFO's were sending a message to us about the danger and futility of atomic warfare. 

The earliest known case of Alien Abuction was that of  Betty and Barney Hill in 1961, and since then many such stories have surfaced (and some inventive hysteria as well).  I was impressed with Yvonne R. Smith D.HT., a professional hypnotherapist who has been working with repressed memories of UFO abductees for many years.  She has released a new and updated edition of her book  Chosen:  From the Alien Hybrid Program to the Fate of the Planet  which is very disturbing and fascinating.    After thousands of hours of regressions she founded CERO - Close Encounters Resource Organization as a national organization to help people suffering from the trauma of abduction.  During her presentations she presents recordings of some of her  subjects while under hypnosis.  Apparently abductees can often  trace their experiences to early childhood (which might explain the presence of tracking devices found in a number of subjects), and abduction continues into adulthood.  Among some of her case studies are two double abductions, which she shares in her book.  Although most of the abductees are traumatized by their experiences, some apparently are not.   Here's a comment from her book by a woman who was abducted, and remembers having extensive "conversations" with the beings that abducted her:

"The point is that these creatures feel we take too cavalier an attitude toward the only environment in which we can truly be comfortable on a very deep level.  They see us doing something that they witnessed their own species doing long ago on whichever system they came from, something that grew imperceptibly,l incrementally, until it reached a threshold and then produced complete and quantitative change to conditions on which they could not continue.  

The reason they care is because they are also living in our environment, and they are barely hanging on.  I get the feeling they can't endure  our sunshine, our gravity, our geomagnetic fields, our high-octane emotions for long.  They've managed some kind of half-existence here.  Whatever we're doing that will have systemic, global impacts on us and economies on which we depend will make their tenuous existence even less tenable. 

I get the feeling  they are trying to manipulate our genetic material to create bodies fully adapted to our planet but which can also house their own kind of consciousness.  They are trying to create a body into which both species can incarnate and express their own styles of consciousness.  They're having a helluva time of it, though, above and beyond the technical difficulties of micro manipulating the extraordinarily complex DNA of Earth creatures.  Even as our bodies are not adapted to life on other worlds or permanent residence in spacecraft, their consciousness is not adapted to life in our stormy bodies and brains.  And, if we're moving as fast as they fear to altering irrevocably the conditions of life on Earth (theirs and ours) they may not have much time left to create a life form adapted to this world, a world which may ironically change out of their design parameters."

I suggest anyone interested in the subject read her most recent book, which can be ordered on Amazon.

 Last, I was disappointed that  Freddy Silva  was not there this year to speak about crop circles, as well as  sacred landscapes.  While it is now known that most the crop circles that appear are human made, there have been many that are absolutely inexplicable, and Silva has a great deal to share about this communion and phenomenon.  

After the Conference, to "cool down", I made my way to the hot springs at Truth or Consequences, N.M., which seems a fitting name and place to digest all of this!

Below, a recent (2017) movie about UFO's that is fascinating.  

UNACKNOWLEDGED:  An Expose of the World's Greatest Secred (Trailer)

Steven Greer presents new, top-secret evidence supporting Extraterrestrial contact including witness testimony, classified documents, and UFO footage while also exploring the consequences of ruthlessly enforcing such secrecy (2017).  Included in the documentary is commentary by, among others, Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the Moon.  Edgar Mitchell was a United States Navy officer and aviator, test pilot, aeronautical engineer, and NASA astronaut. As the Lunar Module Pilot of Apollo 14, he spent nine hours working on the lunar surface in the Fra Mauro Highlands region of the Moon. He was also the founder of the Institute of  Noetic Science and a well known UFOlogist and researcher of the paranormal.

https://youtu.be/9ebdQ-PC0aU


*
Nuclear Physicist-Lecturer Stanton T. Friedman  was employed for 14 years as a nuclear physicist by such companies as GE,GM, Westinghouse, TRW Systems, Aerojet General Nucleonics and McDonnell-Douglas.  He became interested in UFOs in 1958, and since 1967 lectured about them at more than 600 colleges and 100 professional groups in 50 U.S. states, 9 Canadian provinces and 16 other countries in addition to various nuclear consulting efforts. He  published more than 90 UFO papers and has appeared on hundreds of radio and TV programs including on Larry King in 2007 and many documentaries. He is the original civilian investigator of the Roswell Incident and co-authored “Crash at Corona: The Definitive Study of the Roswell Incident” 

TOP SECRET/MAJIC his controversial book about the Majestic 12 group, established in 1947 to deal with alien technology, was published in 1996 and went through 6 printings. He is co-author with Kathleen Marden (Betty Hill’s Niece) of a book in 2007: “Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience”. His book “Science Was Wrong” with Kathleen Marden was published in June 2010. He has provided written testimony to Congressional Hearings, appeared twice at the UN, and been a pioneer in many aspects of ufology including Roswell, Majestic 12, The Betty Hill-Marjorie Fish star map work, analysis of the Delphos, Kansas, physical trace case, crashed saucers, flying saucer technology, and he has spoken at more MUFON Symposia than anyone else. He will be profoundly missed.
https://youtu.be/DvJBZgDGKjI

"The Scarlet Bird of Paradise"........a Syncronicity

I have turned my home and property into an AIRBNB, which has made it possible for me to keep my home and studio, and also provides me with many interesting encounters with people who are  travelling.  The past month I've enjoyed early  morning coffee and illuminating conversations in the garden with Barbara.  Barbara is a retired hospice nurse, and also a Buddhist.  She is a wise woman who has deep insight into many things, a long life's experience to draw from, and has worked for most of her career with those who are leaving this plane of life and moving into the other worlds.  I've learned a great deal from her in the  course of these morning  conversations about death, consciousness, and spirit.

With the closing of the Masks of the Goddess Project, and the advent of my 70th birthday, I've found I have many questions about what to do now, as an artist, a human being living in such a troubled time, and as I enter old age, the limitations of old age,  and my final years.  Many images come to me now of possible art pieces and art projects - I always say "thank you!" when the Muse offers them to me!.  Conversations with Barbara have often engaged these questions, and I have spoken of how I long to be of service in some way, perhaps to find outlets to teach, to find ways to help people access their inner selves through art and self-expression.  And I often spoke of my longing to devote my art to the Earth.

It was just such a discussion we were having about a week ago, and I believe I was talking about how grateful I feel for the privileged life I have led, and also how I wish I could share more with others about the transformative powers of art making, particularly what I have learned by working with masks.  My garden has several bird feeders not far from where we were sitting, and suddenly a red cardinal appeared!  To those living in points east and north, this may not seem unusual, but in southern Arizona, in the hottest month of June, it is astounding! Songbirds migrate here in the winter, but what on earth is a songbird, a red cardinal,  doing in my garden in June? I've seen sparrows, the desert dove, woodpeckers, and finches in the summer, but never a cardinal.  

The beautiful creature lingered for a while.  When I woke up from a nap later that day, I saw and heard him singing sweetly and very distinctly on top of a tree in the garden.  When he appeared the following morning Barbara said that he was a message for both of us.  We haven't seen him since, but in the course of contemplating this "visitation",  I remembered a poem I wrote a long time ago.  It was about .......... love, the experience of love, and also the gifts of experience and knowledge that come from a lifetime.  I called it "Bird of Paradise",  and one of the lines was:  

"A scarlet bird flashes among the trees.  Fly free,  Bird of Paradise, fly into the morning from the other side of forever."  

It seems to me that  synchronicities, visions, dreams and spirit contact are outside of time, time being a function of embodied existence.  That poem, and that Cardinal,  carried an answer.........

But it doesn't stop there!  I thought I would write about it in my Blog, and so I searched for a photograph on Google Images of a red Cardinal for a post.  Amazingly when I found a photo I wanted, as I was getting ready to download it, I noticed the website and words beside the image - it said:  "What It Means When You See a Red Cardinal" !  The website is something called Psychic 2 Tarot, a psychic site I was not familiar with.  But their article about what it might mean spiritually when a Cardinal appears was perfect, just perfect.  So I share the poem I wrote some 20 years ago, and also take the liberty of copying from that very synchronistic website.  And I apologize to the author, because I could not find his or her name when I searched the website.




BIRD OF PARADISE

I pause at the door, key in hand
Breathing in the last of you
Pleasure that pierces heart and reason:
All I can give
is to give it back.

Back to the World 
to the dreaming earth, the singing waters,
dancing flames, to the open sky.
To the Circle at the center of all things.

World, here is my heart's unspoken delight:
I offer it back to you, with gratitude.
To play among the leaves,
to light my dappled path.
I ask no more than this.

I open my hand
A scarlet bird
flashes among the trees.
Fly free, Bird of Paradise,
fly into the morning
from the other side of forever.

1999

What It Means When You See a Red Cardinal

Psychic 2 Tarot (author unknown)

Signs and messages are all around us. Many of them come in forms that are subtle and are often difficult to spot or interpret, but receiving a visit from a red cardinal is almost always a noticeable event. With their soothing song and bright, vibrant red plumage, red cardinals are impossible to miss — and there may be a good reason for that indeed.  In fact, these beautiful songbirds may be delivering a very important message, one that’s just for you. If you want to learn more about the secrets behind what it means when you see a red cardinal, read on below. Prepare to have your mind blown.

The Messengers of the Spirit World

Cardinals have been considered messengers sent by the spirit world for quite literally thousands of years. This notion spreads across a number of different cultures — wherever these beautiful red songbirds are found, the legend arises. It’s therefore not too surprising to see the word “cardinal” used to signify an important or meaningful object or relationship. Whether it’s cardinal angels, cardinal directions, or cardinal colors, the use of the word denotes something big and noteworthy.  This makes it especially appropriate that the word itself contains the Latin root word cardo, which means either an axis or a hinge — a point which everything revolves around or holds all moving parts together. Cardinals are, resultantly, viewed as the revolving point between our world and the spirit world, acting as messengers between the two.

Old Traditions, Sacred Meanings

Many indigenous people have old and sacred traditions and meanings associated with the cardinal. In many Native American languages, cardinals are simply known as “red birds”, and there are a number of indigenous creation myths where they feature prominently. Cherokee myth says that the Sun gives birth to the first red bird, making the cardinal her daughter. Meanwhile, the Choctaw feel that cardinals are associated with relationships and are often associated with changing relationship status — and sometimes as a warning for rough times ahead.

Many indigenous traditions hold that cardinals are associated with other sorts of change, such as the weather. Others still feel that cardinals are guardians or sentinels, that their red coloration provides protection from illness and from harm, and that cardinals can point you in the right direction while traveling. Whatever the specific tradition is, it’s universal that red cardinals play an integral role in many Native American belief systems.  This extends to shamanic approaches as well. Indigenous shamans use tools that include the medicine wheel; this specific tool incorporates the four cardinal compass points and cardinal color choices. Red, the color of the cardinal, is associated with the East compass point, the beginning of spring, and birds like the cardinal that can take messages to and from the spirit world. Speak your message to the East, the legend goes, and cardinals will take flight to deliver your words.

The Western Traditions: Cardinal Angels

There are seven Archangels, four of which are known as the Cardinal Angels. These four are Gabriel, Uriel, Raphael, and Michael, and they have dominion over much in the Western Abrahamic traditions. Whole nations and cultures often fall under the sway of these Cardinal Angels, who are thought to provide support in the form of divine inspiration and protection.  This thought, of course, echoes much of Native American shamanic thought, which uses Cardinal compass points and colors.

Visitations from the Spirit World

Many feel that cardinals represent visitors from the Spirit World, or at least messengers sent by those that have come before us. Particularly insistent cardinals that sing to you or even approach you are especially thought to be bringing personal messages to us, perhaps in response to a request for guidance or because you’re hunting for the answer to a particular question.  In such a situation, it’s important to stop and think about what you’ve been struggling with and what this visitation may be trying to tell you. A visit can show you that you are not alone and that you are receiving the spiritual support you feel you need so desperately at the moment, and this brings many people comfort. Feelings of gratitude for the visit, both from the cardinal and from whatever force sent them, are quite appropriate in such situations, as are feelings of peace and reassurance that you’re on the right track.

Those Brightly Colored Spirit Guides

In many cases, a visit from a cardinal can be the delivery of a message from our loved ones that have departed. Cardinals can be signs that the ones we miss are still here with us, watching over us and protecting us. Cardinals may not be the only messenger our loved ones send us, though — anything that can catch our eye is a common and welcome choice. This includes any small, rare, or colorful animal or insect.  Winged creatures are especially good at getting our attention and are quite special when they make themselves known to us. From butterflies to dragonflies to hummingbirds and, yes, especially cardinals, whenever we’re visited by one it can be an indication that our dearly departed family, friends, and ancestors are showing us they still love us and care for us. In your own time of need, when you’re searching your soul for answers, our loved ones can often send us a cardinal in an effort to help us make up our mind or find the right course of action going forward.

Paying Attention to the World Around Us, Both Seen and Unseen

Finally, cardinals are a reminder to pay attention to the world around us and all of its many forms. The gorgeous red plumage of a cardinal against the white snow of winter is a reminder that even in a season where all seems cold and dead there is still life and beauty. There are things to care about, value, and be in awe of at all times in life, things that are special. This includes the people in our lives right now and those that may no longer be with us.

It’s this capability that lets the cardinal bridge the gap between our world and the Spirit World, acting as the axis that turns the two. Messengers on crimson wings, the special missives cardinals bring to us from the beyond should never be ignored but always considered with great importance — and great joy. Whether it’s a message about the relationships we have with others outside our family, those we have within it, or those we have with our blessed ancestors, heed the call of the cardinal and you will receive the wisdom of the ages as a result.

This article also appears on Psychic 2 Tarot 

(https://www.psychic2tarot.com/blog/spirituality/what-it-means-when-you-see-a-red-cardinal/)

Summer Solstice 2019

The Buddha’s Last Instruction

 

“Make of yourself a light,” 

said the Buddha,
before he died.

I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal – a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.

An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.

The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves. 
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.

And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire –
clearly I’m not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something  of inexplicable value.

Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

~ Mary Oliver ~

I woke early, on this longest day:

the light rose among
 the green conversation 
of  trees, a fading star, exultant starlings,
  two grey squirrels 
performing their morning ritual

greeting the only God 
they know,

the Sun


Lauren Raine
6/2013 

Carolyn Myss and the Subject of Honor

"We seem to be having a crisis of honor............Lying and deceit dominate public politics and public life, business, academics, and even the arts.  As a result our children have virtually no valid role models on which to model their own sense of honor."

Carolyn Myss, Why People Don't Heal And How They Can (1997)

Medical intuitive Carolyn Myss is one of the new paradigm's most articulate healers.  She has commented in several of her books  that we are becoming a culture without honor, which she likens to lacking a spiritual "back bone".   Without a "back bone" to support us,   there is very little to keep us standing as a unified body.  Without a personal and social sense of honor, we are like people without a foundation, without the strength to be sustainable.  This applies to individuals, it applies to families, it applies to nations. 

Under Trump endless  lying, corruption, nepotism, blatant adulatory as well as reducing the humanity of women to "pussies", disregarding the urgent warnings of world scientists about climate change, disregarding the Constitution, removing any environmental protections, and last, caging and punishing the most vulnerable of people, refugees seeking asylum.............has become normalized.  I don't know how much farther the formerly united states of America can fall into DISHONOR.  Which is why, in my opinion, this country is not going to be able to continue as a nation much longer.  It no longer has the honor needed to sustain itself.

Remembering some of Carolyn Myss articles about the importance of a system of honor,  I'm taking the liberty of copying below from an article she wrote shortly after the deadly  Tsunami that struck Japan in March of 2011.  I think what she has to say is important. 

Reflections on the Power of Honor

by Caroline Myss on Thursday, March 17, 2011

An inspirational story from Japan is being shared,  from a sister in Sendai:

"If someone has water running in their home, they put out a sign so people can come fill up their jugs. I come back to my shack and I find food and water left in my entrance. There has been no looting, no pushing in lines. People leave their front door open. People say, "Oh, this is how it used to be in the old days when everyone helped one another."

This small story is touching the hearts of thousands of people. Today on a conference call, someone read this story to an entire group of people, then added, "What an example of love and compassion."  She was mistaken. Such actions are not just motivated by love and compassion. The absence of looting is not the result of love and compassion. Nor is the choice to stand in line patiently, waiting your turn. This is the result of having a deeply rooted sense of honor. The choice to not steal from a person who has already lost nearly everything in a catastrophe comes from realizing that such an act is the ultimate dishonorable choice.  The Japanese come from a society rooted in a long running code of honor, of not losing face.  Nothing would be more dishonorable to a Japanese person than to steal from another person who has lost home, business, or family, much less much of the nation they share.
An honor code is power - period. And we are witnessing that power holding the social fabric of Japan together.

In schools in the United States, words such as "morality" and "ethics", much less "honor" are practically banned. Fundamentalists and other such lunatic extremists consider those subjects "religious".  The result of listening to what in fact are the politics of these people has been, ironically, morally devastating to the generations that have since followed the ruling that banned the use of these words or courses involving discussions of that subject matter. Who now can speak about the importance of refining a personal honor code or the importance of studying ethics or learning how to navigate one's way through a moral crisis?

The lack of instruction of such essential soul knowledge is now evident in that we rely upon law suits to fill in the absence of honor. We just assume the lack of honor in another person, considering it foolish to do business without a contract or a lawyer. Even if we know them, when it comes to business - well, you just can't be sure honor stretches into that area of a person's character. Right? I mean, come on. Why? Because the other person might just lack a sense of honor - you just can't be sure these days. Why take a chance?Never mind refining our personal sense of honor. We would rather have our sights locked onto to the other person's lack of honor and that's that.

 The truth is we have become an obsessively litigious society precisely because we are no longer an honorable one. Or, as Benjamin Franklin would say, we are people without virtue. Trusting another, doing business with a handshake, honoring one's word - why, that's just considered old world. Who keeps their word these days?

We don't respect this entire spiritual wisdom to either demand it be taught in our schools - and NOT as a religious topic but as a HUMAN ESSENTIAL - or to insure that such sacred knowledge is passed within the home.  The handing down of a personal honor code is not a weekend course. It is taught through the example of an elder, a parent. Children inherently look for that instruction. They have a yearning to be schooled in honor because it requires something of them. It demands that they rise up to a certain standard of self-respect and from this standard, self-esteem awakens.

As I write this, memories of the disaster of Hurricane Katrina are flowing through my mind. Vividly I recall that the National Guard was called out immediately due to looting while streets were still soaked with water.  Rescue teams poured into the sea of confusion (no pun intended) while the chaos grew exponentially by the hour. Unlike Japan, panic, anger, and outrage soon followed.  FEMA was more than disorganized and unprepared, as people were ushered into a stadium. But my purpose is not to recall those familiar details. Rather, details of how we responded under crisis versus how the Japanese are now responding strike me as worthy of note............The people of New Orleans were told that the levees would hold back the water. As a result the much needed funds to repair them were denied. Structural engineers warned authorities that the walls were in desperate need of repair. but politicians and authorities did nothing about it.

Consider:   would we consider our politicians honorable individuals? Is this an assumption that most Americans make about their "elected leaders"?  Do we really believe many of them are even capable of telling the truth?  We now assume we are lied to in this country far more than we assume we are spoken to with respect, which is to say, told the truth.  And that is worth truly thinking about.

 We are treated with dishonor and we accept it as normal. How incredible is that?  Is it any wonder then that the Earth is so dishonored or nature or that endless policy decisions are made that lack any sense of honor or evidence of human dignity?
 
Living an honorable life comes at a cost. You have to be willing to stand for something, for values that mean something to people other than yourself. Your values have to make a difference in the world. They have to count, especially in a crisis or when the outcome of your choices - your word - matters to the lives of others.

Dishonorable people could care less about whether safety standards are actually met in nuclear plants or coal mines or in air traffic control towers.  Their interest is the corporate bottom line - profits. Never mind if the "losses" are human beings.  But the power of honorable people committed to making a difference in the world actually have the power to make a difference.

Consider that one paragraph from the woman from Sendai, writing about how the people of Japan are sharing everything in this time of crisis. Her words are piercing the hearts of thousands because they are true. They make each of us want to share, to keep our doors open, to be gracious, generous - to be honorable down to our souls.  That's the power of one person. I look at the people of Japan with prayers in my heart and gratitude for the example of an extraordinary people who have entered into the beginning of their dark night. I know ours is coming. I pray we learn from their example.

Caroline Myss, 2011

Fire Art..............

Going through my old files, I seem to have done quite a few paintings over the years about............Fire!  These are all paintings I really have never shown, most them lost by now as well.  Most of them were done in the month I was at the Cummington Community, in western Massachusetts, for a month, my very first artist's colony residency.  That was 1989, and it was such a magical month, the images just poured out of me, each morning I woke up with another one of them.  I believe they were about..........transformation, transformation of consciousness, of communion, of form, the element of fire representing all of those things.   Some of them seem strange to me now, clumsey, some of them I still like.  I don't really know what to say about them now, except that I wanted to just share them, finally, after all these years.    

Carlsbad Botanical Gardens.........

"Dragon Tree Deva" (2014)

The Botanical Garden at Carlsbad

Where I found, some 5 years ago, some  very sexy flowers, Agaves with Attitude, and quite a few exotic Devas of the Garden........... 

No matter how I wish, I find I just can't write lately.  No new revelations come, other than it is so very important to notice the Beauty.  With a capital "B".   So my  mind, keeps going backwards.  I visited the Botanical Garden with my friend Joanna Brouk, and made these photos for her.  Joanna and I went to Berkeley together, and she was a poet, a novelist, and best known as an early, and influencial, composer of synthesizer music. So much of her music came from the magical beings she sensed in nature, the Undines and the Dryads.   She died  suddenly in 2016, and I so often find myself missing her.  As I approach my 7th decade, so much memory, and a lot of loneliness and loss  too.  Here is for Joanna, once again.