I took on a 108 day practice challenge

Posted in Being Peace, Healing Journey, Personal, Spiritual Journey, Uncategorized by
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Yikes???

For a while I’ve been feeling like it’s time to get back on a more consistent path with some of my spiritual practices. You know, after all the deaths and the grieving and the moving and the surgeries…

So I was really pleased when I saw a local kirtan leader whom I follow has a practice group on Facebook and does 108 day challenges. She’s also a yoga teacher and a lot of folks are doing yoga but she said you can choose any practice. Regular yoga practice is one thing that has never been an issue for me since I began in 1986.

But there are lots of other practices I’ve done for long periods then wandered away from. Lately I’ve been feeling I should return to my practice of chanting Jack Kornfield’s lovingkindness chant from Path With Heart for 10 minutes plus singing a 10 minute version of the Gayatri I like. So I picked that one.

The lovingkindness chant has been an on and off staple for me for many years, the Gayatri is more recent. I made up this 20 minute practice of the two early in the first term of the orange monstrosity and it served me SO well for staying more calm and at peace. But I got into Steve Nobel’s meditations on YouTube and eventually moved into doing those instead of the chants (still doing).

Now, of course, I’m also thinking about how I dropped my 5 Tibetan Rite practice and how much I love ho’oponopono but don’t remember to do it… How I keep picking yoga nidra back up and then wandering off. Questioning if I picked the right one.

I’m about 8 months in on a giant effort to change my schedule fairly dramatically from the night owl pattern I’ve had my whole life to an earlier one. It’s shaken everything up including, it turns out, trying to fit a practice back in when the schedule in general has never completely settled down.

But I’m doing it. Often I’m doing it lying down and yawning the whole way through, but I’m doing it. And it feels as good as it always did. I wanted something to calm down some of the anger I keep feeling at current events and it’s working beautifully.

I love the calm and peace it leaves throughout my body. I can always feel heart chakra expanding and energized by the end. And yet I’m dragging my feet sometimes. It’s day 19 and today it feels like an endless time till day 108.

Which is why I’m really glad I decided to take this challenge. It isn’t always easy to commit to practice and in unsettled spells in life it’s harder to do. I hold on to knowing I feel better from the chants as support for my commitment to 108 days. Right now I have no idea whether the practice will stick after 108 days or fade away or change. The yoga nidra I’ve been loving lately is a 20 minute one so I’m wondering about alternating the two after the challenge.

I love this eclectic spiritual path I’ve wandered. I’m also aware many times the picking up and putting down of various practices is part of a flow for me. Sometimes it’s the moment for a shift to something different. In this case thoughts of going back to this practice had been popping up for a while so it feels like a flow into something I was being nudged by my inner voice to do.

I know many people pick one path and are faithful from then on to those practices only. It’s possible one day I’ll arrive at something that feels like “the one” but it’s hard to imagine. Right now I’m just pleased to revisit a practice I’ve loved.

Max’s kisses legacy

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My soulmate cat, Max, chose me at the Chicago AntiCruelty Society in 1987. He and his kitten siblings had been abandoned with their very young mom in an apartment. When he saw me he jumped up, meowing and frantically pushing his legs through the bars of his cage toward me.

From the beginning he was an affectionate guy and he loved to have the top of his head kissed. For all his life he’d present his head for kisses any time he was in my lap or my arms.

Jump forward 10 years. We were living in a small apartment attached to the side of Nine Gates Mystery School founder Gay Luce’s home in Corte Madera, CA. Gay had 3 kittens she’d brought home a while after her cat died. My place was always open, Gay was out of town a lot and the kittens soon thought my place was part of home.

One of the 3, Gandhi, adored Max (NOT reciprocated). The house was on a hill and there was an outside path I took down to the basement to do laundry. The path passed a tiered garden with a short retaining wall at the bottom, alongside the path (that’s Max in my arms near a different garden wall in the yard). Often when I did laundry Max would jump up on the wall and wait for me to stop and kiss his head.

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Gandhi watched and pretty soon, if Max wasn’t there waiting for me to come back from the basement, Gandhi was and he wanted that kiss on the head. By a few years later, after I’d moved away, on a cat sitting visit it turned out Gandhi had expanded it to jump on the kitchen counter and present his head for kissing to any loved one nearby.

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A few years later Max died and then Salty came into my life. He was 3 and had been abandoned but such an affectionate little guy. Being accustomed to 18 years of kissing Max’s head, I kissed his. He loved it so much he was soon presenting his head for kisses. I could say “gimme kiss” and he’d put his head to my mouth.

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Salty stayed with me for 18 blessed years, passing away in 2024. Now I’m fostering 15-year-old Tucksie for the local shelter. He’s afraid and slow to warm up and, I think, still waiting for his original person to come for him. Slowly, tho, he’s letting me come near and accepting scritches. Initially he cowered from my tendency to lean over and kiss his head. But now he’s occasionally presenting the top of his head near my mouth 🙂

I feel Max’s presence through all these kitties loving kisses on the head. My sweet soulmate cat’s lovely soul still offering blessings.

Knots on the daisy chain of beliefs?

Posted in Healing Journey, Personal, Personal Growth, Spiritual Journey, Uncategorized by
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Ellen, my Fisher Hoffman facilitator, talked a lot about how old beliefs and issues operate in complex daisy chains. Sometimes an admonition we follow unconsciously in one area of life is ignored in other areas and connects with other admonitions/behaviors in three other places, etc.

Lately I’m aware there’s a set for me with two sides toeing a fine line when it comes to deciding “am I just following the old pattern?” My maternal grandmother was born in the late Victorian era and definitely learned some of the hand-to-forehead, fainting couch type stuff. To be fair, she (and much of the family) had severe migraines, but she spent an awful lot of time lying down. My mother also tended to go “have a lie down” often, so I had plenty of role modeling about just heading off to bed.

My dad, on the other hand, was a go getter type, always busy, hard working and radiating nervous energy. My mom’s sister was also hard working (the first woman turf reporter in the world) and contemptuous of the die-away tendencies of her mother and sister.

I’ve been realizing I wound up with an odd mixture of the two. I wrote a post long ago in which I noted I wound up often feeling paralyzed amongst the many conflicting viewpoints about me held by the most influential adults (my aunt never had children so her efforts at molding someone were aimed at me). Winding up with chronic fatigue & fibromyalgia seemed unsurprising with “paralysis” as a central mode; ailments that just stop you in your tracks.

My new exploration of the push forward vs fainting couch influences has me seeing some other aspects. To the outside world through the years of zero energy, I appeared to do very little (and many people made sure I knew how lazy they thought I was). But as I struggled through the fatigue, I often pushed really hard to keep working, to keep the house clean, to keep socializing etc. Even though I did all those things far less than previously, the advice for my issues was to rest more and all the pushing, I now see, prolonged the chronic health problems.

In the last few years, juggling grieving, moving, surgeries, etc. I’m seeing I’ve been executing quite a dance around the dueling issues of pushing vs resting. Some of the time I’ve just been either in so much pain or so exhausted — often both — that pushing has been impossible. And yet the tendency to push is there. Because pushing too much and resting/avoiding too much are both patterns for me, it’s a struggle to decide which pattern I might be falling into — and to what extent has all the personal growth work moved me into a different place regarding both?

Being single and living alone gets into the mix too. If I want to eat and live in a reasonably clean house, there’s grocery shopping, cooking, dish washing, etc. And I’m fostering a cat who needs to be fed and have his box kept clean every day. Living in a condo with a small stacked washer/dryer set means more small loads to run so there’s rarely a day when I don’t need to run a load.

I listen to various married friends complain about their husbands who only do these 2 things or that 2 things and imagine how my life would change if ANYONE but me did those 2 things… or anything around the house. Even a decision to take a day of rest still involves a couple hours worth of cooking, cleaning dishes, cat care, etc.

I’m trying to handle decisions about doing versus time off with a lot of checking inward. It definitely helps and there are more and more days when I think I’m going in one direction and a check-in leads in another. But because those are deeply entwined issues for me the mindfulness required to always sense into the push vs rest question can be elusive.

Plenty of times along this journey it’s been easy to see the daisy chain of one issue/behavior leading to another but this is a new one for me to ponder a place where two opposing tendencies meet on the chain but also have their own spots.

EMDR Music

Posted in Healing Journey, muscles, Personal, Uncategorized, Wellness by

A couple of friends have been seeing an EMDR therapist and mentioned the impact of the music, which you listen to with headphones. I have zero expertise, all I know is the music works with bilateral brain stimulation and can reset the nervous system.

People who are using it in conjunction with therapy are digging deep into old issues and the music is part of an accompanying reset of the nervous system. Since I’ve been doing deep digging off and on for years I don’t feel a strong need to see a therapist but I’m also aware nothing I’ve done has ever involved resetting the nervous system so I was interested.

I am aware, because of multitudes of deep muscle issues I’ve dealt with for years, sometimes emotional release is enough to also release patterns in muscles. But there are also times when the reptilian brain continues to hold the muscles in whatever pattern has been the norm in spite of releasing the emotions held in it and it takes something more. I’m now watching some shifting in my body which suggests the nerves can be similarly held in old patterns. And affecting the muscles.

I’ve been using the EMDR music for about a week, so I don’t have any massive change to report but it’s had a surprising impact even in so short a time. Initially I didn’t have headphones but listened anyway to get a sense of it and found it very relaxing. I also felt like I slept more deeply.

Then I got some cheap headphones & started using those. I could instantly feel how much more reaction there was throughout my body. The one I’ve embedded above for the vagus nerve actually led to a bunch of muscle releases. It takes the headphones to get the back and forth stimulation on both sides of the brain.

I knew tight muscles could squeeze off nerves and cause numbness and opening muscles could release the nerves. It hadn’t occurred to me the nerves could also be holding the muscles. This work on resetting has triggered some really interesting opening, often happening long after I’ve listened to the music.

For instance, there’s been a pattern where ankle muscles meet the lower ends of muscles in the calf/shin area for ages. It’s a hard area to catch with exercise; the ones I know that work with some of those muscles have not been helping, not even the ankle releases from the Robert Masters work. But suddenly a few days in on working with EMDR a big piece on the right ankle popped open.

I’ll report more as this moves along but I have to say I’m really impressed so far with the impacts of this music. And there’s so much available on YouTube (haven’t checked Vimeo but I’m guessing there too), it’s an easy thing to try.

Resolutions and Grind Culture

Posted in Healing Journey, New Age, Personal, Spiritual Journey, Spirituality, Uncategorized by
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For my whole life New Year’s has been a moment when one “must” make a list of resolutions for the coming year. Not a practice I’ve ever been into; I think some part of me resisted being tied to a list & another part knew life throws too many curves to make a plan for a year. In recent years, as I’ve come to understand how our corporate culture has molded a grind culture mentality, I see those resolutions as further invitations to the grind — another to-do list adding more time to the constant activity roster.

It took me a LOT of years on the spiritual path to finally, a few years ago, start seeing how affected I am by grind culture and a lot of American ideas about what counts as a life worth living. And then to see how the goals of being in the moment and following an inner flow are direct contradictions of the demands of grind culture.

If I were to make a resolution now (and probably for every year to come) there would be two interrelated ones: stay in the moment and stay tuned in to follow the flow. I’ve been really working these last few years at doing both. I’m a long way from being sufficiently mindful to hold myself in the moment or to stay always in the flow. But I have reached a point where I stop and tune in often during the day to decide which of several (or multitudes of) actions all clamoring in my head to be done is the best choice in the moment — or whether there is another choice I’m not hearing because of the mental noise.

My days often feel much more smooth and satisfying and I often get more done while draining less energy by listening to inner wisdom about the next moment instead of laying out a plan. An early change involved a daily check in I’ve been doing for years with a friend of mine. We started because of a blog post suggesting it as a daily text activity, checking in on how you’re feeling, what you intend to do & what you’re grateful for.

We changed it to an e-mail and have turned it into a much longer check-in than the quick few words intended by the post that inspired us. A few years ago as we both leaned in to trying to follow the flow more of the time we decided that calling one section “intentions” was too grind culture and put on too much pressure to feel like we must accomplish the list. We changed it to “flow wishes” and we’ve both been much happier with that much less judgmental & demanding title. We both often find the flow leads to something other than the plan being the thing that feels right to do. Life also often throws a curve into the plan and “flow wishes” makes that much more okay.

As New Year came and went this time I really thought about the resolutions requirement and I really didn’t want to make one. I did participate in a spiritual exercise that asked me to go deeply inward and name some words about a few aspects of the coming year and I did though I have some questions about whether I even want a word for the year that asks me to follow it instead of my inner guidance (it was a lovely inward journey anyway).

Staying in the moment and being always tuned in to the flow are such foreign concepts in our culture and time, I feel like an annual resolution to work on those — and maybe eventually to keep living with those — will be a long journey. So far it’s a slow process to keep my thoughts in the moment and my being tuned in to the flow and I’m okay with re-learning those culturally ingrained habits in baby steps.

On “being” and “doing” in “must do” U.S.

Posted in Being Peace, Collective Consciousness, Healing Journey, Personal Growth, Uncategorized by
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One of the most enormous transformational journeys in my life involved going through the Fisher-Hoffman process in the 1990’s, then continuing for approximately 10 years to “process” every deep issue I could identify and release. At the end of the 9-month Fisher-Hoffman class* the facilitator warned us to be careful, once finished, about jumping too fast into things.

The release of a big block of old stuff for most leaves a sense of a hole that needs to be filled, she told us, and if you anxiously leap into filling the space immediately you’re most likely to re-build the familiar old stuff. I took it to heart and kept it in mind as I continued marching down the “release the old” path.

Eventually I reached a point where I felt as if I no longer had a strong sense of who I was. Here in the U.S. where “being yourself” is endlessly celebrated along with a strong moral certainty that having goals and working hard to reach them is the only way to be worthwhile, such a journey has been an interesting challenge.

It’s been 20+ years since I reached that moment and I have to tell you the ongoing journey of transformation has mostly just increased the sense of not knowing. All those old issues, auto-programmed reactions, etc defined so much about how I operated in the world that without them, I’m not sure. I pick up, look at and drop various “goals” and longings-to-be of different stages of life and find they no longer appeal. At the same time I don’t have a strong sense of “what’s next”.

A lot of health issues created a strong sense that healing had to be the primary objective and, of course, it has included more digging into the depths of consciousness as well as following a lot of alternative therapies to heal the physical aspects. Mostly I keep moving through what seems to be in front of me.

The Buddhist concept of “no self” has helped me negotiate through these years. Not that I have any illusion I’ve achieved that ultimate space of the Buddhist path, but I think stripping away a lot of old touchstones and auto-behaviors has brought me closer to that space and farther from the American ideal of deciding who you are and insisting upon sticking to every aspect of that.

To me life seems far more flexible and shifting and my goal has more to do with always tuning in to “hear” the inner sense of the right next thing to do in this moment. I watch people from many spiritual traditions, including the more “New Age” type spirituality paths, insist that having a plan, deciding on steps and “doing things” is a MUST and at this point I mostly shrug and think to myself it’s a deeply held American belief that needs to be culled out of the collective consciousness.

I’m not unaffected by the overwhelming majority view. In fact it leaves me uncomfortably questioning whether I’m doing something “wrong” by not having a plan and a destination more often than I’d like. But I always wind up tuning in, breathing deep and throwing off the “do, do, do” dictates in favor of listening and being…

I wrote a longer piece discussing this a while back but it’s on my mind again as I contemplate how this all applies to political activism. Stay tuned for that post 🙂

* If taken via the Hoffman Institute, the course is much shorter (a residential week or two?). Ellen had facilitated there for some years and evolved the process into a longer and, to me, much more in-depth one. Instead of being residential, hers was a weekly class with assignments to do in between, some gatherings to help one another on release work, etc. and spread over a period long enough to let everyone have time to delve into many issues. Unfortunately she died some years ago and as far as I’m aware no one else teaches the method as she transformed it.

For real change break the power of the rich!

Posted in Change the World, Collective Consciousness, Current Events, Environmental, Opinion, People Power, Politics by
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As many of us are, I’m following current politics anxiously and often. Having been a “leftist” for 50 years, I’m really happy to see a new generation finally getting how much we need big changes. I’m also glad to at last see some understanding of the role of the rich in creating most of our woes. But I’m also uneasy because I don’t see much understanding that a simple change of administration is not an ultimate answer. Too much power has always been held outside of government by the rich and major corporations. Without breaking their power, we’re doomed to be always caught in their greedy machinations.

I’m not sure why it’s so hard to get that to sink in. In part, I think most activists want quick changes and, as they quickly subsided after some victories on Viet Nam, the environment and various rights in the 70’s, the current crop seem impatient for a quick shift that then absolves them from the need to participate. I started trying to get my hippie activist friends in the 70’s to understand the import of research I was doing on the Council on Foreign Relations (think east coast power elite) and their vast inroads into government positions and policy. They didn’t want to hear it.

In the 90’s I tried to talk to my politically-inclined friends about how we vote with our $$ and the importance of bringing down the power of bad-acting corporations (pretty much all…) and again was met with shrugs of impatience. In more recent years I’ve been pushing progressives to organize around the need to bring down the oligarchs. A few people are getting it but I’m not seeing enough.

There are 3 basic parts I see where we can start breaking up the power of the oligarchs and global corporate bullies. First, boycott, boycott, boycott, And the first thing to understand about boycotting is it doesn’t take a large percentage to influence the behavior of corporations. Studies have shown a boycott by 5% can influence a policy change. The complicated part is getting together lists of all the companies owned by the worst oligarchs and all the companies with the worst policies on labor, environment, etc. And then organizing for as many people as possible to boycott all the ones they can.

For instance, someone who lives in a small town with only Walmart as a choice can’t reasonably be asked to boycott Walmart but they can put the Buycott App on their phone and boycott as many products from bad actor companies as possible when shopping there. And sometimes you’ll find dilemmas like Whole Foods being own by Amazon but donating Democratic and, for instance, making one of the highest environmentally ranked toilet papers on the market. It takes people plugging in as much as they can where they can. https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/advocacy/direct-action/organize-boycott/main

Another big issue with boycotts is the lack of alternative products and businesses. I’ve written before of the world-wide and growing local co-op movement , which I think holds a lot of promise. We need more co-ops, more small manufacturing, etc. to provide people with alternatives to buying from the greedy pigs.

Another arena where I see possibilities of fomenting change re big corporations follows the brilliant plan carried out by environmentalists with Chevron and Exxon. A concerted campaign of buying shares, recruiting shareholder activists and using voting rights garnered them a seat on each board (since defeated at Exxon). Maybe activists could coordinate the various angles required to elect more Board members to lots more companies. A long shot, but it sure would be helpful if we could create some change from within those companies.

All of this requires some really long-term planning and finding ways to encourage people to boycott, etc. for longer periods than they’re usually willing to do. Which requires enough liberals, progressives, etc to really understand how crucial it is to break the power of the rich that we can stay organized and carrying on the work.

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I’ve written more extensively about all of this in the past and there’s a whole list of posts, most of which contain a lot of links to more info, at the bottom of this post: Boomers, Revolution, Politics

Start the revolution… with me? without me?

Posted in Change the World, Opinion, Uncategorized by
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Back in the early 70’s, I became radicalized in my political thinking. I hung around with the hippies, and particularly the folks who were protesting Viet Nam, etc. and stayed tuned in to the thinking of many on the far left. During those years I also spent a summer at the Sorbonne, which helped me gain perspective on how incredibly conservative the U.S. population really is. This perspective helped me to evaluate some of the really far left thinking and their tendency to be immovable in this insistence on every point, down to the pettiest, of their objectives being followed.

It didn’t take me long to weigh the general conservatism of the populace against the very Marxist thinking of the far left and to realize (a) as far as elections, no one was going to win an election based on a truly left-wing platform and (b) the deep hold the wealthy power elite has on politicians and policy means we’d really have to be prepared to plan and carry out a full scale revolution in order to shake off their power.

I was a history major and enough of a “history buff” to know a fair bit about the horrors that have generally accompanied revolution, so I was not prepared to jump on any bandwagon leading there. I’ve since come to believe we, as consumers, have a lot more economic power than we ever wield and there are potential answers for change if we unite to boycott, infiltrate boards, create alternative businesses, etc. But that’s a post for another day.

Periodically through all the 50+ years since I moved left I’ve noted the far-left folks unfailingly supporting candidates who will never win or deriding the ones who can and in general insisting their platform/ideas be implemented. But they never seem to have a realistic plan for how you would get out from under capitalism. In my opinion elections, in a country where too many politicians on both sides are owned by the rich, are not at all likely to create such an outcome. They also never seem to come to an understanding of how conservative most Americans are.

It’s not that I wouldn’t like to see a far more progressive swing in government. And I’m heartened by the embrace of far more progressive positions by larger numbers of Americans than before. But I’m pretty practical and, at core, since I know the real power is wielded behind the scenes and a big portion of the populace is quite moderate, I’ve always tried to work within the system to do what I could to nudge change along and voted for whichever candidate leaned a little more toward helping people than not.

A revolution or not? At some point, once you decide on a radical path and insist every bullet point on your platform must be followed, you also have to decide if you’re prepared to foment a revolution, whether violent or a transformative but peaceful reorganizing of the existing structures. Because hanging around shouting about your principles while voting for 3d parties or not voting just means the worst of the “no change” — or now the “let’s go backward” — politicians keep being elected.

The healing journey and value

Posted in Change the World, Healing Journey, Uncategorized by
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My physical, emotional & spiritual healing journey stretches at this point over decades. And for much of it I was only in shape to work part time, if at all. Because of the physical aspect, it was obvious to me I really needed to address the healing because being out in the world in any normal way was impossible given the constant levels of fatigue and pain.

Having embarked on a spiritual journey almost simultaneously with discovering I had some big physical issues, it didn’t take long to connect those two, nor to realize emotional issues intertwined with both. Working on all three levels is time-consuming and takes a lot of commitment to healing on every level. If the issues are numerous and deeply imbedded, it is also a long process. I was lucky I had few commitments to stand in the way of my journey so I could devote lots of time over many years. Plenty of people heal in many ways and still do other things; I’m not saying the way I did it is in any way a must, it was just the way I had to do it.

Through the journey, on many levels I’ve understood healing is really important — and the impact of healing spreads out into the web of all life. At the same time, living in grind culture, I’ve encountered many moments when I questioned the contribution and import of healing as a basic life direction — and, surrounded by grind culture, plenty of other people made sure I knew they disapproved of a life devoted to healing rather than working hard at earning money.

I can’t tell you I’m never affected by the grind culture mentality; it’s so deeply ingrained in our culture that I struggle to free myself of it and can’t always remain immune to other people’s immersion in it. But overall I’ve long believed in the central importance of understanding ourselves as beings of energy who exist as part of an interconnected web of all living beings’ energy. As part of a web, each one of us who heals the wounds and traumas of the past contributes healing to the web.

All this healing, releasing, clearing, transforming, etc. doesn’t pay a dime. In fact, a lot of it has been expensive, especially the alternative healers who have been vital to the physical recovery piece of the journey. In the eyes of our society, the lack of monetary return means the journey is useless, without value.

The deeper I move into this journey –with the clearing away of false layers, the slow unveiling of my essential self, the growing connection to higher consciousness — the more I sense it not only has more value to me than a well-paid career but that it also adds plenty of value to society and the web of life. Not all things of value equate to sums of money.

In spite of the lack of a “normal” career or means of earning, my financial circumstances have actually grown slowly better and I attribute it to having cleared away a lot of blocks and old beliefs about money. So, an interesting side note about the value of the healing journey is it may attract abundance to you without the usual grinding claptrap.

I’m not sure what it would take for our culture to shift into a space of appreciating how key to our collective well-being it is to have increasing numbers of people keeping their physical bodies as healthy as possible, healing themselves of old traumas, beliefs, issues, and stepping forward into their essential selves. But I hope all of you who have been traveling down a path of physical, emotional and/or spiritual healing pat yourselves on the back for the great value you are adding to the world.

The “life’s purpose” game

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Over the many years I’ve travelled on a spiritual path, I’ve run into discussions of “life’s purpose” SO many times. It’s especially common among New Age/New Thought teachers, but pops up in many places. The idea is each of us came to earth to fulfill a purpose. It’s our job to figure out the purpose and make sure we accomplish it.

I’ve struggled quite a bit over the years with both the notion of that purpose and wondering what mine might be. So I was very pleased during a recent Ahava Center for Spiritual Living service when the guest speaker told us our purpose is just to be here alive. Not to work a particular job or create a particular gallery of accomplishments or to found an earth-changing association. The purpose is to be here, being ourselves (around 39 minutes into the video below if you want to skip to this piece).

Besides the personal sense of relief that brought me, it also struck me the usual discussion of “life’s purpose” as something to do with a career or accomplishments is a total outgrowth of the grind culture. The capitalist push for ordinary people to feel they must work harder and then harder and somehow prove their worth by grinding themselves beyond endurance, shows up, I believe, in a lot of spiritual talk, especially from American New Age “gurus”.

They tell you you need to “do something” to manifest a vision instead of understanding if you’ve cleared your inner-belief-obstacles, established your connection to your divine Self and created a vision in which you truly believe, that can be enough. It’s worked for me many times. There’s virtually a whole industry of books and workshops for helping you to discern your “purpose”, always with a clear assumption said purpose will involve doing things, creating things, accomplishing things… Both of these assume a need to work and do and have a list of achievements — right in step with grind culture.

I’m not sure I ever had an absolute sense of life’s purpose. If I ever did, it was in childhood and adolescence, when my dream was for a career in music. I took lessons and daydreamed and assumed it would be my path. But when it was time to apply for college and I created a list of music conservatories, my family put the kibosh on that one. I wasn’t the kind of kid to buck their dictates, so I started out as an ed major.

By the time I finished college I was looking in other directions and wound up going to law school in hopes I could work on environmental issues. It didn’t take long to figure out law wasn’t for me and during the last couple of years I practiced, I’d found my way to New Age studies, yoga, meditation, etc. I really disliked practicing law and really loved the spiritual path I’d begun so I quit practicing and entered into many years of bumbling from teaching stress management workshops to copy editing to teaching yoga and workshops on journeying to peace, etc.

Health issues had shown up in law school and I was already using various alternative medicine therapies before I quit practicing. The path to heal from chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia wound up being entirely intertwined with the spiritual path. Eventually I realized I wrote all the emotional dramas and traumas of my life on my body and the way to health had to involve not just medicine, but inner work and personal growth etc.

That path led to going through the Fisher Hoffman method as facilitated by my friend and mentor, the late Ellen Margron. We dug deeper and released more “beliefs and admonitions” than anything I’ve ever done. At the end she warned us to be careful about jumping onto a new path or direction too fast because the tendency would be to recreate a path out of the old familiar stuff instead of forging something new. We needed to spend some time “empty” and allow the shifting to lead us to the next place.

I really took in that message. And I continued to use the “Fisher Hoffman process” to dig through beliefs and conditioning from the past, constantly letting go of more and then more. I lost most interest in the musical and public interest law paths of the past but had no sense of what was next other than a very clear pull to continue going deeper on the spiritual path and, especially, to complete the process of healing my weary body.

Periodically through the years I’ve worried a bit about the life’s purpose issue. Should I be figuring it out? Was now even the time? The overall feeling always came down to the sense of being still in progress and not wanting to make the mistake against which Ellen warned, recreating old structures out of anxiety to have something rather than nothing happening. And the draw toward healing the past and moving ever onward on a deepening spiritual path was irresistible.

For the most part I’ve been content to spend a few decades on a spiritual journey in which there’s no sense of purpose other than being on the journey. In some traditions like Buddhism and Hinduism there’s a lot of support for the idea of living in the moment and just feeling into the next step and the next, so the path I pursued felt like it followed a well-established route.

Still, the idea we each have a purpose and that our great spiritual goal must be to find it kept popping up, leaving me occasionally feeling uneasy about whether I should be figuring “it” out. Some inner searching always led to the conclusion that I was still transitioning out of the past, with no clear sign of who or what I am meant to be and/or do in the future. And I often wondered why there needed to be a particular career or set of achievements.

While I’ve lived somewhere near the idea Rev. Alexander expressed in her talk, it was such a moment for me when she announced we’re part of nature and nature’s purpose is to be alive. That’s it. Just be alive and do what you need to to maintain that. Whew. Done. I don’t have to dig and grind and make sure I do enough. I AM enough. And so it is.

Scar tissue from the past

Posted in Healing Journey, Personal Growth, Uncategorized by
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I’ve complained a lot in the last few years about pain in my left hip/low back area. Having just hit a breakthrough, it seems like a good moment to tell a bit about the journey.

I’ve had problems there for decades but a combo of excellent bodyworkers and routine practice of poses and exercises for the area kept it at bay. Then my mom landed in the hospital and suddenly I was spending hours on uncomfortable chairs, followed by having to support her weight much more often. My exercise routine wound up often being less than usual. Didn’t take long to find myself limping around in pain.

I exercised that round of pain away over the course of a year and instantly she was back in the hospital. When she came home I was on 24/7 caretaker duty with many more times I had to support her weight. Then she passed away at the onset of a completely new ailment and suddenly I had to move. So my hip was already killing me and I spent the next 5 months on first clearing our home and packing up my stuff then moving to a condo I inherited from my dad and both unpacking my stuff and feverishly working to get his out.

Ultimately, while moving a chair I threw the whole low back/hip area out of whack so badly I stopped all efforts to move anything in or out and have concentrated ever since on figuring out the hip. A referral to PT came attached with copays that were too high for me, so I began hunting on the internet for PT exercises. I’ll be writing a series with lots of videos and info about what I found, but for this post, I’ll just mention the biggest challenge for me was that pretty much every muscle and every muscle group in the entire low back-pelvis-hip-groin area was totally out of whack.

To work on an area with issues that complex the order in which you work is important but I had no way to know where I needed to start. So I just found tons of exercises for many specific muscles and areas and began working my way slowly around. For a long time it actually got worse, though there were days when a particular set would bring relief for a while.

Eventually I was exercising 2 different times/day and then 3 in order to make my way through more than one area and also to do some things like my exercise pedaler just to keep in general shape. From PT type exercises to isometrics and continuing on with the yoga and Robert Masters work I’ve done for years, I moved slowly through each sore piece. By this last March I’d finally narrowed in more on which areas to work on, one at a time, and unlocked enough tight stuff to feel like the small amount I could afford for massage might be enough to move it along faster.

I did some research to find someone with the kind of credentials I wanted. One fab thing about the Upledger Institute (home of craniosacral therapy studies) is that their “find a practitioner” pages include info on all the certifications the person has from Upledger. I wanted someone with at least 4 levels of craniosacral, 1 or 2 from their visceral manipulation or lymph drainage therapy and to have massage certification as well (not listed on Upledger).

I found Jennifer, with 4 levels of craniosacral, both visceral manipulation and lymph drainage, 4 kinds of massage certifications and more! She’s been amazing. I’ve had 6 appointments so far and so much has improved in such a short time. Thanks to all the opening through her work the exercises I’m doing are going deeper and helping even more.

She mentioned scar tissue several times and that the cerebellum will move bones and muscles away from pressing on scar tissue. She pretty quickly realized the top of my left femur is rotated. Finally on the 5th appointment while talking about it she mentioned that just a minor fall can create scar tissue. As she spoke she circled her hand around the central area of her lower left back — basically the pelvis/piriformis area and emphasized how scar tissue there could affect the femur.

Later that evening as I reflected on the appointment a lightbulb went on: when I was maybe 8 or 9, at a riding lesson where we’d gone outside late in a droughty summer, my horse took off and I wound up flying off, landing on exactly that area on the left side. My parents took me to the family doctor who didn’t bother to take an x-ray. There was a giant BLACK bruise over that area for the next couple of months but no treatment ever.

Suddenly, an explanation for the many decades of issues with that hip and low back area! Jennifer did a bunch of work on the next appointment to break up the scar tissue (calcium deposits) and it’s already made quite a difference.

Bringing up the memory has me thinking about a lot of the issues swirling around that incident and the messages I took in. The riding master’s first reaction was “Who told you you could get off the horse?” along with a command to get right back up. The doctor’s attitude was that it was just a bruise and to buck up. The overwhelming message I received was to pretend nothing had happened, that it didn’t hurt and that somehow maintaining a perception of stoicism and gung-ho “keeping on” was more important than any wound I’d received.

Stoicism and “keeping on” fit right in with the “grind culture” I’ve been arguing against for a while. Those notions go deep in American culture and when they have a personal drama driving them deeper, it’s a long journey of spiraling up through the many levels where it holds and moving beyond…

I’m so incredibly grateful this round of journeying with that area going out again has finally led to figuring out the key issue and how well the healing is progressing.

How we dread change

Posted in Being Peace, Healing Journey, Personal by
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I’ve been listening a lot to a local Sarasota FM station that plays rock music from just my era and pretty much all stuff I love. At the same time a friend has recommended Radio Paradise and I’ve been trying to get myself to tune in.

Much like WXRT in Chicago, it plays rock from a number of eras but curated to be all stuff that kind of goes well together, a flow of sounds through decades. Sometimes on RP I hit a nice mix of old stuff I know and love and new things I don’t know.

One day recently I put it on and found myself in a long stretch of music I’d never heard before and I wasn’t really loving any of it. Nothing bad, just not grabbing either. Not one song I’d pick up the tablet and write down info to find it again. I longed for the FM but I was all comfy with my book and the FM station takes the old stereo setup in another room.

As I thought about how much I love almost every song on the FM station and wished the streaming app would play something I loved, it struck me that a certain measure of disliking change lived somewhere in those feelings of discomfort with the new stuff. Not anything huge, but once the thought crept in, I flowed on to a sudden distinct sense about how much of our current upheaval and conflict in the world reflects the fears of lots of people who are faced with a changing world they really hope to keep the same.

And in my moment of discomfort about my favorite old rock choices, I felt a tiny tug of greater understanding about how afraid they are. Not enough to sympathize with the hateful choices many are making, but enough to see more about how much humans generally like things to stay the same.

Fear of change is behind so much of what goes wrong in the world and how unhappy people who want their lives to be the same tomorrow as yesterday wind up ramped into constant anger. As I sat and willed myself to just let the unfamiliar music flow and enjoy having the musical background to my novel, I had no insight on how to help those “stay-the-same” folks reconcile with change.

I learned how to move into the flow by purposefully pursuing a spiritual path including practices to develop just that skill. But you can’t make other people do it, it’s definitely something that must be chosen. So no answers from my moment of insight. Just a flash of recognition about the deep discomfort many are feeling…

Healing my anger with ho’oponopono

Posted in Being Peace, Change the World, Collective Consciousness, Healing Journey by
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I’ve been making my way VERY slowly (i.e., most of the time not at all) through the ho’oponopono course for which I signed up a few months ago. So far, though, completing the class isn’t feeling like the point as much as reconnecting with the practice — also gaining insight from the videos of the course I’ve watched — and the deep reminder that everything I see reflects something inside of me.

The big place in which it’s come into play has been noting my high levels of anger at Republican pseudo-Christian right-wing fascists. How often, as I watch MSNBC or read articles pointed out by fellow progressives on social media, I yell and shake my fist at the lying, misogyny, bigotry, hatefulness, murderous intent, utter lack of compassion, etc.

Now I shout “You lying f**k!!!” and then repeat “I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.” I contemplate how much anger must be in me to be constantly that angry. To question how much misogyny, bigotry, etc. there is in me if I keep seeing that much outside of me. Yikes. “I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.”

At the moment I can’t say I see a big change in the frequency with which I erupt upon seeing various news items, though I have moved to watching MSNBC less and spending more time researching on subjects raised on social media, like learning more about Constitutional interpretation, etc. Watching less means fewer occasions to get angry. What I really notice is how the constant repetition of the prayer keeps shifting me back to a more peaceful place.

Those of you who’ve read my blog for a long time will know I always come back to the Oneness of energy. We’re all energy and exist as one wholeness of energy. Thus we each contribute to the peacefulness or hatefulness of the planet by which energy vibration we choose to hold. Knowing that, I continue repeating, “I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you”, trying to release all those hateful qualities within me.

I also believe in the basic theories of David Hawkins’ Power vs Force, which posit that those who raise their vibrational levels to higher points help to raise the vibrational field for thousands (or, at the highest, avatar-type levels, millions). And I think the spiritual movement that has built around the world, quietly, in the background since the 1960’s, has been raising the vibrational level.

The movement brought westerners into practices that eastern spiritual leaders have taught for centuries as well as bringing eastern lights like Yogananda and Thich Nhat Hanh to the west and also led many people to study indigenous spiritual traditions. Human vortexes of higher energy have thus been created at various points around the world. Some spiritual leaders have actually set up places where certain numbers of people chant or pray 24/7 to keep a high vibration helping to counterbalance lower energies.

Much of the world has lived in apathy, the 100s, the bottom of the scale of energy. The next level up is anger, so when enough people have raised their vibrations to impact the whole, a significant number of people who’ve been in apathy are raised up to anger, something I believe we’re seeing now. The next level up is the 300’s, where self-awareness and introspection begin to operate. I feel that when we move the energy up enough to have a majority of people vibrating above 300, we will start to see the harmony, justice, equality, etc. for which so many of us yearn.

I can’t control what other people are doing, I can just work on my own vibration. As well as repeating the ho’oponopono prayer, I meditate, practice yoga, chant, etc. I belong to several spiritual groups in which I’m able to periodically participate in the “energy of two or more” phenomenon around building peace. Right now I have a big focus on the readiness with which I yell and shake my fist at what I consider Republican perfidy and keep repeating, “I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.”

I’m also contemplating whether I should return to more frequent metta practice. I’ve been a big fan for many years. In the leadup to the Iraq war, I spent half an hour every day saying it for President Bush. It didn’t stop him from faking intel or starting the war, but it did shift my feeling about him and my sense of his deep insecurities. Didn’t mean I suddenly liked him or agreed with him, but it created a softer place in my heart that has remained that way.

For me it was a profound shift and I wholly credit the power of the lovingkindness chant. I’ve always used Jack Kornfield’s version from Path with Heart: “May I be filled with lovingkindness, may I be well, may I be peaceful and at ease, may I be happy.” Obviously, substitute someone else’s name to say it for them. And I often leave off the “may” and state it as an affirmation “___ is filled with lovingkindness,” etc.

Whatever practice or technique works for you, I hope everyone is finding a way to keep returning to peace, to keep releasing old anger and fear, etc. in order to raise their vibration and contribution to lifting up the planet.

For some interesting info on energy in the world, etc. see https://www.heartmath.org/gci/gcms/live-data/ and https://noosphere.princeton.edu/

Books not written…

Posted in Personal, Spiritual Journey, Uncategorized by
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In my last post, I said the next one would discuss my journey with ho’oponopono and anger, but I received word yesterday that my dear friend Gay‘s husband, David, died yesterday and changed the plan.

The Nine Gates memorial service for Gay is being held Monday, which would have been her 93d birthday. David had hoped to go but his health has been bad since her death; now the memorial will be for him too.

The eighth death in 3 years among my friends (and let’s not forget both my parents too) kind of slammed me. And right now I’m in a stage of melancholy and wishful thinking.

Both Gay and David were working on books for pretty much all the time I knew them. Gay, who actually wrote several well-received books in an earlier stage of her life, wanted to write one to explain the ideas behind her creation of Nine Gates Mystery School.

I write too, and while I was living in the apartment on her property, I worked as a copy editor and proofreader so we talked here and there about collaborating, with her providing the content and me helping with organization, proofing, editing, etc. And probably some cheerleading.

I really hoped with me or without me that the project would happen as her work was so brilliant, especially her concept of playing all the notes of our beingness.

David was a Druid. His family was from the Isle of Iona and David was the one son to whom his father passed the family’s generations of knowledge. David was also a scholar, so he added copious research to the practical basics. He was going to write a book about the practices, especially covering his extensive work on the oghams. (I’m going to hunt through some of my files for material; I loved working with oghams but remember very little of the specifics and David’s teaching was a little different from the few other sources).

I especially loved his deep info on the labyrinth, or Dromenon as he called it. For my session of Nine Gates in 1990 he presented a huge piece on the chakras and the labyrinth, which he apparently didn’t teach at any other session. I adored it but there was so much material I came away really only with the memory that at every turn in the labyrinth you are either turning inward or outward in one of the chakras.

When you reach the end, you’ve done a complete inner and outer journey through the chakras. His teaching was to pause at each turn to acknowledge the inward or outward movement. I never know which chakra I’m in as I move through each turn, but just the pause and acknowledgement always adds great depth. I looked forward to his book and my hope was that it would have a complete chart of how we move through the chakras.

For many reasons, neither of them ever finished writing their respective books and I’m not sure if either had enough written on some retrievable device or notebook that someone else could finish the project and publish. So two amazing teachers, with unique and illuminating understanding of spiritual life have died and so much knowledge is lost.

On another front, I really thought for many years that I would get back to California and be available to help the two of them as they got older. My mother was not only older but in way worse health than either of them, so I assumed she would pass away while they were still functioning pretty independently and I’d be available when they needed more help.

But in the way the Universe has of orchestrating from a different consciousness, my mother wound up living to be much older than anyone (including her) expected and about the time she went into a downward spiral, so did David and Gay. And I lost all 3 in the space of 15 months.

I won’t wallow in this space of “what ifs” and wishes for different outcomes, but I wanted to mark this moment and the thoughts jumbling through… Today it is what is for me.

Guided to Ho’oponopono

Posted in Healing Journey, Personal by

Every now and then the Universe hands me a series of synchronous events that point me to a new insight or direction. Recently, after a long hiatus from practicing ho’oponopono several taps on the shoulder turned me back to it.

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My ho’oponopono story started with my recently-departed friend, Gay Luce. During a conversation in which I told her that I’d come to believe the biggest changes/impacts we can have on the world are those we make in ourselves to release negative issues/beliefs and also to raise our vibration regarding peace, love, compassion, etc. I was looking for a teacher or teachings to help me practice from that understanding. She asked me if I’d seen the work of Hew Len, master teacher of ho’oponopono, because she felt it would dovetail very well.

I never got a chance to study with Hew Len (and he passed away last year…), but I found some videos on YouTube on which he talked about it and found some teachings online via Joe Vitale and some of Hew Len’s students. It gave me enough to begin doing the ho’oponopono prayer and for some years I practiced it regularly, then, five or six years ago, drifted away.

Jump to this summer. Not long after Gay’s death in June, I got on a Zoom service from Camp Chesterfield (spiritual center) guest-led by Rev AdaRA Walton, whose Wednesday night meditation I’d been attending via zoom for a while. For one portion of the service, she did readings of people on the zoom, during which she called my name and gave me a strong message to re-connect with a kind of healing I’d stopped doing.

Over the years I’ve been trained in lots of types of healing and there are many I don’t do anymore, so I had to do some inward journeying to interpret her insight. The very strong message I received was to go back to ho’oponopono.

A couple of weeks later as I went through my Facebook feed, there was a big ad from Joe Vitale (whom I do not follow) offering the first level ho’oponopono practitioner training for a hugely discounted price. I instantly knew I needed to take the class and signed up.

Once I started watching videos (I’m making my way through VERY slowly), I was delighted to realize that almost all the teaching is from Hew Len. The class is a set of videos from a workshop some years ago brought by Joe Vitale, who also taught a bit, but mainly featuring Hew Len. So at last I get to “study with” him. And the timing, so soon after Gay’s death, leaves me feeling my dear friend has a hand in this.

I have no idea how the ho’oponopono practitioner status will fit into my life. Is it just to uplift my personal path and being and to help me clear issues and thereby help to clear issues all around? Or will I go on to take the other levels and start a practice? Right now it’s fine with me that I don’t know. Taking the class feels right and I’m content to let it flow wherever it’s meant to flow.

In the meantime, it IS helping me personally as I navigate through lots of angry moments as I watch the news and the hateful, misogynistic, racist, authoritarian, murderous right wing that is threatening democracy. Next post will talk about how ho’oponopono is helping with that and helping me see what in me hooks into all that.