thoughts on our collective evolution

Humankind as a whole is in a huge mess right now.

We’re out of step with the place we live.

We need to make major changes in the way we do business. We’ve heard, even scientifically proven now, that global warming is real and human influenced, yet why isn’t our behavior changing in the face of these necessary shifts?

Think of human kind like a great organism. It’s impersonal; it moves around based on the mass of its thoughts. In this way it’s like a well run riverbed. The mass of human thoughts dictate the direction of the rut that is formed. It’s impersonal. This is what we call the mainstream and in the past, it has taken about 30-40 years to incorporate the leading edge. An organism this big takes time to change its course- imagine rerouting the mighty Colorado river, for example- it would take a lot of energy to shift the inertia.

Yet all of the signs point to _We must change if there is going to be the continuance of human life on this planet_. We are not living in step with our environment and we may be thrown off the back of momma earth like so many fleas on a shrugging gorilla.

A lot of this has to do with our current religious paradigms which perceive humankind as “something other than or above the earth”- when in reality we are highly evolved self reflective consciousnesses of the earth itself. We are the earth- thinking in our human way. No separation there- think of human beings as the earth arms thinking and feeling and observing, reflecting on what is. Our body a hologram of what is around us (patterns of streams in our blood).

Media, the Internet, books, television all play a part in deciding where that collective consciousness goes. Yet there’s a small voice inside of us which leads us toward evolution. It’s the voice of the intuition, the instinct, perhaps the “voice of god or goddess” to some. This voice and our emotional feedback loops (pain, happiness, fulfillment, alignment) all lead us forward.

Entheogens (literally within-god; plant medicines like psychedelic cacti, leaves, roots and fungi) have been an extraordinarily important part of my path now, as well as being and sleeping outside. Any contact with nature is good. Eating nature in the form of the entheogen and taking its consciousness on for a time is a very fast and efficient path toward evolution. These open doors and can perhaps expedite or illuminate our evolving paths. But be careful, you may be pushed to start exceedingly more and more thinking for yourself after these experiences. It may not be as easy to fit into the mainstream after these awakenings. This can feel dangerous and perhaps it is, to the status quo, external and propped up within our internalized paradigms.

While culture, the collective mind would have you be stuck in stasis, in the flow of survival and the current “way things are”- its incredibly important that you listen to your own voice stream now. That’s how we shift and evolve.

The outliers must lead. They must use the media sources and Internet especially so that many people can catch wind of the hints of evolution. In this way, perhaps the main stream can shift in 10-20 years instead of taking the 30-40 it took before. If it is evolution, people will feel a resonance. The right people are looking for these words for it is our biological and holistically encrypted imperative to evolve, to take part in the evolvement of our species.

bats at dusk

bats at dusk, rio grande

The bats at dusk glide and dip
As if drunk
Yet, actually, are guided by infinitesimal
Sensors, down to a hairline fracture, on their journey to what they seek

If we didn’t know we may think bats were lost, inebriated, or, worse, incapacitated
And unable to fend for themselves
(though they go on making bat families)

Perhaps we should rethink the term “batty”
Wild kook? Or incredibly honed, following some inner radar we can’t detect?

Open the gates of perception
Allow what is “different” or “other than”
It may just be that he or she
Is simply attuned to something
You can’t see

Full Super Moon Spiritual Revelations

The spirit world is not separate from “our world”, the world we perceive with our eyes and experience with our senses, think about with our minds and feel with our hearts. The spirit world is not some great hereafter. The spirit world is now, coexisting with our present world.

The energy of the full super moon has been revelatory, releasing, ramping. I feel as if lifetimes are able to be released. Fogginess has been pierced with insight. Manifestations feel strong, as if the energy of the full moon is supporting them in their nascent state toward fulfillment. 

One thing especially “on me” this full moon is the presence of the unseen realms. For years now I’ve been experiencing this more often. Tonight I realized that it is sufficiently a part of my “everyday” reality. Spirituality isn’t something that is “sometimes” a part of my reality or allocated to certain places or times. It is part & parcel of my perception, as real as what is seen. Perhaps even more real?

I see the spiritual realm as informing this one. It is not a place to escape to, but a place to learn from, to receive teachings & to share. It brings a wider perspective & vision. It teaches me that there is no precious hereafter to wait for, to yearn for. It teaches me to embody this hereafter now. To bring a little more heaven into earth. This is essentially what spirituality means to me in connecting with things unseen. 

healing with the hank drum

Do you play an instrument? Is there a musical instrument whose sound you find particularly pleasing? Tell us a story about your experience or relationship with an instrument of your choice. from here.

 

playing the “hank drum” at an ecovillage circa 2012

This is a story about a sweet little blue propane tank that was made into a “hank drum” (fashioned after the “hang drum”). Little Wren biked and biked and biked up the west coast. You see, she was searching for a new place, a new place to reside, to be. Before she’d left for her journey, she had connection with an ecovillage that held promise of what she was looking for. As she was in communication with one elder who lived there the room turned foggy/fuzzy, as if entering a different realm; she felt her heart open and knew the place must be special. She treasured it as a possibility in the back of her mind as she cycled & rhythm’d her way up hills and on flat land, all beside the ocean, along that coastline trek.

When she got there it was indeed a magical place full of heart-opening and deeper unfolding lessons. There she also met a special sprite that she did choose to spend some more days with (and is still in cahoots with to this day). A magical place it did turn out to be.

And especially because she loved to play the instruments which laid about everywhere… and sing! 

One night in particular sticks out as a big one, a big ole memory. It was full moon & things were getting sticky at the village. The relationship honeymoons had worn off & there was some stuff that needing releasing, perfect for the full moon! So three of us, it was three of us then. A girl from Quebec & my fair sprite & I, collected some instruments, made a fire among a birch stand, calling in the sev7n directions, kali ma~ for destroying & building back up again, for dark goddesses (the ones we’re usually taught to be afraid of, but really just mean death & the beginning again), for ancestors & the power of our own great hearts.

The instrument was there for sure, you betcha. We banged that thing in turn, hearing its hollow reverberating melodious sound enter into the ether & sparkle up toward the tree limbs just like the flames of the fire. Our voices collected the stuff of our hearts, all of our feelings we was feeling that was hard to say became song and healed & released itself in this way.

That night I felt fully released as I howled up to the moon at the end. I felt like a fresh fine baby with no-mind, letting words bubble up & froth forth, spilling out, received by the darkness of the night & my friends’ ears. I was a howling wolf, in company, not judging anything that snarled up from my belly.

The power of music is great for expressin’ that which we may’ve been repressin. Unedited Jam Sessions.

Fresh belly baby birthed in jovial space sacred spaces created by us, graced by our own two feet. Stomping, swinging, standing, sittin’ round that great fire; we are lost & found & birthed anew from the flames & smoke amid our breaths, reverberation of vocal chord collects to form our healing vibrations. Sad, lost, lonely, angry, mean & frustrated finds voice around the fire -without judgment- and in this speaking is released. And what is left is what was always there, but was maybe covered-up by politeness or a holding-in. But we gotta let that stuff out otherwise it may eat us from the inside. 

Let it out in art or song. Let it out your whole life long. Let it out from morn til night – there’s no reason to hold it in tight. Let your mind stop judging it “right from wrong”… you’ve got feelings to feel ~ Let this be your song. And don’t judge it yourself. Nothing’s right or wrong, save we say it is. Clear our your heart; free your body from the not-expressin’ ~ Let yourself say what you’ve been repressin’

And in that dark night lit by bright moonlight, I found the release of so much time & energy built up. Wiggling free with nothing left to say; I was emptied. By art & song & friends, the space we created with the “hank drum” , our voices, a drum & tambourine, didgeridoo ~ music can be a portal for expression, if you let it. If we let it. It can. 

a fresh wind moves in: letting go of the angst

Today as i walked the loop by my parent’s house it was palpably a different experience for me. We moved into this house from a fish-bowl neighborhood, where everyone is competing with each other & can literally see into each other’s homes to know what they’re competing on. One of my friends growing up – her dad was a basketball star on our state’s NBA team & i used to play in the lake, others were my wild soccer team members (lots of stories to share about that!), and others were children with lame mothers who didn’t enjoy it when i would invite their daughters to play in the ice with me- so what if our feet got caught as we tromped around the icy stream beds? we were on an adventure! but i digress..

We moved here and it was spacious & surrounded by farm fields and the occasional farm house (which pretty soon got torn down as little box neighborhoods, as i call them, were popping up in their place). Good bye corn & soybeans, Hello plastic siding & same-looking boxes with same landscaping for people to live in! Everyone gets their little mortgaged square of bland, colorless earth around here. At the time, i was a very active young one – playing sports in every season, hanging out with friends, making out with my boyfriends in the basement. It was a time i look back on as being so outwardly-focused. But sometimes in my room, especially at night, i would feel this hungering ache. I would write poetry to my boyfriends or write in my journal to God. I read Edna St Vincent Millay. I wondered what it would be like to live an artist’s life and i hungered. It was a hungering ache i didn’t understand & it made me feel very very alone & misunderstood. While on the outside, perhaps everyone would’ve said, well, that girl had such a great, well-liked high school situation – and, in so many ways they were right – but there was so much uncharted territory, so much of myself, left unaddressed and, well, neglected. The plastic siding & homogeneity only made it worse.

They tore down the farmhouse i could see from my bedroom window – and the one across the street too, where my sister & i would dare one another to sneak into the old, falling-apart, creaky barn & where i got the then-wild asparagus & transplanted it into the garden. The neighborhood seemed to magnify this ache that i had. The homogeneity was excruciatingly painful. I saw it as a place with no character. Without soul. Filled with slaves disguised as people who take out mortgages & listen to everything the local news says. A place where people live in fear & do not think for themselves.

My inner life was relatively untapped while in high school. My inner learnings were to unleash themselves/i was to open up a few years later as i faced certain struggles like death, injury, desire & ways of life different than the ones i’d known growing up. Since this homogenous neighborhood experience & many seekings of character, art, ingenuity, individuality & ram-shackledness later, i am pleasantly surprised today as i go on an evening walk and feel peace as i look around at the surroundings, the plastic siding, the boxes, the manicured lawns.

Suddenly, my judgment or perspective of the place was not holding me back from enjoying my little moment in nature, my walk on the concrete loop in the subdivision’s flood plane turned into nature trail (i’m sure you’ve seen one of these places – a little forest, prairie, wetland nook in an area unbuildable for homes within a subdivision). The prevalence of non-native, “invasive” species didn’t bother me. The cotton woods were beautiful, as were the red-breasted black birds and the shrubby legumes were so prevalent & taking back that landscape, fixing nitrogen into it, so well! The sky had just rained & big grey billowing clouds were still turning above me. I felt like a witch as i harmonized with my surroundings, taking step by step, recollecting & embodying the walking meditation i had taken part in the week before at the prison meditation. Perhaps it was seeing some of the horrible natural devastation in Peru just a few months prior that gave me this perspective. The clear-cutting of the amazingly diverse amazonian rainforests into vast deserted land. The pollution near rivers & in cities. Perhaps it was this perspective which more easily allowed me to “let-go” of my previous hold on hating & judging & disdaining this young adult habitat of mine. Perhaps there’s something in this week’s astrology (I think so), which eased this transition for me. Or perhaps, this wound has finally dislodged in a deeper way within me & i have found peace here from within my earlier surroundings which beckoned so much pain, angst & aching. So many questions. So many existential crises.

And today on the walk, they felt transcendentally resolved. I felt finished with them. I was there, in this same place i have been so many times before, in so many moods and i felt … peace. simply put … peace. And that release brought happiness and gratitude.

in lieu of _______ , I put my energy into _________

in lieu of the anger, frustration, disbelief rising in me due to the fact that so many people seem to have their head up their ass in relation to so many issues, but primarily: the disempowering economic job force media based- buy this to finally be good enough-keeping up with the joneses scheme & the turning a blind eye to earth devastation: deforestation, unclean/unprotected air/water, depleted agro-chemical soil, destruction of indigenous communities & countless ecosystems for monetary gain or expediency…

I put my energy into 

• searching for land where i can put trees into a land covenant for forest/ecosystem protection
• keeping bees
• creating food forests and gardens
• continuing to be in wonder of the earth’s bounty & beauty
• dancing on the earth & collecting & implementing her medicine
• building soil
• sharing this example with people & encouraging them toward their own healing path
• speaking out when I can shed more light on the aforementioned devastation

it is easy for me to get caught into my anger which sits in me like a fire. yet anger burns and it eventually creates wildfires. i choose to put my anger as fuel toward creating what i want to see happening. i choose to fuel what delights me and makes my life worth living. amen.

Written Gift for the World

If I had a chance to share encouraging writing with the world, what would I say?
What would you say?

spirit connection: the place

me as human is an energy being, a creature with 2 legs & 2 arms. i can only do so much, really. me as a human only has so much capacity, yet through this capacity i can hold the space for something so much greater than myself. this is what i feel called to do.

i want to hold space for a space to flow through me. i want to hold the fort down of a place where the following can be found:

• spaciousness: to feel spirit & breathe deep
• ancient: reflecting deep cyclical forces from which we all originate; not for quick profit, not for quick anything
• mater: deep presence of connection with mama earth
• meeting place: where people can congregate & grow
• home & hearth: feeling of warmth, coziness
• wilderness: large pieces of wild land (undisturbed by humans)
• purity: clean air & protection from pollution
• art: expression, vision, creativity, innovation
• secret nooks
• streams: fresh, clean, flowing water
• mystery room
• abundance: food forests, alignment with earth’s ways, permaculture gardens

this place reflects spirit connection. i am just a human with 4 limbs, a brain, a pumping heart. yet i could hold the space for infinite forces to move through me. may this space have the chance to grow through me and others. give me the courage to be embodied and hold the space for this. amen.