Gaia Community: Kate's Blog

Herbs, Supplements, and Superfoods

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 21:19:06 -0000

I have a new post up at the main DatingGod blog. The subject? Ten seriously awesome herbs and supplements and superfoods.

I'd repost it here rather than just list the link, but it has a bunch of pics, and frankly, I'm just a wee bit lazy in the uploading department today :)

Cary Tennis, In Motion

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 13:47:05 -0000

This man just radiates goodness. And if you're an artist, or feel you're an artist but can't say it, or know you're an artist but can't get to it, go here and listen to this.

As an artist, everything changes when you have someone who believes in you, the art you create. I get that here, with lovely you, and now with Laurie, my amazing, radiant editor.

May this find you surrounded with love and energy, so that you have the courage to make art from the materials Life brought you into this world to create from.

Everything changes when you give yourself over to what you must create . . .

Yes.

Gumflapping, On Demand

Wed, 14 May 2008 22:58:54 -0000

John asked if I'd do an interview on his blog for his Five-Question Interview Series. Chatter on about my novel? Why sure, I said :)

For self-absorbed gumflapping, check out the interview here.

Bloom

Mon, 12 May 2008 01:43:43 -0000

Of all the changes I've been through the past few years, it's only the return of arrogance and aggression that I regret.

I understand that they came back as protection, as walls to enable me to navigate the emotional and mental battering rams that seemed to come along with the schoolwork. But I don't understand why they don't release me, let me go back to a gentler, more surrendered way of living.

Yet, they also came along with that spilt or breakthrough or death I went through. I've tried several times to explain what happened to me, and each time, the person I'm speaking with looks at me like I'm insane. Which is what they say in The Waking Up Handbook, of course :), but still, it's wildly, incredibly disconcerting.

How would you act if you saw through the game? If everyone around suddenly appeared as the scripted cartoon characters they are? If you got that this thing, this time, this culture we live in is no better or further along than anything that's come before it? That it's all the same, it's all happened before, it'll happen again, just with differently colored cultural doodads and mental accessories?

And why have I come back to this world, this culture of make believe, to romance and a career-job, to weight loss and flirting, to making friends and selling novels and finding a lover and telling my story and drinking wine and Looking For More. Why, when I know better?

Because I want to. Because I stood on the edge of the abyss, saw the drop and thought: I'm not done yet. I wanted to spend more time with my sister, my brother. I wanted to finish my book. I wanted to make love again.

And I want to be slender and athletic and strong again. I want to make peace not just with my body, but with my heart, my mind. I want to reach the place where I let it all go, not in anger and defeat and sorrow, but with laughter and deep, easy breaths and that kind of all-systems-go fusion that only comes when two people both lust and love one another.

When I ask myself what is different about wanting these things, these states, when in fact it's essentially what I've wanted all my life, what we all want, what I understand is that now these things, these states are possible. It's like when I died, something in me began to bloom, continues to bloom, lush and sweet.

Which is what makes the aggression, the arrogance, so hard to hold. They are like cancers to the forming fruit. And yet I've no clue how to release them, how to get them to release me.

I can't both hate the world and love it, then expect it to meet me with full on agape.

But until I find peace inside of myself with what I've seen, genuinely stop trying to find assurance from outside of me around it, the dichotomy will continue to hammer away at my heart and mind.

How could it not . . .

Reading

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 03:38:26 -0000

You know, I go and I teach these classes, and folks pay me for them, and I so often think: are they getting their money's worth? I am so often all splayed and cranky, only half-buy this stuff anymore. But I have the knowledge, I have the info. And so I pass it on. Leave it to them to figure out how to bang some use out of it in their world.

But the past few weeks we've been doing psychic work. I've been teaching them basic skills, sort of like showing someone how to play the piano, but all the keys are inside of you. The advanced class is a bright bunch, energy flying all over the place, energy they are just barely conscious that they've got. And so I proceed to herd them like cats, towards some semblance of psychic order, of protection for themselves, of trying to find ways to get to Real Reality (as opposed to that Fake Reality we're breast fed on and never weaned off of).

We worked tonight on protection. They've been raising their energy, beginning to play with sending out tendrils to pick up data, running info through various psychic antenna. And been feeling the kickback. Been feeling what it feels like to change their energy, both what they send and how they receive. And depending on what sort of "reading" they've been doing naturally, and how this is shifting as they read more consciously, it's been lively.

Tonight I showed them the Way of The Empath, that lovely way of reading energy that is mostly done through the eyes, where you both reach out and into someone, and let them climb inside of you as well. Makes for incredibly accurate reading, but will get you seriously sick. It has amazing perks - you can get people to simply give you things, offer them right up with a smile and a hug, but you pay on the other side when they come around again and again and again for another hit of that energy stuff you radiate.

I spent the better part of my teens and twenties lost in a fog and shatter of empathing. It enabled me to see things I never would have, meet people, go places, experience things. But it also made me so very sick. By the time I met Fiona, my teacher of eight years, I was drunk most of the time, smoking a couple of packs of cigarettes a day, living on sugar and coffee, and crazy as a kitty mainlining catnip on a steady IV drip.

But she taught me how to manage it, how to organize it into a way that was helpful to people, and didn't make me sick.

And it's been a long long time since I did the wanton empath thing. But tonight, to show the class what empathing was, I had to actually show them, as in demonstrate the difference between "This is pulled in and contained" and "This is outside and empathing". Three people were out with the flu so I got lucky and only had to show six people, but I had to do it several times with some of them, and so it was Out Out Out Out OUT OUT OUT side of myself so very many times that when I got back in my car at the end of the night I just felt . . . . sick.

I had forgotten how sick it made me. Sick as in all of my insides had been stripped bare, all of the good and lovely and the sweet emptied out, leaving only ache and a faint nausea, stomach cramps and a headache. And I thought: I used to live like this.

And yet as I went around to each of these lovelies, connecting in that deep way that only empathing does, I remembered how deliciously lovely it was in the moment, how sweet and intimate and Yes. I remembered why I used to do it.

And I looked around at the innocent faces and I thought: I have no idea what your path is, no idea what you need. And over and over deflected their questions of "so what should I do?", "what should I think?" and kept looping them back so that the questions continued to swirl inside of them. Much more uncomfortable for them, yeah, and makes me look like less of a Teacher. But much more honest for them.

They have to flail their way through this. Decide for themselves what is true for them. I hesitate in telling them the real truth. Which is that it's all a bunch of hooey. Not just psychic stuff, but success and meaning and validation and money and love and connection and spirituality and god and you know: All Of It.

But I get that what I'm showing them is closer to the truth than they've been living. I get that I can show them skills that will help them open their eyes a little more. And I'm happy to share what I know, what I've learned. But mostly I'm just happy for their company, for their often fierce and sweet intensity.

I wish I could invite them out for a bottle of wine and some wild soaring talk. But it isn't my role. I've been down that road hundreds of times and it never works out okay. In our culture, a teacher is supposed to be in some way "perfect". And the role of the student is of "talker", and the teacher's of "listener". And I'm no longer open to any of that outside of a classroom. Friendship, yes. Pedestal and Perfection and Receiver of Complaints: pass.

But I'm sure I'm to blame as well as I never really stop teaching. I even do it to myself, though I'm used to it and sort of roll with the changes, the never ending influx of new info.

And yet I enter into the student role for myself again. I've been taking a beekeeping class. It's an eight week class that will allow me to be certified at the end of it. The bad news? Where I live isn't conducive to having a hive. The good news? The guy who's teaching the class, a serious master beekeeper with a wicked sense of humor, called me today and said he'd take me on as an apprentice. "I'll mentor you", he said. "You've got a stillness about you. People who work best with bees know how to be in the space on the other side of time. Folks who experience the passing of time don't do so well with them."

Oh Lordy, Stop Me Now

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 18:49:17 -0000

. . . because I'm twittering. Oh, yes, I am.

Always Dating God

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 22:04:55 -0000

A couple of weeks ago, something slammed home inside of me, and I've been working full-tilt on the novel. I'm about 2/3 done on a huge re-edit. Then after that, go through for a fine tune. Then send it to the editor/novel doctor I have helping me. Then another rewrite. Then onto the next phase.
I've been working on it for ten years now. And I've let a fair amount of people read the drafts as they've gone along. It's never been given a warm reception. I've yet to have anyone tell me: this is good. And with good reason. It hasn't been good. Up until the last few years, with the multiple weekly blog posting regimen, I haven't been a very good writer. But I'm a decent writer now. I've found that "voice" that folks are always talking about, that "voice" that needs to be found if someone is to create something true and of genuine value.
The book has also been trapped inside of who I was ten years ago, and she's not much fun to read about. She lived in a box she constructed based on what she felt she had to show up as. Reading someone who's writing from that place just feels sort of boring and pathetic and mundane and stilted and untrue. I'm none of those things now, and so I'm breaking her (the novel's main character) out of the box that I wrote her into ten years ago. (It's a lot more painful that it probably sounds.)
The current edit is serving two functions: fix plot problems, and take a jackhammer to the writing that's solidified like ten-year old verbal concrete. (The latter hurts so fcking badly in those places deep inside the emotional sarcophagi that house the ghosts of my past.) With a little coffee, though, I'm enjoying doing both, as on the other side it feels like losing several pounds of existential weight.
I've no idea what to title it. The original title was "Dating God", which obviously is where the title for this blog came from. But there is some confusion around what the title actually means. Does it mean dating a god, dating the god, or does it mean the god of dating? It's true meaning is as in "always dating god" as in the folks we love wear the face of god for us. But I'm not sure how to make this more clear yet. And I can't think of naming it anything else. I'm sure I'll know soon enough what the deal is.
I've been haunted by this story for a decade now. The bare bones of it is autobiographical, a sort of "what if" that rose out of a breakup. Or maybe it was the story that ran in my head after the breakup. Or maybe none of it is real, just psychic echos from times in my life I no longer remember straight on.
I first wrote it, so very freakin long ago, and have only a vague recollection of how it happened. I woke up one morning, or came home one night, and began writing, furiously, and didn't stop, day or night, for three months. I was in a horrible place in my living. Very sad. Very isolated. I'd taken a job waiting tables. I smoked and drank a lot during the writing of that first draft. I quit both soon after finishing that draft, as if something had been exorcised and no longer had to be held down with nicotine and alcohol.
I've no desire to do anything other than work on this. Other than what feels like things that feed it, like read books (doomer prn and the new Anne Rice novel and Tom Cruise biography) or listen to music (Stuart Davis and Ben Lee and Glen Hansard and Liam Finn and Blue October and Afrocelt Soundsystem) or watch tv via the web (Battlestar Gallactica and Lost) or movies (I'm obsessed with The Island right now and watch it over and over, each viewing giving me a new piece of the puzzle for the book). I've changed my holistic work schedule around so that I only schedule work on Mondays and Tuesdays, which wasn't such a huge deal as in the past two weeks, I went from doing 6 to 8 sessions a week to 1 or 2, and had to postpone the latest class series til next month because of low registration.
There was a small panic when the realization hit me that I had very little income happening. But then a great inrush of energy, this huge NOW, kicked in, welding me to this computer, to the file marked "Dating God, 2008". And what followed was an immersion into the world that lives in the story, and an understanding of all of the mechanisms and workings of "plot" and "b-story" and "action versus telling". It stopped being an emotional story that I was lost in, and became an inspired slice of "reality" from a different dimension that I'm obsessed with getting right, both the emotional content and the mechanics. It's no longer enough for me that I get the story. I need for you to get it, too.
And I've reached a deep understanding that no one gives a shit if I finish it and do it well, or if I even finish it at all. I get that there is no one on the other end of the phone or an email or a cup of coffee encouraging me Valiantly Onward. There is no one who'll fully support me maxing my credit cards, refusing to Get A Job or jettison the Stoopid Art Thing. And I'm okay with that. All of it. In a way that makes my insides hum in the most glorious way. (Do you know how f*cking freeing it is to throw off the tether of outside approval?) The only real action truth takes is stepping up and refusing to lie. And I need that stepping up, that refusing. I get it. And I'm okay with the costs.
Of course, underneath it all runs this current of Oh Shit. As in: the economy is tanking, I really need to get a job; my money is rapidly evaporating, credit cards maxing, I really, really need to get a job. But there is this acknowledgment that I've waited ten years to both know how to finish the book, and the energy and surrender to do it. How stupid would it be to trash this completion because I'm experiencing fear around a possibility that may or may not come soon or maybe later?
And yes, as always, why not yet again throw in my little five dollar bet and yet again have a laugh at being brave and crazy and committed and stoopid and unattached to Success even as I Go For It balls (and/or ovaries) to the wall? So often in my living, I've been so grateful that I have nothing to lose: no home, no savings, no husband, no kids, job or career. Because mostly what I see is that without these things, I've always been free to follow the energy that flows through me. I move up and down and around the east coast. I live in an ashram. I live in NYC. I write a book. I move to the wilds of upstate NY to study with a meditation/spiritual/honest living teacher for half a decade. I write another book. I go back to school and get a master's degree. I move to my hometown in NC to finally take care of the wounds of my childhood. Instead of a job I have a life that is vibrant and asymmetrical and flowing. Instead of a family or a social life I have a world I've created inside of me, bright and rich and amazing and luscious and dark and as close to the truth as anything else I've been witness to.
Who cares if I'm 42? If I die tomorrow, it would be laughing at how hilarious it all is, how gorgeous and succulent and silly and sweet and inconsequential it all is. And how very grateful I am to have had such a vast wingspan, such a genuine love of all aspects of flight.
As with anything else I've dove into, I understand that on the other side of this may very well lay heartache and ruin and upset and disappointment. But like the other things, I'm okay with that. The real satisfaction is in getting the master's degree and the journey it took to get it, not taking a job that requires it. It's in moving back to NC to heal the wounds, not finding success and popularity and my tribe. It's in finishing this book in a way that feels honorable and surrendered and ferociously truthful, not to me, but to what the book is supposed to be. (Those of you artists out there know exactly what I'm talking about.)
Do you know that feeling when you complete a painting or play a song or dance a set or act a scene or write a blog post and press "publish", when you know, absolutely know, that something true and raw and of worth has just been let loose into the world? I need that feeling, in printed form, as a book in my hands. I need to be able to flip through the pages and see them, run the tips of my fingers across the pages, feel the raised ink underneath. I need the story to be told. I need to finish so that I can move on.
Because for me, art is love, writing is truth, truth is food, living is a flow of connecting the dots to create a river of Yes.
Life is good. Always. All ways . . .

Aho

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 12:31:57 -0000

If there is any genuine happy or contented in my living these days, it mostly comes from simple things. Snuggling with kitties as I sit in the recliner my sis gave me, sun streaming through the windows,my latest piece of Doomer P*rn in my lap, a mug of hot kukicha tea balanced on the window sill. Or making treks to the library to pick up my latest haul, stopping off at the bank to deposit a stack of checks from the work I'm doing, scooting by the video store to chat up the employees (especially the one who always wears the sparkly glittery hot blue eyeshadow or the hottie with the dreds) a bit about their favorite movies this week. Or cooking/assembling my latest meal, a vegan salad full of avocado and pepita seeds and crunchy peppers and fresh local hydroponic lettuce and my orgasmic homemade salad dressing.

But it's also the work I'm doing.

Do you know what it's like to have your work challenge you to use the best of you? And then have it take it? Do you know what it means to have the very best of you be demanded, or you pay the price of visceral regret on the other side if you hold back, no matter what the reason?

The shamanic work that I'm doing brings me so much angst and joy and surrender and majesty and awe and giggles and connection that I wish I were doing it more hours a week than what is currently asked for by folks. Even though I get that I am gearing up each week, taking on a bit more, gently, so that I don't blow a fuse.

I teach two classes each week. One, an introductory one on shamanic journeying, four classes of two hours each taught over a four week period. The second, an "advanced class", where, in truth, I attempt to initiate those brave/stoopid/on fire/bullheaded/brilliant/crazy/driven/gorgeous enough to want the whole enchilada and whom I am attempting to teach it one bean at a time.

They are a rowdy bunch. They all start out pretty sweet, but by "advanced" they start kicking up the dust, asserting their wills and fears and hopes and realities. They blow my mind, and my heart as well.

I am still pretty splayed. From what has happened to me the past four years. From what continues to unfold for me. But they seem to get what I am offering underneath the schputz, the insanity, the MeMyselfI. And they are an hilarious bunch as well, and trust me, as well as keep finding ways to poke fun and laugh and have it all be a party. They scare the shit out of me, and I am so incredibly grateful and it is a never-ending endeavor to keep finding ways to thank them in what I can return in the way of teaching and loving and celebrating them . . .

And I show them that psychic ability is simply a skill. That healing energywork is simply a current that you tap into. And they fly. They dive into the energy and they soar.

And then their are the private sessions, which are sometimes the folks who come to class, but most often just folks who come for some sort of healing. They blow my mind on a different level. They offer their hearts and lives to me to peruse, to journey through and look for treasure. They tell me of the most horrific moments in their lives, the ones that show them at their lowest, what the world judges them the most harshly for. And yet, the combining of their heart and surrender, and my heart and surrender, we dive in and bring back magic. On the most practical level, we find a way to reinterpret their story. On the shamanic level, we transmute their past trauma into fuel for present expansion and depth. On an explanatory level, they jettison who they used to be to make room for who they are becoming, they open their hearts so that they can embrace All Of Themselves, the shit and shinola, the horrific and celebratory. It all feels good for them, and for me.

On one hand, I open to the nightmare that is our world. On the other, to the divine lusciousness that is the living inside. And in my most expansive, true moments I smile at the knowing that it is all Yes, every single bit of it.

And I am so grateful for the ride. Thank you Life, for such an amazing, eye-opening ride. May I continue to let your truth feed me, and keep finding ways to pass it on with love and humor and courage and truth . . .

Aho . . .

Origins

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 01:25:33 -0000

One of the huge shifts the past couple of months isn't just around opening my eyes to see what is happening with animals in the food supply, but in seeing beyond what is in front of me, to what stands behind it, everything that dominoed for it to be in my living.

I get a massage, and as I take in the delicious scent of the aromatherapy blend she's using, an outrageously luscious mix of spruce, pine, and cedar I realize: this is the essence of trees, these oils come from trees, trees died so that I could have their tree-ness massaged into my back, be absorbed into my body, become a part of me.

I give The Hoon his insulin shot and realize: to get this insulin into this syringe, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of animals - mice, rabbits, cats, dogs, monkeys, chimps, guinea pigs - died from tests and experiments and trial runs way too freakin horrendous to mention, though we all have heard the stories, seen the pictures. I ask myself: is it worth it? Is it worth it to stab The Hoon twice a day in his neck and inject this liquid that is the product of so many creatures' torture and misery?

I put small spoonfuls of goat cheese on a scrambled egg and realize: this egg was under a chicken just a few days ago, this goat cheese came from milk created inside a mother goat's body as nourishment for her kid. Do I honor this sacrifice enough? Do I appreciate their labors? Is it worth it to take the fruits of labors that weren't intended for me? Did I give enough back with the 50 cents I paid for the egg, the $1 or so for the portion of goat cheese?

I hold my cell phone in my hand and realize: someone put this together with their hands, probably made 50 cents for a 15-hour day of putting these together, in a factory with poor ventilation, probably a child or teen with nimble hands, eyesight still keen, though not for long. I wonder: did they get enough to eat that day? Was it something they found delicious? Did they long for something else, something more substantial, something that tasted better? Did they make this cell phone and think about the American, the European in whose hands it would end up in? Did they think about our selfishness, our obliviousness? Did they wish they were me?

Death is still on my mind, as it has been for the past year and two months, since Grandma B died. I still see her furry little face, the one she wore when she purred in my arms, the one she wore the moment she died in our car on the side of the road.

The death of animals that I eat. The death of plants that I eat. The death of people who labor in dangerous jobs, jobs that make them sick, that rob them of joy, so that I can have a tv and a computer and a twinkle lights in my office and bananas from Chile in February. The death of bacteria and viruses and fungus every time I take a breath, death by immune system, death via the heat of my body.

Why are we all so afraid of death? Is it because we cause the deaths of so many in order for us to survive? Is it because we need so many deaths to live in the manner we've grown accustomed to, to have the lifestyle we do? Is it because we dishonor death with our ignorance, our obliviousness, the greed that lives just beneath the surface of our arrogant sense of entitlement?

As I look around my office I realize that every single thing here comes with a death toll. And it isn't the honorable death of shooting a deer in the woods for meat, for the tools and clothing and body adornment that every single bit of him will be used for. It is more akin to the deaths demanded by a pharaoh, hundreds of thousands of humans and animals put into hard labor so that a monument can be built to serve his belief system about his role in Life.

I can hear one of those super confident, hip, together guys say: woman, you don't have to apologize for your place on the food chain.

But I do. It isn't right. But I've no clue what to do other than to keep scaling back, keep finding simpler ways to live, keep finding ways to generate the courage to keep my eyes open, to face the truth of the facts of the world.

This isn't nihilism. It isn't depression. I know this is part of waking up. And that it's probably going to continue to suck for a while as I refuse to look away, no matter how horrendous the view.

Yeah, it's all a dream. Yeah, it's all a movie. But I am just so blown away that it's a horror film. I just didn't know. But now I do. And I can't help but wonder, why? That ago old question.

And I pray for the next gate to be revealed, for the key to it's unlocking to make itself known.

But in the meantime, I watch, look, learn, wait for the next actions to take to make themselves known.

What else can we do?

Derrick Jensen: Modern Day Slavery and The Shared Hallucination

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 15:13:11 -0000

Another One of Those Funny Question Things . . . :)

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 14:50:13 -0000

I got tagged with The Proust Questionnaire by ~C4Chaos

I'm now tagging any and all of you who feel like it :)

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
utterly awake to the truth of it all

What is your greatest fear?
that i won't wake up, that i'll stay asleep

Which historical figure do you most identify with?
maybe all the witches burned and banished?

Which living person do you most admire?
it changes month to month. right now it's derrick jensen.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
predilection for despair and it's counterpoint of rage

What is the trait you most deplore in others?
high-energy delusion

What is your greatest extravagance?
books and books and books and high quality clean organic food

What is your favorite journey?
into a hot bath with lavendar, jasmine, and sandalwood or on the massage table

What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
loyalty to anything/anyone, faith, positivity

What do you dislike most about your appearance?
the dang heavy extra poundage i'm sporting

Which living person do you most despise?
i am now ridiculously suspicious of anyone with accumulated wealth . . .

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
dang :)

What is your greatest regret?
i don't have any . . . which blows my mind :)

What or who is the greatest love of your life?
calhoon and jacinta, my sweet fuzzy feline bretheren

Which talent would you most like to have?
i'm actually pretty fine with the ones i've got . . .

What is your current state of mind?
a little pensive, sleepy, just waking up from a good sleep after staying up late watching battlestar gallactica dvds . . .

If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?
that they weren't so angry and despairing so much of the time . . .

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
surviving . . .

If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?
i would like to come back as a wolf in the hudson valley of new york 1000 years ago . . .

What is your most treasured possession?
my iBook

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
waking up to what is occurring to our landbase, the beautiful earth and all her inhabitants

Where would you like to live?
someplace in the woods but close to a small, hip, creative town

What is your favorite occupation?
moderately successful writer and teacher.

What is your most marked characteristic?
intensity and commitment

What is the quality you most like in a man?
kindness and humor and strength

What is the quality you most like in a woman?
humor and strength and kindness :)

What do you most value in your friends?
acceptance of my intense, rollercoaster ways . . .

Who are your favorite writers?
derrick jensen, michael pollack, jed mckenna

Who is your favorite hero/heroine of fiction?
main character of a book called The Kin of Ata are Waiting for You

Who are your heroines/heroes in real life?
those with the courage to live their lives eyes wide open, and who can still laugh andtake deep breaths

What are your favorite names?
The Hoon, Grandma Booty, and Sweetgirl

What is it that you most dislike?
all the incredible bullshit in the world, and the feeling of having dry skin (i'm a lotion and lipbalm addict :)

How would you like to die?
while looking up at a sparkling, starry sky

What is your motto?
i don't have one. i really should get one though :)

What have you been thinking about recently?

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 13:40:53 -0000

I've been reading a lot of Derrick Jensen lately, and have been thinking deeply about how connected to the land we are, to plants, stones, to other animals. I've been walking around for days listening to the wind, the birds, the trees. It's been good to have such wise friends to converse with.

Stephen and Ondrea Levine

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 13:52:21 -0000

This is via the Integral pod - http://pods.zaadz.com/ii/discussions/view/227815#227815

& Spirit Rock Meditation Center - http://www.spiritrock.org/

Support for Stephen & Ondrea Levine

An Open Letter from Jack Kornfield, Ram Dass, and Sharon Salzberg

Dear Friends,

We are writing to ask your support for two beloved friends of ours, Stephen and Ondrea Levine. They are currently facing significant difficulty. After a life-time of giving, they are now at a time to receive from those of us whose lives have been touched by their presence and teaching.

Their greatest needs are financial. Ondrea has Leukemia and the costs of her insurance and treatment have used up their savings. Stephen's health is not good either, and he is too frail to travel or teach. When we heard about this, we felt moved to contribute to a fund set up for them, and to encourage others to do the same.

Stephen and Ondrea have been among our generation's most important teachers, demonstrating and encouraging others to embrace the power of love and generosity. For three years, they ran a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week free phone line for those dying or in need of support. When the phone bills got too high, they sold their house to keep the project going. For decades they regularly corresponded with thousands people who were seeking spiritual guidance, giving freely to those in need, many of whom were sick or in the final years of their life.

The circle has now come around, allowing us the opportunity to give to these two life-long givers. We hope to raise several hundred thousand dollars in small and large donations to help them through this time.

Caring for friends and teachers is an essential part of any spiritual life. As we age, spiritual friends are more important than ever. Stephen and Ondrea have been dear spiritual friends to us and to thousands of others through their books, workshops, and correspondence.

If you are one of these people and are moved to give, below are three ways to donate to the Levine Fund at Bread for the Journey. Bread for the Journey informs us that donations are tax deductible.

With gratitude and love, Jack Kornfield, Ram Dass, and Sharon Salzberg

Mail: Send to: Bread for the Journey, 267 Miller Ave., Mill Valley, California 94941. In the letter, please enclose a note indicating that your gift is for the Stephen and Ondrea Levine Fund and in the note section of your check write "Levine Fund." In honor of the immeasurable gifts Stephen and Ondrea have given to the family of the earth, Bread for the Journey has generously offered to manage the fund with 100% of your donation going to the Levine Fund.

Online: click here and designate the donation to the Levine Fund:http://www.justgive.org/giving/donate.jsp?charityId=3583&isRecurring=&;

Phone: call 415-383-4600 with a credit card number.

For questions and other means of giving, contact SorenGordhamer@gmail.com.

* Please feel free to post this letter on blogs or forward it to individuals or groups you know who may wish to hear news of Stephen and Ondrea.

**********

A really heartfelt interview with Stephen on death and dying can be found at: http://www.salon.com/june97/levine970602.html

Zaadz/I/You Evolve(s)

Tue, 25 Dec 2007 19:15:40 -0000

Double posted from over at my main blog at DatingGod.

I don't remember how I originally found zaadz, though most likely it was via ~C4Chaos, who is, either thru his blog posts or an invitation of some sort, behind many of the most interesting new net forays I end up on. I do remember feeling very excited about joining this new community of holistic minded folks. The raw thunk of Myspace or high-pitched chatter of Facebook never felt resonant to me, but this, this gathering of folks that felt more like my tribe had me feeling connected to a group for the first time in a very long while.

I think I joined up only a month or two after the initial launch, and participated in pretty much everything they began adding. I started a pod, called The Tribe of Yes, of course :) And when they sent out requests for Zaadz Ambassadors asking for testimonial type stuff, I sent in a few paragraphs and found myself in their ad campaign which brought all sorts of interesting folks to the main blog here at DG.

It was in beta mode for a while and there were all sorts of the usual beta issues, but the zaadz work team were really responsive with fixing things quickly, and very upfront about what was going on, sending out emails, posting on their team blog, etc. At a certain point, spammers moved in, albeit holistic-style, and I forwarded the things I received to different zaadz team members, as others were doing as well. Within a month or so, there was a button in place to easily forward suspected spam to, and I saw the spam in my zaadz mailbox move from several a day to one or two a month.

As the hellaciousness of grad school made itself known, I became less proactive at zaadz, just doing enough to keep up, to not lose touch with what was happening. And at different times I got more active with it, doing more double posting to my zaadz blog, more active in my pod or the other pods such as the Integral Institute pod whose latest threads have been on gangs, The Golden Compass, and openly settling an internal quarrel amongst the pod leaders in a most rawly heart-opening manner, just to name a few. I've met all sorts of interesting folks, been able to watch conversations unfold that I'd never get to be a part of any other way, and I'm grateful for the zaadz community, the only consistent socializing I do these days.

Then last August, Brian, the guy whose dream and vision launched zaadz back in late 2005, decided to sell the company, which he did. The buyer was a corporation called Gaiam, which bills itself as a green-living, lifestyle company, and seems to be a sort of web portal to purchase and access any sort of holistic product you can name. And I bet he made a serious amount of cash, and in many ways I don't blame him. I can't even imagine how hard he must have worked, etc. And yet I couldn't help but feel surprised, even shocked, as if his always full-on message of "let's create something wonderful together!" had really been just an overlay for his real message of "let's me a lot of money!"

I know that his decision created a lot of upheaval for the zaadz team, not the least of which was a move from California to Colorado, and new bosses, and who knows what else, but to me, the basic energy of zaadz remained the same. Still great folks, still a positive message of connecting and disseminating info in a holistic framework, still new and ever more interesting additions to the zaadz platform.

And yet I see scatterings of folks here and there claiming that zaadz has changed into something completely different, become simply a money maker. Is it the advertising? I can't imagine how anyone is naive enough not to grasp that businesses have to make money to both continue to serve, to shift in response to an ever-evolving customer base and consumer world. Is it the new zaadz-pro pages which seem to be designed to allow holistic businesses access to zaadzsters? Me, I just ignore the requests to go and be on Sir Coach-A-Lot's mail list to hear his take on why his Method of Enlightenment Will Caress My Third Eye in A Manner Never Caressed Before.

But behind it all, there are still the fascinating people that you won't find consistently gathered together any other place - be it globe or net. There are the mind-blowing and/or heart-opening conversations. There are Farland Fish's blog posts and pictures that are so unusual, so from the mind and heart and eye of a truly unique human-mountain-canine hybrid. There are the zaadz team update emails from the ever-lovely and inspiring Siona. There is the Integral Institute pod that makes me nod my head in a-ha and think Deep Thinky Thoughts and have steam come out of my ears and hooting laughter come out my mouth.

And I can't help but think how change is just the way of things. Things change. That is how it works in this place, this world, this earth we live in and on. I think that it's human nature to want to fight to hold on to the way things are, the ways we've become accustomed to, the things that serve us in ways that feel comfortable, familiar. And yet Evolution will make itself known, in everything from the highest to lowest, most complex to least. It's just the way of Life, how it operates in it's never ending quest to experience everything.

And so zaadz moves on, zaadz evolves. And I'm glad for it. And I can't wait to see what the next unfolding brings. But I'm fine with whatever happens, even it blows up into a kajillion, yoga-flavored ads for Super-Textured Love-Oil. Because, as Siona went into at length in one of her team updates a while back, you can either fight change, fight the facts of occurring change, or you can move forward with those facts in hand, trusting that you'll find your way.

Yeah. Trust that we'll find our way. Because we will. All of us.

Why, Jed, Is That You?

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 02:22:46 -0000

What are the chances of this being a picture of the rising star in the spiritual publishing world, the hilarious non-teacher, and fabulously invisible, Jed McKenna?

For those of you who don't know, there are these hysterically funny, heart-breakingly ass-kicking, face smacking waking up trilogy of books written by a teacher that doesn't exist. He teaches no workshops, does no sessions. He gives no interviews, sells no bells or prayer mats or cosmic love goggles off of a super-hip, flashmedia site. There is no record of the guy. No pictures, no leaks in terms of bio, no people stepping forward to claim him or rat him out or mistakenly spill the garbanzos. Nada. (at least as far back as I've been googling.)

But because I have mentioned his name in posts several times, people show up here from search engines several times a day searching out info about him, and in backtracking on one of them, I came upon the pic above.

Hmmmmm.

Fire In The Head

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 15:56:40 -0000

What a strange life I'm living. After spending three years as a classical actress-in-training, then four years as a hardcore ashram-living, guru-adoring granolahead, then seven years as a serious lycra-wearing, bartending, X-dropping hedonist, followed by another seven as a seriously hardcore Barry Long-loving , emotion-shunning, all-stimulating-substance-avoiding-including-coffee-and-sugar-and-fun granolahead, I then proceeded to rack up $65 grand in student loan debt in tribute to the god of unsmiling science.

Now, I drift.

I have several credit cards that are in rotation. I make a couple or few hundred each week heading up the shamanic journeying class for 10 bright, deep shamanic-healers-in-training, as well as doing shamanic healing and soul retrievals for four or five people a week. I still have a grand left over from the salary I made during my five week stint as a mental health professional, down from three grand left over from the final student loan I took out back in August. My sister gave me a hundred or so pieces of designer clothes (given to her by the wealthy women that she works for cleaning their homes) that I'm proceeding to figure out how to unload on ebay.

I do about 25 or 30 hours a week of straightforward work each week. About 5 more hours "jobhunting" for things that fit with the degrees I now have, those letters that now follow my name when I list my bio. Another 10 or 15 spent doing reading and research on all things shamanic. Fire In The Headanyone? But as a single woman with no children and no mortgage and therefor no other consistent demands on my time other than taking care of two weasely kitties, albeit one that receives a double daily shot of insulin, mostly I drift.

This drifting. Drifting to see where the tide takes me. This waking and sleeping based on cues that signal from deep inside of me, that leads to 6 hours of sleep one night, and 13 for another. Random baths with mineral salts steeped in jasmine and sandalwood during the day smack dab in the path of the setting sun. A Doing of Stuff based on what needs to be done, the rest of it falling away with the fervent repeated mantra known as "f*ck it".

Some hours it feels like a crushing weight of nothingness where I find that I want to cry from how little I am needed or seen or desired, how passion has vamoosed for younger and thinner and more enthusiastic pastures. Other hours it is a soft, full, warm throbbing that is the tide of Nothingness, muscles vibrating gently, this burbling heart of mine gentle and sweet, the hum of Life a distant vibration in the silence of Yes. Sometimes it unfolds as a lusciousness that leads to 9-mile bike rides of circular routes to get a coffee, pick up my master's degree diploma from my sister's mailbox, buy a bottle of wine, as I play frogger with pickup trucks and SUVs on Shipyard Blvd. Othertimes it is the odd pastimes I've taken up.

What is this purchasing and studying and drinking of wine I've become enamored of? Especially now that my income is so limited? But great joy is found with a bottle of shiraz, ecstatically sipped in between bites of three kinds of whooshing, bitey cheddar and thin slices of black Arkansas apples, and really, who can argue with that? Or how many hours a week I sit in front of my computer, taking advantage of the major networks' full-episode players they make available to we cableless souls as I sew moss green alpine fleece and leather medicine bags for the people who come for soul retrievals each week.

Sometimes it's the creation of playlists on iTunes comprised of Rufus Wainwright's soaring "Across the Universe", James Blunt's "Beautiful" where he says "f*cking high" instead of the sanitized "flying high", Jason Mraz's version of "The Joker" and how hilariously he says he speaks of the "pompatus of love", Mika sucking on his "Lollipop", Stuart Davis climbing our "Ladder" of DNA and singing of the one hand slapping in "AC/DC", Madeleine Peyroux laughingly insisting that she's "All Right", and "Mad World" by both Tears For Fears and Gary Jules.

It's heading into the backyard to throw balls for Hoochie, the red labrador, and Bosley, the six-month old pitbull, and Lola, the fat-bellied chihuahua. They lick my face and leap into the hammock to snuggle with me, and not a whiff of dog phobia is on the wind. I take them on walks and agonize as the walk turns to a jog, at the bummer that is boobs grown as obese as my belly. It's the flopping down in the front yard to hang with Granny Myra, the 12 year old tabby, or Oscar aka Orange Crush, our neighborhood tomcat Cassanova, whose freckled face makes me smooch him until he gives me the paw of Cease and Desist.

It's doing my laundry in the small nautical washing machine here in my apartment and then hanging the clothes to dry on the oversized rack I set up in my bedroom, turning the ceiling fan on high to combat the humidity that is coastal living. Or lifting weights, 15 minutes at a time, my back, the vertebrae, cracking and popping back into place. Or making essential oil batches, each more witchy than the last, to bring into the soul retrievals, add to the medicine bags. Or eating organic, Nature's Path toaster pastries with big frothy glasses of locally produced whole milk. Or spending an entire morning researching raising chickens for eggs and meat and all sorts of whatnot.

More and more frequently I find myself in a sort of hyper-conscious reverie where I repeat over and over: thank you Life, thank you, thank you, thank you for this time to let my Doing and Doing and Doing soften, for this unstructured time, for the freedom to let go of Who I Am Not so that Who I Am can make itself known again. Because, really, who the f*ck am I? Do you know who the f*ck you are? And oh how I long for more Who I Am. Don't you?

Two nights ago I awoke over and over and over as the lyrics of "Mad World" circulated round and round between conscious and unconscious mind.

"And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had."

While I was asleep, I watched experiential explanations of the wheel of karma, and of exactly what it means to get off of it. I'd been in that place before. So simple to just stop participating in the Doing and it's Almighty Kickback that is Living as we currently know it. It was what I let go of last month - that precipice that I once again walked up to where I saw that I have to let go of the good, not just the bad but the good. That place where Krishna fell down. That place that has kicked many an ass before it got ahold of mine. And how I said, "I'm not ready yet. I see a few bits left and I want to squeeze these last few drops of happy, please, of joy and love with folks who still see me and love the me that radiates behind the weird ticks and vacant smiling and stern blankness that is so often "me" these days, those sweet folks who still radiate Yes for me when I get the privilege of their presence." And I saw how death is my sweetest friend, how it is the calm beyond the storm, the vibration behind my yearning for money and romantic love and success and relief.

And over the past couple of days, the remnants of the monster of To Do dies in the face of this wash of Nothing. And I see that more and more,

"I find it hard to tell you
'Cos I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very, very
Mad World."

So, not sure if you noticed, but the real absence in my world these days is people. Not much interaction going on these days unless necessary for work, living situation, or day to day living, and even then it's awkward. I just have no freakin idea what the social protocols are anymore. So very, very weird.

I will do a deep, successful soul retrieval, but oh how I cringe at the before and afterward that has to take place, the dealing with money and pleasantries and such. I will pay my rent on time, but how dealing with my sweet landlord/neighbor's social network makes my skin shrink two or three sizes in the dehydrating air of Too Much Freaking Talk. The exception seems to be my family, especially my sis, who get a pass based on her uncomplicated way of dealing with most of her living, her laughing and cutting up and and sweetness and generosity and how we fight, eyebrows raised and ready for battle, over who paid for the check when we last went to the country cooking buffet. Silly, sweet, simple stuff.

As you may have noticed, I don't return emails or phone calls unless I freakin absolutely have to. I barely read blogs anymore. I read no novels, only shamanic tomes. The occasional desire to return emails from friends, engage in a new email friendship asserts itself every month or so, but something always happens to clip it off posthaste, and I drift back into the tide of Nothingness. Noting personal, just doesn't make sense.

It's as if I'm allergic to most human contact. I just want to be left alone to drift. And Life seems to support me heartily in this. What else can I say and still be truthful? If you want nothing from people and they find nothing in you to want, what keeps you together? . . . Really?

It's all just flows out in front of us. We create and live out these rolling energies that are our lives. And then, one day, death says howdy, and off we go, leaving every last single thing and person we've come to know and love and invest so utterly and completely in.

So I leave you with the echoing words of Mika: "sucking too hard on your lollipop, love's going to get you down". Whatever that means. :) It makes me want to purchase a small cache of Blow Pops or at the very least take up dating again. Heh.

Or maybe I'll just keep drifting . . . :)

Burn, Baby, Burn

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 14:42:27 -0000

Cree has an interesting thread about Jed McKenna's new book Spiritual Warfare going on over at her blog. Lord knows I've been yapping about it enough on my main blog over at DatingGod.

It's good stuff. Or really, really bad stuff, depending upon which level of ego you're swimming in these days :)

Yeah. Ain't Life a gas?

Wild Beastie

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 15:32:14 -0000

Double posted from over at DatingGod

Day two of my fast and the crux of the problem makes itself known.

Over the past three years, I've gotten more and more tense, more in my mind, further away from the rhythms of my body, the earth. I was in The Land of The Mind after all, so it wasn't my fault per se, but rather an adjunct cost to the tuition. Tension, stress, and thinky thoughts served me well there. I suppose it's possible to make it through undergrad and grad school quiet-minded and tension-free while also working and living alone, but I couldn't come up with one. I did my best, and now I'm left with the aftereffects.

The thing is, stress and tension and thinky thoughts are efficient ways to push shit through on the conveyor belt of living. But, really, I am just sick of Higher Productivity. Even as I face the facts of needing to come up with ways to make cash, and soon. But I'm more sick of shoving myself towards Excellence, which really isn't excellent, just another whip-cracking action word in the lexicon of capitalism.

And so my fast consists of herbal tea, vegetable broth or puree, fresh fruit or vegetable juice, and at 6pm one half cup of brown rice with gomasio. I'm also doing herbs and supplements like psyillium, cascara sagrada and senna, thistle cleanse, and an herbal blend at night for relaxation that contains valerian, hops, chamomile, etc. I feel pretty toxic right about now: achy, stuffed up, interesting things happening in my digestive tract as it cleans itself out. And tired.

But light. I also feel light. And relaxed. Because that's part of what a fast does: it starves the beast, and so the beast takes a nap.

Which reveals the crux of the problem. I want the beast to leave me alone, to give me a break from his incessant roaring and sniping, his great yawing mouth of consumption, his spontaneous glutinous lethargy, his baleful eye. But he also serves me well with his tremendous crackling energy, his nose to the grindstone of widget making, his endless creativity in the generation of ideas and the resulting projects, his fiery perseverance in the face of things Sisyphusian.

And so, here I sit, incredibly relaxed, at ease, breathing deeply, fear on low, yet knowing that the beast sleeps with one eye open, waiting for the slightest nudge to unfurl his mighty To Do list, to get me out Doing and Doing and Doing.

And it's true. In this game of living, things must get done. I may be taking time off as Head Chef for the beast, but ultimately what I must find is a different way to be with him. Not tame him. I'd never want to domesticate his wild hairs or sedate his typhoonish qi or ask him to be even a little bit nice, even though he takes a chunk out of my hide each morning as tribute. What I want is to turn his flame down a few notches, and feeding him less will help with that. I know it means I won't get as much done, but maybe, just maybe, the things I won't be getting done are those things that I don't really need done.

But really, it's too soon to tell. All I do know in this moment is that I'm lighter, freer, something dark and heavy having unmoored itself from me, allowing deep breaths and a softer heart. I don't need to give up the fight, because the war, it is not yet won. But I do need to pick my battles more wisely.

Yes, battle picking and beast soothing. Not a bad way to spend a day . . .

DatingGod: The Ocean Edition

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 03:07:28 -0000

I've done a big redesign of my main blog over at http://datinggod.typepad.com (the DatingGod main blog): new colors, masthead, all sorts of cool stuff.

I haven't worked out all of the kinks yet, so expect things to shift and move as I figure out what the deal is here. I know that I want to focus less on the emotional-Me-fiesta and more on the process of health and well-being. I almost always write in first person and don't imagine that will change, but who knows? :) If this sounds vague, it still feels vague even to me, even after many weeks of playing with it, trying to figure out what it is that's attempting to burrow its way out of me, or be born, or some other such alien/uncomfortable/ready-or-not-here-I-come/pregnant-with-possibilities metaphor.

I do know my immediate focus must be on regaining my health, and that for a number of factors, this has been proving to be harder than I had anticipated. So, in short, this next blog phase will be about How To Regain One's Health When The Burden Of Un-Health Behaves In A Disproportionately Unwieldy Fashion. Or even shorter: I Feel Like Crap.

I came up with the idea to use Integral Practice's four modules of development because I did a little assessment and what I realized is that I am skewed and fractured to one degree or another on just about every single layer of human-ness. And as the best way to deal with an overwhelming project is to break it down into pieces, that is what I'll be doing with the Dis-Ease I've got going on. And of course, I'll be inviting you along to take a look at where you are in regard to health in your living . . .

Hope you stop by and say hello over there in my little typepad.com on the prairie :)

Homes

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 14:12:20 -0000

I post several times a week at my main blog DatingGod. Sometimes I double post here, but most posts live over there. Please join me . . :)