Live Close to the Earth

Live simply,
Live close to the earth;
Enjoy life
With all its mirth.

Live high,
Live close to the sky;
Fly on eagle wings
To where your desires do roam.

Live close to your home,
Live tight to your clan,
Live without an ambitious plan,
Live to enjoy the new dawn
When the lone star
Touches your breast.

Live on the soil
Without any toil,
Live in your place,
In your sacred space
That is as high and as wide
As an infinite wave
That crashes upon you
Without water or sand,
Caressing your hands
That touch my eyelids
Asleep with the now
Of your loving me.

 

 

HEALING AND POLITICS

Published in the Monadnock Shopper News – February 8-14, 2017

This column is supposed to be about healing and often we are told that talking about politics or anything that could be confrontational and divisive is not healing.  But I beg to disagree, especially now given events in the political arena that seem to be beyond the norm of our political system to date.  These events are causing stress and anguish for many people while others are cheering in victory.

For me, my interest in healing actually began with an experience when I was 17 years old.  I was an exchange student to Uruguay where I learned shortly after arriving that the country was in the midst of a brutal dictatorship and my host family had a son who was a political prisoner.   His name was Luis.  I visited him several times in prison, at a place called Libertad.  Ironically, this word means Freedom in Spanish.

How could my host brother have ended up in jail for carrying out non-violent activities?  It was my Uruguayan high school friends who explained to me that their military had learned how to do this repression from the U.S. military school, then based in Panama (now in the Carolinas).  At first I refused to believe it, but they convinced me of this truth.  They also told me that they did not equate me with my government, and that of course they like me and wanted me as a friend.

Flash forward many years.  Luis just finished serving as Minister of Development for Uruguay, under the Presidency of another former political prisoner – Mujica – who endeared himself to the world with his modest ways and care for the poor.

I became obsessed with understanding how governments can fall apart, how democracy can be lost, and how it can be regained again.  That one question guided me all the way through to a PhD in Latin American studies.

I spent more than a decade living in Chile as I witnessed that country shift out of a military dictatorship to return to a robust democracy under the banner of a coalition of political parties from the left to the center right.  I became friends with Cubans who helped rebuild their country’s economy during the Special Period, when the nation was near starvation.  I spoke with people who ran soup kitchens in Buenos Aires for formerly middle class people who had no food due to an economic collapse.

What I can say from all these various experiences is that the people who were at the forefront of the struggles has no certainty of the outcome.  They would tell me modestly of how they just started to write down a few human rights cases for the record or go into the fields to learn how the old timers grew crops or give solace to people who a few months earlier had not wanted to help any beggars or soup kitchens themselves but now were without food.

As desperate and hard as those experiences and times often were for so many people, at the same time they were moments that brought out the courage and imagination of many.  Some people just did what they felt called to do, with their unique strengths and gifts.

The other thing that I have felt in those places and periods was that in some odd way they were also times of great joy.  In my early days in Chile, the man who became my husband and his friends had little money to go out, but they would hold all night dance parties until the curfew was lifted.  There was lots of laughter, easy friendships.  Difficult discussions were had.  People disagreed about politics.  Folks were scared, unsure, but also we were oddly alive.

Ever since my time in Uruguay, I have felt a heavy burden knowing that it was the policies of my government that helped to jail my host brother Luis.  And contributed significantly to the military coup in Chile, where the brother of my friend Marcelo Montecino was killed, along with thousands of others.

I sometimes hesitate to talk too much about these truths here, afraid to offend people, or sound too political, or too harsh against the United States.  But these days, for better or worse, I am hearing people talking about politics and policies in new ways.  People are grappling to understand what may not be understandable.  I spent decades studying this same question and never found the answer.

But what I did find was many amazing stories, many brave people, and a few tragic tales as well.  I did learn that processes can take time, sometimes a long time, to play themselves out but that nations can heal from trauma and pains. Challenging times that shake a nation to its core can eventually help usher in new beginnings we cannot yet even conceive of.

 

 

Crystal Message for Keene #2

I come to tell your community
that the time of the clans and cliques is done.

It is time to unite,
to come together with gentle words
and without undue strife.

To forward collectively
the cause of this land,
which is to protect the energies of
the mountains, lakes and rivers.

You are a valley,
a portal between peaks,
and due to this configuration
you have a unique energy to keep –

Valleys bring together people
in good brotherhood and cheer
telling people from far and near
that they can have a respite, a pause, some hospitality, a smile.

Before they continue on their journeys
to other domains far and wide

So create of this community
a site of hospitality and good cheer;
Welcome all strangers who pass through
with a nod, a smile and a song.

And as your community grows
Exclude none in your embrace –
the fair and ugly of face,
those of all colors of skin and race

All are brothers and sisters,
All are united in our common humanhood
So use me to promote good brotherhood, harmony and cheer.

Enough of depression, addictions and pains,
from this there is no karmic gain.

Banish all those ghosts, those shadows that cling to ourselves
through pardon, good grace and a fair face.

Now when I say a fair face,
I’m not talking of a pretty girl or boy:

I’m talking about the sacrifice of the sacred
Each person can extol

With the way that they work,
the way they live their lives:
with good will to all
and no evil disguise.

And the malls and corporations,
the asphalt filled wetlands,
will pass in due time

When people access more deeply
the sacred and the divine
that can be found in your soil,
in your rivers and slopes,
in the trees and the deers,
in all kinds of folks –

So in good brotherhood
with love and good cheer,
plant me with firm conviction
that other times are drawing near.

Written 2013 for a ceremony in Keene, NH, USA.

Crystal Message for Keene #1

I am a crystal so bright –
who will accompany your community
All day and all night.

All through the hard times,
The sad times to come,
If you call upon my radiant red light
I will beam bright
upon you –

With malice unto no one.

I come to tell you to believe
That there is a light
That shines so bright
It can never be extinguished
No matter how hard some people may try.

So please tell your people
In sweet dear Keene
That each life is dear –
Human, flower and animal too.

Let love beam bright
all around your hometown,
Imbue it with passion
For the beauty of life divine –

Without any expectations of wealth or recognition,
Just enjoying the joys of ever-loving mother Earth.

Keep out greed and mistrust
Banish those enemies from your domains

Make this a humble place
Simple and sweet
And goodness and bounty will smile down upon all
In good time and due course.

Written 2013 for a crystal healing ceremony

 

Now

I don’t want to carry your
burdens anymore –

Don’t give me your tired, your lost,
those yearning to be free
0f them, I have no
more needs

I don’t want to carry your burdens
anymore—

Be gone, just let me be

in my isolationist stupor
in the pain to the known
in the fear of the knowing
in the branding of you.

I don’t want to carry your burdens
anymore—Be gone, banished from my distant
shore

while I burn effigies of
me
and conjure up eschatologies of thee
as my neighbor smokes his weed
to forget all that he does see

I don’t want to carry your burdens
anymore—

be banished deep in the earth,

up to the forever skies—

into the volcanoes, the ash clouds,
the poison rains

that pour down upon me

all I don’t acknowledge of thee

in nightmares silently scream on

celluloid blogs

in the mechanic’s garage.

 

 

 

 

Right action

Right action dedicated to the highest good for all, including the water,plants and the stones, can truly shift the course of the planets and the stars.

Transmitted to Skye, 2014.

Who am I?

Who am I?  Why am I here?  What do I want to learn in this lifetime?  Some say that the first step before any true healing can occur involves answering honestly and deeply these questions about yourself.

Alejandro Jodorowsky – movie director, author, tarotist, and much more – numbers among the most creative and innovative individuals walking the planet these days.  He is widely renowned in France, his adopted home, as well as in Chile (where he was born) and Mexico (where he lived for more than a decade).  He has developed a type of ancestral work that he calls “metageneology” that, according to a French colleague, is used quite extensively in France.  It brings in our connection to our family tree and ancestors as an important pathway to self-discovery and avenue for healing and positive transformation.

But in this article, I want to focus on a personal story he shares in his book about Metageneology.  He tells about how at one point in his eventful life, he was threatened in Mexico as a result of a movie he was making and had to flee to the USA in the middle of the night with his family.  He ended up in New York City with no money and no work.  This caused him so much anxiety that every night he soaked at least 7 t-shirts.  No prescription could stop these infernal night sweats.

One day someone told him about a Chinese sage named Cheng Man Ch’ing who was living in New York City and giving free consultations every week to the sick in Chinatown.  Alejandro decided to go see if this man could cure him.  He describes meeting “this beautiful elder” with such gentle energy as follows:

He stared into my eyes and asked this unexpected question: What is your goal in life?  That bothered me and with a lack of respect I regretted immediately, I answered, “I came to you for a remedy against sweating, not for a philosophical conversation.” 

Calmly he responded, “If you do not have a goal in life, I cannot cure you.”

This came as a shock to me, psychologically. 

Alejandro goes on to describe several answers that passed through his mind, but all seemed unimportant and insignificant.  He perceived how many of his goals were actually from his ancestral legacy, unfulfilled wishes and dreams of his parents and grandparents – poor Jewish immigrants from Russia.  And how his own parent’s unhappiness instilled in him a fear of success.

And as he looks at Cheng Man Ch’ing, I realized that my purpose in life was not that of an isolated individual, but that of the entire human race: past, present and future.  Timidly, I ventured to say, “I want to know and understand the whole universe; I want to live as long as the universe lives; I want to become the Consciousness of the universe in order to create.”

I thought the wise man would laugh at me, accuse me of delusions of grandeur, but it was the complete opposite.  With a loving smile, he said, “You have a purpose in life, now I can cure you.”

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s story continues to intrigue me, especially as other recent reading on the topic of healing also discuss the criticality of knowing our life purpose in the healing process.  I have asked myself the question Cheng Man Ch’ing posed with such acuity to Alejandro, and must confess that I am still groping for the true answer that resides beyond all the societal expectations and practical realities.

Is it to write?  As much as I enjoy writing, if I couldn’t write I would still be me and find other ways to fulfill myself.  Is it to love and be loved?  Important, of course, but I somehow sense that there is something more to life, and to my life.  Is it to transcend?  To transcend what?

I have tried asking a few people this question, people close to me, people I love.  None have been able to give a response yet.  Maybe this should not be so surprising, since in our culture and lifestyle we are taught and trained in so many ways and about so many things – but understanding ourselves, at a spirit level, is not a high priority.  In fact, it sometimes feels like society is set up to keep us from focusing on these “big questions” as we entertain ourselves with gadgets and busy ourselves with the mundane.

Maybe, just maybe, one of the reasons for so much mental illness and addiction these days it that a lot of us don’t have a clue why we are living our life or what our true purpose is.

Often, in the case of Alejandro Jodorowsky, we need a wise elder to help us discover the answer within ourselves.  Most of us can’t access such profound knowledge on our own, without the help of sacred wisdom keepers or through some other sacred gateway to wider realms of realities.  As for me, I continue to pose this question to myself.  Even if I don’t yet know the answer, I find solace and perhaps even a bit of healing in the quest.

August article in the Monadnock Shopper