Crossroads Dispatches

For me, disaster was my saving grace. - Ash Ambirge

“The only way you can tell the difference between disaster and opportunity is to decide to make an opportunity out of every event.” - John T. Unger

In last few days, I've heard several inspiring true stories of disaster and adversity overcome through surrender and grace. In no particular order...

• Bob Doyle shares his story in this 15-minute video via Sonia Ricotti's site, Unsinkable. "I felt like a complete loser.... To be someone who wants to make a difference in the world that wants to give up--talk about being knocked down." / "If you can give it up to the Universe, you're life can change." / "I'm just going to have fun with this, I'm going to follow whatever comes up [as far as intuitive nudges]."
• "My good friend (and bestselling author) Sonia Ricotti went through a NASTY phase herself. A potentially deadly blood clot shattered her health. Financial devastation stole her lifestyle and home out from under her. An important relationship ended (which, to make matters worse, involved an alcoholic)...all of it hitting her AT ONCE. Something like that could destroy most people, but Sonia knew what to do and did it in style... She bounced back on a grand scale... and rebuilt a thriving business and a beautiful life." - from an email by Joe Vitale
• "Want to hear the story of how I created my first product while homeless, crying, and living in my car, out of a K-Mart parking lot in the slums of South Philadelphia? And how I leveraged my blog to pull me out of homelessness?" - Ash Ambirge
• John Unger's third disaster was "having the roof of his studio cave in while he was standing on top of it, which nearly brought him to bankruptcy but ended up as the catalyst for the full-time art career he has now." - Chris Guillebeau interview with John Unger / Then John shares: "Part of my resilience is that I know from experience that just because it seems like the apocalypse, it doesn’t mean tomorrow isn’t coming. I figure that the world ends every second, and it starts over the very next second. I’ve seen the end of the world so many times I’m just not impressed by it anymore." / And another gem: "In fact, one of my favorite lines about how I started my art career is “I did it with nothing, because nothing is free.”"

I'm sharing these stories because I realize there a ridiculous amount of stigma and shame around job loss, business and financial "failure" (particularly in the success-frantic USA) that it's time to directly confront that failure/success see-saw duality that can get us fixated (and stuck). Failure?... whatever--it's merely an inflection point in a very very amazing process called Infinity. (btw, I adore James Carse way of looking at Life as an Infinite Game.)

My first brush with disaster was when my Dad died fairly suddenly two weeks before my high school prom. It's one thing to deal with emotionally (and I touched on that previously in Father's Day posts), but it was also a financial ruin for our family. My Mom had no income source--other than social security widow's benefits, and no marketable skills. Zero life insurance. Three kids, and I was the oldest. I managed to graduate college with zero debt and zero student loans from a private university (read: private=expensive) by working part-time (first job ever), qualifying for merit scholarships, and jumping at the right time at the right place (the state was pouring resources to any student whom wished to study computer engineering when I was second semester sophomore--so I simply switched my degree from computer science to computer engineering even though it meant losing credits and going to summer school to catch up).

I believe I dealt with that disaster and also with the post-tsunami "post-traumatic growth" opportunity fairly well (considering) because both felt like random, outside events out of my control. Surely it wasn't my fault that my Dad died when he did. It wasn't my fault that a tidal wave formed at the exact minute we were vacationing on an island shore in Thailand.

Yet, if we lose a job, or bankrupt our business venture, or get mixed up with sabotaging romantic/business partners and everything goes to hell in a handbasket, it can feel like a thoroughly personal reflection and assessment of our unworthiness (or our stupidity or insert-the-self-berating-term here) in comparison to natural disaster or an accident. Those times are when I've found it hardest to recover since I tend to focus far too long on, "Oh no, this is all my fault."

And, to be perfectly honest, when it isn't a wild natural disaster, allies are few and far between. Mostly, their refrain goes something like, "I told you so." Plus the entire universe seems to agree that it is so totally your fault and you are the duddiest dud in the entire galaxy--that is, until you stop that b.s. In other words, get over yourself--it's all part and parcel of process of your unfolding myth.

Pretty much the Ego is always vying to find some identity to affix to, and "poor me" works just as swell as "rock star me." (Neither are true.)

Anyhow, without further ado, here's another graceful way to look at "failure" that one rarely sees mention of in the risk-averse public sphere from former vice-president of Facebook; this is an excerpt from Chamath Palihapitiya's final email to his troops as he left to start his own venture fund:

"don’t ignore that which you don’t immediately understand and keep pushing to evolve faster than what people expect. it can create unease at times but its our only path to long term relevance.

speak the truth. its too easy to “manage” – upwards, sideways, downwards and be rewarded for it. this is death. speak candidly especially when it means it won’t be well received. respect the person but don’t let bad ideas go unchallenged.

their is more valor in failure than success. success is hard to define and hard to isolate root causes when it happens. its rare to learn much of anything from success except to conflate luck and skill, but you learn tons in failure. take enough risks that you continue to fail… and celebrate those so that it becomes the battle scars you talk about when you do eventually succeed." - Former VP Facebook, Chamatch Palihapitiya

p.s. PLAY as LIFE is an INFINITE GAME... Join us on Encanto monthly... more unfurling on July 1st when pricing goes up slightly (new and current subscribers by July 1st are locked into their original contribution amounts).

art credits: from seesaw glum to glee: not sure who's digital illustration this is but it's via Big Kid Walking Through the Park blog; illustration "I am nothing without you" by Niko Geyer (see also his site, Niko Geyer); oh, I've saved this seesaw photo from ?? for several years--yikes, not sure whom to credit; photograph "Woman on see saw" by photographer Ann Giordarno

Creation is pleasure and torture at the same time. It’s trying to make something out of nothing. It’s a birth of some sort. - zooey deschanel

"Creation is pleasure and torture at the same time. It’s trying to make something out of nothing. It’s a birth of some sort. Sometimes it’s like pulling a piano out of a swamp. Sometimes it’s like walking on air. The torture of that nothing-space in front of you, and the pure elation of filling that space with something good—it’s one of life’s great juxtapositions. I am grateful for that—the torture and the pleasure. " - Zooey Deschanel, Southwest Air Spirit Magazine, April 2011

Make something out of nothing. She can't literally mean nothing, right? I mean you need at least a studio, or a Mac Air, or a guitar, or an illustrator wanting to be paid for that picture book collaboration. Where does all that come from? Money? You think? I used to think so.

Nope, not money. Where does money come from? Keep following down all the turtles... Nothing. (Five purple stars for any homework turned in by the participant reading this:  Don't just take it on word, check it out for yourself.) Okay, another tack...

"In 2009 a group of wealthy Germans asked their government to require them to pay higher taxes. "We have more money than we need," said the 44 multi-millionaires. They wanted to help alleviate the ravages of poverty and unemployment. I urge you to make a comparable move, Leo. In what part of your life do you have more abundance than most people? Are there practical ways you could express your gratitude for the extravagant blessings life has given you? I think you'll find that raising your levels of generosity will ultimately lead to you receiving more love." - Rob Brezsny, Leo horoscope for May 19, 2011-- nope I'm not a Leo btw, this just seemed relevant

I hadn't read The Diamond Cutter (the business book, not the Diamond Cutter sutra which I have re-read) since 2005. Recently, I found it tucked in the Buddhism section in a bookstore recently although it more appropriately belongs in the Business category. It made so much more sense to me now than it did six years ago. In fact, I was fairly stunned by author Geshe Michael Roach's description of "The Economics of Limitlessness."

 "You can just throw out the idea of sharing limited resources, and by the way you can throw out the idea of poverty itself. Wealth is a perception (and therefore a reality) forced on anyone who has been truly generous in the past. It is therefore available to all people. The mind--a mind crippled by the assumptions and, frankly, fairy tales [collective imprinting at subconscious level] of our civilization, passed down by well-meaning parents over its entire length--balks at the possibility that every living person could have more than enough wealth. It's not something that has ever happened before in our recorded history, says this state of mind, and so it could not happen now. We've heard this argument before; it wasn't true then, and it's not true now. Watch out, Columbus [and all the explorers prior], you'll fall over the edge because the world is flat. Iron could never fly in the sky, or float for that matter. It's not possible that practically every person in the world could have the same access to the world's information, running through wires made of glass or beamed down from a place beyond. Where is the absolute amount of wealth in the world? Where does new wealth really come from?" - The Diamond Cutter: The Buddha on Managing Your Business and Your Life, by Michael Roach

There is just no way that I can fathom to distill this idea of limitless wealth for all into a single blog post. The crux comes down to knowing the source of wealth (i.e. the source of anything) and changing subconscious imprints (personal and collective) from separation to wholeness, from scarcity to infinity: "this particular imprint can be planted only by watching yourself giving all you can to others.... financial, yes, but also in terms of giving your own time, and your emotinal and professional support, and helping people with ideas."

Connecting the dots between these three excerpts this also means I will be giving much more of my time and ideas to this blog as time and ideas are two things I have in extravagant abundance currently.

So ask yourself: In what part of your life do you have more abundance than most people?

p.s. I'm in the mood to chat more about symbols, myth, subconscious, storytelling futures, especially experiential art, alchemy, and luxury (more in the Coco Chanel way, "Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity.”), creative process, and such flux.

BONUS: And making something out of nothing is pretty much alchemy, eh? I've transcribed an excerpt here from Deepak Chopra's The Book of Secrets on the alchemy of transformation which relates to the source of wealth (Chopra calls it "one reality"), the nothing. The alchemist in the diagram appears next to a huge salt shaker, which reminds me of this passage from the excerpt that distinguishes transformation from change: "The key to true transformation is that nature doesn't move forward in step-by-step movements. It takes quantum leaps all the time, and when it does, old ingredients aren't simply recombined. Something new appears in creation for the first time, an emergent property. For example, if you examine hydrogen and oxygen, they are light, gaseous, invisible, and dry. It took a transformation for those two elements to combine and create water, and when that happened, an entirely new set of possibilities emerged with it, the most important from our point of view being life itself. The wetness of water is a perfect example of an emergent property. In a universe without water, wetness can't be derived by shuffling around properties that already exist. Shuffling only produces change; it isn't sufficient for transformation. Wetness has to emerge as something completely new in creation. Once you look closely enough, it turns out that every chemical bond produces an emergent property. (I gave the example in passing of sodium and chlorine--two poisons that when combined produce salt, another basic element of life)."

what is best in music is not to be found in the notes - Gustav Mahler

"What is best in music is not to be found in the notes." - Gustav Mahler

It's been difficult to write lately, as I didn't wish to be explaining... I yearned to express, but it wasn't happening. There was something that needed to complete and be directly experienced first.

Last night, I was watching what to me was an amazing video. It consolidated a concept I'd been thinking about myself. I kept wondering why some art was able to convey a transpersonal and direct transmission of the divine.

Sometimes I call that "black hole" art.

For instance, one day last September I was feeling pretty down and out. Even an art museum could not cheer me up. Room after room in a fog of color splotches. Yet the moment I entered the room with Van Gogh's Olive Trees in a Mountainous Landscape (with the Alpilles in the Background) all was right with the world again. It's a difficult thing to explain as it is experiential. Right now, looking at a photograph of the painting doesn't have that same knowing that takes one into that felt sense of Absolute. (I reckon it may be because the photographer resists going there.)

So, of late, I've been calling that "quality" as black hole art, as in:

"I have contacted a place of internal gravity within myself beyond my own doing or my own will that is pulling the impulse and energy of the "I Am" thought into Itself." - in a letter to Adyashanti from one of his students

Back in 2003, I was in Berkeley improving my Spanish at a local language school while vaguely hoping the tech economy would pick up again so I could get back to work. Although the truth beyond all the obvious is I was on a pretty hardcore spiritual journey ever since 2001 when the dot-com startup I was at (first employee after the founders, so I was very emotionally invested) imploded followed rather quickly by my divorce and other sundry personal disasters. When I went to the bookstore looking for a good Spanish-English dictionary, I wasn't quite expecting to find a book that would accelerate this 'journey.' But once I opened the book, I couldn't stop reading it. That book led me to an intense study of A Course in Miracles. I read the entire thousand-plus pages over a course of days (it may have taken a week or so, as it's not easy reading) sitting in that studio apartment. I probably ought to have been looking for work, but even then I guess I was starting to realize this is my work.

"It is not Goethe who creates Faust, but Faust which creates Goethe." - Carl Jung

Since then, I have spent more time in my own sort of self-study into the nature of Reality and my own true nature that has taken me on many paths including Buddhism and Advaita, yet I have a lot of respect and appreciation for A Course in Miracles to this day, and also for Ken Wapnick whom I've studied in person several times at the Temecula classroom.

Anyway, that's a long-winded way of saying that I have a thorough appreciation for ACIM and Ken, although I don't really even know where my big blue book is (I suppose it's in storage). The words in the book aren't the point anyhow.

The beautiful part of the video is when Ken shares his own personal journey on how he realized his psychotherapy grad school studies were coalescing with an understanding of why he was so drawn to music, and in particular some of Beethoven's later compositions.

"I wrote from the heart, may it reach the heart of the listener." -- dedication in one of Beethoven's scores

Two aha! moments to pay attention to are when Ken shares how he wished to create a mood in the room, an environment in his therapy practice that was as palpably peaceful as he had experienced at a concert of Beethoven's music the evening before. (Ken was in grad school at the time, and said he couldn't pull it off.)

 

The other aha! is when Ken talks about the felt difference between Schubert and Beethoven's compositions he experienced. Listening to Schubert he could feel the sadness that he would not allow himself to go "there". This sadness I recognize now as the core of the Dark Night of the Soul. And the "there"?...

Part I and Part II of "Music, Melos, and Miracles: The Art of Listening" are twenty minutes in video--I thoroughly believe it is worth it, as it conveys so much of its own.

Plus it explains everything I've failed in past to convey in my art (akin to how Ken says he failed to establish a presence of peace in his early psychotherapy practice), and why I set aside everything--paid work that might have provided living wage, relationships, et al-- to go through this Dark Night of the Soul... and, actually to go "there"--all the way.

"Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him." - Carl Jung

p.s. A great interview with Jeff Foster on the Dark Night and the end of seeking (and, of course, the seeker as well).

i lower my standards - william stafford

Today is the first day of the Casi Cielo Intensive Salon--an online group encouraging living in the present moment and sharing the art that emerges from Now with other artists. Daily blog posts consisting of contemplative and writing (and sketching) prompts through Easter are public (subscribe to Casi Cielo Salon blog free here via email).

I have plenty of material for this blog, and so the daily tidbits of inspiration will stay separate and over at the Casi Cielo blog. Yep, you can still sign up to participate in the private, shared space with fellow Salonistas, and/or donate. To give you a peek, sample post today is below:

"Contact with the awareness of the Absolute can come about only when the mind is fasting, when the process of conceptualization has utterly ceased. When the mind feasts, Reality disappears. When the mind fasts, Reality enters."  - Ramesh S. Balsekar,  A Net of Jewels

Today is Mardi Gras. Fat Tuesday. I've lived in New Orleans--and in fact, was residing in the Marigny neighborhood during last year's Mardi Gras. Fat Tuesday is a holiday, and traditionally the last big hoorah to indulge before Lent begins. (Although, in New Orleans curbing indulgence isn't in the city DNA.)  Alhough I was marginally raised as Catholic--I quit after my communion, I don't observe Lent either, at least not in any typical sense. 

Me? This year I'm "giving up" memory. I'm giving up rehashing the past for Lent.

Live by the current of inspiration alone.

Perhaps, spurred by the quote by Balsekar above (just serendipitiously sent by a friend this a.m.)  give up believing in my thought gyrations. Reality happens in the present not in the synapses of my brain. Beyond (or more accurately, below) what I think it is, it is.

Today I'm not providing a writing prompt. 

Indulge your intuition. Feed on your inner muse. What does It prompt?

When I Met My Muse

I glanced at her and took my glasses
off--they were still singing. They buzzed
like a locust on the coffee table and then
ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the
sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and
knew that nails up there took a new grip
on whatever they touched. "I am your own
way of looking at things," she said. "When
you allow me to live with you, every
glance at the world around you will be
a sort of salvation." And I took her hand.

-- William Stafford

Most people 'paralyze' the muse with their thought gyrations of perfection. Consider that anything you write is okay, and that you can not write it wrong. Trust in simply showing up... each day for 40 days (minus Sundays). When poet William Stafford was asked how his daily practice of writing one poem a day could possibly produce quality poetry of high standards, he replied:  "I lower my standards."

"William Stafford woke up every morning, seven days a week, at 4 a.m., made himself a cup of instant coffee and a piece of dry toast, and stretched out on his family's living room couch. There, notebook on lap, he wrote until the sun came up. He wrote a poem a day, a process he describes in the short lyric "Just Thinking": "Got up on a cool morning. Leaned out a window. / No cloud, no wind. . . . Let the bucket of memory down into the well, / bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No one / stirring. No plans. Just being there." Stafford was a late bloomer whose first major collection of poems, Traveling Through the Dark, was published when he was forty-eight. It won the National Book Award in 1963. He went on to publish more than sixty-five volumes of poetry and prose." -- "The Poets Laureate Anthology" edited by Elizabeth Hun Schmidt

ART CREDITS: Sure takes a lot of showing up every day to a blank page to get this vortex of words. Book sculpture and architecture by artist Matej Kren.

"to all the muffled... joyfully add yourself, and cancel the count" - Rilke

Be--and yet know the great void where all things begin,
the infinite source of your own most intense vibration,
so that, this once, you may give it your perfect assent.

To all that is used-up, and to all the muffled and dumb
creatures in the world's full reserve, the unsayable sums,
joyfully add yourself, and cancel the count.

- Rainer Maria Rilke, “Sonnets to Orpheus”, II:13, translated by Stephen Mitchell

Those stanzas of poetry distill the spirit of Casi Cielo Salon that is going to delve into present awareness, ordinary rapture, and shared writing starting March 8th.

"Unmuffle yourself; come close to the hearth. Come into the circle of home," intones the portable quotable online I Ching.

Come from wherever you are whoever you are. You don't need to book a flight to a deserted island to be. You don't need lots of eccentricities or 'character' either.

I'm currently living in the edge of the suburbs in the Mojave desert. It's not the kind of atmosphere that I normally find inspiring. There's an constant urge to say, Not this, not now. To postpone to perhaps some other place, some other time.... later, when it's better, or shinier... rather than be and write from here as just me.

Funny, I was skimming through one of Byron Katie's books and her husband, Stephen Mitchell, wrote this in the Forward (yep, same Stephen Mitchell as translated Rilke's poem above):

"The Mojave is bleak even by desert standards, it lacks the whimsy of cactuses, yet becomes truly beautiful if you start to pay attention to it. If you take a walk with Katie there at sunset, the warm wind seems like a caress and the rocks are subtle in their shades of brown and yellow and black and red, and the shadows are blue. She will lead you up canyons to places where hidden water drips and you might begin to see the desert as kind and believe her when she says it was her teacher."

Bleak, or not (that's an interpretative layer anyhow...).... it too is Wholeness. So are you. "Unmuffle yourself; come close to the hearth. Come into the circle of home."

Casi Cielo will have a free, public, online component as well, but if you really want to jump into the sandbox with us....

WHAT: Facilitated Intensive Salon of peers interested in living in present awareness, ordinary rapture and sharing their everyday writing. Loose and structured. Loose in that you decide on your topics of rapture and length and style of writing--erotica or renku or brochure or video game or watercolor sketch....; structured in that there are optional daily prompts (excepting Sundays) and I'll nudge you to submit something to the private group shared space if we don't hear from you in a while (i.e. no spectators).

WHEN: Seven weeks March 8th-April 24th. (Sneak start for early-birds starts March 1st.)

HOW MUCH: Seven weeks for $40 covers all daily prompts, feedback, facilitated online group (private and cozy as most writing circles are). Included as a bonus if you subscribe to Encanto newsletter+pilgrimage ($25/month). Register Encanto+Casi Cielo here. Register Casi Cielo Intensive Salon here.

ART CREDITS: Leonard Knight painted the hills at Salvation Mountain and it's now a "National Folk Art Shrine", photo via Life magazine; Kelso dunes in the Mojave photo by Cami Renfrow

live in the &

even lotus blossoms
bend a bit...
oh floating world!
-Issa, 1819

While listening to this archived Ken Bechtel radio show about Living from the Both/And (rather than Either/Or) last night (it's a treat I recommend) AND nibbling on a sliver of my favorite organic dark chocolate, Green and Blacks (with tea!), I noticed on the packaging their trademarked tagline. I stole it for the title of this post:

Live in the &.

Plum blossoms, delicate pink, have started to bloom here.

I'm re-reminded that the heroine of a narrative that's been weaving in my mind's eye since the '08 Beijing Olympics is named after the plum blossom. It's time to write, again.

behind me
laughter at my rags...
plum blossoms
-Issa, 1804

And, just to have company, I'm starting a Salon for folks that want to delve into present awareness, ordinary rapture AND write--check out the Casi Cielo Salon. An Intensive version of the Salon starts March 8th, that includes a private, intimate, sharing, gathering space for inspiration in action.

In both/anding fashion, during the Intensive Salon (March 8th-April 24th) public inspirational cues will be available for all similar to (but not same) as the 40 days of Everyday Inspiration in 2007.

Here's a little background on the Why's:

"The best time of my life (thus far...) was a period in 2006 where I kept a journal for forty days and wrote  in the present tense and of the present moment. It was subtitled "40 days of Ordinary Rapture."

I was 'stuck' in the further suburbs of San Jose, CA without a functioning car. Although I had a roof over my head, I was having trouble putting food on the table. I was whining to a local friend, "I am getting tired of tea and toast everyday."

She put me to a challenge. What if every time I ate a piece of bread to view it with fresh eyes and senses as if, "You have never tasted a morsel of bread before that moment."

So the journal became a way to record my daily ritual of tea and toast at dawn and tea and toast in the twilight. I was also "playing" with Jesus' intent of forty days of fasting in the desert, and this sentence: "Man does not eat by bread alone, but by every word from the mouth of God."

There are no adventures of ice-climbing across New Zealand or marrying a rock star in that journal.  Yet I saw magnolia trees in my neighborhood for the first time. Before I just drove by them on the way to something else without a second glance.

The scent of roses blooming was richer, and one day I understood their voice. I strolled to the local park and felt the glee of children at play. As I walked everything shimmered as if in an enchanted fairy tale; and yet, nothing changed externally.

Soon, I could afford more than Earl Gray with bergamot and sourdough. I enjoyed white peaches that dripped with sensuousness from the farmer's market. I fell in love.

There was none of my typical ennui. A subtle and sublime joy suffused my daily life, just as it was. I suppose one can call it mindfulness, but it was more like Wholeness."

The most important question a person can ask is, "Is the Universe a friendly place?" - Albert Einstein

"Einstein said that the most important question that a human being could ask is, Is the universe friendly?" I pause to let that question sink in. Whether for my benefit or his, I'm not sure.

"I don't know what the answer to that question is," I continue, "yet I'm going to live as if the answer is Yes."

He looks up from his perch on the tawny Indian motif rug. He stops petting our golden lab, Taz.

"I can see how that might work for you," he replies, "but I can't do that." That's the turning point instant when I knew that the separation he instigated was going to be a divorce.

"This is a journey to be taken, not studied." - Jed McKenna

Fast forward from that scene in summer 2002 to autumn 2003: I'm on the phone with someone coordinating an upcoming Miguel Ruiz workshop. "Great news," she says. "You're no longer on the waiting list. Do you still want to go to Teotihuacan with us?"

I stammer, "Yes!" It's only 15 days away. I have no plane ticket to Mexico. Not to mention, I have no way lined up to pay for said airline fare, nor the additional roughly $1500 for the workshop fees.

"I'll be sending you the details in the mail. There's not much there. Don Miguel doesn't tell participants what's involved in the workshop, nor outline any itinerary. The whole point is to be learn to be comfortable going into the Unknown," she explains. Perhaps appropriate for a place on Earth that the Toltec shamans call, "the place where men become Gods."

"There doesn't have to be a someone on the journey for the journey to continue." - Adyashanti

It had never occurred to me that there was no synopsis of the workshop on Miguel's website. I'd just read Beyond Fear (which interestingly enough is not listed on Don Miguel's home page collection of books right now...), and immediately searched for his website, saw the workshop--and knew inside that this was what I wanted. I jumped at the chance too as I had hunch that Miguel himself would not be leading any more of these excursions, which has proved to be true as he's handed the baton to his sons in the ensuing years.

All that excitement... all to find out that I was too late. The workshop was sold out. I was placed on a long waiting list, and promptly forgot about it--until the phone call from out of the blue (see above).

"There are two emotions that inform and animate the human animal; fear and a gratitude-love-awe mix that might best be called agape. As fear goes out, agape comes in. More accurately, a pure white light of consciousness hits the prism of self and splits outward to become the universe as we experience it. If the prism of self is gray and murky with ignorance, choked with fear, contaminated with ego, then so becomes the universe that radiates out from it. It's that simple. As the prism becomes free of such flaws, then the whole universe changes with it. It resolves into clarity, becomes brighter, more playful and magical. Because we are the lens through which it is projected, we are participants in its shape and motion; co-creators of our own universe."- Jed McKenna, Spiritual Warfare

INVITATION: Having observed online behavior for twenty years (not an exaggeration, just been part of the Internet from early on), I think blogs are best suited for skimming. For those eager to take a plunge a couple of octaves richer, I'm sharing a new private newsletter called, Encanto. (It's more of an interior, vertical journey than may be implied.) There will be 12-20 issues per month. I'm being purposefully vague as your own radar can discern for you your decision whether to embark with us.

UPDATE 01-27-10: I've a new hunch (sharing soon) on how to share this new project, and still keep it in public view on the Web, rather than a private newsletter.

p.s. Of course, I did go on Miguel's trip, after all. In fact, I ended up extending the journey for another six weeks and wended my way through Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras solo (well, I started solo... as these type of journeys do gather up fellow voyagers along the way).

p.p.s. Maybe I'm just being chicken-shit and should have posted the photo into this post. Link may or may not be "safe" for workplaces. Depends. Anyhow, beautiful artwork I found titled "Duet-Incanto" (you'll have to click to fourth photo in the lineup--the azure and flesh one) by Kim Joon.

art credits: NY artist Erika Somogyi's watercolor and gouache The Mirror, The Hourglass, and the Prism via Vigorously Lazy blog (wow you ought to check out Erika Somogyi's other works too); ancient Teotihuacan mural / graffiti art via James O. Jacobs; artwork from the game Sanitarium

"Our internal artist is always our creative child." - Julia Cameron

This morning I woke up, and wondered how many people think, "Another day, so many problems to solve, and a world to fix."

I doubt children wake up that way.

It's play!

It's mystery to explore and the unknown to throw yourselves at.

When I go walking, I pretend everything isn't quite so serious and solid, I sit down and play with a pile of raw umber and burnt sienna rocks. While arranging them into a star, I stay to watch a black beetle navigating the same ledge as my sculpture.

At the playground, young tykes were playing soccer, and the goalie squeals, "A unicorn got caught in the net!" Other kids came scurrying over.

I wondered too if the Japanese and Chinese are right, and there are three soul centers, then perhaps the mind center is masculine, the belly feminine, and the heart center is the offspring: the innocent wonder of a child.

A week ago I was surfing Kickstarter (after I saw that $1M funding for the iPod Nano watch kit). Lo and behold futzing around on "Brooklyn" category I come across a whimsical, unscripted, improv film project featuring kids and their random mysterious objects that they are find along the way, called Spirit Ship.

"As scientific research has shown, the time young children spend participating in open-ended imaginative play has a direct effect on their brain development. Complex extended make-believe play is characterized by invented (both fantastical and seemingly very real) scenarios and characters, often takes place while children are outside of their classrooms and homes... [C]hildren are becoming lost in a series of hoops adults have laid out for them to jump through." - Spirit Ship: a mysterious short film narrated by children, Kickstarter project backing proposal

Spirit Ship video below:

 

In "scratching my own itch," I'm working on creating an imaginative, inquisitive overlay to the game of life, rather than defaulting to the typical interpretive overlay. I am so feeling that make-believe and what-if is the spirit of the whole thing (I'm not 100% sure how it'll manifest...it's a Mystery).

Just play as we go along. Purposefully deliriously silly if need be. Look at it as MYSTERY!! Rather than.... this is the way things have always been, and it is very very serious and heavy. Oh well.

The consummate explorer: a child.

Your internal artist: your creative child.

Just imagine whatever you want to and say it is so: There is a unicorn in your soccer net.

"You know, it's a truism that writers for children must still be children themselves, deep down, must still feel childish feelings, and a child's surprise at the world. "- A.S. Byatt, The Children's Book via Little Augury blog

Bonus: Excerpt from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way including "This is why artists may feel shame at admitting their dreams."

art credits: "I wonder if you're crunchy" card by PaPaYa!; Spirit Ship video by Kristin B. Eno

"I would never live a better day." - Hendri Coetzee

Every serious accident I've ever had has involved water.

This isn't about "accidents", nor white-water kayaking (a sport I once partook in), nor rivers. This is about the downstream current of life. This is about death. This is about getting to the point where one fully trusts that gravitational pull in the black hole of your belly. This is about how I never surrendered to the divine, to that black hole, last year. Maybe once. Okay, maybe twice. Piss poor for an explorer, really.

I watered down every single idea I had last year to make it palatable to investors or voters (think Pepsi Refresh or Kickstarter) or potential clients. When the whole point in the first place was the first descent--an expedition that had never been attempted before, not pursuing the safe and sure. This is about how the real danger is resisting where the flow takes you. This is about being gutsy.

At least that's what I thought this post would be about.

I still don't know why, yet this story about Hendri Coetzee captured me when I read it on December 25, 2010. I figured I'd write a post soon after about adventure, risk, life, death. I haven't been able to do it justice.

I give up. It's just going to be a small tribute from what Hendri himself and a friend wrote of his life.

What comes next in the weeks and months ahead shall be infused with some of his spirit and joie de vivre.

Hendri Coetzee was kayaking in Africa with a few other world-class river runners on a private expedition. "He led the first source-to-sea exploration of the Nile River in 2004 and opened up many waterways for kayak travel throughout Africa." - MSNBC, 12/21/10

"It is hard to know the difference between irrational fear and instinct, but fortunate is he who can. Often there is no clear right or wrong option, only the safest one. And if safe was all I wanted, I would have stayed home in Jinja. Too often when trying something no one has ever done, there are only 3 likely outcome: Success, quitting, or serious injury and beyond." - Hendri Coetzee's last post on instinct and "feeling" one's way

I believed it'd be all icing on the cake after near death on December 26, 2004--and all my days ever more would feel like an "extra" extension. Yet it is easy to take life for granted and to settle into other people's rhythms even for someone that writes a post titled, If Not on the Day I Die, Then Not Today."

"The highest form of bliss is living with a certain degree of folly." - Erasmus

I originally read of Hendri's life, and his death on the Vagabonding blog. The entire post is worthwhile, and this excerpt of his friend's first meeting with Henri touched me:

"From the moment I met him, nearly ten years ago, I was awed by Hendri’s incredible physical courage coupled with his profound quest for truth and meaning in life. At the time I was working in a remote safari camp on the Tanzanian coast, living in a hut, with nothing but raw nature for a hundred miles in any direction. Hendri rolled up off the beach and introduced himself. He was sunburned and loaded down with survival gear—yet inconspicuous and nonchalant, as if on a leisurely Sunday stroll through the mall. He had trekked that wild stretch all the way from Kenya, braving every manner of life-risking obstacle (particularly the many hippo-, croc-, and shark-rich delta fordings) by himself. After I uncorked my nicest bottle of wine, we stayed up way past our bedtimes debating what was the most important invention in the past two thousand years (he suggested it was the rudder, I said printing press). In the morning we exchanged contact information, and just as nattily as he’d arrived he was on his way

As time bore on, that trope—a man taking on the wild African coast by himself—which blessed me at 22 years of age, proved a catalyst for change in my relationship with the world.
- "In Defense of Adventure: Some thoughts on the death of Hendri Coetzee", Vagabonding blog, Jonathan Yevin

One of the parts I loved about Peter Pan (I only read it for the first time in 2009) was a scene where Peter believes he may really die as tidal water rises around him. The boy huddles on a small knoll. Suddenly, the avid and daring adventurer in him brightens up at the prospect of a new adventure--he's never died before, he realizes.

Henri tries to answer that quintessential (and exasperating) question asked of every explorer, Why? about his expedition. (Explaining kills art, is my typical reply.)

Beautifully expressed:

"In a world filled with interpretations; truth exist in only in nature. There you cannot even lie to yourself. She does not tolerate bullshit. You come before Her with respect, fully present and ready to give a 100%, anything less and She will have your head.

Ultimately going on a journey that puts your life at risk is not a decision made by the mind. Reason does not support it. When Edmund Hillary was asked why he climbed mountains, he said “Because it is there.” I wonder if he knew he was talking about the need not the mountain.

My current view on the matter is that the issue of motivation is indeed beyond words or even petty needs. When we surrender to the unknown, faced with the magnitude of the powers that lies ahead, it forces the realization of how insignificant this body is compared to the forces that lie in our path. Someone recently pointed out to me that our greatest moments are the ones where we lose ourselves. Moments when we become not only more, but become everything.I have breathed in life in its purest form a few second here and there and all I want is more of it.

These moment by themselves are inadequate, they offer only brief respite. Grabbing onto them can be as destructive as any addiction. Their value lies in the glimpses they provide of what is possible. I have come to hope that perhaps the intensity and clarity of these experiences can be used for more than cheap thrills. There is more to this world than what we perceive and perhaps one day I can slip through the gap these experience briefly provide, to live permanently in that place of Boundlessness, also know as Happiness. Not the superficial ‘satisfaction of needs’ happiness, but the real thing. The happiness of Being one with the moment, no matter how it presents itself. Ultimate freedom." - "Because it is there," The Great White Explorer blog, by Hendri Coetze

Thank you, Hendri.

p.s. Crocodile symbol via BellaOnline.com: "[Although the crocodile signifies hidden danger, it can be transmuted into an ally.] If you can identify the emotions or situation that is lurking under the surface of your conscious mind, you can use that powerful energy as protection rather than experiencing it as a hidden danger. You can harness the energy and use it as a source of inspiration and creativity."

p.p.s. The blog headline is the very last sentence of the last post Henri wrote.

Bonus: Supposedly, my horoscope for 2011:

"The Strait of Gibraltar is the narrow passage between Europe and Africa where the Mediterranean Sea joins the Atlantic Ocean. According to legend, in ancient times the Latin phrase "ne plus ultra" was inscribed in the rock overlooking this gateway. It meant "not further beyond," and served as a warning to sailors not to venture out to the wild waters past the strait. Eventually, that cautionary advice became irrelevant, of course. With a sturdy vessel, skilled crew, good preparation, and expert knowledge based on the experience of others, venturing out past the "ne plus ultra" point wasn't dangerous. I hope you'll take that as your cue in 2011, Gemini. - freewillastrology.com for January 5th, 2011

At this point, I don't even care if venturing past the "ne plus ultra" signage is dangerous or not. The safe choice will surely kill me.

art credits: Scout of the Rusisi River, photo by Henri Coetzee from his The Great White Explorer blog; The Fool, from the Phoenix Tarot deck; 1810 postcard of the Rock of Gilbraltar issued by L.J. Stagnetto from Wikipedia

a gutsy gut, a holy hara... "each one ignoring the others as it wheeled on its own path, urgent and true."

Often my turnaround point on my daily walk is a school (I like to walk in its grassy field and by the playground). However, Friday, I was approaching this school just as it was letting out so it was congested. I took a slightly different route to avoid it. Right in front of me was a building with the words:

HARA
Mind Body Fitness

I kept looking at that word, hara, and was intrigued, yet that was all I thought about it at the time. After I was home, I clicked on a link in a friend's email. It read:

"Deep within the belly, just below the navel, lies the soul center known variously in different traditions as the hara or tan tien, the womb or egg, abode of divine mother or shakti, and the seat of the feminine or mother aspect of God." - Karen Anderson and Barry Martin Snyder, LuminousSelf.com

Twice in two hours--hara. As far as I know, I'd never heard the word before. Talking with a few folks since many that have done martial arts it's a Chinese and Japanese concept. 

""Hara" in Japanese is akin to the word gutsy in the English language. In English, "gut," "guts," and "gutsy" refer both to the belly and to someone who is adventurous, brave, persevering, earthy, attuned to her instinctual knowing." - Lisa Sarasohn, HonoringYourBelly.com

In case this sounds like sissy stuff, it is how the Samurais of old Japan navigated. In his book "Hara: The Vital Centre of Man," author Karlfried Graf Durkheim states that in Japanese hara means ‘belly’ and refers to a ‘state in which the individual has found his primal centre’:

"Man, as a living being, is not rooted in himself. Rather he is nourished, sustained and held in order by Nature whose laws operate without his knowledge and assistance." - Karlfried Graf Durkheim via HealingPhilosophy.com

It's tough to explain to anyone that you're "following your gut." Using any sense but thinking is seen as nonsense.

I had been feeling light-hearted and whole-belled stumbling into evidence of a somatic way of swimming the infinite currents of Infinite experience. Then yesterday, Sunday, I fell into a funk thinking about how much judgment I've endured by obeying this illogical navigation.

Oh, well, I climb underneath the covers and read a novel. It's the one I picked up so I could luxuriate my senses to a part of the world I want to live and play in: deep, rich, earthy viriditas-infused foothills crisscrossed by arteries of gurgling water.

A chapter in, there's a scene (click if you want to know the name of the book, otherwise don't if you hate spoilers) where a newcomer to a farming valley by way of marriage is struggling with feeling accepted by his family. In being integral to herself, she turns down growing tobacco. She's virtually branded as the foolish city lady. Here she's sharing with her sister-in-law's son:

"She sighed, crossing her arms across her chest and rubbing her elbows. "If there's any reason or rhyme to what I'm doing, I wish I knew it. I'm like a moth. Rickie, flying in spirals. You see how they do?" She nodded up at the lightbulb, where hordes of small, frantic wings glinted through the arc of brightness in circular paths through the air. They were everywhere once you bothered to notice them: like invisible molecules, Lusa thought, entirely filling up space with their looping trajectories. Rickie seemed surprised to realize this, that moths were everywhere. He stared upward with his mouth slightly open.

"A calf will run around that way when it's lost its mama and scared to death," he observed at last.

"They're not lost, though. Moths don't use their eyes the way we do; they use smell. They're tasting the air, taking samples from different places and comparing them, really fast. That's how they navigate. It gets them where they need to be, but it takes them forever to get there."

..."That's me. I can't seem to go in a straight line."

"Who says you have to?"

"I don't know, it's embarrassing. People are watching me. I'm figuring out how to farm by doing all the wrong things..."

. . .

They stood together watching the dizzying dance of silver wings through the cool air: tussock moths, tortricids, foresters, each one ignoring the others as it wheeled on its own path, urgent and true.

"Aunt Lusa, you worry too much."

"I'm a widow with a farm drowning in debt, standing in a barn that's about to fall on me. You're right. What, I should worry?"

He laughed. "About the family, I mean.""

She's already refused growing tobacco--the only viable means of surviving as a farmer, she's told. Yet in this conversation with Rickie, quite out of the ordinary blue, Lusa hits upon the solution. It's nothing important to your story, your life, as it was tailor-made for a city girl of Palestinian-Jewish descent that studied insects and moths at college who had just happened to live her own life trusting her gut, trusting her senses. (There's a reason I used the solution, not a solution.)

"It is the blessing of our incarnation that the body can’t be fooled; in fact, it feels the full brunt of our driven behavior." - Reginald Ray, "To Touch Enlightenment with the Body", Shambala Sun, Jan 2003

Bonus: I recall hearing Loch Kelly say that after the awakening, it was as if his brain dropped into his heart, and his heart dropped into his belly. From that perspective, this passage from Don Juan, the Toltec shaman makes much more "sense."

"Before you embark on any path ask the question: Does this path have a heart? If the answer is no, you will know it, and then you must choose another path. The trouble is nobody asks the question; and when a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without a heart, the path is ready to kill him. At that point very few men can stop to deliberate, and leave the path. A path without a heart is never enjoyable. You have to work hard even to take it. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy; it does not make you work at liking it.

I have told you that to choose a path you must be free from fear and ambition. The desire to learn is not ambition. It is our lot as men to want to know. The path without a heart will turn against men and destroy them. It does not take much to die, and to seek death is to seek nothing.

For me there is only the traveling on the paths that have a heart, on any path that may have a heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge for me is to traverse its full length. And there I travel--looking, looking, breathlessly." - excerpted from Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castenada

art credits Forest Dryad, by Kurt Richards; OHO Rojo Silkmoth, a wall mounted sculpture made with recycled materials, by Michelle Stitzlen; going for a luna moth fairy look... Fairy Wings and Things (yes, she sells wings!) photo by Mary Danzer