Ho'oponopono

ho'oponopono ~ sing your inspiration ~ acute myeloid leukemia ~ lupus ~ speaking truth (you are power) during salem witch trials

Acute myeloid leukemia continues to come up as a signal, and a symbol in the collective. Also I read this story today in a local paper about a singer who was brutally assaulted by a priest in January 2007. She now is in the midst of treating her leukemial.

From the last post recently on leukemia, the message underlying is: Brutally killing inspiration.

"If someone wishes for good health, one must first ask oneself if he is ready to do away with the reasons for his illness. Only then is it possible to help him."- Hippocrates

In the strange way that everything is One, and thus more than just interconnected, this all is coalescing into a singular larger message that relates to the recent spate of posts on pancreas, Occupy Wall Street, Steve Jobs, and becoming our own authority/expert.

I won't get to tie all the puzzle pieces together in this one post. As a catalyst, consider the feeling (not the meanings) of power/energy/will and the solar plexus chakra. Keep that feeling "in mind" for the next several posts.

In my own life, I tend to "kill inspiration," when I conjecture that the status quo power structure would mock my ideas--or, gulp, worse, and thus I self-police myself.

An intense self-preservation reaction takes me over as a force that I hardly understood until I read two books recently.

I received more insight into that self-censoring impulse (and truthfully it was just two chapters within each book that together were the huge Aha!). The nutshell is that cultural memes that progragate the easiest are the ones that stifle innovation, and serve to keep the status quo in place (see The Beginning of Infinity, by David Deutsch--particularly chapters The Evolution of Culture, and The Evolution of Creativity). It's not me, it's not you. It's the memetic milieu you're born into. This is often done through the use of pyschological pressure of shame and praise and through the labeling of taboo. 

More than anything, it's failure and success, that are shamed and praised (see Little Bets by Peter Sims). Thus, cultural indocrination (inherited generation to generation) instead of viewing failure as being a valid, natural part of the journey towards new inventions (and heck, adventures), paint obstacles as evidence that we are worth less as valued members of society. "They might not think I'm smart, so let me avoid that challenge since it may not pan out and make me out to be the fool."

"A functioning police state needs no police” - William S. Burroughs -- think that one over

Do you self-police your self expression? Do you censor vibrant inspiration since it doesn't fit the message and memes of yesteryear's society? As far as I'm concerned, it's all yesteryear's ideas since same old, same old memes and memories have been recycling in a loop-de-loop for a while. Dynamic civilizations ability to grow, progress, and evolve depend on knowing and allowing that failures aren't personal shortcomings. They're part of the process of progress.

Several research studies, including those by Carole Dweck at Stanford University, show that children praised for process and effort take on new challenges more readily than children praised for intelligence. The latter seek external pats on the back to keep up their self-image, and thus adopt a "fixed mindset" that pretty colludes with static societies. The former adapt to a "growth mindset."

If truth be told, I was a child praised for intelligence. Straight A's, yada yada.

The last few years I've lived a fairly unconventional life--probably classifying me as a 'loser' in the black-and-white failure-or-success culture of USA. I would keep feeling these strong, nearly debilitating sense of shame that was unsettling, and I didn't know why. Now I know why, and that knowledge that it isn't personal--but embedded into the cultural--has broken its hold over me (very, very recently).

Isn't that Dr. Len's point? That these patterns aren't personal to you or I. They're programming (and, memes serve that function). They're collective. That may explain why it feels like a force field when you begin to make some head-way and bump against their boundary... there's generations of cultural energy charging the battery up.

Enough was enough. No cultural censors--no priestly classes or doctor classes or police classes or what not authority figures weild power over me such that they will silence me.

I shall speak and express freely.

Power and energy are forces of life and existence itself, and thus are available to all.

Shortly after reading the article about the singer who is healing from leukemia, in the same coffee shop, I picked out a book from their shelf on New England Legends and Folklore. And lo and behold, I find a story about the Salem witch trials. (Remember static tactics are taboo... shame and praise... "You're a witch!" is a shaming tactic. Or, "You're a heretic!") Back then, shame went a bit further than just mere psychological abuse, it was literally killing inspiration.

In those days, traits of a witch included singing, writing, storytelling, reading, and spending  time alone.

Even though I've been to Salem, Mass., myself, I don't recall this story at all. To summarize.... at that time the Mather family was quite powerful. (There's that word again.) And Cotton Mather was "the foremost clergyman of that dark day." Church and state were much less separate in that time as well, btw.

Reading this chapter I got the impression that everyone was cowed into obeying external authority of the day, especially if they claimed direct access to Divinity (as if you don't?). It's quite possible everyone believed the truths of the day unquestioned. Or, even if they did not, who wants to be the minority outspoken one who is made an example of ("off with her head"? Oh, at this point I should point out I have an unhealthy fear of being burned at the stake. Yeah, it makes no sense but maybe it does.

Except not everyone was intimidated. A clothier named Robert Calef spoke up.

"The sickening reflection that the judges had decreed the death of a score of innocent persons upon a mistake paralyzed men's tongues, unless, like Calef, they spoke in obedience to the command of conscience." - New England Legends and Folklore, by Samuel Adams Drake

Calef bundled together his thoughts in writing to rebuke Reverend Mather's teachings.

"No printer could be found in Boston or in the Colony willing to undertake the publication or expose it for sale. "

Fine, then, all the powers that be in the Colony may have the ability to intimidate the printers, but that didn't deter him. Calef printed his words against phony witch trials in London.

"It was publicly burned in the College-yard at Cambridge by order of the president, whom its exposures reached through his near relative."

The near relative was the father of Cotton Mather, a puritan Minister whom was President at Harvard. Fine then, the power plays escalate. The Mathers print a denounciation of Calef's work in his printing a response, Some Few Remarks upon a Scandalous Book. (That label scandalous is to make sure that the pious adherents to memes understand that it is taboo, just in case):

"To break its force, a vindication was prepared and printed;. . . ."

However, borrowing William Burroughs again, “Writers are very powerful,” Burrough tells us; they can write, and “unwrite,” the "script for the reality film." Calef used his own energy rather than bowing to others' perceived power, and in so doing, balanced the imbalance of power:

". . . but there were no more denunciations made for witchcraft, or courts assembled to hang innocent people. Calef indeed felt the resentment of the Mathers, but he had saved the cause."

John Greenleaf Whittier wrote a poem in Calef's honor called, Calef in Boston. Here's one verse (the full poem here) that I'd have to say pretty much could be a poem in honor of Ho'oponopono--cleaning away the old to allow the fresh, moment-by-moment inspiration:

"Falsehoods which we spurn to-day
Were the truths of long ago;
Let the dead boughs fall away,
Fresher shall the living grow."

BONUS: A related video that I found really helpful is below. Almine uses Ho'oponopono principles to heal herself, even though it appears that a student is asking her for a healing because he'd completely lost his singing voice.

Particularly note the symbolism of singing voice, the singer in the Las Vegas Sun article, voice, inspiration, expression:

 

 "My own life needed to sing more... even if it meant simplifying a great deal." - Almine

p.s. If you want to do some homework in anticipation of future posts, take a peek at the Third / Solar Plexus Chakra attributes in this chart/list.

p.p.s. I'm also finding that lupus seems to also have a similar message. This post may be useful to delve into that too. The message in lupus is that one is feeling, "A giving up. Better to die than stand up for one's self." Again, it seems very related to power, 3rd chakra, and cultural meme of fitting in to rest of the tribe (by psychological pressure). For instance, a friend comes from a strict Asian family, and they don't like that she "defies" their cultural mores to go to school to be a modern dancer. So, yeah, you guessed it, she is diagnosed with lupus. It's almost as if this massive collective conflict between meme-memory and the flow of future is playing out inside us...  Thankfully, life itself has no opposition.

ART CREDITS:  Jazz Singer, by Erica Laszlo, www.ericalaszlo.com.

ho'oponopono ~ THINK DIFFERENT ~ steve jobs ~ true innovation in health ~ personal health and self-healing

Henry Miller said he didn’t approve of memorials.

Memorials, he said, "defeated the purpose of a man’s life. Only by living your own life to the full can you honour the memory of someone."

Perhaps the only way I could truly honor the memory of Steve Jobs is to step up another octave and live mine to the fullest.

"Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?

We make tools for these kinds of people.

While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do." --  original Apple "Think Different" advertisement (long version)

These same words narrated by Steve Jobs in this video of a never aired TV commercial:  

I'm surprised how much Steve Jobs' death has shaken me up. It may be a couple of days of processing and writing to get through all I'd like to express, and it may be a little jumbled, and not necessarily in any order.

I'm writing this post today because someone in my Google+ stream wrote yesterday: "I want to thank Steve Jobs for the way he lived with vigor in the face of cancer. My Mom did that, too. My heart goes out to his family and other loved ones. Losing brilliant people to cancer is so very painful. I hope someone who lives by "Think Different" finds a cure!" (For the record, my dad died of stomach cancer when I was a teenager.)

I'm not sure how many people know the history of computer technology (I do since my university degree is in computer engineering). To put it in a nutshell, originally computers were huge mammoth machines that took a huge room to house and due to lack of reasonable user interface (not that learning assembly language is rocket science, trust me, but it's not very facile either) where mainly accessible to scientists and other highly qualified experts in white lab coats. (I jest about the lab coats, sweaters would be better since it was freezing in those rooms.) The machines to the left in the photo above weighed in at 30 tons.

"This was the whole point of the 1984 commercial. That if IBM ruled the world, it would be boring, totalitarian, George Orwellian--just an ugly society of mediocrity and conformity and thought control. And Apple was going to send the proverbial act into the image of big brother. It was religious fervor in the sense that we were fighting a mighty opposite. Which was IBM, the totalitarian mainframe company.

. . . . What we did is we worked very, very hard because we truly thought we were on a mission to improve people's creativity and productivity and prevent totalitarianism, primarily of IBM." - Guy Kawasaki, early Apple Inc. employee, impromptu October 5, 2011 talk on the day Steve died

Apple's original vision was to end that 'only for experts' preciousness. Hey let's make the power in those computing machines available to be harnessed by individuals too. Allow people without reams of science credentials and computer degrees to be expressive and creative on that platform. Thus, adding to the option of computers built and designed for a team of scientists and engineers solely, the world would also have  personal computer for any and all.

“I used to think, ‘He’s a doctor. Who am I to ask a question?’ ” Bill Lee, a Baltimore man who has suffered 10 heart attacks, says in a video on the agency’s Web site urging people to speak up. 

. . .

“The unsettling reality,” they write, “is that much of medicine still exists in a gray zone, where there is no black or white answer about when to treat or how to treat.” -- - Maureen Dowd, Decoding the God Complex, September 27, 2011

The analogy between personal computing and personal health may not be immediately obvious.

It is obvious to me. It's been nearly a decade since I had any health insurance.

It wasn't something I deliberately chose--at first. I couldn't afford insurance (and a lot of other luxuries) as I was unemployed and as soon as the divorce was final, that was the end of the insurance too. It took a couple of years to learn self-healing. Only in retrospect, am I grateful for the impetus of lack to push me to look for a solution didn't require external experts. I'm not entirely sure I'd have enough guts to forego conventional thought without that nudge of "fierce grace."

"Dr. Hartzband and Dr. Groopman [authors of "Your Medical Mind: How to Decide What Is Right for You"] warn against excessive reliance on overreaching so-called experts and nebulous metrics and statistics.

“The answer often lies not with the experts but within you,” they write... " -- Maureen Dowd, Decoding the God Complex, New York Times op-ed, September 27, 2011

Bingo.

The ones who see things differently.

They’re not fond of rules.

 "If we just scrapped our system and adopted any other wealthy country's system, at a minimum we would have a trillion dollars more a year for pay raises, for investment in new technology, to create new jobs, or whatever." - Former President Bill Clinton, comparing the United States, which spends 17.2 percent of gross domestic product on health care each year, to Germany and France, which spend 10 percent and are considered to have the most effective health care systems in the world. - Yes! magazine, Fall 2011 issue

And they have no respect for the status quo.

A small step, nice. However that is not much of a vision. It's an assumption that ill health is a given (it's possible to clear this kind of indoctrination from birth), and maybe we can just make ill health far more cost effective. What?!  How about zero percent of GDP because everyone is healthy? All those people in pain and/or degrading in full use of their functionality are not simply profit centers... they'd rather be living productive lives with an able body, mind and spirit. (If GDP is so important to you, contributing direct to the GDP through their creative gifts and talents rather than by buying pills, surgery, health insurance policies, etc.)

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers.

All healers ought be working themselves completely out of a job/role in terms of healing ailments...  (and I'm in that boat--even though I do this all pro bono, my vision is that this is a very, very temporary position on the way to... )... and I'll let you connect the dots of what's next when everyone's healthy.

“The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease." - Voltaire

p.s. And you are nature.

p.p.s. If you're looking for more information on pancreatic cancer and self-healing through Ho'oponopono, etc., also check out this fine post by Misa Hopkins (the pancreas organ is involved with diabetes too, focus on the 'sweetness of life' aspect she speaks to here: http://self-healingsecrets.com/965/diabetes-and-self-healing/

Her philosophy and her practical application (philosophy itself isn't sufficient to heal) is cut from same cloth:

"You are not broken and you do not need to be fixed.  Your body and your emotions are inviting you to become aware of beliefs, feelings, or needs that are keeping you trapped in suffering. They can be changed, opening you to true self-healing and even more importantly, to a greater awareness of your Divine self. This web-site and what is offered to you is an invitation for you to create your healing miracles from the inside out." - Misa Hopkins

BONUS: Educating, hands-on application and spreading the word ideas I had kicking around around self-healing.

Photo credits: IBM System 360 Model 40 in 1970; ENIAC and IBM mainframes photo from IDG News Service; child using Apple iPad via jorymon.com

I alone create joy and sweetness in my life. - Louise Hay

I heard Steve Jobs died today. 

Yesterday, I posted on G+ (unedited, just as it is on Google+):

Time and patience turn the mulberry leaf to silk. - Serbian proverb

Two stories on weaving the threads of inspiration with patience I read today:

Ralph Steinman co-discovered the role of dendretic cells on immunity in 1973. "For at least a decade, his findings were brushed aside, as he struggled to attract funding and failed to get his papers into top-flight journals."

In 2011, three days after his death he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Medicine. (via WSJ, October 4, 2011, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204612504576608370043268348.html)

Steve Jobs paid $10 million for Pixar in 1986. He sold it to Disney for $7.4B twenty years later, and....

"When Jobs opened Apple's first store in Tyson's Corner, Va., the company's foray into retailing was met with skepticism and even scorn."

Five years later, revenue per square foot was $4032 for Apple stores. The second best retailer that year, Tiffany & Co founded in 1837, came in at $2666 per square foot. (via Fortune, September 2011, http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/09/08/steve-jobs-real-legacy-apple-inc/)

I don't tend to get affected differently over the death of a celebrity or icon any more or less than any other person. To me, the hundreds of thousands of lesser-known people dying I never met on December 24, 2004, affected me so deeply I've never been the same again. And not because of masses (even one person is a treasure). It was because I literally felt something I'd never felt before in my heart. I think it's what a blogging buddy, Wayne, calls transpersonal emotion. In fact, in Buddhist philosophy it cannot even be said that you own any emotion... it's not exactly yours. If there were to be any sense of ownership it'd be All's.

Yet I must admit I am feeling a great deal more grief than I would feel towards another icon I don't personally know. Perhaps sometimes there is some kind of communion with souls that transcends having met them on a physical plane. I do not know. I just know it feels as if I knew Steve.

Ralph Steinman died on September 30th and Steve Jobs on October 5th.

Both men had pancreatic cancer.

I didn't even notice the connection when I wrote the post yesterday on G+.

So did Ho'oponopon fail? Supposedly, I applied Ho'oponopono on Jobs a while back.

That is a question for another post, and it is a very good one. In fact, it'll be the next post.

Two quick things though. First, you cannot heal another person.  In fact, the second you think another person exists as a separate entity, you're insisting on an illusion that isn't there, adding upon the illusion of the dis-ease or other imbalance. This isn't about finding a nicer, better illusion--it's about the end of illusion. That's why the terms cleaning or clearing are often used in Ho'oponopono. Perfection underlies illusion. So clearing reveals its infinite presence.

Ho'oponopono if it "works" works because I acknowledge oneness. "There is no one out there," is one of the other most repeated refrains from Dr. Len. Second, I'm noticing more 'failure' with Ho'oponopono and again I'll go deeper into that next post, but one theory I have is clearing has to go deep. You can't just yank out weeds without grabbing the root in entirety or they simply grow. The longer you've practiced Ho'oponopono the more you will see that the toughest weeds for you are the last you perceive. It was easier when I began (circa 2003) since perhaps I was less invested in keeping those particular weeds (unconscious patterns, conditioning, tendencies, memory, karma, programming--goes by so many names). 

Also, it always comes back to you. You in this case is myself. It's not for Steve Jobs or for Ralph Steinman to get it. It's not that they are sick. I cannot attach to any outcomes or agendas of being a savior/healer, however noble. There's a pattern that we share, a precise frequency pattern that the senses interpret as occuring in the organ of the pancreas because of its resonance. (Again, next post and go deeper on that.) Dissolve the pattern in Mind, and its vibratory effects are gone. (One Mind.... and it's within.)

From the last post on ho'oponopono and pancreas, pancreatic cancer, diabetes and my increasing synchronicities with Steve Jobs:

Louise Hay simple message for pancreas problems is, "Not being able to enjoy the sweetness in life."

Lawrence Michail at the Compassionate Dragon Healing site on Chinese medicine adds that pancreas issue (especially diabetes) may indicate:

"One may be bitter at the world. Things are not the way they should be."

 The truth is this pattern is still there. I've acknowledged its presence and done the Ho'oponopono mantra, and that's obviously not enough. I know this not because of the external deaths, I can feel the dying within.

It may seem trivial to enjoy life, and to perceive the sweetness in life. Doesn't it? I mean look around you. All these people dying and suffering, then I should too. That's the empathetic thing to do. (Or is it?). That may be the extreme end of it, yet there are subtleties that carry the same tone, just muffled down a notch. It is a rather sticky piece of programming that one. I grapple with it. 

I don't often do the affirmations piece of Louise Hay's work, as it doesn't necessarily tie into Ho'oponopono or at least my work. The affirmation listed for issues of the pancreas is:

I love and approve of myself and I alone create joy and sweetness in my life.

Now, as a lived testament that would be very vital, very powerful. A wee step in that direction each day.** (And here I'm speaking out loud to myself.)

Again, my own theory right now is that Ho'oponopono is losing its efficacy if it just comes down to repeating mantras. It reveals illusions (past patterns), and it requires surrendering those illusions. 

** I can make excuses why it's not practical. For instance, I only have $1.38 in the bank, and no credit. How shall I do anything sweet with that, blah blah blah. That is the death dirge, do not listen or be swayed by it. There is another stiller voice to listen for.

ho'oponopono and leukemia ~ brutally killing inspiration ~ post-traumatic stress disorder (or rather what about post-traumatic GROWTH?) ~ expressive writing ~ shadow side of Artist

A friend of a friend of a friend is in the hospital. He's quite young, early 30s. The symbolism in the message of this dis-ease (via Louise Hay) is:

Leukemia: Brutally killing inspiration.

The whole point of Ho'oponopono is to reveal our innate origin which itself is Pure Inspiration moment to moment.

(By the way, it's not anything to become some day or get back to...  it's more like clouds obscuring the sun, yet the sun isn't missing in action, only our awareness of Awareness may be.)

If you've read A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe, you already know the answer to everything is 42. So let's take a look at #42 in these notes from an interview with Ho'oponopono pioneer, Dr. Hew Len (I'm joking slightly about the 42--taking all this with a heavy heart doesn't heal, and you'll never be able to continue to clear.) Anyhow, #42 is:

"42. Ho’oponopono is a process of only looking at myself and working on the garbage (memories) in me (my subconscious mind), because once I get myself in rhythm with The Divinity, everybody else gets into rhythm too; But if I am out of rhythm, so too will be everybody else." - notes by Saul Maraney of watching an interview with Dr. Len

In note #86 of Dr. Len's talk: "By now saying to that memory “I Love You”, Divinity transmutes that memory, and takes me back to my original state of Void and Infinite, and inspiration can then come through."

Coincidentally, I also reading this post yesterday on shadow side of artists (recommended reading). It's very telling, yet still leaves a lot out. In my experience (yes, much of it is anecdotal, but I know a lot of creatives), many have suffered from trauma, and addiction (of all kinds, not just stigma type) is a way to blot out pain. Often it actually appears to 'work' for a while.

I have my own experience with acute stress disorder. If I recall correctly, this is the term for symptoms of PTSD, although occuring immediately after a trauma it is common... it becomes an issue if these syptoms persist and thus acute turns chronic and long-lasting. A person close to me whom is a university professor of psychology told me about studies in "post-traumatic growth," and that (and applying it) has all the difference in the world.

What I found with emotions like grief, anguish, despair, etc. is that ofen they bring up earlier, unresolved emotions. In my case, it brought up my dad's rather sudden death (only a few months he declined steeply) when I was 17 years old, mostly. But it brings up everything.

Actually, so does being an artist... the creative process itself. It brings up everything, bidden or unbidden, it has no compunction about it. But that's a big topic and too much for one post.

(Just in case you're wondering how I'm tying these seemingly disparate ideas together... I'm not doing it. These were presented to me within the last 24 hours. Notice patterns. There is an Intelligence there. And there's always this reminder:)

"Your medicine is whatever appears now." - Byron Katie

Today, flipping through a random magazine lying on a coffee shop table, I pick up and read (these are a few highlights):

"A lot of times when people develop PTS [post traumatic stress] symptoms, it's because the traumatic event is linking to earlier memories that have not been processed," says Francine Shapiro, Ph.D., one of the world's leading PTSD experts. Memories, she says, often of vulnerability and powerlessness.

One study showed that women were 33 percent more likely to suffer PTS symptoms after 9/11 if they had an earlier experience with unwanted sexual contact. Such findings challenge the assumption that PTSD is confined to a single event. "We're the product of our memory networks," says Shapiro. "How we feel and how we perceive the world is based on the past experiences we've had."

"Sometimes even the direst traumas can lead to positive outcomes. In the case of 9/11, several studies found that many people had an increased appreciation of life, altered priorities, and a new understanding of personal strength afterward. Some of these effects faded after six months. Others, however—like increased kindness, spirituality, and teamwork—did not." -- "How to Manage Post-Traumatic Stress," Women's Health, September 2011

This is just the start of a series I'd like start on these 'shadow' topics that are RARELY broached in polite domesticated society. It's not a great idea to keep this all bottled inside, and I believe that expressive creation is one modality (combined with ho'oponopono it'd be so powerful!) that can allow for fluid living that is not resurrecting old memories (as emotions are often recycled, and not truly a response to current life) but living in the Here and Now in inspiration.

BONUS: One way to support this work and go deeper into the depths is through a $12/month newsletter with interactivity (optional)--Psychopomp. (Unsub at any time, although I recommend a two-month commitment to feel it out.)

p.s. For folks that come from other 'schools' for instance nonduality, Buddhism, Advaita etc., I think of memory as conditioning. From a Toltec shaman perspective, reacting from memory/conditioning is referred to as the Parasite.

p.p.s. The What is Ho'oponopono site is very informative. All the information and notes from Saul Maraney above are copyright © Saul Maraney - 2008.

Art Credits: Photo via DesignJulia.com.

education as a process of living ~ pioneering and prototyping ~ the future of well-being ~ the real fixers

 

 

 

 

"I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living." John Dewey

A family member of mine remarked to me (they must have glanced at something in my regular blog, as this blog is secreted away and discovery is via the right keywords), "I don't believe in meditation."

"I don't believe in meditation." That statement perplexed me. What is there to believe? You try it. You do it. You either like it or not like it. It's not intended as yet another belief system.  So too with many 'alternative' methods of healing, alternative methods of living, alternative methods of ___ <fill in the blank>. You try it, you do it, you perhaps wrestle with getting it (I recall my first faltering attempts at skiing!) yet that's still through doing, and ultimately it either rings for you or it does not. It works for you, or it does not. There's no need to believe when you can get your hands dirty, your mind messy, and check it out for yourself.

"Don't blindly believe what I say. Don't believe me because others convince you of my words. Don't believe anything you see, read, or hear from others, whether of authority, religious teachers or texts. Don't rely on logic alone, nor speculation. Don't infer or be deceived by appearances.

Do not give up your authority and follow blindly the will of others. This way will lead to only delusion.

Find out for yourself what is truth, what is real." - The Buddha

Trying out for yourself. It's kind of like prototyping: "In a world that prizes answers and solutions, prototyping can be somewhat counterintuitive, placing the emphasis on doing to be able to think rather than thinking in order to do. Discovery doesn't happen in a vacuum, which is why doing things, however imperfectly at first, opens us up creatively," says Peter Sims in Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries.

I like to think from stratch too, what if we could start with a totally clean slate and build from the ground up... what would responding to dis-ease and imbalances look like? What would maintaining a moment-to-moment alignment with well-being look like? So I really gravitated to a few stories of innovators and pioneers I ran across today....

"One evening about nine years ago, Simon, Mike, Aiden and I met up at a Vietnamese restaurant in Chinatown. We’d become friends over the previous five years, working in various capacities at West Philly High. Somewhere in the midst of swapping gossip, storytelling, and generally giving each other a hard time the conversation turned more idealistic, driven by a simple question: if we could start with a totally clean slate and build from the ground up, what would high school look like?" - Introducing the Sustainability Workshop (from the school's blog on opening day)

So I'm kicking around ideas for an online curriculum and workshop to teach Ho'oponopono and other 'modalities' of Mind-based healing (even that word choice is wrong, that's just me trying to fit into conventional frameworks; the way 'healing' works is by clearing up habitual patterns obscuring the underlying perfection of Wholeness.... I've never gotten any positive results from focusing on brokenness nor 'fixing'...)

As much as I've learned from books and other teachers, it's been my own first-hand experiments and experience that has taught me the most, usually by trial and error, inquiry and refinement. So I'm working on a structure that is based on experiential learning. I liked what I read this morning in Newsweek, September 19, 2011 issue on "The Real Fixers" (yeah, ironically the headline labels them FIXERS, but many of them are really DOERS) about a pilot school: 

"The boutique school follows the “project-based learning” model made popular by San Diego’s High Tech High and others around the country, where conventional classes are replaced with long, interdisciplinary exercises to solve real-world problems, like designing a solar charging station or writing energy-efficiency legislation. More engaged students, the thinking goes, learn deeply and retain knowledge longer. - The Real Fixers (on Simon Hauger and The Sustainability Workshop)

A family member of mine remarked to me (they must have glanced at something in my regular blog, as this blog is secreted away and discovery is via the right keywords), "I don't believe in meditation."

"I don't believe in meditation." That statement perplexed me. What is there to believe? You try it. You do it. You either like it or not like it. It's not intended as yet another belief system.  So too with many 'alternative' methods of healing. You try it, you do it, and it either rings for you or it does not. And it works for you, or it does not. There's no need to believe when you can directly check it out for yourself.

I foresee two closed-intertwined tracks of project-based study and experiments. One focused on healers: clearing physical, spiritual, emotional, mental, psychological ailments and dis-ease as well as environmental dis-ease (i.e. anything from pollution to natural disasters). The second track focused on creators: releasing past to create through inspiration, improvisation and visionary (meaning could include manifestation, but not limited to that) in scope.

The complete list of catalysts to be introduced, presented, and then jointly as a class develop exercises and experiments to learn through direct experience might include: A Course in Miracles (particularly Psychotherapy: Purpose, Process and Practice booklet), Ho'oponopono, Byron Katie's The Work, dream/archetype/shadow work ala Carl Jung, Belvaspata, Louise Hay's symbols from Heal Your Body, Heal Your Life, Lise Bourbeau's work, Debra Shapiro's work, traditional Chinese Medicine (particularly the symbolic associations with body organs, etc.), Mary Baker Eddy's work, Gregg Braden's The Isaiah Effect, The Trivedi Effect, Zen Buddhism's notion of 'direct transmission',  Full Catastrophe Living and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (Jon Kabit-Zinn's work), Richard Moss' work, post-traumatic growth resarch, sound healing (especially correspondence of frequency to different body organs), Jane McGonigal's SuperBetter health game, Florence Scovel Shinn, Abraham-Hicks, Thich Nhat Hanh The Energy of Prayer, Advaita inquiry, The Holographic Universe, Toltec teachings, Russian magical priniciples from the medieval guild of skomorokh performers--and, that's for starters.

In another example from The Real Fixers, lawyer Brooke Richie started a 12-week class, The Resiliency Advocacy Project,  to teach teens how to navigate the legwork, paperwork and legalities of effectively using both social (and other) services and resources to break out of poverty cycle. The part that really struck me is that those that completed the program were then empowered to teach peers in their own neighborhood: "Each class of 15 [teens] can help up to 400 teens get answers to their questions without paying legal fees."

Thus, our teaching curriculum and workshop ideally would be a grassroots wave that trickles out so that those who 'graduate' go out and share their experience with their own peers, and so on. The idea is to empower people to be their own author and authority--to clear themselves in a natural, innate way that addresses root issues rather than symptoms alone (like pulling weeds from the root so they don't just grow back), as well as assist others in regaining their authority without dependency on hospitals, professionals, pills, insurance and ability to pay.

As far as structure, I'm not quite sure yet. By structure, I mean is it online or live in-person class? Is it even a classroom feel or is it more self-study or small teams (slight personal preference for the small teams tackling projects) or a combination? Is it for-profit or non-profit or B corporation? I have enough resources to begin something possibly online--yet not enough to see this all through all on my own. It is definitely intended to be international, grassroots, spreadable, and experimental (in terms of keep pushing the edges, don't ever rest on laurels).

If what I've written so far ignites your soul and intrigues your mind in any way, please write me or comment below.

p.s. Coincidentally, in the same The Real Fixers article, here are some stats on healthcare in USA: "Because we currently reward quantity over quality, the U.S. spends at least twice as much per person on health care annually ($7,960 in 2009) as Japan, Canada, Germany, and other developed countries. Yet whether measured by infant mortality or cancer survival, we are far back in the pack in terms of quality."

p.p.s. Don't feel obligated, however if you would genuinely wish to donate to this project:

"Love has no obligations. Fear is full of obligations.... Whatever we do is because we want to do it. It becomes a pleasure; it's like a game, and we have fun with it." -- Miguel Ruiz, The Mastery of Love

ho'oponopono - diabetes & pancreatic cancer - pancreas = sweetness of life - gifts of imagination - steve jobs

Ho'oponopono is useful for any imbalance we perceive "out" there in the world. Whether that imbalance is a family member's "incurable" diagnosis or it whether it be a wildfire in another state.

It cares not for remoteness, and is equally effective for a child with malaria in tropical countries half a globe away, as issues up close and personal issues. (In the collective, nothing is really far or close. In One, it's all here now.)

In the subjective world of ho'oponopono (and if you've some experience in Zen or Advaita or that sort of thing, you can feel into what I mean that it's all occuring to the All) we are responsible for everything as it is all arising from one consciousness. (Note that responsibility is not fault. Many new practitioners in Ho'oponopono begin by cleaning up old, repeating patterns of guilt and blame. This is no-fault stuff.)

So getting personal.... I read in the newspapers that unemployment rate in Las Vegas is up to 14.2%. Of course, that is the folks that are still reporting to the officials within last 30 days--the actuals are much higher.  I've been reading newspapers much more thoroughly in the last few months (whereas I normally stay away from mainstream media) seeking out the recurring patterns in the collective unconscious to clean on through Ho'oponopono (and often I also use Byron Katie's The Work as well).

There are two patterns or messages that feel closest to me, because they are directly impacting and showing up in my life as well as "out there." One is scarcity/poverty-thinking and the other is "not being able to enjoy the sweetness in life."  I think they are related.

I'll keep this post short, as this will be a recurring topic until it is actually resolved. I've found lately that with Ho'oponopono the stakes get higher. At first, we clean up all the low-hanging fruit. Later, the patterns and programs we run up against are so ingrained we actually believe they define us (they don't, but it doesn't make it any easier). Saying, "I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you," alone does not suffice. No matter how heart-felt that mantra is, it isn't meant to be mantra.

 On August 9th, I wrote to a friend:

"I was getting a lot of syncs around Steve Jobs about 2-3 weeks ago.... and not in normal sense, more around his health problems (and he's younger than I thought when I looked up). So looked up pancreatic cancer it has to do with not allowing in sweetness of life (paraphrasing).  And that was SO true. I was pretty locked into working on myself, and figuring all manner of things out and fixing this and that.... that just simple ordinary savoring was missing when I was  ruthlessly honest with myself."

 On August 24th, Steve Jobs resigned his post as CEO. It is not clear why, but speculation is his health. From his resignation letter: "I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come."

For all his wealth, the speculation is (as it is quite plausible that Jobs simply wishes for a break from decades of long hours of work so he can enjoy himself) that doctors and drugs have not healed him completely from and of after-effects of pancreatic cancer (2004) and his liver transplant (2009).

Louise Hay simple message for pancreas problems is, "Not being able to enjoy the sweetness in life."

This past Saturday, my aunt's husband died from complications due to diabetes (he was quite old, so there may have been more complications upon complications). A fairly good site (as far as the symbolism) on Chinese Medicine states as far as the pancreas: "Metaphysically then diabetes represents a difficulty in processing the sweetness of life. One may be bitter at the world. Things are not the way they should be."

I have noted (being completely honest here, as in Ho'oponopono it is necessary to be honest with oneself) that I do feel bitterness. For the past 12 months, I have not been able to create more than $125 per month in income no matter what I do, think, or offer to others. You can do the math yourself, and realize this is not a living wage in the USA. (And if you are wondering how this is even a possibility, I'm living with family--basically mooching.)

I used to be a highly-paid professional, but now it feels (doesn't mean it is real) as if my gifts are worthless. That's bitterness talking. 

For me, ultimately it is not about the money (I live on $1500/month even in hot spots like NYC  or SF because of my ability to be resourceful and easily satisfied; however, $1500/year isn't frugality, it's depravation). It's the feeling (again, that could be the imprint talking) that I am being withheld from offering, contributing value that's bugging me. I think all people do want to express their gifts and contribute their talents:

"It is ironic indeed that money, originally a means of connecting gifts with needs, originally an outgrowth of a sacred gift economy, is now precisely what blocks the blossoming of our desire to give, keeping us in deadening jobs out of economic necessity and forestalling our most generous impulses... Our purpose for being, the development and full expression of our gifts, is mortgaged to the demands of money, to making a living, getting by, surviving. Yet no one, no matter how wealthy, secure or comfortable, can ever feel fulfilled in a life in which those gifts remain latent." - Charles Eisenstein, "Living the Gift," Ode magazine, September 2011 (edited excerpt from book, "Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition")

After a long period of studying the similarities between health and wealth, I'm coming close to cracking the whole code. I decided to treat poverty as a dis-ease, too, since I already knew that health (i.e. ease manifesting itself in the body) was not dependent on hospitals, doctors, drugs, money, or anything external. (More on this topic of scarcity or infinity-thinking in future posts; here's an out-of-the-box-thinking video on the subject by Story Waters that combines the sweetness/joy and the wealth topic to kick it off:)

 

H(w)ealth is a matter of knowing well-being as an unshakeable wholeness that lies beyond (feels more like beneath to me) any appearances to the contrary. (In Zen, simply dropping into no-mind or awareness meditation simulates this knowing.) It is the natural ease of flowing with life rather than opposition to the flow of life which asserts itself as dis-ease.

Through ho'oponopono one can clear away the vibrational pattern from a habitual imprint (could be anything from trauma to cultural conditioning) that re-asserts a particular ailment.

For all the "I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you," I did prior to August 9th, when I wrote a friend an email about how much I'd been thinking of Steve Jobs' health (trust me, that's odd, as I don't even own any Apple products and he doesn't pop into my consciousness that much). I have to balance my imbalance. Is there sweetness in my life? Am I expressing that sweetness? Or is there bitterness? Am I acknowledging it? I have to clean the pattern within myself. Ho'oponopono isn't about reciting empty words with more emphasis on each refrain. If a recurring pattern is truly acknowledged deeply and appreciated for what it's shown you, it drops away in favor of a fluid state (what Dr. Len calls zero state) that is more responsive to the current moment, thus not automatic and reactive based on unconscious stores from ages ago.

Since the income issues, my life has become much heavier, more serious, more solemn than ever before. That's not like me, but it's been like me for over a year; closer to two years. I look at the newspapers, the radio shows, TV (again, this is recent development as I didn't used to) and I notice how dour and doom-and-gloom everyone else is too. The imbalance is inner and outer.

It is possible to enjoy the sweetness of life just as it is.

To that end, I'm living this experiment in changing a habit.

There's a quote that goes, "Worry is the misuse of imagination" so I'm focusing my imagination on whimsy, on playfulness, on my dreams and visions, on magic and even laughter to get out of this serious mode, and into sweetness mode. I'll be using (loosely) some of the concepts in The Art of Soaring and The Power of Luck (between the two, there are 48 pages of excerpts that pretty much spell out of the gist).

If you'd like to join me in this, I'm creating an online circle to share our whimsical new imaginings and imaginative gift-giving that really draw out the precious aspects of an ordinary life day by day.

I've tried to do the exercises in The Art of Soaring and The Power of Luck on my own, and I'm not consistent enough. I think 30 days without fail might help to make it into a habit. If you'd like to join, I'm starting Tuesday, September 27 through October 24, 2011 for $30 --Mage Your Own Luck for a Buck* (a day).

Another reason I'm reaching out to do this with a community is that the Chinese Medicine site I quote above continues (on the theme of pancreas and diabetes): "Excess weight, metaphysically, is a way of putting distance between ourselves and others; a way of emphasizing our separation and isolation from others." Isolation imprinting is another theme that I've noted to be getting more rampart in last few years, and unfortunately, now that I moved to a city where I don't know anyone (and so many social events depend on paying money) it is all too easy to justify isolation. To break the pattern of isolation on collective and individual levels, I am also purposefully doing outreach on things I'd normally keep to myself.

Please read The Art of Soaring and The Power of Luck excerpts first to see if this is interesting for you. (The books are NOT required to join in to share your daily gift, magic, luck, etc.)

* With ho'oponopono, based on 100% responsibity for everything in your world, I like to say to myself, "The buck stops here."

p.s. In Wired magazine, February 1996 Jobs said:

"The problem is I’m older now, I’m 40 years old, and this stuff doesn’t change the world. It really doesn’t.

“I’m sorry, it’s true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We’re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It’s been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much — if at all.

“These technologies can make life easier, can let us touch people we might not otherwise. You may have a child with a birth defect and be able to get in touch with other parents and support groups, get medical information, the latest experimental drugs. These things can profoundly influence life. I’m not downplaying that.

“But it’s a disservice to constantly put things in this radical new light — that it’s going to change everything. Things don’t have to change the world to be important.”"

ho'oponopono beyond the individual - what if perception cleansed everything infinite whole well-being - the water engines -

Last night, deciding on some pretty radical ideas I have perculating around Ho'oponopono. Do I take it broader, deeper, wider than one-on-one remote healing? Or should I shutter those ideas at the public level... keep 'em closely guardly?

There is a play by David Mamet called "The Water Engine" about an inventor and it "highlights the sometimes violent suppression of a disruptive alternative energy technology."  In that play, the inventor is harassed to stop his work since it would obviously threatened the oil companies. The keyword there is violent--underscoring the lengths that the status quo goes to protect their monetary interest by keeping any leapfrogging breakthroughs underground.

So, yes, ho'oponopono (and another remote healing technique I know) are alternative technologies that upend the way we look at well-being. Part of me is fearful of the backlash of the medical and pharmaceutical industry, or worse. Sure I know it is fear, and means I need to clean up this patterning of fear via ho'oponopono or any inquiry means available.

"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.

For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern." -- William Blake

The idea started coming to me when I first read a blog post a few months back about a former real estate developer (or broker) and: "he's also a bit haunted by the loss of his father to a poorly understood but quite well known neurological disease. He's dedicated his life to supporting new approaches to research in the field, and the work he's funded is tantalizingly close to a breakthrough. It's an entirely new framework for understanding the illness, one that isn't easy to grok if you're a layman (as he was when he started). As I listened to him explain the work, I had a very strong sense of deja vu. Dan was an Internet startup guy now, pitching me his new approach to disrupting a sclerotic industry (in this case, the foundation-driven research institutes and their kissing cousins, the pharmaceutical companies.). It may work, it may not, but he's going to go for it. To raise funds for his new approach, Dan is talking to angels and VCs, and developing a new model for profiting from drug compounds that may come out of the research he's funded."

The dis-ease wasn't spelled out, although there were enough hints in the blog post  that I recognized it. That same dis-ease was the first time I ever had to use these healing methods on a close family member (who's completely fine now)--besides the minor stuff like a broken toe or a toothache.

As I read the post about Dan's drug research arising out of the loss of his father, I noted, "Oh, he's look for a way to cure M.S. as a whole. Not just his father, or a surrogate for his father. The entire pattern of M.S. cleaned away." Only thing is he's doing it a very costly, old-fashioned (to me) way. You want an entirely new framework? It involves starting from a blank slate, or zero state as Dr. Len likes to say--not a slight incremental tweak in the health industries. Reading it was the Aha! moment for me--and it has gripped me since as much as I try to ignore its call.

I realize that healing by Mind alone sounds like magical thinking to the general populace. On the other hand, there's a growing amount of folks on this same planet who think relying on pills and injections is the magical thinking, aka to idolatry of icons or pleading to a statue. The statue wields no power; and similarly for me, there is no power in the pill, or in the procedure; they're actually props.

The only reason I am remotely interested in this (healthcare is not my #1 passion, but doesn't mean it just falls away as there is something true for me when it keeps tugging and tugging) is it is such a direct, nearly unequivocal way to know we are not separate beings -- it's not only self-healing, as in your body but anyone can heal anyone since there is no other, no out there. And heal any planetary imbalance, not just human beings. How? (In a nutshell:) Because we are all one singular contiguous Wholeness.

So yesterday I felt I needed to make a definitive decision to focus on 1-3 things max in my life and not be scattered on 10-20.

Then, I saw this as the first out of 213 comments on a website* I only frequent every 6-8 weeks last night as I was pondering this question around taking Ho'oponopono on an yet unexplored, enhancing direction to tackle healthcare more publicly at a pattern-level rather than individual-level, or not.

from Dan
September 13, 2011

David, I have just finished reading your book and it was truly amazing, I couldn't put it down. One of the most profound points in the book for me was when you quoted Dr. Hew Len** and how he healed his patients by simply saying....I love you, I am sorry, please forgive me, and thank you. It brought tears to my eyes when you also ended the book with this quote.Thank you for this masterpiece, and my the source field be with you.

**Dr. Hew Len is the one who popularized the ancient shamanic technique of clearing his patterns to heal an entire hospital for the criminally insane in Hawaii. The technique is known as ho'oponopono.

** I don't abide by everything David Wilcock thinks whatsoever, however I'm primarily an explorer and spelunker of the Infinite in form. Thus I dive into edgy topics and conduct my own experiments. For me, I can't ignore because they don't fit my previous frames of reference. Use your own discernment. (I find discernment more refined than judgment, not to mention that judgment tends to towards division, obscuring the indivisibility of wholeness.) I didn't recall knowing Wilcock was a fan of Dr. Len.

p.s. How this would look like? Approach a research institution, build a small venture with a few people who have applied ho'oponopono for some time, band together with anyone who wants to try it (sort of a network effect)? Don't have any of the how's yet. Feedback, suggestions welcome.

ho'oponopono on malaria - balance with life and nature - In the way of the Medicine Healer we use our minds to heal

[Sent September 7, 2011 to Encanto members. I realized it ought to be public here too.]

I just returned the book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide back to the library. It was part of my research into the root causes of maternal health and girl's education (among the U.N. Millenium Goals I'd committed to apply ho'oponopono on behalf). It's just the mood I'm in today, and I'm sure another day I'd have quite another review. Right now, I'm frustrated so many of the solutions (mind you, I wasn't looking for any--just trying to deeply understand the root problem first, and that was my impetus to get the book) presented basically boil down to money--give us money and we can solve anything. But really, solve meant typically in this context, treat someone after they are sick in a hospital by a doctor. Rarely do people speak of preventing dis-ease or eliminating the issue at hand before anyone suffers.

Okay, coincidentally I noted Seth Godin's new ebook through his The Domino Project imprint today. It's a charity project to raise money for anti-malaria bed netting via sales of a book:

"At least $20 from each copy [book] sold by us goes directly to Malaria No More to send a mosquito net to a family in need and to support life-saving work in the fight against malaria. Malaria No More, an international advocacy organization, is on a mission to end malaria related deaths by 2015."

I noted the synchroncity because reducing deaths due to malaria is also on the U.N. MDG list (thus, my list too).

However, I am under no delusion that sending money for bed netting is wiping malaria from the face of the earth. Not to mention I don't have $25 to my name this sec--seriously. I just wrote a check for my storage locker in Arizona--owned by a nice mom-and-pop operation owned by Dennis. I know the folks (as best I can) that I exchange energy/money with, but that's another story--or is it? Again, the money goes to netting, not eliminating malaria. Netting is a stop-gap measure when looking at the core questions.

We give up. Sure it seems "too big" to tackle malaria, I was taught to say. But why resign ourselves? Begs the question too, where am I throwing up temporary nets to avoid the issue of a getting to the bottom of a potentially death-inducing dis-ease while it continues flying around me?

The last time I went to a country (Thailand, Sri Lanka 2005) that recommended malaria prevention measures and quite a few other vaccines, I didn't do anything of the sort. Yes, I used to get all the proper vaccinations. By 2005 I knew without a shred of a doubt that my certainty of mind and knowing of my self to be Well-Being Wholeness was and is my protection. (Sort of a take off from A Course in Miracles, "In my defenselessness, my safety lies." -- something that must be practiced as it depends on inner certainty, not knowing about how it worked for someone else... start with small things...)

Malaria. I see it as a message.

End malaria? One doesn't end a message. One grasps a message, understands it, assimilates it--then it's work is done and is discarded.

I'm not always chipper to hear messages myself. I recall a few months ago that loud, incessant knocking at the door here. I wasn't asleep--but had only awoken minutes before, I walk groggy to the door in my pajamas. The police officer says, "I'm letting all the tenants know that a tip came in, and there's a dangerous situation and everyone needs to evacuate from the building." I thanked her. I didn't fight her or protest the inconvenience. I could have asked more questions, yes but I was sleepy and she was very firm and adamant about the danger, now. Why? What's the tip about? What danger do you mean? But I quickly got dressed and left the building and then asked more questions once at the edge of the condo complex, rather than endanger myself. There had been a bomb threat called in.

(It's just an analogy.) Malaria is a message knocking, and I can ignore it and keep puttering around the condo. Perhaps it means nothing. Except the message isn't from a bothersome external entity, it comes from I, in a wave-form pattern (call it symbol) and later the pattern can manifest more tangibly as dis-ease.

Malaria: Out of balance with nature and with life. - Louise Hay

That's the message. And it's not collective. It's individual. (So that makes it collective... that's the paradox of oneness, of wholeness.) No one else there to blame. It sounds sort of green, not really. There are times I regret being an environmentalist in the 80s since I created influenced a few ideological monsters by handing folks books like Silent Spring. Folks like a family menber that won't speak to her next-door neighbor because they drive an SUV. That's out of balance. Our true nature has no rift with our neighbor which is One with everyone and everything. Malaria is not a message to blame anyone else for being out of balance with life.

Malaria's a very intimate handwritten letter. To me. (To you if this resonates.) Or consider it a whisper in the wind... be balanced with life and nature, there's no need to fight life, we ARE you, living through you....

NATURE AND LIFE

Two days ago, I stumbled onto a new blog at Ways of the Wild Institute, a wilderness survival and awareness school (interestingly in Vermont, yet unaffected by the flooding). In it, the founder, White Wolf, tells the story of his teacher and his teacher's peoples, born in 1896:

"You will not find most of their names on any census. Like hundreds of others in this land, they escaped the tagging that the government placed on all others. While others Native Americans were being horded into reservations or being killed under government policies, Meechgalanne’s people took to the wilds and disappeared. They refused to give their powers and freedom to the invading cultures."

That post is worth reading since it sets so much context for reading White Wolf's blog (if you do) since his teacher is the one who taught him the old Medicine Ways--ways of balance with nature and awareness. Also White Wolf has lived in some quite adverse conditions and survived and transformed through them. We are very different in that he goes the way of the purist warrior and survivor living in the mountains and wilderness, and I'm more the romantic magician and artist. Yet reading his blog I knew he knew much of the the same things I'd stumbled upon regardless of our diverse paths. The main difference on his blog is that he is willing to be (warrior) bold, plain honest (even if it upsets a few apple carts of belief systems) and outspoken (since what he shares are so secret and even denigrated as being primitive in our culture) about them.

In another article, White Wolf shares my own ways of self-healing. This is a topic that only became appealing to me to learn when my health insurance ended with my divorce in 2002, and I couldn't afford a policy being unemployed at the time. The strange thing is the more I delved into healing by applying experiments and such (book smarts don't count here--it either heals or it doesn't) the more I realized my health is your health....

"In the way of the Medicine Healer we use our minds to heal."

and

"Chronic pain is a messenger. "

"Remember that the pain is not your enemy, but a warning guide to something deeper that you need to find. It does not have to be cancer- it could very easily be that you are not living your dream and truth in life and so need to switch pathways."

In another post, on Reiki, he shares:

"Meechgalanne and Kikey Gawi always said that pure energy of life comes from the universe itself and is there for everyone to use. They had been tapping into the pure universal energy for their entire lives without Reiki training and without secret symbols. I saw them use it many times with great success.

. . . .

I have the training of a Reiki Master but I do not use the symbols that I was originally taught. After I began using Reiki some time ago, I realized that the deep feelings and energy that radiated from the symbols were anything but pure. After deep searching I recalled Meechgalanne and Kikey Gawi using universal energy without symbols. So I went back to my teaching with them and how they did what they did surfaced in my memory as clear as mountain streams. They would open themselves to the universal energy by allowing it to flow through their High Spirit Self ( also called Oversoul, High Self, Pure Self) and then down into their physical and energy bodies. This way it was pure, untainted and truth. Nothing imbalanced could interfere or touch this pure energy flow. They knew exactly were it came from and the path it took to reach them."

Below is a full copy of the post which affected me the deepest and probably the one I read first, and has much there to say about the balance of life and nature grounded in trust.

Unfortunately so much of these topics come under the subject of paranormal, supernatural or simply "that's impossible" when I've tried to broach these same subjects myself in our culture speaking from my OWN experience.

(White Wolf is speaking from his.)

A LESSON IN SELF-BELIEF

Meechgalanne said to me, “Animals can survive in their natural habitat with nothing but themselves and the environment around them. Most humans can not. The key to surviving in the natural world is knowing survival skills and trusting in nature to provide. Meechgalanne told me this many times.

One day Meechgalanne decided to show me just exactly what he meant. I, as usual, was unaware of his plans. He took me out one weekend when I was still fairly young on a bare necessity camping trip. We went out in an area I was not familiar with. We moved so fast and in zigzags I became disoriented fairly quickly. We stopped and made a quick and basic survival camp. It was fall and most of the plants were gone for the winter. We sat around a fire that night talking about all the spiritual things that pertained to my present training. We went to sleep on our earthen beds of leaves and moss.

I awoke the next morning to a cool brisk breeze rushing through the forest. I sat up and realized Meechgalanne and all the things we had brought with us were gone. There were no tools, water, food, clothes or sign of anything left. I was alone with nothing but the very light layer of clothes I had on. I was cold so I tried to start a fire with any hot coal that might have been left, but Meechgalanne had snuffed them all out. I tried to start the fire, find water, find food, build a windproof shelter, and find Meechgalanne’s tracks and to tell direction on that cold cloudy day. Nothing worked because I was nervous and had not practiced my skills enough. I was miserable!

Cold, thirsty, angry at myself and lost, I saw a squirrel go by as I sat shivering. It stood up and began yelling at me, probably for being so stupid. I told it to shut up and leave me alone. It looked at me some more and ran off. I watched it for a little while and was amazed at how such a small animal could survive with ease out here all year. I saw the amazing strength of the trees and the tiny little plants under the leaves. I was almost sad to be a human once I fully realized how weak we actually were. The day was getting colder and I realized I had to do something before I froze sitting at the bottom of a tree. A crow flew over and yelled at me for a while before gliding away. At the time I thought it was yelling at me for being stupid as well. I was so miserable I could not understand what anything was telling me. All my training so far seemed like a waste.

Then I started to meditate. After a short while I became warm and relaxed. Soon I heard a cedar tree tell me to use its bows for shelter. A rock at my feet said that if I used it, it would give me sparks to make a fire. A voice on the breeze told me there was water not far to the west. A ancient looking wolf with matted fur the color of northern birch bark walked out of the woods and stood before me. I was amazed! I looked at him and knew that we had met before. He said to me, “White Wolf, I am an old one that has been beside you for many lives and we have shared much. I have come forth once again so you can learn from me. You must remember, child, that you have a very old spirit and you are not weak in anyway. Your only weakness is nothing but an imagination of an illusion placed before you by the technological world. You are of the wolf, my old friend, and you know our ways. You and I are one. Look within your spirit and feel the power flowing through your blood. The knowledge of ages courses through you as we speak. Reach in and take hold of it.” The old wolf turned and loped away. I quickly got to work and within a short time I had a very comfortable survival camp with fire, shelter, seats, water in bark containers and roots to eat. I was happy and thanked everything around me for its help. I realized my training was not a waste and Meechgalanne was right. Survival skills were the key to being able to comfortably live in the wild. Survival skills, awareness and belief in the sacred way of all life were all necessary.

Meechgalanne returned a while later with a big smile and said, “You have done well. You believed and so you were given the gifts you needed.”

I was so happy I had done the right thing. It made me proud when Meechgalanne complemented me for using what he had taught me.

Meechgalanne read my thoughts and said. “I have not taught you anything. Everything you will ever know in your life you have always known. I am just showing you how to find what you already have deep within so you can be who you truly are. ”

ART CREDITS: White Wolf Walking in Forest by Steve Somerville - available as greeting cards, etc. 

ho'oponopono on Texas wildfires - stifled passion leads to inner anger - prelude to courage - heart, coeur=temper, heart, innermost feelings

The small boy, about ten years old, is in the deep Appalachian woods with a Native American elder. It is evening, they are cooking two rabbits over a fire. The old man speaks:

"Take a look at the fire. Watch how it moves, how it dances in the air and across wood like a ghost. The four main elements exist in life and they are fire, water, air and earth. The fire is the purest of them all. It cannot be tainted; it cannot be polluted in any way. It is pure energy and so is held in high respect for its abilities in the aspects of purification. Fire is not that much different than us. It must breathe, it must feed and it is always moving. Without the breath of air it would suffocate. Without food to burn it would starve. And it has too much energy to remain still. Even a single flame upon the wick of a candle in a still room moves. Fire itself casts no shadow, because it is the light. Fire demands the utmost respect. It can be used to warm the home or burn it to the ground. Pay attention to the fire because your connection to it is strong. Pay attention to how it differs from the other elements." - from Ways of the Wild Institute founder White Wolf's memoir

I received his request and applied ho'oponopono from Joe Vitale (his nickname is Mr. Fire and his website, MrFire.com--you can't make this stuff up, as they say) but it took me about a day to receive enough clarity on my reactions to the wildfires in central Texas in order to clean within.  Joe Vitale was the second person ever in the same time frame in about 2003 to urge me to look into the mystery of ho'oponopono. I'd never hear of Joe Vitale nor Dr. Len before that point.

The wildfires in central Texas were out of control and burning down homes and scorching the lands. Could we pray, please?

Mr. Fire goes on to say that he feels that it represents an out-picturing of inner anger. Yes, I totally agree. I disagree with his next suggestion--which he says is serenity or peace.

Not that harmony is to be thrown out... just that's not the message I got. Check it out for yourself. Light a candle. Watch. Feel it. What does it say? Or if you're better with archetypes, look at the suit Wands in the Tarot? What is the sensation?

A few days later, Mr. Fire updates us on status publicly on his blog, "Almost instantly a friend who had been evacuated from his home due to the fires wrote to me saying the smokes seemed to clear, the power came back on, and he was told he could return home safely.

Friends of mine who were preparing to evacuate were told they were safe.

Then I looked at the news and saw that while the fires were still burning and there was no rain in sight, most of the larger fires around my area of Austin, Texas were either contained, put out, or greatly improved in containment.

That’s progress, but we’re not done.At last count, there were 180 wildfires in Texas.

The smoke from them could be seen from space." -- Joe Vitale, A Texas Wildfires Solution

That is soooo good to hear, but the work is not done if you are reading this September 12th or thereabouts.

My comment on that blog is shared below in case you any of it resonates for you and you also wish to apply ho'oponopono. It is well-worth contemplating, feeling the fire element within for your own self first.

"I am grateful that you reached out to your community on this. I did ho’oponopono and prayer work when I first received your email newsletter request.

When you mentioned wildfires in Texas as “contained” above, I must say a good part of me viscerally bristled at the suggestion. My whole upbringing consisted in being told to be obedient, and “containing” my fire.

Then I recalled something a mentor of mine told me a week before your prayer request (how quickly I forget): Stifled passion, sooner or later, ends up bursting out as anger.

I see that as the core message of the wildfires. It’s more about passion than peace. Be wild! Be fire! Blaze in all your glory! –or the will riots in a potentially destructive way as the will is enraged at being held down, dried and bound. God knows what happens when that spirit explodes. Homes are lost (homes reflect our self, or “being home for our own selves”) and trees burn down, land is parched. Sometimes lives are lost that didn’t escape before destruction engulfed them.

The message: If I don’t self-extinguish my flame, then the outer world is no longer bereft of my gift. And I don’t need feel or be explosive. I actually don’t feel THAT explosive at all; yet because of the email in my inbox, I took that as a personal call for cleaning… I explored it and, yes, I can consciously detect the seething and simmering anger at being denied to express creative will symbolized by the fire element.

I was flipping through a new (to me) magazine this morning while it rained outside (connecting with Texas again in prayer) my window called Ode Magazine which had an article on anger. The title of the article was, “Prelude to Courage,” (the word courage comes from ‘coeur’, French for “heart, innermost feelings, AND TEMPER”), and the illustrations in this article where all of the crackling bonfire variety.

So my final takeaway from all the cleaning, and visualizing rain is to allow our vital and prodigious passion to express. Thank you for the opportunity to perceive this message and participate with the clearing."

* * *

I found this excerpt also apropos:

"There is a saying, “Life is a journey, not a camp”. We are either moving forward or moving backwards, but we are never standing still. In the vast river of change we call life, any life form either moves with it, or is swept away to be replaced by another.

Lifeforms that consistently oppose life may, after many lifetimes, even lose the ability to incarnate into physicality at all. Lack of growth weakens the lifeforce at someone’s disposal. Without sufficient lifeforce and energy, the formation of a lower or physical body cannot take place. It requires an enormous amount of energy to create material form.

Because everything is in constant flux, balance cannot be stationary –- it has to consist of movement. Many light seekers think of balance as always living in serenity and peace no matter what occurs. What they fail to understand is that by refusing to embrace the dark, they call it forth. Anything that we deny the right to exist by failing to acknowledge its contribution within the cosmos, is strengthened either within us or within our environment.

We are the microcosm of the macrocosm, but the macrocosm is anything but peaceful and serene. Although some parts of it may be tranquil, it is also destructive and explosive and gloriously passionate. The only constant is the matrix; the underlying grand scheme that gives the overall purpose and the allotted time and space within which creational cycles play out.

As we enter God-consciousness, we see the big picture. Not until we re-enter the human condition do we pay attention to the stormy ups and downs of life. Even as we cry and laugh once more in the drama of human life, we still keep our inner focus on the big picture; the perfection of the divine plan. Like the cosmic matrix that underlies the passionate drama of the cosmos, this large inner perspective underlies the stormy changes in our lives. It provides stability within flow, measure within movement.

Keeping our eyes fixed on the perfection underlying appearances can be called the first half of balance. It is the masculine, positive polarity of balance. Learning to bring balance to the movement or flow of emotion is the second half of balance, the feminine, magnetic aspect. If we have expanded vision, without allowing the balanced interaction of emotion to occur, growth stops and we start to stagnate. When emotion is denied the right to exist, it eventually surfaces as jagged and disproportionate; in other words, out of balance."  -- excerpt from Almine's book, Journey to the Heart of God, http://diary.spiritualjourneys.com/life-is-not-a-camp

p.s. Particularly noticed the sentence on my second reading, "Anything that we deny the right to exist by failing to acknowledge its contribution within the cosmos, is strengthened either within us or within our environment. "

credits: Heart Fire USA postage stamp via Zazzle.com; image from role-playing game, role-playing game Deus Ex: Human Revolution

We are a walking mirror. - Don Jose Luis Ruiz, Toltec shaman

Recall that Ho'oponopono is a Hawaiian shamanic technique. Here, in this interview, Don Jose Luis  Ruiz (who is Don Miguel Ruiz' son) describes some shamanic beliefs that relate to Ho'oponoono as well.  I climbed up the Temple of the Sun (Teotihuacan, Mexico City) with Don Jose Ruiz in November 2003 (Don Miguel was there too).

We are clearing the mirror, and ho'oponopono is a technique for stalking the smudges in the mirror, so to speak. These smudges tend to take us (in my experience) through re-runs and loop-de-loops, rather than movement through evolutionary (and magical!) experiences.

Yet even that cleaning up is sort of a mirage effect, just to make our everyday lives dreamier and nicer than say, a nightmare--as no image in the mirror can mar or enhance the mirror Itself--which is actually what you are, a.k.a. the Dreamer. Recall when you sleep at night, you are also each of the dream figures, the dreamscape, the storyline, etc as it arises and falls away all in your Mind; although all being said most people prefer their dreaming, as non-real as it ultimately is, to not be an excrutiating, painful, hell-ride. 

This interview was conducted by Julia Griffen, and the entire interview (excerpt below) is here at The Spirit of Ma'at site:

Don José: Dreaming is a big Being, and we are married to Dreaming. All of life is a dream.

We are a walking mirror. God is a mirror — everything we think, feel, or believe is reflected back to us through this great mirror that is life.

The world is a mirror that reflects back to us all that we believe. The world does not create what we are experiencing. We do that. We create our beliefs, and the mirror of God reflects them back to us.

God can send us only love and beauty. We create the distortions in this mirror of our life that is so short — and so beautiful.

. . . .

Julia:   A shaman said that he used stalking in dreaming to find the weaknesses in his consciousness. How is the art of stalking used in Toltec dreaming?

Don José: Stalking is used in dreaming to find the mental and emotional images that prevent us from being free.

When we dream, we must learn to discover in our dreams the forms or energies that limit us. They may repeatedly take the same form, or they may take different forms. They may appear in many different dreams, or just one dream that reoccurs.

We must dream with the purpose of stalking, to try to stalk who is within ourselves and see what our beliefs are.

We primarily stalk two things in dreaming: thinking (what is in the head) and heartbreak.

By heartbreak, I mean the incredible pain we feel from the terrible things that have happened to us. When we feel the pain of heartbreak, we close off parts of ourselves. In some way, we stop living. If the same situation comes up again, we say, "Oh, no, I won't let myself be hurt again!"

But this is no way to live. Life is so short and so incredibly beautiful. It is such a gift. You must forgive yourself for experiencing heartbreak. You must love the heartbreak in your life, because it is part of living. Most importantly, you must create a better dream.

We also stalk to find the thoughts that keep us chained in "reality." These thoughts that we think so many times limit us. If we can identify these limiting thoughts, we can pull the energy back from their mental patterns and create anew.

It is so important to take back these lost energies and share with the world the gifts given to us from the angels and God. Heartbreak and limiting thoughts are like a cage. They keep us caged, imprisoned, in the three-dimensional world. The cage is created from the fear of being the Self, of being authentic.

Lies and fears about our Self are the forces that keep us in the cage — and they are not real. We must reclaim the key to our cage by pulling the energy back from our thoughts and our heartbreak. In this way, we become free.

Stalking in dreaming can be compared to opening gates. If a state of mind or heartbreak has been identified in dreaming, then we find the opening point of the wound, or the judgment, and we go in our memory to the point just before it occurred. When we remember the time before the memory occurred, we find a closing point for the wound — and then we go a little further back in time, so we can avoid returning to the wound.

Now we can see an entirely different world, or movie. We have created a better dream.

It is possible to use this technique to open a gate and see a different view.