Happy Mother’s Day to all Mothers!

This weekend my local community held some fabulous street theater reenacting women’s fight for the right to vote, ratified in the US in 1919 and my town’s first all women council and mayor.

Suffragist’s March in Langley, WA

I Love Langley Facebook page

Half a world away, some powerful messages about women struggling between humanity’s highest good and present reality:

Most of us are only a few degrees from living a rich life.

I woke up one morning recently to discover I DO lead a rich life and am happy!  The past few weeks and months, small shifts– a matter of degrees– made a huge impact in my awareness of life’s riches and my connection to them.

The shift started last year with lots of visioning and intention setting about a life I wanted to lead, and the protractor of my life moved a few degrees in December when immediate family members supported me with brainstorming session and small commitments of funds to nudge me toward some breathing room.

Then came a transition to self-employment and higher wage contracts, discovering a rewarding program in Ecopsychology I can afford and manage one class at a time, a gift of an entry fee for a women’s choir that allowed me to find my voice for the first time, and ability to pay for daughter’s enrichment activities– and suddenly my life had moved a few degrees toward richness in many realms.

Thanks to a homework project I shared with my daughter based on one of the exercises in Michael Cohen’s book, Reconnecting With Nature, her enthusiasm led to me being able to lead these activities in a pilot project with two middle school science classes next week!  It remains to be seen if someone without a teaching degree but simply blind enthusiasm can manage this task.  Stay tuned.

Here is the workshop write-up:

Class Title:  “Naturography – Let Nature Teach”

Introduction:  Come learn about yourself by reconnecting to the natural world using the Natural Systems Thinking Process. See what happens when you learn to think like nature.

Curriculum:

Q:  Have you ever had a positive experience in nature?  What did you feel?

Q:  Can anyone think of a way we are connected to nature every moment?

Each student will be handed a journal.  The class will be divided into 4 activity groups and progress through activities #3, #4, #8, and #9 from Reconnecting With Nature (p.28, 33, 74, 88).  Due to possible safety concerns for the “blinded” activity, those who want to defer activity #4 may move to another group, as this activity will only be done with partners who commit to safety.

~ ~ ~

Over the past few weeks:

1) My daughter completed 6 fabulous performances of “The Little Prince” at our wonderful children’s theater:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?eature=player_detailpage&v=Fw_TofBrmDw

She was part of a movement ensemble that created sunsets, windstorms, baobabs, roses– basically a human set.  Having seen the production several times, I can say it was inspiring to see these kids do such a beautiful job!

2) The choir I am part of (Chanteuse) held 2 performances in Oak Harbor and Langley, and I survived wearing nylons and a dress shirt for the first time in 15 years and commuting with a “clown car” of 5 women of a certain age in a Prius.  It was a blast!

3) I accompanied piano for a solo & ensemble workshop for the first time since I was in high school, while my daughter performed 4 pieces on saxophone.  Amazing motivated middle school musicians abound!  Who knew Mozart could be arranged for alto sax?

~ ~ ~

In all this richness, it occurs to me how I have in the past postponed embracing the things I want in life due to waiting for some magical moment when everything would just “fall into place.”  I have been single a long time and finally deeply get this is only one piece of life.  Being one of those rare children of an intact family, I had few models for how to do my own path well.  How many women (and men) hold off living the life they want, waiting for some perfect relationship, some perfect support system?

Well, I am now done with waiting and planning to live the fullest life I can, partnered or not.  In fact, I now am able to see solo time as a blessing that allows one the increasingly rare commodity of time (America’s Real Deficit Crisis) in order to figure out what a person wants in their life and how to go about finding the places where their energies can most benefit the world.

As the Fox told the Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry):  Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

I just finished reading Dr. Eben Alexander’s book “Proof of Heaven,” and am thrilled there is a reputable scientist with courage to push the boundaries of what science thinks is possible.  Frontier science it is.   It is my understanding that the original title of his book was to be something about “consciousness” but publishers landed on “heaven” knowing that concept is familiar to all.  As someone who is highly spiritual yet not following any single religion, I was a bit put off by the title.

Regardless of your background, you can benefit from reading the remarkable medical and transcendent story of a critically ill man who survived.

Anyone can go to his new nonprofit organization to find out more information and support for their own experiences with expanded consciousness that are as yet disregarded by many scientists as “kooky” or impossible to explain:

Eternea.org

The Seven Postulates dovetail with what I am learning firsthand in my reconnection to nature experiences through my degree program in ecopsychology and provide an added dimension for my focus.   So many thesis possibilities. . . I feel like I need a Wheel of Fortune game for thesis projects.

Common ground revelations are that life can be a magical interaction with all surrounding webstrings that connect us, and that antidotes for almost all that ail us are found in reconnection to the natural world of which we are a part.

In addition to the tragedy in Boston, news of several sudden passings have reached me this week, so I am posting a great resource for grief and loss that came my way:

Golden Willow Retreat: A Sanctuary for Grief and Loss.

Here is a mandala to be used as a visual prayer wheel to send Love to anyone.  Click on the image to be taken to the artists’ website.

Over recent weeks, I have had several opportunities to be reminded that being in the right place is a gift.  I used to think of being in the “right place at the right time” as describing some sort of windfall or opportunity that falls in one’s lap.  Lately, I have been in the right place, and it feels like the right purpose for being alive.

1)  I pulled into a huge parking lot at a park to take children to play there, when the only other vehicle driver parked in the lot needed a cable jump for his battery.  Thing was, this individual drove a van for his job that supports all transit buses in my county when they fail.  Apparently, I arrived at the moment his own vehicle failed despite being regularly maintained to help other failing vehicles.

2)  I was hiking alone in my favorite place and ended up being able to help 8 “lost” people by showing them a shortcut and taking one family member back to their campground to get the family’s van and sustenance after they had hiked for 6 hours without water.

3)  Lastly, while this does not help anyone, I was in the right place to “win” a game played with my daughter at Easter that could easily be called an “intuition game” you can try with friends/family.  It is a testament to nonverbal communication, and whatever was happening between me and my daughter worked that day!

Here’s how you play the game of Tip!:

• You place a few handfuls (50+) of jelly beans (or any small item) on a table.
• One person in a group volunteers to be a “chooser,” and one a “picker.”
• The “chooser” chooses a single bean and points to it for everyone in the group to see, while the “picker” closes their eyes.
• The “picker” opens their eyes after given the okay, and all watch in silence as that person starts picking one bean at a time and drawing it to them.
• When the picker touches the bean that had been chosen by the “chooser,” everyone in the group shouts “TIP!” at them.

When my daughter and I played these roles in 2 rounds, the first bean I touched was the Tip! bean she had chosen, and the next round I won by getting all the beans down to the last that was the chosen one.  So no one had to yell at me (whew!).  We beat a family record on 2 accounts that day. . .

Below is an excerpt from my organic psychology course work that describes the “lost tribe” (ha!) event:

I went to my favorite place to heal– a bluff trail of about 7 miles that loops high above the ocean, down along the beach, and across farmland thanks to a generous farmer who allows the public to skirt his property for trail access.  Fortunate for me, I was there mid-day when hawks were circling.  I have always felt a strong connection to hawks and could watch them fly all day.  If they hover near me on the bluff, I feel they are observing me as I observe them– a two-way nonverbal communication.  One flew up to my level on the bluff and looked straight at me before everything below happened.  The sun was out and about 60 degrees, with hardly any trace of the spring snowstorm the week prior, other than a few strands of unmelted snow deep in the cool wild grasses alongside the trail.  

I sat down at the top of the bluff about 3 miles in to meditate a bit before proceeding down to the beach, and a family of 8 people encountered me.  They were visiting from Canada, had been walking for 4 hours from a campsite North of where we were, had no water with them, and were looking for a quicker way to return than from where they had started.  Basically they felt lost, tired, and thirsty.  As luck (or nature) would have it, I was in the right place at the right time to be able to provide them assistance.  I showed them a shortcut along the lagoons near the beach (easier walking on packed muddy earth than rocky beach), and took the dad of the family back to my parked car above the farmland a few miles.  During the walk with his twin 20-something daughters as we exchanged information, I was able to even mention the study of ecopsychology and my desire to lead or teach small groups of people.  After I drove him back to his van parked at the campsite so he could return to his family with water and sustenance, he shook my hand and said he was extremely grateful for the help.

This whole experience felt like an encouragement from nature, that I can actually have something to offer others if I continue on this path listening to my heart in nature.  Normally I tend to walk alone everywhere since I have severe allergies to dogs so cannot have a four-legged companion, and enjoy being alone in nature.  This time, it was as if I was being led to lead others in the way that I dream about someday having the confidence to do.  I felt empowered and realized being in “the right place,” which I have often thought about as when something good falls in one’s lap, can be equally as right when able to meet the needs of others.  My knowledge of the natural area I love (that loves me back) allowed that to happen.  

(Pic from a block away from me in spring 2011. . . stay tuned for this year’s lambs)

Last year I visualized change and abundance for myself.  Then I gave up, thinking all this spiritual mumbo jumbo is nice on paper but not observable in my reality.  No change was happening.  Oh how wrong I was!  Something definitely happened that I can choose to connect to months of visualizing abundance and greater satisfaction with my life or call a random roll of the dice.  I choose to connect it to all the groundwork in spirit.

Inspiration, aspiration, respiration, expiration all have the same root “spirare” (breath) and connect to the word Spirit in English.

Some of the changes in my life over the past few months include:  Going from a job in which I felt watched constantly and needed to work 60 hours/week in order to pay basic bills, to being self-employed and showered with more accounts than I can take, all offering me a third to double my prior income with giganto corporation.

By the way, “corporation” years ago meant “people united in a body for some purpose,” but my years of experience in the left big toe of one left me with a metaphor of a body whose appendages are suffering from gangrene because the  head and mouth is taking all the blood supply to feed itself.   Not only that, but the eyes constantly scan the appendages to make sure they get just enough blood flow to remain alive so the body can move, but not enough to be healthy.

Other changes for me are reconnection to music because I have funding and time to attend community concerts and be in a choir.  Then there is my discovery of the field of ecopsychology, the wonderful online class I am taking, and all the potential it holds for me to fill my spirit and direct my life path in nature’s direction.

My 25th college reunion is on the horizon in a few months, which I will be attending with the two 12-year-olds in my life, as they are ripe for seeing a college campus and enjoying a few days with the person in their life voted “most likely to take us outdoors.”  It is no accident that my school’s “College Outdoors” program was my favorite part of my education.

I’m not sure what to expect from a 25th reunion, as I have not kept in touch with many folks, and the ones I remember will probably be met with a clean slate, as a 40-something self and a 20-something self are different entities.  In fact, one person on the reunion committee called me encouraging me to register because she said “I remember exactly who you are!”  Oh really?  ”You are blond, very athletic, and very outgoing.”  Ummm. . . Strike 3?  Chances are I will go into the reunion as invisible as I felt in my 20s when I held a 30-hour a week work study job delivering mail to the entire campus and wrote poems in the campus literary journal.  Invisible is my thing.  And that’s okay.  I don’t need fanfare to be happy in this life.

A few snippets since the last blog:

“Mom, call me at 3:13 so I can do a dance at 3:14.”  What??  ”It’s International Pi(e) Day!”  Oh. . . it took me a moment to place this in context of a Math Olympiad child.  Pi, not Pie.   I was picturing some blackberry pie dance she created with a friend.

Then, there’s the fact she will be representing her school at the statewide Geography Bee. . . a gathering of 100 students from 4th to 8th grade sponsored by National Geographic on April 5.  Eight rounds of competition lead to the final 10 students, and then a single winner from each state go to the national competition in D.C.  Luck of the question draw (and possibly spirit guidance) to make it past a few rounds, but we are studying world geography for a few weeks as if it matters.  No matter how each child places, they are probably teaching the adults in their lives more than they ever sought to know on their own.   And that’s what’s best about being a parent.

If you want the best Spirit $10 can buy, check out this e-book:  Peace Codes (Mandalas from Nature).  I love this couple’s work and find it inspirational.  It is hard for me to describe the almost physical effect I have from viewing the   sacred geometry I barely understand and their blending of green earth and space elements.

We are all programmed from birth with all we need to connect to the Earth and our natural home in a sensory way.  In order to become “civilized” (educated, earn a living), it is understandable many of us lose our conscious awareness of these senses, yet they are always there to be reconnected.  No experience can replace this direct sensory relationship we have with our environment – not a movie about a natural environment or a book.

What I love about studying Michael Cohen’s writings and taking Ecopsychology Orientation is that it allows me to label concepts that are nonverbal.  My favorite word of his is Webstrings.  Webstrings are the attractions that exist between us and Earth/Nature and Nature and us, and the entire system of attractions that exist within Nature.

Ever since introduced to the webstring concept, I have been experiencing everything I encounter, especially in a natural environment, in a refreshing way.  It makes me feel more connected to understand that my natural attractions to a certain tree, a certain bird, a certain color, a certain leaf originate from my core in communication with it all.

In fact, Dr. Cohen does not state this, but webstrings parallel exactly what I understand physicists to say about the nature of matter – that the majority of matter (over 80%) is energy or “dark matter” and it is the attractions between particles that hold all the matter together.  Sorry for that explanation, but I am not a physicist.

Here are a few exercises I am borrowing from Michael Cohen’s work that anyone can do to enhance their awareness of webstrings:

1)  Before you go to a natural area you find attractive (woods, beach, even a potted plant will do in a pinch), spend 15-30 seconds asking its permission to go there and communicate nonverbally that you want to learn something from it.  Here is a bit of my journal from this exercise:

I find asking permission allows me to experience myself as no more than or less than anything around me, vibrating with all, as if we are one instrument.  I asked before I entered a thick wooded area and soon a bird call caught my attention.  It must have been a warning of my presence, because suddenly a huge flock of small birds lifted off from the tree tops.  This brought my attention upward to the lattice of leafless branches above me forming a black net against the gray sky. 

I realized how rarely I look up while hiking/walking, and felt the expansive network of trees communicating.  As I continued to walk, I experienced cedar, alder, fir trees as wise companions, many of them older than me, standing witness to earth time.  I came away with the sense  they had much to teach me.  I trust this “knowing” as much as I trust any other source of knowledge.

2)  Take 5 minutes with a partner (or alone if you feel safe) and go to a natural area with your eyes closed.  You are to be guided by the partner to touch and sense anything in the natural world, other than visually or verbally.  I am experimenting with this with my daughter, who said “I’ll do this exercise with you, but just don’t ask a group of middle school students to do it– they’ll ram you into trees.”   Which brings me to one of the most important parts of this exercise– you have to have assurances of safety and trust you can be safely led.   Point being nature communicates nonverbally, and our verbal reasoning sometimes shields us from our conscious awareness of webstrings.

3)  Take 5 similar sticks or stones and place them on the ground.  Take a pencil with you and mark one of the sticks or stones.  Then close your eyes and try to identify the one you marked without looking.

Here’s the difference between language experience of webstrings and sensory consciousness:

“Aristotle thought there were eight legs on a fly and wrote it down.  For centuries scholars were content to quote his authority.  Apparently, not one of them was curious enough to impale a fly and count its six legs.”

~ Stuart Chase

Below you will find a fascinating 20-minute video about the importance of nature-connected consciousness in the science of Biomimicry (developing solutions to human problems by thinking like nature).

In my little corner of the universe, things have been going so well, I have been hesitant to write about them.  Like if I do put anything into words, the good juju will evaporate.

Over the past week our Earth was visited by a powerful chunk of debris from the darkness across the Thin Blue Line.  Anything could happen.  So maybe I should write.

I’m all about experiencing Earth as a wise organism lately with my studies in ecopsychology, and watching this amazing program full of new data left me with fresh awe:   Nova – Earth From Space

So. . . in the past few weeks I have left a job that had become like a paranoia machine with a time sheet that tracks my hands on keyboard, and got a new job that treats me like a human instead of a number for double the pay!  I renewed my business license for Speedyfingers Typing and Transcription and am henceforth working for myself.  Hallelujah!

Let’s see, what else?  Oh yes, I started singing in a women’s choir (with most women 20+ years my senior helping me feel oh so young), and it has been great fun to discover I have a voice.  Let me rephrase that.  I can read music.  The notes I read on the page are mostly not the ones that arise from my vocal cords, but nonetheless I get to actually hear my voice emerge after doing a job that requires 100% listening 8-10 hours each day.

Then. . . I have the best homework in the world!!  Aside from working 60 hours/week for 2 weeks while transitioning jobs, February has been all about  my online ecopsychology class where my homework is to reconnect with nature and journal about it with like-minded folks from around the world.

Now, somewhere between all this good has been coping with squirrels in my roof and a house-fly infestation of huge proportions (down to a single fly now), and all I can think is I must have been focusing so hard on wanting to be outside that the outside critters are coming in.

Next on my scheming of goodness is how to fund a master’s degree in ecopsychology and step away from the computer eventually to do paid work in the great outdoors.  But working for myself is an intermediate step that leaves me feeling I’m free!  I’m free!   Someday, maybe we’ll have the freedom from money thing worked out (Money and Life) and we can all live the way we are optimally human.  One project in the dream works is 30 days away from the computer to walk 10 miles a day and document what its effects are on my person.  A wee bit more realistic than my dream of taking a year to walk across the entire country.

Oh, and one last thing.  I finally figured out how to delete my Facebook account after not using it much for 2 years and am happy to take one more small step toward processing life a little less connected to all the noise. . .  Somehow everything feels a bit more like nature intended to step away from it all and process things apart from everyone’s fishbowl.  Here’s another person’s take on the process:   Life Without Facebook.

Whether you choose to stay virtually socially connected or directly socially connected, or both, here’s to goodness in your corner of the universe.

It’s been 17 days since my last blog post, an unusual state of wordlessness.  Thanks to a gift from family, I was able to attend a beautiful weekend workshop guided by this team:

Threshold Arts

I came away from this break from my usual weekend work into immersion in techniques of wordlessness (music, drawing, Qijong, group and partnered listening), with a sense of grounded hope.  It was one of those amazingly random groups of people gathered in the same moment in space and time that seemed to have overlapping life experiences and backgrounds.  My experience was of no single dominant player in the group, and this allowed us to form fairly quickly into a resonant unit.  There was talk among several participants of forming a quarterly gathering, and I hope that happens, as that kind of support around shared vulnerability is few and far between in my life.

All of us face many threshold experiences in life, with the ultimate one being the final transition of our body.

I learned there are things we can do to prepare for thresholds, and that willing them alone rarely works.  Inviting others to join us is one major aspect,  another is information gathering, and reflection on understanding what is ending and what is trying to be born.

The personal threshold of my current focus is shifting careers from something that no longer serves me in many ways to something that engages me joyfully.  Following ones joy feels to me the hardest thing in life to do.  Yet it is imperative to the soul.

Because I know I am happiest, most supported spiritually, and most engaged physically when in the natural world, I know it would be healthiest for me to head toward a livelihood inside that connection.   As a step toward that threshold, I am studying the life’s work model of Michael J. Cohen’s Natural Attraction Ecology.

Will it be possible for me to:

1)  Provide service to others,

2)  Earn a living outdoors,

3)  Set my own hours,

4)  Pay my bills?

I have to surrender the answer to the great unknown for now, because I do not know what is possible.  I only know I can take baby steps toward that reality for now by seeking folks willing to be “guinea pigs” as I study and practice techniques, continue to do my current job as a baseline until something shifts, and make sure I carve foundational daily time outside.

I believe our connection to the natural world is innate and essential to our well-being, but I wonder why some of us feel this connection as both transcendent and basic as breathing or drinking water, while others barely seem to notice?