wake-up time

I really get irritated when I walk into a store right behind another person, who does not notice me, does not look back, and does not hold the door for me, so that the door basically flies right in my face.  While it is necessary at times to turn inward to ground yourself, you miss what's going on around you when you walk around out of tune, or with music plucked into your ears - besides being an easy target for pickpockets. A few weeks ago I was awaiting the end of my daughter's dance lesson on the parking lot outside the studio and noticed a dad reading in his big car with the engine idling for the whole hour of the lesson - no awareness of the environmental implications.

We awake slowly, gradually, individually, to our own rhythm from this unconsciousness slumber. We all observe it in our own children when we see them growing up, first making the "I-am-connection," then becoming aware of their greater environment (my 12-year-old daughter asked the other day "Mom, what do we actually need Social Studies for when we grow up?  - so it takes some time), and then going out into the "real" world.  Walking through life awake, with open eyes and ears and mind, in tune with what's going on around, adds depth and complexity to your experience, but is also an indication of a deeper spiritual connection or awareness.

A few days ago I was giving my son one of his first driving lessons - in my very methodical and structured way - and then coached him along as he was slowly practicing.  Then he said something like "driving really requires concentration and all 'round awareness." 

Life does in general. When we blindly follow all those thoughts that race through our minds we live in our heads not at the wheel, or holding a door for the next person, or minding the environment and shutting the idling engine.  Being awake in the moment is where living happens.

Also take a look at some previous blogposts on mindfulness.

animal consciousness

I have always wanted to delve a bit deeper into the question of animal consciousness. The death of our dear cat Snowball a few weeks ago became the catalyst for it.  We all know the relationship between brain size and depth of consciousness, awareness and intelligence.  So it might seem that the larger the animal's brain, the deeper a relationship we can forge with it because of the animal's deeper awareness.  I did not experience an animal relationship until we got Snowball, our first cat (I grew up in city apartments with fish and hamsters - no deep relationship there).  He was white with a few well placed black spots, gentle and regal, and sociable to a point.  Sometimes, he would jump up on the bed to snuggle, but he was not a lap cat.   A few years later we adopted Mieze as a companion for him, our little black very assertive female tuxedo cat.  She talks a lot, while Snowball did not, she jumps on our laps, he did not, she'll wake us up in the morning by prancing around on the headboard and meowing by the side of the bed (not out of hunger, but for companionship).  She is very sprite, quick, and playful, a perfect hunter (she even caught bats on two occasions they made their way into the house), he lost a lot of his playfulness over the years.  I learned how individual animals' personalities are, and how they truly become a beloved family member.  Just like with my children, my nurturing gene kicked in, and I made sure the cats get the best holistic cat food and vet care and emotional nurturing.

Yet, René Descartes, the 17th century French philosopher, believed that animals were nothing more than mechanized, soulless, feelingless, rightless moving bodies we have dominion over - a prevailing understanding of his times.  And you wonder about many still prevailing animal practices like dog and cock and bull fights, raising animals for fur, CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations), selective breeding food animals so abnormally that they cannot function anymore  (chickens with breast so heavy they tip over, corn fed cows whose intestines scream because the diet is so unsuitable to their digestive systems, etc.).  We have come a long way, though, thanks to animal rights groups and wake-up calls that happen spontaneously when we look an animal in the eyes and see a soul or consciousness staring back at us with meaning.

Coming to the end of reading Cat Body, Cat Mind by vet Dr. Michael Fox, who obviously has a deeply spiritual understanding of life, I regret not having shown our Mieze the dead body of her companion Snowball.  Animals seem to understand the passing of close mates and companions, and need closure like we do.

Now we are working on integrating her new companion Peter Pepper into our household.  Fox says that it is important for animals to have a like companion so they always remember who they are.  We found Snowball on the side of the road when he was 4 or 5 weeks old, and we are not sure he ever totally understood how to act among cats.  Maybe he was always a bit more human than cat.

I am still intrigued and would like to learn more about this collective animal consciousness I read about, that bees or cats or cows are not as individuated as us humans, and are more a fragment of a larger encompassing cat consciousness, or bee consciousness, or cow consciousness.  It may shed some light on our own embeddedness in a larger collective human or universal consciousness, how inseparable we really are of the greater collective consciousness.

no man is an island

I just finished reading Emily Matchar's book Homeward Boundon the New Domesticity movement.  The book is about women (and some men) embracing home & hearth in a new cultural twist, about being tired of corporate pressure and the lack of the government's and the corporate world's response to women's (and men's) family needs here in this country, while European countries are introducing more and more of it (more guaranteed daycare spots, more maternity and paternity leave, more vacation time).  This movement also comprises the so called "preppers," who believe in taking things into their own hands in light of a perceived potential armageddon that the government is not prepared to manage, and become as self-sufficient as possible.  Some of that self-sufficiency drive is shining through in homesteaders who only trust the safety of their own vegetables, the quality of their own childcare and school instruction, etc.  (note that this lone-man-on-the-frontier and homesteading syndrome seems specific to this country because of its pioneering history).

In nature everything is intricately interconnected in the famous web Chief Seattle (supposedly) spoke about ("whatever you do the web you do to yourself").  When you remove elements of a system (eco or social), like removing a card from the middle of a house of cards, the system starts to crumble.

Since we are part of nature we also exist within an intricate web of relationships and associations.  By the way, the more meaningful our relationships, the richer our lives.  People with a large social network and strong relationships live longer.  When we opt out of the web some part of the web crumbles and weakens, and what we are able to accomplish diminishes.  Matchar makes this crucial point.  When people become so self-centered, as in if-public-education-crumbles-I'll-just-pay-for-private-school, or if-the-general-food-supply-is-unsafe-I'll-just-grow-my-own, or if-corporations-don't-give-a-damn-about family-life-I'll -just-quit, then we have a problem.   Then the country no longer pushes towards a common agenda that benefits all.  You may call me a socialist, but what is bad about jointly rooting for the highest good of all (as opposed to my own highest good)?  What is bad about making education accessible for all and increasing the level of intelligence and critical thinking of the entire population?  What is bad about pressuring the government to put proper food safety measures (including those against GMOs) in place?  It benefits all of us in the end.  We need to remain within the web and help to improve the entire web instead of jumping ship and going it alone.

"Ask not what this country can do for you, but what you can do for your country," as one famous president said not so long ago.   Please also take a look at a previous post on the people factor.

frequency, energy and the blessing of food

My son and I picked some things up at Walmart the other day, and he reflected that the "Walmart atmosphere" with its blue-grey color scheme surely has a negative influence on the employees' psyche (I agree, I'd much rather work at Target for its warm color scheme). The NY Times recently reported how we adapt our behavior according to whose company we are in - which means that we adopt and become part of the surrounding consciousness or frequency, that there is a fluid seamless interrelationship.  When I travel to France or Germany I put on my French or German culture hat, I become a lot more French or German than I am here at home in Warwick; when I am here, I am back to my (almost) American self (reminds me of mimikry in biology).

Masaru Emoto's astounding water experiments became known in the West through the 2004 movie "What the Bleep Do We Know?"   The thesis of this movie is the seamless interconnectedness of the physical and the spiritual, the influence of consciousness on the physical, and the far reaching consequences of this hypothesis (let's call it that, although I firmly believe in it).  Although not yet accepted by the scientific community (which in general doesn't yet accept that consciousness might influence matter, much less create matter), Emoto's research of several decades indicates that consciousness influences the molecular structure of water.  He maintains that we can improve the structure or frequency of water by taping a sign with a positive word to a water container or imbuing it frequentially with spoken words, such as saying out loud "love" or "gratitude."  Think about the benefits of a glass of water, if it had indeed absorbed such positive frequency, and think of the implications on the human body, which consists of between 50% and 65% of water.

Lastly, all of this reminds me of the religious custom of blessing food and drink, which would improve its frequency or energy, and therefore its beneficial influence on us.

death and wordlessness and the spiritual

Two days ago our dear sweet cat Snowball died and I explained to my daughter how much we look at death from our human perspective.  The regret and sadness and ensuing emotional heaviness in the chest all come from two things:  Our "word world," and a doubt that our existence could be more than just a once-and-never-again-opportunity to appear on earth, which of course causes a massive fear of death. Existing in a "word world" enables us to live with awareness of the past and projecting into the future, instead of living in the present, as animals do (and as we did pre-language).  We look back and remember, we compare it to the present loss, and translate it into future loss.  But the feeling of loss is one-sided because the transiting animal perceives the process totally differently.  Animals are different from us because of their present-oriented consciousness and inability to reflect (although meditation and mindfulness teach us to enjoy fleeting moments of being in the moment- also see previous post on "Now" and previous post on "wordlessness").

I recently read a very helpful description of an animal's death in Martha Beck's Finding Your Way In A Wild New World.  Beck reminds us that "...we suffer more from our thoughts about events than from the events themselves.  Detaching from our verbal thoughts eliminates almost all our psychological suffering."

Here is Beck's description of watching an antelope being killed by a leopard, how she connected with the animal and understood the death process on a different level:  "...The impala's always Wordless awareness is filled with shock and confusion, but absolutely none of the thought-based fears that make my own mortality so frightening to me.  I'm struck by the lack of resistant ideas, like 'This shouldn't be happening!' or 'I'm not ready to die!' or 'My loved ones will be devastated!'  There's just awareness of the strangeness of the situation and disorientation.  Then it feels for all the world as though the impala senses my compassion for it.  The animal seems very relieved to find someone caring about it, joining with it.  I project all the calm and peace I can.  Then I feel a gentle whoosh, and an incredibly sweet sensation of delicious, liberating expansion........Dropping back into language, I can clearly see that the leopard killed the impala.  Then I immediately find truth in the opposite statement: I could just as easily say the leopard 'lived' the impala, taking its stored physical energy into her own body.  Holding these opposites in my verbal mind, I feel language create a strange loop, pushing me beyond paradoxical belief structures and putting me smack-dab back into Wordlessness."

"Death is the stripping away of all that is not you.The secret of life is to 'die before you die' - and find that there is no death."

Eckhart Tolle

may God bless the whole world

I love the all-inclusive bumper sticker "May God Bless The Whole World," which some awakened people created in reaction to the restrictive "God Bless America" bumper sticker.  Not that I am against well wishes for this country, but I do not wish any other country any less than this one.  The problem is the distinction between "them" and "us," whereby "we" believe that we are more deserving than "they."  As long as we exclude others from our well wishes, as long as we think we are better or more deserving, as long as we think of ourselves in isolation, we have a problem. My teenage son ran in a Spartan Race this week-end.  It was hot, it was humid, it was long and difficult.  As a mother I was of course worrying and quietly asked "for the most benevolent outcome for his wellbeing and safety"  (see  Tom Moore's The Gentle Way for more on requesting positive outcomes).  He was running with three of his friends.  So then it occurred to me that I wanted of course all of them to be well and safe as well, and I quickly added my quiet request for that.   And then I thought "Gee, actually I would not want anyone in this whole race to be hurt, I really do want all racers to finish safely, and I added yet another qualifier to my "most benevolent outcome wish."

It is misinterpreted Darwinian thinking that one party has to lose for the other to win, or that there isn't enough wellbeing and goodness and abundance available for all of us.  Win-win for all!

pill or self-heal, or the power of beliefs

We used to believe, truly believe, that the earth is flat and that we would fall over the edge if we went too close.  We also believed, truly believed, that we were at the center of the universe.   Heck, we even burnt someone at the stake for saying otherwise.  We believe other things now, but they are as firmly embedded in our minds as those from earlier times we now call silly.  One of them concerns self-healing. We currently don't really believe that we can self-heal, or let's say that we only believe it under certain circumstances (which makes no sense; it either works, or it doesn't).  Usually we quickly run for outside help, doctors, pills, tests, and so forth.  But think about this:  When you have a cold and eat chicken soup or drink tea to feel better, you don't believe that the chicken soup or tea actually heals the cold.  You understand that you/your body heals the cold and the tea or soup simply helps. When you break a leg and get a cast you don't actually believe that the cast is what heals the bone, you do understand that you/your body heals the bone and the cast simply keeps the limb from moving to aid the body in the healing process.  Under those circumstances we all actually agree that we self-heal and that tea, chicken soup and cast are aids or props.   But the belief system is shaky because we still need an outside "expert" with "expert" methods to help us heal more "serious" ailments.  When we take pills or resort to various treatments, we believe all of a sudden that they actually caused the healing. (Yet, when the treatment doesn't work so well, as is often the case, then we are at a loss - but we wouldn't doubt or adjust our belief system).

You may have heard of voodoo deaths, whereby someone actually ends up dying from a combination of their own fear and the combined energy of the village community that does the condemning.  You may have read about the study on placebo knee surgery for arthritic patients, that ended up treating pain as well as actual surgery (!).  The fact is - our beliefs are enormously powerful!  And when we don't heal, it is usually because negative beliefs or residual trauma are in the way and counteract the process (there are a few exceptions, such as afflictions we are born with).  When they get cleared, the body can heal itself.  Check out the recent book Use Your Body to Heal Your Mind by psychologist Henry Grayson to explore this subject further.

CAM

CAM is short for "complementary and alternative medicine" and covers all healing modalities other than the Western allopathic model, or "conventional" medicine (at least for us). Western allopathic medicine is based on a mechanistic model of the human body, where the different body parts can be treated independently from one another by specialists (i.e. the heart by a cardiologist, the kidneys by a nephrologist, the feet by a podiatrist, the mind by a psychologist or psychiatrist).   Diagnosis is based on detailed examination of all visible parts of the physical body.  Treatments are geared towards eliminating or reducing symptoms; they are not geared towards healing the root cause of the matter, because that is not part of the belief system.  

Treatments range from cutting out diseased tissue, to injecting or administering substances that reverse the symptoms (but also usually have side effects - undesirable for the most part).  This is similar to bringing your car in for a check-up and having its oil and windshield wiper fluid checked and refilled, the tire pressure verified, and the spark plugs exchanged.

This model is successful in emergency medicine (accidents, broken limbs) and for acute illnesses, where no time is to be lost to save a life.   It is not so effective for afflictions that have a connection with the psyche (most of them) - did you ever consider that heart disease might have to do with matters of the heart (not the organ, but the emotional heart)?  Here, the model of one-standard-treatment-cures-all does not work so well, as we can see from the varying successes of treating cancer, heart disease, psychological and psychiatric disorders, diabetes, auto-immune diseases and on and on.

CAM works with a different model of the body.  In this model the body is more than a sum of its physical parts, it is a mind-body-spirit entity that exists in an energetic universe.  Some examples of CAM modalities are homeopathy, healing with herbs, acupuncture, reiki, Ayurveda, but also massage therapy, music therapy, yoga and meditation.    These methods all help to rebalance the underlying energy system of the body.  It has been said that about 85% of all illnesses are due to emotional imbalances, which means that the underlying emotional blockage or psychological conflict needs to be resolved to dissolve the physical symptom without reoccurrence.  It has already been acknowledged that lifestyle changes can do wonders - regular meditation reduces stress, a better diet and more exercise give you more energy, and less stress and more harmony in life are beneficial in general.  That's all spiritual stuff.  There is definitely more to our bodies than what we can see.

Please also read my older related post on Healing as a Balancing Act.

what's holistic anyway?

Some people who I have spoken to about Holistic Living think it just means eating your veggies and going to the gym, sort of just leading a pretty healthy life.  But it's more than that. The word "holistic" is a cross between "whole" and "holy." Why "whole?"  Or we could ask: what is not whole and needs to be put together again? Life consists of both the invisible and the visible, the spiritual and the material, soul/mind and body, thought and matter.  These last few centuries we have been living as if the spiritual or invisible part of life (our emotions, beliefs, feelings, spirituality) did not exist.  And we felt proud of it, proud of being "rational" and "analytical," proud of focusing on the "real" stuff we can see, touch, feel, smell and hear, not that wishy washy airy-fairy emotional stuff no one can see and that's not really "real."

Turns out, though, that that stuff we tended to push under the rug is pretty important.  Without it we mistreat and rape nature (because we think it's separate from us), we make war (because we think "they" are different from us), we don't vote (because we think it makes no difference), we treat animals worse than things (because we think they are not sentient beings), we buy as cheap as possible (because we don't think of the people behind the product, i.e. Bangladesh) - or maybe we don't even think at all.

Holistic means putting the two sides together again, the way they belong, the way they are, the way we forgot they always were.

spiritual farming

Huh, you might ask?  Yes, there is such a thing, and it is called biodynamic farming.  The Biodynamic Farming & Gardening Association’s website defines it as a “spiritual-ethical-ecological approach to agriculture, food production and nutrition.”  Fred Kirschenmann, author of Cultivating an Ecological Conscience, explained in his 2010 keynote address at the conference of the association, that the present big-ag paradigm of maximum efficiency is geared towards short-term gain, and is only possible through specialization and simplification (the small picture, immediate gratification).  However, he says, farms need to be run more like organisms (the Gaia principle), in sync with nature.

We need a new agricultural paradigm, what with the bees dying, crop varieties diminishing (Tom Standage reports that “of the 7,100 types of apple (!!!) that were being grown in America in the 19th century…6,800 are now extinct.”  WOW!), monocultures that discourage insect and bird variety and promote disease, and GMOs and pesticides as misguided solutions to increasing production with short-minded profit in mind.  While there is so much more to say about the deficiencies of the present paradigm, I’d rather look towards the future and better solutions.

Organic agriculture, sustainable agriculture,permaculture, and biodynamics are all promising alternatives, of which the first is the most profit and least nature oriented (yep).  The term permaculture comes from the contraction of permanent and culture and agriculture (there is indeed no culture without agriculture).  Permaculture is a completely sustainable agri/culture practiced in symbiosis with local nature and without waste.  Biodynamics incorporates more lofty principles.  Just like permaculture it works with the farm in a symbiotic wasteless cyclical organism-like relationship.  In addition, though, it takes into account our embeddedness in the larger cosmic picture, and considers the planetary influences on seeds, crops and soil, and works with “homeopathic” soil enhancements since the health of the soil is first and foremost in growing minerally rich produce, the ultimate aim of agriculture.

healthy soil = healthy food = healthy body