All's Well In The World

New Moon, New Season

The new moon in Pisces has aligned with the Equinox for some added zing to our spring. Tomorrow is a day of perfect balance and then a move toward light.  The energy of  the growing season is upon us.  What will you plant to grow in your garden?  The new moon in Pisces is about imagination, inner happiness, psychic sensitivity, mystic awareness, states of joy and compassion.  Good fertilizer!

Shiva Rea says:  "Bless your home, your body, and the emerging light.
Make space internally and all around you for new life to awaken."

                                          

                          Happy Spring!

Living Like A Lotus

Sometimes its all so muddy and messy and dirty and stinky I can't stand it.  Then I am reminded to live like the lotus.  This is the key symbol for the spiritual aspirant.  The lotus flower has its roots in the muddy waters but it blooms above, untouched by the murky waters below.   

 

Something has shifted inside me since our weekend with Richard Miller in his yoga nidra training.  Just a couple days before I had been feeling decimated by issues of global poverty, war and over consumption.  What I learned in this weekend training -or rather had an experience of, was that I was fused with the perception.  We have experiences and perceptions and feelings.  This is the stuff of humanity.  Yoga nidra and other yogic practices teach us -scientifically - to pull back the focus on our lens so we are not so tightly gripped by our circumstances and all the waves that flow through our lives; fear, hunger, craving, sluggishness, confusion, anger, images, words, feelings, sounds, thoughts.  The practice is like a big floaty toy.  Instead of being tossed up and down, to and fro by every wave that comes along, spittering and spattering as it all splashes in our face, we begin to rise above the tumult.

In the practice of yoga nidra, we don't push away the experiences, perceptions and feelings but instead welcome them in for tea and cookies.  Once we welcome in the sensation, we can observe it and welcome in its opposite.  The mind can't hold the two opposites - hot and cold for example - so it at some point dissolves into the radiant sensation of the body and we can hold both fear and joy, confusion and clarity, hot and cold in the spacious awareness of our Beingness.   We don't fuse any more.  Can you imagine?  Someone yells, but not at you.  From spaciousness we welcome  in their anger, ask them more about it and allow a space for it to dissipate.  How does that work for world hunger?  I'm not sure yet but this is my project.

It all equals life. The lotus flower wouldn't bloom at all if it weren't for the muddy water and we're all one lotus flower.  We grow up through the muddy waters together and unfold as one beautiful flower.  I don't surface until you do.  This is why the practice is to ungrip ourselves and then work tirelessly to support others in ungripping themselves. It becomes impossible to turn our backs on anyone's suffering as soon as we see it as inextricably linked to our own. I guess this is how it works for world hunger.  When we all get shaken a bit loose from our grip on this illusion of separateness, a natural compassion arrises and it becomes easy to make choices that are sustainable and humane.

As a kid, I spent much of my life in water.  I loved to drop things to the bottom and dive down to pick them up.  I loved to then swim towards the surface with my eyes open as the light expanded and all the shapes would become more and more clear until I broke the surface of the water. That's us now and we are about to bloom.

Miracle Jewel Poem

MIRACLE

Listen.

Do you hear it?
I do.
I can feel it.
I expect a miracle is coming.
It has set loose this restlessness
inside of me.

Expect it.
Dream about it.
Give birth to it in your being.
Know!  Something good
is coming down the line.
Finding its way to you.

                   -Jewel

Are You In Your Right Mind?

Please take a moment to read this very interesting article.  This was written by Bob, someone I was chatting with at the Peace Alliance conference who happens to live in Rogers  Park!  Now he sends me his articles and this one is the best so far.  Being left handed and thus more right brain dominant, gives it special personal appeal.  ; - )

ROBERT C. KOEHLER

For release 3/15/07

HEMORRHAGING NIRVANA

By Robert C. Koehler

Tribune Media Services

“Oh my gosh, I’m having a stroke! I’m having a stroke! And in the next instant, the thought flashed through my mind, this is so cool!”

You want a guided tour of the human brain? My guess is that you probably can’t do better than “My Stroke of Insight,” Harvard-trained neuroanatomist Jill Taylor’s extraordinary account of the cranial hemorrhage that shut down her left brain when she was 37 years old. But the book’s value — its preciousness — lies less in the plain-language, enthusiastic science it offers us, than in the door it courageously opens to the mystery of the brain’s right hemisphere and beyond . . . to the pulsing miracle of life and the vast universe that is our home.

One morning in late 1996, Taylor, a research scientist who worked at the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center (a.k.a., the Brain Bank), awoke with a sharp pain behind her left eye, and soon enough — as her speech and motor functions failed her, as she melted into what she called a euphoric stupor and lost all sense of where “Dr. Jill” ended and the rest of the universe began — she realized this was no ordinary headache. It was, she later learned, a blown AVM: the rupture of a congenitally deformed vein-artery connection deep inside her brain. She was in the first stage of a potentially killer stroke — and she was alone in her apartment and had lost the capacity to think or act rationally or even communicate with the outside world.

Part of the joy of this book (to order, visit drjilltaylor.com) is that nothing unfolds the way you’d expect. Taylor’s story at its darkest courses with gratitude and humor and, most of all, amazement, as she recounts what happened to her with Ph.D.-level clarity and awareness of detail combined with childlike exuberance. The sudden loss of her left-brain organizational and self-defining capabilities was not, for instance, terrifying. Life-threatening though her predicament was, Taylor saw her stroke as a gift of unparalleled awareness: the shattering of the self-created box we live in that we call “life.”

“When the shower droplets beat into my chest like little bullets, I was harshly startled back into . . . reality,” she writes of that first morning. “As I held my hands up in front of my face and wiggled my fingers, I was simultaneously perplexed and intrigued.

“Wow, what a strange and amazing thing I am. What a bizarre living being I am. Life! I am life! I am a sea of water bound inside this membranous pouch. Here, in this form, I am a conscious mind and this body is the vehicle through which I am ALIVE! I am trillions of cells sharing a common mind. I am here, now, thriving as life. Wow! What an unfathomable concept! I am cellular life, no — I am molecular life with manual dexterity and a cognitive mind!”

Taylor’s book accomplishes quite a few important things in a fairly short space. It tells a fascinating story that begins with how she orchestrated her rescue that morning even as “my earthly body dissolved and I melted into the universe,” and proceeds through brain surgery and eight years of slow recovery of her left-brain functions (for instance, she had to learn to read all over again, beginning with the preschool-level “The Puppy Who Wanted a Boy”); it bursts with hope for everyone who is brain-injured (not just stroke patients but accident victims and thousands of Iraq war vets); and it gives medical practitioners clear, no-nonsense information about the shortcomings of conventional treatment and attitudes toward the brain-injured: “I needed people to come close and not be afraid of me.”

But to my mind, what makes “My Stroke of Insight” not just valuable but invaluable — a gift to every spiritual seeker and peace activist — is what I would describe as Taylor’s fearless mapping of the physiology of compassion, the physiology of Nirvana.

This book is about the wonder of being human and as such is a plea and a prayer that we strive to be equal to how big we really are. What a piece of work is man — 5 trillion cells functioning in purposeful harmony. The two hemispheres of our brain are yoked opposites: limit-setting rationality (time, judgment, ego) in perpetual interplay with the eternal and unbounded now. Together, and only together, do these two halves of our awareness make our human destiny.

A healthy person, and a healthy society, honor and live more or less equally out of both halves of the brain. When I asked Taylor how she’d describe our current state of societal balance, she said: 85-15. “We don’t just not engage the skills of the right hemisphere, we mock them!”

That is to say, we live and we strangle each other in our left-brain ego-boxes, refusing to trust or even acknowledge that a different kind of world is possible. Here’s how Taylor puts it: “I realized that the blessing I had received from this experience was the knowledge that deep internal peace is accessible to anyone at any time. . . . My stroke of insight would be: Peace is only a thought away, and all we have to do to access it is silence the voice of our dominating left mind.”

Flexitarianism!

Now that I have gotten myself over my initial irritation with people who say they are vegetarians and then go on to list exceptions including fish and chicken I can now chuckle when I hear comments like, "I am a convenient vegetarian" whilst this person orders a shrimp dish at a Chinese restaurant.

One time I even heard a girl declaring herself a vegetarian saying she didn't eat beef but she did eat pork!  It was cute, like she was attaching herself to a trend or a style rather than an ethic or health choice.

I'm not sure why this has bothered me 'cause who really cares?  I guess because the reason for being a "vegetarian" is often for ecological and ethical reasons and any life taken for food is considered himsa (violence).  So when people say they are vegetarian but still eat flesh, I wonder why they just don't say, "I eat a whole food, plant based diet" or something like that?

It's perplexing. When asked about my eating habits have taken to saying, I am a "Miratarian."  I just eat what I eat for the reasons of my choosing.  It's not so cut and dried.  I consume very small quantities of dairy products compared with the average American but I am not vegan.   I will occasionally eat an egg so I am not even a vegetarian, but why must we label ourselves by our food preferences?

Then today, I came across this oh-so-very-American-I-did-it-my-way phrase, "Flexitarian!"  Perfect!  This is was the comment -  "Lacto-ovo vegetarian? Forget the old rules: flexitarianism lets you choose where to draw the line."   Ironically, it is from Plenty Magazine...

Whew!  No more confusion.  No more irritation or little white lies.  Flexitarian includes everyone...except the 850 million malnourished people in the world who don't get to choose where to draw the line.  The world hunger site reports that children are the most visible victims of malnutrition. Malnutrition plays a role in at least half of the 10.9 million child deaths each year--five million deaths.

“Far from decreasing, the number of hungry people in the world is currently increasing – at the rate of four million a year,” reported Dr Diouf, speaking in Rome in October 2006 at the launch of the annual FAO report, The State of Food Insecurity in the World, or SOFI.

Oddly -bizarrely- with 850 MILLION malnourished people in the world, obesity is on the rise at an alarming rate.

In a August 2006 BBC article, Professor Popkin, from the University of North Carolina, said that... obesity was rapidly spreading....  The report stated that there are now more overweight people across the world than hungry ones, according to experts.

Professor Popkin had the clever suggestion that food prices could be used to manipulate people's diets and tilt them towards healthier options.

"For instance, if we charge money for every calorie of soft drink and fruit drink that was consumed, people would consume less of it. "If we subsidies fruit and vegetable production, people would consume more of it and we would have a healthier diet."

Well, money does talk.  Currently it seems to completely possess us and enslave us and make us completely bereft of rational thinking skills.

What if, instead of labeling ourselves based on our food choices we did something a little more radical?  What if we all called ourselves, instead of carnivores or omnivores or vegetarians or flexitarians, we all called ourselves....humanitarians?  radical, I know.

Honestly, who thinks of the humanitarian implications of their food choices?  More and more of us do I dare say.  There is a very large food revolution going on towards local family farms, toward organic, toward sustainability.  An article in Conscious Choice this month talks about knowing where food comes from and who produced it.  Can you trace the history of your food?  What a fun way to shop with kids. It would be like a cool treasure hunt, a mystery unfolding -find the source of this item!

This is where money really can talk. Simply, so very simply, we just stop purchasing items that have an unknown story.  This may pose a bit of a challenge at first but as with all interesting endeavors, with a little practice, it becomes a part of our way of being with the world.  Very humane.  The simple act of buying locally can free up food in other parts of the world.  Farm subsidies in this country, largely for factory farms, makes an African farmer's crop undervalued.

I would be happy to jump in my canoe and paddle out into Lake Michigan right here across the street and catch myself a big salmon (is there salmon in Lake Michigan?).  I would be happy to take on the energies of a salmon -strong swimmer, beautiful pink flesh.  I just can't participate in the process by which a salmon at a good restaurant in Chicago has arrived on my plate.  What about everything else I  eat?  Where did the Gruyere cheese on my vegetable croque monsieur I ate for lunch today come from?  I don't know.  And it probably wouldn't fit in with my criteria for being a humanitarian eater.  But here is where I begin, meal by meal.  That is why I came up with this Miratarian.  Everyday is a whole new set of choices.  I just do the best I can in each moment.  Some days are better than others.

Next time someone asks me if I am a vegetarian, I don't have to say I am a Miratarian or flexitarian, I can simply say, "I am a humanitarian"

 

Give Dept. of Peace a Chance

This article beautifully articulates the message and the mission of a United States Department of Peace.  All YOU need to do is call your representative and urge them to sponsor HR 808.

Give Dept. of Peace a Chance
Seattle Times Op-ed
by Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA)

In a world torn by conflict, I can't think of a better time, or a greater need, for America to act as a force for good at home and around the world.

A bill recently was reintroduced in Congress that will go a long way toward bringing peace both at home and abroad. The measure would create a Cabinet-level Department of Peace.

The proposed department will give voice to the latest research and expertise on peaceful efforts in many areas -- from safe schools to international arms control.

The legislation, which I am co-sponsoring, would fund, support and coordinate programs already in existence -- in schools, prisons, police departments, educational institutions, charitable organizations and elsewhere -- that are proven to reduce domestic and international violence and enhance the security and health of all Americans.

I believe a Department of Peace represents the ideals on which this country was founded. Our legislation, HR 808, embodies the dreams and aspirations of Americans to live in a nation that uses its great strength to support the cooperative efforts of people throughout the world to create peace.

In my years as a congressman and as a physician in the U.S. military, I have recognized repeatedly that the interests of the one cannot triumph over the interests of the many; that the security concerns of the United States are best served by diplomacy and cooperation rather than brute force.

A Department of Peace won't be just another top-heavy bureaucratic organization. Much like the Environmental Protection Agency, it will provide a uniting framework for existing organizations scattered throughout the U.S. currently working to bring peace to our communities and the world.

The department will research, propose and facilitate practical, field-tested solutions to reduce conflict, providing financial and institutional heft to our current ineffectual efforts to deal with all forms of domestic and international violence and discord. And it will help develop curricula to educate students in grades K-12 on how to resolve conflict peacefully.

Internationally, a Department of Peace will advise the president and Congress on the most innovative techniques to establish and promote peace among nations, and will research and analyze the root causes of war to help prevent conflicts from escalating to the point of violence.

It will create a Peace Academy, on par with the Military Service Academies, to train civilian peacekeepers and the military in the latest nonviolent conflict-resolution strategies and approaches. And it will provide a direct voice at the president's table to offer peaceful solutions to conflicts before they disintegrate into violence.

The president's recently proposed federal budget would allocate more than $439 billion to our military, an increase of more than 5 percent. A Department of Peace will cost a small fraction of that, or approximately $8 billion a year. That amount is less than we currently spend each month for the war in Iraq.

Clearly, a Department of Peace will be a bargain -- and, it will be money well spent. It will save dollars -- and, more importantly, it will save lives.

As the globe shrinks, as the peoples and countries of the world become more entwined in both commerce and security, our consciousness has expanded.

I've learned there's something about the human spirit, about the spirit of Americans everywhere, that strives for cooperation rather than domination. We all yearn for peace, and for the prosperity that peace brings. We all yearn for a better world for our children and our children's children. We want for them the best education possible; health care that encompasses and embraces everyone; a retirement secure from the plagues and worries that come with inadequate income and support; a healthy environment; and a world freed from the horrors of war.

By reducing the immense costs of violence both domestically and internationally, a U.S. Department of Peace will help secure these essentials. It will demonstrate to our citizens and to the world that the United States is committed to using its great strength in partnership with all peoples to work for, and champion, peace. And, it will provide a beacon of hope for everyone that the peace we yearn for is not an unachievable dream, but an obtainable reality.

As President Bush correctly noted, Americans are a peace-loving people. Now is the time to put these words into action.

U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Seattle, represents the 7th Congressional District of Washington state.