Dear Friends:

I have decided to write an open journal, where I can share my rambling thoughts in an informal context. You are welcome to write to me (see side panel), to share your reactions to my thoughts, though no guarantee that I will respond. In some cases, I may choose to post what you have written, so be sure to tell me if you are okay with that, and if you want your name and city and email address to be included. Put the word Ramblings in the subject field so I won't mistake your letter for junk mail. Since I am a compulsive re-writer, don't be surprised if you come back and find that I've re-written earlier entries. I'm going to begin with a few entries that I made a couple years ago.

July 27, 2003

I just read that Chemical Engineer Robert Langer spent 14 years at his lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), developing a method of slipping medicines through skin with pulses of sound. The pulses, emitted by an ultrasound machine, OPEN MICROSCOPIC PORES IN THE SKIN so that a liquid drug can leak into the body. (Popular Science, Dec. 96, "Breaking the Skin Barrier" by Ingrid Wickelgren, p. 86-9.)

This blows my mind, because it gives us a visual of what we have always known and suspected but had no evidence for. We all feel that music "opens us up." That it makes us more vulnerable. It reminds me of a story a man told me about how he was in a coma for months, and he was not expected to live. Then his brother came to visit him, and he brought a CD of a particular piece by Steven Halpern, and when he heard this piece, it brought him back. In my book, Vibrational Healing Through the Chakras with Light, Color, Sound, Crystals and Aromatherapy, I speak about three basic sounds, or three aspects of the power of sound. They are:

Cleansing and Releasing
Soothing and Relaxing
Regenerative

Now I see that there is a fourth power of sound. It is the power of

Opening You Up.

September 16, 2003

During a Past Life Regression Workshop, I did a regression for Barbara in which she was a Priestess during the time of Herod, and she lived to see her friends tortured and killed. She tried to leave the past behind, but the others she loved were so filled with anger and hatred that she lived to see them kill and rape for revenge. So she went off by herself to the hills and willed her soul to leave her body.

We watched as her soul went into a flame and then drifted over the hills and settled into a large tree. She said she stayed there and rested for a long long time, and the people of the village loved that tree, and respected it, and included it in their rituals. She enjoyed being the tree.

"Then they cut me down and made me into a boat. That was good. They asked my permission and I gave it. So I was able to put my whole heart into it. And every time they set out on a journey, they asked for me to be blessed, and they asked for my blessings. I loved being in the water -- it was very soothing. I loved pointing people in a direction and carrying them there.

"I served them for many generations. Then finally they brought me up on the land, and eventually they put the boat in a museum. But I left long before that."

I was grateful for the insights that Barbara gave me. It reminded me of an incident in one of my classes when I guided my students in an exercise in which they became a gemstone—or more precisely, they experienced themselves as the gemstone that they are. At first, I guide them to become very still and quiet. To feel their heartbeat slowing down; their respiration slowing. Then I would say, "You are a gemstone. I want you to observe yourself. What is your color? What kind of conditions are you growing in? Where do you live? Are you growing as part of a family unit, or are you alone? Are you in a cave, or on a desert? Are you attached to the earth, or to another rock, or are you independent?"

Then I would tell my students that a human being was approaching. "How does that feel?" I would ask. Later, the group discussed their experiences and one young man became a piece of jade. We could feel how the jade most closely embodied the characteristics of this young man. He told the class that the person who approached was a rockhound. The man saw the jade and wanted to be sure it was true jade, so he scratched it with another rock, to determine its hardness.

"That hurt!" exclaimed the young man. Later the rockhound sold the jade to an Indian who proceeded to carve dolphins out of it . The young man seemed pleased. "Didn't that hurt?" we asked him.

"No!" he exclaimed. "Because he handled me so lovingly!"

This is such a fascinating exercise. Sometimes I will introduce three different characters. The first might be a little boy who asks the rock, "Will you come home with me and be in my rock collection?" The second a man who has a rock shop. He does not ask permission, but he has great admiration for the beauty of the rock. The third a woman who asks permission to use the rock for healilng.

As my students have shared their experiences with this exercise, I have witnessed rocks that wanted to be in little boy's pockets, and rocks that distinctly did not want to be taken away from their home for any reason whatsoever, and other rocks that distinctly wanted to be used for healing.

This helps me to understand why tons of lava rocks are received by the post offices in Hawaii every year—sent back by tourists who were forewarned that the volcano goddess Pele does not like her rocks to be taken away and that she will send misfortune to those who dare to do so. It is common knowledge in Hawaii that when one wishes to use lava rocks in the building of a home or a temple (a heiau), one must first consult the rocks and ask their permission.

In Tales from the Night Rainbow, we are told: "The early ones believed that there was one body of life to which we belonged. We had land, sea and sky. They, too, were a part of us Everything that grew on our land and swam in our ocean we called brother and sister. We were a part of all things and all things were a part of us. The old ones knew this and lived accordingly. They did not destroy. They spoke to a plant that was to be picked and explained why it was being done. A rock, before being used as a part of a new house platform or heiau [temple], would be asked if it approved of being used in such a manner. If signs were against such use, the people needing the rock moved to another location and asked a different rock. It was far better to do something correctly than in a hurry or without regard for the effects of our actions.

"We were taught that when the mana [spiritual power] is strong and people accept themelves as the powerful beings that they are—all things are possible. Moving rocks, for instance, need not be as big a burden if the rocks wish to be a part of the project. Men would carry the stone but need not carry the weight of the stone." (p.20)

February 13, 2004

I have, on occasion (actually, just before taking an unusually big shit) heard the sound of the ocean in my own ears. Which caused me to reflect: when you listen to the sound of the ocean in the conch, is it actually just reflecting back to you the sound within the spiral of your own ear? and why is there a labyrinth within our ears? and isn't it curious that it has to do with balance?

July 1, 2005

I've just moved from the Big Island to Maui. My deep green Subaru Forester, which should have arrived yesterday from the Big Island, did arrive this afternoon, and I was able to drive it home. It has been christened "The Green Bean" by Krista, who writes children's stories. It has already begun to speak to me, and it likes the humor in its name. This is the first vehicle that has actually spoken to me. Clearly it is here to teach me many things, concerning prosperity and worthiness and faith and fun and image. Since my previous car was a 93 Chevy Cavalier with a big dent in the fender, this is quite a change. Amazing how much 'stuff'can get tied up in the vehicle we drive, or the clothes we wear or how we wear our hair. I noticed that on the Big Island I had stopped being concerned about what people thought about how I dressed and how I looked. I think that's because I felt secure with my friends and I knew I was loved as I am, so I had no need to impress anybody. Here it's a little different. I can feel people trying to size me up, and appearances are all they have to go with, in the beginning. I'm sure I do it, too.

But then there is something else. I first noticed it consciously several years ago. I'd just be walking along and pass someone, and I could see who they were written all over their face. We didn't need to say a word; I just knew we were on the same wavelength.

I used to feel painfully aware of my difference from other people. I think it made me appear a little cold and stand-offish. So I guess people would respond by being cool and stand-offish toward me. Lately that has changed. Perhaps IÕm no longer afraid of rejection. I feel my connectedness with people. Local people (a term used in Hawaii for the Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese and Philippino people of color who have been here all or most of their lives) have become Much more friendly, and I can easily kid around with them, even when they're strangers.

Every day I find that strangers are smiling at me. Big smiles. Looking me right in the eyes. It's mostly women. All kinds of women, from all walks of life, young and old, fat and skinny, third world and Caucasian. Some are women whom I might have judged in the past, but there seems to be very little judge left in me. I think perhaps Kwan Yin (or the Universal Feminine) is shining through my eyes at them, and through their eyes at me. It is a lovely experience. Lovely is such an apt word!

October 10, 2004

Sometimes I feel like an alien. I think most people can relate to this—at least, most people who have unusual gifts who choose not to suppress their gifts. In fact, the only reason why these gifts are unusual is because most people find it more comfortable to suppress them.

When I was around thirteen, I felt like I was (or wanted to be) one of the Chosen Ones. Then I would vacillate between feeling better than or less than my peers. But I didn't feel comfortable about having more than others. When my parents drove around in their Eldorado Cadillac, I would scrunch down in the back seat so none of my friends would see me.

Later, when I experimented with LSD, I felt like I had been brought to this planet by aliens. But I wasn't one of them, either. I was more like livestock for the aliens. I was being placed on the earth to function as a kind of spy, so the aliens could use me to observe human beings. So I didn't actually belong to anyone.

I vacillated between feeling like a Chosen One and feeling like a non-person (both imbalances of the third and sixth chakras). No doubt all this related to my not receiving unconditional love from my mother.

When I was nineteen a series of poems came through me. Every day, for a week or two, I would get this powerful impulse to write a poem. It would just come flowing out. I called them Poems from the Earth. I'd look at what I had written, and it seemed pretty good, but honestly I didn't understand them. I know now that I was channeling these poems, but at that time I never even heard of channeling. Throughout my life I have remembered these poems, and they have been teachers for me. Here's a line from one of them:

"Thyself is Chosen by choosing to be so and by working to remain so."

That implied that anyone could be Chosen, which was comforting to the equalitarian Aquarian in me. On the other hand, it validated the fact that it isn't easy, and that appealed to the part of me that likes to be acknowledged for doing hard work. (Actually, it doesn't have to be hard, but that understanding didn't come until more recently.)

This morning I woke up feeling loved by All That Is. I often wake up that way. It's delicious. A couple months ago I woke up feeling that way, and then the earth moved. Literally. We were having an earthquake! Anyway, I wondered how I could help others to feel this way? That caused me to reflect on the role of the Teacher (the Hierophant in Tarot). Sometimes I feel as if I came to this planet to be a teacher, to remind people of the love of All That Is. Sometimes I feel as if I came from another place, and that I had to live through a life with a certain amount of suffering so I would learn to truly understand human beings (the Wounded Healer). Only then, when I could walk in their shoes, would people believe me when I spoke about the Love of God. That was my Mission.

October 11, 2005

So I used to think that I was put here on earth to fulfill some kind of Mission. Then, about a year ago, I got a whole new perspective:

I'm here for the adventure of it!

That changed everything. It became a key element in my move to simplify my life. I had been very driven and achievement-oriented. I had furrows between my eyebrows. I spent about half my time sitting at the computer, doing things I did not want to do. Don't get me wrong: I loved my life and my work was very fulfilling, but I was working too hard. (This is a typical third chakra excess problem. Shades of the workaholic trying to win approval from parents who are never satisfied—even after the parents have passed away!)

Then a rock talked to me. I was in Machu Pichu with my friend, Angela. I had been admiring the beautiful homes that were built of adobe: mud from the earth, free for the taking. Our young guide had taken us by horse through his village near Cuzco, Puru, and we waved at his uncle and father and brothers as they laughed and waved back while they were laying tiles on the roof of his uncle's new house. Up on the mountain, the temples were made of rocks. I imagined that the men who built such places enjoyed their work, communing with the stones.

We were walking among the temple ruins when I felt a huge rock calling to me. I set down my pack and scrambled up the path to a place where I could put my whole body up against the rock. Then it spoke to me. It told me to simplify my life. Get rid of the computer. Travel less. Have just one bank account and one credit card.

At that time I had two computers, three bank accounts, and eight credit cards. I did get rid of one computer, two bank accounts, and six credit cards, and a LOT of other things. But the most important change was that I stopped doing things I didn't like doing. In fact, any time I hear myself say, "I have to do that," I stop and ask, "Are you sure about that?"

I've stopped allowing my left brain to run my life and I've handed the whole thing over to my right brain, my intuition. It's much smarter. It sees the whole picture. It can feel things that my senses have no connection with. It sees into the future, reads minds, and is connected with All That Is.

So now I start every day by asking myself, "What do you want to do?" Of course, I have responsibilites and I have appointments, so that has to be taken into account. But my intuition is perfectly capable of doing that, and all of those responsiblities are fulfilled, and I have no resentments.

Everything seems to happen in exactly the right time. I've begun to pay more attention to when the moon is void of course. During the month the moon travels through all twelve constellations, and each constellation has a kind of personality that flavors events of the period. But when the moon is between constellations there is a lack of energy and personality, so it's not a good time to start new things. (Anne Massey has a great website with this information at http://www.astrologicallyspeaking.com). I've noticed that is usually when I feel lazy or unmotivated. If I force myself to work then it's usually frustrating, unfulfilling, and may have to be done again later. That's fine. Sometimes it's good to just chill out. It's natural. Things ebb and flow. Sometimes I accomplish more when I'm just playing around. But I try not to use accomplishments (or money) as the yardstick for a good day.

What is the yardstick? A sense of fulfillment, a feeling of love and gratitude in my heart, good relationships with family and friends, feeling sourced in my work, feeling a sense of connectedness with the earth, the trees, the flowers, the animals, the insects, the rocks. I have a new affirmation:

May I know how to live my life in the most rewarding way.

Money is still a factor, but it has taken a back seat, along with my left brain. There is always enough, and I've simply given up worrying about it. (It wasn't that simple to begin with. It was hard to do. It took a lot of practice, and a lot of experience until I became secure in the knowledge that it really does work.) When I have money I spend it (and save a little). When I don't have it, I do without. I use very little. (I admit that it was much more challenging to live this way when I had children—but it can be done.)

Americans have set an example of consumption that the rest of the world is trying hard to emulate. Unfortunately it is an example that is based on massive overconsumption, with disastrous ecological consequences. Now we need to turn that around. We need to downgrade our standard of living and begin consuming less and enjoying it more. Bush needs to sign the Kyoto agreement and commit to reducing greenhouse emissions. Americans need to drive more fuel-efficient cars. But we also need to take a more positive attitude toward hitch-hiking and develop more creative forms of public transportation like the three-wheeled tuk-tuk in Thailand. In fact, Thailand is getting ready to start converting vegetable oil into biodiesel fuel which will cost about 60 baht ($1.25 US) per gallon. They will start out by fueling 200 mini buses each day with biodiesel fuel. Pretty neat, huh?

November 15, 2005

I've been reading Agartha by Meredith Young-Sowers, and there are some passages I'd like to share. Sowers is the author of the Angelic Messenger Cards. Her channeled teacher, Mentor, gave her the name, Agartha. Much of the book reminds me of Jane Roberts' channeling of the Seth material in The Nature of Personal Reality, which had quite a profound influence on me in the sixties or seventies. (By the way, there's a great book, Bridging Science and Spirit by Norman Friedman, published originally in 1990, which shows how some of the most profound insights in quantum physics were anticipated by Seth's teachings despite the fact that Jane Roberts knew nothing about science.) Agartha was asking Mentor how to distinguish between the kinds of insights that grow and evolve and those that seem to have a universal unchanging reality?

Mentor responded that each person has their own personal reality, which includes their perspective on people, places and things in their environment. That reality is constantly subject to change. Then there is a universal reality. "How can you find a universal perspective, your lasting truth, a truth that transcends your personal perspective? You find it by seeking to discover those beliefs to live by that allow all life to prosper, that assume your life is as important as, but no more important than, the life of every other living thing. A universal perspective guides you to live within the universal laws of nature that suggest you are obliged to perpetuate the well-being of the entire system.... When you have acquired a universal perspective, your soul holds the spiritual energy of impersonal and unconditional love...Your soul holds the perspective of the highest and greatest good for you and all other people and living things."

He explains that in choosing a method of living or healing that is right for a person, that person must find a lifestyle or a method of healing that is in harmony with their own personal reality, and then, in order to be really effective, they must fuse their personal perspective with a universal perspective. In relation to healing a serious illness like cancer, he gives the following universal perspectives:

It is essential to find a harmony of body, mind and spirit.

To effect a lasting cure, a person must tap a deeper reason for living than just material gain or accomplishment.

Disease can be halted long-term only when the involved tissues are allowed to rediscover their original health and purpose.

These insights are in complete agreement with my Vibrational Alignment work.

After reading Meredith's wonderful book, I wrote to ask if she would write an endorsement for my new book, Vibrational Healing through the Chakras. She was very sweet and agreed to do so.

December 10, 2005

Throughout my life my concept of God has changed radically. In fact, it changes all the time. Sometimes I feel embarrassed about that. Other times, like this morning, it feels completely right and natural. Because God is All That Is, which constantly grows and changes. Through the experiences of all life forms our Noosphere (the atmosphere of ideas that surrounds the planet) grows and changes, and God knows Her/Himself.

It isn't exactly as if someone called God got this great idea and created human beings. Maybe our bodies actually did go through some process of evolution, but the consciousness of God is the consciousness of All and Everything, undivided, and that will always remain a Great Mystery. Human consciousness grows out of duality, subject and object, observer and observed, I and Thou. One way or another, human consciousness separated from All and Everything and began a great process of exploration. So every time we have an "Aha!" experience we send a spark into the Noosphere, thereby changing or evolving All That Is. We may choose to write or teach or sculpt these Aha's into some form, which is another way of sparking consciousness. In the end, it is all lila, a play of the Uni-verse, a cosmic dance in which we are privileged to be dancers and singers.

Namaste (I see and acknowledge the God and Goddess within you)

JoyUs

I sometimes use the name JoyUs because it carries the vibrations of the joy of all of us—an affirmation that each person's joy expands as we support one another to unfold into universal Joy. Feel free to use Joy or JoyUs, whichever appeals to you.

July 18, 2006

Most of my adult life I've taken a minute or two, before eating, to stop, take some deep breaths, and feel gratitude:

For the food, for life, for the cooks, for family and friends, and for the beautiful places I've been privileged to live. (Many times during the day I also take the time to look around at the beauty of nature and feel pure and utter gratitude for being privileged to walk this earth. Or I look into the eyes of someone I love and feel so blessed to have this person in my life.)

When I'm eating with others, we usually hold hands and sometimes we give thanks aloud. When I'm alone, I usually hold my hands a few inches above my food, kind of blessing the food and giving thanks for it. And when I eat out, I also ask that any impurities be removed.

When I'm tuned in, I may feel the energy of the food rising up to meet my hands, and then an interchange of energy may take place.

I've been fasting on grapes for the past week. It never occurred to me until today to actually talk to my food. I talk to rocks and trees and flowers and geckos. Sometimes I even talk to my computer or my car. Why not speak to my food?

Maybe there has been a sense of guilt about eating it that has held me back. But today I really tuned in on the green and red grapes that were soon to be consumed. To my surprise I felt a complete willingness and even a desire on their part to merge with me. I was enabling them to complete their life cycle in a good way. They seemed especially eager to enter into and clean my bloodstream. I would be honoring them by enjoying their flavor and chewing them thoroughly. I was honoring them now by cleansing my body so that they could do their work even more efficiently.

They showed me that by taking time to breathe and give thanks before eating, I am taking in more oxygen, calming my nervous sytem, and creating greater receptivity for assimilation in every fiber of my being.

[To find out more about fasting with grapes, read The Grape Cure by Joanna Brandt. Also see ]

July 19, 2006

After seeing Al Gore's great movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," I wanted to do something to make a difference. I decided that I would sell my beloved Subaru Forester, which only gets 25 mpg, and get something that is more efficient. It's really far more car than a single (or even a double) person needs! All the time I had two kids, I had small cars; it's ironic that now that they're grown I have this big car. Of course, it's great to have all-wheel drive on Maui. But it's a luxury I could do without. It feels like all Americans are going to have to sacrifice something if we're going to fulfill the Kyoto Agreement. So what if Bush hasn't signed it? Let's make our private committments to doing what we can do. Several states have signed it.

I was very touched by Gore's story about how his family grew rich growing tobacco, and even when they began to realize how harmful smoking was, they continued to grow tobacco. But when his beloved older sister, who always smoked cigarettes, died of lung cancer, the family made the painful decision to stop growing tobacco.

I feel that every American is being called upon to make some kind of sacrifice. Travelling in South America, I had the terrible realization that all the poor people of this planet look upon the American Standard of Living as something they all strive toward. But this is a standard that is built upon slavery. We've enslaved most of the planet and its citizens to provide the raw materials and labor to produce the goods that make this way of life possible.

If we're going to save the planet, we need to free the slaves. And at the same time we need to educate them about the terrible truths that we are just beginning to learn about the real cost of this way of life. And at the same time we need to give up some of our own conveniences, just as the Southerners needed to do when they had to free their slaves.

So I made the decision to sell my Forester and exchange it for a vehicle that is highly fuel efficient with low emissions. But in subsequent days I found myself coming up with all kinds of reasons why it was going to be difficult to do that. If I could just snap my fingers and make it happen, I'd be willing to do it. But it takes quite a lot of time and trouble to sell a vehicle and buy another.

So I was starting to think, "Well, that's too much trouble and I'm too busy and I really don't have the time to do that right now, and it's just not that important.

"In fact, who's gonna notice? I'm just one person. How is one person's actions going to make any difference? It's just a drop in the bucket."

But I had a pain in my left hip. In my Vibrational Healing system, the left hip holds the energy of the Mother. When I tuned in to that pain and gave it a voice I realized that it was my guilt. "I know—the earth is my Mother. She's taken care of me. It's not too much to ask for me to take care of her. She didn't say, "Oh well, I don't really have to take care of this one. No one's going to notice. I have so many. We'll let this one fend for herself."

She didn't say that. She just took care of me. She takes care of all her children, to the best of her ability, regardless of whether they reciprocate!

So I decided that I need to set aside a day—or at least a half day—per month, for taking care of the planet. So if I find myself spending hours researching vehicles with high gas mileage and low emissions, for example, I don't need to feel as if I'm wasting time or taking time away from my work. I just need to make that one of my priorities. Clearly, I need to do that. And the more of us who do it, the more we will create a force field of energy that will sweep more and more people into it, and make it easier and easier to do this.

7/30/06

Today I had a very long “To Do” list. But when I got out of bed, I didn’t feel like doing any of it. Not even my morning exercises, which I’m usually very good about. But there was one thing that I did feel like doing, and that was sweeping, mopping and vacuuming my floor, which is a very long and difficult procedure that takes several hours, when it’s done properly, which happens about once every three months.

My commitment is to not do anything I don’t feel like doing. So I let go of the list, and just threw myself into the mopping project, and enjoyed it.  While I was resting in between, I got inspired to put shelving paper on the bottom shelf of my medicine cabinet. That wasn’t even something I ever thought of doing before, but it was a great idea.

Then I had an impulse to look at my astrological information for today (this is based on your whole chart—not just the sun sign, like in the newspapers, and it can be found at astro.com).and it said that my Moon is trine to Venus and “This is not a good time for getting very much work done, because it often brings out a lazy streak. One exception to this is that you may feel like working to beautify or otherwise improve your home. You need beautiful surroundings, and you will work to get them.”

August 28, 2006

            Coming home from a sunrise walk this morning, I was reflecting upon my life and how I am becoming more and more conscious of how each event—even the ones that would ordinarily seem sad or tragic or disappointing—is part of the Divine Adventure that makes up the fabric of my life. If I resist those difficult events, then it would be like trying to weave without the color black, or red, or purple. 

I realized today that my greatest fear is that I will miss an opportunity to live my life to the fullest; that I will be out of alignment, or off center, or caught up in my own little world, or selfish, or out of sorts in some way so that I will make the wrong choice.

I think that’s one reason why the Synchronicities or the Miracles and Coincidences (see my Blog about Miracles and Coincidences) that occur along the way are so important to me; they are the voice of the Universe, saying to me: “Yes, you are a child of God/Goddess. You are walking in the Light. You are living from your Center, and we are supporting you.”

Then, no matter what happens, I know that I’m going to be okay, and I can live from a place of great Joy. In fact, when I say that I Garden Joy, that is exactly what I mean. I help people to eliminate all the factors that prevent them from living their lives from this deeply joyful place.

February 1, 2007

            I have had a lot of challenges in my personal life recently. Then I came across the Essene Tenets. I believe I was an Essene in a past life, so it doesn’t surprise me that these teachings feel so utterly right and familiar. Some say that Jesus was an Essene.

1. There is a single Source responsible for all that ever is and ever will be, and every single event, without exception, is a part of The One.
2. There are no accidents. Each and every experience, without exception, is an opportunity to demonstrate Mastery in life (without judging that experience as good, bad, right or wrong).
3. Your life mirrors your quest to know yourself, in all ways. Those you love and trust take you to the very edge of who you believe you are, and that is you choosing to know yourself at a greater and greater level. We are many bodies choosing to live in this world in a single consciousness.
4. Life essence is eternal.
5. That same eternal nature may relate to your body. The Resurrection may become a reality. Your body and soul are the Holy Marriage that you agreed to long ago.

I will talk more about this later, because it is so rich. At the moment, it was #3 that was most relevant to me. We tend to think that the role of those we love is to protect us from the cruelty of other people and the world in general. And yet, it often happens that we suffer most in relation to those we love.

What a different way of looking at it! The person I love who seems to be hurting me is actually a part of myself, bringing me to an edge that I would never consciously choose for myself, allowing me to know myself better. Wow. I like that.

I also came across a quote from Don Juan in the Carlos Castaneda series. He says, to paraphrase, “The normal man experiences his life as curses and blessings. The warrior experiences it as challenges.”

February 9, 2007

            Yesterday I had to go to the periodontist to have two of my crowns lengthened because I had cavities that were below the gum line. This is the closet thing to an operation that I have ever had! When I got to the office I casually remarked that I wished he had laughing gas (nitrous oxide), and he said he did.  I’ve experienced nitrous a couple of times and I liked it; I thought it would be good to take the edge off of a potentially painful experience. And also, I had heard that Osho  (also known as Rajneesh, the guru of ecstasy) had been addicted to nitrous oxide, and I was curious to examine why that might be.

            The book I brought with me to read while I was waiting was Take Off Your Glasses and See! by Jacob Liberman. I’ve read most of it before, with miraculous results. Just by reading a couple of chapters, my eyesight will improve. Because the book is about the underlying cause of vision impairment, and it’s about attitudes about sight, and about true Vision. Very inspiring. This year I have promised myself to truly focus on overcoming my myopia. So I am re-reading the book, and this time I will read all of it.

            On this particular morning, as I was waiting in the dentist’s office, I felt inspired to open the book at random, as if I knew there was an important message in there for me. Here is what I read:
            “Breath is the flow of our life force, our link to the web of life. The way we draw air into our lungs is a mirror of the way we take life into our awareness. When we feel stressed, we automatically suppress or hold our breath. When we feel relaxed, our breath flows freely, reducing stress and enhancing self-integration. Since effortless, relaxed breathing cannot occur in a contracted field, we can even use the breath to relax and expand the energetic and visual fields.”

            Then he quotes Bija Bennett, a yoga therapist, from her book, Breathing into Life.
            “It’s true that every emotion, physical condition, resistance, disturbance, or tension you have is connected to your breath.
            “Do you ever notice that you are holding your breath? Remember what you do when you are afraid, tense, or worrying about something? Or how your breath is when you’ve been sitting at your desk all day?
“It’s the breath that is carrying the message.
“The breath can be your best friend. It can be a tool to balance, release, and free your mind and body. It can bring you strength and courage. It can calm you down or give you energy.
“Breathing is an art.
“But you don’t need to be taught how to breathe.
            “Breathing needs not to be taught, but liberated.”

Then I was called in for the procedure. Now I have done plenty of deep breathing. I did LaMaze breathing throughout my 36 hours of labor with my first child. And I’ve done (and taught) lots of abdominal breathing with yoga and visualizations. So it was nice to be reminded of what I already knew.

Once I was fitted with the tubes over my nose, I proceeded to inhale very deeply. The more I inhaled, the more open I became. At some point the periodontist injected even more of the pain-killing medicine into my gums, and the taste of the chemicals is normally very shocking and displeasing to me. This time it came into my awareness very intensely, but instead of resisting it I told myself,  “ACCEPT EVERYTHING. Just open up and let it in. INHALE!”

I became acutely aware that it is resistance itself that causes constriction, pain, and damage. When we can flow with the situation and ACCEPT EVERYTHING without judging some things as good and others as bad, then there is no place for anything distasteful to get caught up and cause trouble. It just flows right through you; in one door and out the other.

It’s like knowing how to fall. If you know how to relax into the fall (like martial artists do) then you can just use the impact to roll over and then stand up and you’re perfectly fine. But if you stiffen up with anticipation of being hurt, then you will resist the flow and whatever you contact will collide with your rigid structure and something is likely to bruise or break.

I think Osho loved the laughing gas (if the rumor is true); because it reminds us to ACCEPT EVERYTHING.
I know that you could carry this philosophy too far!  You could become totally undiscerning, and unable to make decisions or to function effectively in the world.

Nevertheless, I urge you to try it. I spent the rest of the day walking around BREATHING and ACCEPTING EVERYTHING. For example, I received anesthesia on both sides of my mouth, the upper right and the lower left. So when I spoke, my puffy lips went in opposite directions and I looked quite bizarre. This lasted for hours, and I had errands to do,. But I just accepted it. What if I had been born that way? I breathed into it. Of course, I minimized the talking I did with people, but if I felt the need to talk, I just did it.

I noticed that my walking was slower; I was simply in the flow, in the present. And my posture was excellent; I had nothing to hide; I felt totally good about myself.

I am going to try to bring this awareness consciously into my daily life. I’m sure it will help me to see better. I’m well aware that my myopia began when I was thirteen, when I began developing breasts. Men were looking at me lecherously and I felt like a wild animal, unable to hide. So I blocked them out. I drew in my little world, where I could only see the ones I trusted. And I could pretend that the others didn’t exist.
It was a useful tool for surviving in an uncomfortable environment. But now it is time to let it go. By using my breath, by allowing other people to have their feelings, and their addictions, and their hang-ups, without judgment, by just breathing it all in with compassion, by standing up tall and feeling good about myself, I believe that I can widen my horizons and literally see more clearly.

           
February 10, 2007
            It occurred to me recently that it is very funny that our scientists believe that we were created by chance! Do you realize that a single eyeball (which is actually an extension of the brain) contains about 1 billion working parts? That makes it far more complex than a NASA space shuttle! Here we are, with brains that are so complex that we are only just beginning to unravel the mysteries of them, imagining that all this complexity occurred as a random act of evolution. Unbelieveable!

March 6, 2007

I’m in the process of selling or giving away or throwing away almost all of my belongings. I’ve rented a tiny storage locker; seven feet wide, five feet deep and ten feet high. I’ve installed three sets of five shelves on each wall, so that everything has a place and I can see everything that’s in there (except for the corners). So it’s like a big wide closet.
Many people have said they admire me for being able to let go of so much stuff. They say that they wish they could let go of their stuff. My late husband Raphael was like that. In the end, I think his stuff that was a major factor in his death. We lived for a few months on the small island of Molokai, with just a few clothes and some art supplies, he was at his happiest. But then, when we actually moved to the Big Island from Marin, he had to bring all his stuff. It took a whole container, and then another big crate.
After that move, he never had a big enough space or enough energy to organize all his stuff, so it just sat in disarray and gathered dust. He was depressed and disappointed in himself because he couldn’t organize his stuff. In fact, after he found out that he had melanoma and would probably die within a couple of months, his last request to his men friends was to build shelves in the garage so he could get his stuff organized (which never happened).
I have other friends who are unhappy because their living space is so cluttered, but it seems they’d rather be unhappy than let go of their stuff.
I’m glad that I can let go. And mostly it feels very good. But there are certain things that just aren’t going to fit in that locker; things that I would have liked to have kept. And then I do love being able to create a very special space by bringing in my own special objects that hold my energy.
But I guess I can do that on a smaller scale, and keep it relatively simple and uncluttered. Honestly, it doesn’t take much. And sometimes less is more.
The hardest thing to let go of was my Subaru. I’ll have to show you a picture of the Green Bean.

What a love! My Dream Car. It has given me so much pleasure. But I’m grateful that I made the decision to sell her before I had to sell her. I promised her that I’d try to find a good person for her, and it happened! About a week after she went up for sale I was at the health food store and a young woman walked up, very high energy, and she totally fell in love with the car; just like I did, when I saw a picture of her on a bulletin board. She’s a Wedding Planner, and she needs a vehicle like this for her work. And her boyfriend is a mechanic. So that made me feel much better about selling the Green Bean.
Yesterday, at the Swap Meet, was another high point. Last weekend I sold a few big things at my Moving Sale, but not many people came all the out there to Huelo. I gave tons of stuff to Saver’s. But there were still a lot of valuable smaller items, and I took those to the Swap Meet.
It’s an amazing place. It’s about an acre of land, with about 200 venders, and most of them have tents. People start arriving at 4 am. It officially starts at 7, though there are customers who start shopping with their flashlights at 4! What a treat for Garage Sale addicts! There are probably 10-20 spaces for people with garage sale items.
So one of the things that I was reluctant to let go of was a wood cabinet with mirrors on the front doors, and little shelves and drawers inside. Raphael told me that it was built for his grandmother by her first boyfriend. That would make it about 100 years old! But it wasn’t in great shape, and the mirrors were fogged up. Still, it’s so cute and so unusual, and I’ve always treasured it. I believe it was meant to be a kind of medicine chest. If I didn’t sell it—if I couldn’t find someone who really liked it—I would make space for it.
One of the first people to arrive at my site, while it was still dark, was a beautiful Hawaiian/Oriental man, with some gray hair, and a very fine energy about him. He took a liking to this cabinet, and asked lots of questions about what it had been used for, and to whom it belonged. When I said I thought it was a medicine chest, he got really excited. “May I do something?” he asked, kind of waving his hands in a gesture that implied something in the subtle realms.
“Of course!” I exclaimed, though there were other people already going through the books and I still had things to lay out on the tables. Then he squatted down alongside the table and opened the chest and began to chant softly as he ran his hands back and forth along the shelves. I too stopped everything and squatted alongside of him, holding the energy with him because clearly nothing else was more important.
“Yes!” he murmured, “I can feel her energy. She was a good woman.” Oh, I’m sure she was! That;s why I still sleep under the quilt that she sewed with her own hands. I never met her, but I have her blue and green and red and pink starred quilt (and I’ve given the other one—the one with the little girl dolls and the boy dolls—to my grandson). Raffi, who loved her dearly, could never let go of anything that he inherited from her.
The Hawaiian man took the chest, and that made me very happy, knowing that it had a good home. When we talked he was not surprised to hear that I am a Vibrational Healer, and we exchanged cards and agreed that we should get together before I leave the island. Turns out he’s a minister in a church that seems to combine the old ways and the Jesus teachings.
Later a man came to look at my books, and remarked that it was like looking at his own library. When I admired his most unusual bone and turquoise and coral necklace, and he said his wife made it and it was for sale. Really!
By the end of the day I had that awesome necklace and he had my Foredom Flexshaft, which was a major tool that I used in my jewelry-making. That was the other hardest thing to let go of; all my lapidary equipment. But finally I settled it by working an arrangement with my silver-smithing teacher, where I contributed my Combination Lortone Unit to The Hui, in exchange for free use of their space, and that way I have a place to go and work (I never did get a shop set up after I left the Big Island) whenever I’m on Maui. And now I found a person who really appreciates the Foredom, and gave me a fair price for it.
Then there was the Filipino woman and her sister and mother and her two daughters, who spent about an hour looking at my dear old Singer sewing machine that has been with me most of my adult life. I knew they should have it, so I let them bargain me down a lot. And then, when I put the top on it, and handed her in the case, the handle broke! That clinched it. She got her price. They were so happy! Gosh, I haven’t used that machine in a couple of years.
Then, at noon, at the very end—and I had been lowering my prices every hour, because otherwise that stuff was just going to Savers or to the dump— a woman came along and bought up Raffi’s little bookcase—the antique that was made without nails—and the Foreman Lean Mean Machine Fatless Grill (it made great food, but it was a hassle to clean) and a half dozen other items, and I really did quite well. A lot of my books found happy customers (“This is like being in a metaphysical bookstore!”). And I made some new friends, and I even had a new client.

3/16/07
But this business of letting go of things still isn’t easy. I’ve been carrying around Raphael’s artwork, including the colored pencil nudes, since he died, and I haven’t been able to find homes for most of that stuff. I made a hard decision. I would keep a few smaller things, and take the rest to the dump. Fortunately, my son decided to keep several of the beautiful large paintings.
One of the hardest things for me was to put that beautiful nude “Goddess” drawing in the dump. It was almost like when I took his body to the crematorium. Honestly. But I knew I had to do it. I couldn’t keep storing it in the closet for the rest of my life, and I tried to find someone to buy it and no one stepped forward.
So that is done. And soon I will go through my journals and throw most of those in the dump as well. I have three boxes of journals, and they have been so precious to me. But I haven’t looked at them in years, and I no longer expect to write the memoirs of my life. And if I do, I’ll probably only write about what I can remember!
So letting go of all that stuff is very profound. It’s a little bit like dying. It’s a little bit like admitting that my life wasn’t really all that important anyway. No one’s is. I mean, we’re really so insignificant in the long run.
So that gets me thinking about the meaning of life. It feels very fragile right now. I’m stripping myself of so much. I hadn’t realized how much my stuff was anchoring me down to the earth. Right now my relationships with my family (particularly both my daughters-in-law) are very fragile. And that indirectly affects my relationships with both my sons and my grandson, i.e., all of my remaining familial relations. That’s hard! Especially since there is currently no beloved partner in my life.
It’s almost as if Spirit is forcing me to look Life straight in the eyes, completely naked. Nothing to hide behind.
What’s really valuable here? Love is. Right now my relationships with my friends are SO important to me! And my love of God/Goddess. And Nature. And the kindness of strangers.
The crystals are comforting to me. The very few objects that I have chosen to keep: my beautiful spread from Bali, my Oriental carpet, the hand-woven cloth from Peru, the scroll of mountains and waterfalls that Raffi brought back from China, a few pieces of lovely jewelry, a few select photographs.
Somehow narrowing down my possessions allows me to appreciate what I have even more. Getting rid of all the clothes I didn’t really love gave me some extra bucks to buy a few new clothes and I do love them! I haven’t been so excited about clothes in a long time! I found a little Chinese-type jacket-blouse in a style that I’ve been looking for for years. Spirit has been very kind, bringing me just the right sandals, just the right little shorts that look great on me, just the right top. It’s been fun to actually go shopping for new stuff, which I rarely do! And my new color is coral. It combines the orange of friendliness with the pink of love.

December 13, 2007
            As a death and loss counselor, I have been with so many people as they approach death. What makes a life well-lived? What makes a person feel fulfilled and satisfied as they move toward that grand finale?
            I met Grandfather Semu, a Native American elder, when he visited the Big Island, when he was in his nineties. He used to say, “Remember your death! Never forget that you are going to die!” It’s true. If we live as if we were going to die, then we are more likely to make good use of our time while we are here.
            As we approach death, all the trappings begin to fall away. We are like actors in a play, shedding our costumes and our roles, and returning to our ordinary lives. As we come together after the play to have coffee or tea, what are our relationships? The plays come and go; it is only the relationships that endure.
            In the end, it is how well we have loved that travels with us into the other worlds. It is who cares about us enough to carry us in their hearts that gives us true immortality.

1/24/08 (Asheville, NC - my new home)
It was still pitch dark, but it felt like time to get up. I usually get up to pee around 6:30 in the winter here, just when the first glimmer of light comes through the curtains. Must have been overcast outside. Usually I can see the colors from my bedroom window, then after about half an hour I can see the sun peek out over the trees. What a blessing, to be able to watch the sunrise!
Sometimes I hear a voice in my head, especially when I just wake up. This time it was telling me to go for a walk.
“Really?” I said.
“Yep.”
The conviction was so strong that it wasn’t hard for me to just get up and dress real warm, with two pairs of pants and two pairs of socks and three shirts and two pairs of gloves, and head outside. Now there was a bit more light, but it felt like rain or snow was coming. In fact, weren’t those just a couple of snowflakes falling?
As I came down the stairs of the back porch I could see just the faintest glimmer of color over the Blue Ridge Mountains to the south. It boggles my mind that these mountains always do look blue. Could that have something to do with all the crystal inside of them? But honestly, they weren’t blue this morning; everything was still gray.
It felt totally good to be outdoors in the fresh morning. My knee, which had been aching for the last couple of days, felt perfectly fine. There was a fair bit of traffic, including the school bus. Here I was thinking that I was so remarkable for being up and about this early, but for all these other people, it’s completely normal.
I walked for about 20 minutes, up and over an incline, toward the west, and then I turned back. As I was enjoying the barren trees and rolling hills, an odd idea came into my head: Perhaps I am possessed.
Now I should mention that I remove possessing entities. I probably do about 20 per year. It’s not a big part of my practice, but it sure is significant when it happens. That’s when you can have an apparently miraculous healing (see Testimonials).
But it never occurred to me that a person could be possessed by an extremely happy spirit.
Possession is usually about having a voice in your head that is not your own that tells you to do things that you don’t really want to do. Often possessing spirits stay around because of their addictions. So you might have a sudden compulsion to eat sweets or smoke cigarettes, even though you never really cared for sweets or cigarettes. Or even worse, you might hear a voice telling you to slit your wrists, or do something that is self-destructive or dangerous.
Which is different from the classic case of hearing a voice in your head that is always obsessing about “What will people think?” or “You should have done this,” or “You’re stupid and you’ll never amount to anything.” These are manifestations of the subconscious, and they are the voices of our parents or other authority figures from our past, whom we keep alive and well inside ourselves.
These are annoying voices, and I call them Core Beliefs. I have a safe and gentle way of eliminating these voices, which I believe is essential for one’s health and happiness. (This is something I can do by phone, and it’s also a technique that I teach in the Vibrational Healing Program.)
But a possessing entity is something else entirely.
But whoever heard of a positive possession? Honestly, I think it’s perfectly reasonable. Sometimes when a relative or someone who loves a person dies, that person thinks that they can help their beloved by sticking around, and that is one way that possession happens—it’s really quite innocent at first. But what tends to happen is that the possessing entity can’t help but want the body to do things her way, and they end up fighting for supremacy, thereby creating quite a lot of conflict and even ill health in the process, as when the person takes on the illnesses of the entity.
Now I would recommend that  if you die and you want to hang around with someone who is alive, instead of hanging out in their body, that you go into the Light first, and then you can come back as their Guardian Angel or Spirit Guide. This is a much healthier process, because then you are both free agents. It seems to be a spiritual law that angels and guides cannot help people unless they are asked. That’s why it can be very helpful to pray and to invoke your ancestors or your spiritual lineage. Because if they are hanging around anywhere, they will probably be glad to help, and then you will multiply your power by many. (There’s a great story about the Hawaiian Kahuna Daddy Bray in my Healing Voice book that illustrates this point. The book is out-of-print, but can be ordered through Amazon as a used book.)
So honestly, this idea of being positively possessed is really just a silly thought to make myself laugh. And I do laugh! A lot. The reason why the idea seems apt is because it’s almost like there is another me inside of me, and we are very much in love with one another. Psychologists might call it narcissism, but it’s hardly an ailment!
I started noticing it several years ago. I’d be going along—maybe driving my car on a back road in Hawaii (which can put you into an alpha state of mind, which is very relaxing and meditative) and suddenly this feeling would just well up inside me and I would take a deep breath and I’d hear myself declare “I’m in love!”
Then my rational mind would kick in and ask, “Who or what are you in love with?”
Now let me digress for a moment. Back in 1998, when my husband, Raphael, was dying of lymphoma and the doctors said he had about 6 weeks to live, something quite remarkable happened. He was a pretty down-to-earth kind of guy, and not very spiritually inclined, except for the fact that he was a follower of the guru Maharishi, and had actually been a TM (Transcendental Meditation) teacher back in the sixties.
He always felt a little jealous of people like me who could talk to Spirits, or see Spirits. “Why doesn’t that ever happen to me?” he asked, plaintively.
Then, about a month before he died, he told me that there were two angels that were always in his room. He was quite delighted, even if they were the Angels of Death.
Now Raphael always felt awkward about the word “love.” “What is love?” he would ask. It was difficult for him to say, “I love you.”
Then a few weeks before he died, he suddenly sat bolt upright in bed and declared, “I AM love!”
From that point on, he radiated an incredible energy. People would come to comfort him on his deathbed, and they would go away smiling from ear to ear. “It feels so good to be around you!” they told him.
So maybe that’s the kind of love that I felt (and feel) when I said, “I’m in love!” when there’s no particular object for that love to attach to. And yet there are so many people and places and things that are so loveable in my life.
Including myself. I adore my own company. I was telling myself as I was walking home this morning: “I love you! You are just so much fun to be with! You always want to do the same things I want to do!“
Maybe I have Siamese egos.
“And you have such a great sense of humor! You always laugh at my jokes!”
A very powerful process has been happening to me over the last few years. I’m sure I’ve talked about it elsewhere in these Ramblings. But around the time that I started having those spontaneous “I love you!” experiences, I had just moved to Maui from the Big Island, I was living entirely alone, and I decided that it was time to stop pushing myself.
My connection with my Inner Guidance had been getting stronger and stronger. My daily practice was to stop running my life from my head and start living from my heart and intuition. I reasoned that my intuition was vastly wiser than my head, because it was capable of seeing into the future, and considering factors that my conscious mind had no access to.
I felt guided to continually ask myself “What do I most deeply feel like doing right now? “ I would do that from the time I woke up in the morning until I went to bed at night. I would do that for the smallest tasks and for the largest ones. In fact, I put it to the biggest test when I moved from the Big Island. Instead of making endless lists, and forcing myself to do things that I was too tired to do, or things that I just didn’t feel like doing, I would continuously consider what I most deeply wanted to do.
At first I didn’t think it was working. I thought it had been a miserable failure, because the container was due to arrive soon, and we weren’t totally ready. But it turned out that they sent the wrong size container, and we had three extra days to get ready! How crazy it would have been to have driven ourselves nuts with such a tight schedule when we actually had three more days. But we had no way of consciously knowing that would happen!
So this practice puts me continually in the present. I’m not worrying about the future. I have perfect faith (well, almost perfect) that I will be taken care of (as long as I live my life in constant Service and attunement to Spirit), and this continuously proves to be true. But sometimes it is an eleventh hour phenomenon, and I do not recommend this way of life for those who are nervous by nature.
I think that this way of living is part of why I am so joyful, and so in love with myself and with life.

Now when I returned home from my walk, I saw a book that my housemate Dorisse had left on the dining room table, The Presence Process—A Healing Journey Into Present Moment Awareness by Michael Brown. I just had a chance to leaf through it, but what a delight this book is!
I feel that I can now refer anyone to this book, to get a step-by-step process for how to be fully in the present, even—or especially if they are nervous by nature! Michael Brown uses circular breathing (inhale-exhale-inhale-exhale, and do not stop) as a method for bringing people into the present and getting them out of their heads.

I don’t mean to imply that it is a bad thing to think about things. In fact, one reason why I enjoy being on the East Coast is because there are a lot of people here who enjoy thinking about things. If you’ve read my most recent book, Vibrational Healing through the Chakras, then you’ll know that I think about things quite a lot.
But there’s a big difference between thinking about things because it is an enjoyable and stimulating process, and thinking about things obsessively in a way that is neither enjoyable nor stimulating; that is, in fact, draining and exhausting.
Brown tells his own story in an engaging way, so that the reader can understand how he came to evolve this process out of his own very deep need. This is designed as a do-it-yourself process. Brown discourages readers from trying to find a teacher, though he does encourage working with a partner.
The goal is a feeling of love, oneness, and gratitude. Just like I was saying: This might be a good thing, if you don’t feel too weird about telling yourself how much you love yourself!

Continued -- Part Two (2008)