Jacquie's Blog

Empowered Spirit-Being People

2012-01-28T12:58:00.001-05:00

The clearest picture I have thus far for one aspect of “how it all works,” is that spirit-being humans can become so connected and identified with their own pattern originations, when there is a spirit-being parting from their physical body organisms, they are still enmeshed and encoded with those same patterns So by not successfully extracting the essence of themselves, the spirit-bring quite possibly lives other lives within similar design matrixes. I also think there are spirit-beings who have consciously wanted to keep having similar experiences in other lives and locales.

In the later 1970s, while living in the Sierra Nevada mountain foothills in northern California, when I was in a crisis about my father‘s forthcoming passing on, I played a lot with different ways of thinking—and their results. On many occasions I would temporarily set aside my own identity and thought processes, and purposely energize another set of patterns with which to see and experience my environment. Then I would extract the essence of myself from my body organism, placing “Me” in back of my body, identifying with myself as the essence of Me that was the energy pattern originator. After that I would take a walk in the surrounding woods, seeing and experiencing the world through that different lens. When I came back home I would rejoin with my body, assume my usual identity and thought patterns, afterwards writing about the specific designs I had instigated and what had happened

From today‘s perspective, it was a great way to begin to really Liberate and untangle the various components of Me-as-a-wholistic-Being … and to experientially Understand the processes I naturally use to energize designs of all kinds.

Then in the early 1980s when Jim and I were taking a tour through history, Jim was convinced he had lived other lives in other times. From my point of view, I thought I certainly made natural energy connections with others in the past and present, from my emphases as Jacquie, but it didn‘t feel right for me to go beyond that. A few weeks ago a speculation arose to my conscious awareness: Does how some people in today‘s world think about living other historical lives, primarily apply to the experiment?

Over the years, my Understandings about how one‘s gender role as a cultural female or male can be a large entrapment in terms of one‘s identity and identifications as a spirit-veing human, has increased considerably. This includes the emotional tones that have become familiar experiences in one‘s Life. Also, I‘ve been increasingly aware that our official cultural agreements about the significance of objective/scientific reality, a type of logos that doesn‘t include a person‘s inner subjective aspects, can become a major entrapment.

Recently, during “Our” explorations of The Tree of Life, our body organism is very clear that in its natural state, the escalating emotional intensities in today‘s world are usually too much for it! When in their presence at televised sports events and many other entertainment venues, it tenses up to protect itself. And I have Realized that in the past, as a spirit-being human within a cultural context, I too thought I needed to set forth a lot of energy in order to be safe-enough and to even have a desirable place amidst it. Again, this is being said with great Appreciation for the experiential contrasts I have had as a participant in the cultural processes.

Today … the story that wholistically makes the most sense to Me is one where I imaginatively See a big spirit-being gathering of those who were choosing to collaborate and participate, in preparation for the experiment in separations from the basics—that would unfold for thousands of years. At the preliminary spirit-being meeting, various forthcoming participants were choosing various parts. During the process, I said I wanted to come into the whole experiment just once, near the end. I wanted to play a part where I showed how one could become culturally programmed, and then successfully disentangle oneself from one‘s patterns and body organism—returning home as a portion of unfettered divine Love and Oneness, while still amidst the natural world as a spirit-being human. (I especially enjoy this picture because it gives each of us spirit-being humans a more original horizontal playing field.)

A major Realization that has been becoming even clearer recently, is that as a spirit-being person, I‘ve been exploring divine Love all my Life, including how it has been culturally translated during the experiment. In the present, it‘s like I‘m back home as a portion of unfettered divine Love and Oneness, with all the digested experiences, Understandings, and their applications so far … along with a wonderful companion and fellow-traveler for the past 41-years—Jim.

I‘m also very clear that experiences from using current-day cultural individuality positions and perspectives are very different from experiences amidst the dimension of basic unfettered divine Love and Oneness, as an individualized portion of it all.

To repeat, as I See what‘s happening in our world-of-today, I think we‘re all close to the experiment‘s conclusion, where we each can directly apply what we‘ve learned in our Lives … now. And so, as a wholistic composite Being that includes our Body Organism, our choice is to continue applying what “we” have already learned, along with our further explorations and adventures in 2012 … amidst The Tree of Life.

With Best Wishes for the Highest Good, J

Money

2012-01-22T11:35:00.002-05:00

During the past few months, while following the developments of cultural events, I have accumulated a fat file about “Money.“ This is a folder I didn‘t take to the basement recently from studies of the past, because it is so actively current—and globally volatile! Overall, I think the money picture is very entwined and complex!

Translating what I‘ve learned about the complementary nature of logos and mythos to money, I think in logical terms money is a factual medium for transactions: I give you so much money for what you are selling—goods and/or services—money that you can use as you choose. Then symbolically/mythologically-speaking, in addition to direct buying power, money can give a person potential prestige and esteem in other people‘s eyes.

Moreover, there is the very practical reality here in the United States and in other places around the world—that it is necessary to have enough money to support oneself as an individual and as a family. In the U.S. and elsewhere, people are saying, “We need and want jobs!” (hopefully jobs that pay enough). But again, I See all this within the context of a disintegrating spirit-being experiment—of separations from Oneness, from unfettered Love—and from the natural world itself, which has resulted in large-scale environmental problems.

Personally-speaking, in addition to our own endeavors, as only children Jim and I both inherited enough money when our parents passed on, to be able to live comfortable and modest lives, debt-free. But we too are part of the demise of “the experiment.” Even though Jim has a lot if experiential background in the area of finance, we have never been invested in the stock market. Instead, we have been putting our money into bank CDs, primarily because we wanted it to be as safe as possible, and for many years we both wanted to use the majority of our time and attention amongst other Life choices. Also, neither one of us wanted to put forth the efforts to achieve the life-style and the potential symbolic prestige that money can give one culturally.

For decades, we both have been mindful of who and what our money supports. In the present, our checking account and bank CDs are “all in” a regional bank, that wasn‘t involved with federal TARP funds. But, in many ways Jim and I are like other Americans today, people who live primarily on our social security checks for our monthly expenses.

How does all this relate with my integrated Being‘s explorations with The Tree of Life in 2012? That will be part of our forthcoming discoveries and adventures.......

All In

2012-01-10T12:36:00.001-05:00

One day—after weeks of studying and being emersed in paganism and the various mystery religions around the Mediterranean, including many people‘s Understandings in those days about the importance of both logos (cultural logical thinking) and mythos (what‘s behind the scenes), and their complementary nature—all before Jesus‘ appearance … and then the subsequent developments of both “official” Christianity and Gnosticism—I drew a schematic picture for clarity. This had been a big study, amidst my multiple culmination processes of the past year, where I needed to stand back from the whole thing. It was four days before I blog-posted “The Tree of Life in 2012” on 1/1/12.

At the top of the page for my schematic depiction I started with Divine Love and Oneness—where each of us is an individualized portion of it (our Essential I). Then on the left side of the page I showed the eating of fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the biblical Garden of Eden story. Next, moving down the left side of the page came oppositional duality—good and evil, and on and on. After that, going further down the page, I showed the enormous interwoven complexity that has developed and evolved throughout the centuries from that first spirit-being collaborative emphasis of oppositional duality (along with other Troublemakers), to the present.

Moreover, by that time, four days before the heralded 2012 year began, I was already clear that it wasn‘t just oppositional duality that was one of the main problem-causers for we as the human species … it was duality itself! So near the top of my schematic picture, under Divine Love and Oneness—where each of us uses its attributes with our choices of patterns, I placed duality itself above oppositional dualism on the left side of the page.

What I believe now is that there is no fundamental duality … what there is basically are contrasts of time/space movements such as night and day, up and down, in and out— and interconnected relationships such as spirit and matter.

Then on the right hand side of the schematic picture I placed The Tree of Life—Oneness and unfettered divine Love—with basic characteristics such as easy/effortless; full health; transformation processes; joy; unified and integrated wholeness; safety; full potency; and full responsibility.

When I Saw the whole picture, it was clear that to continue with any more studies and Understandings about the past, such as I had been doing, was foolish. So I began to move more upstairs materials of books and folders from studies I‘d done over the years, to the basement. It was time to be even more wholistically aligned with the basics of divinity and the natural world, as I Understand them today. And of course by being more “all in” as a fully integrated composite Being this way, our body organism now has more of the opportunities it has wanted to have, to find out what it can Be, Become, and Do. And as a spirit-being human, who doesn‘t need to use cultural designs and ways of thinking so often, I can find out more of what I can Be, Become, and Do, too.

As I See it today, each of us as a spirit-being human has played our part and parts in the collaborative spirit-being duality experiment, and now it‘s rime to translate and apply what we‘ve learned. So no matter what ethnicity, background, or station in life a person has had and has achieved, in some ways it isn‘t really that relevant any longer. From my point of view, “the experiment” is about over and each of us has played the part or parts we individually chose originally. What does matter is what each of us does from now on—daily and moment-by-moment, with our experiences and what we‘ve learned … which actually can level the playing field a lot more in 2012.

With Best Wishes for the Highest Good, J.

The Tree of Life in 2012

2012-01-01T11:18:00.002-05:00

Now that we as the human species have played out our cultural experiments for the past thousands of years—separating ourselves from other natural world species members, from our fellow humans, and from a direct relationship with the Oneness of divinity—with the experiential Understandings we have currently, I think each of us can individually and also collaboratively explore The Tree of Life.

To me, the Garden of Eden story in the Bible‘s Old Testament—Eve and Adam choosing to eat fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—is a symbolic representation of the human species deciding to use oppositional dualism, etc.—and go forth with its separation experiments. And now, with the help of modern technology, we are all able to See the results that have played out in global physical terms over the centuries. I also think that “the experiment” was important and valuable.

What I Understand as an integrated, wholistic Being, is that “In the beginning is divine Love. Divine Love is the starting point. From it, forms are manifested in this reality system, and it connects all Life.” That is what I heard repeatedly one night from a very deep dimension of my Being, during dreams and associated awake moments. Then that same night, from a closer dimension to physicalness, I Realized that as individualized portions of divine Love—of Oneness—each of us uses its attributes to energize patterns and designs that become our personal contributions to the overall play, bringing about our share of connections and events.

I think that one of a myriad number of misinterpretations about Oneness in our culture today is to say that I am you and you are me. I think this doesn‘t account for the various levels and dimensions of each of us as wholistic Beings, nor does it give each of us the wholistic potency and responsibility for our individual choices, no matter what dimension we are in. Capabilities I have played with as the essence of myself are such that “I” can temporarily merge with another Being‘s focuses, either purposely or semi-automatically—but I am still fundamentally Me doing so—and then the connections naturally recede when one lives Life as a process and moves on.

As I experientially Understand it now, there are two major consciousness forms that are part of our human personhoods:

* One is our overall basic body consciousness, made up of the whole divinely and intelligently crafted body organism‘s natural processes amidst the basic natural world—all within a vast network of connections and probabilities.

* The second consciousness is that which each of us primarily identifies with and experiences. It includes our cultural gender trainings and some cultural designs of “how it all works.” And of course the contents of this consciousness can be changed and transformed with different perspectives and patterns.

In current-day terms, I think the two consciousness forms and their interactions are being expressed as the mind-body connection.

In later December 2011, the very day I word-processed a larger-picture story of events in my Life for the file folder, “New Songs, New Stories,” Jim composed the melody for his first musical composition. He had been hearing variations of it oftentimes inwardly, and he was finally ready to play it and put it down on paper in note form. When I heard it, as a wholistic Being I thought it was exquisite! So there we were on the same day, with a new story and a new song, from amidst a new framework!

Inwardly, I have been Seeing the symbolic picture I painted early in 2011, representing a potted and growing plant of safety and peace, as part of The Tree of Life, too. As I wrote earlier, I am now a Being who is comfortably energizing divine safety along with peace for myself and others—part of my contributions to the overall current-day spirit-human events. I‘ve Realized that I can truly create a personal core that is fluid and integrous, without needing protections. Yes, I am continuing to play my part as best I can, while also horizontally valuing others for their worldviews.

I think a good perspective to use about Life is to see our human choices during “the experiment” as if we have been using just one radio station among many options, or tuning to just one television channel, among many other options. Both Jim and I have been and are wholistically exploring other stations and channels that are also connected to this basic reality system.

From my point of view The Tree of Life is a mythic symbol, an internal psychic energy form used by many groups of people throughout our shared human history … of course filled with different ingredients depending upon the time and place. I think a psychic and biological emphasis such as The Tree of Life can be a potent energy-filled centrality in today‘s world, that invisibly and inwardly flows, naturally connecting with like-minded energies.

And now, with our individual and collaborative emphases, Jim and I and our body organisms will be discovering how The Tree of Life manifests for each of us—and how we each inter-relate with it in 2012, when there will be more fresh New Songs and New Stories.

With Unfettered Divine Love, J.

Aligning and Harmonizing with “The Basics”

2011-09-05T12:02:00.002-04:00

Even though Jim had been energizing designs of “New Songs, New Stories” and “A Completely Different Reality,” he also had other emphases in motion from earlier times—especially golf achievements and more basic understandings of Western music. Then last month (later August), after he had achieved a fairly consistent level of skillfulness on the golf course, he experienced a physical situation that involved both of us.

Rather than going into the details of what happened using cultural thought patterns, I‘m choosing to write about it from within the reality I am amidst now and my perspectives from there. What I See is that Jim‘s body—as an integrous, intelligent energy form amidst the basics of divinity overall and the basics of the natural world—brought forth a wisely chosen event in which Jim was somewhat disabled for a while. And during that time, we both often sought divine guidance in terms of how to think about what was happening, and what to do and not-do. Being together this way, we each cherished some of the richest days we have ever experienced as a dyad.

One result of Jim‘s reflections is that he decided to withdraw all his attention from golf and sports in general—as a participant, spectator, or Witness. He concluded that to go any further with increasing his golf skill level would require more than he wanted to put into the process … he thought that if he wanted to play the game sometime in the future he would be able to feel good about his abilities and performance. In other words he interpreted his body telling him, “Enough is enough.“

Since sports and athletic prowess had been huge significances throughout Jim‘s Life, starting in his growing-up home and their family‘s involvement with the community, his purposeful withdrawal from all aspects of competition shifted his whole psyche—with dramatic consequences from the start. He also removed the complexities of cultural designs he had used around being a separate individual.

All of these developments further magnified my Understandings about the uniqueness of each of us, and the various components of an individual‘s psychic structure. I could clearly See that while I had been intent on aligning all parts of my Being a steady step at a time into and within A Completely Different Reality, Jim had had a mixture of realities in motion. And his physical disablement obviously provided the motivation for him to make some big changes!

During the process I became even clearer about the part I Am playing as a wholistic, Liberated Being including an intelligent-wise body organism, with various and flexible connections to divinity and with my personal God that is a portion of overall divinity.

At one point I was guided to imaginatively take the top portion of my previous “Beyond Sticky Webs” dream/vision—where each of us is an integrated, wholistic, illuminated Self, who is now freed from all the entrapments of cultural obligations and responsibilities and from our own personal patterns—and to mentally fill the whole picture frame with it. What I experientially Understood is that “more is less,” that is, the larger Self I Am in a basic sense, the less “individual” I Am in ways I had learned for a cultural identity. Playing my part now as a spirit-being human is to encourage others to step into their own basic grandeur in Oneness terms.

Starting with my writings in early 1999, I have been describing an expanding progression of Me and my identity, where now I know myself to Be an integral part of divinity and the Earth system, like a significant dot amongst thousands of other significant dots, where there are potential flexible and moving energy connections with other individuals, both with physical bodies and without them. I know that all of my writings have been collaborations with other aspects of Oneness, where I have played my part as an Essential I/ spirit-being and body organism in this time/space reality as an individualized portion of Oneness. Along with my evolving identity, my Understanding of personal power has also evolved.

Jim has Realized that what he is really enthused about energizing for his Life in the present is to express basic divinity overall and especially musically—uncomplicated Divine Love, Divine Trust, Oneness, and Joy. From there one thing led to another, where together we went through a delightful co-creative process online of connecting with distributors of crystal bowls in the U.S. Southwest, buying a set of 12 that were harmoniously tuned with each other. At the start we decided we would both use them for healing/healthing activities; additionally, Jim would use them for some of his forthcoming musical compositions, and I would personally use them to explore and have fun. Jim also purchased an E minor wooden flute.

Crystals have been meaningful in Jim and my Lives in the past. In the early 1980s when we lived in the Sierra mountain foothills of northern CA, our delightful cat, Minute, would frequently go to the top of the back of the couch, bat the crystals that we had hung in south-facing windows there, and then jump down to chase the dancing sunbeams around the room. In our Lives today, we have the same two crystals hung in south-facing windows, and twice a year they dance on the ceiling and walls of the large expanse called “the great room.” And when I was seeking for a core symbol of my psychic structure, where I no longer needed any protections, what inwardly emerged was a beautiful, large fluid crystal to replace any of the steel core that remained, which I had given myself during difficult years with my father in my middle teens. Then recently Jim was able to achieve some healing and healthing when he immersed himself in Steven Halpern‘s “Crystal Suite” CD, which my body had also loved for many years.

For most of a couple of days last month Jim lay on a chaise lounge on our covered deck amidst the natural world here on Harmony Hill, using his CD player with earphones to wash his body and himself with gorgeous classical music that we have in our music collection. I think it definitely helped him!

At one point I mentally associated to 1975 when we left the accelerating world of money-making and money-spending in southern California, and we turned in another direction, taking our Lives into our own hands when we moved to the Sierra foothills in northern California. In some ways this change of direction we are making in 2011 is similar because portions of our Lives will certainly be different. We will still live in the same home and locale with this directional shift, but our experiences will be emerging from different emphases.

During this large-scale reconstruction, one day during meditation I experienced an internal energy structure collapsing, which I could both inwardly feel and See, where the energies were being freed to move on. One association with some of the collapsing structure was to the emphasis I made in my early 20s: I emphatically stated that when I got to the end of my life, I wanted to be able to look back and have no regrets. Well, after the completion of Jim and my first collaborative script together on our 40th wedding anniversary last October 30th and I looked back as a wholistic Being, I felt I had satisfactorily and successfully completed that story.

I also intuitively knew that part of the collapsing inner structure came from last October 30th on our 40th wedding anniversary, when Jim and I completed our first collaborative script with one another and started a fresh adventure the next day. At the time we dissolved all of our previous design connections. For me this meant no longer Being immersed in the River of Love, either individually or as a dyad … and so I really opened things up as I had been divinely guided to do for years. One result has been that how I would describe my Life currently is that the river of love—which I believe connects us all and is the Source of Life—is able to flow freely throughout all levels and layers of my Being. I don‘t have to go anywhere or do anything. I don‘t have to Be immersed in it as I was before—it just is, it is a basic. It can now flow freely and unencumbered.

Since starting our New Adventure last October 31st (2010), I even more clearly Saw how some of Jim and my personal designs had obviously conflicted with each other, and we had both done the best we could to be as harmonious as possible with one another. But what finally dawned on me was that with those conflicting energies, we just made it worse by trying to be harmonious because that put each of us freshly and automatically into energy connections with the other one. So what I did was to take all my energies back from those types of patterns with their connections, and instead set forth a design that if from my individual choices there was a natural connection with Jim and others with their choices, all well and good, If not, in energy terms we would miss one another. Result? It has played out beautifully for both of us!

In the present regarding the purchase of the 12 harmonized crystal bowls, I could See that there was a convergence taking place of some of Jim and my past-present personal interests—mine in primal processes, the basics of divinity and the basics of the natural world; and Jim‘s immersions into the depths of music and their harmonics. We both think that sound and vibrations are a basic of this system and primal to our body organisms. So we are clearing our round slate coffee table that sits in front of the curved couch and a comfortable distance from the fireplace, and we will be placing the bowls on it when they arrive, as a welcome addition to our living room area. It seems that finally Jim and I are both at a place individually where we can naturally harmonize even more wholistically with each other now.

More connections to the past were also emerging to my conscious awareness. Twelve plus years ago Jim experienced a crises of the spirit we wrote about in our book, God‘s River of Love. In the snapshot “Jim‘s Odyssey” he talked about not being able to correlate what he knew about himself as a spirit-being in an uncultured environment with how to translate that harmoniously into his Jim Life. And in “Caught Between the Worlds” he said things were better, but he was still caught between the worlds of the basic spirit-being dimension and the current-day cultural time/space reality.

With the purchase of the crystal bowls and his choices to remove all competition and cultural separations from his Life, Jim has felt like he has finally achieved what he had been seeking all his Jim-Life … and the other day he told me while we were making our lunches, “I can finally say I Love my Life now!” He also says he has completely stripped himself of cultural designs with which he learned to be strong, and now he needs to build his strength (and identity) afresh as the essence of himself.

For months I‘ve been in a Culmination Time, being open to what emerges from my past emphases, studies, and inputs from elsewhere. Jim has recently suggested that I complete my student role. I smiled when I heard him because I‘ve thought of myself as a student most of my Life, currently speculating that possibly I should emphasize and put even more weight into explorer and adventurer designs in this Completely Different Reality. It seems that the inner voice that stated it needed a vacation last spring has also provided energy input for our personal and dyadic choices now.

In the present/future I‘m very interested in more explorations with the feedback loop—from Selector/Chooser, Energy Originator, Witness, Experiencer, and Evaluator positions—in relationship with others, in invisible and visible terms.

One day during this directional change process, with tears in my eyes I thought back to that afternoon in 1975 on the beach in Tobago when tears were flowing then as I told Jim I was homesick, sick about our country and what was happening to it, as I was engulfed with the realization it was the land of my birth … I loved it and its people. I said I had to go back and somehow play my part, to do what I could, whatever that meant. At the time, Jim said he too had to go back and figure out how to create a different Life. My evaluation at this time is that we have both achieved those goals—and we‘ve each had a lot to do to get here!

Then from more recent times, out of a dream event in mid 2006 I Lovingly and slowly painted a mixed media picture of a new home Jim and I bought that has complemented and coexisted as an imaginary one to the physical home we live in now. The unfurnished imaginary home was/is amidst a natural world environment where really big dreams can be realized. For five years now this picture has sat on an easel atop the dresser in our bedroom. Again I feel that multiple emphases from the past have been emerging and intermingling in the present.

One of Jim‘s visions and follow-throughs in physical terms is manifesting in our front yard today, where the fruit trees we planted have matured and we are daily eating fabulous peaches in our morning fruit compote, while more peaches are ripening on another tree … and pears, pear-apples, and apples are also ripening. Last month the Cox Orange Pippin apples Jim picked were delicious. He is frequently exclaiming, “We are going to have a lot of fruit this year!”

And so I close for now with Namasté and Unfettered Love from both of us, J.

The Land of Our Births, September 2011

2011-09-05T11:53:00.001-04:00

Sometime last spring when I was half way through the DVD series around Frenchman Alexis de Touqueville‘s observations about the U.S. during his visit here in 1831 and 1832, from which he later wrote Democracy in America, I heard an inner voice I Trust say, “I need a vacation.” The warmer season was approaching, and so I began to methodically shut down what I had in motion, neatly stacking up materials I thought I would return to in the later fall or winter. Then one day Jim came into my personal room during this process, observing that he thought it would be good for me to get some of those piles out of my daily environment, and he would be happy to help me take them downstairs to the file cabinet he had moved there when he brought an electronic piano into his personal room. He added that he‘d be happy to bring materials back up if I wanted them later in the year. Since I agreed with his suggestions, downstairs they went.

Then I crafted and painted the clay pot of safety and peace I talked about earlier, that is now thumb-tacked on the door to my personal room—and in my imagination it‘s growing! After that I went through all my art materials to update myself on what I have, deciding (again at Jim‘s suggestion) to get a lovely wooden, portable tabletop easel. My first picture using it was of a chickadee, a tribute to an indigenous spirit-being male I greatly admire. The painting style I‘m currently using has many aspects of what I‘ve interpreted in my studies over the years of Japanese and Chinese visual expressions, which come from their Zen, other Buddhist, and Taoist belief structures.

A big emphasis for these past few months during my “vacation” has been to Go Direct, repeatedly given as divine guidance. This has meant to use my invisible inner Choice Selector from a position of Oneness and merge with what I want to Understand.

Moving to the immediate present. After I recently reread my website manuscript Within the River of Love, Translations and Applications, and then the subsequent blogs, I Realized I had already interwoven many perspectives about “The Land of Our Births.” Central to my perspectives is that We the People of the United States of America have now taken the energy designs and patterns that were set forth from the beginning of our nation and have played them out to their logical conclusions. From my point of view, that‘s what the spirit-being experiment for the past thousands of years has been all about, and what our United States of America experiment within the larger experiment has been all about. And now each of us as an individual has the opportunity to stand back in his or her Life, deciding and choosing which I, which matrix, which wavelength—and then effectively implementing their decisions. Will we choose, individually and together, to craft A New American Dream?

We the People

2011-03-08T11:28:00.002-05:00

While immersed in The Teaching Company‘s CD series, “Touqueville and the American Experiment” about democracy in the United States, I carefully read the recent series of three articles in the New York Times by Ian Urbina about the extraction of natural gas called “hydrofracking.” Within them, there was a highlighting of that process and procedure in Pennsylvania, a state where both my daughter and granddaughter live … and my expanding awarenesses struck close to the bone. I also listened carefully to Diane Rehm‘s NPR discussion on 3/1/11 about the first New York Times‘ article on this subject, concluding that to my mind the Health of the people in Pennsylvania goes far beyond limited conversations about free enterprise and Constitutional rights.

The following are my cullings from the three New York Times “hydrofracking” articles and what I heard on Diane Rehm‘s NPR program:

Setting the stage to start with. Some environmentalists say using natural gas will help slow climate change because it burns more cleanly than coal or oil; lawmakers hail the gas as a source of jobs; and it‘s said to be a way to wean the U.S. from its dependency on other countries for oil.

Now to the processes of the relatively new drilling method called “hydrofracking.” Huge amounts of water, mixed with sand and potent chemicals, are injected at high pressures underground to break up rock formations and release the gas. I read that one well can produce over a million gallons of wastewater that is often laced with highly corrosive salts, carcinogens like benzene, and naturally occurring radioactive elements like radium from underground—which combine with the original elements in the hydrofracking process itself.

From thousands of internal documents—many of which were never reported—a picture emerges that the dangers to the environment and health are greater than previously understood. It‘s a complex story of wastewater from the hydrofracking process sometimes being hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it, and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water. Radioactivity is said to be at levels higher than previously known. Federal and state regulators are allowing most sewage treatment plants that accept drilling waste to not test for radioactivity.

I read further that many E.P.A. scientists are alarmed, warning that drilling waste is a threat to drinking water in PA. And I add, this situation appears to be statewide.

Currently, there are said to be roughly 71,000 active gas wells in PA and thousands more are planned, while regulations have not kept pace with the natural gas industry‘s expansion of production and drilling. Since federal and state regulations are complex, I urge people to read the three articles themselves for more clarity. As I understand it, the natural gas industry overall has exemptions from federal environmental laws that regulate most other heavy industries, laws that were written to protect air and drinking water from radioactive and hazardous chemicals. (Adding another piece to the picture, in terms of what state and federal regulations there are and may be, with governments needing to trim budgets, it doesn‘t seem there will be many inspectors or regulators to do the job.)

In PA, some well operators are selling their wastes to communities that spread it on roads for de-icing in winter and dust suppression in summer. Then when ice melts or rain falls, the waste can run off roads and end up in the drinking supply.

Gas has seeped into underground drinking water supplies in at least five states, including PA; and air pollution caused by natural gas is said to be a growing threat, too.

Some dangers of this toxic wastewater are its potential to contaminate drinking water and/or enter the food chain through fish or farming. As I understand it, once radium enters a person‘s body by eating, drinking, or breathing, it can cause cancer and other health problems. Adding to that, what about the mix of toxic chemicals people are also being exposed to and possibly ingesting?

More of my background. In the early 1960s, while reading books by Henry David Thoreau and many other writers, I extensively studied “freedom” and its various applications, concluding at the time that the way freedom is used by some people gets into license (freedom to do as one wishes in excessive ways); and that an individual‘s American Constitutional rights need to be limited when their use harmfully affects another person. That way of thinking still makes sense to me.

So, even though cash-strapped property owners in today‘s reality have the lawful right to sell or lease their underground mineral resources, if their personal actions adversely affect the Health of others, have these landowners abused their Constitutional personal rights? I think they have. In addition to U.S. Constitutional laws, there seems to me to be Common Sense perspectives that go beyond more narrow definitions of “rights.”

And what about businesses and business people who are primarily focused upon the security of their jobs and company profits, in an era where some people are energizing, “Greed is good”? As I‘ve been digesting the recent New York Times articles, I think there has been and is a lot of narrow self-interests, including distortion of the facts, threats, and in some cases downright lying taking place.

In my blog posting of “Enough is Enough” on 11/6/10, I gave myself room to personally expand without being held back by ongoing round-robin cultural events. And now, even though I Am in A Completely Different Reality, I Am also a mother, grandmother—and U.S. citizen. Somehow an internal tipping point took place for me as a wholistic Being, when amidst the context of all the dynamic global events that are happening, I read the three New York Times hydrofracking articles. I was alarmed! … and decided to productively use my emotional energies to write this essay, post it as a blog, and let it all go.

In addition to Seeing my daughter and granddaughter as spirit-being humans with their own agendas, I passionately care about the well-being and health of my family, including my American family! And from my point of view, many spirit-being humans in today‘s matrixes, who I believe are also basically part of a dimension of divine Oneness, are energizing limited and selfish-centered patterns that are harmful to others. Yes, as I stated earlier, this current-day hydrofracking reality—called this century‘s Gold Rush by some—is close to the bone.

To my way of thinking, it‘s a matter of power, personal power. I think a major significance of Facebook and the uprisings in the Middle East, North Africa, and protests here in the United States, is an emerging declaration of I Am Important, and I Am demanding to have a voice in my Life!

But currently here in the U.S., large amounts of money are being used by individuals and groups for the purpose of capturing people‘s minds and votes. So how free are people really when they are being deluged with sophisticated advertising techniques and propaganda? Who can one trust in this increasingly busy world?

Of course we need sources for the energy we use here in the United States for our industrial system and Lives. Yes, we are dependent on Middle East and other countries for large portions of our needed energy supplies. But does this also mean that hydrofracking for natural gas here in the U.S. is the answer ? I don‘t think so. From my point of view that‘s a manipulative, short-sighted solution to some very complex global and national situations.

I believe We the People of the United States now need to have quite basic, intelligent, and comprehensive conversations, that include both Constitutional rights and our individual responsibilities for others too.

Even though I certainly respect each of us spirit-being humans in terms of freedom of choice and playing our parts as individual portions of Oneness, I‘m also obviously dismayed about how some are currently using their personal points of power. Instead, I think each of us has wondrous individual potentials we can now choose to use, when We the People individually and collectively say, “Enough is enough of playing a part and parts in our trouble-making spirit-being experiment”—and instead choose to become what we are individually and collectively capable of Being.

Here‘s to widespread Liberation! J.

Cultural Contexts

2011-02-27T12:39:00.002-05:00

Jim and I have now completed all the film-watching we had planned of the Rodgers and Hammerstein‘s Broadway stage musicals that were later made into Hollywood movies. And even though the movies were primarily produced in the 1950s, for me they have represented many of the predominant cultural patterns from the 1940s and 1950s in the United States, before the large-scale cultural upheavals began here in the 1960s and 1970s. (Until 1968 there had been censorship guidelines for the film industry called the Hays Code, that spelled out what was acceptable content for motion pictures produced for a public audience in the United States … and I think the Hays Code directly represented some of the cultural limitation agreements at the time. Then after 1968, a film rating system was introduced.)

During our recent movie-watching process, Jim and I also added a made-for-television Rodgers and Hammerstein production from March 31, 1957—Cinderella, with Julie Andrews in the title role. It was reported to have been seen by over 100 million people in the U.S., fully 60% of the country‘s population at the time. Watching the fairy tale in February 2011 provided a fresh picture of some of the underlying patterns that are part of our Western world and mutual European backgrounds for gender relationships.

In Cinderella, she is a poor but beautiful young woman, while he is a handsome and rich prince—a story line that played out with different versions over and over again in movies I saw on Friday nights with my parents in the later 1930s and most of the 1940s. At a minimum the male needed to be able to support them both because the female had limited options to make much money in those days; and besides, it was her gender role to take care of the home and family. In many of the films, before marriage she was a secretary, store clerk, or struggling actress, and he was a successful businessman.

Jim and I have also completed hearing/seeing two of the three proposed CD/DVD series from The Teaching Company about our American past—America‘s religious history, and its philosophical/intellectual history. Furthermore, we ordered and watched a two-hour film—A More Perfect Union: America Becomes a Nation—based upon the 1787 convention of delegates in Philadelphia, convened to modify or streamline the Articles of Confederation, out of which the Constitution of the United States then emerged. (The film had been officially recognized by the Commission on the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution as of “exceptional merit.”)

To all of those perspectives I mentally integrated some of what I read in the Prince of Wales‘ recent book, Harmony, A New Way of Looking at Our World. He wrote that from the seventeenth century onward, science was able to view Nature as inanimate, unconscious, and mechanistic. He says the British worldview had become “a mechanistic mindset,” wherein humans were separate and separated from the natural world.

So watching film representations of the men who crafted our country‘s foundation in A More Perfect Union as people amidst their time and context too—inheritors of British traditions, laws, agreements, and worldviews—was illuminating. There was a mutual background of individual rights and the rule of law. I think the combinations of who those individual men were, their industriousness, their educations (including their ongoing self-educations), their mutual beliefs, the economic opportunities available in “the New World,” and numerous other factors combined into a potent mix that has grown and been developed to become what the United States of America is today.

And now, many people in the Middle East, North Africa, and elsewhere, within their historical and current-day contexts, are expressing their desires for more freedom and economic opportunities. At the same time, they don‘t have a whole continent of resources such as the colonists had in the New World. They also don‘t have the backgrounds the American colonists had from the previous European Age of Reason, the European Scientific Revolution, the European Christian religious past, the English Magna Carta of 1215, and subsequent English laws. What people elsewhere do have are their own backgrounds and belief structures—which I think are very wise to be aware of as patterned energies in motion from their past into their present.

One of the things I‘m saying is I believe there is an overall cultural cohesiveness within each era in each geographic location that includes its past … and to my mind they all have had and have value in their own ways. By not using any filters of superiority/inferiority, dualistic opposition, or competition, I can use a lens that Sees the value of us all amidst the contexts we live in today, along with those contexts within which earlier people lived.

In terms of Going Beyond into A Completely Different Reality, I still come back to a perspective I expressed in the essay “Freedom” I blog-posted on 9/23/10—that for me a wholer, fuller freedom is liberation from one‘s culturally conditioned mind. Hence, clearly Understanding one‘s cultural past and present can be used as stepping stones during the process of Liberation. Then, no matter what culture one is amidst, being free and liberated from embedded cultural patterns can open up new and fresh ways of thinking, everywhere. That is, it really can be a more even playing field as each individual spirit-being person who chooses to access a dimension of basic Oneness, achieves her or his vaster and more wholistic potential > > and then keeps on expanding.

With Respect for Each of Us, J.

More Than One Experiment?

2011-02-14T11:10:00.001-05:00

While Being amidst a large-scale culmination time this winter, a few weeks ago I began freshly exploring “The Land of Our Births”—the United States of America, starting with its originations—from a perspective of Understanding the various background threads that have made up our nation‘s overall and complex story. Along the way I have been placing that picture in a global context—our country‘s relationship or lack of same with other countries. And beyond that, I have been Seeing the whole thing within what I‘ve called a spirit-being experiment for the past thousands of years, where trouble-causing patterns were energized by spirit-being humans and played out as experiences in individual, group, and national Lives. All together, it has become a dynamic tapestry.

One conclusion that has emerged so far is that not only is it quite likely there has been a vaster spirit-being experiment taking place globally for thousands of years, the United States of America may also be an experiment—that is, its origination and development has been and is an experiment within a bigger experiment, (which is a probability I am currently delving into).

Yes, almost a year ago I did successfully dissolve plans I had for any more studies such as going back into the U.S. historical past and threading out the earlier patterns which have evolved and grown to the present—which was wonderfully freeing at the time! Then as “I” personally evolved and expanded, a few weeks ago inner urgings directed me to get into the two small baskets of materials I had collected about “The Land of Our Births.” They were still cozily stored under my desk upstairs (which I had not taken downstairs yet).

Within the baskets, in addition to many other materials, I discovered one DVD and two CD courses from The Teaching Company that I had previously purchased during their sales, before removing that study from my future plans … all of which I had not seen or heard yet. They included America‘s religious history, its philosophy and intellectual history, and Frenchman Alexis de Touqueville‘s observations about the U.S. during his visit here in 1831 and 1832, from which he later wrote Democracy in America, a two-volume study of the American people and their institutions. When I asked Jim if he was interested in joining me while I watched and heard the DVD and CD courses, he was positive—seeing it as a great finale to many of the studies we had done in earlier years.

At the time when I asked Jim if he was interested in joining me with my U.S. historical focuses, along with still and video photography, he was immersed in his musical interests and studies, focusing on composer Richard Rodgers‘ accomplishments with his two main collaborators, Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II. He was also bringing in other composers from that era—primarily the first half of the 20th century—like Jerome Kern, George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Irving Berlin. (Jim is entranced with beautiful melodies and harmonies, and thinks he may eventually like to do his own composing.)

The above people were all connected to stage productions in New York City, from which many Hollywood movies were later made. Therefore, Jim‘s New York stage interests have correlated with my earlier Life in southern California from the later 1930s through most of the 1940s. I have laughingly said that while other families went to church together on Sunday, in those years my family‘s weekly activity was a Friday night double feature at a local movie theater … all of which fed us participants at church and the movie theaters weekly doses of certain cultural patterns at the time. (In those years my parents believed in a remote God “up there” to whom they prayed nightly, and I was free to attend numerous Protestant Sunday schools and churches with various friends.)

My mother especially loved musicals and musical comedies, so over the years I probably saw more than a hundred of them. Anyway, this winter Jim and I have been and are watching many DVDs of earlier movies, such as Kern and Hammerstein‘s Showboat; Rodger‘s and Hart‘s Pal Joey; and films based on some of Rodgers and Hammerstein‘s Broadway productions: Oklahoma, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, Flower Drum Song, and The Sound of Music. Last week we saw State Fair, the only musical Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote directly for film. We both have greatly appreciated Oscar Hammerstein‘s lyrics, starting with Showboat. Oscar described himself as 1/3 realist and 2/3 mystic, and I certainly agree. To my mind, his lyrics often went far beyond poetry and spirituality.

After Jim decided to join with me and my American history DVD/CD studies, he and I began to correlate our evening film-watching with my materials, and it has really worked out well as many elements of our American past have become vibrantly alive nightly. Also, it‘s been very enlightening to See those movie “models-for-life” from my current-day perspectives and who/what I Am today.

A major difference between the plan I had envisioned almost a year ago about studying the multiple patterns that are embedded in our United States‘ past and what I have been doing recently, is its scope and purpose. Even though I‘ve been going through a lot of materials, both during the day and with Jim in the evening, I‘ve been doing it primarily as a personal process, instead of doing it as a pattern study to then write about.

Concurrently, with considerable Compassion and interest I‘ve been following recent events as they have unfolded in Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere. Connecting those events with my American history studies, the original United States of America as we know it today was founded by people with desires for more personal freedom from their previous restrictions along with enhanced economic opportunities. And in the present I have been witnessing people in other parts of the world also seeking more freedom from their previous restrictions along with more economic opportunities too.

What will happen now? Obviously this is a very different world today than the one out of which the United States of America came into existence. As I Understand it, the combined human species within our global industrial matrixes has been using up many of the world‘s natural resources, including clean water and fertile soils. The human population is currently a little over seven billion. And today, we‘re all living on an Earth where there are dramatic climate-change effects manifesting—floods, drought, severe weather, and people who are hungry and homeless. (Nonetheless, I think that trying to feed people and animals with genetically modified food is an unwise choice.)

So how can young people, and people of all ages around the world attain their goals of better Lives in an environment of increasing pollution and diminished/diminishing natural resources? What is a better Life? It seems to me the answers need to come from multitudes of individuals effectively using her or his own point of divine power amidst an expanded dimension of Oneness. And I think that standing back as a liberated spirit-being human amidst any culture in today‘s world can be both an identity and a position anyone anywhere on the globe can choose to use.

With Unlimited Best Wishes To Us All, J.

Growing A Pot of Safety and Peace

2011-02-07T11:43:00.001-05:00

During my recent culmination time, when as-a-composite-Being, I Am both liberated and open daily to multiple connections from the past, future, and elsewhere, I‘ve been experiencing Understandings from amidst a completely different reality. At present, a large portion of my emphases is to encourage and be available to what emerges, both invisibly and visibly.

One event that has taken place is that the pot of peace I imaginatively planted and described in my last blog posting—that is, peace that goes far beyond wars and battles—grew in expanded and invisible dimensions before I even got the painting of it started. As I now See people and events, I believe that without feeling safe, there can be no real peace. In Jim and My Lives in the past, so many of our confrontational actions and counteractions took place amidst an environment where neither one of us felt safe-enough within our individual matrixes, so we brought in our protections! That is, when either one of us felt threatened, in various ways we each used defense/offense cultural tactics we had learned.

And now in the present, I Am a Being who is comfortably energizing divine safety along with peace for myself and others, as part of my contributions to the overall current-day spirit-human events. I‘ve Realized that I can truly create a personal core that is both integrous and untouchable, without needing protections, while also horizontally Appreciating others for their positions and perspectives. Of course, if someone‘s sense of safety is built upon dominating and controlling others, and/or feeling superior or inferior, more than likely we won‘t even connect. And more than likely there will also be non-connections with those who are choosing to maintain (and defend) their current sense of identity, their worldviews, and the status quo.

For his part, Jim is even more experientially Realizing there are other ways to experience one‘s strength and personal power than the ways he learned to be a cultural male. And one of Jim and My current focuses is on even more skillful and easier mental/emotional communication processes.

With Best Wishes from A Winter Wonderland of Snow, J

A Culmination Time

2010-12-30T12:21:00.003-05:00

Exploring the basics. During this recent culmination time, when emphases I energized in the past and other manifestations from multidimentional sources have been emerging to my conscious awareness, what has stood out as a fundamental basic is individuality.

Many of the categories and other containers I‘ve used over the years with which to think about situations and people have been slipping away, where there‘s much more of a directness now without those filters and evaluators. I‘ve Realized that even though a person‘s words and/or actions may tell one story, there is most likely a whole lot more going on within that person‘s overall psyche, (which can be consciously hidden from her or him too) … And my conclusion is to be aware of each person‘s uniqueness, while also using my point of energization power in ways where I feel I‘m playing my part as wholistically as I can > letting it all go, where others do what they do or not-do.

One manifestation I‘m experiencing today is the result of divine Trust that I emphasized many times in previous years, when I Saw I didn‘t have enough of it in my Life. For me, I think it has provided a great underlying and growing energy vehicle.

All of my various aspects are involved in this personal culmination process now—as an Essential I/spirit-being, body organism, multidimensional self, all-things-considered self, and possibly others I'm not consciously aware of yet—reflecting and deciding what “we” will choose to make significant when we finish the process we‘re currently in of going through many materials in “our” personal room upstairs. They are in baskets, paper folders, computer files, etc. At the same time, as a Selector I Am purposely listening to all my inner voices, and becoming more familiar with them.

The winter season that began officially on December 21, 2010, is a great time for this culmination/evaluation focus. And “we” are clear that when we do make new choices, they will automatically set up new probabilities for connections and experiences, which I think is another basic of this reality system.

Other basics I‘m Seeing at this time are: each of us as a spirit-being human is part of Oneness, where each of us uses our personal power of creativity, imagination, and energizations amidst an overall divinity that is primarily moving towards well-being for all. (Therefore, I think that when we set up oppositions and hierarchies we really make things difficult for ourselves and others, and there needs to be a lot of effort and hard work involved to use and experience those oppositional and hierarchical patterns.)

More about Jim and I. In my last blog posting on 12/18/10, “Exploring the Basics,” I said that when playing my part as a responsible female over the years, I had been consistently passionate about maintaining the health and vitality of Jim and my relationship, believing in the power of divine Love—and our synergistic dyadic Love. Filling out more of the picture now, I think Jim had also been passionate about the health and vitality of our relationship in his way. As I See it today, he, like many men, oftentimes showed and shows his passion through his actions, without accompanying words; while many of us females have spent a lot of time talking with ourselves and other females about our relationships of many kinds.

And here again, Jim and my passion about being together was set within the context of the time and place, and also within the context of what else each of us had predominantly active in our individual psyches at various times. Yes, during our first forty years together I think Jim and my relationship was very complex, as I think many others have also been and are. Currently, he and I are even more directly relating with one another in each transaction daily, where as Artists of the Spirit we are choosing to increase our skills with the use of our mental and emotional communication processes. We are both energizing a belief container that we are each an individualized portion of Oneness who is creatively and artistically using our basic individual point of power amidst this time and space reality.

Potency and Impotence. Having lived within and directly experienced an era in the U.S. when we white females were definitely second class citizens (as were male and female blacks), and white males were the first class citizens, I have considerable fodder for contrasts with my Life today. My past experiential comparisons amidst a superior/inferior and oppositional dualistic society are extensive.

While in the bathtub the other day, with a lot of emotional satisfaction I Realized that I have effectively taken my power back from my own originations that had led to connections and events I no longer choose to experience. Other than what I‘m originating on a daily basis for my Life in the present, the only big-scale emphasis I‘m currently making will be portrayed in a watercolor picture of a clay pot of peace I‘m both imaginatively planting and painting. When the picture is completed, I‘ll put it on the door to my personal room.

The clay pot of peace will have a branching, growing vine in it, and a little above the center of the picture there will be a Holiday card I received this year, where there‘s a white dove of peace on a swirly red background. This pot of peace symbolizes my energized and passionate contribution to current-day events—that is, peace that goes far beyond wars and battles. Other than that, in the present I Am open and receptive to emergings from what I‘ve already energized and to multidimensional manifestations. I now know I no longer need to “mix it up” in confrontational ways with other spirit-being humans, that there are far easier and more effective ways for me to Live.

Time and space. Currently, I think there is a basic time and space for this reality system. From a dream on 12/16/10, in my journal Dances and Dancers I wrote, “In last night‘s dream I experienced a fuller, rounder time and space than a linear or even associative cultural process. It certainly was different—and quite wonderful!“

My body organism. Earlier this month (December 2010), after listening to the BBC's/IPR‘s radio program The Changing World about “The Mysteries of the Brain,” it was even clearer to me that my body organism has a mind of its own. So even though our current-day cultural concept about a mind-body connection is certainly valid, where our thoughts and emotions directly affect our bodies … what I also Understand even more clearly now is how vast the Intelligence is amidst my basic wholistic body organism.

And so that‘s an update of many of my discoveries up to now about “the basics” as I have been and am calling them, which I realize are certainly my own energized thought-form containers, and truly may not be applicable or relevant for other spirit-being people, which is another basic as I Understand it today in terms of basic individuality.

With Best Wishes to All of Us, J.

Exploring the Basics

2010-12-18T13:18:00.002-05:00

And so on October 30th, 2010, I completed my portion of the fabulous dyadic Love story Jim and I collaboratively co-wrote and played parts amidst for forty years, within which I had truly cherished so many aspects of our co-creativity! The October 30th completion also included any ongoing immersion in the River of Love; I felt I had done the best I could with my translations and applications from within it along the way, as I and my worldview were expanding during the journey.

Nonetheless, making that “It‘s Completed” decision, and then being able to fully and effectively implement it had taken many months. During the lead-up time it had been a multifaceted, developmental (and rewarding) personal process. From the beginning of our dyadic relationship, playing my part as a responsible female, I had been consistently passionate about maintaining its health and vitality, believing in the power of divine Love—and our synergistic dyadic Love. What would happen to me, and Jim and I, when I energetically dissolved that whole construction of mine?

For his part, Jim too had truly enjoyed and cherished so much of our dyadic journey and Love story, while he had also felt overly constrained at times as he experienced the results of our co-creativity. Then after forty years, we both knew we had each filled that script out … it was completed. Reflectively-speaking, I feel privileged to have been able to play out two major roles available to spirit-beings with female bodies—both as a mother and as a female in an adult dyad—with two such wondrous dancing partners.

Jim and I are now exploring our current-day personal passions. We both feel much freer this way, and can be even more interested in what each of us is doing when we come-to-meet at meals and other times during the day and evening. Our mutual and deepening Appreciation for each other is increasing, where everything is a fresh creative opportunity daily > new stories and new dances.

Jim‘s central emphasis at present is his own wholistic inner processes, along with music, still and video photography, golf with a practice area in the basement, our daily interactions, and ongoing Life-maintenance activities. Since I‘m no longer writing about current-day cultural matters, I won‘t be representing any of Jim‘s point of view either, as he too follows emerging cultural events … if he has anything to say, he can do so with his blog (jimwithin.blogspot.com).

Today, both in the immediate present and the spacious present, I Am primarily amidst a completely different reality as a fully liberated Being, freed from ongoing patterns and connections—open and receptive. It‘s a culmination time, when purposeful emphases I made throughout my Life are appearing; and sometimes many previous focuses that took days, weeks, and months to study are entering my conscious awareness within the space of half an hour. And, as a liberated Being, I Am aligned with my body organism that is freed from cultural programs, collaborating with what it wants and needs, where together “we” are confidently standing and moving on our own two feet amidst overall divinity and its supportive environment. (I have written “I Am” as I have been doing because I believe that‘s what I and everyone else is fundamentally—and then each of us fills in and fills out the details of “I Am”—what, who, and where.)

Recently, I and my body organism were attracted to a book we then ordered from One Spirit: Mike Dooley‘s Manifesting Change. The initial attraction was a sense that he might know something we didn‘t consciously know about manifestation, while my body organism and I are in the process of easily and effectively creating/co-creating a fully healthy body organism and Earth system to experience. (Sure enough, his book gave me an important way to think.)

When Dooley talked about how the original design of our Earth system came into existence, I could Understand that the origin of the basic Earth system is a collaborative dynamic painting that spirit-beings amidst Oneness craft together, which then naturally materializes—so the details of “how“ just manifest from that Oneness dimension. And then, each of us spirit-beings with body forms within this basic system of time and space, fills in and fills out our part with the choices we make. This is a BIG contrast to our Western world‘s cultural ways of thinking and “stories”—both scientific and religious—about the Earth‘s origin and our human place within it.

In terms of levels and dimensions, I‘m now choosing to think that as unfettered Beings we are all currently and collaboratively co-creating our basic system of time, space, and forms through our imaginative powers in a Oneness dimension. Then as individualized portions of Oneness who have chosen to come into this Earth system, we each experience the unique species and gender form we have selected, filling out our portion of the picture daily, where there is always free will within the system‘s flexible design. From my point of view, I think both dimensions—Oneness and our basic Earth reality system—are always operating simultaneously, both outside of time and space and within it … so for me, being able to move to and within them is an important skill to continue to develop as the essence of myself, the Essential I.

Therefore, when energizing this worldview about manifestation and dimensions, “I” have the powers of direct imaginative creativity, which I also think each of us is always using simultaneously, both at the Oneness level and as spirit-being humans. Hence, this seems to be an important perspective to have for my quest of knowing how to create/co-create and manifest a fully healthy body organism and a fully healthy Earth system, to then experience. And now, what about my body organism?

I think my basic body organism is an energy form, a combination of divine creativity crafted to be self-correcting and healthy … It‘s fundamentally intelligent, and constructed from an intermingling composite of mental, emotional, psychological, spiritual, and physical processes. That is, it is “wholistic.” It is basically spiritual in all its aspects, divinely crafted and inspired, and there are really no dualistic divisions like spiritual and physical, etc. I believe it has its own symbolic language.

In this reality system, we—me and my wholistic body organism—are collaboratively co-creating with Gaia, the overall living Earth system, which I believe is also basically intelligent and designed to be self-corrective and healthy in wholistic well-being terms. And together—my body and I—are co-creating with millions of other species members who are focused in those ways, including humans who are making similar choices.

What I‘m currently Seeing is that most of the human species (who are a small portion of the whole basic Earth system, and especially those of us in the Western world), have greatly magnified and distorted our role and place on the planet, which has obviously been part of the experiment here, where there is an opportunity in the present to change oneself individually.

In summary, I Am aligning my creative powers with my wholistic body organism as it explores what it can Be and do as it uses its unfettered creative powers, and together we are choosing to align with other spirit-being species members and those humans who are emphasizing in similar ways to my wholistic body organism and me.

In answer to the question of why “we” didn‘t figure all this out earlier? … Because the appropriate experiences, Understandings, positions, perspectives, and pieces had to be in place, appropriately weighted, and appropriately aligned with one another for us to play our part in the ongoing drama, such as we can do now.

From recent dreams I‘m interpreting that there are many spirit-being people in today‘s world who are looking for different ways of thinking and a different identity. I also think each of us amidst this reality system crafts our own individual and unique journey, that there isn‘t A Process or A Pathway, although there are basic system principles. I know “I” have multiple basic capabilities, which I Am in the process of discovering more about, including more about “me.” Then together “we”—my wholistic body organism with its abilities and me with my abilities—are collaborating to find out what we can Be and achieve, individually and together—using the basics.

With Fresh Love and Beyond Love, J.

Enough Is Enough

2010-11-06T12:56:00.001-04:00

On March 20th of this year (2010), I posted a blog titled “A Completely Different Reality.” At the time I thought I was saying goodbye, or at least was doing so for the rest of the year. But unexpectedly in August, materials for another essay arose from levels that were deeper than my conscious awareness … which I decided to develop, and then blog posted. After that, four more essays emerged, were developed, and also posted—one in September and three in October. Then recently, amidst an all-things-considered framework using multiple perspectives, I‘ve wholistically decided to no longer write about current-day cultural happenings in any more blog postings.

Even though I‘ll continue to be aware of local, state, national, and global events, in the future it will be exclusively from a Witness/Observer position. As I Understand “how it all works,” with the effective implementation of this decision, mental/emotional energy encroachments from the current-day world will be greatly reduced … and as a composite-multidimensional Being, I‘ll have lots more energy and time freed up for explorations in A Completely Different Reality.

One of my recent Evaluations is that within the accelerating, ongoing, and emerging spirit-being human symphony of worldviews, which I believe has been and is taking place, I‘ve already played my part to the best of my abilities. My contributions are already there amongst Jim‘s and my book, God‘s River of Love; in my manuscript, Within the River of Love, Translations and Applications; and within my blog postings. So, if there is anything that seems to be of value to anyone from any of it, she or he can extract and play with it in their own ways. And if there are any future blog postings, they will be about my adventures in A Completely Different Reality, which I‘m also characterizing as Beyond the Beyond.

More background. From my point of view I‘ve succeeded with my original intent when I began writing God‘s River of Love in early 1999, which was to open windows and doors to other ways of thinking, including one‘s identity, which God, getting as close as I could over the years to “how it all works,” and practical ways to replace “the troublemakers,”adversarial and polarized ways of thinking. Early on I tried to provide a large-enough container for the concept of “God,” as a transcendent realm of being that flows through each of us and connects us all … where people of many faiths and belief constructions might choose to expand, understanding there is a vast dimension of creative Source energy, from which and with which we spirit-being humans have been using our powers of creativity with our own designs. One way to think is that everything is spiritual, coming from our basic selves as spirit-beings.

Beginning in early 1999, I purposely shifted the centrality of my identity to Being an individualized portion of divinity, within an interwoven dimension of horizontal Oneness with everyone else as a spirit-being human. In other words, I chose to turn what I saw as a laborious process of spiritual ascension upside down, starting from a position that was part of the goal of many other worldviews, and proceeding from there.

Back to the present. By concluding as I did in the previous blog posting on 10/29/10 that I think we-here-in-the-United States will never again attain the type of economic global supremacy we had in the past; we will not be able to bring back or originate enough good-paying middle-class jobs; and that the global competition race is over for all humans because it depends upon the continued exploitation and destruction of this current-day Earth, which is the Life-support system for all species—it makes no sense for me to continue to spin it around any longer. Enough is enough.

This past October 30th Jim and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary, officially ending the wonderful trip we co-crafted and the script we collaboratively wrote, where we each played our parts vigorously. With the completion of our individual and dyadic journey, I was filled with overflowing emotional Satisfaction and feelings of Success, because when we came together in 1970 we both said we wanted something better than either one of us had experienced … Well, we both think we have very successfully achieved that—and much more! The next day—October 31, 2010—we started at zero, with Day One of A New Adventure, where we can use the past as fodder for the present, while not carrying any baggage forward. Individually and together, we‘re traveling light.

Before I leave I want to paint one more picture. Last Tuesday—November 2, 2010, which was also Election Day here in the U.S.—in the afternoon I listened to a Diane Rehm interview on NPR that I had audio taped earlier that day. She was talking with one of the coauthors of a new book by Prince Charles of Wales—Harmony, A New Way of Looking at Our World. There was another man, a conservationist, who also participated in the conversation. That evening, together Jim and I listened online to the interview. Earlier in the day Jim had already ordered a hardcover copy of the book from Amazon, and we‘ll both be reading it. But before doing so, I want to summarize some of what I heard during the Rehm interview, while adding my own note of caution.

What I understand is that Prince Charles—heir to the British throne and next-in-line to succeed his mother, Queen Elizabeth II—has used his position and resources for decades, exploring the existing environmental realities and our human species‘ place amidst them, where as humans we have been both initiators and experiencers. One of his conclusions is that our collective human worldview, which was characterized as an industrialized mindset, has disconnected us from Nature‘s intrinsic tendency towards harmony and balance. So, he and his colleagues are proposing a different worldview, one that begins a process of reconnection. They state that the way we‘re living now as the human species is not environmentally sustainable.

I heard that in Harmony they are talking about many ancient cultures having a more spiritual view of Nature, and that many current-day indigenous people live in a Sacred Present, bringing a type of spiritual dimension into their daily Lives. So here‘s my caution—While our Western world‘s scientific and evolutionary ways of thinking have given many of us truly wondrous and comfortable lives, these same human design constructions have also resulted in enclosed matrixes of beliefs. Moreover, these scientific enclosures include our human-constructed pattern about objectivity, that is, what we can experience with our physical senses is what‘s “real.”

From my perspective, by using a combined Western world scientific, evolutionary, and objective worldview, where we sincerely believe we have evolved from more primitive people and their superstitious beliefs, individually and collectively we currently are convinced that our ways of thinking about reality and we ourselves are superior to those we consider to be more primitive and less evolved.

In my manuscript Within the River of Love, Translations and Applications (that is on the associated website www.withinlovesriver.com), in the chapter “Science and Religion,” I say that both the objective and subjective can be seen as important and complementary, if one chooses to view them that way. And in the later chapter, “Going Beyond,“ there is some material about experiments from quantum physics, where physicists discovered their attempts to measure the phenomena they were studying affected the phenomena; subatomic particles respond to observation. My conclusion is there are more expanded containers we humans can co-construct for a more wholistic science—and for our very Lives.

At present, from what I heard in the Diane Rehm interview, I think many of the perspectives presented in Prince Charles‘ book, Harmony, A New Way of Looking at Our World, can be important stepping stones. My question is, without standing back from our current-day Western enclosures, which usually include our very identities, how can we individually and collectively be effective enough to really change the energies already in motion?

Jim thinks the crux of the solution to our economic-environmental dilemmas lies in the economic system itself, where all people have to have ways to support themselves while protecting the environment. I certainly agree with him!

In one of my earlier blogs I talked about a renowned religious scholar whose central emphasis was a belief in “the sacred” as the source of power, significance and value, where each religion including shamanism, approached that dimension in their own way. That too can be seen as a valuable worldview, as all worldviews can be seen to be valuable in various ways, as food-for-thought and selective options, during the final stretch of our lengthy spirit-being human experiment.

And now from a Selector/Energizer position, as I did at the conclusion of the blog posting last March of “A Completely Different Reality,” I‘m imaginatively Seeing each of us spirit-being humans as equivalently-sized, pulsating globes of light and sound, where each of us is consciously and responsibly playing with our own unique and personal powers amidst overall divinity, in an age of Individual Creativity, Health, and Oneness. Jim asks, “What are we all, individually and together, going to do now?”

With Love and Beyond Love, J.

Many Worldviews

2010-10-29T11:33:00.001-04:00

This essay is focusing upon the current-day U.S. economy, the loss of good-paying jobs here, the continuing erosion of the U.S. middle class, and the forthcoming U.S. midterm elections.

In early October 2008, Jim and I drove to mid Pennsylvania to visit my daughter, Kim, and her partner, Bob. During our trip we saw mile after mile of the decaying U.S. industrial infrastructure, a system Jim had been part of during its vibrant years in the 1950s and 1960s. When he graduated from Michigan State University in 1956 with a degree in industrial engineering, his first job was with a Michigan company that designed and built conveyor systems. From there, in the later 1950s he had been a plant engineer in Pennsylvania, and then in the 1960s a sales engineer and sales manager with a large automotive parts manufacturer and supplier in Michigan. The big three U.S. automobile companies—Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler—had been some of his customers. He also had many customers in other states.

During our fall 2008 trip Jim and I had ongoing conversations, where he described his experiences amidst America‘s industrial and manufacturing heyday when we were an industrialized nation that hadn‘t been directly involved in the destructions of World War II that other industrialized nations had experienced. Adding to Jim‘s industrial engineering education and 1950s-1960s experiences, there were also the individual and combined studies we did when we lived in the Sierra mountain foothills from 1975 to early 1986. And then when we cashed out our northern California lives and came to Michigan, Jim directly updated himself and me, from when he left the state in 1970 to join with me in southern California. Over the years, in our own ways, he and I have continued to build upon our past experiences, studies, and Understandings—so the picture he has today is one he has given a lot of considered thought to.

Currently Jim sees energies in motion by many spirit-being humans here in the U.S., who together share worldviews wherein they believe that if the American free enterprise system is unshackled, removing government restrictions and financial burdens upon personal creativity and ingenuity, our American culture will be able to ascend to its former glory. As Jim and I both see our economic situation currently in the U.S., that‘s a simplistic picture that won‘t work in today‘s world. But nevertheless Jim thinks the people who share that worldview need to play their scenarios out in the real world, and experience its impracticality and unrealistic assumptions.

Why do he and I both think the implementation of a restructured American free enterprise worldview is impractical, unrealistic, and won‘t work today? Because it‘s based upon an erroneous picture to start with of the Earth system itself and who/what we are as human Beings, including our human place within that system.

One of the differences between Jim and my perspectives has been and is that I do not believe these energies that are in motion for a revamped American free enterprise system need to be played out in the present or future. I think there are enough U.S. citizens who also passionately care about our country, who are not into extreme and simplistic positions, and who are truly Understanding that neither one of our two major political parties and their worldviews are currently able to set forth an economic plan and implement it effectively, that will work in today‘s world. (So of course many Americans are currently feeling a lot of anxiety.)

I hear a generalized anger and frustration across our land, that is not just limited to Tea Party people. And I think what one woman expressed at a town hall meeting recently was well-stated: She had thought Obama had some secret, that he was going to wave a magic wand and it would all be better. In other words, for many of us our hopes were high when Obama was elected—I had hoped the country would become less confrontational and less partisan, where there would be a bipartisan unity of purpose. What has really happened is that currently we are fast approaching midterm elections, where there has been more money spent than ever before in attempts to defeat the opposition, sometimes in increasingly vicious ways.

Throughout my Life, as an encultured spirit-being with a female body organism, I felt varying degrees of impotence. So by no longer using any of my personally constructed previous limitations, and with Jim‘s most recent encouragement, I'm stating as clearly as I can my perspective about the United States of America today. In my opinion, trying to bring back what we as a culture were able to experience in one period of time, in one specific national/global context, is impossible in today‘s world … and is a waste of our current-day national time, attention, and other valuable resources.

Thus far I haven‘t heard anyone with enough cultural stature clearly state: The days of U.S. economic superiority and supremacy, of being Number One, have already been experienced … IT‘S OVER … and now we‘re all amidst a new era. Many of the good-paying industrial jobs with benefits that built much of the American middle class and our Life styles after World War II are gone now, and they won‘t be recovered in terms of the numbers of people and pay scales of earlier years.

What about American workers being competitive with the rest of the world‘s workers? In the first place, look at many other countries‘ pay scales, contrasted with what it takes to monthly pay for our middle class American living standards. This contrast isn‘t just in manufacturing, but includes white-collar jobs, which via the Internet, can be filled by competent workers in other countries at far less costs. What about our advanced U.S. innovative abilities? Other countries have been training their own skilled innovators, scientists, and engineers. And even more significantly, in my opinion other countries are also basing their economic growth and development, their hopes and dreams, upon erroneous and unsustainable assumptions, such as the U.S. has done. I think the global competition race is over because it depends upon the continued exploitation and destruction of this current-day Earth, the Life-support system for all species, including humans.

And what about the influence money is having here on elections? I think the U.S. Supreme Court‘s 5-4 decision in the Citizens United case this past January was a temporary cultural game-changer when it said corporations had the same free-speech rights as ordinary citizens, allowing unlimited campaign spending by corporations and unions. As an aftermath of the ruling, additional organizations have sprung up along with updated past ones, to collect and funnel money from wealthy individuals and businesses who want to control the 2010 election results in state and national races. Well, from my point of view this too is all part of spirit-being people using their personal creativity and power from within the belief-construction matrixes they are amidst. And even though we here in the U.S. are experiencing a barrage of TV ads and postal mailings, I think the current use of huge sums of money will ultimately not work either, because it too is not grounded in the basic reality of this Earth system.

To my way of thinking, even though the past is over it can be used in the present for Understandings of why what has happened has happened. So that‘s mainly the reason I‘m doing the blog postings I‘m doing lately, to add my voice to those of others who are also emphasizing certain versions of common sense and sanity for the present and future.

Postscript. Because Jim and I are senior citizens, we have already voted by absentee ballot. As previously stated, neither one of us think either the Democrats or Republicans have a plan that is realistic for today‘s world; but with the alternatives we had, we both voted a straight Democratic ticket. I voted that way because I think the Democrats will more than likely do less harm than the Republicans would do with their agendas. Jim voted as he did because he doesn‘t feel personally good about supporting the Republican agenda, even though he thinks it may have to be implemented in some ways to show it won‘t work either, opening the door to other ideas and ways of Being. Also, we both voted no to all local mileages, that is to not expand the existing reality and put a stop to the expansion of the existing system, with the exception of voting yes on one fee for recycling. We concluded this was the best we each could do as deeply caring U.S. citizens at this moment in our country‘s ongoing story.

With More Love, J.

What Is Normal?

2010-10-24T13:01:00.002-04:00

As Jim heard my increasing passion and concerns about what was happening here in the U.S. culture, the land of my and his births, he began to encourage me to remove any limitations I had been using, letting my wholistic creativity flow even more fully and freely … and he has also removed his own limitations regarding what I might bring into his Life. Therefore, the previous blog posting appeared earlier than I had originally intended, and now there is this one.

In the present and future Jim is choosing to play a part with me where he listens to what I have “produced” when it‘s already completed as a probable blog posting, where he then can make comments. (So far, his responses have been very affirming.) Therefore, he has become co-responsible in terms of setting the contents of these postings forth to the-world-at-large.

All of this has been a recent culminating result of he and I finally being able to co-craft a way of Being together, which we think can work well for both of us at this time in our Lives. As I noted in the chapter “Expanding and Expansions,” from my manuscript Within the River of Love, Translations and Applications, in the past Jim and I had ongoing conflicts centered around his concerns about what might happen with his peaceful Life if I published my manuscript … And his concerns about what my actions might bring into my and his Lives had continued, which I had chosen to do the best I could with, while at the same time honoring what I felt I needed to do to play the part I thought I could and should be playing. Also, he has had many personal interests, without much additional time, which he too felt he needed to pursue, to honor his Life.

Today I See that an energetic logjam has been broken between Jim and I, where each of us has needed to become and Be who/what we each are currently, in order to participate in these recent conversations. I think that with the patterns we each were using, there had been an individual process both of us needed to move within—where finally we are now able to proceed, individually and together. (I also think there were other viable choices each of us could have energized along the way.)

More background for the contents of this essay around Normalcy. One Saturday when I looked ahead at some of the forthcoming scheduled events on television, I saw that Oprah Winfrey had a program the next Wednesday about “Are You Normal?”—where Phil McGraw, Ph.D. and Mehmet Oz, M.D. would be weighing in with their perspectives. Both McGraw and Oz are people I have a lot of respect for, having watched each of them many times on television, along with reading some of their books. Within the context of our current-day culture, I think they both have been and are trying to help people live saner and healthier lives. I was easily Seeing this focus on Normal could be a logical follow-up to my blog posting about Personal Power and its use in various contexts and matrixes.

Because the Oprah program was being broadcast on my birth day when I wouldn‘t be home, I video taped it, which would also give me an opportunity to pause the tape, studying its contents more closely if I wanted to do so when I did see it. And by having many days of lead time before watching it, there would undoubtedly be a number of inner connections made about cultural normalcy, from which valuable perspectives would be arising to my conscious awareness. In fact, the first one that came forth almost immediately was clear and simple: What is normal in a culture is determined by the consensus within it. If I-as-a-spirit-being-human had been born into a culture where other patterns were used for what is normal, then those would be the contextual norms and evaluators I and others would be using.

When I did watch the Oprah tape, the above perspective about cultural norms and what is normal for specific cultures was a great overall way to think. The subtext of the program was—“is what one does in private normal?” While seeing the video tape, I think “I” was simultaneously and to various degrees in inner “homes” I talked about in my previous blog posting: an Experiencer position, a Witness/Observer position, an Evaluator position, and a Selection/Energization position.

For me as an Experiencer, the program was both interesting and entertaining. In the Witness position, I watched it unfold without adding in any of my own thoughts, ideas, or emotions. My takeaway Evaluation and conclusion is that it was a picture of how many people in the United States are using current-day consensus evaluators with which to live their Lives … while at the same time, I am also aware of how many Americans there have been and are, who are using their creative abilities and personal power to find out how far they can push the envelopes of today‘s U.S. cultural norms, assumptions, and agreements. Then as a Selector/Energizer, I had originally decided the day and time to see it. So the whole feedback loop had been in play.

And now as a Selector/Energizer, Much Love and Best Wishes to All, J.

Personal Power Amidst Overall Divinity

2010-10-12T10:55:00.002-04:00

Last week—the day I was aligning with a new moon month, crafting a short ceremony by energizing specific personal significances, and six days before my 78th birth day celebration—via land-mail I received a Quality Paperback Book Club catalogue. In it, there were two books of interest to me—one of which was The Power by Rhonda Byrne. (It is a follow-up to her book and DVD, The Secret, I mentioned in my manuscript Within, the chapter titled “Which Brain, Which Mind?”.) Then out of that recent attraction, including ordering the book, an essay for another blog posting has emerged, this time about my experiences and perspectives around personal power amidst a context of overall divinity.

This current essay is following previous blog postings earlier in 2010, one of which described taking a creative leap into a completely different reality. Then after deciding to leap, the first thing I did as a wholistic and composite multidimensional Being was to construct the framework and core patterns for this Completely Different Reality to leap into. My overall composite self currently includes me as an Essential I/spirit-being and body organism with its dimensionality—from which “we” can also thread out our various parts. This new framework was like being in a new country … and of course I could still speak the language and understand the customs of the current-day cultural reality. Other earlier 2010 blog postings included perspectives about unconditional compassion, and liberation.

Back to my adventures through the years with Personal Power. In simplified terms, I agree with those who have said and say we create our lives, with every thought every minute of the day. And at the same time, what I now Understand is that so much of what an individual thinks, does, and experiences depends upon who/what she or he believes themselves to Be, what other beliefs they are primarily using, the matrixes they are within as experiencers, their jobs, family structures, and the other relationships they already have. For me, it‘s been a very long journey to blend all the pieces together as harmoniously as possible in my Life.

Now to square one. The worldview I am using today is one that has emerged from large-scale focuses on—What are the basics of our Earth system and the overall divinity we are amidst? … What are our human primal processes? … and getting as close as I can to how it all works. My starting point is that I Am. I am what? For me, in the beginning there is no “what,” it‘s simply, I Am. I have had experiences where I didn’t have a body or thoughts, where “I” was in a place of pure being, direct knowing, and Oneness, directly knowing myself as essence, which I later called the “Essential I.“ Furthermore, I believe each of us has a basic Being structure of a similar sort, and it is up to each individual to recognize and identify with it. That is, to literally choose to become a different person than the who/what we were culturally conditioned to Be.

How I Understand my process today is that as an EI (Essential I), I selected and energized choices, which began my participation within environments that included subtle forms, light, sound, and relationships, where I became a spirit-being with conscious awareness. Since I have almost exclusively confined my decades of explorations to this basic Earth system amidst overall divinity, what I now will describe is within that context and does not necessarily apply to other systems, where I believe there are different fundamental agreements than those that are basic to this system.

So the story that makes the most sense to me today is one where as an EI/spirit-being, I selected this Earth system out of a multitude of probabilities I could choose from, because of its experiential possibilities … and somehow there were agreements made between me and my parents within deeper dimensions of our Beings. I also think that my birth daughter Kim and I made preliminary agreements, as did Jim and I—all at these deeper dimensions of our selves. Moreover, how I think it all works basically is that even though agreements are made, there is always flexible free will by all the participants during their Life processes. That is, there are probabilities and possibilities, but nothing is fixed unless an individual energizes those patterns.

I still think the best way for me to think is that what has been taking place here on this version of our Earth system for thousands of years has been a collaborative spirit-being experiment, with the results recorded in what we call history and archeology—peace among people, commerce and trade, wars and killings, famine and abundant food, inventions, explorations, exploitations, conquerers and conquered, rich and poor … and relationships of various kinds with fellow Earth species, the Earth itself, and overall divinity.

I see the past as a rich mix of contrasts, as a large and moving tapestry—which brings me to the present. Yes, I continue to believe our current-day human cultures have been built upon an unsustainable environmental and economic foundation that is obviously playing out in our Life times to their logical and inevitable conclusions. And I also think none of us spirit-being humans with body organisms is stuck, like having to pay some ghastly price for our actions or non-actions.

The version of Me I usually energize today is a composite multidimentional Being, including an intelligent and empowered body organism. And I have well-established locales in my psychic structure: I now have inner “homes” I can move to in a Witness/Observer position, in a Selection/Energization position, and in an Evaluator position. “I” can Be in one of these inner locales, or even in all of them simultaneously—in addition to being an experiencer in a Physical Result position. This is what I call the basic feedback loop that is part of our original probable equipment we spirit-being humans with body organisms can use. So this is my version of how to fluidly and effectively use the feedback loop, where one can experientially Understand the results of his or her personal power energizations, with ongoing opportunities to redesign.

I am convinced there are other probable Earths, including a fully healthy one, that are part of our basic Earth system, which we humans can figure out how to consciously bring forth into manifestation—and that‘s a lot of my current-day explorations. Repeating what I wrote in the conclusion of my previous blog posting, I See a wholer, fuller freedom as Liberation from one‘s culturally conditioned mind. To achieve that Liberation, I think an individual needs to become aware of their operating patterns for Life, have a strong desire to change them, figure out how to be effective with their removal, and be skillful enough to construct entirely new ones that are not just retreads of one‘s own or other available cultural constructions. From my point of view, this is a formula for An Expanded Personal Power, which can be an interesting framework to use for playing with one‘s Life.

Freedom

2010-09-23T11:39:00.005-04:00

Hello Autumn—with its pumpkins, apples, squash, chrysanthemums, asters, cooler temperatures, and colorful falling leaves … And yet another blog posting for 2010.

After listening to Jonathan Franzen, author of the novel Freedom, being interviewed by Terry Gross on the NPR program Fresh Air, along with reading previous reviews of the book, there have been inner stirrings and motivations to express some of my current worldview and perspectives. This inward flame has been further fueled by the outcries I‘ve been hearing during the past few months in the U.S. about our individual rights and freedoms here. And in addition to all that, Oprah Winfrey has chosen Freedom as her recent book club selection.

What is freedom? For me, this question has been like a big energy container I have dived into and explored from various positions and matrixes throughout my Life. And as I See my numerous freedom explorations today, each one was a co-creative dance between the Me I was Being at the time, the cultural context I was amidst, and the matrix of designs I dove into. (As I am using the term, a matrix is an enclosed composite of patterns an individual has energized in relationship with other spirit-being humans, from which events and experiences emerge.)

Currently, some of my conclusions about freedom are:

* Culturally-speaking freedom is relative, usually contrasted with one‘s own

potentially uncomfortable limitations,

or with others‘ shackled lives and experiences.

* Also culturally-speaking, what is said to be freedom is contextual,

within a culturally agreed upon matrix of designs for a time and place.

* Some people I have known have used the concept of freedom to mean

primarily doing what they want to do, when they want to do it. (“Don‘t fence me in.”)

And from where I am now, I See a wholer, fuller freedom as Liberation from one‘s culturally conditioned mind. To achieve that Liberation, I think an individual needs to become aware of their operating patterns for Life, have a strong desire to change them, figure out how to be effective with their removal, and be skillful enough to construct entirely new ones that are not just retreads of one‘s own or other available cultural constructions. From my point of view, this is a formula for An Expanded Personal Power, which can be an interesting framework to use for playing with one‘s Life.

With Love and Best Wishes, J

Pictures and Perspectives from A Completely Different Reality

2010-08-27T11:47:00.002-04:00

First off this new blog posting is a surprise, arising from deeper dimensions, when at conscious awareness levels I had no intention of writing any more blogs this year.

So, what makes where I am a completely different reality? It‘s a combination of who/what I am now, the reality I am amidst as a composite Being, what I‘m energizing freshly each day as pattern-forms to experience, and what are no longer part of my experiences. “I” am now truly free from all ongoing cultural patterns that I incorporated in the past (and thought I had to use), where daily I stand back and energize afresh. This also includes freedom from ongoing attachments to designs of Love and all its probable ingredients. Moreover, Jim and I are each energizing new and fresh patterns daily for our relationship, seeing it as a wonderful playing field for individual creative opportunities.

The “Me” I primarily wrote about in the book, God‘s River of Love, published in 2003, was focused around the essence of myself as a spirit-being human, the worldview I was using in those days, and being the experiencer of events. In my manuscript, Within the River of Love, Translations and Applications, “I” had expanded to include my body organism as its own intelligent entity too, even more clearly understanding “symptoms” as part of its language. Today, the Me that is amidst this completely different reality is a composite multidimensional Being that includes me as an Essential I/spirit-being, our multilayered body organism, and the connections We make, both invisibly and visibly, amidst our overall environment of divinity. Then as a composite Being, I use my conscious awareness purposely, in various ways in various directions. Hence, these writings are coming forth from a harmonious alignment by all aspects of “Us” as co-writers.

Since so many of the energy vehicles I used for decades for expansion have accomplished their purposes, those challenging types of situations are no longer needed. As a composite multidimensional Being I have arrived at a dimension I can now comfortably, easily, and enthusiastically explore. It‘s an unknown territory, but not an unknowable one.

A few weeks ago, as a composite Being we imaginatively stripped out all the cultural emotions from past events, put them together into a form, thanked them for the experiences, and sent them off to be used in other ways. They too were glad to be liberated. This process cleared our psyche of them, where new emotions have been coming forth from our completely different reality environment. What has emerged so far are emotions of a glow and increased brightness around everything at times, more emotional space, a sense of well-being and overall satisfaction, clearer excitement, and feelings of expansiveness.

And, when Jim and I focused as realistically as we could on Understanding the position and perspective of someone we know, concluding he was really in a tough place financially, the concept of Unconditional Compassion arose to my conscious awareness. Recently, I had been searching for a way to think about some of the emotions I‘d been experiencing that were related to so many people and situations—and when the Unconditional Compassion framework arose, I knew it was perfect.

As I‘ve reflected, I think Unconditional Compassion is a lot of what the Buddha Realized under the Bodhi tree: He Saw humans suffering in their lives through their identifications and uses of their cultural programming, and he also Saw ways to identify oneself differently and live more fulfilling lives, which he went forth to tell others they could do. In other words, the Buddha‘s emphases upon Compassion and Loving-Kindness weren‘t predicated upon a select few, their choices and their lives, but was a way of thinking and Being with everyone.

Over the past months, while playing in this new reality I‘ve also continued to be aware of major ongoing local, regional, state, national, and global events—especially their connectedness. Additionally, I‘ve been keeping up-to-date with what some spiritual and religious leaders have been saying. And from these focuses, the following have emerged as perspectives and pictures:

As the human species, I think we have taken many of what I have termed the trouble-making designs that I discussed in earlier blog postings to their logical conclusions, one of which is opposites and oppositions. What‘s new is that in our current-day world there seems to be little room or appetite for moderates and bridge-builders, who are seen by some people to be ineffective wimps. That is, you are pressured to be strongly for one side or for the other one—where there is a winner and a loser. An area I‘m seeing this play out nationally is in terms of severe partisan politics here in the United States.

Then there has been the issue of a proposed Islamic multicultural center and mosque two-and-a-half blocks from the 9/11 Ground Zero site in New York City. The iman who has been proposing this is considered by many to be a moderate, bridge-building Muslim from the Sufi tradition of Islam. But this issue has brought to the forefront many Americans‘ fears about the Islamic religion overall, and about those who have used it to justify their destruction objectives and actions.

Looking at some of our U.S. history, in World War II we Americans had Japanese and German enemies we needed to defeat. After that there were the Cold War struggles with the U.S.S.R. and global Communism. And after 9/11/01, there has been growing opposition here in the U.S. to Muslims.

Now I believe that when individuals and groups energize patterns of opposites and opposition as part of their worldviews, they need others on their stages to oppose. Do I see another answer? Yes, I do. The first step is to consciously choose to effectively remove the whole design of opposites and oppositions from one‘s operating patterns. I‘m proposing that individuals choose to stand back from it all and go way beyond choices of being for, against, somewhere in the middle, or non involved … and also beyond dissent or protest. I continue to see we spirit-being humans collaborating with a many thousand year experiment, which is obviously coming to a conclusion … because just as obviously there are no good answers now if we continue to use our current-day matrixes and ways of thinking that got us to where we are today.

Moving to another subject. Reading what some current-day spiritual leaders are saying, I am seeing/hearing a major focus upon Being in a Witness position, which certainly can bring forth a distance from one‘s thoughts and experiences, such as I am proposing. And in my opinion, this is a very valuable position to establish and play with in one‘s psychic structure. Nonetheless, I think this basic reality system we are all amidst is designed to be a feedback loop, where each of us has choices and literally creates pattern forms we energize and then experience. So along with the Witness position and Experiencer mode, there‘s also a Selective Creative position, and an Evaluative one—all important elements of the feedback loop. I think part of the game-of-Life is that we have to energize and use patterns … so the question is—which ones? Are we humans going to go beyond cultural choices to create some truly different choices, with truly different results?

Furthermore, “Our” body organism thinks most current-day spiritual systems still aren‘t giving enough credit to the basic designs of our human mental/emotional/physical/spiritual bodies. This is a lead-in to talking about our body organism‘s central role now as the primary decider/chooser in our composite multidimensional Life.

From our body organism‘s point of view it has taken a lot of effort, steadiness, and consistency for it to have the kind of freedom it has wanted to have, to be able to explore and find out what it can be and become, without cultural limitations. It has had to fully liberate itself from patterns I-as-a-spirit-being human had used with it for my agenda, from Jim‘s designs for his Life, and from his and my interactions together that were part of the cultural matrixes of the times. And now it sees itself as fully empowered, sometimes feeling giddy with its opportunities. Its current focus is on emotional satisfaction, both as its starting point, as connectors, and then as evaluators. It is also emphasizing easy and effective results.

For Jim and I, the spring and summer seasons have been wonderful, individually and together. The designs we each set forth for our relationship liberation have worked well, thus far, for both of us. Jim has continued with his golf focuses, still and video photography, music studies, and outdoor activities, along with continuing to activate the changes he chooses to make. And I have become totally clear, including the specifics, that as an experiencer I have always been the originator of patterns which brought forth connections, co-creativity, and then the experienced events.

During the past months there have been many delightful duck dramas on Harmony Hill, and a new fox is in our lives. We think it‘s probably a female because of its size. Whatever its gender, I‘m calling it Beauty. One day in later August, hundreds of blackbirds flew, flowed, and swirled repeatedly throughout the surrounding areas. What an event! And soon, Jim will be making another compost pile, this time with 21 bales of alfalfa hay, to over-winter; and we‘ll be integrating new grass seed into our front yard—all of which are opportunities for celebrating Life, the natural world, and the changing seasons.

That‘s it for now. With Fresh Love and Best Wishes. J

A Completely Different Reality

2010-03-20T15:25:00.001-04:00

The overall past winter season was enjoyable and expanding for both Jim and I. As I mentioned in my previous blog posting, we bought Bowflex exercise machines, one for each of our body sizes, for an at-home gym in our basement. And, throughout the snowy months Jim made a lot of progress with his almost daily music studies. Along with replacing his electronic keyboard with an electronic piano, he is also having his guitar from the 1970s repaired, to add to his choices. In recent days he has begun video-photographing the forthcoming natural world year, and he‘s eagerly anticipating the golf season. The delightful still photograph of a squirrel eating fresh greens on our website‘s “Jacquie‘s Blog” page was taken by Jim a few days ago, after 50° temperatures had melted the snow cover. Another view of the same squirrel is on the website‘s “Jim‘s Blog” page.

One of my winter focuses had been to tie together in the present all the pieces of Buddhist studies I‘d done for decades, using a Teaching Company‘s DVD course about Buddhism (24 lessons, 30 minutes each, with an accompanying booklet). It was great! Along the way, I was again impacted with how many Buddhist patterns I had personally adapted, which I have energized and used in my daily Life for decades, along with many others such as Jesus‘ teachings about Love, that our existence extends beyond this Life, and to go within for divine guidance.

Around mid January, I was inwardly hearing divine guidance telling me to take a creative leap! That advice is what I had inwardly heard repeatedly in 1966 before my first marriage dissolved, but this time I would be taking a leap as a completely different self—a fully Liberated one—in a completely different matrix, on a completely different wavelength, into a completely different reality system I could trust. What fun! From my point of view, over the years I‘ve learned a lot, and now I am choosing to easily and effectively apply even more of what I‘ve learned.

After deciding to leap, one of the first things I did as a holistic and composite multidimensional Being, was to construct the framework and core patterns for this Completely Different Reality to leap into. My overall holistic self includes me as an Essential I/spirit-being with a body organism and multidimensional dimensions—from which “we” can also thread out our various parts. This new framework is like being in a new country … and of course I can still speak the language and understand the customs of the current-day cultural reality.

Moreover, in mid January, as a holistic Being I had been reading a biography about a woman whose achievements I admire … and later that month after completing the book, in an email to my daughter, who also admires her, I said in effect that I too as a designer was setting forth a hand-crafted framework with core belief patterns, such as she (the admired woman) did and does. A difference, as I see it between she and me, is that within the reality I am in now, I don't need to have energy for any oppositional counter-force to what others are setting forth. My version of equality is that each of us is free to use our personal point of power in whatever way we choose > so that natural energy connections are then made, and not made. Another difference is that I‘m not trying to change the world, as she says she is trying to do. Instead, I‘m setting forth ideas, a model, and well-crafted belief structure forms that anyone else can adapt and explore, if he or she chooses to do so, in her or his own way (which of course could change the world).

Beginning earlier last January I had been spending large amounts of many mornings reading some of Serge Kahili King‘s writings, and playing with his suggested mental/imaginative activities. Serge is a Hawaiian shaman and also a Western world Ph.D. His is an adventurer-type shamanic process, called Huna, as contrasted with so many warrior shamanic matrixes. (Reflectively-speaking, all my Life I‘ve been on a trajectory of explorations—and have also been on an adventure in terms of more wholeness.) One of Serge‘s central emphases is easiest and enjoyable effectiveness, which is currently one of mine. Previously, off and on throughout the years I had mentally studied shamanism because I think shamans in general know how to use very practical procedures for energy transformations. But now, as a holistic Being I was in a purposeful application stage, to discover what I could easily do without cultural limitations.

More of my winter choices. From the time of Barach Obama‘s stirring election as President of the United States of America in November 2008, I again became increasingly involved in closely following national and global events. Even though I thought our U.S. culture was environmentally and economically built upon an unsustainable, shifting sands foundation, I had also been energizing hope that the Obama Administration would somehow put together something that would unite us as individuals and as a nation in a common cause. And, my previous blog postings were part of my contributions to ongoing developments.

Then as more local, state, national, and global cultural events continued to emerge in the early months of 2010, they too added fuel to the fire of my purposeful creative leap into a completely different reality. As I see it, the recent national economic crisis has brought to the surface here in the United States many worldviews that were usually more subdued and quieter during prosperous times. Today, numbers of people who never spoke out before are voicing their anger, frustration, indignation, and fears about their jobs, homes, the fabric of the American way of life—and the future.

The answers I am reading and hearing for today‘s U.S. national problems are varied—going from full-fledged government designs that hopefully weave many of the elements together into a successful economic recovery, to those who are demanding more fiscal federal responsibility, lower taxes, a smaller federal government, states‘ rights, and a more aggressive national security policy. Therefore, a big debate is taking place nationally around what the role of the U.S. federal government should be and how much power it should have, versus how much power individuals and businesses should have, without most government controls and interferences.

My perspective at this time is that even if someone or groups of people were clever and smart enough to blend many of the various ideas being expressed into cohesive overall policies, would this be successful in today‘s world? I don‘t think so. What I think has happened is that “we the people of the United States of America” have taken the individual and group designs from the beginning of our nation‘s development to many of their logical conclusions, where we are now experiencing the accumulated and combined results, directly.

A major problem today, as I see it, is that as individual spirit-being humans we are primarily stuck as experiencers of results, instead of using our lives as a creative feedback system. I think we‘re immersed in the results of designs about a random universe, survival of the fittest competition, cultural gender identities, national identities, species identities, racial identities, fear, cultural power, and on and on. The closest I‘ve been able to come to how I think it all works is that as spirit-being humans our lives are basically meant to be lived as purposeful designers of energy forms, where the results are then part of a natural feedback system, giving each of us the opportunity to clearly experience and see what happens with our individual and group originations.

One of the pictures of the United States Jim and I are seeing today, is that it has become a decayed and decaying industrialized nation, (not a third world country), including delayed maintenance for roads, highways, bridges, sewer pipes, water pipes, etc. Consequently, many billions of dollars would be required to even take care of deferred infrastructure maintenance. And then there are all the other problematic situations we have in motion nationally.

Said with much compassion for people‘s suffering and pain, I don‘t see any real answers coming from our current-day culture, or current-day leaders, no matter how hard they are trying. So, my decision to Be in a personally-crafted, completely different reality system feels like the sanest and healthiest thing I can do within this new and fresh natural world year that begins today, March 20th, 2010. As a multidimensional composite Being, I feel I have done the very best I can do to present another way of thinking and living—and now it‘s time to move on. This is the year for my basic body organism to be able to play and explore to its heart‘s content. And, more than likely I‘ll continue to be aware of some local, state, national, and global events.

For Jim and I, this “Completely Different Reality” means we have a fully open system to choose, energize, and manifest on a daily basis, without any ongoing patterns from the past. We are both skilled enough now to be able to freshly construct in the present. For decades, Jim and I have been energizing processes for individual and dyadic transformations and liberation, and then experiencing their results. Today before lunch, we had a ceremony outside to celebrate this new year.

Since I‘ve been inwardly hearing, “It‘s a wrap,” this blog posting may be the culmination for me of God‘s River of Love, Within the River of Love, Translations and Applications, and all my other blog postings. (I‘ll still be available to be contacted by gmail.) I‘ve recently dissolved plans I had for any more studies such as going back into the U.S. historical past and threading out the earlier patterns which have evolved and grown to the present, and also going back into the Abrahamic religions—all of which are materials I‘ll be moving downstairs into a file cabinet Jim freed up and removed from his upstairs room when he brought in the new electronic piano. The materials will be there if someone is interested in any of them, but as far as I know now, it won‘t be me who does the research.

As a fellow spirit-being human, you may want to read or reread the Introduction from my manuscript, Within the River of Love, Translations and Applications, on our connected website, and the Dyadic Biography at the end of the manuscript. Together, I think they give a valuable summary of some of the “trip” Jim and I have been on.

For the past decades, with increasing awarenesses I‘ve been realizing how truly vast individuality is basically. And so I am using my imaginative powers to See each of us spirit-being humans as equivalent-sized, pulsating globes of light in an Age of Individual Creativity, Health, and Oneness.

With Best Wishes to All and Namasté, J

The Winter Season

2009-12-21T12:06:00.002-05:00

Within just a few hours in early December, the ground color changed in our locale from mixes of gold, orange, and tan to WHITE! Then a few days later, when I looked out the window to the area of the two hanging tree feeders, as the snow fell softly, there were five red male cardinals and a number of female members flying about, while two squirrels dashed around the tree. What fun! And later that week, when I looked outside I saw at least ten Mallard ducks rather frantically scratching in the snow on the hillside under the feeders.

As I've been standing way back from the past, Seeing with increasing Clarity my own creativity, Jim's, and our interactive results throughout the years, expanding Understandings have emerged. Even though he and I now agree it's been a wonderful and wondrous trip together, we also agree it's been very difficult and hard work for each of us. And from my perspective, what I‘ve Seen is that in the past in many ways Jim and I were individually energizing some personal choices that were truly impossible to harmonize. Certainly, we each did the best we could within the matrixes we were each within, and the context of the times as we translated them. And of course there have been many personal energizations that did ring and sing harmoniously between us over the years, including a very deep Love. From one viewpoint, each of us has been perfect for one another by providing the opportunities we've had in all ways!

Nonetheless, Seeing the impossibility of a fullness of harmony has been part of my being able to completely Liberate myself from all of my ongoing energized forms … Therefore, as I understand “how it all works,” by Being truly effective, I'm no longer subject to many aspects of other‘s creativity as I was before, because there isn‘t an energy connection in the first place. Hence, effectively dissolving all dyadic designs recently was essential, as was dissolving all past energizations and connections. And Jim is recently stating that he too has been in a Liberating process, in his own way. Thus far, we‘re both pleased with the results about how our originations are playing out in our day-by-day Lives.

By liberating myself from all my ongoing designs with Jim and from my whole past, I‘ve been free to See everything that has taken place as potential fodder now for further Understandings and Expansions, while not being energetically connected with any of it. Therefore, within an immediate present, fresh perspectives are more available. I‘m also even more aware that literally everything I experience I‘ve chosen and energized within vaster dimensions of my composite Being, as my part of co-creative dances. This is certainly a big contrast to what I originally learned culturally!

Everything really is opened up now, as I had been inwardly hearing from divine guidance so often for many years—furthering my composite Being choices of which me, which matrix, which mind and brain, what kind of relationships do I choose to have, and which reality am I crafting to Live amidst?

Recently Jim and I, as multidimensional composite Beings, have been getting to know ourselves and each other on a daily basis in the present, that is, who each of us is choosing to Be each day, and what patterns each of us is energizing now, without the past continuously interweaving. It sure simplifies things! Additionally, with all this open space, energizations from the spacious present have more room to manifest, where I can then decide what to do about them.

This snowy season Jim and I are pursuing personal interests, which we oftentimes share with one another throughout the day. One of my current focuses is upon what I think is a basic of this reality system—the use of my imaginative capabilities as a two-way street process between me-as-a-spirit-being and my body organism … and becoming more skillful with them.

Then last month Jim and I brought two Bowflex exercise machines into our lives (one for each of our body sizes), for an at-home gym in our large walk-out basement. Jim used his past engineering skills to assemble them in a day-and-a-half (with small amounts of assist from me); and no pieces were left over! Our purposes are to build stronger bodies over the winter.

And, both of us as holistic Beings have continued to be informed about developing cultural events, locally, nationally, and globally...

More recent significances. Because golf and golfer Tiger Woods have been such a large focus in Jim‘s Life, and hence mine, to some degree I‘ve been following the unfolding story about Tiger‘s involvements with other women and his involvements in Las Vegas, etc., with some interest and considerable amazement. Moreover, I also wrote about him in my previous August 2, 2009 blog within the racial section. I have been questioning, Did Tiger somehow think that at least some of his other activities wouldn‘t come out in some way? … or maybe he didn‘t even think along those lines. He sure had me fooled (or more responsibly stated, I fooled myself): I thought his wife, Elin, and their two children were filling out the rest of his dreams. Jim‘s reactions? Jim thinks Tiger thought he was above it all, and with his great success he had hypnotized himself. (By the way, my current-day definition of being judgmental includes a type of evaluative right or wrong, whereas I just do the best I can in terms of seeing “what is ” as clearly as possible. And when I do have personal responses such as the above, to own and note them.)

Where I am in my Life today is that I often use a position of who am I to say what someone else should or shouldn‘t do, although generally-speaking, I do think that when basic trust is broken in a relationship, it can be very hard to repair. Nonetheless, I see this as an opportunity for Tiger to choose to Be a different self, one he doesn‘t need to hide portions of. That said, with Ease and Compassion, I‘m moving it all on and out of my psychic structure.

And so Jim and I as multidimensional composites of Being, are now into the fourth season of our natural world year, where the emphasis has been and is—New Songs, New Stories. Today is the winter solstice, the event in the natural world year of the shortest daylight hours.

Currently, Jim feels that for a long time in our lives he was completely consumed by what we had going, which took all his energies—and then some. He says that for a long time he had too much going on, and it was out of control … And now he‘s pleased he‘s dialed it back, where he doesn‘t have the excesses … but it is currently a full Life, and he‘d like to have more open spaces in it. My response is that as Liberated composite Beings, it will be interesting to experience what happens henceforth, on a daily basis.

In the immediate present, I‘m experiencing Jim and I as primarily Being individuals in matrixes and realities which are different than current-day cultural ones, while at the same time each of us is very fluent in the language of our society, with which we interact in various ways at times.

With increasing Clarity I've been Understanding that with a concept energy form—such as Something Completely Different—which each of us then designs and sets forth, our individual energy form oftentimes includes very different ingredients than those used by the other person. And, how are Jim and my individual matrixes and realities completely different than what we‘ve each done before? Well, each of us will have daily opportunities to play with our Life and find out what happens. Obviously, clear and easy communications can be desirable and helpful.

With Wondrous Seasonal Best Wishes, J.

More Results from The Troublemakers

2009-08-02T11:45:00.002-04:00

In July, shortly after posting my third blog, “Females, Males, and the Balance of Power Between Them,” I felt a pleasant internal churning, like there was a developing group of materials that would be emerging as another essay.

Following an inner sensing, the first thing I was drawn to was a book Jim had read and recommended a few months ago about the history of black golf players here in the United States, Uneven Lies, The Heroic Story of African-Americans in Golf, by Pete McDaniel with the Foreword written by Tiger Woods. (Jim says that in golf language “lie” is a term meaning the way the ball lies as the game is played.) Both McDaniel, who is an African-American and Tiger Woods—who is racially a blend of African-American from his father, Earl, and Thai from his mother, Kultida (“Tida”)—told some very personal stories about their growing-up years and difficult racial experiences here in the United States.

I was touched and teary as I read McDaniel‘s and Woods‘ stories, including the one when Tiger played in the Masters at Augusta National as U.S. Amateur champion in 1995; he wrote that the first time he drove down Magnolia Lane he was thinking about all the great African-American players who never got a chance to play there. Woods goes on to say that when he was able to win the Masters at Augusta in 1997, he believes he brought a little bit of vindication for them. He talked about the life lessons his parents taught him: respect and appreciation for people of diverse backgrounds and colors, and knowing about those who came before him. His father had made sure Tiger was vividly aware of the earlier struggles of black golfers and baseball players. (Earl was a former college baseball player who saw a connection between the celebration of Jackie Robinson‘s defining moment 50 years ago—his breakthrough in major league baseball—and Tiger‘s that Sunday at Augusta.)

I could clearly see some direct connections with my previous gender essay—where I talked about leveling the playing field and the balance of power between Jim and me; and connections with the underlying ”troublemakers,” as I termed patterns of oppositional dualism, ranking of superiority/inferiority, either/or thinking, the use of fear, and a belief there is only One Truth. From my point of view, the troublemakers run rampant in race relations, too. In addition to the United States being primarily a nation of immigrants, it is also a nation with a history of black slavery—people who were brought to these shores involuntarily from Africa. And, it's a nation where people already lived on the land before the immigrants and black slaves arrived, people we now describe as Native Americans.

So race and racial relationships would obviously be one of the themes in this new essay.

Later that week—July 16th-19th—the 2009 British Open golf championship was being played at Turnberry, Scotland. It had been part of my attraction to the book, Uneven Lies, because Jim would be watching some of it for four days. Tiger Woods was a prominent participant early-on. He had won three previous British Opens, but this year he didn‘t make the cut on Friday, thereby being out of the tournament. Jim‘s interest in golf throughout his Life has continued up to the present. His direct involvement with it now is from the viewpoint of developing and increasing his skills, and playing in a few tournaments without using designs he culturally used in earlier decades for competition. It‘s also a type of exercise he enjoys; and he enjoys watching great players.

Furthermore, it was the week I would get the book, The Thing Around Your Neck, by the female Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

All together, I felt a lot of multidimensional simultaneousness and interrelatedness, where invisible connections flowed between me as a composite being and other spirit-being people, too.

And, I was being drawn to buy a twelve hour, twenty-four part audio CD presentation, “American Religious History,” one of The Teaching Company‘s Great Courses. It traced various religions from European backgrounds and those of native peoples at the founding of the United States, including African-American religion, up to the present. (In the past, Jim and I had seen some of The Teaching Company‘s video courses about music and French Impressionism, which we both had experienced as informative and well-done.) Here too—in my opinion, along with gender and race, the troublemakers play out extensively with people of one religion relating with people of other religions.

So I had the emphases for my next essay—race, religions, and more about gender—while seeing the troublemakers as underlying energies amidst them all.

When I was clear about the framework and major contents for this essay I spread it all out, to appropriately interweave with the multiple strands of my Life, Jim's, and our dyadic focuses. The lilies were blooming—orange day lilies around the pond and yellow ones in the front yard, with intense gold flowers that were a longer-lasting variety in banks in the bulb bed. Around the front deck were white, light pink, and miniature rose-colored hollyhocks. Then at the side of the garage, from the large trumpet vine on a wooden trellis there, orange flowers shaped like (what else?) trumpets were emerging. From the backyard, Jim was picking raspberries to add to our morning fresh fruit mixture, while eating them outside immediately—just picked and warmed by the sun—was a big-time Event. I was on Easy Street … and it was delightful.

Reading Adichie‘s book, The Thing Around Your Neck, added more to my Understandings of some fairly recent African immigrant experiences here in the United States, and increased my clarity about designs, past and present, that I believe are part of the composite psychic swimming pool of patterns for males, globally, and the contents of the composite psychic materials for the overall female psyche, globally. I also reread the section in Barack Obama's book, Dreams from My Father, when he described his trip to Kenya to visit relatives in his father's homeland, before entering law school. I saw that the tribal customs for gender roles in Kenya formed the fertile background prior to colonialism, and then the gender designs from European countries were superimposed upon and interwoven with the already-existing tribal patterns for gender.

As an example of Kenyan male gender patterns, in his memoir, before his Kenya trip Barack wrote about a meeting with his half-brother, Roy, (whose mother was a black Kenyan). The two of them had dinner one night in Washington, D.C., where Roy was living at the time. During dinner Roy had talked about his worldview: He was the oldest son, and in their tribal (Luo) tradition he was the head of the family now. Therefore, as head of the family, Roy believed he was responsible for Barack, Roy's sister, and all the younger boys. According to Roy, it was his responsibility to pay the boys‘ school fees, to see that his sister was properly married, and to build a proper house and bring the family together.

In the afternoon before watching President Obama‘s prime time news conference that evening—Wednesday, 7/22/09—I finished reading the Kenya section from his book, Dreams from My Father. During his press conference that evening, which was primarily focused on health care legislation, President Obama commented on a recent situation that had taken place between the black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and a white Cambridge, MA police officer, Sgt. James Crowley. Obama‘s comments that evening opened up even further many racial tensions, perspectives, and opinions across the Internet, the blogosphere, in newspapers, and elsewhere. Frankly, I saw it as healthy when both men—Gates and Crowley—talked about their realities, which from my point of view were each from within different matrixes. (The word “matrix” as I am using it is the belief structure a person is enclosed within from which he or she sees, reacts, and relates with others—who are also within their own matrixes.)

On Thursday, July 30th, Professor Gates and Sergeant Crowley met with President Obama and Vice President Biden in the White House Rose Garden. Over beers they talked about ways to move ahead and to make the racially charged controversy “a teachable moment,” to build greater understandings. Crowley and Gates plan to meet again soon for a further discussion.

I am seeing President Obama playing a part where he is the leader of a country where we are all Americans of many colors and races, who potentially are in a process of learning how to relate to and respect one another, building upon and expanding what those in the 1960s had begun …who were building upon what those who came before them had begun … which continues to be an ever-evolving process.

Even though I was spreading it all out, it became obvious I needed to rethink how much to put in the essay. Also, there were a lot of global, national, and regional developments to keep up with, including the ongoing racial perspectives and conversations which had been opened up from the Gates-Crowley incident, whose fires were added to by President Obama‘s press conference comments. And many other strands of Jim and my Lives were beckoning. Therefore, I decided to delve into The Teaching Company‘s audio series about religions in America at a later time. For years I had been accumulating materials around the theme of what made the land of my birth unique, and so sometime in the future I would listen to the American religion tapes and go through the rest of those materials.

With a feeling of relief I returned to read the rest of Pete McDaniel‘s book, Uneven Lies, The Heroic Story of African-Americans in Golf, recheck resource materials, do some additional research, and complete this essay. I thought McDaniel did a superb job tracing black players‘ struggles and successes throughout U.S. golf history. He wrote that when Joe Louis, the ex Heavyweight Champion of the World, went to San Diego in 1952 to play in the San Diego Open, Louis said they would have to tell him to his face he couldn‘t play. (There was a Caucasian-only clause on the PGA at the time, but Louis did play.) McDaniel stated that blacks were not looking for a handout, no special rules, they just wanted an even playing field. (Hence the other meaning for the Uneven Lies' book title.)

Summarizing the three major themes for now of “troublemaker” results:

*Race and racial relationships. My internal picture is one where each of us stands back from creating and being enclosed within the matrix of beliefs we personally use, clearly seeing them and their results in the past and present, with Compassion and Understanding for us all.

*People of one religion relating with people of other religions. A few weeks ago I read some writings by a renowned religious scholar who passed on in 1986. As I interpreted what I read, his central emphases was a belief in “the sacred” as the source of power, significance and value, where each religion approaches that dimension in their own way. I think that‘s a wise perspective to use about one‘s own religion and spiritual beliefs, and how to think about the religions and spiritual beliefs of other people.

*Gender. Ah yes, gender. Certainly I think race and religious/spiritual patterns are very important, and, I also think gender is an especially volatile area each one of us as humans, in all cultures, is directly enmeshed within daily. What patterns do I choose to energize? Which me do I choose to experience? Which matrix do I choose to live amidst?

Conclusion. Beginning in the early 1970s, Jim and I started our emphases of Something Different. Over the years it expanded to Something Very Different, and now after almost four decades it has evolved to Something Completely Different.

As I listen to other people, I am hearing a repeating theme of disappointment in President Obama and his Administration—where from many quarters he is not living up to what people had hoped he would be doing when he got elected—that he hasn't been going far enough (or is going too far). And my response is that I am no stranger to my own attempts to change myself and my Life experiences. In his case, he is trying to change a whole society, the United States of America, and its relationships with the rest of the world. I see it all as a huge job, and greatly admire much of what he's attempting to do, which I think is to succeed in stabilizing the economy, making the whole system fairer-for-all, and the U.S. more competitive globally.

To those who are upset that he isn't going far enough, I seriously question what else he can do within the current-day enclosed matrixes of cultural beliefs, nationally and globally. The only way I know to go far enough is to take the whole system apart and design from scratch, from the position of liberated and skillful spirit-beingness, both as individuals and as groups.

With Highest-Good-for-All Best Wishes, J.

Females, Males, and the Balance of Power Between Them

2009-07-14T11:46:00.002-04:00

In my previous blog posting in June, I said I was convinced that gender identification and the disengagement from same as a spirit-being is essential to any real and lasting liberation and expansion. Since that time, from many places materials have been emerging into my life for me to write the forthcoming essay.

There are multiple perspectives and analyses about the causes of our current-day financial/economic crisis, ranging from what human nature is—sometimes said to be composed of both greed and altruism, bad/evil and good, or tainted from the start—to debates about the wisdom of free markets versus government regulations on specific activities. Adding my voice to all the viewpoints I've heard or read, I see culturally designed gender roles at the heart of some of the reality we are currently experiencing today, in all societies. And going deeper than that, I see some of our human species‘ core designs, “the troublemakers” as I‘ve called them, bringing forth many of the cultural patterns used globally by both males and females—and how they relate with one another.

Going back to some of the materials I wrote in 2000 that are in the three snapshots— “Problem-Causing Patterns,” “Females and Males,” and “Sexuality”—from the book Jim and I published in 2003, God's River of Love, the following synthesis still makes sense to me:

* Underneath cultural patterns for gender are more fundamental designs of oppositional dualism, ranking of superiority/inferiority, either/or thinking, the use of fear, and a belief there is only One Truth.

* When Jim and I studied our pasts, starting with our births in 1933 and 1932, we discovered that our early cultural sexual orientations included a lot of dualistic programming, where what one gender was the other one wasn't. Females were said to be emotional, while males were said to be logical; and females were said to be receptive, while males were said to be action-oriented.

* Then within the cultural schema of the United States during our J & J growing-up years, in the division of physical qualities between males and females, males were supposed to be the gender with the predominant sex drive, while only bad girls had sexual interests that could match those of males.

Hence, as the above illustrates, there were multiple potentials for power imbalances between males and females, and females and males throughout their culturally-lived lives.

Some of my personal experiences within the patterns used in the United States for females and males include: When I began my first teaching job in the fall of 1952 in southern California, we teachers didn't make enough money to support ourselves independently, and low wages for teachers were the norm for years. Because I lived at home, I was able to buy a car. In practical terms, we females had to get married. And social customs were such that men too had to get married because companies saw more stability with married men, and their jobs required such a concentrated focus the men needed a partner to take care of “all the little things.” (As a sidenote, about 1974 when Jim and I were both working, we laughingly concluded that in addition to the cleaning help we had, we needed a wife to take care of at-home matters! Our solution then was to decide he and I were the wife, sharing joint living responsibilities.)

In the 1960s, when I returned to teaching in 1963 after our daughter had been in kindergarden for about six months, my mother was concerned, telling me people would think my husband wasn't doing well financially—which could hurt his business. That is, it was the man's role to provide for his family, (and to bring about community respect). Many women I knew in the 1950s and 1960s loved being housewives, taking pride in their cake and pie accomplishments, while others were restless. The cultural message I got was that white females were second class citizens, while white males were the first class citizens. Why? Who knew … that was just the way it was.

Here in the United States, individual females certainly developed strategies to combat the imbalances of power, such as talking about their husbands as if they were little boys in conversations with other females, like their husbands were one more of their children. And to balance out the imbalances of power women have had in their primary male/female relationship, many females have had friendships with other females where they have given each other lots of emotional support.

Adding to my personal U.S. gender herstory. After my divorce, about 1968 while living in southern California, when I went to buy a new washing machine, even though I was a tenured teacher with a teaching contract, I couldn't buy it on credit. (I wasn't married and presumably not a good business risk.)

Coming to the present. From my point of view it has taken Jim and I decades to achieve what I think is an even playing field now, where we share the balance of power in our relationship with one another, which I believe needs to be freshly crafted by both of us daily. That is, it isn't some accomplishment we can say is done and fixed. Over the years we've both had to make many adjustments and changes, which we each continue to do!

In the U.S., along with men primarily controlling money in the past, which was part of the male domain's position of power and control, another male power and control area has been emotional anger, irritation, withdrawal—and sometimes violence. Certainly things have changed, where many women have been working for decades now too, but I also continue to see many men underwriting much of their family‘s standard of living. I also continue to hear a lot of aggression and edges to male voices in the present. What I'm saying here is that even though there have been various changes in the decades after the cultural revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s in the United States, I still see gender designs from the past continuing to operate, even though new ones have been additionally energized … hence they all mix together in a dance of ever-changing dynamics.

Where have I been going with all of this? Here in the United States I think many men have automatically thought of themselves in ways where their value as a male human being was and is tied to their money-making abilities and providing activities. And the more money and possessions they had and have, the more value they had and have in their own and other‘s eyes. (He who has the most toys is the winner.) So of course many males have sought to make as much money as they can, and in an increasingly competitive financial environment, the means to accomplish their goals have been dicey. In today‘s world, some men see their jobs even more strongly in terms of survival of the fittest, or at least the survival of their lifestyle.

Where do females fit within all of this as the other part of the gender divide? Well, a woman's attractiveness—beauty, sex appeal, and personality—were oftentimes her ticket to making a connection with a man who could provide for her and the children they might have. And females too have been in competition with other females. So of course more and more women have focused on clothes, makeup, hair styles, jewelry, and face lifts—all of which cost money. Some women who have been very successful in terms of their appearance in recent times have been called “trophy wives” and “arm candy” as the partners of powerful men, while also oftentimes being successful achievers themselves in business, finance, the law, and other areas.

One male writer I heard recently on NPR is suggesting that the loss of jobs for males in the United States is the beginning of the decline of macho here. (My online dictionary defines “macho” as aggressive pride in one's masculinity; vigorous; virile; red-blooded.) He was proposing that women could come out on top, like it's their turn at the tiller. But my question is, since here in the United States when a man's very identity, self-worth, masculinity and strength is extensively tied up with his job and abilities to make money, what else can he do and how else can he think and feel? And, I definitely think continuing to use patterns of superiority/inferiority and dualistic opposition is very unwise!

Then intermixed with gender patterns here in the U.S., this nation of immigrants, are also patterns from the past that are associated with race, class, religion, age, family, and regional customs. But again, underneath them I think “the troublemakers” weave throughout all these cultural belief constructions.

So far in this essay I've focused on the United States culture because it‘s what I am personally familiar with. But I have also studied gender relations for decades in other societies, past and present. On July 6th, when I heard Diane Rehm interview a female Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, about her new book, The Thing Around Your Neck, I ordered it. For years, along with listening to first-person accounts from many places around the world, most of my reading has been non-fiction, but I felt I would gain even more insight into the interplay of gender with what Chimamanda had written as fiction from an African and American viewpoint. One of her major themes, as I heard the Diane Rehm interview, was the power dynamics in male/female relationships, where in general we live in a world that favors men as a group.

Now Adichie‘s combined Nigerian and American perspectives will be in addition to what I read last May in Barack Obama‘s book about his early life, Dreams from My Father, especially the section describing when he went to Kenya, his father‘s homeland, before attending Harvard Law School. I thought he very graphically portrayed many of the underlying tribal patterns there for males, females, and their relationships.

Certainly there have been upsides and downsides for each gender in each society, but I do think that along with their gender entitlements and cultural positions of power, the patterns for males in general, globally, have also been enormously confining and limiting. Jim says the pressures from other males to “be a man” can be formidable!

Overall, as I understand it, there's been ample co-creativity by both spirit-being males and females, and spirit-being females and males—in the past and up to the present.

Then along with the results from various cultural gender designs, there are also the results from the thought patterns we humans use to relate with other species and the Earth system itself, which is the life-support system for all species members. Do I have an answer to this interwoven creativity and co-creativity? Yes I do! Get to know oneself as the essence of oneself, and construct a self and one‘s relationships afresh. Individually and together Jim and I have been in this process for decades.

Thus far Jim and I have been individually exploring and experiencing different matrixes, and at times have experienced other realities, but up to the present neither one of us has enough information about the steps to take to move effectively from the mass reality I think we are all currently co-creating and experiencing, to another reality. Nonetheless, we both expect to be successful in our individual ways—and I‘ll let you know what happens.

With Expanding Love,

The Summer Season Is Here

2009-06-25T14:31:00.002-04:00

Last Sunday, June 21st, Jim and I celebrated the summer solstice with a small ceremony amidst the natural world. His emphasis was the Magic of Life and Being, and mine was Easy Street—all within the expanding and deepening matrixes of New Songs, New Stories, which we began dyadically in March for this natural world‘s four-season theme.

“Easy Street” was the title I gave to a large-scale dream I experienced in the later 1970s. In the dream I had been attempting to drive to the top of a steep mountain, using a more powerful car each time. Then when I got to the bottom of the hill for a third time, I decided to look at a map. What I saw on the map was that to the left of the steep mountain there was a flat and tree-lined road that went past beautiful beaches, with interesting little side roads I could explore off to the right of the tree-lined one. And the road to the left would get me to my destination. My initial interpretation of the dream was that it was telling me there were easier ways to accomplish what I wanted to achieve. It furthermore said that if I stood back and looked at a situation I would be able to figure out those easier ways. “Easy Street” has continued to give me specific ideas I have needed to hear in various circumstances at various times over the years.

Since the late 1970s when I experienced the dream, I have learned a lot more about who/what I AM, the importance of my moment-by-moment choices and energizations, the importance of the process itself, partnerships, relationships, my body organism, letting go and moving on, and developing/expanding elements of my personal power. I've realized even more clearly that what “our” forthcoming experiences are depends upon the matrix I and my body organism are within, and who/what I/we are Being. That is, I can emphasize a specific energization, but the results are different in various matrixes! It's been fascinating to play around with specific patterns for the contents of an emphasis—like Being Safe—and how safety changes within various pattern constructions.

A central energizer and evaluator I and my body organism are using now is emotional ease and satisfaction with each and all activities or non-activities. “We” are putting more ebb into the ebb and flow of our Life, with more non-doing.

Jim and I/we have completed our thorough cleaning of the upstairs, and the outside plants are gorgeous. One night recently as we were going to sleep about 11:30, delicious fragrances from the dark purple petunia-supertunia plant on the front deck table wafted into the bedroom through the open window, and I told Jim for the moment it didn't get any better then that! Then the first peony from an abundance of buds on five vigorous plants in front of the front deck emerged fully on Wednesday, June 17, 2009, and a few days later peony blossoms dramatically came forth all at once on another plant! My body organism has decided to spread out our closet cleaning, taking the process only so far for now; I agree it's been much more enjoyable.

Random fun has been emerging and erupting in unexpected ways … at times I find myself saying with surprise and delight, “This is really fun!”

Yes, materials for a probable new manuscript have been and are emerging—some of which will be about the past/present patterns used for male/female roles and relationships globally. I'm convinced that gender identification and the disengagement from same as a spirit-being is essential to any real and lasting liberation and expansion. But so far I /we are not ready to write anything more than what we just said.

In response to the question of what are my thoughts about some national and global events, my initial reply is that most of the time I'm in a compassionate Observer mode. This past May, I carefully and slowly read Barack Obama's book about his early life—Dreams from My Father—first published in 1995 with an updated 2004 edition, which is what I read. The 2004 edition includes a new Preface and the addition of the Keynote Address he gave at the Democratic National Convention on July 27, 2004. While reading Obama's stories about his life as the son of a white mother and an absent black Kenyan father, (a couple who met at the University of Hawaii and were married while still in school there), daily news reports were also coming forth from the immediate present, where Barack Obama is now President of the United States of America. (During the lead-up to the 2008 election I had read his later book, The Audacity of Hope, published in 2006.)

I have been grateful I don't need to try to sort out the various patterns Obama and his Administration members are now using; I see them all as people of enormous intelligence, skills, and backgrounds. I think our national political leadership—by both the Democrats and Republicans—is very complex and intermingled amidst a shifting global culture that is also very complex and intermingled. From my point of view it was much easier to show the direct relationship between beliefs, their energizations, and then the results with the George W. Bush Administration, such as I did in my manuscript, Within.

Nonetheless, I wholeheartedly agree with what I/we recently read from the book, The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Solve Our Two Biggest Problems by Van Jones. He was featured one Friday night on the PBS program, NOW. Bottom line: From what I read online from Jones‘ book, within the framework of the major emphases he's using, his is the most basically realistic and inspiring overall perspective I've heard or read from our current-day culture. Two of his main focuses are combining solutions to social inequality and environmental destruction.

Jones is an African American. He was a 1993 Yale Law graduate. He's also the founder of the organization, Green for All. To my mind he has a very impressive activist background, and this past March he was appointed as special advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

The following are my culled quotes from The Green Collar Economy by Van Jones: “But even if our movement fails to avert (environmental) disaster, the work of building a national Green Growth Alliance to birth a green New Deal won't be in vain. The effort to reinvent the system will build up important knowledge and establish invaluable relationships. Even in the most dire, ‘hard-landing‘ scenario, we can redeploy that wisdom and those networks to make the best of even the worst situations … We should not let the possibility of eco-apocalypse paralyze us; we should let it motivate and propel us. Whatever our fate, we know one thing: hiding out or holding back won't save us.

“Many of the best people in the country and the world have not been heard from yet. Many of the best ideas have not yet surfaced or been taken to scale … Just as there are unimaginable bad things on the horizon, there are also unimaginable good things. And I am betting on them … Given the capacities available to us, our wildest dreams and biggest hopes are probably too small … Now is not the time to shrink from the challenge of saving our only home in the universe. Now is not the time to pull into ourselves, retreating into either a survivalist or an escapist mode. To the contrary, this is the time for titans, not turtles. Now is the time to open our arms, expand our horizons, and dream big. Big problems require big solutions … To prevail we will need tens of thousands of heroes at every level of human society … So each and every one of us should stop playing small and license ourselves to become one of the giants of the new century. We will need champions by the truckload.

“If we stand for change, we can spark a popular movement with power, influence, magic, and genius. We won't just have the movement we have always wanted. We will have the country we have always wanted—and the world for which our hearts have longed. Now is the time for us to raise our sights. Now is the time for America to dream again. Even in the midst of new dangers, now is the time for us to unshackle our imaginations.” (End of culled quotes from Jones‘ book.)

My sense about Van Jones is that he literally operates more expansively and consciously as a multidimensional composite being than most people do today—and as a multidimensional composite being I/we resonated with him! I think my worldview is a complement to his, where I fill in some more of the details of how.

At the end of my chapter from Within, “The Global Economy and Environmental Realities,” I talked about Lester R. Brown's book, Plan B, Rescuing a Planet under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble. I wrote: “For many years Jim and I carefully followed materials that came forth from the Worldwatch Institute, an organization Brown founded in 1974 and headed for decades. On a yearly basis they published the most accurate environmental information they could of what was taking place around the globe. I have a lot of respect for Brown, for his continuous diligence, and for his grasp of the connections between the various parts of the overall ecological and economic picture. I think his current-day ideas can be used as both food-for-thought and as stepping stones for wise changes in the present and on into the future, to move us beyond our current-day realities. And then as the process evolves and we become more consciously empowered, we can expand our visions.” Brown says the key to restructuring the economy is the creation of an honest market, one that tells the ecological truth, especially about indirect costs and future deficits.

While being aware of what is happening in other countries, I have been breathing sighs of relief about the freedoms we have here in the United States, including freedom of expression. In May, hearing about the protests by some abortion rights activists at the U. of Notre Dame over President Obama's forthcoming commencement address and his responses to them, I wrote in my journal, “Yes, this is my country, land of my birth, and I'm continuously Appreciating that we have the right of freedom of expression amongst a world where other people are being jailed, beaten, and killed for speaking out. Yes, it's messy when there's room for individual thinking and its expression within agreed-upon lawful limitations, but what are our alternatives?“ The inner answer I heard and hear is, “More expanded and deeper matrixes.” (I am writing this during the aftermath of the recent elections in Iran, where there have been street protests and violence about the legitimacy of the election outcome.)

As I listen and see President Obama emphasize common ground with other humans, my suggestion is: Why don't we make the natural world we all Live within our common ground, mutual centrality, and foundation for what we build upon together as the human species?

With More Best Wishes,

First Blog Entry

2009-04-05T11:17:00.000-04:00

My first blog is an announcement that my partner, Jim, and I have successfully uploaded our new website—www.withinlovesriver.com—onto the server. What a joy it was to launch it! The site represents a dyadic culmination at this time, including computer and design skills Jim has been developing. We cordially invite you to take a look.

Our new website includes my recent manuscript, Within the River of Love, Translations and Applications, in its entirety; a place to order our previous book, God's River of Love; some of Jim's photographs; and the entry pages to both our blogs.

Because I think what I will be saying in these occasional blog postings will make more sense after reading the manuscript on our website, I suggest taking the time to do so. As I see it currently, with a blog I will be able to update previous writings about cultural events, describe some happenings in Jim and my lives, and reply to some emails. My email address is jacquiewithin@gmail.com.

As designers on the input side, Jim and I are choosing to keep our lives as simple and easy as we can amidst our current-day world of increasing complexity. Both of us are choosing to have ample amounts of open time this year, which for me will include large amounts of childlike play and random fun. My body organism thinks it has earned it!

With best wishes,