Musings on Abundance

I'm in a funny state, really believing in the law of attraction, that I, through my thoughts and feelings, am the creator of my reality, but unsatisfied with what I am creating. It is winter on Block Island and I am once again broke and without prospects. I am in a different state than in any of my other 9 winters here in that I have lots of enthusiasm and ideas of what I have to offer the community, except that nobody out here is interested. Well, a few are interested, but they are not willing to pay me for my efforts. Maybe it is not working out for me monetarily because our financial institutions are going to collapse soon, and I am being guided away from participating in capitalism so that I will be less affected when it fails. It really is a Catch-22--I am doing my best to feel abundance, but when it does not come my way I can't help but feel my lack, which keeps me in a state of non-abundance! It is exhausting, stressful and humiliating to be poor and I want to change this state, but it is hard when nothing around me supports my belief that I can change this state through the power of my intentions. I am searching for the block within myself that is keeping me from allowing abundance into my life, trying to come back to the moment over and over again by asking myself what my vibrational offering is on a moment to moment level. Do I want to vibrate stress and fear or love and hope? All I can do is keep trying and keep asking for guidance, I guess, but I will admit to being discouraged and feeling unsupported, for the most part, by my community. So I call my community to me now! Reveal yourselves to me! And I call the land to which I belong to call me.....

Give Me Liberty

This is the first poem in my new book, Bluebell: The Apocalypse Diary. www.lulu.com/jenlighty

Give Me Liberty

It began on a Saturday night
when I took what I wanted.
I was a drunk, so I had no problem
saying hi, you wanna come home with me?
I kept meaning to be a vegetarian,
but the food at the bar was free.
Barbecue ribs and buffalo chicken wings,
licking the preservatives off my fingers
by instinct. I've heard pigs will eat anything
that lies on the ground showing no sign of life.
It wasn't his fault.
I was just bored with everything.
I pushed him off and faced the wall.
It was finally ready to speak.
Yo, ho, ho, the wall laughed at me.
You brandish your drink like a buccaneer
from the seventeenth century,
when you've really been waiting
for the highwayman to sweep you off your feet.
You don't care where you are going
as long as it's at a gallop.
You think you are Cathy
sobbing on the moors of Wuthering Heights.
My sister Emily loved the moors.
Flowers brighter than the rose
Bloomed in the blackest heath for her;
out of a sullen hollow in the livid hillside
her mind could make an Eden.
She found in the bleak solitude many and dear delights;
and not the least and best loved was--liberty.
I have wandered the moors of this island,
stripped bare and bleeding--
(really I was drunk and lost in the bushes
on my way home from a late night.)
How did I end up an outlaw,
hand cocked on hip,
brandishing a cutlass
at all who dared to look at me?
What did I seek in the shadows,
drawing violence toward me as if
there were no limits to what I could take?
For years I hid behind a can of beer,
wearing a coat of smoke I refused to shed,
even when it was hot enough
to melt the ice cubes
in my Stoli raz & cranberry.
I laughed too loud.
I thought my teeth flashed brazenly.
In the mirror that's behind every bar
the truth careened toward me.
The truth tied me to the stake.
When I reached the calm center
at the heart of every blaze,
I cut my own throat,
so I could finally speak.

New Book!

Hello friends,

I am pleased to announce the publication of my new book of poems, Bluebell: The Apocalypse Diary. Five years in the making, The Apocalypse Diary documents what I call my internal apocalypse--a process I went through, triggered by fear of a global apocalypse.

I dreamt a tsunami swept over Block Island. I felt the earth beneath me weep. I was haunted by the ghosts of the trees who once covered Block Island.

And I surrendered to my fear, letting go into it until there was nothing more to hold on to.

When I passed through, I found myself in a place of peace, and I am doing my best to stay there.

I have found that I am a "mover," someone who has to move physically to stay grounded and connected to Source energy. I discovered this through Toni Bergins' JourneyDance, which I first experienced at Kripalu. I fell so in love with JourneyDance that I became certified to teach it this past October! I am currently looking for the perfect spot to teach on Block Island and am confident it will appear soon. I am interested in teaching JourneyDance workshops anywhere they are needed, so contact me if you want to dance!

To order my new book go to www.lulu.com/jenlighty. I thank you for your support and hope you find sustenance from my journey! I love you all!

Jen

Shamanic Journeying

I would like to recommend a book by Sandra Ingerman called Shamanic Journeying: Beginner's Guide. Ingerman addresses an issue that sometimes comes up in journeying--the idea that what you are experiencing is all in your head.

My shamanic teacher said this exact thing to me the first time I journeyed with her. She said that one of her recent students dismissed the places they went as being a product of the mind, therefore not real. This is the same thing people say about the psychedelic experience, which in my experience is simply contacting other dimensions of reality.

I have come to the point where I believe that the shamanic journey is just as "real" as traveling to another country like France, and probably actually has greater impact on the self and society than a trip in the material realm.

If we change our thoughts, we change our material reality. Shamanic journeying provides us with a tool to travel through time and into other dimensions to heal our individual and collective wounds.

What could be more important in this time of crisis on Earth?

Journey Home

I went to New Mexico to the desert and all I wanted to do was walk by the blue green Rio Grande. The best thing about the desert is the smell of sage, and the houses made out of the earth. Low, brown houses who say we will all sink back into the earth some day. And Taos Mountain, sacred to the Pueblo Indians. I understand why they don't allow my people (Anglos) to set foot on it, but I wanted to. But after awhile of looking at it I realized I didn't need to walk up it to commune with it. It saw and knew everything about me.

When I came home I fell more in love with Block Island than ever. The peepers woke up from the mud while I was away and the robins are building their nests everywhere I look. And I saw a golden eagle soaring above the Hodge property when I was driving Georgia home the other day. I knew for certain, that right now, this is my place, and was grateful to finally have this knowledge.

This past weekend, while listening to the poet Marie Howe read, I felt my heart swelling, growing in joy instead of in pain. Thank you Marie. Thank you to everybody who has helped me on my journey home. May I return the love you have given me.

Reflections on Receiving

I haven't written here lately. I haven't been motivated to do much lately, which has really been botheing me. Winter has traditionally been my most creative time of the year. Sometimes in summer I can't write at all because there is so much going on out here///so many social events and the money has to be earned and the ocean is so glorious who could stay away from it? Today after I finished writing I was in the shower and I realized in one spray that it was the feeling that writing gave me that was more important than what I created. I've always had a hard time of letting go of poems, books, etc., feeling I had to keep working on them to get them to a point of perfection where they can be read by others, hopefully published. I know people are always saying create just to create, don't worry about the result or what people will think, but we have been so conditioned to achieve that it is really hard to get beyond this as an intellectual construct and feel it,especially when one's ego identity becomes involved in what one is creating. Well today I did just this. I was jubilant when I finished writing and for a moment I thought how great what I was writing was and how I couldn't wait until this book was published, but then the water washed that thought down the drain and I felt all of a sdudden, dove back into the feeling. I can share this feeling now, people don't have to read what I wrote in order to know who I am, to know what's inside me, to see what I have created. What I have created is me wherever I go......and it's a feeling, not a book. And I don't have to be around people to communicate this feeling. I can share it with the gulls, with the waves, with my sofa, with dust molecules and mites, with whatever comes into my awareness--with California, with whales breaching off the coast of Maui! Alleluia I say! One of th egreatest sounds ever uttered! Wow. This is what happens when one lets go and receives....which is what my inability to do anything was trying to tell me. I usually associate not being able to act with being depressed, and beat myself up for not being strong and centered enough to resist the slough, but the other day I chose two Medicine Cards to see reflections of what I was receiving and giiving. In my left, I drew the black panther, reversed. In my right, beaver, reversed. I have felt very lonely lately (a normal state). I have felt for along time that I will be lonely as long as I resist being lonely, but when I saw that upside down panther in my left hand it all came together for me again as a feeling....panther signifies the mysteries of the void. Reversed, it means one is struggling against the void. I understood that. What I hadn't understood, is that the void is a blessed state--there is nothing to do, nothing to achieve. Exactly what I want. Being alone is the closest we come to being back in the Void! The beaver signifies activity, building. Reversed it means one is either not doing something one should do, or in my case, meaning one should stop trying to do. So I took a few days off from work and set my intention to receive. The earth was blanketed in a surprise snowstorm. I read and took baths and stretched like a cat on the blue rug. I felt grateful for the house I've been allowed to live in. I didn't try to do anything until yesterday when my friend Abby and I walked through Rodman's Hollow . The first humans to do so in the fluffy snow, but we were not the first to pass through the trails. We followed deer tracks and wondered about all the other tracks we saw--were they birds? Rats? Feral cats? Wondering at the secret life of the island we couldn't notice usually, too focused on our own minds to perceive.....and twice I saw an actual live rat scurrying off to the side to disappear in stone cracks. Amazing, to be able to disappear in a stone. Amazing, to finally receive, to feel, to mindfully walk and breathe.

Excavation in Dreamtime

I. Chamber of Wounds

This time, the bird has black wings.
You’ve been following it for centuries,
a woman crawling
on numb hands and knees.
The sun rises every day,
and every night when it sets,
you beg it to stay.
You are always hungry,
but never stop to eat or drink.
You leave a trail of blood behind you,
but never stop to bandage your wounds.
Once you’re search had meaning,
now it’s as worthless as the moon,
a cold, dead body that no longer gives off heat.
You curse its glow, you know it’s
mocking you. Choking on dust,
shrapnel shoots from your eyes;
teardrops bomb craters in the desert.
You crawl past bodies leaking cold blood
on to the impassive ground.
Even the ground has
turned its back on you.
You never once gave it
a word of thanks.

Blood, which by day
pools red as sun’s rays,
trickles silver and self-contained
like mercury across the barren landscape.
Over time, the craters fill.
Poisoned, choking, marching
to the beat of your rattling bones,
you’ve made it to the edge of enemy territory
without drowning.
All you have to do now is drag
yourself across the border to be safe,
but when you reach the rim of the last crater
you look back--the bird with black wings
hovers above the surface of the blood lake
and lands on a dead tree shaped like a gibbet.
You see hanged men rotting at the crossroads.
You watch the black-winged bird pluck its eyes out,
two dull stones.

How can the heart go on beating?
How can we expect her to turn back
when she’s so close to relief?
The bird dives in.
Ripples scream across the surface of the lake.
She has no flesh left on her palms,
her knees are scraped bare like a
wind-pummeled mountain peak.
Now that her eyes, witness to the
rapes of a thousand mothers and the
deaths of a thousand sons
have been stolen, she wants to see.
Deep beneath the surface
the bird’s wings flap like fins.
She doesn’t hear taunt or plea
in its cawing, she hears a memory,
a severed limb calling out to its body.
She finally understands
why the heart has to break.

In the heart of every wound
a dream of a seed germinates.
This time, she feels everything,
but now pain is a bursting pod
rising up through the soil
that will open itself again to the sun,
a crimson poppy
which has already forgotten
its birth pangs.

II. Chamber of Contracts

You close your eyes.
The river is always the same,
the words always waiting.
Do you know what is written
on the walls of the tomb
where your broken heart waits?
Finally, you realize the crows
circling the dead tree
waiting in the field you pace
when you need to put your mind at ease
have been calling your name.
Lightning, a flaming arrow shot straight
from the center of a nightmare
pins you to the ground like a
butterfly in a specimen case.
For one second you see
you’ve always been asleep.
Who wrote the book of laws
by which you live out your allotted days,
the scholar writes in a dusty volume
that nobody thinks to read.
The question has been waiting
in the crook of the dead tree.
Your eyes open to the lies
that have led you to this place,
grasping for the banks
as the river sweeps you away.
You find yourself facedown in sand,
skin unmarked as snow at daybreak.
When you look at your reflection,
you don’t recognize your face.
The water is both clear and opaque,
shifting as you struggle with the
burden of centuries.
Only gravity gives weight,
the butterflies say.
The butterflies believe you can fly,
but for you, crawling’s the only way.
You grip the sand grains until your skin gleams,
polished by pain.
As the flock beats its wings
on the walls of the tomb, you don’t panic,
and you don’t wonder if there
will be enough air to breathe.
They are carving words on the walls
that will set you free.
Your lungs fan a flame so you can read:
Love Pain.
Only too well, you think.
Then you see yourself crawling
across the battlefields, wanting only
a jug of clean water to drink.
A wounded man reaches out to you.
Your enemy.
Blood pools around you,
its color leached, this bleak vision
etched in black and white.
You raise your knife to kill him--
but something makes you hesitate.
Blood from your wounds
staining the ground red again,
the earth quakes in grief.
You know if you don’t drop your knife
there will always be an enemy
laying in wait.

III. Chamber of Grace

This time I didn’t need to follow anybody.
I lay down in the river heedless of the cold,
not caring that rocks dug into my tender places.
I knew their flint could strike a fire in my bones
that would burn away the web binding me
to a body defined by drought, beyond tears,
a fire to cleanse the charred remains of a woman
who has lain in the dirt and been raped,
who has watched soldiers slash her son’s throat
then thunder away.
Tonight the wind carries homeless memories through
open French doors and offers them a place to sleep.
Lay down, I tell them. The sheets are clean.
Once, I thought the insects surrounding my house
were an army, a squadron about to invade.
Now they’re a chord plucked out on a harp
by a hand I can’t see. Or is it mine,
tracing an outline of sound on the edge of a cliff,
about to fall off into a swell that can’t be contained
within these black marks traveling across this page?
I am both underground and flying,
my wings are fins, and the secrets I’ve sought
opens to me like the lips of the cowry I found once
on an island I traveled to in search of words,
not realizing they were already inside me.
Now, not even an iridescent butterfly can
seduce me away from the sight of my three-year old self
spinning through a field of daisies.
When saltwater scours the goldenrod,
you’ll know it’s not the sweetness of honey you need,
but the bitter taste that can only be accepted through grace.
The outline of sound I traced on the edge is filled with
particles too small to be seen by the human eye.
They can only be felt.
Once felt, the body becomes free to accept
the soul’s need to stand at the edge and leap,
knowing space is not empty, but a web of light
waiting to catch us when we dare to fall.
The ghosts who haunted this poem at the beginning
have crossed over into the arms of patient angels
lowing us all to sleep.
The sheets are clean, a voice whispers.
It’s time to dream.

Lucid Dreams

Seals dream on the rocks right outside my window. I have moved to Spring Street for three weeks to take care of Quincy and Noah, two feline friends. The house is only about 50 yards from the ocean. When I lay down at night it feels like I'm on a ship, and since the house is old, it feels like a seaworthy vessel that has weathered many storms. The seals on the rocks are a delight to behold as the sun dries their fur. I wish I could swim with them, but they have learned to be afraid of humans. For humans, seals help us in lucid dreaming. Do seals dream the same way we do? I have been thinking a lot lately about what animal consciousness is like? It is obvious that animals have ways of communicating that are different from ours. Anyone see March of the Penguins? When the father penguins come back and cry out to their chick--and the chick calls back--and they find each other out of hundreds of others who look the same. The narrator says the chicks and fathers identify each other by their particular call, but they all sounded the same to me. It is not the call that links them, but some other way of communicating that we can't recognize because we either have not developed it in ourselves or we have forgotten how to use it. My teacher had an interesting take on the penguins. She interpreted their role on earth as demonstrating to us how little we value the desire to love and have a family. We value these qualities so little that we have created a creature with our thought forms that has to go through so much just to do just that. I really recommend this film if you haven't seen it. It is not anthropomorphized at all. The feelings of love between the penguins are real--please see it if you haven't and remember to ask the animals you come in contact what they have to teach you. I read recently that when some animals dream, they go visit their home planet, reconnecting with their source. Do we dream the same way and just dont' recognize what we are seeing? It is all so fascinating. The more I let go the more I feel myself floating through space--the more funny things are, the more beautiful, and I feel gratitude to have reached this point where I am aware of being able to witness what's going on. What do the seals dream of?

Go Gratitude

Last year we had a tsunami that destroyed many lives, this year we have the opportunity to experience a different wave. Join the experiment in spreading a wave of gratitude worldwide at www.gogratitude.com. The intent is to link one million people in love and gratitude in order to shift the energetic balance of the world from despair to hope. We can do it! Don't be scared by prophecies--they are only a blueprint of what could be. Nothing in the material world is irreversible. All we see is a reflection of our thought forms. If we alter our thoughts (which are reactions to our emotions) then we can alter the world.

Happy Birthday

A year ago I awoke on my birthday to the announcement on the TV that a terrible tsunami had struck in the Indian Ocean, killing thousands of people. I remember feeling, since it occurred on my birthday, that it was connected to me in some special way--that I had something in particular to learn from it, although I guess you could say that we all had something to learn from it. At the time, I believed that cataclysmic earth changes were a result of our arrogance and indifference to the earth--the tsunami was a way for the earth to strike back at us in order to get our attention so that we would stop mistreating her before it was too late. By too late I mean, before she wiped us off her surface. I also saw the tsunami (and the New Orleans flood) as a cleansing of the energies of greed which have caused us to mistreat our planet. As they year progressed, I went through an "internal tsunami" which I have written about here on this blog. (posts are archived in April and May). This channeling of apocalyptic energy through my being was also a cleansing. I can now see that the earth was not, is not, and will not, strike back at us for mistreating her. It is we who are lashing out at ourselves through flood, flu, and hurricane. The cataclysms are thought forms--a product of how we feel about ourselves and what we have created. They are indeed a cleansing which we have called upon ourselves because somewhere beneath our confused and scared egos we know that we need it. However, they do not have to be cataclysmic and violent, as we have witnessed this year with the Asian tsunami, the Pakistan earthquake, and Hurricane Katrina. Until we break the cycle of war and violence upon ourselves, upon the earth, until we realize our oneness with all, the earth (ourselves) will continue to cleanse her/ourselves in cataclysmic ways. However, as soon as enough of us realize and feel in our hearts the bliss of no separation, the cleansing will be as peaceful as inhaling clean mountain air, as drinking water from a spring, as soaking in the sun on a white sand beach as the waves lap at your feet. A year ago I believed we were in control of nothing. Now I feel and know we have infinite potential to create our reality, and I rejoice that every day I am choosing to experience gratitude, pleasure, and joy. What a difference a year has made! The greatest transformation in my life.....thanks to all who have joined me on this journey. Namaste. I honor the light and dark with you. All that leads us to peace in our hearts, the center of the earth steadily beating.

The Light is Reborn

Silent night, Holy night
All is calm, All is bright
Round yon virgin, mother and child
Holy infant, so tender and mild
Christ the savior is born
Christ the savior is born!

Today is the solstice.
The birth of the Sun King.
The rebirth of the sun in our hearts.
The birth of Christ in our hearts.
We are one--land and spirit, spinning in space.
I found a white feather in a field today with downy edges.
From a fledgling. A bird just learning to fly.
A white tailed deer leaped away through the brambles
and the chickadees chirped among the winterberries.
All is well. Peace in your heart on this holy day...
and always........

love, Whitewave

What The Moon Sees

What The Moon Sees

Tonight, on every continent of this
war torn planet, there are still people
laying in wait for their enemies with guns, grenades,
knives, stones, bare hands, thoughts, words, feelings.
Terror reigns in dead-end allies, and behind walls,
both real and imaginary.
People still strap bombs to themselves
and board buses carrying schoolchildren, young lovers,
and old women tired from searching the city for bread and meat.

Tonight, on every continent of this
starving planet, millions of people went to bed
without enough to eat. Women shoo flies
from the lips of their dying children.
If they’re lucky, they fall into a dreamless sleep.
High in glass towers, some feast on
wild animals who may soon be extinct.
It's hard to believe they’re unaware of
what goes on down in the street.

Tonight, on every continent of this
overburdened planet, prophets of doom
dressed as anchormen cast fear in our hearts
in between commercials for frozen pot pies
and pills to improve our quality of life.
Bird flu, bombs, nuclear waste, they recite.
Not even money will keep you safe, they say,
but we still keep buying.
Mountains of garbage ring our doomed cities.

Tonight, on every continent of this
traumatized planet, there’s an ocean of pain,
but everyone’s denying the waves.
Some drown in bars, some sink to the bottom
with a needle plunged into their veins.
Some of us are so used to its texture
we can’t feel it scraping our skin raw, even when it bleeds.
We swim in the undertow, despite being warned it isn’t safe.
We stumble into dark allies to be beaten and raped.

Tonight, on every continent of this
laboring planet, some of us are beginning to see.
We take the boards off our windows and walk undefended
into enemy territory.
The moon calls us to the rooftops of our shell-shocked cities.
Face to face, we can’t tell friend from enemy.
Past and future fade away.
We turn to the sky and remember: a star, a child, wise men
kneeling with the beasts.

Providence Journal Article

Poetry column: From the safe harbor of academia to the storm-tossed self
01:00 AM EST on Sunday, November 6, 2005 by Tom Chandler

The twisty road to the writing life has no guardrails. There are plenty of off-ramps but very little signage.
Jen Lighty has wanted to be a writer for as long as she can remember. She grew up in Connecticut, writing poems all through her childhood. After high school she still had the itch, but decided to pursue an academic career because it seemed safe.
So she went to George Washington University, where she earned a degree in English, and gave up writing poems because she had by now convinced herself she wanted to be an 18th-century scholar. Like most English majors, though, she realized she would need time and experience to find her true calling, and so traveled for a few years after college, living in Hawaii, New Orleans, Colorado and California.
Jen worked her way back toward poetry by enrolling in the Breadloaf School in Vermont, where she received a master's degree. She went on from there to Warren Wilson College's MFA program in poetry writing, but still felt unable to commit to a future of poverty and obscurity, which seemed to her the fate of contemporary poets who try to make a living outside of academia. She says now it was probably that she was more afraid of uncovering who she really was, that "poetry was the path to my soul, but I was afraid to walk down it."
She finally ended up spending a winter on Block Island, a place that had left an indelible impression on her since she had spent her first summer there at age 5. Jen has now been a full-time resident for nine years, and has at last come to see that Block Island has truly been her greatest teacher.
Since settling in, her poems and stories have appeared in such journals as The North American Review, Seneca Review and Birmingham Poetry Review. Her first collection of poems, Siren, was published in 2002.
Of her poem "Animal Speak," Jen had this to say:
"The events in the poem actually happened, and I wrote it at the beginning of what some would call a 'breakdown,' but which I (now that I am on the other side) call a 'breakthrough.'
"I came face-to-face with those deer in the poem, and lay in the sand beneath the fallen watchtower on the southwest corner of the island. This was the beginning of my spiritual emergence (not emergency). On that day, I surrendered to the island and feel that I have been a voice for this piece of land ever since."

"Animal Speak" was first published in Poet Lore.

Animal Speak
This could be the last full moon before the end of the world,
said the two deer who crossed my path last night.
When I came upon the buck and doe in the goldenrod haze of day,
they froze in my gaze.
Fear exploded like the cock pheasant rattling across the sky as I write.
If I had a gun, they'd be hanging from a tree
so their blood wouldn't stain their meat.
They had weeping willow legs,
their withers trembled like an earthquake.
In the not so distant, the hounds bayed.
With a bow and arrow I could have
pinned their hearts to the ground,
but a spring rose up through the clay at my feet.
An arrow flew from their eyes and sank into
the black hole in the center of mine.
I saw I had always been blind, and I knew
why I'd always been thirsty.
I pressed my stone heart to the ground and took a drink.
The clay was cool, cracked and worn away by wind and feet.
It knew better than anyone how to receive.
I gave the earth my shame.
All the arrows I had flung without thinking whom they would meet.
I asked the earth to punish me, but she said come this way.
The doe walked into the west, the buck followed.
Some of my teachers have led me astray,
but they were all leading me to these tracks on the beach,
the hoofprints that I followed,
knowing my life had finally found me.
All I had to do now was keep walking,
but the sand stung my face like a swarm of bees.
For hours I fell through the glass,
wading up to my knees, to my waist, to my ribs and lungs,
I knew my heart would break.
I finally lay down and asked the sand to bury me,
but I choked on the words, spitting out grains
because I still wanted to breathe.
I was blind now.
The wind pulled me to a fallen watchtower
where my ancestors had waited to be destroyed.
I heard the planes close in and submarines rise.
And when my ears were clogged with sand, I cried.
Even the wind had abandoned me.
I had thought my ancestors would greet me,
but there was nothing in that empty space.
Finality may be as unrecognizable as the sperm and egg
that set you upon this path in the first place.
Heaven is the first house you come upon,
after six hours of walking the edge of an island
scoured by waves.
You are shocked that heaven is lit by electric lights,
but you enter their orbit because by now
you'll accept any embrace.
So this is why they stand frozen -- the ache.
-- JEN LIGHTY

Reflections On Consensus

Reflections On Consensus

by Jen Lighty

Consensus is a way of making a decision within a group that honors the individual contributions that each member has to make. It is process oriented, rather than focused on achieving a product or result at all costs.
Most of us who came of age in 20th century America have been raised in a society that values the product at all costs--whether it be chasing down a client, getting a big tip, achieving a perfect body, relationship or child--we tend to judge ourselves on winning, rather than on how we play the game. As you know, the most competitive players are usually the ones who win--those who come out on top.
We call this a hierarchy--a social system where people compete for their position on a vertical scale. Generally, the more dominant and aggressive traits of the human personality are the most valued, as they enable the person who possesses them to grab control and rise to the top. This behavior is often justified by comparing it to the animal kingdom. This attitude--that it is the fittest who survive and prosper, is one of the paradigms that shape our consensual reality. It is systemic in all aspects of our existence on earth. Not only does it reflect our attitude toward every aspect of our personal and public relationships, it mirrors the way we think about the earth--as something under our control, to be dominated and used.
Before I go into the problems with this mode of thought, I would like to identify it as just that--a way of thinking that is based on separation, a firm belief that the material world exists as something unchangeable outside ourselves. However, as discoveries in quantum physics have shown, consciousness can alter physical reality. If enough of us are able to feel and think a different way of being, than the physical world will reflect our thoughts, creating a new consensual reality. In other words, it is our choice. Do you want to live in a world where only the fittest survive, or in a world where everyone is allowed to flower without fear of being devoured by wild beasts?
Back to the problem. The problem with hierarchies is that they are not sustainable. They demand infallibility--when one weakens, one falls and looses one’s authority. When one can no longer perform, one is expendable. This way of thinking has been taken to its extreme. It reaches into all aspects of our consciousness, including the way we relate as a society to the earth. By constantly expecting the land to perform for us, we have exhausted its resources and created a situation where there now seems that there is not enough for all to share. This is a lie based on fear created by those who are invested in the hierarchical system! We have the choice to co-create new paradigms based on respect and sharing. When enough of us decide to do this, we will embody these values, and since our bodies are physically no different from the earth, it will change as well.
Consensus is a way for us to re-create ourselves based on mutual respect. It recognizes that we all have unique contributions to make, and that we all serve as mirrors for each other, enabling us to learn our own strengths and weaknesses as we go through the process of determining the best way to achieve our desired result. Above all, consensus is a way for us to recognize that we are here to learn from each other--that earth is a school--and that the emotions which arise when working in a group are the most important lessons. If we only value the qualities which enable us to most efficiently grab control and win (the capitalist model), then we risk losing the many opportunities to fully develop ourselves provided for us by working in a group.
My experience: I learned about consensus at Earth Activist Training, a program combining permaculture, energy work, and social activism. We worked in small groups on permaculture design projects using the consensus method.
In my experience, consensus can be frustrating and exhausting, but the rewards of learning about myself as I learned to listen to the needs of other people were far more rewarding than presenting our final product. Unless the group is really adept at self-organizing, a good facilitator definitely helps. Someone who can bring out the best in everyone. Accustomed to being overlooked in a hierarchy, quiet and shy people often don’t speak at all. It is the role of the facilitator to give them space to be heard, and to moderate the more dominant types without quelling their enthusiasm. A major part of facilitating (and of being a member of a group) is to look for what’s going on beneath the surface of what’s being said. This is where emotional wounds fester, wounds which have the potential to erupt at a later point, often making it difficult for the group to cohere enough to present the best that they can for the common good.
As a decisive person blessed with the ability to create an overall vision with ease, it was difficult for me to sit back and give the less decisive room to let their thoughts ramble where they needed to go. By sitting back and listening, I learned the value of patience, and the pleasure to be found in piecing the vision together from detail to detail. The experience can be likened to following the tracks of an unknown animal over the landscape one step at at time. When you finally discover what you’ve been following, the thrill and sense of satisfaction will be much greater than if one knew at the beginning.
Ego insecurities will most likely come out in consensus. I noticed in our group that most of us had been conditioned to want approval by the authority figures (although not by the teachers at EAT!). The fear that we would fail and not have a project that was good enough to present to the group hung over us the whole time and brought out the aspects of our personalities that needed refinement.
One other problem that can arise, is the inability to make a decision. I found that nobody in our group wanted to step on anyone’s toes. Nobody wanted to be seen as trying to grab power by finalizing everything. We had all internalized such negative messages about capitalism and the hierarchical models of organization that we suppressed our leadership abilities, and even our creativity to some extent. It is hard to flow with one’s creative energy others in the group are mulling over process points. This is where splitting into subgroups can be handy. Identify what people are best at and have them report back to the main group. The main thing really, is for everyone to just let go and recognize what they are best at, and for everyone in the group to realize that every task has equal value. Being able to locate paper and pens is just as important as being able to draw.
I found the mechanics of the process awkward and stifling--having to make proposals and then having to vote on each one before doing, but I could see how it was a necessary step in retraining a group of people who had been taught to forge ahead toward a goal no matter what the cost. Once I realized this, I was able to let go of my ego needs and enjoy the energy dynamics of the people I was privileged to work with.
Finally, when meltdowns occur, consider that these moments of uncontrolled emotion may be far more important than getting the project done. I’m not sure this happened very smoothly in the group I worked on--at least not right at the time they happened--although they were addressed afterwards in private. I think a little steamrolling may have occurred at the end when the group decided (without speaking the decision out loud) to just forge ahead despite the hurt feelings or frustrations of those who were still stuck emotionally. Maybe this was the action that needed to be taken for the greatest good--I’m not sure. In creatures like ants, who, from the human perspective, seem to work as a group mind with ease, the boundaries seem a lot more clearly defined. But we are not ants--we are humans, blessed with the gift of emotions. We get to choose whether or not we want to let go and fall into the arms of the universe, and if we do, we are able to see that nothing is out of order at all. We are always in the right place at the right time. It is in moments of realization like this, that compassion for others, and most importantly, for one’s self, is born. And in my case, gratitude for the lessons learned.

The Soul Gets To Choose

Sacrifice leads to bliss...

Forgiveness is the path to unconditional love...

These are two of the dominant paradigms that have shaped human cultures all over the planet for the last four thousand years or so. Both of them imply that we live in a fallen world, that life on earth is a punishment for a sin against God, that because we sinned, we must be punished by learning through pain.

For example, I first felt unconditional love through being betrayed over and over again. Finally, after the most painful of all the betrayals, I realized my own role in creating the situation where I felt so much pain. This occurred because I was able to see beyond what my ego wanted for my life, and what my soul was trying to teach me. When the soul chooses to incarnate somewhere, it has to adapt to the rules of the domain where it appears--that is how it learns, how it becomes aware of itself (this is how I see it at least). On earth, as the ego experiences pain, it is giving the person the opportunity to make a choice: choose to realize that you attracted the experience of betrayal. When I realized this, my heart was filled with so much love for the person who betrayed me. I was able to see how I had been only using such a little part of my heart, keeping the rest safe because I didnt' trust in the divine plan of the universe. One can also choose to shut down, to sink into the pain until there is no separation between it and you. You embrace your identity as victim and your heart closes down. I don't know why I finally decided to realize that I was attracting the experiences of betrayal. I don't think there is a rational explanation. It was not an intellectual choice. I think my soul just knew that it was time for me to learn this lesson--divine intervention occurred, what we sometimes call grace.

Now to my next point, the one I am really excited about! I believe the two paradigms I listed at the beginning of this post are relics of the past. The energy on earth no longer supports them. We are now in a time where one does not have to sacrifice in order to experience bliss, and where one does not have to experience painful betrayals in order to experience unconditional love. Forgiveness is no longer a necessary part of the process because we will no longer be learning through pain. Although the world may look like it is falling apart, this is the last gasp of those who will not let go of the control they exert over others, a control based on fear, and on the paradigm that life on earth is one of suffering that will be redeemed in Heaven.

I don't have any facts or evidence to back this up, but my heart knows this is true, and I trust my feelings over anything else. Another thing I learned from being betrayed--one's feelings are usually right, not what one knows intellectually. This gives me another reason to thank all those who have betrayed me!

So what will our new paradigms be? For me, poetry is the language of feeling, but I wanted to sketch my ideas out here to provide the images I feel coming some structure, and to ask all of you what you think. What do you think human life on earth will be like now that we don't have to sacrifice, now that we don't have to be redeemed, now that heaven will be here on earth, now that we don't have to protect our hearts because they won't have to be damaged so that we can learn to forgive to re-open them to the limitless glory of divine love?

Read The Land Of Curving Water: A Mythological Memoir

I have decided to post the book I have been working on for the past eight years or so on the web. It is called The Land Of Curving Water: A Mythological Memoir. The book deals with my experiences in Waipi'o Valley, on the island of Hawaii. I have had enthusiastic responses from a few agents, but no one would take it, saying it is not commercial enough. As you can see from the title, I have invented my own genre. The book is mythological in the sense that it deals with the making and mythologizing of the self. It also has a few Hawaiian myths woven into it that parallel my story. I thought about self-publishing it, but don't have the money right now. I thought posting it on my blog would be a good way to let it go, enabling me to move onto new creative endeavours. To read the book, click here. This will lead you to the book, hosted by my friend John at www.blockislandfactor.com. Thanks John! Thanks to all who have been a part of my journey as I wrote this book.

Thursday, Nov. 4 -- I made an important discovery today I want to add to my words above. I realized that a part of me was hoping I would find a "real" publisher for my book by posting it on the internet. Real, as in the sense that they would pay me for my work. The shift in my thinking which occured today can be attributed to someone telling me that The Land Of Curving Water must have been a real labor of love for me to work on it for 8 years. I replied, it was not a labor of love, rather a labor of learning to love my self. For the past few years that I've been trying to get the book published for money I've been telling myself it doesn't get accepted because it's too non-traditional, ahead of its time, not mainstream, painting myself as a victim of the publishing industry like so many other misunderstood and unappreciated artists before me. Now if there is one thingI've learned in the past four years it's thatI am not a victim of anything--I create the situations I need in order to fulfill my soul's needs. Ironically, that is the major theme of The Land Of Curving Water. So what does my soul need to learn from not getting published? In my old way of thinking I would say my soul needed to go on no matter what happened, to learn to be strong, to find joy within and not rely on approval from others. However, I have been learning about reframing lately. As we move through this energetic shift on earth, our old ideas and concepts based on lack are falling away. We have lived in a world that defines existence as something based on suffering. Everything I am being taught, and directly experiencing, tells me that this is no longer the case. Human existence will be based on the joy of creation from now on. The Land Of Curving Water is a book about suffering. I saw today that the reason I was guided to post the book on the web was because I was meant to give it away. Who would want to make a profit from suffering? As I give my suffering away, I allow you to let yours go as well. Yesterday I watched two golden eagles soar on the wind. This morning a young bald eagle hovered twenty feet above my head. Eagles balance water and fire. The island of Hawaii is being born as I write these words--molten lava pouring out of the heart of the earth, taking solid form as it encounters the sea. We can live in balance. We can give away our pain. Aloha means to give without expectation of receiving, but I suspect the more we give the more we'll receive. I was given the gift of eagles at my window, the sun radiant on their golden wings.

Jen

Soul Age, Part Two

I would like to point out that soul ages should not be rated hierarchically, as we are accustomed to doing with age. It is tempting to claim spiritual superiority if one identifies with the mature soul category--but looking down on a baby soul who needs dogma in order to function will not enable one to move into becoming an old soul. I think I forgot to mention that the goal of all souls in an earth incarnation is to experience unconditional love for all of humanity. As a mature soul who often feels belittled by adult souls, I am tempted into thinking myself superior--but know that this will only hurt me in the end. As Rumi said, "I ignore anything which insults my soul."

With Dignity And Grace

I wrote this poem about my friend Padme, who I met last winter at Earth Activist Training. Padme is a very beautiful spirit who freely gives of herself...she gave the best hugs! Right now she is in Algiers, Louisiana, across the river from New Orleans, working with the Common Ground Collective to help victims of Hurricane Katrina help themselves. She and the others in teh colective are helping community members self-organize to provide for their needs--since the government has failed to meet them. This is an example of the permaculture principle "the problem is the solution" in action. The failure of the government to compassionately meet the needs of the people of New Orleans is giving people the opportunity to create a system of self-governance that reflects their needs and their beliefs, to take charge of their lives and to regain dignity, instead of what the U.S. government wants to give them in the name of charity. Padme is in charge of counselling relief workers and people just coming back to their homes for the first time. She is of course giving lots of hugs! I send these words out into space hoping they nurture her. Thank you , Padme.

In The Green Fields Of Iowa, Padme Crowe Weeps

In a white clapboard house
down a dirt road that used to be a stream,
Padme Crowe weeps.
Sparrows twitter at the window for sunflower seeds.
She sprinkles them on the sill knowing
they’ve been poisoned by cropdusters
who bomb the fields surrounding the house everyday.
She’s afraid to breathe,
but someone must sing to the green corn
rising out of the furrows,
plowed by steel teeth so fierce
no stone can chip or crack them.
It’s not your fault, she sings.
It’s not your fault poison runs through our veins.
She tilts her head back and reaches with her tongue for the rain.
Just one drop is all she needs.
Look at that crazy girl, the farmers say.
She’s in our way.
Even the crows have deserted the fields,
scattered like buckshot,
headed toward a stand of trees
rumored to be holding out in the next county.
Padme’s voice soars above the bombs, the spray.
She takes a deep breath and lets her faith out,
the hymn in the seed.
The crows fall silent and drop back to earth,
watching the bugs flee the corn,
running from the conflagration
like the Vietnamese girl in the famous photo
from Life magazine, her young body aflame.
Flame is the enemy of innocence
as well as its revealer. There may be nothing
more brutal than to be a witness to pain.
There may be nothing more necessary.
The bugs never make it to the road
where they might have had a chance
to be caught up by a wind that would carry them
to a planet in another galaxy
that has not yet been pillaged and raped.
The crows don’t close their eyes.
Neither does Padme.
Together they open their mouths
and release the last drop of rain.
OM MANI PADME HUM.
OM MANI PADME HUM.
OM MANI PADME HUM.
If you lean in close to these words
you’ll see the black sheen of their feathers.
A blank reflection.
Everything.
See the lotus blooming in mud.
See the black diamond in the center of its petals.
See all your delusions be carried away
by a bright gold beak.
See the dignity of men as they go about
the day’s killing.
See the beauty of each swelling kernel.
Harvest the truth that is budding within you.
Their is nothing but this song that won’t end
when my voice whithers away.

Blessed Be

Blessed Be

On a day when breathing was sweet as wild strawberries,
when air soothed my lungs like a cool drink from the spring
pouring out of the iron pipe to nurture watercress and jewelweed
rejoicing at the edge of the pond where I found a box turtle once
who I picked up and took home to live with my family for a week,
a pond ringed by cattails who filter out the toxic waste that casts a blight
on my hope that one day the child who wants to be born through me
will walk without fear of contamination by pesticides, bombs and radio
waves, at this pond where ducks nest in the tussocks, where I’ve heard
frogs sing, where once I ate the sweetest blackberry I’ve ever tasted
in October, long after the rest of the berries had dried up, been baked
in a cobbler, or plucked by a bright-eyed bird’s beak, god finally spoke to me.
I’d been expecting to find the red feather for weeks since the cardinal
flew into my heart the afternoon I asked for help to dissolve the doors
locked tight in my brain. I knew about hawks and owls, birds whose
symbology had me soaring high above the earth, or delving deep
into my shadows. The red feather didn’t say anything to me when I
asked it to speak, so I put my field guide away and rode my bike
like a horse until I could move across the surface of the earth like
I was being chased by a wall of fire, my heart a panicked rabbit
that knew it wasn’t fleet enough to escape incineration. I looked to the sky
to save me, praying for rain, but all I saw were stars, sometimes falling,
but still balls of swirling flame raining sparks that set my hair ablaze,
hissing like a den of venomous snakes, or relentless waves that wouldn’t
let time stop for a moment to breathe, charging across the universe,
a herd of horses there was no way I could break.
I surrendered before they could trample me.
When the numbness finally arrives it’s a relief after the shock
of the sting, a cold ice cube on skin that just wants the pain to go away,
forgetting that life can’t sprout from ground that’s been frozen unless the sun
arrives in spring to thaw the layers we can’t see, and that it’s possible to turn
one’s face away so far from the sun that the ice reaches bedrock,
where no seeds can sprout to feed the soul, who’s starving.
I didn’t know I had left her behind in that valley were waterfalls blossomed
after heavy rain. I thought she had walked out with me and taken her seat
on the plane that flew back across the Pacific Ocean to the desert where I
started walking toward this moment, following a trail of boulders,
then pebbles, and finally grains of sand, until they ran out and I reached
through the hourglass and took my heart in my hands, when I held my
broken self to my heart and soothed her aches as tenderly as the shadows
the boughs of a weeping willow make on the green grass embroidered with
dandelions and clover, where a rabbit nibbles in peace, letting dogs and cats and
women charge by on bikes, knowing it has nothing to fear from the oncoming storm,
what appears to be a squall of unquenchable emotion, but is really just
a wheel doing what comes naturally, guided by gentle hands who mold the rising clay
into righteous shapes, beauty revealed as each turning point is embraced.
I wept with my abandoned self and she forgave me for leaving her.
I forgave her for making me want to forget in the first place.
We dissolved into each other in waves that I now knew weren’t
relentless, but the echo of eternity giving us as many chances as
we need to reach down and pick up the red feather dropped by the
cardinal as it fed on the suet ball coated with sunflower seeds
hung by a kind-hearted woman from the branch of the pine tree
she can see from her bay window when the butterfly bush isn’t
blooming as riotously as it was today when I rode my bike to water
her garden where pink cosmos currently reign, taking their share
of the sun in full knowledge they will let their petals drop to the ground
when it’s time to release, knowing all must change, and even more,
that all should change, the seasons of the heart as explosive as
wild strawberries, the sweet flame I expected to be unbearable,
until I accepted its embrace.

Soul Age

I learned a fascinating way to determine soul age recently and have been mentally applying it to people in my life. I believe it is from the channeled entity known as Michael, a comglomeration of a 1,000 or so souls. There are books from Michael if you want to read more.

baby souls are concerned with issues of survival

infant souls need dogma in order to survive

adult souls are concerned with achievement, both material and immaterial

mature souls are concerned with relationships and have a lot of emotional drama

old souls see things from the broadest perspective possible and are less interested in playing the material game

I would catergorize myself as being on the brink between mature and old. I have tons of emotional drama, but am aware of it when I get caught up in it, and am generally able these days to get out of it be identifying what the drama is trying to teach me.

The world today seems to be controlled by adult souls. I thought it was kind of funny that the adult souls often look down on the mature souls, who since they are so caught up in their emotional dramas, can't get it together enough to achieve much of anything! Here on Block Island, the town is controlled by adult souls, but there are many mature souls who have been blown here like migrating birds.

I have met very few old souls in my life so far. I think one of them is my teacher Maria. The Dalai Lama is another one, but a less obvious is my brother Steven. He and I share Hawk medicine. Hawk is the messenger bird who sees the earth from a broad perspective. Steven does not often get caught up in emotional drama, but he does not judge those who do. So thanks for being such a great brother, Lightnin'!

For those of you who struggle with emotional drama, remember you can call upon the power of the hawk at any time to lift you above the muck. Emotions are classes in earth school. Now that I have managed to fly a little above my current emotional drama, I can see whay my latest emotional drama is trying to tell me: I am still vulnerable to having someone come in and totally take over my life. In other words, I need to work on my boundaries. This doesn't mean there is something wrong with me. There is nothing wrong with being open-hearted, but somehwere along the way I developed a need for love that is so great that I am willing to surrender my whole identity or order to have another person in my life. This is also called co-dependency. I recommend the book Co-Dependendt No More, if this sounds familiar to you. However, just as I no longer identify with the word alcoholic, I can do the same with this other label. My point is, that if you keep telling yourself over and over again that there is something wrong with yourself, then you will never shift onto another spoke of the wheel of life.