On Traveling The Path of the Non-Spiritual and Feeling Okay About It

I talk with my boyfriend now and then about a “spiritual path” in life and how neither of us really believes that we are on one. There was a time not very long ago where I would never have admitted this nor would I have felt comfortable acknowledging it. I remember, years ago, walking around The Lake Shrine at The Self-Realization Fellowship in Malibu and noticing a plaque on the hillside that read, “Everything else can wait. The search for God cannot”. It implied such urgency and I felt moved by the simplicity of the argument. Through the intervening years, I have intermittently practiced yoga, watched The Secret, and attended the North Hollywood Church of Religious Science. All have contributed to my world view, but none became a religion, or even a habit, in my life.

When my boyfriend, surrounded for most of his life by spiritual seekers and having followed the Dead to around 50 shows, would reveal to people that he didn’t feel that he was on a spiritual path, he received a mix of sympathy and disdain. “Doesn’t that make you feel sad?” girls in flowing, tie-dyed skirts would ask him. To this day, his answer is, “By no means.”

In my experience, a life off the spiritual path takes the pressure off of feeling the need to turn every situation, event, or setting into something transcendental or revelatory. Removing the spiritual expectations from a transaction allows one to just be present inside of it, pure and simple. A recent example is a hike we took together in Mount Tamalpais State Park. We were in one of the most beautiful settings imaginable. We were in awe of having unexpectedly found ourselves there. We were hugging redwood trees and dancing on the trails. Looking back on it, our goal in the endeavor was not to learn something or communicate with something larger than ourselves. I didn’t need that grandfather redwood to tell me anything. I simply appreciated him being there to hold on to. I asked nothing of the experience. I can walk away from it without having to name it. It wasn’t an awakening or an epiphany. It was simply another thread woven into the tapestry that is my life.

Does this mean that I won’t encounter god on my journey? I don’t think so. There are times when god’s light is so blinding that I can’t help but take note. This happens in moments when air temperature, wind speed, the angle of the sun’s rays and the touch of someone you love all coalesce into heart-stopping perfection. Whatever my spirit might be hungry for, in those moments it is fed.

Let it come, let it go. Play with it all. HAVE the experience. But, don’t feel bad if you don’t feel like meditating when you reach the mountaintop. Enjoying a beer there is no less beautiful than sitting in lotus.

The Link between the Crude Catastrophe and Your Psyche

Watching the live video link of the gushing oil rig is a mesmerizing and sickening experience. I've left my browser window open all day today and as each moment passes my incredulity grows. Why can't we stop this? Why weren't we prepared for this inevitability? And is there anything, anything I can do?

The day I heard about the explosion, I felt ill and I recalled a saying that has always stuck with me from when I interviewed the filmmakers of Oil on Ice, a documentary about drilling for oil in ANWAR. They referred to protected wilderness as not only valuable habitat for wildlife, but also an indispensable habitat for the human psyche. And as it goes, when we destroy one, we destroy the other.

Anyone who has ever, even momentarily, felt the thread that connects them to the rest of the universe will likely grasp this concept. Anyone who has ever looked into the eyes of an animal or dug their fingers into the dirt and thought "I am you and you are me" will no doubt experience some psychological impact as a result of a disaster of this scale.

I also remember the filmmaker saying that when the Exxon Valdez spill occurred he knew he had to go to Prince William Sound. It was like receiving a call that a relative was severely ill. One just goes to be there - to observe, console, and be of service in whatever way possible. I feel this same pull to be at the Gulf Coast now, just as many people felt the need to travel to Haiti after the earthquakes.

But, this situation is so, so much different. Even from halfway around the world, we were able to throw money at Haiti and get updates from our favorite non-profits about how they were using our funds and what impromptu systems they were employing on the ground. The only one we could possibly blame for the destruction was God and he wasn't about to "pay all legitimate claims".

In this case, we've only got blame. We're pissed and we don't want to pay a dime of our money to clean up the residue of a crime committed by a careless corporation. Rightfully so, I'd say. We can only stand on the shore and watch and shake our heads and "tsk tsk" as one futile effort after another fails. But, where does that leave us, psychologically?

Once the gushers are stopped, how can we heal our souls in conjunction with the habitats along the gulf? If we make the decision to forget and move on (Phew! Glad that's over!), we become the walking wounded, lame in our own inaction. We need to ask ourselves how we are tied into this mess and how we can disentangle ourselves. The world is watching to see how we answer this wake-up call. Americans are prone to take things lying down (financial crises, unjust wars and such) and it's possible that we will do just that, thankful it wasn't closer to our own homes. But, without change these accidents-that-aren't-accidents will happen (look to the arctic next) and they will destroy not only the things that we love, admire and find beauty in, but us as well. In the end, it's all one and the same.

LINKS:

Live video link to the spill

Oil Spill Meetups

On whether a BP Boycott is effective or not (NPR)

Getting Over the Fear of Gardening

The other day I came home from work and I went to bed straight away. Just a nap. Just a little nap. The sun was shining. It was a beautiful California spring day, ideal for an afternoon in the garden. I knew it, but I closed my eyes tighter and pulled the covers over my head. I couldn’t sleep, however. My conscience wouldn’t let me. An inner battle was raging: “Go plant some seeds”. “Not yet”. “Go out there and sow!” "I’m not sure I’ve read enough about it yet”. “Just put some seeds in the soil and let them do what they do!” “But, I’m SCARED!”

I realized in that moment what was keeping me from planting my seeds. It was the fear that they wouldn’t grow. It was the fear that after spending $80 on soil amendments, $30 on seeds and hours of manpower and mompower on digging the soil and building the raised bed, that I would have no prize produce to show for the equivalent of what I would have spent in a month at the farmer’s market.

At a volunteer event last night, I met a girl who worked at a farm in Malibu under an “insane, gasoline huffing gardener” with some pretty interesting, non-traditional methods. She said, with an obvious air of exaggeration that in order to ensure a good harvest he would do something like “bury a cow’s skull, an organic cow’s skull, in the northeast corner of the field under a full moon” and that was about it. pH testing and proper seed spacing be damned. She said her mother, also a professional gardener, would throw newspaper down over the lawn, pile a mound of dirt on it and plant seeds right there. Raised beds be damned. She then relayed her own experiments with greenhouse planting. She spent an entire season employing advanced techniques to raise a vegetable crop inside her greenhouse and threw the leftover seeds in containers around her yard using only cactus soil. Which ones do you think ended up thriving? Technique be damned, it was the veggies grown in cactus soil, while the greenhouse seedlings rotted.

All these variables are what freak me out. All these soil and light requirements that real-life growing stories throw to the wind. And the more I read, the more uncertain I become that I am capable of maintaining the ideal conditions for turning these little pebble-like seeds into flowering, green-leaved, plump fruits and veggies. But, at last, I jumped out of bed and went down to the garden. I planted eggplant, tomatoes, summer squash, arugula, lettuce, spinach, beets, and beans. I spaced them correctly, covered them in compost and watered them deeply. It’s been nearly a week and all that has sprouted is the arugula, which in my minimal gardening history, I have learned will grow like a bush pretty much anywhere. I’m still nervous. I’m still waiting. I wish I could communicate with the seeds and ask them what they need.

I asked the lovely gardener girl, “If seeds do, in fact, want to grow, then why aren’t mine growing?” She said, “Probably because of… you.” So, she’s offered to come over and see what I’m doing to squelch the life power out of my potential garden. Maybe we’ll just let my dog dig up the yard and scatter the seeds willy-nilly while chanting about Gaia and fertility. For all I know, I’ll end up with the finest harvest ever seen, while my $80 block of soil sits fallow

What if God Smoked and Threw His Butts on You?

So, God is smoking. And God is 23 feet tall or so. He takes his last puff and, ah crap, there's no ashtray next to his throne. God's robes don't have pockets. So, God tosses his cigarette butt down on a cloud. Out of sight. Out of mind. That was so easy, god thinks, who needs antiquated ashtrays? Soon enough, cigarette butts the size of baseball bats are littering earth. They're making the humans sick. We shake our fists at God as we watch 50% of our population become stricken with different types of cancers as a result of this toxic rain. Sure, God loves his people, but hey,can we really expect that he properly dispose of his waste? He's so busy.

Meanwhile, on a more terrestrial level, a preliminary study finds that cigarette butts are toxic to fish. As detrimental as these findings could be due to the sheer number of smoked and tossed butts that make their way into our waterways, I am not the least bit surprised. And for a couple of reasons:

First, as reported in 1994 by the cigarette companies themselves, cigarettes contain 599 additives, which, when burned, create more than 4,000 chemical compounds(1). Second, one of many lessons you learn when running a bait and tackle shop is how difficult it is to keep fish alive. They are highly sensitive creatures and are affected greatly by changes in temperature, light, and environment. Change the chemical components in their water and you’ll find yourself with a tank full of minnows floating belly-up in no time flat.

In my eyes, a fellow human carelessly chucking a still-lit cigarette with a devil may care casualness is the epitome of selfish ignorance. When I call friends out on it, I usually get a slightly embarrassed response and a “sorry”. Then, they sheepishly roll their eyes and nervously giggle. Dear, sweet friend, it’s not fucking funny. Your actions make you look like a cretin.

If you smoke, from this moment forward, don’t even think about littering your cigarette butts. If you know people who smoke, from here on out, do not turn a blind eye when they discard their toxic waste onto the same earth you tread. Richard Gersberg, one of the researchers on the SDSU study said, “You might as well have small vials of toxins -- trillions of them -- in the water." It should have never been an acceptable practice to toss smokes on the ground, but somehow the rapidity and simplicity of the action has allowed it to slip under the radar of the average person’s conscience. Add to that the ubiquity of the cigarette flick throughout the history of motion pictures and we have an entire global population that has been duped into a misconception

However, this blind acceptance is the old reality. It’s time we move towards one where, regardless of whatever habits we subject our own bodies to, we don’t intentionally foul our earth and its ecosystem with their toxic detritus.

BAT December 12th, 1986, Mutagenic Activity of Flavour Compounds. FN AQ2222, BN 400916808-400916815)

Self-Continuance and Fear

I wrote this a while back, but I wasn't ready to post it until I put notice in to my employers that I was making an exit, so here we go...

I know a way to guarantee cognitive dissonance and stir up a lot of discomfort and maybe pain. Go to your corporate job by day and read Krishnamurti by night. Last night I read (over and over and over) that “Any time there is an issue of self-continuance, there is fear….”. And on my bicycle ride into work this morning, it became clear to me that the only thing that gets me out of bed at 4:30 am and to work by 5:30 is fear. Fear. Fear. Fear. If you know me, maybe you can guess what happened right after this realization. I cried. And pedaled and cried and pedaled. I already knew that I didn’t like going to work. I knew that I was only there for a paycheck. I knew I had no aspirations for growing in the firm. But, I didn’t realize that the foundation of it all was fear. Logical fear, yes. Fear that I won’t be able to pay my rent or feed my animals.

It’s shocking and amazing when you can take a new concept or even a sentence, as in this case, and layer it over your current knowledge of a situation to find that under its light, everything has changed. As of this morning it was no longer me working a job I wasn’t happy with, it became me living in fear. What? Me? ME! The one who knows from experience that a person manifests their own destiny. The one who believes in creative freedom and the shaking off of anything that feels like chains.

I look around my office and I don’t see my concerns mirrored in anyone else’s eye. They may have the fear, but they’re not facing it. Before you face it, you have to acknowledge it and it doesn’t feel good. Because when you acknowledge it, it won’t stop poking you in the forehead until you’ve done something to eradicate it. And eradicating it will likely disrupt the pattern of self-continuance that Krishnamurti refers to.

I know that the best stories are when the big mahatma – the one in the corner office with a view and a load of responsibilities – takes the leap and gets out of the business. He starts a charity or a rare plant nursery. He inevitably takes a 90% paycut, but finally learns what its like to put his own child down for a nap. That’s what makes everyone feel good. The light went on in his head and he broke free! Yay! But, no one really cares when an assistant does the same thing, because the assistant has like $1000 in her bank account and goes to work at the plant nursery that the bigwig started.

Often, after painful realizations, radical actions don’t happen. What can happen is that the dissonance of the reality and the desire to break out of the reality sit and stew uncomfortably together until it makes one ill or depressed or both. I know. The fear is strong. It is reinforced daily. For me, it is reinforced by the guarantee of a good paycheck combined with the uncertainty of ever finding what it is that will truly fulfill me. Walking off the job like the person in my fantasies does means leaping into a big black ocean holding nothing but my sewing machine and my weekend itineraries as life preservers.

I’m scared. I’m feeling too rational. And that feeling sucks.

Concerning Your Inalienable Right and Patriotic Duty to Throw Down on the Dance Floor

This Sunday afternoon at Sunset Junction Music Festival, I was soaking up Martin Luther’s genre-bending R&B/rock ‘n’ roll/pop music. His luscious lyrics - just to be alive is a reason to ride/ don’t give up the spirit of the phoenix/ RISE” – struck a chord somewhere deep in my expanding soul. As I watched the clouds behind the stage spread out in magnificent formations, I felt Martin’s songs reverberate from the tips of my toes to the top of my head.


I am the person at a concert who needs a little extra space – a sort of buffer around me, because I jump, spin, and get down to the ground whenever the music dictates that I do so. I have a compulsory physical reaction to music. Sometimes, when I find that I’m the only one moving, I wonder how people around me manage to stay so still. Are they consciously stifling this urge to take the music inside them and transform it into a physical impulse? Or inside their bodies, is there no trigger for the music to activate? Does it simply enter and flow through and out undetected?


I remember the first time I understood what it was to really dance. It was at a little event in Tempe , AZ called Wicca Wednesdays. It was a weekly gathering of hip-hop DJs in a strip mall bar. I went by myself one week and stood like I normally did, drink in hand, doing a little swaying and head bobbing. I was tapping my feet, shifting side to side, moving my hips like so. The music gradually elevated into a realm I wasn’t familiar with and before long it made a connection somewhere deep inside me, in a place that felt spiritual. That night I learned what freedom of movement was. I learned what letting go of physical inhibitions meant. I learned to tap into a higher power that reaches out to us through music, and in my case specifically, through good dance beats. That night changed my life.


When Sarah Silverman was asked what kind of music she likes, she said, “Anything that sounds good in my ear holes”. I couldn’t have said it any better. But I could add “anything that makes my body move” whether it’s my own version of ballet dancing to classical, pop-locking to hip hop or jumping up and down to some live guitar. If my body reacts to it, I know my soul is opening to it and I just ride the wave that comes my way.

I notice the others that do this too. I spot them, get near them and let their energy mingle with mine until we’ve created something larger than the sum of persons involved. It’s not hard to do when most of these soulful dancers are dripping with excess positive energy and joy. It is contagious and I soak it up.


When you’re dancing without inhibition, there is a focused connection happening between you and the music and nothing else. There is input (the beats) and there is output (your sweet ass dance moves) and in certain lucky moments that is all there is. Ego goes away and it takes worry and fear with it. Mr. Miyagi said, “Never trust a spiritual leader who cannot dance.”

And Agnes De Mille – who had a few things to say about dancing – said, “To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful.” So why, may I ask, has anyone ever bypassed an opportunity to get down? Why miss a chance to sing, pray, love and give thanks through your feet? If you think dancing’s not really your thing, maybe you haven’t met the music that melts your ego yet. Keep searching. The rewards will be immeasurable.

Hey, Hey, My, My - The Creative Soul Will Never Die

Sewing, quilting, knitting, creating. They run in my bloodline. Only I never fully realized it until now. It should have been obvious. Several of my aunts are expert quilt makers. My mother sewed most of my childhood clothing and dolls. My paternal grandmother still makes purses although she can barely see. My maternal grandmother has presented me with more handmade gifts than I can count over the years, many of which I was too young and too “cool” to fully appreciate at the time. Growing up, I loved to create handmade cards for my mom and I dabbled in furniture painting, all of which gave me tremendous satisfaction. All of which, also, fell away in adulthood.

After a year in college prepping for a major in interior design, I opted for a theatre degree and used the stage as my creative outlet for years. Then, after falling into consciously deciding on a career in investment brokerage and a stint as a small business owner, my creative impulses felt lain to waste. I could barely drum up the energy to make a colored pencil card once a year for my mother.

But, then, one day as I was complaining about x, y, and z for the n^th time that month, I heard a muffled whimper. I listened closer. It was more forceful this time. Then, there was a fist pounding on wood. I scraped at the ground with my bare fingernails until I found it. It was my undying creative soul demanding to be dug out of its early grave. And ever since the moment that I lifted his frail little body into the sunlight, inspiration has been raining down from the sky. I’m currently standing knee deep in plans and schemes. The desire to do something with my hands other than typing is so strong that when a box of discarded business cards landed on my desk recently, a gothic village began to take shape, aided by a glue stick I found. Eventually, the structures became too elaborate to carry on at my desk and too conspicuous to passers-by. Operations have since been relocated to my home and plans blossomed into a line of gothic Christmas villages called Noel Gothique.

I have routinely said that I hate the question, “What’s your passion?”, because I never knew how to answer it. But, the other day, I wrote this sentence without even thinking twice about it: My passions are digging, discovering, dusting off, and rebirthing all forms of discarded objects.

Whoa! There it was. It’s not grandiose and it might not save the world, but those things are what get me really excited. They manifest themselves in picking up furniture off the side of the road, rescuing stray animals, and scavenging through warehouses and thrift stores in search of items worthy of a second chance.

Then, I started a list. It's like a "Makes My Heart Beat Faster" List. It’s just the things that get me really excited. The things that make me feel exuberant. Mine came out like this:

Gypsy Caravans
Vegetarian Cooking
Thrifting
Hats
Writing
Bicycle Knickers
Interior Decorating
Dirigibles
Reusing/UPcycling
Homes on Wheels
Mopeds
Brightly Striped Canvas
Urban Cycling
Linen

Random. Fitting for a renaissance soul like mine.

Here is my first completed project.

I call it La Infanta y Su Precioso. The frame belonged to an ex-boyfriend, the cat broach has been mine since kindergarten, the vine wreath I made while pulling kudzu off the back wall of my store in Tennessee, the doll was discarded by my neighbor’s daughter, and the gears in the background are a broken box top. Who knew that all these wandering objects would find each other and cohabitate so beautifully within the confines of a box destined for the recycling bin?

There’s much, much more in the works… My heart is seizing up just contemplating all of the ways to get my hands dirty.

Right now, I am thrilled for having been asked to create more of the yarn flowers seen in the photo to the right for Kelee Katillac. She is a woman who saved herself and her soul through accessing the creativity inside her and now she is a well-known blogger who has published books, been on numerous television programs, and developed a system of healing through creating sanctuary. And, she likes my scrappy little yarn flowers!!! (Maybe it’s Penny’s adorable-ness that really sells them.)

So, big thanks to my craggy, dehydrated, little waif of a creative soul (in my mind, he looks like a dirt-smudged marionette with a top hat) for reminding me that he will always be there no matter what. I think I will offer him some wine and we will convene this afternoon at the craft table.