lizard liberation

i got a couple of bags of charcoal out of my shed and put them in my car trunk to take with me to the nightwalking workshop at buescher s.p. this past weekend.

i unloaded them but ended up not using them.

when i was loading my trunk for the journey home, i saw a lizard in my trunk. it looked like the lizards that live in my shed--mottled, textured, reddish brown, slow moving. it hid from me and the light.

i worried that it might not come out, that it might die in my trunk.

when i got home and unloaded my trunk, i saw it scurry out of the trunk and disappear and felt relieved.

no pain

i woke up monday morning with no pain, stiffness, or tightness anywhere in my body.

that was pretty amazing and unusual.

i attribute it to several things:

--sunday morning, waking up in mini-cabin #3 in buescher state park, i felt sore and stiff all over, so i did yoga. for about an hour. i mostly did the sun salutation, doing each small move slowly, over and over and over, until i felt complete with it.

--wearing my keen crocs on sunday all day. these shoes conform to my soles well, and i can feel the ground through them. oh, for some winter shoes with the same qualities!

--paying attention to my footstrike, particularly to spreading my weight evenly on 3 points: ball of big toe, ball of little toe, and center of heel. rising on toes to get those pads even, and then lowering my heels.

--peripheral walking, both day and night. the eye position somehow lowers the center of gravity into the pelvic bowl. the theory is that it activates the parasympathetic nervous system.

--and of course, all the body work i do--the regular yoga practice and working with patrice who does acupuncture and myofascial release work, the hanging upside down, foot stretches, knee circles and so forth that she has taught me.

may such days come with more frequency, so i may be healed of scoliosis.

feet

Tias Little, yoga teacher and anatomist, writes about the importance of the feet. This in-depth article includes practices you can do that increase awareness. You don't have to be a yogi to benefit.

Walking on uneven surfaces is good for your whole body. Walking on concrete doesn't activate all the little muscles used to keep balance on uneven terrain. These little muscles help keep the whole body pliable and flexible, able to accommodate variations, from the ground up. And what a metaphor that is for life skills!

poem: What's in the Temple?

What's In The Temple?

In the quiet spaces of my mind a thought lies still, but ready to spring.
It begs me to open the door so it can walk about.
The poets speak in obscure terms pointing madly at the unsayable.
The sages say nothing, but walk ahead patting their thigh calling for us to follow.
The monk sits pen in hand poised to explain the cloud of unknowing.
The seeker seeks, just around the corner from the truth.
If she stands still it will catch up with her.
Pause with us here a while.
Put your ear to the wall of your heart.
Listen for the whisper of knowing there.
Love will touch you if you are very still.

If I say the word God, people run away.
They've been frightened--sat on 'till the spirit cried "uncle."
Now they play hide and seek with somebody they can't name.
They know he's out there looking for them, and they want to be found,
But there is all this stuff in the way.

I can't talk about God and make any sense,
And I can't not talk about God and make any sense.
So we talk about the weather, and we are talking about God.

I miss the old temples where you could hang out with God.
Still, we have pet pounds where you can feel love draped in warm fur,
And sense the whole tragedy of life and death.
You see there the consequences of carelessness,
And you feel there the yapping urgency of life that wants to be lived.
The only things lacking are the frankincense and myrrh.

We don't build many temples anymore.
Maybe we learned that the sacred can't be contained.
Or maybe it can't be sustained inside a building.
Buildings crumble.
It's the spirit that lives on.

If you had a temple in the secret spaces of your heart,
What would you worship there?
What would you bring to sacrifice?
What would be behind the curtain in the holy of holies?

Go there now.

~ Tom Barrett ~


(Keeping in Touch)

click the title to see it on panhala.net with photo and music

book review: The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe

I recently finished reading The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe. As promised, here is my take on it. Click the title of this post to order the book from amazon.com.

Author Lynne McTaggart is an investigative journalist. Her mission here was to examine the cutting edge of science, quantum physics specifically, by reading studies, interviewing scientists, and translating scientific findings into a layperson's language while maintaining as much accuracy as possible.

She got interested in this topic when she kept bumping into hard scientific evidence about methods of healing that went against the prevailing ideas about human biology, including studies validating homeopathy, acupuncture, and spiritual healing.

Now some of you may think, what's the big deal? Everybody knows they work, even if science doesn't know how. Well, the answer to that is that science is a prevailing paradigm in Western culture,and science is on the verge of a revolution that goes far beyond alternative medicine. McTaggart says that scientific stories create our perception of the universe and how it operates, and from this we shape our social structures.

What McTaggart discovered is that a small number of scientists have been working on the fringe of science (although their work is slowly becoming more and more acceptable to the mainstream), using the scientific method to prove things that fly in the face of the scientific belief system. These scientists were often at risk of ostracism from the main scientific community, yet they kept at their research because like true explorers, they knew they were on to something new, and that's what is exciting about science--discovery of the new. These men and women are the revolutionaries of the scientific community.

McTaggart interviewed scientists from around the world, adding personal information about their appearance, background, and so forth to humanize them. She stuck with scientists with solid credentials--some at prestigious universities like Princeton and Stanford--and limited her reporting to studies using rigorous scientific criteria, such as the double blind study design with a control group. The bulk of the book is about their studies.

She interviewed 22 scientists, some up to 20 times, basically translating their findings into metaphors that you and I can understand, in the process receiving an education in quantum physics, statistics, brain neuroscience, and other hard sciences.

Very few of these scientists would discuss the metaphysical implications of their work. McTaggart herself says that although her sympathies lie with alternative medicine, she still demands scientific proof. "There is little of the woo-woo about me," she writes.

The prevailing scientific paradigm is based on Isaac Newton's work in the 1600s. Remember the apple falling on Newton's head and his "discovery" of gravity? Newton basically saw the universe as a machine that follows laws and behaves predictably, independent of human observation.

Then came quantum physics in the early part of the 20th century. The smallest bits of matter were not set things. They were mutable, often many possible things all at the same time, and had no meaning in isolation but only in relationship to everything else. Subatomic particles existed in all possible states until disturbed by us--our observation influenced them to settle down. Time and space did not exist except as arbitrary constructs.

Most scientists assumed the strange quantum world only existed in the world of dead matter, or that one set of laws (Newtonian) applied to the visible world and another to subatomic particles (quantum). It was all so counter-intuitive to their belief system.

Reading her stories about the studies was a good experience. Some were pretty amazing. I especially liked the studies where scientists worked with psychics--who could see inside machinery (influencing it at the same time) and also describe remote locations they'd never been to and only had geographic coordinates for. Even in Russia. (Hint: The NSA gets involved.)

In a nutshell, some of the findings are:
--Human beings and all living things are a coalescence of energy in a field of energy connected to every other thing in the world. There is no duality to our bodies in relation to the universe. There is one field that underlies everything, us included.

--"Nothing" does not exist. Even in absolute zero degrees (the closest we can get to a vacuum), things are happening. There is a field of energy, called the Zero Point Field.

--The field is a recording medium for everything, the means by which everything communicates with everything else. It holds the memories of everything that ever happened. The brain is a receiver.
[define coherence and resonance]

--Perfect coherence is an optimum state just between chaos and order.

--Health is a state of perfect subatomic communication.

--Each molecule in the universe has a unique frequency, and the language it uses to communicate is a resonating wave. Molecules "speak" to each other, regardless of distance, virtually instantaneously.

--We perceive objects by resonating with them--perception occurs by tuning in to the field.

--Consciousness is a global phenomenon that occurs everywhere in the body, not just in the brain. (Perhaps it occurs everywhere, not just in the body. Perhaps consciousness IS the field.)

--Observation puts a halt to randomness and creates order.

--Intent can change the physical world, even the past.

--Pairs of people of the opposite sex have more power to influence outcomes, and bonded couples have even more power, than individuals.

--Women produce better results at influencing outcomes when multitasking; men when concentrating on the task at hand.

--Consciousness results when individual quantum particles lose their individuality and begin acting as a single unit.

--Coherence of consciousness is the greatest form of order known to nature.

--Wishing or intending makes our own coherence infectious.

--People can influence their body functions by directing their attention.

--Other people can have almost the same mind-body effect on you that you can have on yourself.

--Influence increases depending on how much it matters to the influencer or how much he/she can relate to the influencee.

--The greatest effect is when influencees really needed influence. Needing something such as calming down or focusing attention makes people more receptive to influence.

--Humans have a latent ability to see anywhere across any distance. Even those skeptical of this idea can be primed and do this after a little practice.

--The important ingredient in remote viewing is being in a relaxed, even playful, atmosphere that avoids causing anxiety or nervous anticipation in the viewer.

--The information often comes across as if in a dream state. Interpreting or analyzing it colors impressions as the information is still coming through and makes it less accurate.

--People can remotely view the past and the future. It's as if the field is just NOW and all points in space and time exist in a single instant.

--People can influence the future. Using a random click generator, they could influence the output of the machine before it generated clicks. Present or future intentions act on initial probabilities and determine what events actually come into being.

--It is important for the influencer to be the first observer. Others observing first make the machine less susceptible to later influence. So focused attention freezes the system.

--Theoretically everything in the future exists in the ralm of pure potential, and in seeing into the future or past, we help shape it and bring it into being.

--Theretically, the bottom level of the Zero Point Field is not electromagnetic. The secondary fields (scalar waves) travel far faster than the speed of light and provide the ultimate holographic blueprint of the world for all time.

--To remove time, remove separateness. Pure energy at the quantum levelexissts as a vast continuum of fluctuating charge. We create time and space, and therefore we create our own separateness.

--On a subconscious physiological level, we have an inkling when we are about to receive bad news or when bad things are going to happen to us.

--People communicate and respond to remote attention, although unaware of it.

--When the left brain is quiet and the right brain predominates, ordinary people have access to telepathy.

--You can block or prevent influences you don't want by visualizing a protective shield.

--The more organized a sender's consciousness, the more ordering influence on a less-organized recipient. The most ordered brain pattern always prevails.

--The capacity of our brains to receive information from the field is limited in ordinary consciousness; states of altered consciousness such as meditation and relaxation loosen this constraint.

--Children under five permanently function in the alpha state.

--Gentle wishing works better rather than intense willing when using intentions to achieve certain outcomes.

--Plants have empathy for each other. They respond when a neighboring plant is injured or dies.

--Death is a disturbance in the field.

--Human intention can be used as an extraordinarily potent healing force. We can establish greater 'order' in another person.

--Distant healing works. All kinds of healing were tested. Conventionally religious Christians, evangelicals, kabbalists, Buddhists, and healers from the Barbara Brennan School of Healing Light, those changing colors/vibrations in patients' auras, using contemplative healing and visualizations, working with tones and singing or bells, a Lakota Sioux pipe ceremony with drumming and chanting, a qi gong master.

---The main commonality of successful distant healing was healers being able to put out their intention for the patients' health and then surrender to some kind of healing force.

--Asking for help was more effective than not. Whether it was Jesus, Spider Woman, or a healing energy was irrelevant. Help came in the form of energy.

--Experienced healers have abnormally high electric field patterns during healing sessions. This may be a sign of greater coherence.

--Intention on its own heals, and healing is a collective force. There may be a collective memory of healing spirit.

--Illness may be isolation, from oneself, community, and spirituality, rather than physical conditions.

--Experiments suggested individual consciousness doesn't die. Death may be a decoupling of our frequency from the matter of our cells. It may be simply returning to the field.

And there's more. I'm getting tired of summarizing; maybe you are getting tired of reading this very long post too.

One more point sticks out. McTaggart actually says, on page 159, "the left brain is the enemy of The Field."

NLPers, does this ring a lot of bells for you, about congruence, rapport, maps/territories?

Hypnotists, are you inspired to bring the implications of quantum physics into your trances?

McTaggart's next book is about Intent, inspired by what she learned in writing this book. I intend to get it!

2012

my daughter told me that about once a year, she has a dream about the end of the world. this month she dreamed about 2012, that portentous year in which the aztecs predicted a momentous shift of some sort would occur. it's interpreted as a major change in world order, an apocalypse, an asteroid crashing into earth, aliens taking earthlings aboard their spaceship, a great shift in consciousness, spirituality, psychic connection. (from wikipedia)

lela dreamed that it was winter solstice, 2012, and the earth changed the direction of her rotation. it took a couple of hours. some people were not affected, some got dizzy, some passed out.

the earth's axis also changed, resulting in a shift in seasons. winter became summer, summer became winter. this wreaked havoc on agriculture. people in developed countries managed to survive with processed food. people in poor countries were devastated. it took about a year to adjust, in lela's dream.

whatever it is, i believe it could be metaphoric for a shift in consciousness.

i've been reading The Field. one of the key points is that in western culture, we still believe and behave for the most part with the principles of newtonian physics. yet quantum physics has gone way beyond. everything is connected to everything, intent can influence outcomes and even the past, group energy is powerful, distant healing works, the more coherent influences the less coherent to become more coherent, et cetera.

when i finish reading this book, i intend to post its key points here. look for it!

i joined facebook a few days ago, and the connectivity is pretty amazing. you can see what your friends have posted, who became their friends, their posts and their friends' posts, etc. it's a big network, and every interactive.

maybe this is the paradigm shift occurring now, and the peak will occur in 2012. maybe it's a critical mass of people understanding that we are all connected that will really change the world. 2012 will be an election year; obama will be finishing his first term as president.

2012 could also be the year the earth reaches her "tipping point" and responds violently to the changes humans have wrought. air-water-soil pollution, mining and drilling, managing the oceans badly, chemical and fossil-fuel based agriculture, chemical and fossil-fuel based lifestyles, deforestation...

and maybe 2012 will bring both a shift in consciousness and the earth "talking back".

we shall see.

gratitude

i am so grateful for so much. for my dreams and for all the uncertainty that precedes the significant ones that represent shifts. for my 19-year-old cat, sitting next to my computer as i type this. she often visits me when i go to sleep and when i wake. i am grateful for her long years of companionship.

i am deeply grateful for my daughter lela and my granddaughter hannah. words just cannot express how much i love and care about and enjoy them.

i am grateful that i am able to choose good food and to recognize when i eat something not so good for my body, like the yummy strawberry cheesecake i had today for dmitry's birthday.

i am grateful for co-workers willing to swap being on call on weekends so that i can work this weekend and have the following weekend, the weekend of nightwalking, off.

i am grateful for naropa university for existing. looking through their graduate programs is like christmas morning.

i am grateful for my brothers and their wives and children, frank, bill, kathy, helen, grace, and sam. i think about all of them often with much affection.

i'm grateful for my friends, for kathleen, fantasia, peggy, colleen, linda, sarah, marco, keith and katie, jaime and kathleen, my NLP community, my shamanic community. and i'm grateful for all the friends i haven't met yet or befriended yet.

i'm even grateful for some of the rougher parts in my life--the loss of my sister, my father's asperger syndrome. they have been part of this experience, and i savor the contrast of when life and relationships are going well. they also keep me humble.

i'm grateful i have a good job with a good salary, a good hybrid car, a house that's homey, a yard with a garden and now a firepit.

i'm grateful for my health, awareness, heart, mind, body. i'm grateful that eleanor stretches me in yoga and that i have improved so much over the last 3 years, able to do poses i wouldn't have imagined i could do.

i'm grateful for patrice and all her experience, knowledge, and wisdom. and for active life chiropractic and for nina davis, my cranio-sacral therapist. together we are getting me healthy, in a way i wouldn't have believed possible a few years ago.

i'm very grateful for this incredible planet--its sky, winds, weather, soil, rock, rivers, oceans, islands, mountains, its incredible range of geography and beauty, for sunrises and sunsets, plants, animals, cities, deserts, poles.

meerkats

i took my granddaughter hannah, age 8, to wheatsville co-op wednesday to pick up a few things. i pick her up on wednesdays when lela has her intro to nursing lab.

there's a very small toy section there. she picked out a small stuffed animal, a tawny meerkat with huge eyes and a long tail that hooked at the end.

hannah told me that meerkats have such tails so they can hang on things and look into meers.

dream: i see the bigger picture

this morning i shut off the alarm thinking i'd get up, but then went back to sleep, unusual for me.

in my dream, kathleen and i are traveling together. we are at a college campus that reminds me a bit of oklahoma state university's campus, the first college i attended. we have been doing a workshop there, and soon it will be time to leave.

we've been boarding with some cool people, very open and generous. it's morning, and i'm getting my breakfast together. a plate has been set out, but i put it back and get a green cut-glass bowl down from a cupboard. then i start looking for something to eat. i open cabinets and the fridge, selecting and rejecting and tasting various foods. i assemble something that is something like a granola with honey and yogurt and dried fruit on it, and i eat it.

i go outside. i somehow gain height--and perspective. i see that the town is on a gentle slope down toward a valley with a river, and across the valley in the distance is a range of mountains.

this isn't an ordinary range of mountains. they are of a fairly uniform height, and they are fairly evenly spaced. each mountain top is snowcapped. they look like they are in a fantasy landscape, almost as if painted, almost as if in a children's book/film like narnia. there is something special about them.

the view is breathtakingly beautiful. i want to go into those mountains.

i come back down and find kathleen and tell her about it. she's excited too. we decide that's where we'll go next.

i remember that i have an office job that i've taken time off from to do this workshop. i consider the consequences of not going back: people will be inconvenienced, and i will be abandoning my personal items in that office, photos, etc. i know they will send my check to me; it'll be in the mailbox when i get home.

that job now seems so tiny, distant, and irrelevant. the mountains, and adventure, call.

i wake up.

===

associations:
my roommate kathleen is leaving this morning for a one-day seminar on getting set up as a clean space practitioner in san francisco. i am with her in spirit.

my job now is definitely not a throw-away job like my job in the dream.

boulder, and naropa university, are in the mountains.

feeling thrilled and excited is thrilling and exciting!

life often spirals with time, allowing us to re-experience aspects differently, from who we are NOW.

i've been afraid to really go for a dream. i've held back, discounted, repressed. now it's time to face, cultivate, play.

follow your bliss.

marianne williamson on the election

click the title to read her interpretation of the meaning of this election. she sees it as a fulfillment of the promise of the 1960s, that we were too immature and angry to make manifest.

she says bobby kennedy and martin luther king jr. can now rest in peace.