Winter Solstice Moon

In a week or so I'm looking forward to taking more twilight/sunset photos-- will be trying some new techniques. Can't get over how much the moon looks like the sun in this photo. Neary Lagoon is one of our favorite places to go walking.

Icelandic poppy

Happy Solstice !

It's pretty much fall here though. . .

All You Need Is Love

Conner from Boulder Creek called me out of the blue the other day to remind me of the importance of unconditional love.

Click to enlarge the photo.

Spikey Things

Click on the spikey plant to make it bigger and spikier, it’s fun!

Interesting week, Sheryl and I have both had our moods and have been tested here and there. Also have had many positive things and really rewarding work with great clients. My photos continue to sell and Sheryl and I both continue to grow as artists as well as spiritual counselors and healers.

We both got emails recently from people who seem to hit the “send” button before they think things through. Sheryl wrote about hers already, but in a nutshell it involved an overzealous individual with poor manners and apparently a short attention span. They sent an email, back dated to July, had many earmarks of a hoax or a scam ( we get hoax emails now and then). Anyway it was sent to one of Sheryl’s best customers, and not even to Sheryl directly, but apparently it wasn’t a hoax. It was pretty disruptive; intended to disrupt Sheryl’s business near as I can tell. The letter demanded some sort of “compliance” within seven days or they threatened to turn the matter over to their legal department, and then they even named the attorney (who, by the way, did not send the email and probably doesn’t know that his named is being swung around like a little league baseball bat). The parts of the email that really stood out were:

A. They called it a “courtesy letter”.

B. It wasn’t a letter, it was a back dated email with garbled and incorrect information.

C. They called it “personal and confidential” matter when in fact it was about an alleged trademark infringement, and it was demanding immediate action that would require the involvement of third parties.

D. and finally: there was no infringement !

I think that “D” stood out the most, at least to Sheryl and I. Somebody stumbles drunkenly into your place of business, making threats and disrupting your livelihood, well, that’s not good. This, of course, is a metaphor, just in case anybody out there has trademarked “drunken stumbling”. Don’t sue me ‘bro.

I, on the other hand, got some nice comments and a very very polite email that I nonetheless didn’t like much. A guy telling me in the nicest way that I should be more careful about putting my opinions out on youtube. I ended up writing him back because near as I could tell he really misunderstood the video, so I asked him to watch it again and then write me again. He didn’t write back. Oh well. Also, youtube should be censored for any opinions you disagree with? Nah, I don’t think so.

In his letter he did a really good job of describing the experience of the numinous, and how the individual ego dissolves and experiences what he called “pure consciousness.” At that point the separation between the “I” and “God” if you will (nobody has trademarked that yet) is considered nonexistent. Hence people coming out of such an experience sometimes have difficulty putting it into words, sometimes have problems placing the experience into a context in their lives. It is decidedly not an ego trip, and i know i didn’t claim that it was. As far as I know, the individual ego collapses like a teardrop into the ocean when immersed in the mystical experience.

However: I did describe in the video that sometimes people get confused or change their lives immediately following such an event and the outcome isn’t always the most beneficial. Understand that the ego is a necessary part of a functioning psyche; it has a healthy instinct to rebuild itself. Sometimes, the ego attaches itself to the mystical experience in a mixed up way--- My critic didn’t think so. He wanted to claim that the mystical experience was a universal and was the same for everyone. Nope. We may all be one but we’re all different too.

Spontaneous Kundalini

Sheryl and I get an unusual number of contacts lately regarding Kundalini. We put up a video on the subject awhile ago, first on our website and then on youtube. The whole idea originally was just to have a little video so that people could see our faces and hear our voices in a kind of a “see how sane and not scary or weird we are?” way. But we had to have something to talk about, and in one of the vids I talk about how I had a Kundalini rising experience when I was 13 or so. Some very nice people posted comments about their own experiences too (on youtube) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smg5ZHAl8X4

In short, a Kundalini rising is ideally an enlightening experience. However there are a lot of descriptions on the web about people having spontaneous occurrences and being none too happy about it because they suffer ill effects. My own experiences with Kundalini have been wonderful, but I was already seriously into meditation and study when I first experienced a k-rising. The physical sensation for me felt like a spiraling/ tornado sensation of whirling energy starting at the base of the spine and moving upwards until it reached the top of my head. The feeling was of the energy passing upward and outward beyond my physical body. The physical sensations were not confined to the spinal area. Emotionally the experience was one of overwhelming love and joy, of boundlessness/ oneness or of the “numinous.” Intellectually I felt that all my questions were answered in an instant. Some people have described the experience as orgasmic or like a spiritual orgasm, but that’s an analogy and not a direct correlation to the sexual. I would call it an intense and profound spiritual experience.

So we’ve had some contacts asking how to come by this experience, and a few asking for help or seeming worried about the experience. In the last instance Sheryl gave an excellent and well considered response; having been through her own “spiritual emergency”.

So. . . here’s my answers, and they’re just opinions. You can’t take out your credit card and buy a Kundalini. No short cuts to enlightenment, and no long way round either (You might have been born enlightened). There’s a yoga practice called Kundalini yoga, and it might get you there, it might not. So might any devotional path, and in my opinion no devotional path is superior to any other. Or maybe you're just a good person with no use for any of this enlightenment talk anyway, and that's fine by me too. I'm not trying to convert or convince anybody of anything.

Conversely you might get hit with an overwhelming spiritual event that you didn’t expect and weren’t prepared for. Mostly the descriptions on the internet are about those instances, and I’m dismayed by that: where a wonderful gift of being hit by something beneficial that you weren’t quite ready for is equated with catching a painful and debilitating illness. Here is Sheryl’s edited response to a person who was having a particularly difficult time:

“Paul and I both have had experiences with Kundalini. Some of mine were quite difficult as well (Paul's were not) but we both have insights we think will help.

. . . have you ever been in a group, followed a guru or guidebook that said these (difficult) experiences are "normal", "to be expected" or suffered through because it's a "healing" of sorts? This is not strictly the case. To shift this, know that self-realization leads to knowing your infinite true nature. You ARE all and YOU have the power to work with this. Belief makes the biggest difference. For example, Paul's first Kundalini experience was very stimulating but essentially one of oneness, peace and bliss. Mine, not so much. Paul was ready. I was scared and clamped down -- I wasn't adequately prepared for what was happening, didn't understand it. I learned the hard way to:

1) Open and surrender. I learned in my Reiki Master training to use nothing more than belief and intention to open the chakras. Paul got the same idea that he could do this as a teenager before he got his Reiki training. He just does what he does naturally. I use a technique: My Reiki teacher taught me to visualize the top of a person's head opening like a flower. When I feel Kundalini rushes happen I open that crown chakra to allow the energy out the top of my head and there is no intense build-up of heat to cause problems anymore.

2) When Kundalini rushes for me spontaneously I have come to realize that it is always there to force me into awakening. I ask: why now? What exactly was I thinking, dreaming, (worrying) when the sensations took over? What do I need to learn? If I can address the beliefs I was working with and choose to accept a different one, the Kundalini automatically resolves.

3) Paul has been able to use his intention to get the flow to cease. Literally saying something like: I can choose to change this now and I ask that this happen -- and choosing to believe this power to choose IS within our own power is the key.

Practice helps. Learning through my Reiki teacher that intention is the key to healing made a big difference for me. But she didn't do more than I just said to you. She said: Do it, planted the belief that we COULD, and then let us practice on each other. The practice gave us the visceral experience of this choice working and that cemented the belief for me. Made it real so I can use it whenever I remember to. . . “

Couldn’t have said it better myself. Some people describe Kundalini as if it were an alien entity in control of your body and mind. It’s not. You are. Or rather your limited perception of self. Who ever said that the individual acting in isolated consciousness, believing itself to be separate from all that is was the norm?

Bliss over ignorance divided by "is"

If ignorance is bliss, does it logically follow that bliss is ignorance? There’s a guy downtown who walks around cleaning up trash, emptying garbage cans, sweeping the sidewalk and singing at the top of his lungs the whole time, “GOD BLESS AMERICA!”

Now, he gets the lyrics mixed up, and the melody isn’t quite right either, but damn if that guy isn’t happy as a clam doing work that most of us try to avoid. This of course begs the question: are clams happy? And if so, why?

Anyway, I said to Sheryl, “I think that guy is the enlightened one.” and I was only half kidding. He’s got a job to do and he’s doing it. He’s smart enough to know that external circumstances do not dictate his internal mind-state. He likely does not worry himself whether clams are happy or not, or if the word “is” can be considered equivalent to an = sign, nor does he wonder if the words on either side of "is" are therefore interchangeable.

Once I solve whether is = = , I will have opened a whole can of worms about whether there is a single word equivalent to > because I’ll need to know based on the previous outcome what to do about the whole thing. If is = = , then the problem is solved: bliss does equal ignorance and the words are interchangeable. If not, is there another mathematical symbol which would better suit the phrase? By now you’ve probably said to yourself, “Wait a sec, bliss does not equal ignorance, therefore the word “is” does not equal an equals sign. . . except when it does, depending on the phrase. “This is it” comes pretty close, but even though “It is this” means about the same thing, it will never mean exactly the same thing. It is all context dependent. What’s more striking to me is not that simple words like “is” are hard to define, but that small changes in the order of things can have a big effect. “That book is his” means about the same thing as “That is his book.” The word “his” however, magically transformed from a pronoun in the first sentence, to an adjective in the second sentence, even though both sentences effectively mean that “that book belongs to him.”

If, in an effort to be clear, knowing the vagaries of the English language you now state:
“That book is his. That is his book. That book belongs to him.”
what you have actually said is,
“If you touch that book, I’m going to hurt you.”
God bless America.

On the other hand if you were to say, “This is my only pen.” to somebody asking to borrow it, they’ll probably walk away and ask the next guy-- making a mental note that you’re a person to be avoided in the future, even if you’re holding the pen out to them in a gesture of good will and grinning broadly. Conversely if you say “This is only my pen” with the same gesture, they’ll walk away even faster, especially if you follow it up with, “My pen is only this” and then cap it off with “Only my pen is this.” Ah, what the heck, take it a step further and start addressing the pen directly, “Pen, is this my only?” now repeat, with feeling, “Only my pen is this!” “This, my only pen is!” and as the police are being called, one more time with “This is my only pen!”

If only I hadn’t opened this can of worms. . . God Bless America; ignorance is bliss. . . I was happy as a clam a minute ago. Really though, I think that a clam is neither happy nor sad, a clam just “is”. . . Stand beside her. . . I suspect that what we don’t know can hurt us, but then so can what we do know. . . And guide her. . . Total knowledge would functionally be the same as complete ignorance. . .
Through the night, by the light from above.

The barn owl shirt

My current best seller in the form of shirts is the barn owl photo seen above. I do love the fact that folks are wearing this soulful fellow in parts as far flung as Connecticut and Nebraska. Buy it by clicking here.

Kid Nation ambush!

Ok, thirty minutes into the new show "Kid Nation" and the producers have already manipulated these children into divisive, ridiculous behavior. No chance at all to let the kids come up with their own system to work together cooperatively even though they were already showing signs of doing so: helping the younger children, calling a town meeting etc. Nope, can't let that stand. They were divided literally into four color coded teams and just as quickly pitted against each other, then squeezed into a heirarchical capitalistic system. What a disappointment. What a bore. They really had us in the first fifteen minutes, then they lost us.

Yes, we watched the whole thing anyway. But wouldn't it be interesting enough to see what kids can come up with on their own? Ok, I'll admit that when I first saw the promo I nicknamed it "Lord of the Flies," but still. I never watch "reality TV" because it's so manipulated for dramatic elements that there's no reality to it at all. Once in awhile I get my hopes up though, that somebody will choose to show how the finer elements of human nature can rise to the surface.

Pecking at the Roots of Perfection

I was thinking I would write about something I like to call “Pollyanna syndrome.” That’s when a person gets it into their head that they have to be so very filled with sweetness and light at all times, else they are somehow failing to be a good person. With all the emphasis lately on “manifesting” there seems to have been a misinterpretation of how positive thinking as a general habit actually should fit in with being a human being in possession of a whole wide range of juicy emotions, including "negative" emotions.

We’re created as multidimensional beings with an entire pantheon of passions; shutting them down tends to cause malfunctions. But I thought of that subject weeks ago when I heard about an acquaintance exhibiting all the signs and symptoms of "Polyanna". Then it took awhile to resurface in me, and I'm less clear on the subject now because I pushed it aside: not wanting to be critical. It's so much better to be present with where we are at, and to take a minute or two to write an article or sing or shout or whatever. Repressing emotions doesn’t eliminate them, they just go underground into the subconscious to ferment for awhile-- they’ll be back, but in a more, shall we say interesting form?

When it comes to dealing with our emotions the best bet is to be aware of one’s thoughts and how those thoughts are feeding emotions: we can change what we think, we can change our beliefs and our opinions, and certainly we can choose to look on the bright side of life BUT, we can’t be all one thing and still be human. Shakespeare wrote tragedies and comedies. Artists utilize darkness and light and musicians play major and minor chords.

Of late I’ve been looking at the concept “picture perfect.” It’s a fact that the standard now in wildlife photography is to take pictures of captive animals. Usually these are rescued creatures who were found injured or abandoned: mountain lions, wolves and so on. Sure, there are still plenty of photos taken of animals in the wild, but there are essentially “super models” of the animal world who live on rescue ranches where the paparazzi regularly visit. It still takes skill, quality gear, good light, some luck and a fair amount of photoshop tweaking to get the impressive images but hey, it’s photography and photography is it’s own reality. But I struggle with that. Captive animals used to capture captivating images. I think what we like about wild animals is that they are actually wild, elusive, uncontrolled. It's that part of us underneath the surface, like the smoldering hot core of the earth.

Also recently I came across another photographer’s gallery and I think he called it “the perfect image.” That gallery consisted of studio images; impressive and highly commercial stuff, which always gets me thinking about the many varieties and angles of artificial light it takes to reproduce those images: not to mention the makeup and other tricks. Did you know that aside from all the soft boxes, umbrellas, reflectors and there is even a light called a “beauty dish”, a good studio shoot might also include a “hair light” which is suspended just above your head but out of frame and it’s sole purpose is to put a highlight on your hair. I can’t seem to get the hair light out of my head. But I must admit that I’ve seen the effect and it does look good.

Where was I . . . I don’t know. The subject of perfection gets old and tedious and the mind won’t dwell where it’s weary. Sheryl has recently discovered the value of downtime and how important it can be to just watch the ducks at the muddy bog called a wildlife preserve just down the road. We watch the ducks and don’t even think about taking more photographs, trying to capture some fleeting moment of perfection or otherwise working away at our practice to make sure everything is going the way we want it to... Out of the bushes one day came these two little chickens with their red crests and yellow feet. Chickens are pretty darn domestic and they don’t belong at a wildlife preserve. Somebody let them go. Wild chickens. We don’t know how they got there, ruining the perfection of a preserve with their clucking, crowing, their charming presence. They run from the ducks and fly into the trees, incongruous and beautiful.