Art, Meaning, Green Living & Health
Art, Meaning, Green Living and Health
(see "TOPICS", below)
4/9/2025 6:35:05 PM
Photo via Pexels
In the last couple years I have put much of my visual art career on pause while exploring a new medium for me: music (which I figured would be "next life"...but why wait?)
Prior to that, I also have been creating educational and inspirational videos. I have been having a ball, and it has expanded my appreciation for how the insights and principles of one medium (such as unity, contrast and harmony) apply to a new creative medium, which also offer unique challenges and deepening. I will likely return to painting and drawing in greater depth at some point, perhaps soon, and I look forward to the cross-fertilization it will no doubt produce.
How about you? Is it time for a creative shift or renewal?
Recently writer Eugene Williams approached me offering a guest article on this idea, which was very fitting. And here it is:
* *. *
There’s a moment that creeps up on you—quiet but unmistakable—when the flow slows, the ideas stop coming, and you find yourself staring blankly at the same problems with none of the usual fire to solve them. It happens to the best minds in the best rooms. Whether you’re deep in your career or trying to find traction in your personal pursuits, creativity often feels like a well that’s gone dry. But what if the issue isn’t the well, but how you’re drawing from it? Creativity doesn’t vanish; it just gets buried under monotony, exhaustion, or fear. Reinvigorating that spark isn’t about waiting for inspiration to strike—it’s about learning to mine it differently.
Shift the Medium, Change the Mind
You get stuck when you repeat the same creative routine, expecting new results. Switching mediums—writing by hand instead of typing, painting instead of strategizing, dancing instead of debating—can reroute your thinking. When you change how you create, you also disrupt your usual neural patterns, opening space for play over performance. You don’t need to be good at the new medium; in fact, it’s better if you aren’t. What matters is stepping into a space where you're not expected to win, just to explore.
Indulge in Boredom on Purpose
Sometimes the creative jumpstart you need isn’t a hobby or a side project—it’s an entirely new direction. Changing careers can feel like lighting a match in a dark room, revealing ambitions you didn’t know were still alive. Pursuing a degree through an online program makes it possible to maintain a full-time job while carving out a new professional identity on your own terms. Earning a Master of Business Admin not only signals a bold pivot, but arms you with tangible tools—leadership, strategic planning, financial management, and data-driven decision-making—that prepare you to thrive across any industry you choose to enter next.
Revisit the Things You Loved Before You Were Paid to Be Good
Somewhere along the line, you may have started associating creativity with performance or income, and that shift can kill joy faster than criticism. Go back to the silly comic strips, the mixtapes, the thrift-store photography—whatever it was that you once did purely because it lit you up. Those pre-professional joys aren’t irrelevant; they’re often the original clues to your most authentic voice. Rekindling that version of yourself, even quietly, can shake loose a fresh perspective on the work that currently feels stale.
Steal Time for Mini-Sabbaticals
Not everyone has the luxury of disappearing to Bali for three months, but you can engineer creative sabbaticals in pockets of your everyday life. Block out an afternoon with no agenda but curiosity, or take a “meeting” with yourself in a different part of town, free from the daily grind. The point is to temporarily extract yourself from the ecosystems that reinforce your current patterns. Even micro-sabbaticals have the power to remind you of the world outside your task list, which is where creativity thrives best.
Create Without Intention (And Let It Stay That Way)
When’s the last time you made something without needing it to be shared, monetized, or even understood? Try making something you have no intention of showing to anyone. A bad poem. A pointless collage. A voice memo of a wild idea. There’s liberation in creative privacy—it invites risk, and risk is often where your best work begins. By removing the pressure to polish or present, you give your imagination permission to be as weird, as big, or as raw as it wants to be.
Collaborate With People Who Think Differently, Not Just Better
It’s easy to default to collaborators who “get it”—the ones who speak your shorthand and nod in sync. But the wildest, most productive creative friction happens when you partner with someone whose brain moves at a totally different angle. A scientist teams up with a poet. A strategist works with a stand-up comic. You don’t just exchange skills—you swap worldviews, and in that exchange, entire new solutions and narratives emerge. You’re not just trying to reinforce your brilliance, you’re expanding the definition of it.
Let Nature Take Over the Narrative
Creative burnout often comes from overstimulation—not underexposure. Sometimes the city, the screens, the surge of headlines just numbs your ability to feel anything worth articulating. Nature offers a reset without requiring you to think. Go hike, swim, sit in the grass. Let birdsong and rustling leaves do the talking for a while. There’s a restorative hum in the natural world that grounds the chaos and lets your inner voice speak again, a little slower, but often a lot clearer.
You don’t need a grand plan to reignite your creativity. What you need is a small rebellion against your usual ways of thinking. You’ll feel awkward at first, maybe even foolish. But that discomfort is exactly what clears the path for original thought.
Discover the transformative power of art and nature at Susan Pitcairn’s website and embark on a journey of inspiration and creativity!
12/26/2022 4:12:31 PM
On the Eve of the Great Awakening: A Christmas Lesson
Susan Pitcairn, 12-25,-22
Christmas this year has felt especially poignant to me. Whenever hearing the more sacred music of Christmas, I often felt close to crying.
What is it, I ask within, that prompts this?
Perhaps in part it is the knowing that, with advancing age, any Christmas could be my last. But, others I’ve spoken with feel a kind of poignancy as well. It feels bigger, more at a collective level.
Collectively, there is a poignancy about the memories of Christmases past, shared with now-departed or distant family and friends: the colors, sights, sounds, smells of festive times full of bright lights, spiced cider, bountiful feasts, laughter, church services, songs around the piano, the fun of opening gifts. There has always been the reality of constant change, the comings and goings of people, events, places and things, but for many, Covid restrictions and differences as well as other realities have also shifted who we spend Christmas with.
For Richard and I it’s often now with a group of friends who share a passion to witness and assist the Great Awakening now underway on Earth. We will probably not leave our estates to each other, we are not that kind of family, but we are family nevertheless, and our connections are soulful, inquisitive, honest, open and loving, in a more universal way.
With the years, we also have reduced gift giving at Christmas in order to make more space for the meaning‑—a meaning we seek to make a part of daily life. We decorate more simply as well, retaining a few special decorations made or gifted by family or friends. The newest addition is a hand-painted miniature nativity, a spontaneous gift yesterday from the generous owner of a wonderful local family-owned restaurant.
But beyond these kinds of shifts in how we celebrate the holidays, this poignancy at this year’s Christmas has taken me by surprise. What is it ? What is it that is so heart-wrenching about the sacred music, especially, songs like Silent Night that embody the deeper spirit of Christmas.?
It feels like a collective nostalgia, a sense of loss for an earlier time, an earlier state of mind we took so for granted. A time not so long ago when most of us had a more childlike trust in the stability and basic trustworthiness our culture: our families, our schools, our government, our culture, our religions, our history, our science, our systems of law and, in short, our world.
So much of that has been taken from us by the events of the past few years, especially since the arising of the tumultuous times and tyrannies we’ve all weathered since March 2020.
It is a time of shift and re-evaluation of what’s true. And that has also caused me to re-examine my relationship with the Christian and other traditions in which I and most of my generation were raised. My own parents said next to nothing about God but took us to a liberal Christian church fairly often, where we were told it was OK to question even whether Jesus had actually lived, focusing instead upon the essence of his teachings of love and kindness and devotion to the Father, the ultimate creative power of the Universe.
I felt graced to be, as we all are, an inheritors of several hundred years of the Age of Enlightenment, in which we all became, as a society, more free to question, to explore, to inquire, and to experiment. In that process, together we have all learned to question and protest against the authority of religions and governments and seen their dark side in the form of the Crusades, the Inquisition, colonial conquests, Naziism, Communism and so much more.
And as we saw some of these dark histories, many drifted away from organized religion. Many found churches to be fairly shallow with songs and sermons reminding us to be good, or else they were too controlling and strict, threatening us with hellfire and damnation. When we left home, we became free to explore, and often we looked especially to the gurus and teachings of the East, the timeless teachings of Buddha and the Vedas. The word Enlightenment took on new meaning, as we searched for some mysterious and profound experience of cosmic union with the divine and hopefully a complete transcendence of the ego mind and its preoccupations with a small self.
But now, after some sixty years of these explorations, I look around me and I see who is doing the heavy lifting today, the heavy lifting of exposing the growing corruption and failure of our leaders, our schools, our media and our corporations, as all seem bent on top down rule and a trashing of the precious Constitutional values we so long took for granted. Is it the New Agers? The Buddhists? The yogis? The vegans? I think not.
The heavy lifting, it seems, is being done by Christians as well as others of faith. Many believe we are in End Times, seeing current events as the prophecies of Revelations unfolding and pointing out dark and even demonic signs that are difficult to unsee. Many are walking their talk, bravely speaking truth to power , doing their best to save humanity from its own willful ignorance and preference to bury its collective head in the sand. And many of us we who strayed a bit from structures but not from the core teachings of the faiths we were raised in find ourselves in full appreciation and accord.
I do not regret my explorations, not, I think do most of my fellow explorers, but it is good to once again find , common ground and to appreciate more deeply just how much Christian teachings are, at their core, a teaching of love and kindness, no lesser than and perhaps even greater than many of the teachings of the East, of the New Age and of metaphysics. The core teaching of Christianity and related traditions such as Judaism is truly the Golden Rule. To do unto others as one would have done unto oneself is not simply a matter of reasoned civility but the natural expression of the enlightened state of consciousness that Jesus expressed, the kingdom of heaven within of which He spoke, which he said was to be found within each of us as well.
That awareness was and forever remains a state of complete and utter unity with the great mystery of the divine Source, that which we may call God, tainted as the word became, with images of judgement and damnation, captured as it was by religious leaders and authorities more entranced with the love of power than the power of love.
And so here we are, it’s Christmas again. And this time I find myself somehow falling on my knees, bowing humbly to true and divine meaning of the season beneath the human imperfections of Christianity the religion as well as the commercialization of the holidays. And I see and appreciate ,more deeply than before, its compelling beauty.
And I see as well that what keeps me and I think all of us from humble surrender to the Divine, is simply pride, taught us by our competitive society, our approach to education and our shared narrative about who we are: just small little beings at effect of a mechanistic universe. Our faith has been too much in our little selves, our conditioned selves, in all that we think we know, in the ego mind.
Meanwhile, all along, we have been repeatedly invited by Jesus and other great teachers, as well as by the promptings of our hearts, to put our faith instead, in an immeasurably greater power.
Though we call it God and many other names, that divine Source power is ultimately an eternal mystery. It is the force behind all life, behind this vast universe. Though we may never know in its entirety, we can feel it, nevertheless, as a still small voice and we may immerse ourselves at any time in its ever-enveloping stream of Infinite Love.
And I return this Christmas to the timeless words of the disciple Paul:
“And though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor and though I give my body to be burned but have not love, it profits me nothing.
Love suffers long and is kind. Love does not envy. Love does not vaunt or puff itself up.
It does not behave unseemly or seek its own, is not easily provoked and thinks no evil.
Love does not rejoice in inequity, but in the truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails, but where there be prophecies, they will fail.
Where there be tongues, they will cease.
Where there be knowledge, it will vanish away.
For we know in part and we prophesy in part.
But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away...
And now abide faith, hope, love, these three…
But the greatest of these is love.”
Love alone can heal the divisions and challenges of this shifting world, where the threats and the darkness can seem overwhelming to many with eyes to see. And yet, when we look deeper inside, nearly all of us believe strongly that “we can trust the plan,” because ultimately it is God’s plan. And we all agreed to come here at this time to play a part, as the veils are drawn back and as we awaken to who and what we are as the children, truly, of God, made in the same image and capable of incredible goodness.
And as co-creators with God, what if that plan is to imagine and to bring into being a golden age for our kind? What could happen if more and more of us were to envision, intend and take steps to create a Christ consciousness world in which every human organization, from family, to school, to business, to nation is run not for the love of power but by the power of love, as a harmonious team of enlightened children of God, consciously collaborating daily in prayerful intention to create what is for everyone’s highest good and the greatest glorification of the divine.
What would such a world be like? Let us find out. And, God more than willing, let us create it.
7/8/2021 10:38:03 PM
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Recently I woke up with an insight I’d like to share, one that may be helpful as we all negotiate the strange time we are in with all its polarization and confusion, incited by all the restrictions that came into our lives in 2020 which some of us are pushing back against as we try to understand the truth of what is really going on at a global scale.
All this has deeply polarized humanity. Many people have lost friendships and even contact with family members. It has been quite a challenge. It seems almost as though we are going through a process of de-evolution and moving away from unity, harmony and all we think best for ourselves and society. What is the answer?
What I’m seeing is that most of it boils down to how we get stuck in mental identities. Here’s what I mean: The human mind has a tendency to identify with things, understandably with our name and our body, but we extend it wider to our family, our tribe, the like-minded. For example, this last year, it may be people who wear masks or those who don’t. Republicans. Democrats, Christians. New agers.
And this process grows to include almost everything. If we can put the words “I am…” in front of any concept, then it is creating an identity. It can be a trait like, I am a good person, I am rational, I follow the science. I am a professional. Or, I am a rebel, an artist, a Patriot. I am stupid, smart, disciplined, lazy. You name it. I am a good person, and therefore I must mask or get the shots. Or I'm a good person and therefore I don't mask because I'm concerned about our freedoms or I see health dangers with the shots. Everything we can say or think with the phrase “I am” creates a limited and often polarizing identity.
And yet it is almost impossible to live in this world, in this body, with this name and with role in life, without having such identities to some degree.
So the key to happiness and freedom, if that’s what we want most, is simply to not get stuck in our identities, even the desirable ones. To do that, we gently notice where we are identifying too much as some small piece of the puzzle. We observe how that separates us from each other and from our innate well-being. We note how it creates judgement, fear, strife and division. And right now, collectively, it is having huge emotional, divisive effects on our society. It could even lead to Civil War.
Most of all, it’s not true. Identifying with particulars falsely trims us down to a little box of ideas and thoughts, and that is simply not who we really are. What we really are is Life, life being all of this. Awareness expressing as this. Consciousness. The energy behind life. Call it God, Source or the Great Spirit, but, really, it is a felt sense of spaciousness, of a freedom and a joy beyond words and thoughts.
Ironically, however, the silence and vastness of that mysterious spaciousness is the ONE thing that the mind cannot begin to grasp. That’s because it is not a thing. How do you describe or confine the formless? You can’t.
But we try anyway, and we create conclusions. Often, we decide that this formless spirit/space stuff is odd, boring or useless.
Or else, we look deeper and we think we get it. (Often a sign we don’t.) So then we vow that we must live that way from now on. But we forget it all rather quickly, because the river of Mind is ever moving on. One day we realize we lost sight of the whole thing and, rather than smiling at that, we can create a new identity: we are… a failure.
So, even imposing an idea upon oneself that one should try to live without a self or should be anything other than what we are is a kind of violence. What is, is.
So what can we do? How do we get out of this trap?
In “my” experience, the key seems to be this: just observe without judgment , in an impersonal way, the movement and effects of thoughts, beliefs, attachments, identities— especially when we feel stuck, depressed, estranged, arrogant, isolated, afraid, or just have a subtle feeling of unease. The chance are that we have been creating images of ourself and others, attaching to ideas. Is that really all we are? Is this a trap? Are we putting ourselves in a little box? Are we putting the infinite universe in a little box?
Can we just “Be the Field”?
So, how about, right now, just taking a deep breath? Just being here, here in this body, with the sounds heard, the sensations felt. Putting no limit on it, not even the body. It’s not who you are and it’s always changing. Just loving it as it is now and allowing a sense of spaciousness to emerge. Feel it, see it. Merging with the sky, just being the field.
As we become more comfortable with all this, we are likely to see more subtle forms of identification. For example, identifying as someone who is more evolved, who is ascending, who is saved, who is enlightened, who is awake, who gets it. Others sense our arrogance and withdraw. Or we identify now as a positive thinker: “My thing is joy” or “I’m into love, tolerance, diversity.” Then we become intolerant of “negative” people just as we are intolerant of our own negative thoughts.
It’s not that positive traits are without merit. They have their place and their natural expression. As social beings, it is natural to want to be good, to succeed, to understand, to be accepted, to have people like us, to belong. And having lots of social connections is the number one lifestyle factor that predicts longevity.
Being with your tribe feels good. Yet underneath, we fear being losing or being exiled from the tribe, especially if it means we may not be able to survive on our own. And that raw instinctual fear can blind us to reason and higher guidance.
So again, we keep it simple. We just watch and learn, we step back from our beliefs, attachments and identities, even positive and reasonable ones. Do they really serve us as much as something more innate, lasting and unconditional? Do they, even subtly, separate us from others? Do they create a sense of striving or unease? And is there another way to live that is more relaxed, more trusting, more in tune with the greater intelligence behind life? More spacious?
And what about when we lose our way? We learn. We learn from the good, the bad and the ugly. We learn to be aware of passing thoughts, feelings and identities. We learn the many ways they rob us of peace, wisdom and harmony. And we learn how unaware we are most of the time as we don’t even notice the trancelike thoughts that stream through our minds as we garden, drive, do the dishes, talk, go about our day. And it’s OK.
It’s OK and there is always a choice. There is always the choice in this moment to just step back from the mind, to be in the heart, to just be the field, the Presence, the beingness behind this life we are.
To know the truth that what we really are is life itself, life expressing in this manner, right now, as this particular person, this particular drama, be it personal or planetary. And it’s so much bigger.
There's a lot of freedom in that. Not having to be anybody.
This is, of course, a timeless teaching (certainly not original with me, whatever that is). It is the same as the Buddhist teaching of non-attachment, the Christian teachings of unconditional love, and a psychotherapy known as Disidentification. Eckhart Tolle speaks well about it.
So just observe, just be aware. And be aware of awareness. This spacious realm is our refuge forever. From it springs guidance, wisdom, peace and joy. And that is what will get us through our current crisis – and any to come. Trust the Field. Trust Life. Trust God.
6/17/2021 4:07:53 PM
Here's a great question: why are home prices skyrocketing everywhere in the midst of COVID-induced joblessness and small business closures? Sure, the population is growing and moving and houses are in high demand, but there's more to the story, and it threatens our most fundamental drive to have a home of one's own.
Agents report that big investors representing a handful of elites are outbidding ordinary people seeking homes all over the world, buying trillions in real estate, arriving with duffel bags full of cashiers checks, inspection rights waivered, driving up prices despite the poor economy. It’s happening in all markets. Their plan is to rent them out.
We ourselves recently got a call from an Asian sounding man wanting to buy our property sight unseen, which isn’t even for sale.
He explains why it appears to be a concerted effort among super wealthy globalists in concert with the World Economic Forum and China to implement the Great Reset. If you haven’t heard of that, it's time to find out. Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum and mastermind of the Great Reset, says very openly that by 2030 “you will own nothing and be happy." If global elites get their way (my language not his), you will rent everything.
The WEF even has a
marketing video on this where you can see exactly how they plan to sell this global tyranny, which is openly branded under the guise of sustainability and combatting climate change with catch phrases like
“Build back better.” (But we hear nothing about addressing toxic pollution or supporting organic farming or natural building.)
So think it through, Seth says. What if super-elites own half the houses in America? They can then raise the rents and force people into apartments in their revamped "Smart Cities” that are little more than monitored technocratic beehives where you must conform, or you will not be allowed to do many things. China already does this, using "social credit scores."
Big Money has the surveillance to do it. And Big Money has the cash to do it.... if WE sell to them.
Increasingly, the Big Tech oligarchs monitor everything we do and say. If you doubt that, just ask your friends: a lot of us are noticing how often ads pop up reflecting things we just casually talked about, while our phones were nearby.)
And inancial power is so centralized in the US, for example, that 10 shareholders control the 8 largest US financial companies. Four ultra-big companies (Blackrock, State Street, Vanguard and Fidelity) control the Federal Reserve and US/world monetary policy. Blackrock also partners with the Chinese Communist Party, which is very involved in this agenda. The richest globalists in the world, Bezos and Gates, are also buying huge tracts of farmland. Goodbye, family farms, the few that were left.
I don't know about you, but I see this a new feudalism and a serious threat to human rights and freedoms. And we all need to wake up and stop it.
What can we do?
For starters, share this information and consider these choices:
• If you are selling a house, tell your realtor you only want to sell to a family who will live in it.
• If you are renting, avoid using big commercial property management companies.
• If you are buying, look carefully at your priorities. Maybe try for a home in a more distant location but with some land.
• And just say no to the medical apartheid that is known as vaccine passports, which are also key to this globalist power grab.
It is totalitarianism in a new guise.
Save the American dream, save your right to a home of your own.
Do it for your children. And do it for everyone.
4/2/2021 9:34:41 PM
Recently, my husband Richard and I (together 45 years now) sat out on our swing to share our reflections on what helps and hinders good conversations and communications. It includes tips on listening, on dealing with impasses, on sharing in a responsible way, and more.
Here's the video link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTi0qfBioys
The essence of it really is good listening and clear expression, both the product of awareness of one's own mind and tendencies.
Then, a friend shared this wonderful article, "A Few Guidelines That Tend to Support the Quality of Dialog," by Daniel Schmachtenberger
DEFINITELY worth studying!!
Enjoy!
-Susan
2/4/2021 9:24:00 PM
Despite a huge media agenda and government agenda that's been stoking fears all year, pressing for most or even all people to take the Coronavirus Vaccines, there''s another side to this story. Find it here, along with some easy at-home preventive and self-care treatments that focus on properly assimilating key nutrients crucial to fighting off any virus.
Handout to share: Why Half the Country Does NOT Want the COVID Vaccine (plus easy natural treatments).
7/13/2020 2:57:02 PM
July 13, 2020, Sedona, Arizona, Planet Earth
Recently, under the duress of the time of COVID, this inspiration came to me in the night....
What if.... we all just WOKE UP?
Let me define what I mean by "waking up." I mean sensing who we each are: a timeless, eternal spirit, an expression of God. It is putting love first, as much as we are able, over opinions, beliefs, attachments and fears.
That timeless essence that we are is revealed whenever we can step back a bit and see how we trap ourself within the many divisive and limiting identities created by thought: all ultimately false identities based on conditioned beliefs, politics, religion, race, gender, etc. We are like actors who have become so identified with our roles that we forget we are not the part we are playing, nor are others. That includes those we see as both villains and heroes. We are all loving souls deep inside.
Waking up is also fosters the courage to question authority, inner or outer. It helps us question anything that does not seem right and true with an open mind unattached to past ideas or the ideas of the majority.
In this particular slice of time, blind acceptance of the fear-creating COVID narratives are a deep test of whether we can stay true, individually and socially, to our soul's core values and expressions. The COVID crisis is, in that sense, a perfect invitation to a mass awakening, a global shift of consciousness, which many of us have sensed could be coming in our lifetimes.
Just imagine how quickly we could solve the problems we face on this planet if we all just woke up, if we all looked first to love, truth, compassion and kindness instead of trying to be right all the time and feeling like we win whenever we get our tribe to agree with us.
Being kind, however, does not mean that we just roll over and accept things we see as harmful or dangerous. In fact, love and compassion allow us to more clearly see what is wrong with our society as well as our own psyches, even if it is painful to acknowledge, as any good therapist knows.
As we uncover painful truths, we may differ on how we see them and who or what is involved, but what matters most is that we can have a civil conversation, guided by love and listening. Only then can we can move forward to the best possible solutions.
Speaking for myself as Susan, I surely have had many ups and downs thru recent times, as we all have. I believe it is a great spiritual test we all signed up for before we were born. We knew this was coming, and it is a great choice point for humanity, and, I think, for each of us as a soul. So let us be clear in our choices, looking clearly at their consequences.
What helps me the most when I get upset at what looks to me like a battle for the soul of humanity is to remember that:
We are each, ALL the players in this drama, divine, sovereign, eternal beings. We have been through many lives and many challenges.
Ultimately, this is a test, and it is
just a test. Now is an opportunity to pass this test and move on to a better world, to create it here on our beautiful Earth with sufficient numbers waking up, or if not, elsewhere. My hope is that we can create a paradise here on Earth. It is already a biological paradise of immense beauty. Now we are pushed to such extremes that it is nudging us awake.
If enough wake up, then we can make our society, our culture a paradise. Love is what we need to create that paradise and love is always with us when we quiet down our thoughts, simply look for a good feeling, and let it emerge. At every moment it is a choice, like right now....
So let us take off our masks, smile, embrace, and trust in the Great Spirit within and without. Let us trust fully in the intelligence that runs our bodies so beautifully, if we let drop our fears. As for those who are dying, let us accept that it is simply their time, as comes to us all.
So, how about it? Have we had enough drama?
Shall we just allow love to win, allow love to bloom?
And what if we also allow for the possibility of a true miracle....
What if ....we ALL just woke up?
6/26/2020 1:23:16 PM
Citizens against mask mandate pray outside the chambers (6-23-20)
The following is the a short citizen presentation I made at the Sedona City Council meeting June 23.The council members were absent, projected via Zoom on a large screen. Only 10-12 citizens could sit inside due to the "6 foot" rule. Others gathered in the courtyard or another room to watch remotely. We each had only 2 minutes and had to speak slowly to overcome mic feedback, so I could only present a third of this. At 10 pm, after 6 hours of discussion and other business, mostly by staff and council, Mayor Moriarty made the decision she wanted to make all along, to mandate masks indoors, based primarily on what local ICU doctors wanted.
See my other post, Why Arizona's Second Wave Looks Higher Than It Is for a more science and stat based email I sent them as followup.
Dear Mayor Moriarty and members of the Sedona City Council,
Today we, your friends and neighbors, urge you, our duly elected representatives, to make a difference in American and world history.
The issue before you is whether to mandate that we all wear masks to stop the spread of COVID-19. But, make no mistake, millions of citizens now believe, with evidence, that this proposed mandate is part of a much larger agenda that we all must stop, here and now.
As a descendent of John Adams and signers of the Magna Carta, I join the great granddaughter of Dwight Eisenhower, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and countless others alive today to say that WE DO NOT CONSENT to this oppressive agenda, drawing upon the courage of all who have ever risked their lives that we here may enjoy freedom and peace.
Standing together, we urge you, in the strongest possible terms, to join us in saying NO to this, and to all stages of a rapidly unfolding plan now being imposed throughout the world, not in response to a true emergency, but by top-down global forces that pose a far greater threat to the future of humanity than the inevitable rise and fall of a disease still comparable in death rates to a bad flu year, and much less than the flu of 1968.
These forces, representing an elite network of ultra-wealthy and well-placed individuals and institutions,
-through a relentless campaign of fear on mainstream media, which they own,
-through censorship of dissenting experts on social media, which they own,
-through advanced digital technology and systems, which they own,
-through global medical foundations, organizations and industries, which they own,
-through pressure on high-level politicians, which they own,
have used overwrought decrees of emergency to force humanity and our elected governments to surrender our most basic and sovereign rights, which we own, now and forever.
(this is as far as I was allowed to speak) ----
Again and again, they assure us all that their dictates will keep us safe, even as they destroy our economies, our livelihoods, our government treasuries, our schools, our cultural institutions, our human connections and our most fundamental rights, now including the simple right to breathe freely and to see each others’ smiles. Human connection is after, all the number one proven influence on health and longevity.
As with all would-be dictators, their prime strategy is to create false flag operations, to sow chaos and conflict, to divide and then to conquer. Problem-Reaction-Solution. But now they can now exert control and prevent dissent at an unprecedented global scale, using the most highly advanced tools of total surveillance and control, using our own devices and more to track our every move.
In a truly advanced, trustworthy and enlightened civilization perhaps such total surveillance could be benevolent as they will try to assure us. But in this world, it is an invitation to arrogance at best and to disaster at worst, a magnet for those whose love of power exceeds the power of love.
No one should have so much power as Bill Gates, who is at the center of this debacle, without ever being elected or medically credentialed. Such imbalance is why our founders created a system of checks and balances, for which it is time to do an upgrade that reigns in our new technologies, if it is not too late.
Otherwise, we can easily see what is next. Unless we rise up and say no, we will be forced to take their vaccines (tested without proper placebos and protected from all liabilities), just to work, travel, go to school or even shop for groceries.
Do you doubt this? Search France and “certificate of movement.” Next, expect microchip implants, already patented by Gates and others, to store all our personal information that can track and control us at all times. It is already in India, injected with vaccines. Add to a that entirely digital currency, from which any dissident could be easily demonetized.
We are looking at the end of human freedom as we have known it …. unless we say no. We are looking at a virus that not only came to the rest of the world from China but takes the rest of world to China.
But what if this is wrong? Why not make everybody wear a mask if it helps? And this order came down on high from WHO and was based on science, right? Well, unfortunately, science is becoming one of the Usual Suspects. Fraudulent and biased work has now stained such prestigious journals as Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine.
So, follow the money. First, the top funders of the WHO are Gates and China, who installed the current head in 2017. Both have huge stakes in the Vaccine Solution and the implementation of nanotechnology. This WHO order is based on a June 12 study by the Robert F. Welch Foundation, Grant A-1417, (https://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/feature/to-wear-a-mask-or-not-is-not-the-question-research-indicates-its-the-answer). , a less than stellar group who also supported Charles M. Lieber, a nanotechnology scientist arrested Jan. 20 for making false statements to the U.S. Department of Defense and Harvard investigators regarding his participation in China's Thousand Talents Program,[7][8] which has received criticism as a threat to national security.[9] This needs more research and peer review, to say the least.
Many other studies and doctors say masks lower oxygen, increase carbon dioxide and endanger health. Many local restaurant and grocery workers have complained about headaches, fatigue and respiratory problems. And even the Ventura County, CA. public health literature says community masks only stop 6% of viral spread.
Is all this criminalization of normal breathing worth it when our death rates are so low? If you pass this, it will only divide the citizenry further.
So here we are, standing together, all of us, on the edge of a precipice. Do we stand up for freedom and for each other? Or do we allow fear, authority and select science push us further and further into a future in which we must learn to hide in our homes, close businesses that feed our families, avoid our friends and neighbors, and hide our faces? Is this to be the future for our children, deprived of their education and their friends, with their mothers’ smile locked behind a mask? Where we turn each other in to forced quarantines through contact tracing programs run by National Guard Troops?
And although you, our elected local leaders, are not even here in person, we ask you, in the name of our founders, in the name of all who have built and defended the institutions of justice and freedom, in the name of all humanity and not just the frightened and the misled, please be brave, please have heart.Please draw the line in the sand, here and now. We are watching, we are waiting, and we do not consent.
(see my related posts for more science on this)
4/4/2020 1:03:09 PM
Lately our world has turned upside down as fears of COVID-19 and its fallout constrict the collective breath of humanity.
Many authorities have responded with unprecedented orders of shutdowns and quarantines, prompting others to imagine even worse scenarios of widespread social and economic collapse of even greater consequence as well as erosion of civil liberties.
It is a hard time, not the best of springs. But the silver lining in this cloud surely includes some major soul lessons for us all, including compassion, gratitude and humility.
Compassion and Gratitude: it’s Hard for Everyone
First, it invites us to appreciate that this is a big challenge for nearly everyone. For a small percent, it means actual pain and death from the disease. For the vast majority, it means myriad fears and hardships: of loved ones dying, of losing a job, a business, social group, or even food and shelter as savings disappear. As we try to comprehend the scale of all the lost dreams, the lost social supports, the lost security, the lost hope it is clear that all people deserve gentle compassion as this unfolds, including ourselves.
In addition to compassion, we can feel great gratitude towards the countless front line health care workers who serve in the face of personal risk, the farmers, grocers , delivery workers and others who continue to serve us faithfully. And let us also feel both compassion and gratitude towards our political leaders as they struggle to make crucial decisions in which they could err by either doing too little or too much. Who would want such a responsibility? What if you get it wrong?
The Humility of Accepting That We Do Not Know
Both compassion and gratitude are expressions of love. And so is humility, the integrity of knowing when we do not know, and of refraining from asserting that we have a corner on the truth as we enter the maelstrom of both mainstream and dissident views flying back and forth on social media, without which we are apt to sink into disrespect and incivility. We are all called to this kind of humility as we watch how we each respond to this crisis through the filters of our conditioned beliefs, experiences, position and training.
Conditioned thinking is just a fact of being human. Some are conditioned to conform, making sacrifices and following all the guidelines without question or complaint. Others incline towards dissent and project into this crisis a power grab by hidden elites, be it the Illuminati, Big Pharma or the Anti-Christ. Or they spread the meme that this not viral, but rather the start of 5G taking down humanity, secure in believing they alone know what's going on. Yet others, even MD's, assert that this is not caused by a virus at all.
Meanwhile others seek to apply reason and evidence, which is not as clear as some assert, criticizing any minority medical scientists who dare to suggest that the authorities are overreacting with dangerous and Draconian measures to a wave of illness not far from the normal peaks of influenza.
The common thread is that we all want to know what is going on, what caused it and what it means for our future. And we all come to our conclusions: even as I wrote this a message popped into my Facebook feed from someone I don’t really know, a self-described spiritual teacher: “Something fishy is going on here.”
OK, maybe, but maybe not. Right now at least, can we really know for sure? We can make some educated guesses, but there is really very little we can know with 100% certainty about this almost unprecedented development. So we can but do our best to understand, not overreact, and allow others the same.
Looking deeper spiritually speaking, this shows us how intolerant our minds are of not knowing, especially about things that seem dangerous. We can observe how much we want to find answers and then to believe what we believe, justified or not. It reveals how much fearful stories constrict the mind, whether stories about an avalanche of death and disease, about a police state or about economic and social collapse. You name it. The stories of fear are countless and they lead to isolation, blame and attack.
Is there a gentler and more intelligent way? What if we took this moment as an opportunity to set aside fear and acknowledge the supreme truth that it is OK not to know. We each see but a tiny fragment of reality and we are all reaping a lesson in the personal and collective humility of “NOT knowing.”
So why is this? Why do we rarely question our own beliefs?
Perhaps it is that we hold onto an unexamined assumption that we CAN know the answers, that they are there somehow, and that knowing them will save us. This creates a false sense of security and superiority as the mind takes pride in knowing, in believing that our own particular beliefs are superior to those of others.
But if we are honest and humble, we soon learn that one of the few things that we can actually know for sure is how much we do not know. We can believe that we know, but that does not make it so. And ignorance of this truth is behind most of the disharmony and dysfunction in our social and political world.
Not Knowing: Better Than It Sounds
Though we may find ourselves again and again reverting to thinking we can find all the answers to life's challenges, not knowing is better than it sounds. Not knowing opens up space for new ideas and new responses not constricted by fear, panic or groupthink. It opens up space for guidance from a deeper intelligence behind all life. And it removes so many mental barriers between people and cultures.
Not knowing opens up space to be still and at peace, to pause in the face of fear, take a deep breath and invoke the goodness with each of us and life. Then, and only then, can we can meet this global challenge with the compassion, gratitude, humility and love that we need to climb this and every mountain.
1/28/2020 7:15:51 PM
Hosting a regular potluck group is not only fun and rewarding (people come to you bearing wonderful friendship and food!), but easier than you might think. Sharing food with our fellow humans is a wonderful and natural way to build the kind of community feeling many of us miss in the anonymity and isolation built into modern ways of living, so replete with devices and garages that we all disappear into.
And doing it on a regular basis makes it even better. We have hosted a potluck of 12-30 people at a time for over 5 years now, as well as put on many parties for groups of professionals attending our seminars for decades. and it has been incredibly rewarding. It has also helped members build a larger network of connections
So, think about it. It can be as simple as inviting 4-6 friends over to share conversation or a favorite film or an interest you have in common, like books or gardens or a plant-based lifestyle. Keep it small to start, unless you a veteran at hosting events. A smaller group also allows people to share in one conversation, which is often a really great way to find common ground and establish group bonds. You could even make in-depth conversations on topics of the day the theme of your group.
Ours started with permaculture and environmental films and discussions. After watching "Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Solution," we morphed overbite into a = potluck. For several years we focussed primarily on videos on how to eat plant-based, but also included topics like reducing plastic, simple living, EMF safety and more. Increasingly, our focus is on discussion.
Here are some tips to help you physically set it up in a sustainable way.
Reusable Partyware
First, unless you already have these things, get yourself a set of thin glass plates or China, and enough drinking glasses and wine glasses from your local thrift store to accommodate the group as it grows and as your space allows. Custard cups make great soup bowls. Reusable party ware saves plastic and other waste, and buying it used eliminates packing and shipping impacts, saves money and reuses resources. I keep ours on handy trays in a bookcase. When it's time for the party, I can readily set them out on the counter where the serving line begins:
A few years ago I also found a batch of 20 or so cloth napkins for a pittance online and have used them now at least 50 times at these events, saving on paper waste and making it all more elegant as well. We wash and line dry them the next day.
The evening or morning before the potluck begins, you will want to clean house, make a list of who has RSVPd, bring out extra tables and chairs (plastic stacking chairs are great), arrange your living room as needed to accommodate your numbers, set your party ware (above) and chill some filtered water, perhaps with cucumber or lemon slices in glass dispensers or pitchers in the fridge. If you are serving tea, wine or other drinks, get that ready too.
For your own food contribution, make a casserole or salad in advance, depending on what others bring and be prepared to provide a simple appetizer if none shows up. (For smaller groups, I suggest clarifying what each one brings in advance, taking the luck part out of the potluck!). Soups are easy to make but can be more complicated to serve and require bowls and spoons not otherwise needed.
Ask people to arrive on time and let them know where to park and where to leave coats, purses and containers when they arrive. We make a space out of the way in the bedroom. Provide name tags if it's a big group and welcome them and their food into the serving area. If you want to allow time to socialize and enjoy appetizers first, try to keep food chilled or warm as much as possible, or at least covered. These days, many people have thermal casserole carriers they use to bring dishes in, or boxes with towels.
Tables can be a challenge. In our case we have two drop-leaf English oak dining tables that, together at maximum extension, can accommodate 14 people. Other potluck hosts use folding plastic tables, or people just find a spot to sit with plates on their laps, at patio tables or what not. Just make sure it's hospitable and that there are enough places for all guests to sit comfortably. Some of my favorite occasions have been when we hold the potluck after a meeting and it's small enough to continue our conversation as one group as we sit around the table. (8-14 people).
Living Room Setup
And that brings us to the living room, where the gathering usually begins and ends. It helps to ring a bell or strike a drum or crystal bowl to get peoples' attention and draw them from the meal and cleanup. If we are showing a film, I have arranged the furniture so that all seats face the TV screen or can easily be swiveled to do so. I provide throw pillows behind each sofa seat, which usually works better for shorter people, and have a stack of plastic chairs on hand to bring out when the film begins. Or sometimes we have just had people bring wooden dining chairs into the viewing space. I always leave a small chair near the TV to introduce the film and then seat myself elsewhere if need be.
For discussions, place the bigger upholstered furniture in a circle with an opening, and if more seats are needed, arrange an outer ring of dining chairs or stackable chairs. I have found that compact plastic stacking chairs, perhaps with pads, deliver a lot of comfort for their size. (We store a stack of 14 in our guest closet). When facilitating discussions, try to find ways to keep a handful of talkers from dominating the discussion, unless it is of wide interest or you have a guest speaker. If this becomes an issue, try passing a timer around the circle like a "talking stick" or just express that now let's hear from someone else, etc.
How Many to Invite?
If your potluck gels, and most likely it will, it will naturally want to grow as people ask if they can invite other friends. Some homes can only accommodate 4-6 and that is your bottom line. Others can take 60 or more. Ours is more like 25. I have often vowed to cap it at a more comfortable, intimate size, like 14-20 but have said OK anyway up to maybe 26. Beyond that, I find it's just too many and it begins to discourage more introverted participants from returning, who are often some of the most interesting people. As it turns out, when it has swelled a bit too high, the universe often trims it back down to 22 or so as people call or email with last minute cancellations.
You will have to feel your way through this one. Perhaps you or another member of your circle needs to start an additional potluck or else do it more often!
Meanwhile, enjoy the process. The more you do it , the easier it gets as you establish your routine. Don't sweat it too much and enjoy how much people appreciate you for creating the community that is often lacking in our lives! It is a real service, and it is also very fun!
AND tasty!!
