BE AT PEACE

It is cloudy and cool outside. It was supposed to rain buckets last night and we didn't get a drop. We may still get rain. I can feel it. I don't think I am unique, in that I develop a certain level of tension before it rains, and then when the rain comes, I feel a release. I don't think I have heard anybody else mention it, but I am sure others experience this. I was kind of crabby this Morning, perhaps part of it was the lack of a tension release; but, it also could be the profound craziness in the world.

I am not crabby now. I would wish the media would take it down a notch. Wow! Just because some people are nuts doesn't mean all of us need to be. Some of the same people who have always espoused, 'we cannot find peace through war' are declaring war on those they disagree with.

We know we will never find peace by attacking those with opposing views, no matter how heinous we may think those views are. Those folks are creating division. Let us not add to the division by acrimony on our side.

Those, who have been in control of our world, have always used division to maintain or get control. The more they can divide people. The more chaos and violence they can create, the easier it is to shape our beliefs, and keep us under their thumb. Are there purposeful forces behind the current strife? I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised. Those forces who have been controlling things for centuries are desperate. They know there is an awakening happening. They have all the power and money they have accumulated at stake. They are fearful of losing control. I cannot know if they have their hands in the recent events, but it sure is the kind of divisiveness they have been creating for centuries.

We all want to rid the world of injustice, prejudice, racism etc. We see how idiotic those who espouse those things can be. We are not helping by hurling insults at the perpetrators of the nuttiness. It only reinforces what they think. We can't fight intolerance with intolerance. We will never have unity by accentuating division.

Those who have been in power {I call them the cabal- those that worship power and money} are in a panic because they know that Love is rising in the World. They are losing their grasp. As I said before, I don't know if they have a hand in this divisiveness, but it behooves us to work toward unity and stop cooperating with the division. In any case, those intolerant ones are tools, wittingly or unwittingly, as such they are victims of their thoughts and feelings like everybody else and, of course, any power that wants to use them.

We always have the choice to love. No matter what the situation, we can see folks with understanding and compassion. Love and forgiveness heals. It doesn't mean we are naïve and don't see the danger to society, but it does mean the correct action will come from our loving compassionate minds and not from our outrage.

If we were unaware of the media presentation and were not aware of recent events, we would have noted the increase in awareness. The awakening is growing apace. Listen to your neighbors. We all seem to know, the only thing missing is Love.

THE ONLY THING MISSING IS LOVE! Remember that. We need to add to the love. The world doesn't need more animosity. It doesn't need more conflict. We won't bring about peace by being unpeaceful.

Part of the change, we are going through, is that all the craziness has to rise to the top for everybody to see. We are seeing it. It also means the collapse is near. The world needs our loving energy, more than ever before. We need to aid in the transition.

It helps if we can meditate, or one could say, just let ourselves sink into that quiet place inside, feel the peace and stay in that peaceful place for a few minutes. Let's do it several times a day. It will help. We will extend peace.

BE AT PEACE.

Love and Peace, Gregg

A SPIDER STORY

We had a drizzly day yesterday. I pretended I was an old man and napped, off and on, all afternoon. It is still cloudy today and cool. It is more like September than August, at least the cool part; it is usually not this rainy in either month.

I was going to talk more about, my ideas about our separation from Nature, and things we could do to remedy it. However, readers of this blog have as many good ideas as I do. I don't know anything, anybody else's doesn't. It is all a relationship. Nature is all around us. We need to embrace Mother Nature and love her. She gives us everything. It is a matter of opening our eyes and our hearts. What to do, will occur to us.

I have a little Nature story. My daughter, Laura, posted a picture of a Wolf Spider surrounded by her newly hatched offspring, on Facebook. Apparently, this creature was on her basement wall. It was an excellent picture and got many comments. I commented that I had a Wolf Spider story. I thought it might be a little too long for a comment on Facebook. Here it is.

Laura would have been little, as this was over fifty years ago. Donna {her Mother} and I were sitting in the living room across from each other. Suddenly, Donna got up and said, “Get up and walk towards me.” The expression in her eyes told me not to quibble. I did as she said. She then said, “Turn around.” I did and there sitting on the back of the couch, right next to where I was sitting, was the hugest spider I ever saw. It looked as big as a tarantula only without the fuzz. We captured it in a fruit jar. It was so big we could barely get the fruit jar around it. We released it to continue it's existence outside.

I don't know what would have happened if Donna hadn't spotted it. My relationship with the arachnid world was a little shakier than it is now. I am sure that if I experienced it walking on me it would have freaked me out. Donna did the perfect thing. Had she freaked out or told me to look without getting up first... who knows. It would not be such a good story.

I don't think at the time we knew the name of the creature, but we found it pictured in a Golden Book of spiders and identified it. We had most of the Golden Book Nature series. They are marvelous little books.

Of all of Nature's creatures I have been shyest of spiders. Not phobic, but more than wary. As children we caught garden spiders put them in jars and fed them flies and grasshoppers. It was fascinating to watch them spin up a grasshopper in a silk cocoon. I would pick up any non-stinging creature with my fingers, but not spiders. I do it now. I rescue them from the sink and release them outdoors. [Why do bugs end up in the sink- do they fall in- they can't get up the slippery sides] However, spiders are still a special category of creature, to me.

Yes, Nature is marvelous, all of it. What is not to Love? It is only our separation that causes our judgements and the occasional willies.

I need to accompany Jamie, to the Amish for milk, and then to town.

Love and Peace, Gregg

HEALING

 

It is a bright shiny Morning at 10:30 AM. I have been mulling over how I should address our separation from Nature. I think to begin, we need to recognize it is a relationship. Our relationship with Nature often mirrors the one we have with each other. Our relationships are caring, loving, cooperative, inclusive or they are not. On the negative end, they can be using, exploitative, competitive, etc.

Perhaps it all flows together, and as we accept our oneness with each other, we will accept our oneness with Mother Earth. It is a little mind boggling that we would not respect the being [Earth] that gives us everything we need to survive. How did we get so locked into our minds, without our hearts, that we couldn't see the Earth is Love? Is that the left brained syndrome? Logic without wisdom? I can see how we did it. It is another level of separation. We fooled ourselves into thinking it was okay to manipulate matter without reference to the whole. We ignored the idea that the Earth is governed by a living being and thought it okay to manipulate, exploit, etc. without reference to the Earth's will and welfare. It is really an incredible leap into empty logic. Logic based only on a separated mind.

How could we not see the Earth is a living being? Look at what springs out of the Earth. It is super rich with life of all kinds, from microbes to whales and giant Sequoias. How could the Earth, herself, not be living energy? I don't know how to define Nature; perhaps the Energy Being of the Earth. We could settle for all the natural processes, but it is more than its processes.

The separation caused by our fragile bodies is minor in contrast to our total separation. The real separation came about when we quit regarding Nature with love. Religion played a strong role in this, especially Christianity, the church would brook no competition, they wanted God all to themselves. They wanted to be the controllers and purveyors of God's blessing. Nature stood in the way of their reach for complete power and control over the people. Part of this denial of Nature, is the subjugation of women, by most organized religion. I could write a book on this subject and maybe someday I will. Right now I would like to speculate on how we can help heal.

First lets look at our attitude. Separation is lack of love. When we love someone we don't exploit them, abuse them or attempt to control them. We relate to them. We appreciate them. We enjoy their company. We are grateful for their existence.

Our relationship with the Earth is the same way. We need to pay attention. Look. Open our eyes. Nature is all enveloping. It is all around us. We need to teach our children respect for Nature like we would want them to respect any elder that loves them. When we are determined to learn we automatically teach. When those in charge of children, immerse themselves in the appreciation of Nature, the children will learn.

Our society is evolving out of the craziness that was featured by the worship of power and money. With this raise in awareness, the Earth will no longer be seen as something to be exploited. Our society of separation, and its accompanying consumerism, created layers of resistance to seeing and appreciating Nature. It may be subtle, but those making money from our separation, were creating obstacles to our seeing truth.

I have several ideas that may aid in the healing of our separation. I have written enough for today. I will share them with you Monday.

HAPPY FRIDAY!

Love and Peace, Gregg

CAN WE HEAL OUR SEPARATION WITH NATURE

I am getting a very late start. I went to the doctor with Jamie this Morning. The good news is that the test game back negative for Leptospirosis. The bad news is that it puts us back at square one. It doesn't seem feasible, her symptoms could be caused by sleep apnea, alone. Theoretically, they could, but from everything we can tell her sleep apnea is well managed. She had a brain scan last week and she is scheduled for an MRI tomorrow.

We got back from the clinic, I had to have a little brunch and then I had a little nap sitting in front of my computer, it is now after Noon.

I intended to talk about our separation from Nature and some strategies we might employ to remedy the situation. However, it is late, I won't be able to look at the situation in depth. Perhaps, Friday.

How did we get so separate in the first place? It is logical our fragile bodies played a part. We are, an exception among mammals, that we cannot survive the climate we find ourselves in, without protection of our bodies. Why didn't we evolve with nice fur coats? Perhaps, our brains evolved first, and in a warmer climate, we didn't need to evolve fur, then we learned to manipulate our environment with the use of fire and artificial shelters. That path of speculation is best held over a brandy on a cool Winter evening.

We can clearly see, we did manipulate our environment. We reacted to Nature as we would an enemy, we attempted to control it, use it and abuse it. Control and domination seemed to be the general features to our relationship with Nature. Yet we seem to have a schizophrenic attitude; we obviously hunger for what we lost. We create parks, and beautiful gardens in the cities. We go on camping trips and kayaking and canoeing. We work to set aside more land for National Parks, at the same time, we turn a blind eye to the destruction caused by mining, lumbering and oil exploration.

In the Summer, many of us only know how the outside air feels on our skin, as we go from our air conditioned houses to our air conditioned cars. In the Winter, it is our heated houses to our heated cars. I am not making a judgement. I have a body; it likes to be comfortable. I understand. Most of us are so busy making enough money to feed and clothes ourselves, we just treat the outside as something we have to pass through from one shelter to the next.

One of the great attractions of the suburbs is that they had yards! Folks could actually go outside and enjoy a slice of Nature, at least in pleasant weather. I was born into suburban living and I moved to the country after I turned forty. I grew up in a family that loved Nature and did not pass up an opportunity to learn, explore, and emerge themselves in it. We picked wild berries [blackberries, raspberries, gooseberries, blueberries] in season. My school lunches consisted of home made bread and blackberry jam. My Mother always pointed out the names of the plants and bugs that we came across.

Yes! I was very fortunate. Yet, when I moved to the country I experienced a whole new layer of Nature. Heating with wood, pumping water from a well, using an outhouse. It is amazing how much more we are aware of Nature when we need to go outside to tinkle. {I don't think I ever used that word before in my life} After, I moved to the country I knew what phase the moon was in all the time. I don't think I did before.

We have had the modern conveniences, these last thirty years or so, and I don't have to go outside every time I need to relieve myself, but I often do. I have chickens and sheep to care for, so I cannot stay locked up inside for more than a few hours at a time.

Although, our bodies need protection, they are not as fragile, as they are treated. Peoples in other cultures expose themselves purposely to cold because they believe it is healthy. I have observed at least two of my children, walk in the snow, with bare feet.

I used to love to go camping. Cooking over a fire, sleeping in a tent or outside, in sleeping bags, on the ground. It was renewing in a way I can't describe. I know what I gained from the experience last me for a long time.

I have written more than I thought I would. I think we can state the problem, as one of attitude; at some point in our evolution we began to see Nature, as in opposition to us, [enemy?] rather than the nurturer she is, after all, everything comes from Nature. We have become a society of manipulators, controllers and exploiters. We cannot just relax and let Nature take care of us, we must wrest things from her. Could the dominance of power and money have something to do with this?

Let's explore, how we can heal our separation, on Friday.

Love and Peace, Gregg

WHAT DO I KNOW

Good Morning! It is a beautiful day. It is a little cool for August. It is only 68 F and it is already 10:20 AM.

I said I was going to write more about Healing/Learning Centers. I was going to think about it over the weekend and have some more to say about it. What I thought about is, that I know nothing. Every community is different. Every community will have different needs. We need to trust in our guidance to come up with solutions for our individual situations.

We have got into a lot of trouble, letting our minds rule our hearts; we don't want to do that. We want to make all our decisions with love and let our minds follow our hearts direction.

We all ache to see change depending on our experiences. Some of us want to see medicine recreate itself. We believe that Nature has the healing solution for all that ails us, and perhaps natural remedies can be found within a few miles radius of any of us. We may see that healing arts, can include many, that have been excluded before.

Others of us, want to see agriculture return to a more natural state. We don't think that food should be raised using poisons, and the earth it is raised in, must be rich and alive.

Some of us are disturbed that education has become an institution for raising successful slaves rather than free people. It seems that people are programmed to accept authority, rather than think for themselves.

All our systems have been corrupted by money and power. We have been programmed to accept many narratives that are simply not true. Depending on what side the fence we are on, we can look over and see that, the 'others' narratives are faulty, but we are generally blind to our own. We need to see anew!

The collapse of our institutions gives us an opportunity to start over. The danger is, that we could rebuild them, according to our existing beliefs. That would be unfortunate. I don't think that will happen as our rising consciousness is putting love first. Most of us know, we don't want the craziness we have been experiencing. Can we accept the idea that we know nothing and need to start over?

Of course, we know something. We know our bodies need food and shelter. We know we love each others' company. We know we love each other, period. We know we want what is best for each other. We know we want plenty for everyone. We know we want good food, education, and medical care for everyone. And we know we can do it.

What does it mean to start over? We need to reverse our separation from Nature.

Yes, I think some kind of Healing/Learning Centers will happen, but they need to arise spontaneously and be guided by the higher consciousness of the folks that are doing it.

I need to accompany Jamie to town. I want to talk more about ways we can reconnect with Nature. Let us see what happens Wednesday.

Happy Monday!

Love and Peace, Gregg

THE AFTERMATH

Wednesday Night and Thursday it rained and rained. It tapered off during the day yesterday, but not until we received almost three inches. It dawned bright and Sunny this Morning. A remarkably new and brilliant day.

Many of us, who have been paying attention, note that people are waking up all around us. As we awaken to the light and a possibility of a new world, we also are keenly aware, that the old world seems to be teetering towards destruction. We have learned not to focus on the old world but we can't completely escape notice of how crazy things have become.

Many people feel the crumbling will accelerate with the collapse of our financial empire. As I have said before, I am not a prophet. I do follow some folks, who think they they have ability, in that area. For some years now, they have predicted that this year will begin the a major crash of global markets. If this is true, it may herald the collapse, of the whole old tired social systems, that have served to keep us in ignorance and servitude for generations.

I realize that many of us have been hearing and reading about this for a long time and nothing seems to happen. The old world seems to grind on and on with all its nuttiness. I expected things to crash back in the seventies. Many of us joined the back to the land movement, hoping to be part of a new society. Those of us who learned to grow or own food and live simpler lives enjoyed more peaceful lives and became acquainted with Nature in ways we did not imagine. But the tired world continued.

Now it appears, that if a collapse doesn't happen this year, it will happen soon. As it it is going, the old world seems bent on destruction.

What will happen if the economy completely collapses? What will happen if our money becomes worthless? What if our supermarket shelves are suddenly empty? Communities seem to always surprise us, and get together, and deal with common problems, after a disaster.

How can we avoid the mistakes of our old society, as we watch our new one arise? Much of the problem will be solved by the rising consciousness of Humankind. We definitely do not want to go back to endless conflict, inequality, poverty etc. We know we can have the world we want by making all our decisions with love.

Yet, there is so much relearning that needs to take place. We have been so misled, in almost all areas of our lives, that we need to start over. We need to rediscover Mother Nature and our beloved Earth. The most important functions of our society are in need of the greatest changes. How we raise food needs to be completely different. How we heal our bodies needs a complete reassessment. Both agriculture and medicine have become tools for the power elite to exploit the populace. Those of us, who are beginning to see, need to help those who are just opening their eyes.

We can raise food without artificial chemicals and we can heal our bodies without using them, also.

We need people, who are eager to learn, to provide teaching for others who want to learn. A teacher is one, who wants to learn, not one who already knows. We need to avoid the traps of the old world; the expert-dummy, and the worship of authority. We must avoid with a passion the idea of higher and lower.

I can imagine folks coming together to pursue learning and providing teaching and healing to those in need. Every community is going to address what they think as their biggest needs. I can imagine a Healing/Learning Center providing research in education, medicine and agriculture.

How about home industries? Are we going to need weavers, shoemakers, bakers, metalworkers? How much of the industrial complex will survive a major crash? Do we want to support them? Do we want to make our own stuff?

I had late start today and I have other commitments. I will think about this over the weekend and have further things to say about Healing/Learning Centers.

Have a great Friday everyone! Celebrate!

Love and Peace, Gregg

FLEETINGNESS OF LIFE

I was gazing out the North window this Morning admiring the scene, when it occurred to me, those thistles aren't like church spires. {My last blog} How did I come up with that? They branch out at the top, one could say they are many spired , I suppose. There are giant Mullen, that are like spires, interspersed with the thistles; their candles are just beginning to turn yellow.

I have lots on my mind and nothing on my mind. I can be very peaceful. I am very peaceful. This has been a strange year. Time is flying by. I was hoping to capture the Summer and I have been 'here'. I have been enjoying it, but I couldn't stop or even pause time. And that is okay, too.

I was hoping, to do, many landscaping tasks this Summer. I have gotten behind on tree trimming etc. I can hardly mow the lawn, as low branches threaten to knock me off the mower. It is specially bad this year, because the trees are so lush with leaves, the branches are heavier. Yet, I haven't done a thing. Jamie hasn't felt good so we passed up on the vegetable garden this year. Our perennial flower gardens have been outrageously beautiful this year, despite having the occasional burdock, poking up among them, pretending to belong.

I have been more aware of my age, and perhaps more accepting, I do object to the wearing of the body sometimes. Somebody said on Face Book, “I don't mind getting old but my body sure doesn't like it.” The limitation comes gradually as you age but there are times went it is pointed out.

We have had a lot of death, in the family, in the last couple years. My brother Bruce, his wife, Arlene. My brother Garth. And then Donna, the woman I was previously married to, and Mother of my first four children. In a way, Donna and I grew up together, we shared that time of life when people evolve from 'young people' to adults. It is a time of many changes. I was reminded of her Sunday. I was reading the obituaries and I noted and old friend died, who we knew, when we were all in our late twenties and early thirties. My first thought was to e-mail Donna and share the news. Then, I realized, there are very few people left that shared that time space.

I am not sad about it. It's okay. I don't think, of death of the body, as a real thing. We inhabit bodies for a short time and then go on to new adventures. The person that dies certainly doesn't care, I am sure it is a very freeing experience. We, who are left here, however, can be greatly disturbed. We may not have the personal assurance that death is not real. We may interpret it as the end of the person [spirit] as well as the body; and even if we have the faith that death is not real, we just miss them.

Right now, for me, it reminds me of the fleetingness of life. Like the Summer that has flown by, my life is also.

I don't feel that I am going to die soon. I wonder, does anybody? I really have a hard time imagining that I am close to the portal. I don't feel like I am in my 83^rd year and I have much experiencing left to do. Besides, I don't want to leave until I see the new world, created with love, firmly entrenched upon this beautiful Earth.

So, we have more work to do! Or more shining of Love and Light!

Is this a strange blog?

Friday I will talk more about Healing/Learning Centers.

Love and Peace, Gregg