DIVISIVENESS

The snow was coming down hard about 8AM, but it didn't last long and there is not much on the ground. My chickens are out and the sheep are still able to graze. But, more snow is forecast for this afternoon and tonight, and we could end up with several inches. I am ready- I guess.

The chaos in the world is distressing. There seems to be much individual pain. Also, in my extended family, there has been a tragedy, and there has been unexpected illness, of a serious nature, in a close relative. Many of my friends are dealing with illnesses. It is a stressful time for many folk. Yet, people are not letting these events get them down. They are dealing with their pain head on, and moving on.

It seems that no matter how bad the chaos gets, individually or globally, folks are beginning to see the growing light. We want to grow. We want to love. We want to experience oneness.

I am impressed and somewhat disturbed by the polarization that is occurring politically. Individuals and whole countries are demonized in the main stream press. People are catching on, but we cannot help but be influenced by the barrage of misinformation that engulfs us.

It is difficult to avoid divisiveness. I have to admit, I am amused by the ridicule, one of the political parties is experiencing. Their clown car of candidates makes for amusing reading. Yet, I live in a neighborhood fairly evenly divided between the parties; I don't think, any of my neighbors, support the extreme views of these candidates. Some of these folks are the most loving, kind, people I know. Belief systems vary between people, of the same and different, parties; the people are essentially the same.

I don't want to contribute to divisiveness. I want to see through the superficiality of peoples temporary beliefs, to the person they really are. Ridicule creates defensiveness and forces people to retreat to the worst aspects of their egos. We don't want that.

We have a highly competitive culture that likes to see things in black and white terms. People have to be right or wrong, higher or lower, good or bad. This current polarization can't last. When people get caught up in fear, they can manifest the worst aspects of their egos. Political parties like to play on fear, it is a powerful tool for manipulating people. To make it worse, the main stream media is controlled by people who benefit by chaos and divisiveness.

We can rise above it. We can know, truth has to exist, separate from the conflict. We don't have to take sides.

All we can really do is work on ourselves. As we learn to love ourselves, we will quit seeing our own egos projected on the world. We cannot see what 'is', until we get out of the mire of our own egos. We don't have to try to teach our neighbor. We don't have to correct the person next to us. It is only ourselves we need to work on. What the world needs is our love. The more we love ourselves, the more love will flow out of us. We are one, we help everyone, by loving ourselves.

Working on ourselves doesn't mean learning anything. It means unlearning. It means we are as perfect and innocent and loving as the day we were born. We can be who we really are, beings of love. It is difficult to accept, but deep down, I think we know it. When we meditate, we can find that place of quiet, that is LOVE.

More and more people, are realizing, the only solution to any problem is LOVE.

Love and Peace, Gregg

THE CLEANUP AND RECOVERY

We had the greatest Thanksgiving. I believe everybody had a good time. Some people might have thought I had too good a time. I was really into celebrating.

We had sixteen people for dinner and a couple more came for desert. Our six children came, all but one of the spouses [had to stay home with an aged dog] and six grand sons and a grand daughter. We had a wonderful raucous, noisy, good time and excellent food. We had a deboned turkey rolled around the dressing, and our usual Thanksgiving menu of creamed onions, yams, mashed potatoes, gravy and rutabagas. Jamie made apple pie, pumpkin pie and key lime pie.

Now is the time for the big cleanup. Jamie is doing most of it. I am mildly disabled. Well, I had better pitch in.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! I will remember this one for years.

Love and Peace, Gregg

NATURE AND THANKSGIVING

The subject of Monday's blog was on self-acceptance; that Evening I went outside and stood on the deck. The Sun had just gone down and the Moon had just broke over the horizon. The mixture of twilight and moonlight caused the naked trees and the rail fence to glow as if they had their own radiance. It was awesome. It was amazing. It was enriching, yet there was some loneliness. The loneliness is that I don't feel that I can share the experience, I am not enough of a poet.

The thing that came to me as I was standing there, was that I wrote on self-acceptance, without mentioning one word, about accepting our place in Nature. How can it be that we walk on the Earth, without knowing, more than a smattering, of our bodies connection with Nature? And what do we know of our Spirits connection with trees, flowers, lakes, birds and beast of all kinds? We get to know our pets, and are continually amazed at how some of them, e.g cats, dogs and horses, can read our minds. How about plants? How about rocks? We are in such denial, concerning our place in Nature, that it is like a whole new study. I know that many scientist have studied these things, for example Emoto's studies of how our mind effects water. Several people have looked at how our thoughts and feelings effect plant growth, but these studies seem to remain outside our common consciousness.

There was a time several years ago, that we cooked most of our food outside in the Summer. We had a kitchen wood range and we didn't want to heat up the house just for everyday cooking. We had a well pump outside and an outhouse, so we could spend much of our Summer outside. When we modernized, I hoped to spend at least one week every Summer living in a tent and camping in the backyard. I didn't.

I don't know how many thousands of years ago, we were encouraged, even enforced, to turn our backs on Nature. I imagine it coincided with the rise of male dominance and the suppression of women and the feminine principal. The major religions demonized Nature and the feminine principal. We desperately need to put logic back to service of the heart. We need to sink back into Natures arms. Our Mother will welcome us. Let us put an end to male dominance and the function of the mind separate from the wisdom of our heart.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving! It is a wonderful time to appreciate Nature's bounty. Let us be thankful to our Mother. Thankfulness is a powerful state. Have you ever tried it as a mantra? It brings peace and love to the soul. When we connect with what we are thankful for our concerns drop away. I have been making a practice of reminding myself of what I am thankful for, it makes a difference. It is easy to switch your mind to what we are grateful for, whenever worry, or feelings of lack, try to enter.

Nature and the Universe are loving. They want to give us, what we want. Our minds are confused, and thoughts of lack and fear, prevent the good things we want from materializing. Thankfulness clears our mind of that kind of confusion, and opens us to receive the bounty of the Universe. Like attracts like. When we are thankful, we attract more to be thankful for.

A neighbor came over to visit. Have a great Thanksgiving! I will be thankful for the gathering, of my children and their children, and the great food and the general frivolity. I wish every one a Thanksgiving full of love and good cheer.

Love and Peace, Gregg

SELF-ACCEPTANCE

We are emerging from a weeklong cold spell. It is already 36.5 F, balmy for this latitude. It was 24 degrees when I went out to let the chickens out; the ice was thin enough on the sheep's water that I could break it easily.

In the process of discovering who we are, we need to learn self-acceptance. What self do we accept? The emerging self? The ideal self? Who are we? We need to accept, who we are, every moment. It is easier to talk about who we are in the abstract e.g. beings of light, pure immortal energy, etc. etc. We have learned from our spiritual mentors, and the great ones, who we might really be, but on the pathway to that realization, we need to accept who we are now, in these bodies, with all their peculiarities and limitations.

Let us look, for a moment, without any reference to spirituality. We are bodies. We are personalities. We are members of a community. When we first ask the question, who we are, we often jump to the ethereal, and leap over, what we experience about ourselves. We are in a continuous feedback loop with the rest of the folks in this world. We constantly get messages about who we are. But the feedback is social, cultural, and personal. It says something, but it is certainly not the final arbiter, of who we are. We are certainly not a summation of the world's opinion of us.

But who are we? We do have our own opinion of ourselves. The problem is, that opinion has been shaped by a very perverse cultural and social experience. At every stage in our development, people have tried to force us into one mold or another. We have been shamed, criticized, guilted, condemned and sometimes ostracized because we didn't quite fit the mold.

How can we see ourselves free from all that programming? How can we know ourselves, when we are full of others' opinions of us? How can we know our own feelings, from those borrowed from the culture, to protect ourselves? We wanted to be safe. We wanted to belong. How far did we run from ourselves to avoid censure?

Folks talk about being an authentic being; how is that possible after the programming we have endured since our birth?

This is the place where I could throw up my hands and say, “I have no idea”. I am on this journey with you. Sometimes I feel I am close to my goal, and sometimes it seems to be, on the distant horizon.

But, I do have some ideas. I think we need to see self-acceptance as a journey. And a journey we can love. We got in this mess, because we inculcated a whole panoply of judgements and ideas about ourselves. We got confused about, who we are, because we accepted other peoples judgements, about ourselves. We get out of the mess, by backing up, and giving up the judgements.

The first step is to form, the intent, not to judge ourselves. In the beginning, we can't tell the difference between a self-evaluation and a borrowed judgement. The simple decision, not to judge ourselves, opens up new windows. Blame and guilt have never advanced human kind, individually or globally. Opening windows means letting the light in. Letting the light in means loving ourselves. The moment we decide not to judge ourselves, is the moment, we begin to love ourselves.

On our journey we will find ourselves behaving atrociously. Getting down on ourselves does not help; in fact, it insures that we will do something similar in the future. We need to accept that we haven't reached our goal. We will backslide. When we do, we can look at ourselves with love and acceptance. Yes, we erred. Error is only error, and is correctable, by lovingly accepting, who we are at this moment.

We have no understanding of how magnificent we are! We are all unique and amazing human beings. At some point in the future, we may see ourselves as great beings of light and pure immortal energy, but right now, we are in these pretty neat bodies. We might just think things are marvelous when we give up judgement.

Love and Peace, Gregg

A LITTLE ROUGH PATCH

Well Winter arrived suddenly here on Laughing Water Farm. Up until yesterday, we had a week of temperatures that didn't go below freezing, now the forecast is for a week of temperatures that won't go above freezing. The temperature dropped 30 degrees Wednesday night and we had snow flurries yesterday. We didn't get much snow, but there is snow on the ground just to the south of us.

I broke the ice on the sheep water yesterday and this Morning. The ice was quite thick this Morning [it was 21 degrees F when I got up]. Winter is official, when I have to start hauling water. The time is now.

The next few weeks may be difficult. The power of the dark may be diminished, but they are capable of causing serious trouble in their death throws. We are One. We can't insulate ourselves completely from the chaos or should we. We will need to be more alert than ever to negative thoughts and violent impulses. We need to remind ourselves continually that we are on a path of love.

If we think of humanity, as one mind, it is like we are in a final struggle, to give up our violence. The end result of separation is the turning against self. Humanity, as one mind is struggling with this; and, to some extent each individual is. If we reinforce our intent to embrace love and eschew fear and judgement we will come through this in relative ease. This will be, a period of temptation, to retreat to our egos, and see the world in terms of separation. We will need to remind ourselves of our oneness and our love for each other.

I don't think this period will last for more than a few weeks. We are learning rapidly. It would be wise not to draw any conclusions. What we think we see is probably distorted. Refrain from judgement, reject no one, everybody needs our love, regardless of how misinformed or misled they are. We will pass out of this craziness soon.

For some of us, the push to take refuge in our egos, may result in an increase of judgement of those closest to us. It would be wise to be alert to heightened tendency to be critical of spouses, children, and close friends. Again the solution is to remind ourselves to embrace love. With constant intent, we can program our minds to see love.

We, as a whole, are on the verge of great breakthroughs. New knowledge about our past, present and future is coming to light. We will soon see our history in a completely different way. Our origins will be known. It will be clear that we are not alone in the universe. We will soon give up any tendency to embrace the dark. Those who have sought and held power by embracing the dark will be held accountable. We will see that they cannot hurt us. We may not see it clearly now, but we will forgive them. We will see how desperately they need to be loved.

Yes, sometimes in can be darkest before the dawn; be of good cheer. Avoid divisiveness; embrace Oneness. Bless everyone we meet! Laugh, love, sing, dance, smile and see love everywhere.

Happy Friday!

Love and Peace, Gregg

ON DISCOVERING WHO WE ARE II

Strange weather! It didn't cool off last night. It is still 55.9 F, but the temperature is dropping. According to the forecast, it will drop all day and it supposed to snow tonight. It was Sunny when I first got up, but now it is cloudy and windy. We are coming off a three day siege of rain. I took my rain gauge in when the temps were falling below freezing, so I am not sure how much rain we got, but I think it rained at least an inch last night.

Before I go to bed, I sit at the computer for about an hour, read a few things and play solitaire. Last night as I was sitting here, I felt something on my hand, I looked, there was a mosquito biting me. I squished it with my finger, then felt kind of bad that I unceremoniously killed this [perhaps] last intruder of the season. Mosquitoes on November 17^th, that is a record in my experience. I remember seeing one in October once, when I was out in the woods.

Discovering who are, should be an exciting adventure, once we rid ourselves of all our preconceived ideas from all the isms on the planet. Certainly some of the ideas must be valid; the core of religions do contain truth. Any idea we hear, read about etc. must feel right. It must be free of fear and resonate when we contemplate it. Each one of us must to this with all the thoughts we have about 'who we are'. If we do accept something, that turns out to not be true, we will know; that is good, that is learning. We can accept an idea, knowing that our acceptance may be temporary, we can avoid belief.

In our journey of discovering who we are, we must first accept who we are. Or, at least, who we think we are. Many of us on a spiritual journey, have traveled through the phase of 'positive thinking'. I certainly promote positive thinking, as opposed to negative thinking. Yet, it can cause a war in the mind, in the beginning stages. Most writers, on the subject, have some kind of diet they propose, where one attempts to have only positive thoughts. This is an excellent exercise, as it helps us see, just how prevalent our negative thoughts are. None of my sources recommended continuing this experiment, without going into the second phase, which was discovering how/why these thoughts were being generated.

We can not stay in the first stage because it amounts to suppression and creates a war between the conscious and subconscious parts of the mind. A war which the subconscious will win. Having a thought and letting it go, is what we want to do. Having a thought, and finding it intolerable or too icky and attempting to push it out of our minds, doesn't work. It will just be submerged, to our subconscious, and come back, more powerful, with several friends. There is an art to having a negative thought, looking at it, turning it over and letting it go, without attaching feelings to it. Attaching feeling gives it power and assures that it will return.

We address the question, why do we have these recurrent negative thoughts? In our growing up, we pass through a continuing stream of negative experiences, caused by the judgements of our caretakers, and all our social systems. We were hurt, embarrassed, abused, used and exploited. Our world was very imperfect. We make it through this gauntlet, only by suppressing some of the feelings of these experiences. These suppressed feelings, if not thought about and dealt with, become encysted as thought generators.

The key is forgiveness. When we forgive our transgressors, we release ourselves from these thought generators. Forgiveness, is more than just going through the motions, it is seeing that the perpetrator was, also, trapped in their drama and there is a knowing that we cannot really be hurt any way.

We will eventually realize, that we are not our bodies and we, also, are not our minds. At least, not our minds, as the collection of thoughts, that we associate with ourselves. I am getting ahead of myself. There will be more on this in a later blog.

What I want to talk about now, is the acceptance of who we are, with all of our supposed blemishes. When we went through the first positive thinking phase, we were comparing ourselves to an ideal that we incorporated from our culture. It wasn't a real person. We are what we are. In the Eastern meditation traditions, there is a stage where we learn to view our mind from outside our mind. From a point of oneness, we see our separate selves, without judgement.

Accepting of ourselves, means giving up all judgement of ourselves. We can't love ourselves, and judge and evaluate ourselves, at the same time.

I will be writing more about this. I am on this journey, with you, and I can't get ahead of myself.

Love and Peace, Gregg

MISCHIEF MAKING

It is chilly and rainy outside. It is warm and cozy here in the North Room, where I am sitting, with a cup of coffee at my elbow. I am peaceful now, but I have been disturbed, off and on, these last few days.

I did not want to write about it. I wanted to ignore it. I wished it didn't happen. What can I say? I read, in various blogs, that the dark were not over their mischief making. They advised, that we needed to be prepared, for some attempts to get the world involved in a major conflict. They are desperate. They are losing control. They will do anything to create chaos and conflict. So I expected it, but I was still shocked to my core. I am speaking of the events in Paris.

Regardless who gets blamed, it was caused by the same group, that has been engineering false flag operations, all over the globe. It follows their pattern to a 't'. It is the same game they have been playing all along. They create an excuse to go to war; the goal is control of the oil and world domination. Look what happened after 9-11. How many millions of people were killed or displaced? How much division, chaos, poverty, destruction and pain was created? Who was the beneficiary?

This will encourage the war mongers and those who are conflict oriented. We will have to put up with some screaming and ranting. There will be an attempt to create fear in our minds and the need to take violent action. The main stream media will go along, at least, with some of the attempts to arouse people's negatively.

It will be a pain in the tush to watch this again, but, they won't succeed. Our consciousness is too high, now, for this to work. We have seen what fear does. We know that violence, only begets more violence. We won't succumb. It may be helpful to observe it, as a cartoon show, that is going on under the frame of our regular life; strange, funny sometimes, and not to be taken seriously.

Despite the MSM, there is more positive goings on, than negative. Look for them. Folks are demanding peace all over the world. Peace is gaining, I know, it might not look like that. As long as the MSM, blares every violent act designed to keep us off balance, it makes it difficult to appreciate the love growing in the world. We don't have to pay attention to it. It is all part of the cartoon.

We need to pay attention to our self-talk. It is important to avoid negativity, when talking to and about ourselves. These events are designed to incite negativity in the mind. Remember, we are co-creators. We will have the world we want. Let us keep focusing on love. What is not love, is not real.

I think this event is, already, backlashing on the dark. I think we are too aware, to fall for it this time. I think it will have the opposite effect, as the one intended.

We will go along, doing our best, to love one another and find ways of being of service. We can't fail. We have a loving Universe supporting us. Smile, laugh, sing, dance, nothing will stop the emerging world of love.

I would like to continue the discussion of, discovering 'who we are', on Wednesday.

Love and Peace, Gregg