Because I cannot say it any better myself...

I will quote Edward Abbey:


Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it's still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for awhile and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: You will outlive the bastards.

Note that his seeping scorn is directed to the socialization of the wilderness. While I'm not 100% in his environmentalist camp, and my system can't carry the kind of anger that he made his career out of, nor can I support his rather caustic view of immigrants, I do share his left of the Western wilderness. And of living life fully. The combination of the two carries a special magic, which is only now becoming apparent to me. With my 3rd trip to the desert in just over a month coming up this weekend, I think a bit of Joshua Tree pollen has crept into my bloodstream. Swept away by the naked, scorching, mysticism of the Valley of Fire a few weeks ago, I was helplessly hooked.

But, back to Abbey:

I wonder, did he actually, as he claims to... "Of course I litter the public highway. Every chance I get. After all, it's not the beer cans that are ugly; it's the highway that is ugly." Environmentalist litterer? What do you think?

And every trip I take abroad convinces me more and more how right he is when he says "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." (Well, okay, so science class convinced me of the obvious truth... its implications continually deepen)

While I appreciate his point and his wit, I have mixed feelings about his hostility in asserting that "Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top." I don't know if its my affection and highest hopes for the current American administration, or a year and a half of spiritual psychology education, but I can't help but think a path without insults littered about would probably move more smoothly. Oh, I've become such a peace-loving hippie.

My thoughts on Abbey Overall? Like many authors and activists, I love him when he's loving. And, I will be finding a copy of Desert Solitaire.

What do you think of him?
Learn more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Abbey

Going From Broke #5 - Winding the clock

My professional life has changed dramatically since my last "going from broke" update, and I'll leave it to say that my financial situation is now clearly improving. I'm settling into the busy work life of the business I purchased in December, and so so grateful. Strangely though, now that my earlier guiding focus of finding a heartfelt way to pay the bills is taken care of, I find myself showing symptoms of purposelessness.

I have beautiful fulfilling work days, with lovely clients, evenings filled with dance and social outings several times a week, a great reading list I visit almost daily, a couple interesting men on the fringes of my life, shrinking debt, a plan to buy my own condo by the end of the year, and, for this week, a house in Santa Monica to myself. But still, I find myself chronically tired - that emotionally drained feeling of not really wanting to move forward. I have the persistent belly bloat that tells me my digestion is not working quite as it could be, I'm spending way to much time trying to distract myself with what other people are up to on Facebook, and I keep catching myself sadly longing for the comfort of my last relationship, in a way that doesn't fit the picture of really how great my life is now.

My Zen Page-a-Day calendar had, as it always does, a rather compelling little thought one day last week:

"Life without Zazen is like winding your clock without setting it; it runs perfectly fine, but it doesn't tell time." -Suzuki Roshi

Zazen here is the traditional Buddhist practice of meditation, the exact significance of which I'm currently examining a little deeper. I've tended to assume that one could simply replace "Zazen" with the spiritual practice of his or her choosing - anything that would help guide us back to a greater focus than the everyday toils of this mortal coil. (Yes, that rhyme was both painful and completely irresistible.)

I'm beginning to suspect there's something crucial about meditation that nothing else quite gets to in the same way. I've been setting intentions, working a bit with affirmations, tracking psychological reactions, working a compassionate issue-resolution process with myself: simply, engaging in a lot of psycho-spiritual practices. They're all great, but they're also all grounded in material reality. That was what I loved about these exercises the most, as I was learning them, when I'd been searching for a way to make the spiritual practical. Now, I'm finding my needs are different.

I suspect this melancholy is not dissatisfaction with my career, or the days it creates for me, in fact I love those both. I don't think it's just physical blech, although a physiological issue could certainly play into my malaise (eg: the most hated tendency for candida albicans overgrowth in the human gut, for which the best remedy is cutting out all sugars, which is simply not in my realm of possibility at this time - I've tried.) I don't think it's fear at the magnitude of changes in my life, although there have been biggies for sure. I don't think these are just break-up blues, although I do still have a heart full of love for someone far away.

I think this subtly exhausting undercurrent of sadness is a completely spiritual one. I suspect it's actually me longing for something that's not grounded in material reality, that connects me again with my transcendent nature and goes beyond the fleeting highs and lows of life on planet Earth. And, fought it though I have, I think Suzuki Roshi might be right: meditation might be the only way to set my clock right again.

I love other spiritual practices... I love chanting, and dancing suptahs, and eye gazing, and sunset revelling, and loving forgiveness, and random acts of kindness, but as soon as interacting with other people in all our humanness is involved, something of the direct intimate experience of sweet silent divinity is lost for me. The key, I think, to being able to live in spirituality, is to be able to hold a perspective of altitude - one that sees the forest through all the trees. As long as all my spiritual practices involve other trees, however sweet and joyous they may be, I'm not getting re-tuned to the greater forest.

In much lofty hippy-speak, what I'm really saying here is I want to spend more time sitting by myself, staring at a wall.

Actually, when I put it that way, it sounds like something I've heard several friends say after beginning new jobs :)

Welcome to the real world, huh?

If you'll excuse me, I have a clock to set...

I Say Hooray

Let me officially lend my voice to the bulk of women on this planet, as we say:

HOORAY!

For more Hugh Jackman

Egg Crackers #1 - An Old Question, Made Entirely New

I've discovered one of the best gifts the universe can offer is a walking buddy who will ask you imponderables in the early morning.

Here's my most recent favorite. So, anyone who's been on any sort of formal personal growth path (including being about to graduate and talking to career counselors), has been asked the question "If you had all the money you'd ever need, what would you do?" or "What would your perfect day look like?" or "If you didn't have to work, what would you do with your life?" I'm no exception, and I have a laundry-list of pre-fab answers to these questions I've heard a hundred times. Kind of defeats their usefulness. Bhadra threw me the question in a whole new way, though... she asked:

"Imagine you didn't have your childhood, and all your life up to this point. If it were all just starting today, what do you want to do with it?"

See, all my prefab answers were based around things I've found joy in in the past - music, theater, facilitating growth in others, travel... but this isn't the past anymore. This question has the strange effect of requiring a deep awareness of intuition and the call of my spirit, right here, right now, in real time. And my being so stumped at the question seems to show me that's not something I'm so practiced at. It cracks my egg open. I love it.

If it's all new, right now... what do you want to make with it?

Around The House #2 - Smooth Suffering

This one's not really an alternative home remedy, as expected in the hippie sense... but it is a remedy of sorts, and a little alternative. Okay, maybe a lot alternative. But I love it.

The Russian mystic Gurdjieff said that addiction to suffering was the one he had the hardest time getting his students to give up*, and I can relate. I mean, we've got to struggle a little in life to make it worthwhile, right?

Well, I'm tired of fighting out there. I think I'll control how I receive my pain from now on, thanks. Conveniently, I've found a great way to get all the torture I could ever need in one place. I've also decided it's okay to relinquish my old quasi-feminist body-hair-for-the-principle-of-it stance, and give into my aesthetic enjoyment of hairlessness. (Hmm.. sorry, ex-boyfriends!) So,

Ladies, and deliciously metrosexual men, say hello to your new worst best friend:

The Epilady Discrette

Why sabotage success in your life because you have some subconscious programming that says you have dues to pay? Just take all that shit out on yourself with one easy handheld device, and be done with it. Nothing like ripping hairs out of their folicles, root and all, to put you in your place. Plus, you may just find yourself a little sexier, when you're done.

$35 on Amazon. Enjoy!

*Conscious Loving by Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks, pp.90

These are a few of my favorite things #1 - what they've said

Sometimes, especially in periods of flux and apparent downturn, its important to acknowledge how far we've come, the close connections we've made, and the wonderful way we're each blossoming as people. (I know that grammar is all wrong, any English teachers out there, I'm taking poetic license).

I thought I'd support myself in this by listing here, my favorite things that people have ever said to me, about me. Not to brag or toot my horn, but just to summon up a reminder in myself that of how incredibly much love pours my way every day. I invite any of you to sit down and try this out too, it'll really pick you up on a bad day.

In gratitude...

*"You're like a juvenile Maude" (as in Hardold and...)

*"Well, it's not always easy to be a pioneer. But its in your blood."

*"Tonight, your voice sounded like the universe vibrating."

*"Just practicing the old 'Neilson eat-sh*t, huh?" (lovingly, when snowboarding)

*"I've been secretly hoping I could pass on the business to you someday"

*"All this might just amount to a hill of beans, but I don't care. This is our hill, and these are our beans!" (Yeah, I still count it)

*"You know out-of-body experiences? Well that was an in-to body experience. Wow."

*"Stop trying to make everyone else proud, Heidi. You've done that already. It's time to live for you, now"

*"You try to fight it, but you can't help it. You ARE a yoga teacher."


*"I've loved every part of you for the past 2 1/2 years. And I always will."



mmm...

Around The House #1- Nix the Nagging Gnats

We have gradually found ourselves with a growing fruit fly infestation over the past couple weeks. The cloud of them that would emerge when I opened the compost bin wasn't so bad... it was outside, and good for a repulsed laugh. The ones in the kitchen were for the most part, mildly annoying.... until they got uppity. Once it got to the point where they'd wander from the kitchen and start jumping on the keyboard, leaving comments for their Myspace friends while we were trying to do homework, it was all too much.


I sat down with my good friend Google, whom, sadly, I spend more time with than any of my friends who are actually human beings.... wow....

Woops, sorry got distracted there. So my buddy Google and I went in search of non-toxic home remedies for this growing Drosophila problem (my friend also reminded me of this scientific name, I'd forgotten since high shcool.... awesome.) There were, as there always are, a plethora of answers, all swearing they worked, but after the number of home health-remedies I've tried and all the places I've put bizzare concoctions in my body to no avail, I was suspicious.

I went for the simplest first: a couple drops of dish soap, 3/4 inch of apple cider vinegar, let stand. Easy. I guess the soap breaks the surface tension of the vinegar, so the flies, who would normally land on liquid and be able to fly right away, end up meeting a blissful end of drowning in sweet beloved nectar. This is how one has to phrase an extermination when one is a hippie.

Lo and behold, it worked!! Check out all these little babies who we were able to help transgress into a higher life form:

Pretty incredible, huh? Highly recommended, next time you find yourself near-neurotic around your gnat nuisance.