Buffet and Gates and the Soul of Humanity

My opinion? Bill Gates and Warren Buffet go a long way in balancing
pejorative public perception of the wealthy in America. I've felt
wildly embarrassed to be an American on many occasions in the past
several years; specifically by the likes of Kenneth Lay, Martha
Stewart, L. Dennis Kozlowski, Mark Swartz, oh, who am I leaving out??

I'm an independent idealist. I am not wealthy, but I am an artist with
a sensibility that is shamed by the blatant lack of compassion that the
ruling party/class has exhibited in the face of tremendous human
suffering brought on by an oil-based War of their own creation and the
pathetic response to Hurricane Katrina last September.

I loved the New York Times front page image of Warren Buffet on Monday.
There he is getting out a cab on 5th Ave to meet Bill at the Public
Library. No briefcase, no portfolio; just a beat-up manilla bubble
mailer which no doubt held the check for $31 billion (or is it 44)
made out to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Ah! HUMILITY! Thank you Warren
Buffet, thank you Bill Gates for choosing philanthropy at the height
of your power with the best interests of the soul of humanity at stake.
You have my blessing to go cure world diseases and help pay to educate
brilliant minds. May each of us be great stewards of wealth, in
whatever form we experience the word.

Night School

I had a first time visit with an acupuncturist, Susan Sandage yesterday. She was very thorough in garnering background information about my health. When she asked about my sleep patterns and habits, I told her that when I turn off the lights, I immediately begin to silently pray or chant or repeat a mantra and am able to fall asleep easily this way (unless of course, I am manic and obsessive and sleep just isn't even an option). Generally though, I fall asleep around midnight and wake around 4am from a dream. I've blog many dreams in this space and I find that during the full moon, my dreams are illuminated with a clarity that is unique from the rest of the moon's phases. I told her how clear the guidance of my dreams can be at times and she said, "oh, so you're going to night school".

Sleeping and dreaming as Night School!! Isn't that a lovely notion to people like me who feel that life is to be accomplished, not just lived! I've mostly "needed" about eight hours of sleep as an adult and I know there are those individuals who need very little sleep, but I love my sleep/dream time. I'm very attracted to this idea that even though I'm at rest, I'm still learning and experiencing in my dream life. It is said that the mind will believe anything you tell it and that our brains don't differentiate "reality" or imagination or "dreams" as separate experiences; waking, dreaming, hallucinating, imagining, remembering, it's all "real" in our minds. Hence, the very new age idea that we are able to create our own reality!

I've believed for a long time now that the reason I am here is to learn how to become a whole and healed and loving human being. I believe that once I achieve that, in however many life times that's going to take, it is at that point, Nirvana, that my soul will no longer seek a human body and will be absorbed into the greater Divine consciousness some of us know as "God/dess". This is my reality, welcome to it!

May you enroll in Night School,
Connie

Jesse's Contribution

In The Jungle Watch it now on StupidVideos!

Food as Fun?

I was following a Nabisco truck down Llewellyn Ave. this morning and found my view of the greater world blocked by this specifically "Nabisco" sentiment: Discover a World of Fun: Nabisco World. I'm telling you, only in America is the desire for entertainment so insatiable that we attribute "fun" with "food". How many other nations in the world have the luxury of such a ludicrous mindset? Do the French eat for fun? No, they eat because they love delicious foods dripping in butter! Do the Italians eat for fun? NO! They eat because they enjoy simple flavors that can be identified individually on the palette. Do you think the Chinese have the luxury of thinking that eating is fun? Or how about Ethiopia, or Zimbawbe where Robert Mugabe and his thugs have displaced all the white farm owners with cronies who don't give a damn about actually raising crops and livestock and therefore destroyed their nations economy which now has an inflation rate of something like 1000% and 50% unemployment and families who used to have homes living in corrugated tin shacks with grates over an open fire to cook with? Why? It's not because they think it's FUN to cookout!

Give me a break Nabisco! A world of fun? Oh yea, bring on the chocolate covered Oreos and let me watch the fun being had as three sleeves of sugar and fat get consumed in one evening by a family of four! Oh yea, that is great entertainment! In fact, let's make some S'mores now in the fireplace, with the damper closed, that would be fun, wouldn't it? Can you tell I'm a little incensed by the notion that eating is entertaining? What kind of an arrogant sense of entitlement is that? It's so pathetically American to confuse "fun" with "nutrition" or "nourishment".

And lest you forget: Nabisco is really RJRNabisco which used to be RJReynolds, now the ubiquitous "ALTRIA", which so happens to be the creator and distributor of the best selling killer known to humankind: MARLBORO! Hey Nabisco, is it "FUN" being the cause of millions of avoidable deaths every year? Is it fun being the pushers of nicotine as well as white flour, high fructose corn syrup, MSG, dozens of preservatives and genetically modified food starch? Dang! Forget the Nascar! Forget roller coasters, swimming in a mountain lake under the full moon or singing at the top of yours lungs just because if FEELS good! Why bother? Just get me a pack of smokes and some Triscuit, man, THIS IS FUN!

Healing Circle

I called together a healing circle on Monday evening for Leticia. Four of us came together to create a space of healing for the ovarian cancer that she has. We started with meditating to ground our intention for healing and wisdom to come forth. Once she was on the massage table, we surrounded her. I was at her head and began with a prayer, asking for a miraculous healing. We continued to shift our place around the table and each of us spoke to her or laid hands on her silently. When Elizabeth told her how unique and special she was, we could see those words touch her heart and the tears began and we just held a sacred space for those tears to flow and do their healing. When we were finished, we left her alone for a few minutes and walked outside. We were all moved by what we had experienced, by what we had made space for and for the healing that took place in each of us in our desire to heal another.

May you be healed, may you be whole,
Connie

5th Chakra

The time has come for me to say what I think I know about the 5th Chakra. I've been hanging out with this for two months now; experiencing things through the energy center located where the spinal column intersects with the base of the brain. This is a very power spot. My yogini Gwen says that it's considered the super highway of the energy system; it's the tunnel where the Divine enters the physical body? Naturally, it's next stop is your heart.

It was pouring here today, torrential Alberto (time for the males to wreak havoc with their fury this year) remnants. Imagine for a moment that every drop of rain that fell on your head today was a drop of Divine energy...liquid gold if you will. There it is dropping right into your crown chakra...right at the top of your head. Imagine now that the gold flows into your brain, stopping off at your third eye, the place just above your eyebrows and fills your brain with pure, white wisdom from the source of all divinity in the universe. Then it flows down to the base of your brain, the top of your spine.

Now is the point where your unconscious mind asks the question: are you going to honor divine wisdom or your own will? This is the essential question to ask when working with the energy of the 5th chakra. Is your neck stiff? Chances are you are blocking off divine wisdom and knowledge and allowing your rational mind to make far too many important decisions for you. It's essential to focus on that third eye, at least a little bit every day to remind your rational mind that you are open to the voices of Divine God/dess even if you're not sure you speak the language.

By the way, you don't need to be exceptionally spiritually intuned to receive guidance, it's available to anyone who makes it their intention to be guided. The key that unlocks the 5th chakra is SURRENDER. I had a big, huge surrender experience in yoga class today. We were in a heart opener pose, or crucifixion pose if you need a visual, and I allowed my 5th chakra to open up as I surrendered my will to the God/dess and agreed to be taken and used for higher purposes that I may not understand. It may be the first time I felt a true feminine presence in my experience of GOD. There has always been a detachment there in my experience, from the male, patriarchal GOD. I've tried and tried, but I just can't make "him" work for me.

I've been holding June 15 in my mind as some major transition day for me. It's been two months of healing from my most recent heartbreak, which means actually feeling and experiencing the pain rather than stuffing it down as it rises. I feel healed. I've been able to transmute that pain into a love that I send out to him, and through this process I've come back into myself, for I had surely taken flight once I jumped off a cliff with a romantic nihilist (oh! the drama of it all!) ;o} I feel whole again, which is the true blessing of June 15, 2006.

I send you love and blessings,
Connie

Pink Bathtub

Dream Journal:
In my dream I'm in an unknown bathroom with two shower/tub combinations. One is on the north wall, one is on the west wall of the square room. I'm not content with the experience in the first shower, the north one, in fact I have my clothes on. I get out and undress, step into the west wall shower, adjust the shower curtain; both the curtain and the liner are inside the tub, I pull the curtain up and drape it on the outside of the tub.

The water is running and when I look down there is two inches of water, tinged pink with my menstrual blood. It's a lot of blood but I think to myself, "oh, this explains it all".

Any one care to interpret this dream with me?

Connie

Life Must be Felt

Life must be felt, it must be experienced. We are not here to endure this life, we are here to live and grow into the life we agreed to incarnate into. We are here to manifest our highest possible good, while acknowledging our humanity and fallibility and hopefully, laughing at ourselves and the stupid stuff we do sometime.

I've been so afraid of moving up to the next rung on my spiritual ladder. I've spent the last nine months distracted by my past, distracted by the pleasures of the senses and the flesh, distracted by the need to rescue every wounded soul that comes my way. Enough I say! The guidance I am now receiving says to make time for silence and be still. Did you know there are birds that sing to each other all through the night? Last night, meditating in the hot tub, I listened to a most exquisite, musical and natural conversation between two birds in separate trees.....are they nightingales? The complexity of their language was mind boggling while in the same moment, awe-inspiring.

Their song is living in me now...in my heart and love for this natural, beautiful planet and in my auditory memory, in love with the sounds of silence.

Namaste`,
Connie

Ministry

WE ARE ALL MINISTERS TO ONE ANOTHER, WHEN OUR HEARTS ARE GROUNDED IN LOVE.

When I was 14

Summer is my favorite season of the year, it reminds me of my youth growing up in Santa Cruz, CA half a block from the beach. I'd stub my poor toes every day cuz I never wore shoes! I have sand between my toes eternally! At the bottom of the "gully" across the street, I'd pick blackberries with my sister and our caretaker Peggy would teach us how to make a blackberry pie. And with the left over pie dough? We'd roll it out, sprinkle it with cinnamon and suger, cut it into strips and pop it in the oven for a "I-can't-wait- two-hours-for-the-pie-to-bake-and-cool" treat within ten minuites. YUMMY!

Yoga Wedding

I had the extreme honor and pleasure of officiating (for the first time) at the wedding of my yoga teacher Gwen and her groom Fred this evening. The ceremony we created began with Hindu chanting and also included aspects from the New Zealand Book of Common Prayer, (Episcopal), as well as the Seven Blessings or Sheva Brachos canted in Hebrew from the Jewish tradition. It ended with the smashing of the wineglass under the groom's foot! It was truly a multi-denominational wedding ceremony.

I love being called to this ministry. I loved creating a ceremony that was meaningful to many people of various religious and spiritual practices. I have always enjoyed breaking out of the box and this was no exception. Every word spoken was unfamiliar to those congregated; i.e., they listened in a new way to the blessing of a marriage. Gwen and Fred share an beautiful and tender love and it was such a delight to officially marry them.

Creating a Miracle Day

This morning I chose to ask the universe for a miracle. I asked myself, "what kind of day do I want to create?" I answered myself, "something miraculous in the form of exactly what I need". So far, I have had many visitors today.

One of them is a young woman of 24 with an incredible amount of grace and light and Divine energy. She remembers her dreams! She is one of the most powerful dreamers I have ever met. The quality of the guidance that she receives is miraculous! There she is dressed entirely in black in an Antarctic landscape, her soul guide swathed in white.

There she is climbing a cliff to escape a tidal wave, with her spirit guide a few levels above her, guiding and supporting her path. She chooses not to go into the city, but allows the wave to take her and behold, she can breathe underwater!

There she in a forest clearing, a meadow effused with light, with a litter of kittens, naked with her husband, and the spirit guide comes out of the forest as a wolf man, his tongue lolling as he laughs, beckoning her to join in the joke.

Dreams are, in my opinion, the richest form of guidance we are capable of receiving. We are somehow hardwired to receive guidance from the unseen world in a way that does not include logic, or reason or a need for evidence. Every dream is a release from the world of time and linear thought; a glimpse into the way the mind of the Gods work. How amazing that we are invited into that realm each time we close our eyes. For me, who finds so much wonder and joy in the waking world, dreams are like the Gods saying, "hey, you think THAT'S cool? WATCH THIS!".

Wouldn't it be a great experiment to try to live your life the way you do your sleep? By passively entering into it, inviting it even, to take you to places and images you've never dreamed possible. Wouldn't it be great if the next time you wake up, you decide to wake up into a dream where you passively allow Divine guidance to take you where the Gods want you to go? Think about it! When was the last time you fell asleep wondering what you'd be dreaming in two months or two years from now? Do you worry in your dreams? Do you make plans in your dreams? I know I don't! Live a day like a dream; make it a day off from work. Assume every thing you think and see and experience on that day is a part of a dream sending you all the messages and guidance you need to live the perfect day, where all things are in time with Divine Right Purpose.

Dream your day! ENJOY!

Namaste`,
Connie