I’ve been reading Ram Das’ book, Still Here.  Wise, candid, and poignant.  Timely, too, as I recently flirted with death.  Shirley’s death, to be more precise.  She was expected to die any day. I spent two weeks with this 94-yr.-old, annointing her as they did in the Bible, her favorite book.  Discussing who she’d be reunited with.  Confessing her regrets.  I told her I could see God through her when we met, she was that translucent, that ready to go.  And now, 4 weeks later, she’s still here.  But stubborn again.  She’s lost her glow.

Shirley taught me about attachment - - again!  I wanted her to die with, or in, a sacred air.  SHE wanted to “die with her pants on”, wanted to be in control, even if it meant dying from an unnecessary fall while she tried to be independent one last time.  I found it so much less attractive, her behavior, but what really WAS less attractive was my judgement of the way she chooses to leave us.

I’m grateful for Shirley’s teaching, happy to have been part of her preparation for death.  And I’m even happier (though disappointed, as well!) to have been shown that I have yet one more attachment.

Thank you, Shirley - - and good-bye.  

Love, Shanti

Last week I was writing an email to people in power, pleading for justice.  We all do that; these days there are many serious issues to plead about!  In closing my email, I found myself signing it, “In Humanity”.

I then realized, with a start, that its opposite - inhumanity -  is only a pause, only a breath away.  A space, or breath stands between the two words.  That pause….  So very essential!

When the mind is Silent - paused - we find our connectedness.  From this point of compassion, where is no them, no me, it is not possible to act in a way that is inhumane!  What is natural - and effortless!, from that vantage point, is to act in, or with, humanity. This is the value of meditation, of prayer, and other practices encouraging mindfulness.

We’ve all heard the wise maxim, “What you put your attention on, grows”.  So, at the time of celebrating Harvest, grow Compassion.  Grow humanity.  Grow in Silence, through whatever practice works for you!  It is truly a worthy endeavor.
With much Love -

and In Humanity -
Shanti Mai

Unlike so many Americans with African roots, Barack Obama is lucky to know which country his family hails from.  It’d be like knowing merely that you were European…  Italian?  Portugese.  Belgian?  Finnish! Scottish?  Not many of us would be comfortable with such vague information.

When I was in 5th grade, a relative of my father’s - perhaps a 2nd cousin, we were not at all a close family - sent us a request for information; she was doing a family genealogy. I was very intrigued, and offered to help her.  Sadly, she broke my heart by sending me a very condescending letter. What she didn’t know was that, 14 years later, I would solve the mystery that ended up stumping her.   At the time of publication, her volume left a mystery:  was the “John Harrington” on the neighboring lot indeed the father, the next link to the past?  At this point, due to a lack of paperwork proof, that strain of the Harrington tale “ended”.

For myself, I wondered why no one tried to start from the other end - to start where Harringtons started and see if they could find evidence bringing a John Harrington to that town in that time…

I forgot all about that thought until, at age 25, newly arrived in Ireland, my brand-new map in my hand, I became transfixed (without a thought in my head) with a little island off the coast of County Cork:  Bere Island. Nearly a week later, having gone to a music festival and traveled around a bit, I claimed Dublin as my own town.  Told a new friend about my neat and mysterious experience with Bere Island, to which he said, “Well sure, that’s where the Harringtons are!”  and proceeded to bring out his phone book, which actually included the professions of at least some of the listings.  The first one he showed me was (first name?) Harrington, ferryman. For a small island, there were lots of Harringtons.  I knew that, though there were lots of Harringtons in England, that my family was Irish.  Several visits to England had never brought any feeling of familiarity, had solved no personal mysteries. Discovering the Irish connection really did. (More about that later in a later post!)

It was like my cells recognized their own roots.  So….  Intuitive - or genetic?  Who cares, really?  It was a deeply confirming experience.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s like the question about the chicken and the egg.  It’s irrelevant really, which came first:  What’s important is the connection between them.  And that’s what you get when you know your roots.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi used to compare meditation with pulling the arrow back on the bow:  pulling the arrow in the  opposite direction prepared it for stronger, more focused action later.   My time in San Francisco was like that.  There was time spent with my powerful (and beloved!) daughter, Sophia, being an integral part of her life and budding art career (www.sacredmuse.com), but, other than that, it was time spent pulling the arrow back on the bow:  not much looked like it was happening.

Now, back in Washington, called back by the siren’s song of Seattle and, indeed, the entire Puget Sound (it’s quite a chorus!), I see the results of the apparent “nothing” I was doing in San Francisco.  During my last night there, spent in Sophia’s tiny studio apartment, I hardly slept. Blissful, divine energy pumped through me and a renewed life-focus strongly resurfaced, clarified and intense.  The frustration of San Francisco, the backward-seeming time spent there had resulted in a strenghtening of my resolve to be free, to spread freedom - - and to become a stronger beacon of darshan, which required a deeper surrender.  I gave it.  I gave it my all, and cried in bliss and gratitude.

Everything had been increasing in “juice”, in flow, as I had approached my return to Washington state.  The wind was perfectly positioned at my back; suddenly every move I made resulted in three steps forward instead of just one. The “backward” steps I’d been taking in SF, where every forward attempt resulted in the reverse direction, was suddenly paying off.

So - Don’t assume you know what is happening.  …And when you want to lock into judgement of what is - or is not - occuring, remember those times when, with the broader perspective of time and experience, you’ve been grateful for what, at the time, seemed like cold, hard knocks! God invented tough love!!

A couple of my friends impressed me today. One of them was 845 miles away, yet managed to send me a Skype message by thinking about me.  Didn’t touch her Skype account, yet a message came in from her account! Okay, the “voice message” was very short, and had no voice, but she wasn’t even trying to send me a psychic message, or anything of the sort - just merely thinking about me. Interesting - and impressive.

The second friend called me as the bus I was on was at the stop at 9th and Mission (in SF), asking me if I wanted to go to the Asian Art Museum, saying that she had an extra ticket.  When she asked where I was, she said, “Get off!  Get off!”  So, trusting her, I did, and proceeded to call the Muni information number when I got off the bus at the next stop, 7th and Mission.

Muni said, “Walk up to 9th St. and turn right. It’s two blocks from that intersection.” She’d suddenly had a strong feeling that she should call me and ask if I wanted to go, and she did so JUST AS I WAS AT THE RIGHT BUS STOP.

From my side, I’d left the Zen Center (having never been there, and heading from there to an unfamiliar part of town), turned my phone on, and gotten on the very first bus I saw!  Then I called Muni info to ask if I was heading in the right direction… 

- And, as we have seen, I was!

We talked, then, about synchronicity, and her view is the same as mine:  That, if you’re in the moment, following the flow of the present moment, you are in the right place at the right time, you are the thread properly placed in the cloth on the loom, not the thread twisting around, running at cross purposes with the whole.

Like many of you, I’d felt that I’d lost this connectedness for a while. It was delightful and reassuring for it to begin all over again. THIS is the way I know Life to be.

I heard an interesting herbal talk on the radio a few days ago, naming herbs it would be good to take during this time of stress for all of us here amongst the wildfires of northern California. The speaker mentioned not just the damage to our lungs, but also the emotional and mental stress involved: Our senses are receiving the message, non-stop, that danger is present.

I heard this when the sky was finally beginning to show a little blue after weeks of the odd, unhealthy grey of distant wildfires, and when the stagnation I and those close to me had been experiencing for several weeks (all during the burning) had begun to lift, to shift. The sun was again visible, and my dreams had become very strong and clear. A gentle mist arrived, and it seemed to lift with it our life-gridlock. Decisions suddenly became obvious, seemed to nearly “make” themselves.

We forget, sometimes, to consider how external influences affect our day-to-day experiences emotionally. The ancients knew that they were intimately connected to their environment. In another place, another time, we would have had no question of whether it was “just me”, or whether it was the weather, the environment; there would have been no illusion of distinction or separation between the two!

And now, care to join me in a cup? Licorice root? Mullein, anyone?

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again and again and again, if you’ll let me:  I love this man!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A Prayer For the Heart and Soul of America Time to Gather Under One Big Intent September 10, 2007 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ by Steve Bhaerman As we approach the sixth anniversary of the day America lost her political virginity, there are many disheartened among us who fear the enlightened republic founded two centuries ago doesn’t have a prayer. To this, I offer two pieces of good news. America does indeed have a prayer, and we the people are the answer to it. Looking at it from the perspective of six years, our loss of innocence has had as much to do with the choices we made (or more accurately, the choices that were made for us) in response to the event as the event itself. At a moment when we had the world’s attention and empathy, a great healing could have taken place. An enlightened leader could have used the tragedy as a breakthrough in promoting justice-based peace in the world, and isolating the sociopathogens that seek exploitation or destruction. Well, that probably did happen in a parallel universe. In this universe, however, it was used to mobilize this country for permanent warfare and created a “safe” environment to institute fascism at home. According to a recent Zogby poll, 51% of Americans want Bush and Cheney investigated regarding the 9/11 attacks. As David Ray Griffin articulates so well, once the halo of “religious mythology” is lifted from the official story, it seems like an unlikely story indeed. At the time, things happened so quickly and it was such a shock to our collective system that all we seem to remember is the video of the planes hitting the building, over and over again. And then over and over and over again until we could see nothing else. Didn’t see much of the aftermath of the Pentagon attack for some reason, the one where the plane came in at an impossible angle just so it could hit the most fortified and least occupied section of the Pentagon. There wasn’t much conversation about how and why the most heavily armed air force in the world stood down, and ultimately no one was held accountable, and no one so much as lost their job. There was a little buzz about the “puts” placed on American and United airlines stock a day or so before the attacks, but it was never revealed who made a financial killing by selling off their stocks before they plummeted. No one questioned that the greatest crime of the new century was “solved” in less than 24 hours, before any investigation had taken place. Instead we had a carefully planned and orchestrated ceremony where the President offered an unofficial declaration of war (remember, the Constitution tells us only Congress can declare war) from the pulpit of the National Cathedral, with representatives of four religious faiths stamping the “war on terror” with their “amen.” At a time of profound sadness and vulnerability, our so-called leaders used the attacks to start a war that had been planned long before any attacks took place. And a month or so later, anthrax was mysteriously sent to Democratic Congressional leaders and in the panic and fear, the orwellian “Patriot Act” was passed without very many legislators bothering to read the 342 page document. Another unsolved crime you never hear anything about anymore. The bottom line is this: Whether or not you believe 9/11 was a “false flag” attack, even the most die-hard “coincidence theorist” has to concede that even if this wasn’t America’s Reichstag fire, it was sure used that way.

The Good News Is … We’re Facing the Bad News OK. So where’s the good news, and where is the prayer? The good news is, we are finally willing to face the bad news. Last month at the IONS conference, I had a frank and enlightening conversation with a woman who is a religious educator for a “new thought” denomination. In this particular group, every year they celebrate the “season of nonviolence” to commemorate Gandhi and Martin Luther King. I asked her if she knew anything about the civil case brought before a jury in Memphis in 1999 by the family of Dr. King. She didn’t. I explained to her that the jury found that King was killed not by James Earl Ray, but as part of a conspiracy perpetrated by the FBI, the Mafia, the Army special forces and the Memphis police. (As Casey Stengel used to say, “You could look it up.” There’s a book written by the attorney who brought the case Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King. I know. You haven’t heard of it. Nobody has. This book has never been reviewed by any mainstream media outlet, and probably never will.) And that, my friends, is the problem. Not health care, not abortion rights, not even the war in Iraq. The real problem is we are not in control of our own government, and the media has used weapons of mass distraction to keep us from noticing. The solution? I saw that in the eyes of the courageous woman I was speaking with. As she absorbed the devastating news, there was tremendous sadness in her face. Yet I could see that she had no doubt what I was saying was true. Facing this inconvenient truth took courage. She realized that to celebrate Martin Luther King’s birthday publicly and not acknowledge he was murdered by forces in our own government, would be a lie and a disservice. Many of those in the new age and new thought movements have gone out of their way not to “take sides” in “political” conversations. But as we are coming to see, there comes a time when not taking sides is … taking sides. It is taking sides with denial, and it empowers and emboldens the kinds of people who plotted Martin Luther King’s assassination and got away with it. At a time when our nation’s moral compass has gone south, we need spiritual and religious people to have faith in their faith and stand by their stand. Or, as the Swami says, “It’s time for the meek to boldly step forward and claim their inheritance.” Gandhi was meek. So was Martin Luther King. But they were boldly meek, and that is how we need to be. This is not a time to use our religious faith or spiritual practice to run from the world, it’s a time to use that powerful energy to heal it. Doing so doesn’t even require having a faith, just an impulse towards love, harmony, coherence and goodness. As an opening exercise at this time for prayer, please check out this month long experimental prayer for peace at commonpassion.org. Rather than designing some uniform prayer, these folks encourage people to use whatever form of prayer and devotion they already practice — and imbue it with this particular healing intention. It’s just one example of building the field of truth and clarity. Consider that the more we communicate with others — regardless of their professed political beliefs or nonbeliefs — the more we create a new field of awareness that opens up new possibilities. Regarding the dark side of our history and current events, the most powerful thing we can do right now is to create a safe space to speak and hear the truth. Perhaps you’ve known about these perpetrations for some time and have “metabolized” them in some way. Most people have not. On top of all the other things we are occupied with in our daily lives, having a criminal regime to deal with on top of that is just too much.

From Big Brother to Bigger Brotherhood It’s too much for each of us, but not for all of us together. We haven’t even begun to measure our true power. We’ve been too fearful. Imagine a Zogby poll asking the following question: Do you believe it is appropriate for we the people to be disenfranchised from our own government, and our government to engage in criminal activity? Sure, it’s a leading question, but it’s not a misleading one. Would 75% to 95 % of Americans agree that we should have genuine say in our governance and not have to be afraid of our own government? That’s good news. It means some 150 to 200 million Americans agree that regardless of how they feel about abortion rights or universal health care, they prefer to live under the rule of law. America has been divided and just about conquered. What this next most challenging phase in our history will require is for us to rise above the “dueling dualities” in our heads, and focus on the humanity in our hearts. We do indeed have a prayer, once we realize we are praying for our own clarity and courage. The vibrations of those words establishing our right to “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” and the notion that all of us are “created equal” are still ringing in our collective awareness, faint as the reverberations might seem. Our task is to rekindle that fire, finally establish those principles in reality, and be the beacon of example to the rest of the world. There is a reason why there are no leaders on the horizon today. It’s because the old form of leadership no longer serves. The new leadership cannot be assassinated because it is an idea that springs from 50 million souls at once. That is the super-duper power. Again, to quote Swami: “The only sure way to overgrow Big Brother is through Bigger Brotherhood.” Here then is a prayer. Use it, modify it, make up your own. The importance is intent … so let us … as many of us who realize we are all in this together … may we gather together under one big intent … the healing of America, and the healing of the world. May the power of love and courage be embodied in each of us as we face darkness as beacons of light. May we light the way for others with joy and laughter, the weapons the darkness fears the most. May we gather together locally with the global idea that we are each a precious cell in the body of humanity with a loving gift to bring. May this wildfire of truth burn from the grassroots up, and may it vaporize the structures that no longer serve us. May the new leaders arise — humble yet bold — and may the structures emerge to help us create the maximum happiness using the minimum resources. May we understand that heaven is a practice, not a destination, and may we practice heaven until heaven becomes practically real. May we also understand that we choose which game we play in life, and now we must choose the world game as the only alternative to the end of the world game. We cannot know for sure the outcome, but we can know in our heart of hearts that it’s the only game worth playing. May we commemorate the next anniversary of 9/11 as a free people with nothing to fear from our own government, and may that government be a reflection of our highest aspirations for both good and freedom. May we do this for all humanity and for all our relations, and may we celebrate a new convenient truth … global heartwarming.

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When my 7^th grade English teacher read the following quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, I nearly jumped out of my chair with excitement:

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

I really got it: When you’re holding on to a plan, a belief or a behavior only to appear – or to feel - like you know what you’re doing, that you were “right”, you’re missing what’s important. Change, the growth and learning inherent in change, is what’s important; what’s TRUE is important.

I’m reminded of that, now, when I’m saying I’m going to be available in a certain place on a certain date – and then having to take them off the website when the trip doesn’t happen and shift happens, instead.

That’s life according to Life, and life according to Emerson. And me.

Lots of unusual energies today, some situations disappointing, lots of energy seemingly “wasted”. But honestly, it was just rearranged - not at all what I would have planned. Because I was on this altered trajectory, some quite synchronous meetings occurred, simple, connected and fluid.

So what I’m left with is the realization that, once any and all expectations are removed, I had a pretty good day. Yes, I missed my first phone appointment ever, but the client is not upset. Yes, I spent most of the day with my hands “tied”, unable to accomplish what I thought I needed to do. So what? I spoke to someone I love. I received help from another. And I let go - a - little - more.

Someone I love has been so busy pushing his agenda on his life that he hasn’t noticed that the clues and cues are all coming from a different direction - - in his case, literally - - from a different part of the country. He’s being stubborn, though, not going with the flow. If there’s not a fluid, supported response, sometimes it’s because the timing isn’t right, but other times it’s because we’re looking in the wrong direction and just need to turn around.

My summer is a good example of that. I wanted to explore Bellingham, Washington and south central Alaska as places to live. I never considered British Columbia, Canada - which is right between the two - because I am an American, and I assumed it would not be as open to me. (And you know what they say about assumptions!)

SO….though initial indications were great for both Bellingham (WA) and the Anchorage and Kenai Peninsula area of Alaska, what ended up happening, effortlessly, was this trip to Salt Spring Island, while, at the same time, great-looking options in the other areas had been disappearing for about a week or two. I let them go, and then - poof! - something magical I could not, or would not, have imagined!

So make your plans, but be aware of how the wind is shifting them. If at times they seem to be blowing back in your face, see what happens if you merely shift your focus to a different direction. You don’t have to make a different decision, just an observation, which may, in turn, cause you to want to make a different decision. Just look for where the energy is happening. This is following your intuition, and is a very useful, practical skill to learn!