11 July 2010
Sunday 5pm
Canyon de Jemez, New Mexico
I have listened to my intuition this afternoon, which was really good. I’m here at my campsite and I’ve been watching the dark and various clouds today and really wanting to put up my tent, but it just didn’t feel right. And then the Heavens opened and Oh my God, I went down to my briefs, picked up a rag and stood in the rain wiping down my car, and repeating the mantra, Om Namah Shivaya. It was so fun and so liberating to just get soaked in the downpour. It only lasted for about 15 -20 minutes, and now I feel so much better. What an excellent shower a rain downpour is.
This reminds me of a short story. Last year I was biking along Lake Constance (Bodensee) with my good friend Roswitha Schaefer, who lives in Bregenz Austria. The Bodensee borders the 3 countries of Switzerland, Austria and Germany. It was a really beautiful day and we decided to bike over the German border to the lovely town of ______ . This is such a picturesque town/city on the lake. It was never bombed in the war and remains to be a Very Charming and old time German city. We had a coffee and walked around a bit observing the beautiful buildings and structures. The clouds started looking threatening so we started biking back to Bregenz. Om Namah Shivaya, the heavens opened and we still had a good 15 minutes to get home. I must say that this was one of the most liberating moments of my life, completely surrendered to being drenched in a summer rain, and loving every minute of it. It rained so hard, and I too laughed so hard, so many times as I was in an ecstacy of sorts. So now anytime it rains I just get the urge to take off my cloths and go outside and really receive the Shakti(energy) of the rain. Don’t worry family and friends, I will attempt each time to exercise discretion.
This brings up the issue of nudity and seems to be the right moment to comment more. Once again, I am in a posture of Gratitude to the Esalen Institute. In this place I learned to be at peace and without anxiety while being naked in public. There was a learning curve, so to speak, and it took me some time to learn to be at ease and not caring about what others “might be thinking”. We certainly deal with any body issues we have in the practices of yoga and then the nude baths and swimming pool is another level of being at ease with what is.
I LOVE being in the Esalen baths in the winter time when it’s raining outside. Oh that is So Great! The combo of the hot and cold in the same moment feels magical and again just being naked in the rain is such a cool sensation. While most people hide away from the rain, it is quite an exhillaration to fully embrace the wetness and sloppy kiss of the rain. MMMmmm Good........Thankyou to the Forces of Nature!
One more thing, I feel the outer nakedness facilitates an ability to be more naked on the inside, being more transparent. This correlates to the possibility at Esalen, as a healing place on the planet. First of all an individual can relax back from normal life into a natural setting and stunning environment. And then through the various workshops of gestalt, yoga, massage and the many physical and mental-emotional approaches to healing and better health, we can integrate and heal more deeply. It is the combo of placing ourselves in a natural healing environment and then consciously allowing shadow material and challenging issues to arise and integrating them into our yin/yang, light/dark identity. We are the light of the Supreme and we are the Shadow issues also. Bingo!! Most people try to pretend they are perfect and don’t have a shadow side. You know what, we can spend a lot of our Shakti and Energy on repressing our issues. Maybe this is fairly common. What’s up with that? Que pasa? The Hero’s journey is taking the time to acknowledge and embrace these challenging parts of ourselves, requiring many pauses and moments of re-evaluation. There are many layers to doing this as we know, and it takes time to heal deeply. Gurumayi once said,”It takes great determination to take the wheel of karma into our hands and to steer it in a new and beneficial direction”.
I feel that an individual is deeply sobered on the Hero/Heroine’s journey, seeing with Total Clarity and Honesty who we fully are, light and dark. With this awareness we move forward with great humility and a knowing that we are consciously connected to the flow of Grace, and Life.
13 July, 2010
Tues, 1pm
Canyon de Jemez, New Mexico
Dear friends,
Well let me tell you, it is realy HOT. The temp has been 63 degrees when I get out of bed and the days high yesterday was 97 degrees at 5pm. There was some good rain and lot’s of clouds when I arrived on Sun and then yesterday the WIND was blowing like mad. The wind is not a good friend to an artist, especially if they want to work outside. And, I still managed to finish 2 paintings and started another one which I finished this morning.
Remember, 2 paintings out of 10 may be fantastic, 2 are trash and the the other 6 are so-so. But the point is, the so-so ones still require my full attention and essentially the same amount of time. So I’m still dealing with the thought that, ” maybe I’m wasting my time and could be doing more valuable things”....like making money and being a responsible member of society.
The resistance factor is also something I deal with. It was Very Hot yesterday, but still I procrastinated and put off starting. Once I did, I couldn’t stop and kept painting and painting till dusk. Cool huh, and a good awareness for me...just get started and the rest will take care of itself.
Now here’s an example of the polarity/paradox of life which I/we cannot avoid. Here I am in this beautiful canyon in New Mexico, doing my Kniep tx’s in the river and just basking in the beauty of the natural world. Yes! Then yesterday morning, a Native American couple here at the campground went into a major domestic violence episode. I did not witness the violence towards her but I saw her leap out of the truck on the highway, she crying and in hysterics with him screaming and screaming for her to get back into the car. In the moment I didn’t really understand what was happening and then later I understood. Their little 10 y/o boy was still in the campsite with the baby and as I walked back to my place I greeted him. I could see that he was in crisis. The look on his face was far away and very scared. I understood later that it was his father and mother in the rage and violence and he must be familiar with what was unfolding this morning.
Then Alex, the 68 y/o host attendant for this campground, who was involved in this incident, told me the story of his mother being shot in the head and killed by his stepfather when he was 10 yrs old, and all the gory details that he witnessed.I could hardly wait till he walked away, and I just wept and wept after he left, overwhelmed by what I had witnessed and heard.
The tragedy and pain of this world is unbelievable to me. I just kept thinking of that beautiful little 10 y/o Indian boy and his mother, going home and continuing to go to bed and waking up with a time bomb in their house; living out this tragedy. I reflected too on the abusive father. At first I was so angry with him, calling him a coward in my heart, beating a woman and his own children??? And then I realized that someone probably beat the shit out of him and he was just passing along his wound to his wife and children.
Isn’t this what the Catholics mean by Original Sin? Grandma and grandpa passed their wounds onto mom and dad, and then mom and dad pass their wounds onto the children. It’s just what is. Then each one of us has the choice, I LIVE OUT THE WOUNDS OF THE ANCESTORS, or, we take our place on the Hero/Heroine’s journey. In this we face the demons and dragons of our shadow parts and the lineage we come from. The process can be long and sobering. In India they call it, Sadhana, doing the spiritual practices as a way of burning away illusions and deceptions and getting very clear about who we are, light and dark. We recognize and embrace this polarity within ourselves and come into an integration, like the Yin-Yang. In this process there is no pointing finger, and we simply accept a deeper responsibility for our lives.
I imagine this message came to me as a gift from the Eclipse, reminding me that even as I bask in the Holiness of Sacred Ground, tragedies are continuing to unfold every day on our dear planet. I feel so sad that so many people experience such horrors in their lives, and, I feel so grateful to my family that I did grow up in an environment of Love, despite our warts and issues.
Om Namah Shivaya....Bless All Peoples, victims and perpetrator’s alike.
from my heart to yours,
Thomas
14 July 2010
Wednesday, 0900
Canyon de Hemish
Well, this has been quite a week in so many ways. I did a 2 hr guided hike through the Red Rocks on the Jemez reservation. The natives actually pronounce their tribes name as Hemish, same pronunciation as Heinous, and the Spanish put the word Jemez to this sound. The hike was incredible through this deep RED landscape and she, the guide shared so much Hemish(Jemez) history and natural remedies in the plants, and sharing the philosophy or way of thinking of her people. She was a good speaker, interesting, fun and upbeat. I did this hike on Monday morning after the domestic violence incident, and felt like the hiking experience grounded me in the knowledge of the ways of these people. They are human beings like we are and simply have different cultural rules and accepted norms from most of North America. For instace, they do not own land on the reservation but have a timed property deed. This feels So Right to me. Maybe cause I don’t seem to break into the housing market somehow, but not owning the earth just makes sense to me. It drops away a lot of ego identity if we don’t own the land. I know this is very contrary to the values of the majority of the Northern hemisphere population.
Anyway, thankyou to the excellent guide for giving me/us such a sense of her people and how they relate to Mother Earth, the supplier of All Our material needs.
I feel such a connection to the native American ways and imagine I have some karmic connection to this Indian way of life. There are words to follow which are a quote from the Hemish Pueblo museums. I was deeply touched and affected by these words, wrote them down in my journal and wish to share them with you.
“The secret of their existence was simple: they came face to face with nature but did not exploit her. In the view of the native Americans, when the Europeans arrived, America was well cared for: so beautiful, so loved, so plentiful. America remained New because it had not been made old and scarred by human greed. America had been lived on by people who regarded Earth as a Living Entity, the mother of all life. All her children, everything in nature was alive, the living stone, the great breathing mountains, the rushing rivers and streams, the trees and plants, the birds and animals...
We speak the Towa language. We have lived in this valley and surrounding mesa tops for centuries beyond memory. This land is ours; it is our past, our future and our friend. We have no word that translates religion. We have a spiritual life and that is part of us 24 hrs a day. It determines our relationship with the natural world and our fellow man. Our way of life and our religious practices are the same as in the time of our ancestors...
There is a design in living things. Their shapes, forms, ability to live, all have meaning. If we fill our minds with pure materialism and accept a convenient religion, then the backbone of our life, of our perception of beauty will be broken and, as unseen winds, gone.
We must not let ourselves get caught up in the results of an over-efficient society, rapidly moving at a rate and in a way that to most Indians represents panic”.
15 July, 2010
Thursday, 0830
Canyon de Hemish
Wow, my tears have really been flowing this week. They just keep coming and coming, thinking of the native family on Monday and my dad and the effects on me and my family, and just the general issues of Violence, Anger and Rage. So many times in these last few days I’ve been in the river doing my Kniep treatments and feeling a welling up of sadness and emotion, and just crying and crying into the flowing river. I’ve been offering my own anger and rage, consciously acknowledging it and releasing these energies into the cool rushing waters. I don’t know what else to do as these energies arise within and around me. I’m okay with crying for sure and have always trusted its’ healing and relieving effect.
The New Moon eclipse on Sunday was opposing my natal Mars. Eclipses are stronger New and Full Moons and their effect is more long lasting, like for 6 months. So clearly the dark side issues of Mars, anger, violence and rage are being reflected to me from the outside. The transit is also very positive, enhancing my Masculine energy, libido and sense of vitality and self expression.
I’ve been reading this fantastic book lately, Jung and Tarot, by Sally Nichols. It seems that I’m in a period of doing a deeper metaphysical study and this book is giving me a deeper understanding of symbols and archetypes in our collective consciousness. I haven’t picked it up for 6 weeks or so and opened to nearly to the page I had finished some time ago. The following sentences were highlighted, something I love to do, and the message just popped out at me at the first re-opening of the book. I’ve been asking questions and pulling the Tarot cards lately as a way of study of these archetypes, and opening to the Hermit, #9 , seemed to be no mistake. These words spoke deeply to me and of course, my tears flowed...
“Like St. Francis, he must feel an intimate, tender relationship with Brother Sun and Sister Moon and all the birds and beasts; yet at the same time this Hermit must have the stamina of a St. Anthony to withstand the myriad devils, the monstrous aberrations of the human spirit, which beset man in his loneliness. Perhaps the old wise man has come back to teach us the forgotten art of solitude”.
“It seems increasingly difficult for us to accept the lonely path to self-realization. The art of individuation, of becoming one’s unique self, is an intensely personal experience and, at times, a lonely one. It is not a group phenomenon. This involves the difficult task of disentangling one’s own identity from the mass of mankind. To discover who we are, we must ultimately withdraw those parts of ourselves which we project onto others, learning to find deep within our own psyches the potentials and shortcomings which we had formerly seen only in others. Such recognition is facilitated if we can withdraw from society for brief periods and learn to welcome solitude”.
“Such periods of solitude are not morbid or antisocial. They can return us to the world with renewed energy for action and a keener sense of our own identity and our special role in relation to the world....the original Greek word for single or solitary can also be translated as “unified”.”
16 July, 2010
Friday 10am
Canyon de Hemish
my Dear Friends,
It has been so fun and deep for me to share my journey and thoughts with you in these last weeks. Thankyou for receiving this. I have sent these emails to the say 50 people I feel closest to in my life. I did not ask any of you if I could send you these emails and imagine that you read as much as you wanted. I have a new blog on my website, (I hate the word BLOG, it reminds me of BLOB or BLAH, BLAH, BLAH) and I see that I enjoy writing like this and will continue to write and simply put these words onto the Travelogue- Blog-Asana, hahaha !!!
Okay, back to the moment. So funny, after the last quote above about solitude, then the hand of life brings me some fun companions/compadres.
I met a great couple from a town south of Albuquerque, (that is some word to spell and type out) and we have had some real fun activities this week. Morgen and Darren live in the desert and have worked in a Smith’s grocery store for about 12 years or so. Living in the desert, this Haimus canyon and series of springs, waterfalls and and river, has drawn them to this canyon many times. They’ve given me great cues on where to go and some of the more local secret spots.
So this was cool......they told me to go to the tunnels, a swimming hole on the other side of the Big Yellow and Red Mountain to my west. I drove down 4 and turned right onto onto NM 485. Once again, the terrain and the scenery of the mountains is Stunning and I am driving so slow enjoying the whole atmosphere. Same red and yellow stone, different canyon. Whew! Getting there I climbed down into the gorge and for quite awhile let my feet and legs and hands get pounded in the waterfall there. I see that this is an Earth Medicine which I’m describing. There is a stronger energy at a waterfall and this is avaiable to anyone who chooses to consciously absorb it. My absorption technque is repeating the mantra and breathing consciously, knowing that I am receiving the Enhanced Vitality of the waterfall and pond.
And then climbing back up to the car, OH MY GOD, I hear the rattle of a Rattle Snake. My heartrate elevated immediately and I started breathing deeply....and walked away from the sound of the rattle. Yowza!! I love witnessing when my body goes into fight and flight, I think it’s the Parasympathetic nervous system response. Anyway, all is fine and I get back to the car, realizing that I received snake medicine. Cool! I know that Christianity has made a devil out of the snake. But I moved on from that thinking in Siddha Yoga where the snake is regarded as a symbol of the inner spiritual energy, laying dormant at the base of the spine. So the medicine of a snake is deeply significant for me and indicates the spirtual or inner realms of being. So I’m returning home and driving on that little NM highway 485, when all of a sudden a large bird to my right flies off a post and over the car. I whipped my head to the left and looking out the window seeing this large bird was white with black and tan stripes and spots. I knew it was an owl(Spotted Owl) cause this has happened before and it seems I have owl medicine. The owls have shown themselves to me many times over the years. The owl is like the Fool card in the Tarot deck, mystical and easily connected to trans-dimensional states of consciousness. The owl sees everything in the night, so it symbolizes intuitive ability and being connected to forces beyond the physical dimension. For the Navajo tribe the owl is to be avoided and for others it is a guardian to spiritual dimensions. So there you go. I feel very happy to be in this special place and to receive these 2 omens from the animal kingdom.
Yesterday(Thursday) was such a fun and excellent day! Wow! I travelled with Darren and Morgen to several local natural mineral springs and waterfalls. We parked and hiked about 20 minutes through the forest and came to the natural springs and soaked there in the warm waters for an hour or so. This couple is very different from me and yet we have had so much deep sharing about our lives and what has happened. Morgen shared that she too grew up in a physically abusive home, watching her father beat her mother.
What is this? What is the Intelligence showing me? So clearly, this Gestalt, this issue of domestic violence, anger and rage has come up in so many ways this week. I see and acknowledge that my psyche and being is accepting the reality of this force in me, and in all humanity. So in the Accepting and Embracing, maybe I can forgive the heinous abuses of the masculine energy, in myself and in the others. The abuses of women and children and Mother Earth are unacceptable. And even men having power and authority over each other and the killing and maiming of other men. I cried and wept several different times as we shared our stories. It was pretty cleansing for my heart, crying so freely and from such an open and innocent place in front of my new friends and strangers really.
Here’s one stunning and beautiful moment. Darren is speaking about his job in the grocery store, and he said,”You know the very best part of my whole job is being of service to the customers. Seeing that lost look on a persons face and helping them find what they’re looking for, and being kind to the elderly and helping them with their bags or cleaning up after somebody breaks something”. So here I am, looking at this man working in a mundane job for seemingly too long(my judgement) and here he knows that he is in Service to Humanity in his own profound way.
Om Namah Shivaya.....Who am I to judge anyone?
I deeply bow to Darren’s dharma of Service
We left the springs after our eyes were dry, walking back to the car and drove down Highway 4 to a picnic lunch at Battleship rock and then to Soda damn, just before the village of Jemez Springs. There is a mineral spring here as well, and the residues of the minerals have created this huge dome and dam like structure at this great waterfall. So Morgen and Darren lead as we Kniep’ed our way across the river to the pool and then into the Waterfalls. Oh my God, (usually I say), Om Namah Shivaya........ This is really Something!! I have had the experience of going under the waterfalls in Yelapa Mexico many times and it is Super Special!! There is a ledge here behind the falling water where we could sit, and I allowed nearly every place on my body to get a powerful massage from the waterfalls’ intense pounding.
I consider these minutes and hours like a Baptism really, it is so strong and uplifting. Clearly this is another Earth Treatment, like walking on the dew grass or being barefoot on the river stones. Mother Earth has so many portals and openings for sharing and extending her Vital force to us, if we can only take the time to calm down and be quiet in nature.
Thankyou Hemish Canyon for so many naturally occurring Earth Treatments. You are a great Valley of Consciousness.
