Indigo Ocean

Spontaneous Freedom: When the Wall Was Brought Down

noreply@blogger.com (Indigo Ocean) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:30:00 PST

In 1989 I was a college student majoring in International Relations. I had taken several classes on the politics of Eastern Europe and the general consensus among experts in the field was that change in the Soviet Union would be slow, but was certainly happening. My professors, many leaders in the field who had gained tenure at an Ivy League university, saw a gradual trajectory of change. They predicted that as government wanted more economic power in the world, it would have to grant greater freedoms to the people to stimulate productivity, and that as people tasted minor freedoms they would want more. Politicians would seek to appease them by carefully satisfying that tentative call of the people, but without granting any real freedom that would diminish the power of the state. Being a student, I tended to accept their predictions as likely to be true.

We were just as surprised as anyone else when suddenly one day the newspapers announced that the Berlin wall had just come down. News footage showed joyous people celebrating atop the remnants of what had separated them from the free world. I don’t think there was anyone in the U.S. State department or any political office within East Germany itself that was any less surprised. How is this possible, within a nation in which there was no right to freedom of speech nor freedom of association? How did such a huge group of people dedicated to bringing down the Soviet government manage to rise to such power without being stamped out long before they reached a critical mass? The answer will probably shock and fortify you, as it did me, when a friend told me his friend’s story of how he and a group of meditators served as the final straw that broke the back of communist oppression in E. Berlin one evening in November.

About 7 weeks before the wall came down, a small group of meditation practitioners decided to start a meditation group in one of theirs East Berlin apartment where people would come and sit in silent reflection, envisioning their hopes for their country. That first week about 8 people came. They all found it to be a worthwhile experience, so invited more people to join them the next week. That next week the group more than doubled in size. Each week people would come to sit in silence, meditating together and envisioning East Germany as they believed it could and should be. Each week they brought more people with them to peacefully sit together with hope and faith. After a few weeks the group had grown to be too large for the apartment, so they requested permission to use a public café. That worked for a couple more weeks, but then the group became too large for the café. Eventually they had to get permission to meditate in a public square.

One day, while sitting together in silence in the public square, by now a group numbering into the hundreds, someone stood up and began walking towards the wall. Others stood also and began following. One by one, they each stood and walked towards the wall. As they walked, people they passed silently joined the procession. By the time they reached the wall, which was about 4 kilometers from where they had begun in the square, their numbers had reached the thousands. The people at the front of the procession instructed the guards at the wall to open the gates. They refused. The meditators insisted, “Open the gates.” Overwhelmed by the size of the crowd, the guards decided to call their superiors to report what was happening and request instruction. Were they to open fire and shoot so many people? What options did they have? After explaining the situation fitfully, the instruction came back, “Open the gates.”

The gates were opened, the people flooded through, and piece by piece, they dismantled the wall that had separated their vision of what could and should be from the reality of what was. I share this story with you so that you will know irrefutably that what separates us can never be as powerful as what brings us together. If you wish to find that ecstatic connection to all within your life and unleash its unlimited potential, you must only sit in silence with hope and faith until the time comes to get up and walk into the future you have evoked. Namaste (I bow to the Infinite within you).

Playing the Game of Life

noreply@blogger.com (Indigo Ocean) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:19:29 PST

Just as I thought I was winning, I realized again that the game isn't even real. Darn. Why is it I always have to see through the illusion just as I'm getting to the good parts? Why can't the lows be just as transparent?

Anyway, just passing along the reminder in case you're in a low and could benefit from it, but can't see it yourself right now.

This "self" that is thinking happy or sad thoughts that are triggering happy or sad feelings, it isn't a solid thing. It isn't you. It is a constantly fluctuating set of habitual patterns. It is a perspective that colors everything even as it confines it to a space much smaller than the infinity that you truly are.

No matter whether you are currently winning or losing in the game of life, there is nothing truly to be accomplished other moving your pieces around the board. Games can be fun, especially when we are winning. But for the game to be worth playing you have to be a good sport about it and not take it so seriously that when you start losing you throw a fit and threaten to quit. You can't cry just because the game isn't going your way. Well you can, but if you do the game will become less and less enjoyable and your chances of improving your performance will also decrease... not to mention that you won't exactly be a choice partner for the rest of the game.

In this moment I kind of wish the game was real. I wish my accomplishment actually meant something solid and enduring. I wish it was "done" and that I could rest with that forever. But the insatiable ego never rests in anything, so any satisfaction born of ego can only be fleeting. Whether I realize I can't "keep it" because it isn't real to begin with or realize I can't "keep it" because ego is insatiable, either way, I can't hold on to the joy of accomplishment for long. In fact, it is already just another day.

My company did just come out with its first piece of software today though. And I'm really excited about the opportunities for new directions in my life experience that will probably grow out of that. Variety of experience is enjoyable not just to my ego, but also to the infinite "self" that is experiencing through each of us. I'm looking forward to something new. Who will I be this time next year? What square will I land on? Or to mix metaphors a bit, what is on the next page of this script?

The Prosecution Rests

noreply@blogger.com (Indigo Ocean) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 15:01:32 PDT

We have all faced a great deal of both suffering and joy in our lives. The world of ego is by nature a constantly fluctuating dance of cruelty and beauty. Though we all suffer, each of us carries a unique personal story of how we have been wounded by the very nature of the world created by ego. Yet as Hafiz so eloquently says, "your wounds of love can only heal, when you can forgive this dream."

We can only move beyond identification with "the story of me," which is essentially the story of what has happened to the ego and how it felt about it, when we can forgive the world for being the way it is. And this forgiveness is only possible once we feel that the story of our personal suffering has been heard, understood fully, and met with compassion. We must testify as witnesses for the prosecution, have the world be found guilty, and then decide in our hearts to grant it a full pardon.

Many of us have had experiences of temporary awakening. Each time we thought it would be the ultimate one, that it would last. Yet each time we were eventually pulled back into the world of ego identification. That happens because something is left undone. The ego identity is still being clung to for some specific reason, not just as a general state. That is why some people are able to indeed let go and stay let go. They let go and there is nothing that snaps them back. They are truly done with the story of their ego identity. It no longer holds any power over them, anymore than a movie they once saw does.

When your "story self" feels that he/she has been fully represented, that the criminal called "world" has been exposed, and that he/she is the one who has decided to forgive the world its sins, then it will be able to let go of you. It won't need to keep you carrying around its story, lest it be forgotten and never given its due.

The Trial
Write out the story of your suffering. Start with your earliest memories of childhood and go through your present life. See if you can identify any patterns to your suffering and any beliefs you have come to accept even though they cause you great pain. For example, I have dealt with an anxiety disorder my entire life and as part of that I developed a belief that this world was a very frightening place. I realize it isn't that frightening to everyone, just to people with anxiety disorders. But that doesn't make it any less true for me. So that is a part of the story of suffering that I carried through life, that I was a defenseless being in a terrifyingly violent world. See if you can identify not just the details, but the thematic beliefs of your story. This is necessary before the ego identity whose story it is can feel it has fully been understood.

Once you have written out the 3-10 pages you are likely to wind up with when you are done, find a trusted, loving, and supportive friend and ask him/her to help you with a healing ritual. Since you'll be asking a lot of the person, you may want to present it as a mutual project you are doing together, where they help you one week and then you meet again the next week for you to return the favor to them.

Send the friend your story in advance, with them committing to read it before your meeting, so that you can be sure they have had time to sit with it and fully take it in. Then when you are together, read the story aloud to them, so that you are testifying to them. After you have read the story, ask them if they understand fully or if they have any questions. If they have any questions, answer them as best you can before proceeding.

Ask yourself internally if you are truly ready to release the story of your victimization by ego's world. If you get a "yes," then burn the pages of your story, with your friend as witness. As you watch the pages burn, announce your love and compassion for the person who is being destroyed by the flames of love. Speak whatever words you feel moved to speak, and open your heart with full compassion for the story of suffering that once was your "home" and that will never be seen or heard from again.

Bury or scatter the ashes somewhere outside. That's it. It's over. May he/she rest in peace. Just don't go back to visit the grave.

I Love You

noreply@blogger.com (Indigo Ocean) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 16:11:59 PDT

I love you like the horizon loves the sky and the shadow loves the dark, inseparably. I love you like breath loves the lungs and a smile loves the corners of your mouth, interdependently. I love you like a journey's end, and then beginning, and then end, as life takes form, endlessly.

I love you like the clay loves the vase, and the sun stays up late to catch just a glimpse of a rising moon, do you see?

I love you in endless ways, for endless hours, of endless days. Infinity is the very essence of my love for you.

There was never a time I loved you less, nor will there ever be a time I could love you more, for perfection in love is unwavering.

I do not write this to make you feel a debt, and truly love requires no payment, nor could any afford the value even if it did. I write to remind you, so that you will recall just how much you love you too.

A Tonglen Life

noreply@blogger.com (Indigo Ocean) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 17:52:40 PDT

I became aware during Tonglen today that the point of my life has always been to be a blessing with the living of this life. To me, apart from that, there is just the act of survival, and we all know how successfully that ends. Everybody dies. The only way to do it well, is to leave a trail of benefit in one's wake.

It seems common when people speak of recognizing this that they couch it in apologies for past selfishness or cluelessness. I can't do that. I have been living a life of service since I was 15 and started my first public service venture, a countywide high school youth council that among its many projects in that first year organized and put on a two week summer crafts camp for elementary school children. I am not writing to describe the turning of a page of awareness, but to reinforce a message that is already within everyone reading this.

I am writing to say, do it bigger, more frequently, and without any doubt that it is in fact the point. Life is that simple and direct, no matter how pervasive the false teachings of "masters of the universe" mentalities that control our media and seek to define our culture.

There is awakening, the path of letting go of our false beliefs about reality, particularly our false sense of a separate self. And then there is also navigating relative reality, which we were not born into by accident. As well as the awareness of ultimate reality, there is making something out of this experience of the relative. As far as I can see, the only thing worth making out of it is the alleviation of suffering around us and the spread of joy, love, and support in more and more creative and effective ways.

Phone Buddies came out of such a desire, as have many other projects I've been involved in over the years. What is your offering to our collective experience to be these days? What would you like to gift us? If you have tried already to bring your heart gifts out into the world, you already know that working to help others is still hard work. The world does not pave a path of gold for you just because you want to do something good. There will be many people who will be threatened by your desire to make a positive difference. Some will be jealous and not want to see you succeed. Others will not let you help them, they will reject your help because they don't want it to come from you.

This is a very frequent experience of people of color who seek to help people of all races, including the dominant racial group of whites, often because the intended beneficiaries hold a self-perception of superiority that does not happily accept assistance from "inferiors." In my twenties it was hard for me to learn this lesson, both in terms of being difficult to comprehend and also painful to accept. Yet I kept on working to give benefit wherever I could regardless of race or racism, because it is who I am, and I could not snuff out that inner drive however difficult the journey.

I am writing to encourage all of you who have ever thought you wanted to do something with this life more than survival, beyond even creating additional lives (children) and seeing them grow. There is something more than service to self or to immediate family. There is service to the community of life itself. And in the end I truly believe that is all relative reality ever adds up to over time. The rest is timeless and unconditional. We are meant to have both joys, which is why we were created with both aspects of reality such integral parts of who we are.

If you are still looking for your "calling" or your next "service idea," I would suggest adding tonglen to your daily routine. Breathing in, visualize your Buddha nature drawing all the suffering and inner conflict out of everyone on Earth. Breathing out, visualize your Buddha nature fanning the flames of the inner fire of Truth and Love within the heart-minds of all beings. After however many cycles of breath you have time to devote right then, rest in the glow of a world of happiness, health, wealth and wholeness. Do this at least once each day, and as much as once each hour, depending on how quickly you want to birth the vision into reality. I would say "good luck," but that's not what you need. Just do it.

Singing for Your Freedom

noreply@blogger.com (Indigo Ocean) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 14:35:16 PDT

"You are forever pure.
You are forever true
and the dream of this world
can never touch you.
So give up your attachment
and give up your confusion
and fly to that space that's beyond
all illusion."

~ Shimshai from the song "Suddhosi Buddhosi" off the album "Live on Maui"

I love the sound of silence so much that sometimes I forget how transformative a blessing music can be. Of course, it can always be entertainment, and such distractions can be fun, but when I'm not looking for distraction, when instead I'm looking to deepen my intimacy with the present moment, I generally surround myself with silence. And then there comes a day where I brew the very best oolong tea I have been able to find, open up the French doors to the garden, and turn up the volume on my favorite acoustic musicians.

Today I immersed myself in Shimshai, and what a soul opening choice it was. As I listened to his music today, I found my heart opening with a keen awareness of one aspect of the suffering in this world. Recently I have been troubled by the rise in gang violence, and particularly in the growing tension between the races and an increase in gang related race wars. As I sat listening to the music, I felt a deep connection to the false beliefs that were controlling the minds and eclipsing the hearts of all those young people, causing them to live in rage, hatred and fear -- some as victims and some as victimizers, but all as suffering souls. The more I felt the pain of their delusion, the more my heart opened and I began to cry for them. Every inch of my heart cried out for their release, as I prayed that the light of the Truth of their perfection, and indeed the perfection of their imagined enemies, might pierce the darkness and reveal itself to them.

Earlier today I began my morning meditation the way I always do, with the Buddhist Four Immeasurables prayer:

"May all beings have happiness and the cause of happiness.
May they be free from suffering and the cause of suffering.
May they never part from the happiness that is beyond suffering.
May they dwell in equanimity, without attachment or aversion."

I have long known that the one cause of suffering this prayer points to is the suffering caused by the delusion that we ARE these limited, separate, physical devices that we use to move through this physical realm. This false belief is the only true source of suffering that exists. Once we know that we are infinite beings having a localized experience, everything falls into perspective. Group identity is just an idea. Pride, respect, power -- all just ideas, none of which hold the power to cause or prevent our inner peace and outward demonstration of love. But in the presence of false identification with the illusion of these separate bodies and their separate life stories that we call "me," well then no happiness can possibly be a lasting one, for it is all frail and threatened, needing constant defense and shoring up.

Ending each meditation, there is the prayer that the merit gained by the practice be used to free all beings from suffering:

"Rising above all forces of negativity,
going beyond the turbulence of [belief in] birth, old age, sickness, and death,
from the ocean of samsara,
may I free all beings."

This is always meaningful to me, yet rarely does it reach into the depths of my emotions and empower itself as a creative prayer. Yet our thoughts and words have the power to create within this manufactured realm. We can take action upon the physical using our physical bodies and their efforts, but as Divine creators who manufactured this realm ourselves, we can also act upon this physical realm from a non-physical level. Yet in order for us to do this, we must "move" from the locus of our spiritual self, which is heart-centered. Emotion can be one of the widest paths to that center of connectedness with all life. And today it was music that allowed me to follow that path home, and re-energize my commitment to using my life to help as many people as I can to find freedom from the tyranny of their mental confusion, and to remember who they are.

"Pure, pure like the water,
let it run forever more,
to be clean, clean as the waves
come crashing to the shore.
It leaves me
smooth, smooth as a pebble,
polished in the depth of love
carried by the winds of grace
on the wings of a dove.
...
Arise and awake from your slumber
Kindle ancient flame
as witness to the waves of what's to change
though the essence remains the same."

~ Shimshai from the song "Pure" off the album "Deliverance"

Let yourself rise from the depths of your slumber. Remember who you are. You have lived a life from within a limited perspective, but you are not a limited being. You are Christ. You are Krishna. You are Buddha. Remember, and shine your light so that it might enlighten others as you pass through this world. You are not alone. You were never alone. There is only one of us.

"I know that Jah
is forever beside me.
I know the love
will forever remind me.
I know that Jah
is the light in a darkened world.
I must live in Thy way and Thy will."

~ Shimshai from the song "We Give Thanks" off the album "Live on Maui"

May you see the Truth in yourself, and find it again reflected back to you within every face you see.

White Tea for clear skin, and clear mind

noreply@blogger.com (Indigo Ocean) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:21:31 PDT

If you read the previous article on puerh tea and its remarkable meditative qualities, you already know I have an extreme sensitivity to caffeine. That is why for many years I have had to avoid tea made from the Camellia sinensis plant. Nervous system soothing tisanes like African rooibos tea (red bush) have been a favorite, but though they provide remarkable antioxidants without giving the caffeine-sensitive the nervous jitters, they do not provide the mental clearing effect of caffeinated teas.

Meditation is about being physically calm and mentally alert. It is not about spacing out or floating off into a blurry bliss out. It's not like having a beer or a glass of wine, though many people try to use it that way. There are mental practices you can engage in that over time will give you the ability to calm your emotions, but that is not true meditation. Mental clarity must always be present in addition to the peaceful state if it is true meditation. It is in this form that meditation delivers its most profound effects, which are truly life transforming. I will write more on this in other articles, but want to clarify this crucial and often misunderstood point before proceeding to tout the benefits of a little caffeine in one's diet, no matter how caffeine-sensitive you are.

I am not a purist when it comes to having to do everything by dint of sheer effort. Why not get a little help from natural, legal substances if they actually help rather than becoming a diversion or a crutch? I tend to think of substances like marijuana as diversions. They imitate the "bliss out" experience so many falsely associate with spiritual experience, yet lead down a dead end that will never give you access to true spiritual freedom. And for some people these substances even become a crutch, one that people then need to face the world and get through the day. You can do anything in such a way that you develop a dependency. All I can do is to urge you to be aware of this and to moderate your enjoyment of the things you use accordingly, including caffeine.

And now, with no further prelude, here are the blessed attributes of white tea:

White tea is lower in caffeine than any other type of tea, and yet has the highest level of antioxidants. The tea is picked when it is just a bud, before it has developed all of its caffeine. It is also not cured, and so keeps more of its antioxidants all the way to your cup. This is where the skin clearing benefit is achieved, which I'm sure goes much deeper to be a general health tonic. The skin merely reveals what is going on inside.

Here is what a wikipedia article has to say about white tea:

"A study at Pace University in 2004 showed white tea had more anti-viral and anti-bacterial qualities than green tea. White tea contains higher catechin levels than green tea due to its lack of processing.Catechin concentration is greatest in fresh, unbroken and unfermented tea leaves.Furthermore, one study examining the composition of brewed green and white teas found that white tea contained more gallic acid and theobromine. As white tea is made out of young leaves and buds, it has more of amino acid theanine (providing relaxing and mood enhancing properties) than green and black teas, which are made from older leaves."

There is some debate around the internet about the amount of caffeine in white tea compared to other teas, but what I see is that the greatest number of sources say white tea has the least caffeine, while only wikipedia seems to be claiming it has the most. My experience has definitely been that it has the least. Here is a helpful chart of caffeine levels from About.com.

I find that the combination of theanine, antioxidants, and a touch of caffeine makes white tea the perfect health tonic. Served hot, it is a wonderful afternoon break and prelude to meditation. Served iced, it is a delicious accompaniment to many foods. I'm particularly loving it with tuna sandwiches, but that's because the iced white tea I make includes some dried fruit, and fruit is a great compliment to seafood.

I've also notice that my skin is absolutely glowing lately (and no, I most definitely am NOT pregnant). I've always had pretty nice skin, but this is just amazing. My pores have shrunk and my complexion is getting clearer every day. It became noticeable after just 3 days of starting my venture into white tea, and now at the one month mark there is a very marked difference. Another important part of my "great skin" habit is that I take one Apple Cider Vinegar capsule and one Flax seed oil softgel with breakfast each day. I've been doing that for about a year, and also noticed a big reduction in wrinkles and increase in the softness of my skin as a result. The white tea has added the effect of clearing up small blemishes and reducing the size of my pores to create the smooth look of one's twenties. (I'm in my early 40s.)

Things You Will Need

If you would like to add white tea to your diet, you can just buy teabags at the grocery store that are labeled "white tea," but that is going to get you a lower quality product that you may have a hard time considering enough of a treat to actually enjoy drinking it enough to get the significant effects I'm talking about. If you can financially swing it, I would encourage your investing in the following:

The Tea - White Tea Sampler from Adagio, 4 different white teas in 1.5 ounce tins. I discovered I liked the Silver Needle the best, which is no surprise, since Silver Needles is widely considered the best white tea. You don't need to get the sampler to find that out. The reason to get the sampler is to see if there is another white tea you will like enough to buy it instead, because Silver Needle is also the most expensive. Once I decided to get Silver Needle in larger quantities, I went with a different vendor because Adagio's teas aren't the very best you can get for the prices they charge. White tea is best the freshest it is, so a tea that has been picked the same year is ideal. Adagio doesn't even present the ages of its white teas, which tells you a lot. I went with Imperial Tea Court's 2009 Harvest Imperial Silver Needle, which unfortunately seems to be out of stock now. They do still have a 2009 White Peony, which is often considered the second best quality of white tea, and at less than half the price of Silver Needle.

For iced tea, try Adagio's flavored white tea sampler for $7 or mix and match your own 2 oz. tins for $2 each. I love the combination of 2 parts White Pear, to 1 part White Peach and 1 part White Blueberry. Truly AMAZINGLY delicious.

The Accessories - The most significant investment I made in starting up my white tea lifestyle was in getting a temperature controlled electric tea kettle. White tea has to be brewed at a lower temperature than boiling, and I just couldn't be bothered to try to get it right without a kettle like this. You can find them on the internet from $50-100 by just doing a search for "temperature controlled tea kettle" but I got mine from Adagio. Here is a great find at Amazon Temperature controlled tea kettle.

(You will notice that I am mentioning Adagio a lot. I must give the disclaimer that I have mixed feelings about this vendor due to how they handled my last order, which they eventually had to reimburse me for, but they do have a wide selection of useful things for a tea drinker. The biggest drawback that is likely to affect you is that they don't post tracking numbers on their website. The only way you can track your package directly is if you email them and ask for your tracking number. On their website it just shows where they think the package is now. So when at 9pm I got an email from them saying my packaged had been delivered, but I had no package in my possession, they were no help in finding where it was. I called UPS and was on the phone with them half an hour, trying to figure out what package I was even talking about as well as where it actually was. I may still do business with them, because I love their flavored teas for iced tea, but I will do so knowing the drawbacks and never buy anything high-priced from them again.)

The other accessory that may be worth your investment is a clear glass teapot. It is helpful to be able to gauge brewing time by the color of the tea. Different white tea vendors suggest different brewing times, and I find my sight is now the best true gauge, now that I've experimented a little with the exact teas I'm using, the quantities I use, and the brewing purpose (iced or hot). The other benefit of a glass teapot is that the flavor of white tea is so subtle that it can be affected by the pot you brew it in. Never make white tea in a teapot that you have been using to brew black tea, or even oolong or green tea, for that matter, unless it is a non-porous teapot. Glass is non-porous. Yixing is quite porous. Ceramic is moderately porous. Iron pots are always coated with an internal glaze, and I don't know what it is or whether it is porous, but if you have one, hopefully you know.

My glass teapot came with an internal strainer at the spout, so that the tea floats freely while brewing, then automatically gets strained as it is poured out of the pot. I got a small pot because I am usually brewing just for myself, and since you have to let white tea steep several minutes, you don't want a mostly empty pot cooling down your tea before it is ready for drinking. I generally make one cup at a time, for two steeps. Between the iced flavored white tea I often have with lunch, and the hot tea break mid-afternoon, I drink 2-3 cups of tea each day. Sometimes the afternoon break is with a different type of tea, and sometimes I skip the iced tea at lunch, but on average its 2-3 cups a day that leads to clear skin for me. The cost is about $1 per day.

The Preparation - Recommended steeping times vary from 2-7 minutes. I find that my first drinkable steep of most white teas come out best at around 3 minutes. I say first "drinkable" steep, because I always wash my tea leaves with the first steep of 30-45 seconds. This also washes off much of the caffeine, because caffeine is water soluble. Add time to each steep to get more of the flavor out of the leaves.

Brewing temperature is recommended at 170-180 degrees Fahrenheit (about 80 degrees Celsius). In the days before temperature controlled tea kettles, people would pour boiling water into cooling pitchers, let the temperature drop for a minute or two, then pour the water into the teapot. This is also the method used with Green Tea, and White Tea is even more delicate than green.

I hope you will give it a try. To your health!

Tea as Meditation

noreply@blogger.com (Indigo Ocean) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 10:24:35 PDT

I am not going to pretend to be a connoisseur of tea. There are many true experts out there, and I suggest you look to them for an "expert opinion." What I'd like to share with you is my experience of some quality teas I have recently discovered, coming from a spiritual point of view.

The first tea that opened my eyes to the meditative nature of tea drinking was pu-erh. A friend brought by a 12 year old sheng, meaning it had been stored green and allowed to age under the proper conditions for 12 years. He served it to me gongfu style, meaning he used a tiny yixing teapot and two 1-ounce cups, and made many quick steeps that each served just a few sips for each of us.

When I first smelled the tea it reminded me of earth. As I took the first sips, it was as if the Earth itself was entering me. I guess drinking old tea is about as close as you want to get to drinking liquefied dirt. Not that the tea was muddy at all. It was transparent and quite pure in that regard, with a deep reddish-brown color typical of a black tea. But the feeling of the tea was truly like taking the Earth into one's body. Pot after pot, as I looked out into my backyard garden and drank this tea, I felt more and more like I was camping somewhere, then like I lived in the woods, and then like I was a mere extension of nature myself, a walking tree.

I am not someone who can handle caffeine very well. My nervous system is hyper-sensitive. This serves me well when it comes to spiritual connectedness and healing work, but not when it comes to being able to enjoy nervous system stimulants. They put me over the edge into an anxiety that is utterly physical, like I need to jump out of my body, but I can't, so instead I just tremble with clinched muscles all over my body. Not exactly an afternoon treat.

Pu-erh is low in caffeine, lower than even green tea. Only white tea has less caffeine (and I will talk about white tea in a future article). Normally if I drink even green tea one morning I will have a hard time sleeping that night. It's not that the caffeine is still in my body that long, as caffeine is processed by the body in about 5 hours. It is more that the hyper-stimulation of my nervous system takes many hours to abate after the stimulant is no longer present. I had pu-erh around 1pm, and had no problem falling to sleep around 11pm that night. I share this aside for those of you who have avoided tea because of the caffeine.

There was a point when I was drinking the tea when it felt like I was hitting my caffeine limit, even with this low caffeine variety, and needed to stop or pass into jittery mode. My friend encouraged me to keep going. I rationalized that it was a Saturday, so what the heck if I was up all night. The fascinating thing is, two steeps later the experience came around full circle. Instead of further stimulating me, it actually felt like I was taking a nervous system tonic that was calming me, but in a way that was mentally crystal clear.

In meditation, what you are going for is to be fully relaxed and yet keenly alert. You are totally immersed in the bareness of what is, and at peace with it. A lot of people confuse spacing out or blissing out with meditation. I dare say, if there is any "out" involved, you're probably not meditating. Drinking the pu-erh brought me into a meditation that was so grounded in the Earth and yet as spacious as the sky. It was truly a phenomenal experience.

My friend left, taking his pu-erh with him, but a few days later I couldn't stop thinking about that tea experience. I have a daily meditation practice, but have struggled lately to keep it at three times a day. I always do my morning meditation and usually do my evening meditation, but have a hard time getting myself to break in the middle of the day for another meditation session. I work at home and set my own schedule, so there is no external reason I can't do it. I've just had a hard time getting myself to switch gears mid-day, even though when I do it refreshes and refocuses me so that I work better afterwards. I realized that if I had the tea I might take meditative tea breaks right after my "working lunch" and thereby get in my third meditation session each day. (As it turns out, even with the low caffeine, there is a degree of nervous system stimulation from the pu-erh, and I can only handle every other day. That's where the white tea comes in.)

Since my friend who introduced me to pu-erh was traveling, and I knew he got his from a shop near his home in Santa Cruz anyway, I had to hunt around online to find a good source for my own pu-erh setup. A key find was the Pu-erh Tea Community, which led me to Generation Tea, where I bought a 25 year old shou and sheng blend, and Imperial Tea, where I bought a 4 oz. yixing and gongfu tasting and aroma cups.

This is the second time I am mentioning the term "sheng," so let me explain more about that now. Basically, sheng pu-erh is green tea that has been allowed to age under the right conditions, while shou pu-erh is a fermented tea that has been manipulated by man to have the taste of a very old sheng, though it is actually quite young. Needless to say, shou is cheaper, but sheng is for the true connoisseur. The blend I got of the two was a compromise. I spent $28 per ounce and got a tea that tasted 25 years old and that carried the energetic quality of 25 years of aging, even though the quantity was "extended" by shou "filler."

From Wikipedia's Pu-erh page: "Pu-erh tea can be purchased as either raw/green (sheng) or ripened/cooked (shou), depending on processing method or aging. Sheng pu-erh can be roughly classified on the tea oxidation scale as a green tea, and the shou or aged-green variants as post-fermented tea.... Unlike other teas that should ideally be consumed shortly after production, pu-erh can be drunk immediately or aged for many years; pu-erh teas are often now classified by year and region of production much like wine vintages."

I have come to truly love my midday breaks with this tea. I use it as an entry point into meditation. I spend about 30 minutes enjoying multiple steeps of the tea, then meditate for 20 minutes. I start my meditation from a mental state that is already very close to what meditation produces, so that my 20 minutes deliver quite an effect.

Last week I got to share the tea with my Buddhist teacher. We have tea together rather frequently, but usually he is the one sharing tea with me. This time I got to introduce him to pu-erh, a tea he had never even heard of. First I checked that he was okay with having a Chinese tea, since he is Tibetan. He said that tea was universal and he had no problem with enjoying it. And enjoy it he did.

At the first sip he was visibly affected and his literal response was "oh! This is very good tea." He drank more and then added, "I can feel this is really doing something for my body. It is very cleansing." We drank for about an hour before we even spoke about anything else. We simply sat enjoying the tea and each other's presence. As we sat, it was as if our Buddha Nature expanded. I felt like I was at day 3 of a meditation retreat. We then began to converse, but the conversation took a very different form than the sorts of things we normally talk about. For the first time, I felt I was sitting with a dear friend, and not just a teacher. He has often described me as a friend and himself as my spiritual friend, but I never really accept that, and always refer to him as my teacher. Yet in that moment, I sat with a friend, and we spoke of his life as friends would.

I will end this introduction to the meditative qualities of pu-erh here, though really I could go on. I would invite you to go into a Chinese tea shop and experience the tea for yourself if you are near a Chinatown or an Imperial Tea Court (Berkeley/San Francisco). The investment to get started if you buy everything like I did would be about $100. I was willing to spend a little more than that because I had already had the tea served to me. It is a big leap to invest that much for your first cup. Though I suppose you could get away with just buying the tea and using it with your current teapot and teacups. Drinking it gongfu style is recommended though. That truly is a part of the meditative quality of the overall experience of the tea, and also changes how the tea tastes. Brewing a pot and pouring it into a 6-12 oz. cup is simply not the way to drink pu-erh.

You can watch this Gongfu cha dao How-to video to get a good introduction to the method, but you don't have to be a total purist to get the benefits of the method. Just note how he uses the aroma and tasting cups and uses a very small teapot and small teacups. He steeps the tea many times, and truly the most delicious pot of pu-erh to me is generally around the 4th or 5th steeping. You simply steep the tea longer each time, starting with about 10 seconds for the 1st steeping, which you pour off (it contains most of the caffeine, and also washes the leaves). The second steeping is generally around 30 seconds, on through the 6th, which is generally about 3 minutes. Again, this is just a guide and how I like it. You must experiment for yourself to find your "sweet spot" based on personal taste, the variety of pu-erh you purchase, and also how much tea leaf you are putting in the pot. You can read more about gongfu cha dao on Wikipedia. Enjoy.

Too Simple

noreply@blogger.com (Indigo Ocean) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 10:25:02 PDT

There is a beauty that is too simple for most to see. There is a peace too pervasive to embrace, and a joy too unearned to satisfy. Thankfully, there is also a power we each carry within us to make a new choice, a different one in this moment. We can choose to accept what is simple, pervasive, and unconditional as the very thing we have sought, and thereby come to full rest within this very moment.

This is it. This is the moment you have waited for. This is the breath you needed to exhale, and see how the one you needed to inhale comes so effortlessly following after.

There are still so many habits that rule your life and determine your actions and reactions. Yet the antidote to them all is so simple. Sit in meditation each day. Learn through meditation how to let habitual action and inner reaction pass through without identifying with it as "I" or "my experience." Just watch it, as an attentive observer. Be the silent and impartial witness to the cascade of inner turmoil, joy, sadness, anger, and judgmental chatter that calls itself feeling and thought.

Notice too the viewpoint that is watching. Watch the watcher. The truly miraculous thing is that the impartial watcher within you is the same as the one within me, and every other sentient being. There is only one watcher, taken form in many different bodies and watching the passage of many different life stories, all at once. We are not connected; we are one.

And we are enlightened right now. Notice. And appreciate the simple things.

The inner chatter and habitual behavior doesn't necessarily stop when you awaken to your ever-present perfection. It eventually will because you won't be feeding it with the energy of new "I" identity energy, which it depends on to grow, but at first and for probably a long time it will still be there. Yet through meditation you will have trained yourself to not be bothered by it and to most assuredly not feed it. And so, there is the habitual mind, and there is the perfection, and it is all here right now, in peace.

The fire
Has roared near you.
The most intimate parts of your body
Got scorched,

So
Of course you have run
From your marriages into a
Different
House

That will shelter you
From embracing every aspect of Him.

God has
Roared near us.
The lashes on our heart's eye got burnt.
Of course we have
Run away

From His
Sweet flaming breath
That proposed an annihilation
Too real,

Too
Beautiful.

~ Hafiz

Choose again. Sit, watch, and learn to separate Truth from untruth, the Divine you from the temporary form of you. It truly is just that simple. Anyone could do it. I've taught it to convicts right there within prison. Absolutely nothing about enlightenment is the stuff ego pride can grow on. So what do you truly choose? Your next actions will answer that question for you, honestly.

Right-Livelihood, What is It?

noreply@blogger.com (Indigo Ocean) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 10:26:39 PDT

Over the last couple weeks I have been experiencing a tremendous deepening of my connection with my spiritual self's wisdom. I have long believed that surrender to the highest inner wisdom of the "God within" was the only way to fulfill one's potential in life, but only recently have I begun to live that truth, embracing Spirit as the master of my life. I find lately that I am often dwelling in a state of constant surrender, asking, "what do you want of me?" instead of "what do I want right now?"

However, I still have to apply my intellect to sort out and apply the instruction I am given. Spirit doesn't tend to say things like, "I want you to quit this job and apply for this one. And no more wine. Stick to apple juice." At least it doesn't say those sorts of things to me, anyway. Instead it gives images, impressions, feelings and flashes of insight. It is up to intellect to figure out how those things fit within the physical realm we act within. And that's where the confusion comes in when I wonder if I'm doing the right thing at the right time, and if not, what would constitute the right thing to most fully actualize Spirit's highest goals for my life.

For a couple years now my online technology consulting work has seemed blessed; it flowed so naturally and I became so good at it so quickly. When I decided to do the work primarily for non-profits (NPOs) it seemed to my intellect that it would of course be a combination that was even more favored by Spirit. But then the transition has been like slogging through mud. It keeps almost happening, but not quite happening.

At the same time, just yesterday I heard from someone I did a spiritual healing session with years ago, who tells me he has adapted a part of the work I once did with him, creating a daily practice he calls "The Way of the Heart." He says that doing the 5 min. practice several times each day has brought him his life partner, and that it has done the same for several other people he taught it to. It was the centering intro for my work, not the focus, so no soulmates with me. Still, it makes me think about doing sessions again.

He wrote me to ask if I would review the book he is writing about it, and when I gave him some clarifying feedback, he asked how I had come up with the original method. Within my search for the answer to his question within distant memory, I delved more deeply into the heart of the work I once did than I have in several years. Doing so renewed my love for the work, and my recollection of just how profound a difference I was making in people's lives.

The reason I had stopped doing it was the "business" aspect of the work. What got hard for me was that I'm not much of an entrepreneur in general, but particularly when I am having to promote myself as having such nebulous abilities. My technology work is more concrete, and so doesn't feel as much like a promotion of "me," so trying to sell my value in that regard doesn't feel as vulnerable as trying to sell my value with healing work.

When technology clients say, "We've worked with many consultants, and Indigo is the best we have found; she did wonders for our business," and these people are leaders in their industries, well that feels like very strong affirmation and I'm confident other companies will want me to do the same for them, and expect I can. Spiritual healing work is very different from that. After a few years, I just didn't have it in me to keep up the effort of maintaining a separate healing room (at considerable extra expense above my personal living space needs), keeping promotional materials in circulation so that clients could find me, and then "closing the deal" and scheduling the sessions. It all felt like a burden, rather than a gift.

Writing to Forest and explaining the content of the full ClearLight Nature/Bliss Therapy sessions brought back the reason I had created the method in the first place, as well as my confidence in just how effective it is. It truly does restore people to an experience of their spiritual center as their "I" identity. And it leaves them with guidance they can use to help maintain that, even as familiar habits and life structures pull them back towards their old norm.

Then today I read an article by Dave Pollard called The World Changing Story, which essentially asks the question, "If our current civilization is collapsing in on itself, as it appears to be doing, what part of our path forward do you want to be?"

In reflecting on how to answer, I realize that I also see the current way of life as unsustainable, but am split on how I fit into the effective human response. A part of me is concerned with financially supporting myself so that I am not a victim of the worst of it. (e.g. The difference in experience of catastrophe between the poor and the wealthy during Katrina was significant, and I'm still far closer to the poor pole than the secure one.) Another part of me wants to ease people's suffering in immediate ways -- sort of salve and bandage the wounds -- hence my desire to work with non-profits as a tech consultant, helping them be more effective in their service work, and my creation of the Phone Buddies peer counseling community.

Still another part of me sees a spiritual solution. We need as many people as possible attuned with their Buddha Nature/Inner Wisdom to guide us out of this. Intellect won't manage it. This leads me to want to go back to doing my spiritual healing work, which was focused on exactly that "re-centering."

So how do I balance these 3 wants? Is it Spirit's desire that I do incorporate all 3 into my life, or is it pointing me towards just one now? Was the previous support for the technology work only meant to last for that period of time, and is it now time to refocus on offering spiritual healing work and trying to help as many people as I can before X happens? Is it the intermediate work of helping non-profits with technology that is not supported, and I am meant to support myself financially by offering technical assistance to well paying corporate clients so that I can offer the spiritual sessions for free and easily afford the space to conduct them in? Or should I do nothing, and simply wait for something to walk right up and lay itself across my lap, as opportunities did when I lived in Bali?

Spirit, speak more clearly; my intellect is not succeeding in sorting out your cryptic instructions.

Addendum 8/09: As is often the case, as soon as I clarify the question, the universe sets about creating the answer all around me through the circumstances of my life. I was letting myself get lost in other people's ways of relating to life, within which I will never find peace because it is simply not my viewpoint. I am not a person with a story that looks forward, only one which is revealed looking back. Fortunately for me, by then it no longer matters, and so I am not confined by my stories. I don't know who I am or what I am doing in this world. I know I have many opportunities to be of use because I have taken advantage of each opportunity to be of use in the past, even the ones that were rejected as unworthy of a developed intellect by so many others before me. What that adds up to, I don't need to know, unless I'm looking for a good party-talk answer to the question, "What do you do?" I can't live my life for good party talk. I guess they'll just have to be satisfied to hear that I am an unlimited being at play within the ocean of being, motivated by love, and satisfied by this moment.

Dare to be Perfect

noreply@blogger.com (Indigo Ocean) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 10:28:06 PDT

In the previous article I talked about self-love and how self-love is essential in order for us to feel the sense of security we need to relax into the present moment. We cannot be fully present if we think mental vigilance is needed to guard against impending threat, and we cannot stop expecting threat if we believe there is something bad about ourselves that deserves to be punished.

Hopefully you have been sitting each day in meditation on self-love and are beginning to see some progress with your reprogramming. Now I want to extend the focus of the discussion to also include another aspect of your journey of self-healing and your embrace of full self-love.

"You are originally unlimited and perfect. Later you take on limitations and become identified with the mind. Mind is consciousness which has put on limitations." - Ramana Maharshi

You are perfect. Your life is perfect.

By perfect, I do not mean, "very good, great, almost got it, just one more thing to fix." By perfect, I mean, PERFECT, as in no where to go and nothing to do that will provide any actual improvement. That heaven you've been looking for, that promised land? This is it.

Right here, right now, this is what you've been searching for. You have been a drop of water immersed in a great ocean and looking everywhere for a glass of water. Finding no glass, no outer shell to delineate where the water begins and ends, you say "it must be somewhere else." And so the hunt goes on.

This is it. It's here now. There is nothing to achieve to improve upon what is. Your life is already perfect.

It can be very attractive to live in search of a better moment. To embrace what is can seem like a tremendous let down. Yet once you accept the perfection of this moment, you won't stop going to work. You won't stop bathing and become a homeless vagabond with a begging bowl. If you don't feel drawn to that, then it is not your soul's intention, and so the path of surrender will not carry you there. (Though it could happen if you keep resisting whatever IS happening.)

If what feels good to you is physical comfort and mental stimulation, then when you surrender the future to the future, and accept that you are on a path that not only is perfect in every step, but also perfect in its destination, then you will increasingly find yourself in a life situation that has all those features that make you feel good. Ramana Maharshi felt utterly at peace living in a loin cloth and lived in a cave at one point, but if you are not drawn to the simplicity of that, it is not what surrender will look like for you. You don't need to ward it off. Just clarify what you do intend.

Maybe right now there are some very concrete things that are undesirable in your life. You don't like that you are sick and don't want to be that way anymore. You don't like that you don't have a job. You want that to change. And so on. I for one would like to live in a home with more rooms so I could entertain without having people walk through my bedroom to get to the bathroom, not to mention wishing I had more clients for my bread-and-butter tech consulting business so that I wasn't always living on "just enough to break even" within a very modest lifestyle. I'm not saying to pretend you like things you don't like or that you don't want things that you truly do want.

When I say your life is perfect right now, I mean this moment is a perfect opportunity for the highest peace, joy, love, and sense of well-being that is humanly possible. This moment holds just as much potential for that experience as any other moment ever could. You could have all the things you desire and none of the things you loathe, and still not feel contentment in your heart. Or you could be just as you are, with a mixed plate of bitter and sweet before you, and yet dwell in a complete state of bliss. You could, but do you intend to?

If you are like many people, you are suffering under a wrong belief that if you give up your war against what is, you will be forever deprived of the things you want and in fact sink deeper and deeper into poverty, obscurity and lack. You will be loved less, fed less, praised less, and happy less, if you don't keep grasping and fighting and climbing with all your might.

Or else you give up. You're exhausted, can't do it anymore, who needs it. You accept that not only is your life imperfect, it will never be perfect. Who are you to have the audacity to believe you deserve a perfect life? Who said you even deserved a single perfect moment within this life?

I am saying it now, and I invite you to listen to the words of many who have come before me who have said the very same thing. They said it about you and about themselves, and they were right about both.

"This that I have done, you too will do." - Jesus the Christ
"When you realize how perfect everything is, you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky” - Buddha
"You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection. " - Buddha

Note that there is a difference between acknowledging and embracing the perfection that is present versus striving for perfect outcomes. Perfectionism is the endeavor to create perfection in ourselves or situations or things. What I am talking about involves no endeavor, and indeed not even any creation. I am talking about a surrender to the force of creation our intellects cannot manage, and a willingness to call its creation absolutely perfect.

Breathing in, we drink deep of what has been created for us. Breathing out, we pour ourselves into it and let the drop disappear back into the ocean, as the mind empties into silence. Breathing in and breathing out, you are perfect in this very moment. Dare to envision your life as a series of perfect moments, each one worshiped fully as it arose, and I assure you that in time this truth will be fully revealed within your external circumstances as well.

As above, so below. As within, so without. Your decision to proclaim lack or perfection as reality is so powerful that all the Universe will obey it.

Buddha is quoted as having said that in terms of our human experience of life, it is what we do with our minds that will determine what we experience: “The mind is everything. What you think, you become.”

My life is truly perfect right now. There is still plenty of room for improvement in areas like wealth, social life, even health, and I spend some time each day clarifying my intentions around what I want to experience in those areas, but I also experience this moment as perfection. Nothing needs to change before I can relax into this moment and give it my full attention without any resistance. I can "be here now," because there is no war with the present moment.

I do not write all this to you because I want you walking around thinking, "I'm perfect." I do want you to know that, but only so that it will then be possible for you to relax into this moment and let the future take care of itself.

Your bliss exists in only one place and time, here and now. If you refuse to find it here, you will never find it at all. I invite you to see perfection. I invite you to dare to embrace your perfection, and the perfection of your life. And I invite you to do it right now.

Namaste

noreply@blogger.com (Indigo Ocean) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 10:29:28 PDT

What have you been looking for that is so much more rewarding than what is here right now? Is it a dream of accomplishment you seek - affirmation that you are valuable and needed? Is it for the world to love you more, this time enough for you to actually feel lovable? Do you need the roar of the crowd to feel it, or is even that not enough? Is it the security and freedom that you believe more money will buy? Is it the promised impenetrable bliss that enlightenment is said to provide?

Are your distractions from your present moment experience more of the variety of entertainments or defenses? Are you grasping or pushing to get away from here -- to get away from "right now?"

I ask these questions because I see myself in all of them. As I sat in meditation at the Buddhist center yesterday, all these questions kept arising in my mind. In short, "Why exactly is it that I keep chasing after something in my mind instead of appreciating what is here within my experience right now?"

I am a smart woman. I know full well that happiness can only be had as an experience. The thought of happiness is the basis of hope, but actual happiness is better than the hope for future happiness. Unless there is dread of future suffering that is stronger than anything else within one's awareness. And I think that is the root of the issue for me. You should look within yourself, within the lessons of your life, and see what the root is for you. I share more on mine now, in case we are alike in this way.

Having identified this root, I next seek out the genesis of the root so that I know how to uproot it and make sure it never takes hold again. Seeking this, I recognize the programming of my childhood and early adulthood. I was programmed for self-hatred. The world often tried to convince me that I had no value -- because I was a girl, because I was black, because I was poor, because... fill in the blank. Society rarely comes right up to your face and speaks those words, though sometimes some of us have even experienced that.

Actually it is easier to be defended against it when it does say it plain. It's when the lesson comes from people's behaviors and the situations they thereby create, that the programming is particularly effective. You never even realize a lesson is being learned. You simply embody and then repeatedly re-create the beliefs that are carried by the lesson. There is more that is taught like this than merely self-attack, but that is the lesson I particularly want to focus on now. It is the one that leads to this ever-present anxiety about what lies behind the next corner.

Within us all is a sense of justice. I believe this in an inescapable human trait. That is why criminals always do stupid things that eventually get them caught. A part of them wants to get away with it, but another part wants to be punished, because they are convinced they deserve it. I tend to agree with the criminals that they deserved to face the legal consequences of their behavior, but what about you? You have never shot, stabbed, robbed, beaten, swindled or otherwise preyed upon those around you. Why do you deserve to be punished?

If you protest, "No, I know I don't deserve to be punished," then go back to the start of this article and begin again. Now, tell me, why is it that you believe you deserve to be punished? What is it about you that is so bad it must face pain and suffering in order for all to be right in the world?

Yes, and there is the pain, is it not? There is the tear, and the agony, and the why, and the not fair. There is that wounded child, a little bird that was ripped from its shell too soon. And I cry with you. And I cry for you. And I cry out to you, "Please stop."

Stop punishing yourself for the crime you never committed. Stop accepting your programming as truth. Recognize that all you believe is something you were taught, and that now, as an adult, it is your responsibility alone to conduct your reprogramming.

You must program yourself for love, or you will not be able to settle into the peace that is here within this moment. You will not be able to surrender the future to the future until you no longer believe that assuredly some great harm awaits you there -- a harm you must take action or expend thought to ward off now, instead of simply being present with what is.

Breathing in, think, "I love myself." Breathing out, think, "I embrace what is." Breathing in and breathing out, over and over, we proclaim and attend to the truth, and thereby create a new mental habit, one that works in harmony with our peace instead of obscuring it.

Notice that I say, "obscure," not "prevent" or "interrupt." There is nothing that ever prevents or interrupts your peace. Your peace is eternal, ever-present, and unshakable. Your peace is right here right now, as it always is. But are you present with it? Do you take it for granted, or do you worship it with the full holy awe to which it is due?

If there has ever been a small infraction by you that might warrant any suffering, I would say it is this. That you do not exhibit the proper gratitude for the sacredness of your life. You fritter away the moments thinking about the past or the future, regretting this, wanting that, warding off some other thing, and meanwhile moment after moment of life comes and goes unacknowledged by you with so much as a nod. You should be on your knees.

The greatness of who you are in this very moment is so awesome, so beautiful and radiant and powerful, you should be on your knees.

I bow to you. I salute you. I embrace you. I thank you for coming to Earth. And I do it all, now.

PeacePrayer on Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Indigo Ocean) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 18:09:02 PDT

I left out the opening hashtag in the above title because my blogging software makes a url out of the title and browsers don't handled hashtags in urls properly (unless they are there to signify a location on the page). Really this article is about #PeacePrayer which is a Twitter meme that could make a real difference in your life and in our world.

The idea is this: every day each of us committed to fostering peace within our lives and within our world will make our first tweet of the day one that comes out of a vision of peace. We will then tweet whatever we think of and include the #PeacePrayer tag within it.

Method for Generating a Vision of Peace

Some people can just sit down and see a world at peace at will, but for most people that is an elusive vision. We know we like the idea of peace, but don't know what that would actually look like. By a vision of peace I don't mean a theory on the features of peace; I mean a clear mental image of people existing in a state of peace and going about their lives in that state.

In just 9 breaths you can generate a clear vision of peace like so: Sit quietly and focus your attention on your breath. Once you have that focus, imagine a light surrounding the entire planet, but invisible to everyone. See all the pain, fear, anger and sorrow that millions carry within them every day as if it were clouds within their hearts and minds. Then as you breathe in, watch as the all-pervading light sucks the clouds out of every heart and mind around the world. By your third breath, see each person completely cleared.

Then for 3 breaths, as you breathe out watch as the light pours itself into each person's heart. By your third breath, see that this light has radiated out from each person's heart to fill their entire being.

Now sit for three breaths simply witnessing the world at peace, filled with the light of love and surrounded by a world of well-being. Do you see many smiling faces? What are people doing? Watch and enjoy. Then open your eyes and write whatever comes out, adding #peaceprayer at the very beginning or very end.

Three breaths with visualization on the in-breath, three breaths with visualization on the out-breath, three breaths with steady visualization of peace on both in and out-breath, then write. That's it.

Timeframe

I would like to start by working on simply the remainder of this summer. If you feel you can commit to being a part of this meme for the rest of this summer, please retweet (RT) the original tweet that brought you to this page. That will be your affirmation of your participation.

At the end of the summer we can converse about whether we want to continue, and if so for what period of time.

I look forward to reading your #peaceprayer tweets. I know there is great wisdom within you. I also know that you cannot create what you cannot first envision. We must all be able to imagine a world at peace if we are ever to live in one. Let this be one step we take together in that direction.

Update 10/4/09 - Though summer has ended, consider taking the time each day to clarify your vision of the world you would like to contribute towards building. We don't have to tweet about it, but let us keep clarifying and empowering our visions.

Fellowship for Good - Kiva Invites You

noreply@blogger.com (Indigo Ocean) — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 13:10:37 PDT

I have been a Kiva lender for a few months now and am glad I joined every time I get an email notifying me that one of the two Ghanaian women whose business I supported has repaid part of the funds, which I will then be able to make available to other borrowers. Normally I don't do more than read the email and smile to myself at how easy Kiva has made it to share a chance at the prosperity my birth in a rich nation has given me direct access to.

Today, for the first time I followed some of the links in the email to return to the Kiva website to have another look around. I'm glad I did, as I discovered the Kiva Fellows program, which allows people like you and me the opportunity to go to Ghana, Peru, Ukraine, etc. to work with the local Kiva field office which selects businesses for the program and guides them to success with their businesses.

Here is an excerpt from the site - Kiva Fellow Core Responsibilities:

The Kiva Fellow is an integral part of the Kiva Team, acting as Kiva's eyes and ears in the field and helping to extend limited resources to maximum effect. Kiva Fellows fulfill tasks set out in a Work Plan, defined by Kiva along with the host microfinance institution (MFI).

Facilitate Connections between Kiva's Borrowers and Lenders
Your journal entries, business postings and blog entries will help build the rich content that bridges our borrowers and lenders and makes Kiva's model work!
- Interview no less than 15 businesses per week to assess loan impact, verify data, and gather information for journal updates
- Develop innovative ways to facilitate connections via creative journaling, YouTube video and other means
- Write a blog entry every two weeks on the Kiva Fellows Blog
- Promote awareness of the host MFI and its programs to the Kiva lender community
- Promote an understanding of the Kiva lending community to borrowers

There are two more items on the list, and it is recommended you visit the Kiva site for complete details. I highlight this first one here because it reveals an answer to a dilemma I confronted years ago when trying to help an African orphans support non-profit use online technology to grow their international support base. I kept trying to impress upon them how important it would be to have a blog that included entries from recipients so that people who donated money could get direct feedback about the difference their contribution was making in the childrens' lives. I even set up the blog for them and posted the first entry, but they simply never got themselves to a point where they could post anything themselves.

Kiva probably faced a similar problem, and solved it by having westerners who would be there in the field, posting the information on behalf of those who received services. It may seem like a small thing, and you might wonder both why it would be so hard for the local people to do it or why it would be important enough to send people half way around the world to do for them. I still don't know why it is such a seemingly insurmountable hurdle for local agency staff abroad to do the updates, but I can definitely say as a financial supporter myself that those updates mean a great deal to me. They are the human proof that there was a good reason for me to skip those two dinners out with friends to send the money I had worked for and earned to someone I have never met and will never meet. Those updates provide the motivation to keep on giving, so that others too will benefit based on the experience lenders had with those who came before them.

The next deadline for Kiva Fellow applications is coming up Oct. 1 and that trip will be departing in early February. If you do decide to apply, please come back and share insights about your experience in the sidebar comments.

As someone who has traveled and lived in financially impoverished countries, I can definitely attest to the life changing impact such an experience has on you. Though I never went as part of an official program, I always sought out and found opportunities to make a contribution to the lives of those around me beyond simply paying them a good price for whatever products their family business sold. I never saw myself doing the 2 year, government sponsored Peace Corp program, but the 3-6 month non-profit based Kiva Fellows program could be a great fit for anyone who sees economic independence as a key part of self-actualization for people around the world, and who wants to be a part of helping that happen.

The Right Kind of Independence

noreply@blogger.com (Indigo Ocean) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 10:31:30 PDT

Yesterday was the 4th of July, an American holiday celebrating our liberation from Great Britain so that we became a separate country instead of a collection of British colonies. It is sometimes referred to as Independence Day.

Some friends of mine at a barbecue yesterday kept greeting people with "Happy Inter-dependence Day," and I definitely find that more appropriate a wish given what is needed in the journey ahead if we are to survive as a species. We need to recognize our interdependence and begin working together for the common good, instead of trying to climb over each other's bones for a personal "win."

Yet a deeper interpretation of the word "independence" offers a promise for even greater human triumph than that which social interdependence could bring. The independence of which I speak is freedom from the tyranny of a mind that criticizes everything you or anyone else does, is impossible to keep happy for long, and which seems to feel it has something of value to say about every little moment of your life.

Do you ever find yourself thinking, "My head hurts. I need to get some sleep. I need some peace and quiet. But these thoughts keep running through my head, on and on?" Do you ever tire of the constant judgment flowing through your head? Wouldn't you like to be free of all that?

Well I sure would, and that is what I want to invite you to cultivate in your life. May you find independence from the tyranny of your chattering mind. May you be at peace. May you close your eyes in just a moment, take a deep breath in, think "I accept myself" as you breath out, then pause on empty and allow your mind to go blank. Then breathe in again as such, and begin the cycle again. May you do this over and over for the next 10 minutes, and opening your eyes, find yourself immersed in an all-pervading clarity and peace.

Be well.

On Racism

noreply@blogger.com (Indigo Ocean) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 10:32:08 PDT

I was asked how I as a Black person can work so hard to bring healing and happiness to people of races that have a rough history with my race (aka, White people). I was actually kind of shocked, but saw the earnestness of the questioner, so tried to come up with a meaningful response. At the time I didn't do so well, truly thrown off by the perspective of the question, given my world view. I think I said something like, "Well everyone is an individual, not a member of a group. You can't relate to people as if they were groups."

On further reflection however, this is what I really have to say:

I have been blessed to have been born into a family that did not believe in hating those who hurt them. Nor did they assume that this stance of forgiveness would be spontaneous within us kids -- so they taught us -- correcting and explaining as necessary to guide us to a place where there was peace in our hearts, even as we confronted painful incidents of racism and discrimination.

Neither were we taught to turn a blind eye to injustice. My step-father and grandmother in particular were very vocal about their thoughts and feelings about racism, and about other forms of discrimination against other groups. As many things as my family may have done wrong as I was growing up, this is one area in which they clearly got it right.

I will not say that I am color-blind. I notice race, but I do not see through the filter of race. I do not conceive of myself as a Black person, but rather as a person, one for whom sometimes it is quite significant that I am Black. I see others the same way.

To be color-blind would mean to deny the very real impact that racial heritage has on how much of the world treats a person, and thereby shapes that person's life experience in very powerful ways. I sometimes have reason to note a person's racial heritage because it becomes relevant to something that is happening or that they are saying, but in general it doesn't rise into my awareness any more than other details about their appearance.

I do categorize people a bit, not being completely able to perceive everyone as an individual of unlimited potential in each moment, but it is more in terms of the decisions they have made about who they are. Categories I would use to generally think of my friends would include: Super-loving, Environmentally Proactive, Community oriented, Musician, Dancer, Nature-dweller, etc.

When I run into them that impression tends to influence my unconscious assumptions about them. These are of course all positive characteristics, but still it is a type of prejudice. I have been socialized to be prejudicial in my thinking just as much as the next person has. It's just that for me race was never included as a major category, and certainly not a negative one, and really the idea of having negative prejudices in general was not a part of my upbringing.

Many parents assume that because they themselves are not racist their children naturally won't be, but nothing could be further from the truth. The society teaches racism, and to ignore that is to let it run free reign within the hearts and minds of the next generation. My family knew this because as victims of racism who had not let it harden their hearts, they saw the development of racism within the young around them of various races, and empathized with those children as victims in their own way. They understood how it happens, and knew it could happen in their own children too, even if coming from the opposite racial perspective. And they therefore worked very hard to see that that did not happen to us.

And so now I can unequivocally say that I do not feel ill-will for someone simply because they may feel ill-will towards me. What I truly wish for is their growth, learning and healing. I know that if they can develop a sufficient degree of self-love they will find there is no room in their hearts for hating anyone. They will discover that their light shines equally upon all who draw near, and that this is the fundamental truth about who they are. I know this about them, but they don't yet, and that's okay. I will hold that truth for them until they are ready to do so for themselves.

And I will go on writing books and articles meant to inspire everyone, creating communities meant to emotionally support everyone, teaching meditation to even murderers so that they may find peace, and generally being utterly irresponsible in my loving. I will not build walls to separate the supposedly deserving from the supposedly undeserving. I do this for my own good, and am glad it blesses you as well.

The Schizotypal Shaman

noreply@blogger.com (Indigo Ocean) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 10:33:21 PDT

If you have a spare 80 minutes, check out this fascinating Stanford lecture video on the Biology of Religion, which could more aptly be called, "How religiosity is the healthy trait expression of schizophrenia and OCD."

Not being a follower of any ritual based religion (my Tibetan lama has removed the ritual aspects of the religion from our sangha's practice), I don't myself see the benefits of the traits linked to OCD. But for those people who find peace within ritual and believe in its transformative power, hopefully you find no insult in the linkage to OCD. You really have to watch a good chunk of the video for the connection to be clarified, but he is definitely not pathologizing religion.

In fact, he starts with examples of how biological traits of physical illnesses also have valuable protective abilities within a society. Sickle cell anemia results from a trait that protects against malaria. Cystic fibrosis from a trait that protects against cholera. Tay-Sachs traits that protect against tuberculosis, and so on. It is the small portion of cases where the trait is excessive that disease results. Because the trait normally expresses in a healthy way, it gets passed on to future generations (many people with the trait still reproduce).

The need to "get it just right" is the key point of the lecture. In traditional tribal cultures, the shaman who goes into a trance, speaks to spirits, and thereby draws in healing energy in a ritual that the next day has the sick person get up from their sick bed totally well, or allows them to forewarn of the need to make a change in the tribe's behavior which months later turns out to save all their lives, this shaman is using the best of the traits of schizophrenia to benefit everyone. The schizophrenic who babbles to himself during a part of the hunt where everyone needs to be quiet in order to catch the game, gets exiled. There is a world of difference between highly well adapted traits that make super capable and maladaptive disorders that make one incompetent when it comes to personal survival and tribal survival.

As someone who possesses some such traits (channeling healing energies like Reiki and Johrei, having some truly miraculous healing experience in my treatment of AIDS patients, etc.) and who has also experienced some of the more difficult aspects of them within modern culture (the need for personal isolation within a culture that demands constant social contact in order to achieve), this lecture had a particularly strong resonance within me. It makes me feel both vindicated and condemned. Great to think my biology falls in that "just right" range where I can use the traits beneficially, but still so very hard to live with Shamanic ability within a culture of skepticism. And to have it be biological means that like the autistic, there is really no amount of trying and learning that will ever get me to a point where I don't need to be alone so much just to be at peace.

Fortunately, a tendency towards religious belief also seems to be a very strong buffer against depression. It is thought to relate to religious belief's ability to soothe the pervasive human need for a sense of control over one's environment. Humans don't like it when cause and effect relationships are obscured so that they have no sense of what they need to do to get what they want and avoid what they do not want. In fact, an internal "locus of control" is a well-established psychological determinant of mental health, as opposed to feeling buffeted about by circumstances beyond one's control or a victim of fate.

Lastly, the lecture points at one other pathology whose traits offer some positives when expressed in a mild and adaptive form: temporal lobe epilepsy (to be distinguished from other forms of epilepsy). With TLE traits the person may have a tendency to write a lot and to be fascinated with philosophical/metaphysical topics. It's not that they are necessarily moved by the subjects or applying them in their lives. They are simply fascinated by the mental musing and synthesis of ideas about the subject through writing.

This is a trap of the religious life that many good teachers will point out. Many Buddhists I think particularly fall prey to the down side of this one. They get stuck at a love of the ideas, but do not practice them in their daily lives. They can ruminate and theorize endlessly about the value of compassion, and then be rude to every single person they meet without seeing any incongruity between the two. Yet surprisingly, the same could be said of many atheists. They are just as fascinated by religious ideas, simply from the standpoint of refuting them. They can go on for hours (or write volumes) about all the reasons why religion makes no sense, and they will if you give them an ear.

Similarly, Catholic spiritual leaders back in the 16th Century could be found warning about the practice of empty ritual and how it was important to not let the meaning and spiritual experience of the ritual be lost. Congregations were told to guard against the people who would be attracted to the religion by the structure of the ritual but essentially have no heartfelt embrace of it.

I suppose we should also add to the list of "warnings of pathology masquerading as the healthy balance that produces a benefit to the community" the new age teacher who wants to convince everyone they are speaking for God (the one and ONLY God) as a unique and special messenger. This would be the distortion of the shaman role in the community. The traditional shaman is never thought of as having a special relationship with God. It's more that they have a job that few people are needed to fill, and that few can fill, but it's still just a job within the community.

I can't really present you with any conclusion from all this that goes beyond what has already been said. I think the point is just to present these ideas for you to reflect on with your own experience. For me, I think it leads me to a place of greater acceptance around my solitary nature. I had recently begun thinking I really needed to somehow overcome that, but this research suggests continued attempts would be just as futile as past ones have been. Rather, I should see the value in having the other traits that go with that, and commit myself to making good use of them.

If you find any of yourself reflected in this post, I hope you find an insightful yet empowering conclusion as well. Peace and blessings be with you.

Update 9/14/09 - Comments have just been added to this blog, and this article can now accept reader comments.

Fun New Connection Features at Indigo Ocean

noreply@blogger.com (Indigo Ocean) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 15:45:32 PDT

Hello everyone. I am so happy to be able to announce that I've just added some new gadgets to this blog that will allow me to hear from you and for you to share with one another your insights, tips, and inspirations around health, wisdom, and well-being.

In the right sidebar you will now see three new features:

1 - A member's area -- please join so that you can post. You can use your existing Google, Yahoo, AIM, or Open ID instead of having to create a new profile/login just for this site

2 - A comments area -- your insights and feedback are an integral part of what this site is meant to be about. Please share.

3 - An article recommendation area -- think an article should be up in the light blue box at the top of the home page so everyone visiting the site will see it? Go to the individual page for that article (not the home page or archive pages that include several articles) and click the "recommend it" link on the last line. You will find links to the most recent articles in the left sidebar under "Ripples in the Pond... Recent Posts." Note that you don't have to pick articles that aren't already listed. The top 5 articles with the most recommendations will appear within the box, so if you agree, register your thumbs up for that article too.

I hope you will find that these new features make the Indigo Ocean blog even more of an uplifting and nurturing retreat within your life. I have long seen that there were many readers coming back each day, but I didn't really have the time to moderate comments, so couldn't really do much to tie everyone together. Hopefully this will be the answer to that. Blessings to you all, and thanks for your loyalty all these years that this has been a comment-less blog.

Endings and Beginnings

noreply@blogger.com (Indigo Ocean) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 10:34:00 PDT

As of a couple days ago, it is official that I won't be teaching meditation to teens at the juvenile detention center any longer. I will miss the connection I had with the teens, but definitely will not miss interacting with the organization.

Fortunately I get to go in on Monday to at least be able to say goodbye to the boys, instead of just disappearing like their previous teacher was forced to do (who was also yanked out by admin for reasons unrelated to the actual delivery of services to the kids). Every week they have asked me about her and I only just found out the day things came to a head for me that she had been asked to leave and not allowed to go back to say goodbye.

I had actually offered to stay on for another month, since all the boys in my group will be turning 18 and moving on to adult prisons at that time, but all I got was this coming Monday evening. I'll take it. At least they won't be wondering what happened to me and imagining the worst, the way they've been doing with the other teacher.

What a shame that the organizations that provide such valuable services are plagued with such dysfunction that the kids wind up being more dependable than the teachers. These guys are so committed to the work, it's a shame to not be able to find them regular teachers that the organization is willing to accept. In the end though, for me, it came down to a difference of philosophy. They seem to believe there is only one way to do the work, which is to use one's personal history as a teaching tool, while I believe that there are multiple effective teaching methods, and mine is "get the self out of the way and let a higher wisdom come through."

I have no doubt that both methods work, because I've seen both work, as have all my co-teachers, who are sorry to see me go. But sometimes the truth just can't be brought out, and it's just time to let it go and move on.

I was very sad about this last week and praying for some assistance in coming to peace with it in my heart. Then I logged on and saw that my Facebook profile had been approved (had to get past the "real name" filters due to having such an unusual name), and in the couple days since I've found so many amazing light beings who I have shared the path with at various points over the last couple decades. It has been truly heart warming to reconnect with all these people who adore me and who I adore, such angels of goodness, generosity, and joy. I am so thankful for having them in my life, both in the past and now in a renewed connection online, though they are scattered all over the world.

I held out a long time, with several friends trying to get me to join, but I always thought it would be a waste of time and couldn't imagine genuine social connection coming through something called Facebook. Well I stand corrected. Just loving it right now. You can find me there at Indigo Ocean on Facebook.

What I'm researching - CRM, SaaS, etc.

noreply@blogger.com (Indigo Ocean) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:22:07 PDT

I've been looking around the web a great deal lately to discover new SaaS business tools that solve business problems more affordably. I'm discovering that many a CRM consultant offers a downloadable CRM implementation guide (particularly for Salesforce crm implementation projects and Salesforce implementation consultants). That leads me to think that there must be a lot of businesses out there trying a "do it yourself" approach to getting started.

That's both good and bad. Good that the available software is getting more accessible so that people feel they can do this. Bad because in my experience people usually make a lot of fundamental mistakes, both in setting up their systems but also in choosing the right products to solve their needs in the first place. I really think it's one of those areas where a couple thousand bucks invested up front getting a consultant to help out can really pay off in tens of thousands in return on investment in the long run.

I'm also noticing more and more that for a Salesforce crm consultant in particular there is a need to help people understand best practices, since it is hard to find instructional material, and what is available is so overwhelming to most people that it might as well not even exist. I think that can be said less for products like Zoho, which are more limited but also simpler to learn.

Another thing I'm finding in my research is that the number of new products coming out seems to be trending upward over the last 3 years. It's as if "software in the cloud" or whatever catch-phrase you use for it, just went viral. It is a little hard to keep up with, and I think that also creates an opening for any technology consultant that can guide people through it and help with business process optimization. Salesforce training services are also still growing strongly in demand, probably linked to the dominance of that software in the CRM space. All good things.

Rather than creating a downloadable, I'm going to develop a separate blog for comparing all these different SaaS technologies and giving people free advice. If a subject holds your interest, why not share the information you collect with others? Besides, it may help me organize the information more for my own uses too. Nothing like having an audience to sharpen your focus, as any blogger reading this surely knows.

I'll post later on that blog once I really get it going. I'm going to need to decide between Blogger and Wordpress. I've been using Blogger a while now (including for this blog), but I'm seeing that Wordpress has some nice features I might want to use on the new blog. For one, the tag clouds that show category popularity would be nice. However, I get Blogger at not additional cost to have the blog hosted on my own server, whereas with Wordpress I wind up paying about $60 yearly for a blog with no ads on it that is hosted externally and another $100 yearly for PHP capabilities on my host (which currently I don't need, as I'm serving only static HTML pages).

Since I'm helping a friend make a site with Wordpress this month, that will give me a chance to sort out whether I want to establish my new online technology blog on that platform or stay with Blogger. To be continued.

I have succumbed - I'm on Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Indigo Ocean) — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 16:51:34 PDT

I had no intentions of joining Twitter. As you can see if you've been following this blog, I don't even post all that often. But then I started a Twitter account for my business to see how well it worked for that and in the process I learned enough about Twitter to want to give it a try for my personal online presence as well.

Imagine my surprise when I went to sign up only to find out that there was someone already using my name on Twitter! After signing up under an alteration of my name I looked him up (yes, it's a he) and discovered he's a guy named Jason. After I post this I'm going to send him a message inquiring about his name choice. Though I would rather be the one using my own name, I can't deny that I'm happy to "meet" what may be a kindred soul. I have actually run across two other Indigo Oceans (both women and neither with it as their legal name) over the last 20 years it has been my name. (No, I was not born Indigo Ocean, but it's been a long, long time since I wasn't Indigo Ocean.)

Anyway, I'll update this post when I hear back from Jason/IndigoOcean, assuming he replies back. I'm also following him on Twitter now. Hey, I've got to start somewhere and none of my friends seem to be on. If you would like to follow me I would love that. Since I haven't been able to stay on top of this blog enough to allow comments, following me on Twitter and sending replies to my @IamIndigoOcean postings is a great way for you to open up a two way dialogue with me. I'm really going to try to post something there at least a couple times a week. You can follow me by clicking this link Indigo Ocean on Twitter.

Looking forward to getting to know you. Peace and blessings, Indigo.

Update 6/13/09: Received a message from Jason that he was changing his Twitter username to be his real name so that I could have access to my name. Thanks Jason! I am now simply @IndigoOcean on Twitter (and I've updated the above link, in case you want to follow me).

Time for Lift Off

noreply@blogger.com (Indigo Ocean) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 10:34:46 PDT

Listening to Anam Thubten Rinpoche speak on the Buddhist path as he teaches it, I reflected on how his words resonated with my own life these days. He spoke of the many reasons that people go to spiritual teachers and admonished us that all he was offering was the path to enlightenment, not another type of "ground" for people to try to get their feet planted on when it feels like they are losing everything. He spoke of the tendency, when life has torn up the ground beneath us with an earthquake, to try to find some stable ground to re-establish a firm and reliable sense of safety. So we lose our job and become obsessed with improving our romantic relationship. Or a relationship ends and we throw ourselves into our work, each time thinking that the new focus is what we should have been focused on all along and that only it can deliver us out of suffering. Selecting a spiritual teacher can be just such an effort, looking for someone to make us feel safe in the world instead of someone to tear our world apart and give us no refuge within the illusion of samsara.

The key thing he mentioned that resonated with me was that when we have lost 99% of what we cherish, that is the most painful time. We react by trying to get back what we've lost, or create something better to take its place, but really what we need to do in order to end our suffering is to let go of that last 1%. Hanging out at "99% groundless" is an excrutiatingly painful place to dwell. And yet so many of us do that repeatedly. After a while the flow of enlightenment gives us a break and let's us have some illusion of safety again, but it can't last because the fundamental truth is that all security within a realm of birth, old age, sickness and death is inevitably ephemeral.

Recently the ground was torn out from under me, and I can already see that it has allowed me to soar. I was sailing along, preparing to buy a house this summer, when all the sudden my regional director decided to quit and my East Coast based company decided not to replace him, eliminating its Western division and my job in the process. There went my house. But then it turns out that I get to not only keep some of the clients, but to also start doing the work the regional director once did, only without having to give a cut to the East Coast company. My pay rate just doubled! This also lays the ground work for a number of long range plans I had forgotten about in my quest for a mortgage at 3.75% interest.

Of course, the moral of this story is not that my true refuge all along should have been self-employment instead of home ownership. That would just be ego doing its normal thing again. No, the teaching is that I have a choice to keep dancing as fast as I can to stay erect as an earthquake rages about me, or to finally let go of the one ground that has always been my final 1% refuge. And that refuge is my consciousness as this separate person I think of as "me."

Today I had the clarity that reality was ready for me to lift off and soar, and that it was therefore pulling the ground out from under me to give me the opportunity to do so. And I also realized that the manner in which I might do so is to shift my perspective from that of an I looking out at a world that is other, to that of an is that is experiencing the flow of itself in many forms. It actually isn't so hard to do once you have clarity about what you are intending to do. It's just that it's hard to integrate into the habits of daily living, because the strongest habit is to completely interact with life from a point of view of separateness. So it takes the same commitment that breaking any bad habit takes.

Ever quit smoking? Stop drinking? Foreswear any daily habit you knew was going to do you in if you didn't do it in first? Well that's the same approach to take to freeing oneself from the habit of seeing the world through the eyes of "me, me, me." Repeatedly interupt the acting out of the bad habit (self-referencing all perception) and deliberately repeat the desired behavior (experiencing the wholeness of the moment), again and again and again and ... Until it becomes the new habit. Then you don't do anything. You just live and don't make a new habit of thinking of yourself as someone who has achieved something. When you achieve having truly let go, there is no one left to congratulate himself for having achieved it.

So how about you? Could you put down that last X that's been killing you? Would you like to be free of the need for any type of security blanket? Are you doing it right now? Who is there to do it or not do it? Is awareness happening right now? Ahhh. What a nice place to rest, in a glide on the wind.

A Contact Improv Life Path

noreply@blogger.com (Indigo Ocean) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 10:35:15 PDT

Today I did contact improv for the first time. Often when I’m at dance gatherings I see people doing it, but I never do. Today someone I was dancing fast with offered me his hand and then pulled me into himself and lifted me off the floor. I was shocked and terrified. When he finally put me down I told him I didn’t know how to dance like that. He said it was okay, he would show me. Then he slowly flipped me over his head and gently brought me down to the ground, head first!

I stopped him again to explain that he was scaring the bejesus out of me. He said I was so light there was no way he could drop me and that he was a trained professional. I decided to relax into it and trust him with my neck (hopefully not to be my broken neck).

It wound up being one of the most amazingly wonderful experiences I’ve had in a long time. It was one of the most intimate exchanges of movement and heart I’ve ever shared in a dance. I had to completely trust him and be totally present with everything that was happening between us in order to know how to shift my weight at different times in order not to go flying or rolling off him. He still had to occasionally remind me that I didn’t need to hold onto him, as I would periodically recall that I had a self-story as a person who didn't know how to do contact improv, and would then clutch at him to avoid tumbling -- but for the most part I was able to let go and ride a wave of trust into a very beautiful space of communion.

I share this as an example of how the risks we take in life are often frightening. The most valuable experiences usually involve letting go, having nothing to hold onto and no knowledge of which direction fate is going to turn us next. And yet, if we take that leap, if we take those risks, on the other side is just a little bit more of our true selves. Sometimes the reward is quick in the coming, and other times years away. But always there is the refinement process going on of our becoming more and more true to the fullness of our potential.

What are you holding on to? What makes you feel like you're in control of your life? Who would you be if you let go of that? Could you let go of it? Would you? When?

With each letting go of the walls defining your self-story, the story that tells you how you grew up, what you learned and did, and who you are and are not, with each letting go of that story there is a breeze of freedom that blows through. If you let it, it will lift you and spin you and carry you and gently lower you down to the ground once more. And then you will walk with new feet on a new land and be new yourself.

This is to live life as if it was a contact improv exchange, with your partner embodied by all that is. I invite you. Enjoy the dance.

Dare to Care

noreply@blogger.com (Indigo Ocean) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 10:36:47 PDT

With so much turmoil and suffering in the world, and 24-7 news availability making sure we know about all of it, it's easy for anyone to start shutting down emotionally. You may not even realize it is happening. It's like boiling the frog slowly, so that it never realizes there is a crisis and that it needs to jump out to save its life.

Your open heart is the path to your spiritual unfoldment. The awakened heart IS what it means to be awake. Therefore, anything that causes you to close your heart is a direct threat to your spiritual health. You must respond with action and not wait for things to get bad enough that you are noticing impairment in your day to day life. By then you have already lost so much.

There is a meditation you can easily do in just 5 minutes each morning to re-attune yourself to the path of awakening. Just sit with eyes closed and begin to imagine all the fear and worry people are feeling in their lives right now. Maybe start with people you know personally and the worries you know them to have, or start with the things you worry about yourself, but make sure you expand your awareness to realize that all around the world people are worrying about what is going to happen in different areas of their lives. This worry eats them up inside and dulls their ability to feel joy. Really imagine this until you can feel the feeling of their worry within yourself. Then imagine all their worry being consumed by a beautiful bright light, vanishing out of existence in a flash.

Then begin to think of other feelings of suffering people live their lives buried beneath. The anger, the sadness, the guilt -- imagine each one being liberated into light all around the world. (Perhaps note to yourself that this light is real, all-powerful, and all-pervasive. It is always present, and is in fact your own essential nature.) In the end, spend another minute watching as each person the world around shines their inner light brightly, no longer being dulled by the clouds of fear, anger, grief, shame and the mental confusion these turmoultous inner states cause.

When you are done, rise and go about your day with the conviction that you will be a beacon of light in the world, living your own life free of these conflicting emotions and helping those around you to do the same. Remember to notice each person you meet as an individual and greet them with an open heart. Be well.

Midlife Suicide Rises - A Loving Response

noreply@blogger.com (Indigo Ocean) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 10:37:47 PDT

The NY Times published an article today on the rise of suicides among the "mid-life years" populace over the last few years. The article is worth reading and so are the hundreds of readers' comments. Having read the comments, I posit the following in summary and response:

Many people cite different versions of fear or dread of what is to come as the rationale. There are various reasons why people fear/dread their futures after 45 or so, but I think that the bottom line is that there is a belief that things are only going to get worse, so why not quit while one is ahead.

If we look at our lives in terms of our physical and economic realities, that is often true. Things are going to probably get worse and then end in extreme suffering for many people. The only way suicide doesn't make sense is if we decide we are going to be something more than our physical condition, whether in terms of health or possessions.

As the song goes, "the greatest thing you could ever learn is to love and be loved in return." When it is enough to have the chance to be in this world as a localized expression of an infinite love, exchanging love with other parts of itself in the form of other "bodies," then life is worthwhile regardless of your aches and pains or financial insecurity/decline. Then you look ahead with an expectation of always being surrounded by love, the love you give definitely and probably also love you will receive in return. There really isn't anything else worth living for.

Oh, and if you say you don't have anyone to love because you are estranged from "too busy" adult children, didn't have children, are divorced, are widowed, whatever ... don't have family.... Well walk out your front door and love the first person you meet. Love every single person you meet everywhere you go. Love the cashier at the grocery store, even if she doesn't seem to be doing anything to be worthy of your love. Love all the people who are unworthy of your love. Love fearlessly and relentlessly.

If you're pressed for time and or can't get out much, join the Phone Buddies emotional support community I started last year at www.Phone-Buddies.com and build ongoing relationships with other people who want to exchange loving and supportive connection. If you have more time and mobility, contact your local volunteer center and connect with organizations that could use your help. Whatever you do, find some way to connect with others in a loving way... and enjoy the ride!