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Checking out the podcasts from Buddhist Geeks: http://personallifemedia.com/podcasts/236-buddhist-geeks . Very cool series so far. 20-something’s exploring Buddhism, interviews with teachers, and the integration of Buddhism in their lives and Western culture.

photo credit: Amy Pony

When we first start on the road to Feri, the majority of us have to transform old blocks and complexes so that life force can flow more freely. Then we expand our capacity to hold and move life force so we can have a more solid presence in life for our selves, our Work, and our relationships. Colin at No Impact Man posted today a discussion on wasting life force - something, I think, to be given careful consideration, not only for ourselves, but for the people and resources around us.

Take wasting food, for example. None of us will ever be a perfect shopper or gardener, purchasing or planting/harvesting EXACTLY the right amount. But to mindlessly make food purchases, only to let them rot in the refrigerator or spoil on the counter - that’s not only a waste of your money. You’ve wasted precious life force on earning the money to make that purchase that is now spoiled. There’s even more waste: think of the effort of the sun, seed, soil, the tiller, the field worker, the fuel to get the food to the grocery store… all wasted. This could be applied to clothing. Gasoline. The efforts of our teachers, peers, friends and leaders.

This is not a Puritan rant. This is about respect. Respect for ourselves, for each other, and for the world around us. Respect for that life force we’ve so carefully cultivated within ourselves that I believe should now be returned to the life force that supports us from without.

I often pray before a meal, “Bless the cycle of life that feeds us all”, while seeing in my mind’s eye the soil, plant and human efforts that brought the food to my plate. Colin’s post is going to have me thinking for a deep long time about respecting the life force energy that those cycles represent as well.

photo credit: Ray_chel

I love Joe Bageant’s blog, and am shamelessly reposting his reply to a woman who was annoyed with another writer’s stereotyping of “liberals”. I’ve emboldened the lines at the bottom that I find priceless, and I’m right there with him. Enjoy!

If every liberal in America fit that latte sucking, chard chewing stereotype (though a large number in places such as Manhattan and San Francisco and many metropolises seem to fit, from my experience) our election results would not be so close (even discounting for GOP vote theft of recent years).

But in all fairness, I must say that Americans of every political stripe — including me — suffer under their own political hallucination, 100% of which is created by the media. One of course is the neocon “every man for himself” in a (rigged) free market whereupon a man or woman’s destiny and prosperity is supposed to be available to anyone with the “initiative” to beat his neighbor in some sort of national competition for material productivity (wealth). The other hallucinatory promise is one of kindness, equality, charity and justice.

Neither party now delivers on those hallucinatory promises.

But nevertheless, the choice citizens make between the two speaks volumes. Not about the person’s goodness or meanness of heart and spirit, but about their level of fear. Conservatives tend to be somewhat fearful to start with (which is common sense — the world ain’t no bubble bath in Eden). And the new breed of ultra conservative Americans are terrified deep inside, despite their bluster and aggressiveness, their grab at every material opportunity — materialism being the only terms in which they understand security. Mainly because fear reduces homo sapiens to fall back on our deeply seated reptilian survival brain. To my mind the choice one makes, even if the offering is a state sponsored hallucination, represents at least to some degree the humanity with which one chooses to view life and live life. Some of us have a natural revulsion of choosing to be lizards, preferring peaceful, kind, non-aggressive lives pursuing the currently much sniggered at path of “truth and beauty.” The lizards of course see such people as their natural prey.

In the end, like you, I choose the legion of kindness, equality, charity and justice. Even if we do seem to be marching off the cliff of destiny, as all civilizations and super powers of any era inevitably do.

When I hit the bottom I will be in good company. And when we look around we will see ole Mike and the rest who made the opposite choice right there beside us. The calamities of national folly and hubris play no favorites.

And if we are truly people of mercy and charity, we will not harbor blame or revenge. Because the “great game” being played, the game in which we were always pawns, is bigger than all of us. And the solution, to the degree that there is one, is not national, not political, but rests in universal humanism, which is mightier and more enduring than any nation or its politics.

Meanwhile, because we must live our beliefs in order to claim them, I extend the hand of brotherhood and good will to all others who have made different choices than I, including Mike, right up until the time his tribe comes knocking on my door to take me to “the camps.”

Then I start shooting.

We truth and beauty types have a lizard brain too.

In art and labor,

Joe

photo credit: lincolnblues

Language. One of the biggest blessings AND curses we human beings bear and employ.

In working with the land this season, I’ve been made aware so keenly of the knife’s edge of life and death, of our ancestor’s burden of survival. Those of us with resources have remade parts of the world to ease that burden, but many of us have also in turn made life worse for other beings. The spiritual journey at this point is to figure out how to balance the burden, come to some sort of respectful equilibrium between myself and that which feeds me: in both the literal and metaphorical sense. But the words to describe this awareness - in a way that does not come across as nihilistic - are not there. The understanding that the cycles are inescapable is freeing on a deep, deep level. So much of what we say and do, above these cycles, just doesn’t matter in the long run.

Words. I fucking hate them sometimes. The stories we spin to explain ourselves to ourselves seems to only kick up an internal dust-storm, clouding our vision and further feeding into other’s storms. Right now I listen to others, read their stories, and want to shake everyone. Wake up! Put on your protective goggles and filter mask! Can you eat dust as a meal? No! Stop and breathe for a minute! This moment will pass. If you’re not careful, your whole life will be nothing but one big dust-storm, and you will die without knowing the sun and rain on your skin.

I’m not making sense. I don’t know if I can. I’m not the only one who as walked this path and felt this way, but the frustration I feel in not being able to explain… I’m not sure where the light is at the end of this tunnel.
photo credit: Ben Cooper

Or any other beverage of your choosing. Here in the Northern Hemisphere, in this particular neck of the woods, it’s been bone-dry and searingly hot, so today’s overcast skies have provided some much welcome relief. I’m also grateful that the increasing daylight has peaked, for selfish reasons: putting the animals to bed at dusk will come earlier, soon. Finally catching supper and a shower at 9:00PM has been, well, for the birds.

photo credit: .KM.

During these days of 100-degree F weather, when the sun shines without the tempering of clouds, I have extra gratitude towards the dark.
The sun’s light, without break by clouds or setting beyond the horizon, would scorch everything unto death. The dark lets us rest, cools us off, lets us prepare for the next day. One could compare this to how we learn life lessons: if there were no times to reflect and rest, we’d couldn’t take in and integrate all that we do. Life would be one reactive event after another.

Blessed be the cooling dark, and the opportunity for resting and indwelling.

photo credit: Katie Dureault

I didn’t join the candle vigil for Cora. It didn’t feel right for me to participate, as if it weren’t an appropriate vigil action for my nature. What manifested instead was to not post or write about spiritual topics, here or elsewhere, in the days leading to her memorial service. A turning inward, instead, to give honor to one who gave so much, in whose footsteps so many of us Feri-kin aspire.

My offerings to her spirit these next few days: working on our farm. I’ll be thinking of her as I take care of the chickens, geese, and puppies; as I take care of the land and our home. Although I only met her once, what I knew of her (through her writings and other people) was that her magic was very down-to-earth, grounded literally in the roots of her Appalachian ancestry and land, and later expanded through her explorations on the astral and with Victor. As I return more deeply to my agricultural roots, I’ll be thinking of her, and offering up to her the love I feel here and now for this land and this life I’m creating. Blessed be your journey, Cora.

photo credit: cathyse97

Most Feri’s believe that the veil between the living and dead is thin not only during Samhain (10/31), but during Beltaine (5/1) as well. Cora Anderson passed through that veil this morning at around 1:00 AM. Those of us who were aware of her rapid decline have been praying and singing for her transition, whether for life or death, according to Cora’s Will. Blessed be Cora on her journey. Her and Victor’s impact upon the Pagan community cannot be measured.

A good friend was at a tai chi lesson, and having one of those days where she was constantly getting knocked off center. In frustration, she asked her teacher “how is it that you maintain such perfect balance all the time?” “I don’t,” he replied, “I get off balance all the time. I’ve just learned to re-balance faster. “photo credit: mnorri

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