Here is an eyeopening look at the true plight of the salmon. If page doesn’t load properly reload the page and it should come up or simply click on “watch the full episode.”
Watch the full episode. See more Nature.
All posts by Jan
A Day in a Life: Mother
Spring is eagerly looked forward to in our house. The first signs of green growth, what some people would call weeds, herald platefuls of nutritious meals and the making of tinctures, infusions, and decoctions. At this time of year we are gathering those weeds, drying some for teas, cutting and infusing others to become medicinals for winter use, and cleaning and eating others fresh from the ground. Those weeds are full of energy, the first signs of offerings from Mother Earth after a long winter of making due with what we can find in the local markets. As the winter waned we watched the struggle, the earth awakening, the buds growing a little more each day, the need for sunlight and rain to aid in the natural unfolding of what has been lying dormant for so many months.
As a young teenager, I hiked along the Appalachian Trail that ran along the top of the mountain where I lived, a copy of Euell Gibbon’s Stalking the Wild Asparagus in my backpack, learning to identify plants and trees, digging for roots, picking leaves, and always on the lookout for that elusive wild asparagus. My daughter tells me that Stalking the Wild Asparagus has taken on a cult meaning now, within a new hippie culture; her friends posting that they are out ‘stalking the wild asparagus’ when walking the land or simply unavailable. I like that, the idea that a book written by a man who Johnny Carson regularly used as a brunt of jokes, but also respectfully invited to his show, The Tonight Show, is still important, still valued. I know that this modest man and his book are extremely valuable now as we face the call to change how we live upon this earth.
Yesterday, while driving and listening to the radio, I happened to hear part of an interview with Vandana Shiva on Alternative Radio, a woman from India, a nuclear physicist turned environmentalist. Unfortunately, I am unable to provide a link to that interview, called War on Earth, originally recorded on April 26, 2011, but I urge anyone who is interested in the environment and what is happening to our food supply to read her books, look for interviews, and pay attention to the truths she so eloquently speaks of. At the end of this blog I link to some You Tube video recording of interviews with her, for convenience, in an effort to aid in awareness of her lifelong calling to save what rightfully belongs to Mother Earth and to us as human beings living on this planet.
In the interview I listened to yesterday, she spoke of the differences between Eastern and indigenous knowledge of the earth as true Mother and the Western concept of earth only as nature, totally separate from man. No, she says, the earth is Mother; she gives us everything. In fact, we are the guests here, though we have lost this most vital and humble connection to our presence on this earth.
As visitors for only a brief period of time, are we not responsible for being better guests? Are we using the earth as a cheap hotel, leaving it in a shambles for someone else to clean up? Are we going to keep trashing, burning, drilling, cutting, tampering with, poisoning, and destroying what Mother Earth provides? Are we going to let a greedy few take away our health, our land, our most vital resources because we don’t have the energy or time to care?
A few weeks ago, someone turned to me in the aisle of the grocery store as they read the label on a can of tuna fish that stated it was sustainably caught and caring of the planet. This person looked me in the eye and said: “I don’t care about the planet, let the planet take care of itself.” When I heard this utterance I felt my face turn into a mask, my entire being becoming earthen and solid, as I felt the deep well of disrespect that I know is rampant in our country. To speak even the word ‘mother’ in the West, as Vandana Shiva mentioned in her radio interview, is often rebuked as silly, dismissed as naive, unimportant.
In truth, we are so distant from the true reality of ourselves as related to all things. We prefer to be superior, above and beyond nature. We are a culture resistant to breastfeeding, where a woman’s body is no longer sacred or respected; mother no longer held in the highest regard, as the giver of all life.
Vandana Shiva is part of a group of international environmentalist working toward earth change, part of the group that recently helped enact the law in Brazil calling for returning equal rights to Mother Earth. As she said: She is mother.
How can we not understand that? The indigenous cultures know this and they see what has happened to their mother and they want to stop it. Can we not also see this and embrace this cause? Can we not see that our very lives are at stake?
It takes more than an individual effort; it takes a global effort to enact this kind of change. But, in the meantime, we must still, each one of us, do our individual part. Today, I suggest that we each take a look at what Mother Earth offers us in our own environment so that we can truly begin to understand just what she provides us. I follow with a few examples from our own backyard.
Chuck and I have been resurrecting our acre of land over the past several years. Once highly landscaped, it fell into disrepair and by the time we purchased it most of the gardens were overgrown, hiding the ornamental trees and bushes; the rock walls covered in poison ivy, sumac sprouting up everywhere. When we lost our tall pines in the tornado that came through last fall, we at first bemoaned the loss of those majestic trees, home to many birds, that had shaded us in the summer and protected us in the winter. Now however, we have embraced what nature did, for we have sunlight and the ability to grow food that we didn’t have before. As we have cleared and cleaned our property we have discovered its hidden offerings as well. As we walk the land, we find that we could actually survive off it, food aplenty, medicinals and healing opportunities abounding.
Crab apple and magnolia trees, though often thought of as only ornamental, offer many healing properties. Their blossoms, leaves, and barks hold many properties that have been used by indigenous and Chinese herbalists for centuries, some of them making their way into products we find on the market today. If you chew the bark of the magnolia you may recognize that it tastes like something familiar, used in many dental products, because it is good for the gums and teeth. The pesky sumac, the kind with red berries, not the poisonous kind with white berries, is actually full of healing properties as well, as is the rapidly growing catalpa with its large leaves and long pods, the seeds especially medicinal.
Dandelions, the leaves, roots, and blossoms are full of vitamins, minerals, and healing properties as well. Plantain, the lowliest of wild plants probably—everyone has this in their yard or can easily find it alongside the road—is amazing in the healing of cuts and stopping the flow of blood. We use it often; chewing the leaves and laying the pulp over a cut to stop the bleeding and knit the skin back together faster than anything I have ever seen. In telling his story Black Elk, the holy man of the Oglala Sioux, refers to being healed in this way after having been in battle, his guts hanging out and the shaman having him chew the leaves of this lowly plant and it knitting him back together so that in a matter of days he was back on the battlefield.
Last night, Chuck and I had a meal of tender dandelion greens sauteed with shitake mushrooms and garlic in olive oil, a little lemon juice sprinkled over it, salt and pepper. We also sauteed, in butter, tiny buds of dandelion flowers. Tasting like tiny asparagus they are the little green nuggets at the center of the plant before the stems grow. We sprinkled our plates with a few edible purple violet flowers. In picking the greens before the flowers grow the characteristic bitterness is avoided; after that soaking them in salted water removes this taste if it is unpleasant.
We make salads or sautes of chickweed, garlic mustard, plantain, prickly lettuce, wild onion or ramps, and clover, all found in our backyard. We make dandelion brandy from the flowers of this so-called pesky weed; its properties cleanse the liver; its roots a tonic for many ills of the digestive system. We make tinctures of chickweed, good for the skin; lemon balm, good for the nerves, heart, and brain; burdock for innumerable reasons.
Get a good book, research ancient folk remedies on the Internet, learn to identify what Mother offers in your own backyard, neighborhood or park. Everyone, no matter where we live, can have access to what the earth offers if interested. She is right below our feet, we don’t have to go far to find something to sustain and heal us. She does indeed offer us everything we need.
Stalking the wild Mother,
Jan
#757 The Terrorist in the Backyard
Written by Jan Ketchel with a channeled message from Jeanne Ketchel.
I sit and look out over the peaceful scene of my backyard, the magnolia tree finally in full bloom after a long struggle to blossom, the blue birds nesting in the boxes we’ve put out for them, flitting about, feeding their young. The crows, chickadees, robins, Baltimore orioles, phoebes and Caroline wrens are loudly calling, cackling, chirping, dancing and fluttering in the trees and sky. The grass has turned green now, the dandelions adding a touch of golden sunlight, nature in full swing. I’ve even seen honeybees this year, a good sign. I contrast this scene before my eyes on this early spring morning with the truth of the world. I may have the perfect little acre, which I am thoroughly grateful for, but I am also a member of the human race and I must face the truths of what my species has done and is doing around the world, beyond my private world.
The big news, as everyone must now know, is that Osama Bin Laden is dead. I’m not sure how I feel about this, either how it was done or how I see people reacting. Something is missing in all of this for me. I see his death as a symbolic tactic, an attempt to let all terrorists know that such blatant disregard for human life is unacceptable to us. But I also see that terrorism, right or wrong, is a true fact of nature and that it exists for a reason. Yesterday, I watched as the pretty, peaceful looking bluebird swooped down and snatched a white moth, coming out of nowhere. Death happened. Yet the bluebird flew home to feed his young with that moth.
On the other hand, the Hitlers and the Osama Bin Ladens must be stopped, just as greed must be stopped, an equally dangerous terrorist in my opinion. We sit back, complacently watching as the greed of a few powerfully wealthy individuals infiltrates every aspect of our world, our politics, our natural resources, destroying our health, land, oceans, streams, wells, air and our very food sources.
How do we make sense of all this? I can accept Bin Laden’s death as necessary. I accept the decision that President Obama made. It is done. Like the white moth, Bin Laden is dead. I appreciate the quiet stealth of Obama’s tactics in undertaking the mission. Like the calm and peaceful bluebird he swooped in and made the kill. He was in the right place at the right time, taking right action according to nature. As the peacefully meditating Buddhists often note: sometimes you have to leave the retreat on the mountaintop and take up arms and fight for what is right. But they also know that eventually we will return to our everyday lives, once again face contemplation, seeking what our real purpose is.
Today, I ask Jeanne to comment on this. As a peacefully living and acting human being, I know I must also face the fact that I am a killer, a terrorist too. When my President kills, I too kill. When Bin Laden killed, I too killed. We must all accept that side of ourselves. Partly, I think we are being asked to acknowledge the truth of the natural world, to face what we, as a country and as individuals, do each day as international terrorists. Can I accept the fact that I am both killer and victim, that I am just like everyone else on this planet?
What do you make of this, Jeanne? At the moment I have so many thoughts running through my head. Please grant me, and all of your readers, some clarity. I know a lot of people prefer to turn to the beauty of nature in their backyard, as I do, rather than dwell on the truths of evil in our world because they make us have to feel bad. But I also know how important it is to face the facts of evil in ourselves, because we are all interconnected, good and evil energy combined. We must all face the darkness within, that we are all Bin Laden; we are all the bluebird, the moth, and the baby bluebirds too.
Jeanne responds:
My Dear Ones, well may you rejoice and embrace a moment of such climactic resolution; for indeed, in order to change the world, the truths of evil and greed must be exposed. Is it right for man to kill man? I pose this question to you, but I will not solve that riddle for you, though I direct you to your inner decision making process. For all of you have within the same system of conflict that abides in the world you live in.
However, I caution jumping to conclusions. This action, killing Osama Bin Laden, will not resolve the true issues at stake. It removes a major blockage, yet the work to remain diligent and alert in the pursuit of accepting and understanding evil must continue. Evil will not be destroyed or stopped, but it must be explored and acknowledged as innate within all of life, in nature and mankind as well. Only in wrestling with it, in discovering its purpose will balance be achieved.
Pause a moment. Take a look at the self in the world that mankind has created. Look at how involved you all are in the destruction of so much life upon your planet, without even realizing it for the most part. You have all been hiding out in your personal caves and compounds declaring that you are doing the right thing, your ideals correct, your life worth something. Everyone feels this way. Yet, I ask that you consider yourself a world terrorist for a moment, as evil as Osama Bin Laden. To truly understand why he has lived these past decades upon that earth you must put yourself in his shoes.
What was his purpose? I pause in the channeling to ask Jeanne this question.
Jeanne responds:
His purpose was to awaken the world to the truth of destruction, rampant on the part of mankind. He was but a symbol, representing nature fighting back, attempting to reclaim that which has been destroyed. Mother Nature does the same thing with equal ferocity to reassert proper balance. Evil must be fought with evil.
Okay, I say, interrupting again. I know we must all face the truth of our world, that we, as Americans especially, have been equally evil. We continue to destroy the planet, spread our detrimental habits and way of life far and wide, bringing our modern diseases and our greedy habits elsewhere, killing natural resources and other human beings in an effort to Americanize the rest of the world. In so doing, we destroy indigenous lands and cultures, undermining ancient wisdom and practices that are far more connected to the earth and the laws of nature than our plastic offerings could ever be. The struggle for all of us who are truthful in this acknowledgement is the frustration we feel as we come up against the status quo, so staunchly present and unmoving, though we ourselves, in our so called right-thinking, clearly see it as wrong. How do we have greater impact in change?
Jeanne responds:
Well, you see My Dears; here you have a great blockage, a staunch symbol of the status quo, Osama Bin Laden, now removed. But having removed him does not solve the issues still at stake. Now the real war begins. Now the real work begins. Now the time of real hardship begins. All the worlds’ peoples must face the situations that have been created worldwide as a result of the fear of this man. The man is gone, but the true fears still exist inside each person upon that earth. Bin Laden was merely a symbol of fear. What are you really afraid of? Who are you really afraid of?
Anyone who does deep exploratory work on the self knows that all fears exist inside the individual, that the world is merely a mirror. I suggest that you cautiously and honestly accept the death of this man who lived anchored in evil inflation in his heart, terrorist tendencies in his veins, death in his brain, as one stark picture of the full truth. On the other side, take the picture of peaceful nature and accept its full truth as well. Ponder what they each represent and see that they are equal. They both represent the same thing: the struggle to survive, to find meaning and purpose, on the one hand, ego in full command and on the other the forces of nature. But I contend they are one and the same. Can you see this?
Yes, I interrupt the channeling again. I see it all as life and energy, doing what it has set out to do. I also see that in order to change things in the world we must, as always, change things inside ourselves. We must dig deeper still, because the truth, as it is spoken, may not be the real truth. I experience this all the time in what the media presents, in advertising, in what we are told, fed to believe. I have learned to question everything. I hope everyone else does too. I cannot accept something as right or wrong simply because someone tells me it is so. I must find out, within myself, what it means.
Jeanne do you have one final comment for your readers today?
Jeanne responds:
Yes, let the fear go through you, even as you let the hatred go through you, even as you let love and gentleness go through you. Only in letting yourself feel all of these things will you reach an energetic shift, a place of emptiness and peace without grasping and greed, without need and desire for anything upon that earth, except to more fully understand and explore your purpose.
What is your personal purpose? Are you there to cause a shift, to shock the status quo, like Bin Laden? Or are you a blockage that refuses to budge, creating backlogs of energy that must one day spill out, in some form, out of your control, also like Bin Laden? Where is the good inside you? Identify it, own it, release it. Where is the evil in you? Identify it, own it, release it. Where is your greed? Identify it, own it, release it. Where is your frustration keeping you bound to the status quo? Identify it, own it, release it.
You see, My Dears, you are all asked to do things differently now, to break down the barriers, to dismantle the machines that have been churning and spitting out the rules, first within the self, then without. This is your challenge. These are the times you live in, the times of change.
Watch nature for the most proper methods. You will not be disappointed. Nature will show you, but you must be ready to follow her guidance. She will challenge you, as you now feel challenged to accept the evil one inside. But you will not be free to access your utter good if you do not access your utter evil. Only in knowing fully both sides can you return to balance, within the self and within the world. Nature is included in this parameter because nature is really in charge. Even though man challenges nature, nature will always take command.
Know this about your own inner nature. It too will take command, sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a bad way, causing illness and suffering, but its purpose is the same: To show you the way to evolve beyond suffering and beyond good and evil to the true state of energetic beingness, truly in balance with all other energy.
I thank Jeanne for this message today. I will take up some of this in my blog on Wednesday as deeper truths about how we have tampered with nature come to light, at least for me. We have been destroying the natural environment for centuries without care. The truth of just how critically ignorant we are about what we have done to our world dawns ever more brightly each day. Our interconnecting abilities via Internet, television, etc, offer us the opportunity to face and share these truths more deeply. I see the truth-revealing potential of this kind of interconnectedness on the outside as offering us the same truth-revealing potential for interconnectedness on the inside, as we open ourselves to our deeper spiritual potential. I just hope that we can face enough of our truths to never fall back again into complacency.
As I write this final paragraph a racket ensues in my backyard. I get up from my writing position; shake off the trance I have been in for the past hour to observe a synchronicity in nature. I see that I have a terrorist situation in my backyard! A big black crow is invading a robin’s nest. I hear the pleas of the robins as they attack the crow, but they are helpless against his deliberate threat as he dives into the small pine tree that has been hiding their nest, keeping it safe, until now. The robins finally pull back as the crow shakes them off and dives once again into the pine, stealing the bounty of their nest.
Is this evil? Do I automatically side with the poor robins as I witness their babies being killed? Or do I see the black crow as just doing what naturally comes next—keeping nature in balance—doing what the hawk did to the crow a few weeks ago, that I also wrote about in my blog. All of this is going on without man’s interference, crows being crows. Where is the good and where is the evil? Are they, as Jeanne suggests, the same thing; equal?
Most humbly offered.
Go to the Source
Here are a few quotes to ponder from Hexagram #48: Well, taken from The Living I Ching by Deng Ming-Dao.
“The muddy well does not feed. No birds come to an ancient well.”
“Well: draw from it, and you draw from the source. No matter how advanced a civilization becomes, its foundations depend on nature. A source of water cannot be replaced.”
“On a practical level, we must maintain our supply of water and food. On a spiritual level, our understanding deepens the more we dwell on the sources of our existence.”
“The water comes to us freely from the earth, deposited by the last winter’s rains…This free use of a well is a metaphor for how we should conduct our lives. If we are careful and healthy in our conduct, we will be replenished each day. Accordingly, we must give all that we can today, knowing that tomorrow will bring new support. Those who are narrow and selfish with their energies grow smaller, not greater. Give everything that you can. Do not hold back: unless water is drawn from a well, new water cannot flow in.”
“Water from the earth is wonderfully pure, refreshing, and invigorating. Our scientists can find little different about this water in their laboratories, but those who drink from the wellsprings know better. Expensive bottled water and manufactured beverages cannot help us in the way a well can. Eschew the artificial. Go to the source.”
A Day in a Life: Face the Chaos & Question Everything
We must all make personal decisions that are right for us, but we must also challenge our selves to go beyond our limitations. We must ask ourselves: What is the possibility that I may be getting this wrong, that I am not seeing something? What am I missing? We must all take personal responsibility for our lives, for how we interpret our experiences, and how we ultimately decide to view and live in the world.
During my three-year long intensive recapitulation, I learned how to question not only the reality that I was encountering from my past, but also how I was going to interpret it this time around. Could I really trust that what came to greet me out of old forgotten memories had really happened? How could I embrace the truth of what I was learning about my childhood? How could I take it all in and move on to a new interpretation of what it meant when what I was reliving was often so devastatingly overwhelming that some days I could not even get out of bed?
I learned how to question everything. This was the only way I was going to get through the recapitulation of traumatic events from my childhood that had held me so tightly in their embrace for decades, though I had little or no inkling of this fact. I knew little about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and the tentacles of trauma that infiltrate every aspect of a person’s life until finally faced. For the most part, I felt that I was not really living life as I sensed it could be lived, but I did not know why until I elected to take the recapitulation journey. When I began to allow old memories to surface I had to face old judgments, prejudices of self and others, truths and lies that were incredibly uncomfortable to confront, disassemble and release myself from.
The entire time I worked through this recapitulation process I also disassembled the world as I knew it, the outer world as well as the inner world—one could not hold up without the other. As I deconstructed the old self, I found that I could not live in the same world that the old self had constructed. Recapitulation meant a total disintegration of the self I had been. So, as a result, who I thought I was and how I viewed the world all changed as I plodded along, chipping away, day by day, at what I thought was reality.
Some days I would wake up in such pain that I immediately wanted to seek medical advice, but at the same time I knew there was nothing in the conventional medical world that would help the somatic experiences that my body was telling me I had to go through. There were times when I did indeed need to go to the doctor, like the time I had Lyme disease and could not walk or think properly. There were other times when what was buried inside produced real physical symptoms that needed attention, though I knew they originated from something deep inside me looking for a way out, like the time I had skin cancer. I knew it was not related to sun exposure, but to the unknown stuff that was putrefying inside me, needing release. I had to learn to distinguish between these issues by questioning the reality of my situation and determine how to address them, taking full responsibility for my choices along the way.
As I faced some very painful memories, I had to learn how to let myself be taken into other worlds, knowing that I had the power within to face the truth that those worlds were indeed as much reality as the everyday world that was looking more and more unreal to me. As I recapitulated, I learned, by taking one incremental step at a time, how to be an observer as well as a participant in those alternate realities. In strengthening my inner conviction to complete the task my body was laying out for me, calling me to, I found that I had within me more than enough personal power to face the challenges presented and change the way I experienced everything.
I learned to question everything too; from the physical symptoms I was experiencing to the way I thought. I let myself learn, through the process of recapitulation, to perceive reality differently—reality being all the conventions I had been taught and adhered to, all the beliefs and ideas that kept the world in order. I allowed myself to blow apart everything that held me together. In the end it was my salvation. It not only changed the way I viewed the world, but it changed the way I viewed my place in it.
What am I really here for? What is it that I must do in this lifetime? I knew I was not here for a selfish reason, that to be eternally depressed and self-absorbed was not going to cut it in the long run. I knew that I was no longer going to be able to hide, to isolate myself in a private world of make-believe. I faced the deepest kind of isolation and make-believe during my recapitulation process and found that they no longer granted me anything of substance, though at one time they had been the backbone of my entire existence.
In constantly questioning the true meaning of my life throughout the recapitulation process, I learned that the main thing I was being asked to do was to break down, literally. I had to deconstruct my entire being, inside and outside, into tiny pieces that I then had to sift through before finding the proper way to reconstruct those pieces into new pictures. As I broke down the past, I also learned how to break down the present and, in so doing, be open to a new kind of future.
I know that all of this may sound very esoteric and impossible to do in the context of a very busy life, with all that we must encounter each day to simply survive, but it is not that difficult if one is committed to change. From personal experience, I can say that the recapitulation process is one of total reevaluation of self and world, leading to the ability to take full responsibility for both. It means taking on the challenge to committing to change with a conviction that defies all other methods.
Perhaps the most helpful part of the entire recapitulation experience, a simple statement that not only anchored me as I entered the darkest and most complicated issues of self and world, was this one: Question reality. Chuck said this to me on more than one occasion.
One day it came up in our conversation as the most meaningful of statements and the next day I was driving behind a car that had an enormous bumper sticker plastered across its fender saying the same thing in large letters: QUESTION REALITY. I could not ignore that it was exactly the right message. In continually questioning reality, I was able to not only face my darkest moments but re-envision them in the context of a new world, a world that I was totally in alignment with, having allowed it to form out of my deepest inner process.
I wish for all people to have a new world vision, but it can only happen by facing the world that we have constructed. This is what we are facing now as a nation and as a global world, but most importantly, personally. We are facing the reality we have created, trusted, and believed in. But now we must re-envision it. It is time to see it for what it is: a reality of exploitation, distrust, greed, selfishness, with little regard for human, animal and natural life. Are we really so heartless?
How can we re-envision a just and right world for all? In questioning reality as it now stands, breaking down the rules and dogmas we have lived by, facing the truth that we are all responsible for everything that has happened and is happening by our adherence to old ideas, tactics, and habits, we can begin to change.
We must all change. This, I believe, is the only way for us to evolve. But even change must be radically different from the means of change as enacted in the past. It is not enough to reinsert new rules that uphold an old order. It is time to face the chaos. Only in facing the chaos within will we be able to face the chaos without. If we don’t do that we will simply reassemble what we have already discovered does not work. We must indeed question everything about ourselves; about the worlds we live in, and ask ourselves to face the truth of the existence we have constructed.
Why am I really here? Personally, I continue to face that question each day as I read, write, meditate, and break through the conventions that arise. The old world will never give up on me; it will continue to pose its side of the story. But I must face it and ask: Are you the reality I wish to live in? The answer that always comes up is a resounding: No.
Still questioning everything,
Jan