“…please touch the Earth deeply with your feet. Please practice walking meditation. The Earth, our mother, is filled with deep love for us. When we suffer, she will protect us, nourishing us with her beautiful trees, grasses, and flowers.”–Thich Nhat Hanh
We begin this day, Good Friday and Earth Day, with this quote. I hope to post more throughout the day, a busy one, but I’ll see what I can find and post as I have time. Anyone else have pertinent and favorite quotes related to the moment?
Last week Chuck and I had many discussions around the subjects of good and evil, death as an advisor, impermanence, the shadow, accepting that we all have inner demons, negative energy, the capacity to commit murder, and that we must all face these things at some time in our lives or risk having to reincarnate. The subjects kept coming up again and again in various circumstances and encounters. As we sat at the breakfast table early one morning over the weekend a synchronistically powerful event occurred right before our eyes that we just could not escape. It was supremely meaningful, underscoring the very conversation we were having at the time, which centered around the capacity that we have as human beings to hide from our true nature, to want to pretend that we are only good, and how hard it is to confront the truths of our inner darkness. Life would be so much easier if everyone were happy, good, loving, kind and compassionate. I totally agree and could wish for nothing more. But as any Buddhist will tell you, it can take a lifetime of intense inner work to reach even a moment of enlightenment.
The following is a quote from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche, which I am particularly fond of and drawn to almost daily.
“One of the chief reasons we have so much anguish and difficulty facing death is that we ignore the truth of impermanence. We so desperately want everything to continue as it is that we have to believe that things will always stay the same. But this is only make-believe. And as we so often discover, belief has little or nothing to do with reality. This make-believe, with its misinformation, ideas, and assumptions, is the rickety foundation on which we construct our lives. No matter how much the truth keeps interrupting, we prefer to go on trying, with hopeless bravado, to keep up our pretense.” -from page 25.
The author goes on to say the following:
“Reflect on this: The realization of impermanence is paradoxically the only thing we can hold onto, perhaps our only lasting possession. It is like the sky, or the earth. No matter how much everything around us may change or collapse, they endure. Say we go through a shattering emotional crisis . . . our whole life seems to be disintegrating . . . our husband or wife leaves us without warning. The earth is still there; the sky is still there. Of course, even the earth trembles now and again, just to remind us we cannot take anything for granted . . .” -from page 25 and 26.
So, what occurred before our very eyes last weekend that so profoundly affected us, as we sat at the breakfast table and chatted over our omelets and toast?
I was sitting and facing the backyard when I noticed a pair of crows doing a funny dance in the sky. They were twirling, diving and whipping about as if in the throes of a mating dance. This was my first exclamation as I pointed them out to Chuck: “Look at those dancing crows!” But there was something odd about them at the same time; they did not look really happy and I had never seen crows doing such antics. Normally they are very businesslike. They fly with purpose, heading directly to their intended destination with little fanfare or distraction. These crows were acting very strangely indeed.
We both got up from the table to watch more closely when I saw that they were not doing a mating dance to new life at all, but were in fact doing something more like a dance with death, for we saw that a huge hawk was sitting in the tree close to their nest and they were dive-bombing him, trying to scare him off. They were dealing with the true nature of reality: death comes to call; no one can escape it. They could not ignore this truth, but they could put up a valiant fight to save their young. And indeed they did. We watched as the crows repeatedly attacked the hawk, and eventually, scared it off the branch. Their fight continuing in the sky, they dove at it continually, cutting it with their wings, sending it spinning at one point and, eventually, the hawk flew off. I said to Chuck: “He’ll be back. He’s not going to give up. Just wait.”
Perhaps an hour later I happened to look outside and saw that the hawk was indeed back, his head stuck inside the nest, pecking away. The crows were nowhere in sight, but I could hear their gentle keening coming from a distance, acquiescing to the inevitable. Death had come. They were accepting the impermanence of life, that change had come and they could not do anything to thwart it, their mournful cries marking this truth.
Chuck and I watched the hawk tearing at something under its claw, though even with binoculars it was difficult to see what it was; an egg or a baby crow we could not tell, but the truth was plain to see. Eventually the hawk flew off the branch and, as it did, the crows flew up out of hiding and, with one last cry of pain, attacked it again before it flew off for good. I expected the crows to return to the tree where their nest lay disturbed, but was surprised to see that they did not. “Wow,” I thought, “they really do accept the loss, they aren’t even looking back, just moving on.”
I don’t know what transpired after that, if they did in fact go back to see if anything had survived, but I think they already knew that nothing remained, that the hawk was just doing what he should do, what they in turn do to smaller birds; that it was just nature. But the sky was still there, as Sogyal Rinpoche writes, and they took off into it. The earth was still there too.
“What is our life but this dance of transient forms? Isn’t everything always changing: the leaves on the trees in the park, the light in your room as you read this, the seasons, the weather, the time of day, the people passing you in the street? And what about us? Doesn’t everything we have done in the past seem like a dream now?… We are impermanent, the influences are impermanent, and there is nothing solid or lasting anywhere that we can point to.” –The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying pages 26 and 27.
The only thing we can really count on is now, this moment, this breath we take, this truth that at this moment in our life we are alive. And then the next moment is upon us, even as we let the last one go. Each moment is as impermanent as the last.
Personally, I am awestruck by such acts of nature. They are always thrilling moments. I feel lucky to live where I do, that I can have such moments of brilliance in my life, that I am offered such grittiness to reflect on. I cannot say that I would be able to fly off as easily as those crows did, though eventually I get there. I know myself well enough now; that after many years of inner work I am fully capable of walking on into life without regret or sorrow. I know how to face new life, letting go of the past, though I have learned to appreciate that death, in its many forms, always accompanies me.
I don’t mean to be morbid, especially with so many experiences of life abounding now, each new spring day bringing nesting birds, emerging plants and flowers, the earth reawakening. But I cannot help but point out the truth that we are all impermanent, that we must all one day dance with death. We already do it all the time, in so many small ways.
We must learn to face our own deaths each day, preparing for it in our thoughts and actions, learning from the crows how to let go. We must also learn from the hawk that we too are capable of taking what we need to live; we too kill to survive. We must keep learning from the people in our lives how to face the transient nature of life, learning from them what the most important questions to keep asking are. We must all face the truths of our make-believe worlds and face the grittiest of the truths of reality. I am thankful for everyone who is a part of my life, even if only peripherally, for showing me that everything is meaningful and how important it is to keep working on the personal inner process.
As the seers of ancient Mexico are so fond of saying: I am a being who is going to die. The hawk and the dancing crows teach us this. Chuck and I learned this again last weekend as we watched this lesson play out in the sky. But, in the meantime, we intend to fully live, for we have so much to still learn.
Living fully, sending you all love and good wishes,
Jan
If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below. And don’t forget to check out our facebook page at: Riverwalker Press on facebook where we post comments, photos, and quotes.
Written by Jan Ketchel with a channeled message from Jeanne Ketchel.
Today I ask Jeanne to address the world situation. Already the news about the situation in Japan has dipped from the front pages of most newspapers and blogs, even though what happened there affects us all and will for decades to come, and most likely even longer. I feel strongly that it is wrong for us, especially in America, to slip back into comfortable complacency, to forget the truth of what has been revealed with the amount of radiation pouring into the earth, the sea, and the air. Locally, in New York State, there is a tremendous push to frack through the earth with deadly chemicals in search of natural gas, wreaking havoc on a par with what has recently happened in Japan. With the safety of nuclear power now in question on a broader scale, natural gas companies are pushing ever harder to sell their “clean energy,” which is absolutely false promotion. There is nothing clean about how they extract gas from deep inside the earth.
I ask you, Jeanne, why are people so cavalier about how they treat the earth? Why don’t we, as a species, care enough about nature to protect it above all else? Why are we so narcissistic when we need the earth to be clean and pure for our very survival? Don’t we get it?
Jeanne responds:
The earth is a garden, but mankind has forgotten this. A long time ago, the truth of the earth was turned under with the machinery that man developed in order to produce on a massive scale. In tilling for profit mankind killed the truth of Mother Nature’s intent and bounty. In essence, what is happening now is the fault of mankind.
Do not blame what is transpiring only on the greedy few, the profiteers, the moneymen, the commodity markets—for all of you are responsible for the decline in true agriculture and true garden tending.
How many of you truly appreciate the earth you walk upon? How many of you speak to the earth and to the wilds of nature? How many of you walk upon the earth with gentle tread and open heart, thankful for every breath of air you take?
Is it not possible to take in the truth of the devastation that man has wrought? Each one of you must face what you have done as well. You cannot place mistakes and negative decisions only upon a few. You must face what each one of you do each day, for you too are at fault no matter how pure your intent.
You see, that is the other truth. Man is but another beast who walks upon the earth, doing what beasts do; using, taking, destroying; yet in all cases is there symbiosis to study. Even the most destructible of creatures serves a purpose and so man must accept that his penchant to take, to increase exponentially, is natural, but that it will be challenged in some way, leading to a new level of nature development. But, and I say this in all certainty, mankind must use what he carries in his head–his advanced mind in alignment with his knowing and tender heart–to begin a new process, or dire circumstance will arise and change things for him. This is not a flippant warning of world’s end on my part, but the truth of the devastating split that has occurred over the past one hundred years and more, as mankind has divorced himself from nature; nature outside of himself and his true inner nature as well.
Have you not all been poor stewards? This is the first question you must answer in the affirmative. For if you suggest that you have been good stewards the world would look mighty different right now. It is not enough to sit in your comfy homes and declare the self an environmentalist, a lover of nature, a partaker in energetic alignment. You must all take greater action now. You must all participate on a wider scale.
I interrupt and ask Jeanne the following question: What do you suggest we do? What can people who, for instance, live in a large city do to help the natural environment that is so far away from the concrete jungle they live in?
Jeanne says:
Take responsibility for your own health. Everyone breathes the same air, drinks the same water, eats of the same foods grown in the same earth. It is not too far-fetched for all to demand that these three things, the air, water, and the earth itself, the soil that sustains all life, be unpolluted, be free of manmade chemicals, be pure and natural. Everybody eats, and this is the first place to begin the demands of change. Eat only that which is real, pure, and intentionally produced with sustainable practices.
Well, many would find that prohibitive. Organic, healthy, clean and chemical free food is often expensive and many people struggle just to put even the basics on their tables.
Jeanne suggests:
Yes, but with increased demand for clean food and refusal to purchase poisoned food, a shift in practices now so rampantly damaging would be forced. After all, if money is the bottom line, don’t spend your money on that which sickens you, you only injure yourself and make the poisoners happy. If mankind is indeed to survive diseases, cancers, and most physical ills, a change in what he puts into his body is the first step. To allow the self to simply decay due to the greeds of a few is but an excuse to not take responsibility for the self.
Do you, My Dear Ones, wish to decay, to become a widely spreading fungal entity rather than a human thinking, acting, feeling, breathing machine far more capable than you are now? How do you expect to evolve if you cannot use your time upon that earth wisely and properly? Remember, your time is of short duration upon that earth in comparison to most life. And yet, do you keep this in your awareness?
It is time for mankind to live consciously, to live in awareness of self and surroundings, to make demands upon the powerful so that they may face the truths of their own short life spans, and to take action for change.
What you are proposing sounds like it will take some time because many people are caught in just trying to survive right now. The world we have created, I admit, does not work for the vast majority, but really only for the few. And yet, it seems that what we have created in America is spreading like a cancer to other parts of the world, where ancient wisdom ruled until recently and now capitalism is making inroads, sickening human beings, reaping money over real food. In light of why we are really here, it feels wrong.
Jeanne responds:
I understand the dilemma, but you must all, My Dear Readers, fight against the stupidity of governments that do not work for you and declare that some things are just wrong. For what is a democratic government if you do not participate in some way–it becomes merely a tyranny and then, yes, everyone struggles.
Find your personal balance. Make your personal commitments to change the self, how you walk upon the earth, how you feed yourself and your family. How you think and formulate your opinions should not be based on rhetoric and mimicry, but only on heart-centered truth. You cannot dismiss that something is seriously wrong, so how can you begin making it right? And who do you choose to listen to?
Basically, I suggest that the best place to look for answers is inside the self. But do not simply sit and mull for too long. Make some pertinent decisions. No matter what your station in life, your situation, you can do something to change the world. You all have power; you must find and utilize your own personal power. Remove the cloak of despair, the negative thinking, the fear of not having enough, and do something positive for the self, for the air, the water, the earth.
Can you end today’s message with some advice about what is happening in Japan?
The circumstances surrounding the catastrophe in Japan is your wake up call, My Dear Ones. This is what you must recognize and then you must stay awake. Be careful now, for what comes next will be of utmost importance, for it will decide the future. Be careful how you treat the earth. She has been so careful of all of you and yet now she weeps and moans. Her painful cries must be heeded. It is time to listen to what she tells you.
Walk upon your Mother Earth softly now and ask her to tell you what to do. She will reveal her answers to those who can truly listen. Listen with your heart and you too will hear her speaking what is now the most necessary step. Keep purity in mind now for the earth, for the self. The human body and the body of Mother Nature both need it, since both encompass a far greater ecosystem that you can fathom.
Everything is interconnected; keep that in mind.
Thank you to Jeanne for this message today.
Most humbly offered,
Jan
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I don’t often encounter depressed feelings, but by Monday of this past week I was laden with the weight of the futility of the national political civil war. I’d been in the world too long; I needed to find my way home.
Whenever I connect to the moment, that final moment of life in the body, feeling my energy body separate and lift for the last time from my physical body, I am treated to such a different perspective. All that seemed so important, worth fighting for but a moment ago, becomes actually light and even humorous. The relativity, the transitoriness of all that was once held so dear, melts into a glow of loving compassion. All that matters really, for all of us, is the infinite journey and what comes next.
As I struggled Monday to find my way home, to the perspective of this final moment, I turned to my old trusty friend, the I Ching, for counsel. The I Ching tells me I’ve been treading on the tail of the tiger. Fortunately, this tiger is so caught off guard; it bites not and heads for the hills!
The tiger symbolizes wild, intractable people—the kind I wrote about in last week’s blog, those currently energized with evil energy. I broke my vow of detachment and ventured into that energy field. It didn’t bite back, but its negativity caught me unaware. It’s a world of ego gamesmanship, a world that separates me from my spirit. Without my spirit, even for a day, I feel like I could die! I have no interest in dying, but in my innocence I strayed. This, according to the I Ching, is not correct conduct: walking can be carefree, but ought not be naive.
The I Ching suggests I return to the calm and level way of the lonely sage. “He remains withdrawn from the bustle of life, seeks nothing, asks nothing of anyone, and is not dazzled by enticing goals.” —Wilhelm translation.
This is coming home: the egoless clarity of the moment of death. Finally, I am counseled to look where I walk, to look into what will be favorable and turn toward it to find great fortune. In essence, to turn toward what makes me happy, for that is the right path. For me, this is alignment with that final moment of separation: a path of heart, the warrior’s path, a being who is going to die.
When it comes to finding the way back home, turn toward that which truly makes you happy. Here you will find your path, a path of heart; follow your bliss.
From home,
Chuck
Back in 1969 Blind Faith’s Can’t Find My Way Home resonated with my spirit. Check out this early video and then in 2007 Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton got together and sang it again.
Can\'t Find My Way Home—1969
Can\'t Find My Way Home—2007
If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below. And don’t forget to check out our facebook page at: Riverwalker Press on facebook where we post daily comments, photos, and quotes.
I sit on my meditation pillow and do the sweeping breath; exhaling, emptying of breath while turning my head to the right, breathing in while moving my head to the left, and then holding my breath while I sweep my head back to the right again. I do this over and over again, sweeping back and forth in an effort to recapture the dream I had last night. I have most of it, but there are a few details that I want clarified. The shamanic sweeping breath, the recapitulation breath, works like EMDR to capture experiences, dream and otherwise.
In my dream I am planting a garden. Chuck is with me. We have prepared everything according to what we feel is good for the earth, for the soil, imbuing everything with our intent to do it right so that everything we plant will feel welcomed and loved and provide us with sustenance and nurturance in return. Now it is time to put the seeds into the ground. I am standing with my cupped hands full of seeds. I am looking at them intently, knowing that I have done everything to prepare for this moment, but still I am aware that something is missing.
Chuck is standing next to me, also looking at the seeds in my hands, both of us trying to figure out what it is we have forgotten. Suddenly there is a loud crack and the pile of seeds is emblazoned with energy. They glow with a vibrant ethereal light and then I know that this is what is missing, the energy of Mother Nature beyond what we personally could intend. At the same time I am startled awake, because the loud crack was, in reality, a powerful jolt of lightning and thunder that rumbles on and on, Mother Nature, the earth reminding us of her power.
“It sounds like an earthquake shaking the earth apart,” Chuck said, as we lay awake listening to its insistent rumblings, the significance of this statement highlighting the truth of what has been happening lately in Japan and other parts of the world. As we fell back to sleep I thought about writing the dream down so I didn’t lose it, but I chose instead to replay it over and over again in my mind so I could more readily remember it in the morning. Alas there was something missing when I woke up too, just as I knew there was something missing as I stared at the seeds in my hands during the dream experience itself.
Doing the sweeping breath helps clarify the intent of the dream, which I am aware, is teaching me something important. What I remember now is that at the moment of the crack of thunder I was aware that I was as the tiny seeds in my hands, that no matter what I personally did it was the energy of Mother Nature, in all of us, that would determine the outcome of my garden. It is important to prepare for life, for planting, making preparations according to what is in alignment with what is right, but it is hubris on our part to think that we can control anything. It is important to be an active participant in life, but the truth is that the energy of life, of nature, is unstoppable.
This is what I also understood as I lay in the dark listening to the thunder rolling and cracking open the silence of the night. In all that I have been writing about lately—pointing out the decisions that we have all taken and that we are all responsible for, whether we agree with them or not—in the end, the one who will determine our fate will be the Earth itself. Mother Nature holds the real power.
We are but seeds scattered upon the soil, we fall were we fall. We must each one of us find our way with where we have landed in this life. Some of us live in the richest country in the world, in a material sense. Some live in a country with a belief in the richness of Mother Nature, Pachamama, as I mentioned in a note yesterday regarding Brazil’s law of equality, granting nature and all living things equal status with humanity. How is it possible that such diverse and drastically different attitudes exist? On the one hand our own country of America continues making decisions to ravage and destroy the earth in an effort to uphold our standard of living, while another country seeks to return to ancient alignment with the earth. The truth is that Brazil too has ravaged the earth, but now seeks to return to ancient alignment and identity with nature. Something powerful is being expressed in turning to this other truth that lies at the heart of our human presence upon this earth.
As in my dream, something is asking us to pause now and question what we have done. We are at a crucial moment in our time, but synchronistically in the time of all living things. We must all ask what is missing. What is it that we have not done to prepare, what is not right here? What have we forgotten?
Mother Nature has the answers. As we see happening in Japan, in Arizona where fracking for natural gas has unleashed earthquakes deep inside the earth, in the tragic truths of gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, mother nature is responding, even as she did in the night as I dreamed. I take the synchronicity of that loud crack of thunder at the moment I was dreaming very seriously. I also see its synchronicity in all that I have been reading and writing about recently, in the wake of national and international events and discussions regarding how we all treat the earth.
Even as I was wondering in my dream what was missing from my own little effort to do something earth-sustaining, taking personal responsibility for growing some of my own food, nature herself spoke loudly and clearly, reminding me of her powerful presence in my life and in all life as well. She is life and she has something to say. We all need to listen.
I don’t mean to be preachy nor do I wish to impose my personal beliefs. I think we must all come to what feels right for us personally, but at the same time I do strongly feel that it would be amiss to not point out the synchronicities all around us. I truly believe that Pachamama must be treated with respect and awe—not simply granted equality with humankind, though this is a good start—because she is far more powerful than we are. This is the truth I learned in my dream.
I am just one little seed, sending you all love and good wishes.
Jan
If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below. And don’t forget to check out our facebook page at: Riverwalker Press on facebook where we post comments, photos, and quotes.