WE ARE ALL RELATED - IT'S COSMIC

 Prehistoric cave paintings often display men with part animal bodies.  Was this a way of drawing the spirit of the animal closer or to bring the man’s spirit into the animal’s essence for purposes of hunting or medicine?  Like attracts like; the human and animal worlds were not separated the way they are now.  Perhaps we are slowly making our way back to accepting the reality of our common beingness.

The longer I live the more I’m convinced that we humans are still on a primitive level of development and like adolescents, we think our ancestors didn’t know very much. We make amazing instruments for convenience, healing (more accurately patching) and destruction, and yet we aren’t actually happier, healthier or more in synch with our environment. We pursue power and immortality without knowing what they are. The lesser mind is attempting to control its own source. With all the sophistication of our medical instruments, health seems to be declining. I recently read that cancer treatment is no more effective than it was sixty years ago, and cancer is more prevalent, perhaps because our lifestyles and values are not people friendly. Is this really about progress, or more to the point, why do we deify progress? 

A great separation of time and mentality divides nowadays from the time of the cave paintings of

This cave is a reproduction but the contrast is still huge.

Lascaux, images carved on stone in ancient Australia, Africa or pre-invasion America. However, nothing of the earth that once existed is truly lost but merely stacked one upon the other in the growing hoard of time. There is perhaps a place for psychic archaeology as much as that practiced by those equipped with shovels and scientific tools for illuminating the deeply buried past. Yet truly, the past never fundamentally separated us and now travels with us through the eons of ancestors imbedded in our cells.

Most ancient cultures viewed time as a circular or at least spiral process rather than the linear process by which our modern world abides. Personally, the more birthdays I collect, the stranger time seems.  An event last year may seem a few weeks ago while memory of an event last month is like the distant end of a long chain of whiles.  How much is our sense of time actually cultural conditioning?

How about balance? .It isn’t a fixed state but a constant tide between movement and stasis. The Tiwa people, my husband’s tribe, don’t trust the dominant culture of America, and keep their religious beliefs and the meanings of their ceremonies strictly to themselves. They even hold their language within the tribe. They base their distrust of the dominant culture and its ways on bad experiences in the history of their relationship with Spanish and Anglo subjugators. Even more to the point is the recognition that base values are so different that even with good intentions the cultures don’t mix harmoniously.  Of course, the modern global culture affects them, if culture is the right word.  They drive motor vehicles, eat fast food, shop at super markets and use TV’s, computers and smart phones. Some of the children don’t even speak Tiwa, but they are very aware of being an alternative viewpoint and believe they perform their ceremonies and hold their tribal identity for the good of the entire world. At the very least, it preserves something fundamentally organic about being human in the cosmos.

I am now thinking of time in the mode a plant or an animal begins and ends and the Sun and Moon divide their movement to give us an instinctive go by through our cosmic territory.  Without a beginning or end, there is no time and no existence on this dimension. Without the borders of time, there is no-thing. Our normal way of thinking is dependent upon an agreed upon canvas of space and time on which to paint our life’s portrait. Yet in this fractal universe, we are intricately patterned offshoots of Creator’s primal energy body. I’m getting lost and a little dizzy now. Why did I start this? It reminds me of a childhood game I once played. Staring at the night sky I would imagine what was beyond the stars and what was beyond that beyond until I fell down from dizziness. Light and darkness are opposites but they differ in that light exists and darkness is the background that reveals its existence.  There is a border between them that we recognize but can’t explain without destroying the thought of one or the other.

 Lascaux remained in darkness for ages just as most of who we are as beings exists locked in a dark vault waiting  for the need of a critical evolutionary key to arise, a call from the future. Is this desire part of the creative force? Now and then, I rediscover a book that was very important at one time in my life and was then lost to memory.  Is it really chance that it re-emerges just when I need a particular piece that will enlighten the present darkness? Amazingly, I would never have recognized the need for this key without perception acquired since the first encounter. The past and the future seem to be in constant communication at the juncture point of the present.

PQ and I enjoy watching a micro-world in the backyard over morning coffee. There are three cats (that was yesterday, now there are four), many birds, prairie dogs chirping over the fence, dogs barking on both sides and numerous insects from which to learn or at least notice as existential players in an ongoing creation story. A beautiful blue dragonfly dipping and swooping across the backyard disappears somewhere through the leaves of the cottonwood.  How could it once have been as large as the magpies perched on our neighbor’s globe willow? A prehistoric creature that existed long before our own species has changed only in size. There are flies and aunts imbedded in ancient amber that haven’t changed at all. Then I realized that we are held in space on a big ball that has existed for so long that the numbers of its years bounce off my overloaded brain and float away into the incomprehensible.

 Could it be that we humans are still in early dawn of our development?  I hope so. The shortsightedness of our species threatens the existence of everyone who shares this big ball.  We humans have a large brain, powerful reasoning ability and that deadly prehensile thumb, added to very little wisdom about how to use these instruments. We are still the Sorcerer’s Apprentice when it comes to a relationship with the Master Wizard and yet we hold onto our familiar beliefs as if they were the final word of truth.  Now it seems that the upstart religion of Scientific Materialism is going down the same road to intellectual taxidermy as it’s religious predecessors.   This may be due to a hardwired component of the human psyche. However, the greater problem is a lack of heart connection, that gravitational pull that binds our thoughts to the cycle of creation, exacerbated by fear of mortality. The ancients were right to correlate the heart with the solar center that magnetically powers our cosmic organism. The view looking out from inside our skin gives us the idea that we are isolated entities and everything outside of this thin and penetrable personal border with its minute lifespan is either a potential enemy or something exploitable. 

Yet all borders exist within still larger borders, and all edges disappear when viewed panoramically with a cosmic eye.Unless we acknowledge all our relations from the heart, nothing on heaven or earth will penetrate our isolation illusion and organize our passions like the spirit images on the walls of dark caves did for our ancestors.   The mystery of time reminds us, that the creation of the world is happening now as it always has. It has bothered me since early childhood that I can live only in one place at a time, whatever it happens to be. I sometimes envision a plane of grazing mammoths, prehistoric bison, lions, dire wolves and all the other plants and fauna of 20,000 years ago from where I sit for coffee each morning. Then, at other times, try to imagine life in pre-Roman Europe, Renaissance Europe, Egypt, Mesopotamia and so on. Nevertheless, the focal point for all of that is now, and the sum of everything that was is now. It is an awesome bank of resources for now and the next moment and the next.

WHERE IS BLACKIE?

I’m feeling sad. The garden seems empty. Who would expect that a little stray cat could have such a big presence?  Four days ago, I closed the front door at about 11:00 PM as I usually do.  The neighborhood cats would wander in and out until I closed the door, especially Black Kitty.  She had taken to coming inside to lay under the table or alternately, the big flowerpot in front of the door where she could watch us on the couch.

On Wednesday, she had already gone about her night business when I closed the door. Usually she would be sleeping on PQ’s patio chair in the morning, or if the sun had already risen over the latia fence, she would be in the shade behind the barbeque. Thursday morning she wasn’t there. I had a twinge of concern but remembered that this happened now and then.  Cats have their own secret life and although creatures of habit, they sometimes have their attention on other things.  After all, the white cat disappeared for two weeks once.  I think his human kept him inside to fix in him where he lived. But, Blackie didn’t seem to have any other human family.

Blackie Watching from the Flower Pot

Whitey was becoming jealous of the black cat, and I wondered if he scared her off in the morning.  But, she never showed up, not that afternoon, not the next day or the next.  Both PQ and I suspected that something must have happened to her.  It could have been a coyote, a hawk, a dog or a car. We hadn’t heard anything but then there is a big field behind us, and beyond that the mountains. Maybe someone thought she was homeless and took her to the shelter. I would like to think that, but I doubt it.

Last fall, when I first saw her, she was small and skinny. I don’t know how old she was. I think she was older than her size indicated because her dull coat indicated that she was undernourished.  The hair on her ears was patchy, her left ear had the tip clipped off, and her tail seemed ragged.  She was so wary that she wouldn’t come out of hiding to eat unless you left the food out and then went indoors out of sight.  I don’t know if she was feral or abandoned, but she stayed away from humans. There were indications that her previous experience with our species had not been good.

The first time I got close enough to touch her, she jumped three feet off the ground. However, every week she became a bit more trusting. By last week, I could comb her pet and play with her.  She was still anxious about being picked up, but would allow me to hold her off the ground a few feet. We were working on that. She became so affectionate that sometimes I had to put her outside when working, she was always under foot.

We were concerned about leaving her on her own when we went to Arizona in May, but Amanda our daughter in law fed her and the others whenever they checked on our house. When we got home, Blackie peered cautiously around the corner of the house and on my greeting, “hi little girl,” she came bounding to meet me.

Right after I realized that she probably wasn’t coming back, I also recognized that I always had the sense that her life was precarious.  Every morning I was happy that she was still here. It was in her aura. She was much like certain humans I’ve known who began life on a narrow edge. The aura of a perilous hold on this dimension envelops them. You want to enjoy their presence while you can because it seems likely that they will fall through the dimensional floor into the unknown. Perhaps it’s because they always did have a dual residence between this world and wherever they came from and to where they will return. Even if they have a big hole in their aura, such creatures deliver a special blessing to the rest of us. I’m glad for the opportunity to make this little creature’s life better for as long as she stayed here. I can still feel her muscular little body vibrating with purrs. She was a medicine gift.

PQ who doesn’t want a pet to complicate our life or travel plans, said, “she was such a sweet cat, this is why I don’t want an animal, the loss is always hard.” Perhaps now, we are again free to travel without planning for anyone’s wellbeing in our absence. 

Last week I made a great shift in my attitude toward my life on Mother Earth. It’s been a new start in life. The original high is gone, and I knew it would dim, but now I am down to the Nitti gritty work of living my new insights in everyday reality.  I’ve noticed that a big breakthrough is often accompanied by a loss. I don’t understand the dynamics, but I wonder if this is somehow connected to the origins of sacrifice. In the religious use, the pump is primed, so to speak by offering the loss first in hope of the blessing.

Perhaps the alienated child in me, identified with this little creature. After all, I’ve had terrified and abandoned cats in my dreams for years. They are a species that never was completely domesticated, and often find the human world confusing and threatening. Did Blackie disappear as a mirror of my own social precariousness? Nevertheless, I’m still hoping she will show up.

UPDATE:

Last night we finally had a wonderful earth soaking rain. It is the first truly nourishing rain in months. I was enjoying this great blessing even while wondering if Blackie was alive and soaked or possibly lying lifeless in the refreshed but muddy field behind us. The other two cats have been especially friendly since she disappeared as if they were trying to compensate.  However, after writing about Blackie I was feeling much better, something was shifting.  This morning I was inexplicably OK. Yellow and White greeted me when I opened the door and we headed for their dishes behind the house. And then all three of us heard faint meows next door.  I looked through the fence but saw nothing, then the meows grew stronger. Finally, I saw something move behind my neighbors window screen. Yes! It was Blackie. I could see her jumping around trying to find a way through the screen. She was desperate to join us. What mixed feelings! I was greatly relieved but felt uneasy about her captivity.  I miss her, and she misses us, but it was confirmation that someone is trying to make a home for her and we don’t have to worry when we go out of town.

The Smoke from One of the Fires Viewed from The Bypass

I truly believe that this world is a boundless fractal pattern of broiling, morphing creative energy. Each event only seems isolated when we are micro focused on our own minuscule view inside the great design. Mother Nature swallows and digests us and there is an even bigger Mamma waiting to swallow ours in the vastness of the universe. On a local scale, the forest fires surrounding us have filled the air with smoke and last night’s rain, washed the sky clean. We are always vulnerable on this physical plane, but each relief is ecstatic.  And, the “Maybe” story has no end.

 

 “There were once two old farmers who had a fence between their property.  Every morning farmer A would meet farmer B at the fence and they would exchange news and gossip, as neighbors do.  One day farmer B’s best horse jumped the fence and ran away in pursuit of a band of wild horses. Upon hearing the news, farmer A came to visit. “Such bad luck,” he said sympathetically. “Maybe,” farmer B replied. The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three wild horses. “How wonderful,” the neighbor exclaimed, now you have four horses and they look young and strong.  “Maybe,” replied the old man. The following day, his son decided to train one of the untamed horses, was thrown off, and broke his leg.  Knowing that farmer B was getting old and needed his son’s help, the neighbor came to offer his sympathy on this misfortune. “I’m so sorry those wild horses were bad luck after all”, he exclaimed. “Maybe,” answered farmer B.  Very soon after this misfortune, two military officials came to the village looking for young men to draft into the army. Seeing that the old farmer’s son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. Farmer A congratulated farmer B on how well things had turned out after all. “Your son would be drafted and you’d never have any help on your farm if his leg had not been broken,” said farmer A.  “Maybe,” said farmer B. An so the story continues…

HIGHWAY 40 REFLECTIONS, OR DRIFTING WITH THE TUMBLEWEEDS

 Coming back to New Mexico on I-40 the events and impressions of the previous week begin tumbling out of my disorganized and somewhat crowded mental storage locker, as if I’d just lifted the door to that dreaded and familiar scene of boxes, dust and cobwebs. I’ve been working up the courage to sort through to those hard to reach boxes toward the back. While in Cottonwood, I was too tired to think.  A minor bug perhaps, the ever present chemtrails, a dimensional shift maybe, but I was a bit under the weather on this visit. PQ was content just to be In Arizona, breath richer oxygen, enjoy the company of friends and watch lizards and birds from the porch with coffee and without worries.

We did accomplish our intended goal for the trip, checking out owner/chef Vlad Costa’s new location for 15.Quince in Cottonwood. It was quite a surprise.  It isn’t just bigger than the quaint Victorian cubby hole in Jerome, it’s on an entirely different scale with an enormously different environment.  The new place is huge, southwest style modern and able to seat probably four times as many. Of course, it has a lot more wall space for art.   

 

I’ve been reading Rupert Sheldrake’s new book, Science Set Free.  After a long spell of not reading, just letting my own process sort itself out, I’ve been hitting the books again. I believe this is part of the medicine path I’m on. Something new is emerging and I need to sharpen my tools. I read the way I cook or mix paint, a lot of intuitive blending and flavoring. I can tell when the mix is just right. Not scientific?  Of course not, science hasn’t arrived at that innate organizing of the creative process.

Yesterday, on the way up Oak Creek Canyon I was thinking about Sheldrake’s ideas and the outrage they evoke in the traditional scientific community. Perhaps Sheldrake’s concept of morphic resonance will require honing and reworking into the future, but from my intuitive, unscientific mind his ideas appeal to me because a similar concept came to me and others without any awareness of Sheldrake and I don’t think this is about being psychic. The popular saying of “it’s time has come” seems to automatically apply to major conceptual changes. Perhaps Sheldrake tuned into a need to find a new intention of knowledge.  The conventional science operates with a masculine thinking process of breaking down and analyzing the materials a thing or creature is made of, rather than what it is as a whole and certainly, not how it functions within a cosmic level of wholeness. Sheldrake, in this case, would be an advanced guard representing another mind and another perspective beginning to emerge into the consciousness of humans. This may be more important than whether or not he is theoretically correct.

Scientists and others who live in the world of intellect seem to fall into two primary types. There are those who adhere to and defend the current cache of knowledge like orthodox theologians and those that step beyond the boundaries of the prevailing paradigms with their accompanying doctrine. I’ve come to see this as a temperamental difference.  They are both necessary and yet predictably butt heads with each other.  This world seems to operate on the friction generated by opposing processes.  However, the concepts defended rigorously by the orthodox, were once considered heretical and frequently got their discoverers and supporters killed.  Somehow, the orthodox have never learned that making martyrs out of advocates of new concepts only empowers their ideas. However, this it isn’t about failure to rid the world of heretics as much as it is about the impossibility of stopping an idea whose time has come.  Scientists are the current priestly class and Scientific Materialism is the orthodox belief system. Simply notice how often science is used to authorize almost everything and it becomes apparent that orthodox science is the religion of our time. The mechanistic model seems strangely backwards. Since humans are the creators of machines, machines would have to resemble us not the other way around.

As we start down I-40, I’m seeing this landscape in a different way, how strange, and even embarrassing as I notice that my memory of this stretch of road is wrong or at least distorted. Next, Joseph City’s smokestacks are approaching. When coming from the east, I look forward to this landmark, as the first place from which it’s possible to see the San Francisco peaks behind Flagstaff.  However, I thought it was west of Winslow and now I realize it is actually between Winslow and Holbrook. Here and there, I feel that I’ve never seen this landscape before.  However, I’m enjoying the sensation of looking through different lenses.  I wonder which impression is closest to the truth and then it occurs to me that they are both true but incomplete. I’ve been seeing by habit and now the habits are breaking into fractal extensions or perhaps I’m just more aware of it.

When we pull off for gas in Gallup, PQ pulled up on the wrong side of the pump.  I had to remind him that our car fills on the right. How could he forget this? Then he dropped the keys on the floor, behavior more typical of me than him. This state of mind is either contagious or there is something in the air altering our perceptions and coordination.  Are the chemtrails getting to us, or maybe its sunspots or a consciousness shift to an awareness that is still unfamiliar? 

Next, I begin thinking about some of the people I know who are open to alternative medicine, science and spirituality.  These are not eccentrics or hippy types, not that it would be a bad thing if they were, but actually these people are well educated, highly functional and formerly from a middle class conservative socially responsible background.  They are not stereotypical woo-woo types, and they are middle age or older, well beyond adolescent rebellion.  Why are they looking beyond scientific materialism? There must be something unsatisfying in the current orthodox dogma.

As we drive on, we pass the fourth 18-wheeler within 150 miles, stopped by the side of the road with its hood up and a mechanic or tow truck attending. It is unusual to see even one.  Perhaps synchronicity has a theme. What is breaking down?  As we drive on, I notice another twisted retread on the road.  This one didn’t die easy. I wonder why retreads are legal. On one of our trips, one broke from a rear tire of a big rig right in front of us.  It almost caused a wreck. Moving down the highway at eighty miles an hour, they can cause a lot of damage when they break loose but still they are legal. Highway rules sometimes seem arbitrary.  

The mind conditioning runs deep.  No matter how often I experience synchronistic events, I still doubt my perceptions.  PQ reminds me now and then about my flat response to events that seem impossibly endowed with magic.  Our meeting was one of those events. When it’s happening it seems perfectly normal. Our minds dulled by reductionist teachings, we look through a dirty window.  When we see our surroundings with sharp clarity and joy, the priests tell us we are deluded by chemicals.

Our Goddess of Flaming Love

 An image of the Goddess of the New World came to me as we were moving back to Taos three years ago. Last week I decided to overcome my reluctance to paint in the kitchen. I found that she had a life of her own and I felt very inadequate to bring her in with paint on canvas. It seemed like an arrogant sacrilege but she wanted to come out, so I did the best I could. She is made of fractal energy flaming life visible and invisible into the space all around her. She is made of original power.   I will use her power as inspiration to lead me into the future. 

Back in Taos, hundreds of Harley’s are buzzing around town like giant flies. The Memorial Day weekend is the kickoff of the summer season and this is how it begins.  The weather is good except for being windy and dry, but otherwise open door weather. PQ is still recuperating from reentry but we are well and looking forward to whatever is around the corner. Our visit to Cottonwood was like old home week, but two among our Arizona family are moving out of the area. We were glad to be there before they left and we all had a barbeque for the sake of tradition. Nothing lasts forever, and spring is a time of new growth. We look forward to the next chapter of our story. Creation keeps happening.