Quarter Year

by Azure

After our hike in the Causses du Quercy, we decided to head down to Carcassone and explore the region and revisit some friends we made a couple years ago. Here is the slideshow link from that part of our trip. Again, if you want to watch the slide show with captions on, click “show info” in the upper right corner of the screen.

Bonus photo! Mike meditates at the Mediterranean at sunrise.

by Azure

I used a different format… I’ve put a link to a slideshow I made in Flickr with captions on most of the photos, some interesting, some not so much. In order to watch the slide show with captions on, click “show info” in the upper right corner of the screen.

slideshow

Bonus photo! This is me on the coldest morning in my sleeping bag. I love this thing

by Azure

Mike checking the map day 1

Day One

We took the train from Toulouse to Martel to start our walk. After a LONG lunch, we set off around 3pm for our first walk. After climbing a hill, we made our first offering of salt (salt is the ancient currency for trading of this region, so we are making all spiritual offerings with salt) while overlooking a small settlement of about three houses. We continued on, crossing the Dordogne a little before 5pm at a place called Floirac. In the town, we met a golden lab. It was friendly and started walking with us. At several times, we tried to get it to go home, but it wouldn’t and since it was getting dark, we needed to find a place to put our tent for the night. We hiked up the hill through one of the many oak forests, the dog with us the entire way. At one point there was a clearing that revealed a viewpoint, the first we had seen since leaving the town. We realized that it overlooked the entire valley. We could see and hear everything, even the bells from the church below. The dog, our loyal companion, laid down and so we took it as a sign that we should camp there. We set up camp on the edge of a bluff and ate the bread and cheese we had brought from Toulouse. I laid in the tent listening to the sounds of Mike and the dog playing and enjoying each other’s company. read more

by Azure

About a week ago, I received an email from Mike that said, “We’re doing something different this year – a combo walk-about and pilgrimage in Southwest France. I suspect I might have had a past life in the region, so we’re going to head there and just walk. Right now we’re talking about arriving in Bordeaux and walking to the Mediterranean, though this plan might change by the time we get on the plane tomorrow night. Who knows. The reason we’re walking is that we’re going to be putting ourselves out there to be in as much contact with the land and structures and people as possible. We’re taking sleeping bags and a tent, so we’re hoping to sleep on the ground. The trek is around 350 miles.”

I was sitting in the living room of Travis and Aliya’s apartment in NYC when I got it. Mike was on the couch and I turned to him and said “Did you really just send this out to like 100 people? You know this means we have to do it now, right?”

The truth is, I really don’t think much about what we are doing, I leave that part up to Mike, but I am the logistical one in the duo and so I started thinking about how we’d get where by what means and what we would need to take. Ten days and many trips to REI/Decathalon later we are about to begin this walk-pilgrimage thing and I still have a few nagging concerns.

#1 It is the dead of winter. Today, the temperature was in the thirties and at night it gets below freezing.
#2 Neither of us has ever hiked for one whole day in our lives.
#3 Neither of us has ever camped other than out of a car.
#4 Overall ill-preparedness in general

The things we do have going for us are that we did do a one-hour test walk around the chateau grounds. Luckily it was just as cold and rainy as it will be for the hike and we survived the test. Later, Mike had a dream about trees or stars or something and ended up finding his way to this specific tree and at the base was a giant ring of mushrooms. The internet revealed that it was called a fairy ring and mythically it is where elves congregated, so we had to set up our tent in the middle of the ring and sleep out there during a storm. All in all, both tests seemed to go alright, so off we go.

In all honesty, I am excited for this hike. We returned the rental car early and I must say the feeling of freedom really shocked me. Usually I associate having a car with freedom, but right now, I feel empowered to walk anywhere, even if there are no roads! I have never had the chance to just walk somewhere like this. I like to think of it as my very own Oregon Trail type situation. Would I have made it or started crying and stopped? We’ll see today!

We aren’t bringing our big camera on this walk (too much weight), so for the most part, it is all imagination.

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” – Howard Thurman

“I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.” – Theodore Roethke

“Still, if I’m going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I’m grateful so many of those moments are nice.” – Kurt Vonnegut

At one end of the spectrum is zoning out, day dreaming. Being totally in head consciousness. At the other end is being in a trance and night dreaming. Being totally in heart consciousness.

I’ve found it helpful to follow a rhythm when I’m trying to get into a trance. I can’t completely shut my mind off willingly yet, but I can distract it with repetitive noises, activities or sensations.

In recent conversations with friends I’ve been paying attention to the dance of head- and heart-centered expression.

I’ve always thought of myself as a good listener, and I think I am, but I’ve noticed there’s one question I often ask that knocks people out of “speaking from the heart” and into the head. The question is some form of, “When was that?”
It’s innocent enough, it’s a question for me to get a grip on the chronology of what was going on in someone’s life. But usually it’s not worth derailing the momentum of heart-centered talk.

Similarly, there’s an issue with meditation that I needed to resolve. I’ve always made an effort to “be in the present moment” or as I’ve recently been trying, “be sensitive to the present moment.” The problem here is that in framing it as a matter of time (“moment”) I was paying attention to the linear aspect of my experience, which had a tendency to override the non-linear aspects. In other words, by giving importance to the idea that I was experiencing an aspect of time, I was derailing the experience of place. I was trying to feel with my head. It’s simply impossible. Feeling is the heart’s domain, and I mean this literally, not metaphorically.

The meditation language I’m beginning to use is more along the lines of, “My purpose is to be a feeling being.” I like that this trains me to see my identity as heart-centered.

I’m sure in two days I’ll find something wrong with that sentence, but I’m making progress.

I had a meaningful moment with the Hawthorn today. Deeply felt it, it felt intimidating at first. Not like a cute little tree but like a physically fit man, a warrior. I’ve had a feeling that Hawthorn is compassionate, so I’m approaching it right now as a Protector. Birds take refuge in its branches. I found a bee under a leaf on a stormy day last week. There’s also room underneath for a person to sit or sleep and be protected from the weather. It has thorns. I think its medicine is about courage and trust, but I haven’t totally felt that yet.

Last night, before falling asleep, I read the following passage, again from The Secret Teachings of Plants by Stephen Harrod Buhner:

[Once you have established a rapport with a plant,] ask the plant how you can use it as medicine. Tell it of your need.

There will be a response. Though you may have to pay attention to your body, your feelings, and the odd stray thoughts or pictures that pop into your mind to perceive it. Sometimes a phrase will, of itself, emerge into the mind.

Or perhaps a picture will flash on the field of your interior vision.

Or you will breathe deeply. Or a flush of relaxation will flow through your body and your skin begin to tingle.

You may want to go look up the medicinal actions of the plants that you have been sitting with (to convince yourself that all this is real).

To see what you are receiving has some basis in reality, that it is in the books of the “experts” as well. Take it one step at a time, take as long as you need. It takes a long time to really trust this most ancient of skills, (to reclaim it as your own) for our colonization has been deep and long and all of us have forgotten much.

The observation that all phenomena are relevant is an interesting one. This spiritual journey is a lot like travel – I began traveling because I had this vague sense that my understanding of ‘what you do in life’ was only a sliver in the spectrum of all cultural experiences. In India, every scrap of information hinted at narratives totally separate from what I had been taught. It was everything – people, food, the stars, death. It was overwhelming to realize I didn’t know anything about myself and the world, I only knew what my culture had taught me.

I don’t like hearing the “we only use 15% of our brain” thing because, whether it’s true, it’s not helpful. But Buhner’s paragraph above is helpful. We’re encouraged to learn from less than 15% of our sensory experiences, all of which come in the form of explicit communication. We only consider information relevant if it comes from one (or more) of a few sources: books, websites, radio, tv, conversations with friends and family, work, classes, church or school. We’re taught that those are the phenomena that have information for us to learn.

(Notice that science, government and institutional religions insist that, despite our experiences, all sources of legitimate knowledge are external to us).

Some people drop the cultural restrictions and learn from tarot cards, horoscopes, psychics and so on. Though they’re outside the sanctioned channels, these phenomena are still explicit messages from sources we consciously seek out as communicators (external to us).

But what Buhner is suggesting is that all information is a message, even the inexplicit. When I approach a tree, I should pay attention to everything from the tingle in my hand to the fact that I’m paying attention to the tingle in my hand, the noise the neighbor makes, my hunger, whatever I can smell, the fact that I just thought about that one time I was coaching and that kid said that one thing, the gust of wind… in other words, nothing is a distraction. All phenomena are relevant. I’m the antenna, and the information I receive is legitimate.

It’s a leap of faith. It’s trust.

Last night I had a dream that Azure wasn’t feeling well – her stomach was upset. Someone offered her food but she didn’t want any because she wasn’t hungry. I offered her some fresh thyme, and she ate it because she thought it might relieve her pain. I woke up wondering if I’d received my first communication from the plants, so I looked it up: “Thyme has been used to treat appetite loss, encourage smooth digestion, alleviate gas and to cure chronic gastritis.” [Practical Guide to Natural Medicines]

I had no concept of this before this morning. I’m convinced that this is all real.

Resistance to fear is terror. Resistance to pain is suffering. Best to just feel them fully.

Resistance is the mind blocking the function of the heart. Spiritually, I’m finding it’s best to give the heart priority and recognize that my mind can only take me so far.

It’s been a long time. I wish that someone along the way had said this to me: “Meditation is not a mental exercise. It is a sensory exercise. When you turn off your mind and create all that space, fill it with your senses.”

Last year I was prescribed a hawthorn tincture for my circulatory health, and I was so impressed by the efficacy that I started looking into how to make tinctures, how to use herbal medicine and, eventually, spiritual medicine.

Turns out we have a hawthorn tree in our backyard, I’d just never known what it was until I was looking up the medicine online. I was pumped about the idea of having the most effective heart medicine growing in our yard, so I’ve been waiting for months for the berries to ripen so I can process it myself.

But there’s a catch: while you might just grab an herb and throw it in alcohol and make a tincture, that wouldn’t be effective. There is an important spiritual element to using the plant’s medicine. Part of it is communicating with the plants using your heart. And while I’ve never experienced this directly, I’m willing to give it a shot, whatever that means.

Last week (on the full moon) I went out to harvest the berries, and I started talking to the tree. I told it that I hoped it would be ok if I would harvest its berries, and I hoped it was ok that I didn’t yet know how to communicate with it. But I’m trying to learn and as I get better at the language I’ll be able to listen better.

Then, reading The Secret Teachings of Plants by Stephen Buhner, I finally got a deeper understanding of the heart’s role in our bodies. It is not just a pump for blood, in fact it has a very subtle communication system with the other organs, it sends information to the brain, it has a strong electromagnetic field. And part of its role is to be sensitive to other electromagnetic fields, like those emanating from trees. The heart needs to be healthy, though, to carry out all its roles effectively.

Maybe you’ve already figured out where this is going. When I finally tincture the berries from this wonderful backyard hawthorn, the tree will not only cure my heart in its role as a circulatory regulator, but it will heal the organ that holds the key to my communication with the tree. How incredible is that? The tree is teaching me its language.

This is similar to the story I keep repeating about how this path started for me: In France I ran my hand across a stone wall and tried to imagine how the wall builder experienced his world hundreds of years ago. I realized that the very thing that prevented me from understanding his mindset was the thing that made us different. That is, he believed in magic, and I did not, and because I was limiting myself I would never be able to understand how he experienced his world. So I decided to open myself to the possibility that there is magic, though I didn’t quite know what that meant for me at the time. Since then life’s been totally weirdawesome.

Anyway, point of this whole post is that in both instances I decided to take a chance and be open to something I understood to be impossible. Though I didn’t know what direction to follow, the universe has organized to make impossible things happen.

Your Heart
blesses
every cell
in your body.

Listening to the offset rhythms of my heartbeat and breath I was reminded of the offset rhythms of the sun and the moon.

In dream analysis the significance of the content is often secondary to the emotions we actually felt in the dreams. Similarly, when we’re awake, the structures of our lives (work, relationships, hobbies) are vessels for our felt experience of the world.

One of my favorite ideas from Marxism is this idea that we are alienated from the outputs of our labor. Money has made our labor abstract, intellectual, so there’s no physical sense of the work we do. According to Marxism, in order to fully realize ourselves we need to stop doing work that’s abstract and start practicing work that’s an expression of our relationship with the chosen material – that is, work we can experience with our senses. Less head, more heart.

Marxists fall short, though, because they fail to take the idea out of the economic realm and apply it to the social realm. Characterizing a person as an opponent (say – as the 1%) objectifies and abstracts their humanity (and in doing so, it does the same to us). In order to fully realize ourselves, we need to practice compassion, even toward our enemies. Less head, more heart.

1) God bless the photographers. An analysis that puts compassion at the center of the Occupy Wall Street movement. “What is a revolutionary idea?” [No Caption Needed]

2) God bless the photographers. A photographic essay that explores how our use of every day items has an enormous impact on people around the globe. “The true price with a hidden cost.” [lens blog @ NYT] Part of the At What Cost exhibition.

3) God bless the photographers. A photo of a wet panda. [I have seen the whole of the internet]

There’s one thing on my mind that I’m too afraid to ask about because I don’t know where it could go. I guess I’m afraid I’ll be let down because nothing happens, or I’ll be overwhelmed because it’s so emotional, or it will be something else that I don’t know how to handle.

I’m curious why I’m so drawn to Southwest France. I want to experience a past life, because I suspect that’s what’s going on. I want to know the story, I want to see the faces of the people I loved. I want to feel the pain and smell the air. I want to know where I worked and I want to know where I died and I want to know the unfinished tragedies and the forgotten joys of that life. I want to see my handwriting again. I want to know my name.

I guess this is me asking the question: Who was I in a past life?

Breath
is the phenomenon
around which
our bodies
coalesce.

Fire sounds like the wind and the rain. Breath sounds like a wave crashing.

I’ve noticed that every day has a daily theme. Sunday it was style in storytelling, Monday was about ethical leadership, today it’s about finances.

If I manage to tune into the theme early in the day then it can function as an intense study in that particular subject.

People talk about omens and signs as if they were huge events in their lives – they might even remember one particular instance years ago when they got a sign. My experience has been that every single moment there are several signs to read. The question is whether I’m patient, aware and paying attention enough to learn something from them. And am I doing something to help that message stick?