Archive
A Message from The Other Side for Richard (and everyone!)
Friday evening Rosemary hosted a Conversation with The Other Side. Several of us gathered together, some in person and some online, to hear what messages were available to us from loved ones who have crossed over to The Other Side, from Spirit Guides, Angels, and other multi-dimensional beings who are their for our highest good. I recorded my message and it’s a valuable one for many to hear.
Without further introduction here is Rosemary offering channeled guidance for me, and anyone else who needs to hear this; enjoy!
Over the next few days I will also be offering my thoughts on this guidance, especially about duality, polarization and the message from the Inuit! Please stay tuned.
PS: I do realize I had planned to write about Grief today. I sensed that this message was more important at the moment as we approach tomorrow’s election. I will return to the emotions and how to transform them in later posts.
Do you want to learn more about Rosemary, her Conversations with The Other Side? The next one is already scheduled for December 7 at 7:00 pm Eastern. For the details Go Here
Men and Emotional Health
The recent videos by Rosemary and our commentaries have been about health and balance. Balance is achieved by bringing all four of our bodies, Spiritual, Mental, Emotional and Physical into both a healthy state and into balance across them.
Examining Emotional Health and Balance I have presented how Taoist Chinese sages work with emotions by transforming them into virtues. I have previously addressed Anger and its counterpart virtue, Creativity (Resourcefulness). And I have looked at Anxiety and how it might be transformed into Connection and Joy. Today I address two additional emotions: Fear and Worry.
Working with Fear is to transform it to Wisdom. Fear is probably the most primitive, instinctual emotion, therefore most deeply seated. It is an emotion of the ego and the ego’s job is survival. Fear triggers the fight or flight response, the reptilian brain component designed to keep us alive. Through inner work it is important to transform Fear into Wisdom and Empowerment. We move from the primitive, instinctual response to an Enlightened response. Frank Herbert, author of the Dune science fiction series, wrote that “fear is the mind-killer.” Exactly! When faced with survival it is easy for the mind to shut down and move into automatic response mode.
The trick here is to catch our reaction to an event or an object which triggers fear, to pause and breathe into the fear, and then to examine if this thing or occurrence is truly something to fear. These days we rarely encounter saber-toothed tigers to which the flight/fear response is appropriate!
There is a Korean Koan practice that helps me in these potentially fearsome situations. The practice is very simple: pause and ask “What is this?” Go inside to find an answer. And then ask the question again, this time of the first answer that comes to mind. Continue the practice until the questioning comes to a satisfying conclusion. This is a way to transform Fear to Wisdom.
Worry is often a wasted expenditure of emotional energy. I prefer to transform it to Centeredness. Next to Anger, Worry may be the next biggest emotion Western Men have to deal with. While Anxiety is about our place in society, Worry is more about our place in the Cosmos. Who are we; why are we here; what is life all about anyway; and is there any purpose to any of this, to my life? And these questions extend to health, security, and general lack of well-being. To counter Worry it is good to go into our stories for insight into this emotion. How has Worry affected us, influenced our decisions, guided our choices? How does Worry feel on the inside? What color does it have?
Worry transforms to Centeredness and Ecology. When we sink into our own Inner Space, our Wisdom, we become grounded and wholly present. We connect here with the All, the Universe. And from this deep place of wisdom we begin to understand our connectedness to everything and everyone; this is different from the transformation of Anxiety to Connection which is more about our human connections. This is broader and deeper. And the result is a deep appreciation of everything, all of creation, including ourselves! Within this context there is no room for Worry. We are part of something so much bigger. And we begin to see where we fit in the overall Ecology of the Cosmos. We see ourselves at the microcosmic level fitting neatly into the overall picture of the Macrocosm. There is great peace here and the beginning of balance.
Wisdom and Centeredness. These seem so much more appropriate responses than Fear and Worry! Try them on. Pause and ask: “What is this?” Breathe and move inside; find your Center. Everything in the Universe radiates outward from that Center. You are a key piece in that Universe!
PS: for my next post I will examine one more emotion that men need to pay particular attention to: Grief. Stay tuned!
“How’s Your Health?” A Commentary from Richard
Have you reviewed the video and commentary by Rosemary from her FREE weekly MuseLetter? I posted them over the past couple of days; and if you want to receive them directly you can subscribe here. And today here are my thoughts on the question Rosemary asks:
In her Video and Commentary this week Rosemary asks a broad question about health. On the surface this may seem to be a simple, straightforward question. For the most part when we think of our health we immediately scan our physical bodies for anything that may be signaling a pain or illness. But probing the question of our health is a much deeper subject than that first reaction!
We have four bodies, at least! And Rosemary addresses each of them in her commentary posted yesterday. For optimum health we need to “treat” each of these bodies and balance them. For men this can be a real challenge!
Last week I wrote of the emotional body and one emotion I am particularly familiar with, Anger! In Taoist philosophy the ancient Chinese identified five primary emotions and their correlating virtues. For example Creativity is the virtue corresponding to Anger. The other four emotions are Anxiety, Worry, Fear and Grief. Treating these emotions and moving them, transforming them to their virtues is the work we must undertake at the emotional level to achieve a healthy emotional body that in turn supports the physical body’s health.
Today let’s look at Anxiety, a serious emotion affecting so many of us in Western Society. Here in the US we are nearing the end of a polarizing National election. And in the Northeast US we are cleaning up and recovering from a devastating storm, Hurricane Sandy. This election cycle has seemed to go on forever! And with the long prediction of Sandy’s potential as an historic storm, it seemed larger than any storm could live up to; yet for many, it did! Just holding the energy of these two intertwined events is sufficient emotional strain to give the healthiest person a severe case of Anxiety!
What do we do?
Anxiety is often associated with our place in society, our standing within our family, group, tribe, nation, world. It is about who we are; it is deeply connected to self-esteem issues. Using the Tao as guidance, the emotion of Anxiety is associated with the heart and small intestine; it is the Fire Element emotion. The virtues that correspond to Anxiety are Connection and Joy, clearly virtues of the Heart. Moving Anxiety to Joy is a natural transformation as we work on our place within the human family, recognize the importance of that place, our being in that place and the Connection we have with others from that place. And once we have that Connection, deep Joy is there for us. The process here is remembering our own connections. “It’s a Wonderful Life” that famous Christmas Capra movie, is an excellent reminder of just how connected we are in this life and how vital to the overall scheme we are.
The process is reasonably simple: breathe into your Heart Center. Visualize a ruby red light streaming in to your chest to cauterize the wounds inflicted by Anxiety and transform those wounds to Connection and Joy. We are humans, a connected species. We live in groups and survive through cooperation and connectedness. Anxiety is created through our sense of
disconnectedness. Breathing the color Red in to our Heart Center restores this sense of togetherness in all of Life’s experiences.
My 15-year-old granddaughter just came down to visit and to apologize for her over-reaction to an incident around the dinner table this evening. I accepted and in turn apologized for my own over-reaction! It reminds me of our connection; our heart-connection. Family, friends and neighbors, communities, cities, states, countries…we are all connected. We can transform our Anxieties through remembering all of our Essential Connections and taking great Joy in those Connections!
PS: Tomorrow, November 2, just in time for All Souls Day, the Day of the Dead, you are invited to a Conversation with The Other Side! Rosemary brings in the Energies, Loved Ones who have crossed over, Angels, Spirit Guides, all manner of extra-dimensional beings during this time when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest! Join me! Learn more here!
ROSEMARY’S COMMENTARY: How’s Your Health?
Balance and Health; they really do go together! In the video posted yesterday, Rosemary speaks of balancing the four bodies: Spiritual, Mental, Emotional and Physical. And this is the way to health as well! So often we think of health as a well body, our physical body. The physical level may be where a symptom shows up most prominently, but how often does a dis-ease begin at another level? Here’s Rosemary on Health. I’ll be back tomorrow (Thursday) with my own commentary on Rosemary’s MuseLetter (subscribe).
I’m writing this as I sit in a doctor’s office while my daughter sees a surgeon about having her gall bladder removed. It’s sobering to see your loved one in pain.
So I’m thinking about the pain that so many people have, every day, because their health isn’t what they would like it to be. Not just physical health, but also emotional health, mental health, spiritual health. It’s so important to be healthy on all levels that just focusing on the physical doesn’t lead us to the life of our dreams.
What’s the last thing you did for your emotional health? Are you looking at your life for keys to the blocks that you are experiencing? Have you mined the past on your personal timeline to learn the lessons of your experiences? Are you developing new tools for your responses so your knee-jerk reaction isn’t where you get stuck when something happens in your life?
How about your mental health? Have you examined the tapes that play in your head for their source and to decide whether to keep them playing or to change them? Do you know what negative thoughts are popping up and keeping you from growing into the person you were meant to be? Are you holding yourself back from your greatness because you think you can’t be great?
And your spiritual health is most important because the beliefs you hold affect all the other levels of your being. Your beliefs affect your thoughts which generate your emotions and, finally, present as physical health problems if you haven’t cleared them. Oftentimes, beliefs come from our childhood or our family tree or our environment [society, teachers, churches, etc.]. They have not been generated consciously but are sourced in the unconscious mind.
What do you believe about yourself? Might there be a belief that ‘Everyone in our family gets arthritis by the time they are 50’? How about ‘No one from this neighborhood gets to go to college’? These unconscious beliefs operate to restrict us whether we are aware of them or not. Have you examined what you believe and made a conscious choice about holding onto that belief or releasing it?
At the physical level, you must choose to live in balance with all of your other levels. Are you eating in a way that matches your beliefs about food and its sources? Are you making physical choices based on unconscious emotions or thoughts that conflict with what is best for you? Do you ask yourself questions about your life and its balance when something presents as out of balance?
Many people can look at stress in their life and see the imbalance that is caused there. Too many believe that they can’t do anything about stress. But what they are really saying is that they don’t know what to do about the stress that they can’t change.
Things happen. We react. Then we choose our response to the event. That’s what life is.
And if we can’t change the things that happen, then we have to look at our reactions and our responses. This is the first place to build up our took kit so that we can live a conscious life and choose wisely our responses to events. This FOLLOWS doing all the other work to bring our beliefs, thoughts, emotions into balance.
When I spend a Muse Day with a client, where we have a whole day together to clear blocks and make plans, we often spend most of the day on the clearing blocks part of the agenda, checking in on the spiritual, mental and emotional levels. Creating a plan for the actions to take in the physical plan is often the easiest and quickest part of the day because we’ve brought every thing else into balance before we start the planning.
Trying to plan without the balance brings frustration and much harder work. Trying to deal with dis-ease without finding the source of the imbalance makes the task much more difficult, if not impossible.
Our daughter will be fine. She’s been working through many levels of what is happening. I’m sorry she’s going through the proverbial ‘2 by 4 to the head’ experience but haven’t we all had some of those? We learn!
And I hope that you, too, will examine the levels of your being for where imbalances live. Clearing those can really help you move the pain out of your life!
PS: Halloween, All Saints Day, Day of the Dead…they are here! And to take advantage of this time, when the veil between this world and the next is the thinnest, Rosemary hosts a Conversation with The Other Side! Friday Evening, November 2, 2012. You are invited! Deails Here
“Are You Flipping Out Over Something?” A Commentary by Richard
As I indicated last week when I posted Rosemary’s video from her MuseLetter (subscribe here) I am posting my thoughts on that video on my blog. Without further introduction, my thoughts:
I was particularly struck by the topic this week: Flip-Out. In fact I too often find myself flipping-out and almost always over very small things. Computers suddenly running slow, or even worse, crashing for unknown reasons; a lost item, like keys; a negative checking account balance when there should be plenty of cash available; a credit card that inexplicably fails to work (and this is worst if it’s a client’s charge that won’t go through!); the dog’s 2:00 am need…the list can be nearly endless! Are these life and death issues; of course not. But in our hustle-bustle lives they do add fuel to the fire of an already hot burn life-style that keeps pace with a 21st Century clock!
Is it a particularly male thing to flip-out over small things? Rosemary goes through life at a pretty calm clip; her life is just as complicated as mine. She writes and speaks this week about a “Toolbox of Resources.” Well, I’m a pretty resourceful guy; I’m on the journey with her. And yet my fuse is so much shorter. But I’m ready to learn these lessons; the 2×4 upside the head is beginning to hurt, get through to me!
I am examining my tools and resources. In the last few months I have rediscovered the Tao, the ancient Chinese philosophy known as The Way. I have read fairly extensively about Taoism, studied it as part of my seminary program, practiced off and on through authors such as Mantak Chia, studied and memorized sections of Lao-Tzu’s Taoteching, consulted the I Ching, and practiced Tai Chi. And recently I found an excellent Qigong instructor who has brought me back to this Way. And there are some significant tools and resources to be found here.
Managing my “flip-out moments” is certainly a skill I am working on. An emotion I frequently reach for in these moments is “anger” in its various forms. I can too easily flash to a white heat over some relatively small irritation. I cool quickly and then realize the exaggerated reaction as an unproductive response to the situation. And I ask myself, “why the unbalanced reaction?” And, “why the wasted energy?”
The Chinese Masters identify anger as one of the obstacles to finding The Way. In addition to wanting to reduce my expenditure of energy on a wasted emotion, I want to overcome this obstacle. And, oh by the way, mastering anger will go a long way toward improving my environment!
In the Taoist traditions negative emotions, like Anger, can be transmuted into their corresponding virtues; in the case of Anger the work is to transmute it to Creativity or Resourcefulness. Wow! What if my wasted anger energy can be channeled into creative energy? What a concept!
This is not as easy as it sounds, however. But in my mind it is clearly worth the effort; I choose creativity over anger, calm over flip-out, any day! Rosemary mentions meditation as an approach to “hit the pause button” in the midst of over-reaction (or better yet before the reaction even occurs!). Qigong is often referred to as “Meditation in Motion” and I am finding this practice is a way to pull my energy and my resources, my consciousness, into the present moment when I can be fully aware of my environment, my reaction at any given moment to the environment and to then respond appropriately. When I am very, very present I can actually catch myself on the verge of anger and quickly seek a creative response, diverting the anger into resourcefulness! I have a long way to go to catch myself every time, or even often! But it’s good work for the journey!
Guys, Rosemary has many ways to channel the flip-out mode into presence of mind. Her toolbox is filled with fun things and even some neat toys! Sometimes it may seem easier just to go with the reactive emotion of the moment; but too often the consequences of the easy route bite painfully.
Flip-out reaction or creative response? The choice is yours if you are willing to do the work!
PS: Beginning today, Monday, October 29, Rosemary is offering you a new way to add to your toolbox! She is holding a FREE half-hour call of wisdom and guidance for Conscious Living; to support you Living Your Richest Life! As Einstein said: No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. Lift your consciousness and lift yourself!
Click Here for the call-in details; it’s FREE!
ROSEMARY’S COMMENTARY: Are You Flipping Out Over Something?
As I mentioned yesterday when I posted Rosemary’s video here, I am today posting her commentary on that insightful post. And on Monday I’ll post my commentary specifically targeted to my readers here! Stay tuned…
And here’s Rosemary:
It seems today as if there is always something to ‘Flip Out’ over! What has you feeling this way today?
I sometimes hear clients longing for simpler lives or less stress or at least less drama in their lives, but they are really wishing for something to change about their circumstances without a thought to how they can change themselves.
Flipping Out happens when we don’t have enough resources in our tool box to deal with what is happening in our environment. If you can reach into your Resource Tool Box and pull out just what you need to do in this circumstance, then you just do that and there’s no need to get too excited. But how often are you perfectly prepared for exactly what is going on?
Let me say here that I am not talking about going into denial and pretending that nothing big is happening! Sticking your fingers in your ear and singing, ‘La, la, la, la!’ won’t manage the stress of the circumstances, although, I admit, sometimes that seems like an attractive behavior choice. Denial invites the Universe to keep bringing the lesson to us, over and over again, with perhaps more severity each time until we learn what we are to learn.
What tools have you been developing to prepare you for whatever might come your way? Are you on a path of constant personal growth, seeking new skills, finding new opportunities to explore ideas? Are you committed to your own personal, spiritual growth as a journey of exploration? How you answer these questions will determine how well you can handle what happens around you.
Just as an athlete doesn’t wake up one morning and decide to win a gold medal in discus throwing without training for that exact sport, so, too, must you train for the circumstances that haven’t yet come into your life.
When the doctor says, ‘There’s something of concern going on here,’ or you get the phone call that, ‘There’s been an accident,’ how will you respond?
I pray that you never hear those words but it could be something else that throws you for a loop and the resources must already be available to you or you will find it more difficult to cope.
So what are you doing today, this week, this year to expand the tools in your Resource Tool Box? Are you taking a class? Working with a coach/counselor? Reading self-help books? In a group with speakers who teach you tools? Attending seminars and conferences with content-rich programs for personal growth?
This is not an activity that can be postponed indefinitely! Now is the time to prevent Flip Out!
Learning meditation can be a great start. Breathe, hit the pause button, take a moment to collect yourself. Allow thoughts to arise but to keep flowing onward, without attaching to the thoughts. Give yourself permission to focus on your breath and to let go of thoughts and emotions that come up for you. Give yourself permission to simply BE.
Sign up for a class on a psychological or spiritual topic that intrigues you. Read a book that someone has recommended to you. Find a group of explorers that you can join to study new ideas. Work with a coach who can help you to develop the tools that are best for you.
Fill up the Resource Tool Box and you’ll be ready if and when something happens. Won’t it be nice to have the confidence of knowing that, even if you never need to use the tools, you won’t have to resort to ‘Flipping Out’?
ROSEMARY’S VIDEO: How to Avoid Flip-Out
OK, I’m coming back to this blog that I’ve been neglecting for too long. It’s time to get “regular” again. And with shifting season as we move into the dark times, the quiet times, the inner times, it’s a good time to not only reflect but to offer back what has been churning around inside.
I’ve been motivated in part by partner, Rosemary’s review and renewal of her work. She has shifted from a fairly standard weekly Ezine format, published for well over three years now, into a more active, video format. She publishes the weekly MuseLetter on Fridays (you can subscribe here). And last Friday she published a video and commentary that inspired me to get the word out to a wider audience! So, without further introduction here is Rosemary with an important message. I’ll be back tomorrow and on Monday with commentary.
A Review of “The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic” by Martín Prechtel
I recently finished reading Martín Prechtel’s latest book having preordered it and received it on its publication date. My long anticipation of the work and excitement to devour it in wholly massive gulps was only tempered by its importance and my savoring each bite as I moved through the elegant prose poem word by precious word treating each one as a seed for growth and understanding. This is a giant of a book unlike anything else out there. This work is itself an instruction manual for humanity to find an “unlikely peace” in this post-modern, post-everything chaotic world we are waking up to.
In the interest of full disclosure I first met Martín in 2002 at the Minnesota Men’s Conference. I had at that point read his first book, Secrets of the Talking Jaguar, published in 1998. I have since read everything he has written multiple times and will continue to read his books for the rest of my life. Each is built of many layers of information, knowledge and wisdom. And I am currently a participant in his school, Bolad’s Kitchen, in his third group known as the New Sprouts.
That said, The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic is Martín’s most important work yet. It offers me many additional readings as I absorb each layer of the stories and the wisdom much like an archeologist peeling back the compost heap levels of ancient communities to reveal the underlying meaning and cultures that instruct us in ways to build a new community and a new culture in order to keep the seeds alive! These seeds are our seeds if we can find them. In fact these seeds are us. And they are vital to the very survival of humanity.
At first blush the part of the subtitle: The Parallel Lives of People as Plants, sounded a bit strange to me, and intriguing. Martín explains his meaning here very clearly, again in the extraordinarily multivalent way he has of bringing together complex thoughts and concepts into juxtaposition to deepen the understanding of his meaning. Read the book to discover for yourself how true this exploration of people as plants is!
As I read this book I found myself chuckling at the humor in the stories and anecdotes from his time in Guatemala. More often the tears would come as I went through both grief and inspiration as the words sank slowly into my psyche, almost at once plunging me into the depths of despair and rising to the heights of confidence and optimism as I with Martín consider the human condition and our future.
If you have had the privilege of meeting Martín you will hear him, see him and sense his very presence as you read his words. It is so good to have him close, just here on my shelf! And if you have not yet met him this is a wonderful opportunity to begin your journey toward an “unlikely peace” with yourself and your fellow humans! You will meet Martín on this journey.
The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic ended much too soon for me. The work is totally satisfying and certainly complete meeting all the promises of the delicious title and the enticing Part and Chapter titles. I just wasn’t ready to let Martín go; I wanted to keep his voice in my head. So, I went back to his earlier book: The Toe Bone and the Tooth (now published as Stealing Benefacio’s Roses) to again savor that sumptuous feast and retain his voice echoing through my whole body down to the very core, that seed within!
If you have any sense that the indigenous cultures of humanity have something to teach us, if you are interested at all in how we can resuscitate a culture from the mess we are now in, if you have ever prayed for peace, if you love stories, if you are intrigued by the title, if you find yourself wondering where the human family is going, then read this book. It is important. It is powerful. It will make you cry – and laugh. And you will love yourself just a little bit more for having read it!
Balance – Part 2
We have come half a cycle since my last post on “Balance.” The Sun is once again approaching the half-way point in His journey through the heavens, moving back toward the North. He will reach the mid-point of this journey on Tuesday, March 20 at 1:14 am Eastern Daylight Time. And it is at this point that He enters the Astrological House of Aries.
Have you felt the heat? Here in the Northern Hemisphere we are moving rapidly into Spring. Do you feel the energy of the climbing Sun as He moves higher and higher in the sky each day? As I write it is only a few hours now until He approaches His balance point with Mother Earth as They lock up in the dance of this balance creating the equal parts of night and day for our world, for our bodies.
It’s a good time to check in with our physical bodies and to check their balance. Are we a little wobbly, still recovering from the storms of Winter? Are we a little low on energy still restocking an impoverished larder here at Winter’s end? Are we still standing in the shadow of Winter’s weak Sunlight? It is time to move toward balance, replenishment and the Light as we track with the Farther who revitalizes the Mother and all of us, Her children.
Personally I have begun a new practice of Qigong this Spring, learning the Wuji informal style from a creative and capable teacher. She is going well beyond teaching the forms, explaining why Qigong is so powerful, how it works, offering anecdotes of healing and bringing this ancient Chinese form into a modern context. I like this balance of the Old and the New, the physical movement with the exercise of the brain and spirit. And I feel like I’m doing a Spring cleaning of all of me, pushing out the old stagnant chi and filling me with freshness!
Stand tall and firmly planted seeking the grounding and centeredness of the Mother who supports you so generously. Build your strength and energy through a new practice you bring in with the coming energy of Spring. Seek the Light of the bright burning Father who shines for us all feeding us and the Mother with all of His power and Love. This is the balance we all seek. And we can feel it strongly at this time of year as we face the Sun, away from our shadow, and soak up the healing rejuvenative Light and Love He offers us.
The brand-new leaves of the trees
Form a lovely soft green halo of Light
Bathing the still visible dark branches
Of these stately trees in a wash of
Liquid Sunlight misting all around.
Celebrate the New Season. Celebrate you!
Life
A few days ago the dear rescue cat, Buddha, beloved of our daughter’s family, died quietly in the night. Mindy found him the next morning curled up in his favorite kitchen chair as if asleep! He had been having some health issues, expensive ones, but the vet thought none of these to be life threatening. But Buddha never wanted to be a burden. I sensed he left his body to do his work from the other side.
We are so frequently reminded of mortality, of the temporary nature of everything. I have been through my own set of losses over this past year, so Buddha’s untimely death brings all of this to the foreground. A young friend with a brain tumor, a brother-in-law with open heart surgery just behind him, another dear friend struggling (and winning) against cancer!…life is indeed so fragile.
But it is this very fragility that reminds me of the cycles in life: the seed-to-sprout-to-flower-to-seed and dead, dried plant, repeated infinitely in response to the universal impulse toward this energy we call life! What an awesome power this is, a power toward good, light, love. We are all light beings. We all have this core as strong as a steel rod and as soft as the down of a baby bird, as hard as diamonds and as gentle as the shy hummingbird, this life urge that never dies, that cannot be killed by any force in existence no matter how many attempts are made. The shadow can be fiercely dark and still not overpower the light. The life force of love is the strongest thing in existence.
And this is the foundation for hope. Standing on this foundation death can never have dominion. Forces of darkness will shatter on the solid foundation of love – life force – every time.
The song of the day may be a funeral dirge, but there is still life in song. There may be longing and melancholy in the notes, but there is also love and that is the power behind life. This has never been clearer to me than now, facing all this loss and grief. No matter what happens life goes on.
I just finished reading the latest book by one of my teachers, Martín Prechtel: The Unlikely Peace of Cuchamaquic, The Parallel Lives of People as Plants: Keeping the Seeds Alive. (Watch for a review post here shortly.) I have a sense that this notion of life and love is exactly what drives Martín. This is what empowers him to “keep the seeds alive” – the mandate from his teacher. At the base of that steel rod that supports life is a seed. And the pent up potential at the heart of that seed is love. That heart contains the sprout, shoot, stalk, bud, blossom, stamen, pistil, pollen, ovum and next generation seed, and every future generation seed as a time capsule nestled in the cozy confines, protected and alive, waiting for a turn beyond our own in the great cycle. The echo of every generation is there forward and backward, no end, no beginning.
Buddha’s death is just another reminder of this great wheel of time that rolls out and back. His life may have been fragile at the end. But that was not an end. The story, even his story, goes on. Life goes on all around. Life powered by love goes on.
Men and The Goddess 