I finished Secrets of the Soil and now I’ve started The Foundations of Human Experience, the only Steiner book the library had. It consists of a series of lectures Steiner gave when he was forming his first Waldorf school and was intended largely for the prospective teachers.

It’s quite fascinating, although a lot of it seems a little off base and still substantial amounts of it seem wacky. But other parts really jive with my recent ideas and it just gives me goosebumps. I definitely need to delve into his writings more because I suspect a lot of the remaining wackiness will wear off as I learn more. I do believe he was intuiting truths, but he had a quaint way of expressing them that gives his whole body of work an aura of quackery. The challenge is to uncover the nuggets of truth.

There was something he said in his first lecture that really struck me. He was talking about how teachers need to bring into the classroom the totality of who they are—who they’ve become in the entire course of their existence. It’s not enough to simply bring their knowledge. By bringing their totality they bring more than mere personality and ego and they can reach the children through the spiritual. The next part was what was really interesting to me:

When you enter the classroom in this unpretentious state, then through inner powers a relationship is created between you and the students. In the beginning, it is possible that superficial occurrences contradict this. You go into the school, and you may have rascals before you who laugh at you. Through thoughts like those we wish to cultivate here, you must so strengthen yourself that you pay no attention to this laughing and accept it simply as a superficial occurrence in the same way you would regard being out without an umbrella when it suddenly begins to rain. This is certainly an unpleasant surprise. Normally, people differentiate between being laughed at and being surprised by rain when they have no umbrella. However, no difference may be made. We must develop such strong thoughts that we will not differentiate between being laughed at and an unexpected rain shower.

That paragraph was tailor-made to grab my attention because it compared human activity with—what else—the weather! You walk into a new classroom and the children laugh—what is this? It is a manifestation of the local influences—the children are expressing their environment. Everything they’ve become until then, all that has influenced them—their environment internalized—sits there and greets the teacher on her first day. If all of that precipitates out as laughter, so be it—that is what wants to manifest here now, given all the preceding conditions. Just like a rain shower.

The gift of that paragraph is that it deepens a little more my explorations of the question, what wants to manifest here? I hadn’t so much looked at human behavior yet as a manifestation of place. Most human behavior is off balance—what is causing that to manifest? What are the local conditions that have caused a particular behavior to precipitate out? How can the local conditions be improved so that balanced, harmonious actions and attitudes will precipitate?

If people have lost their connection with the natural world what wants to manifest will not be good. What can precipitate out of the matrix in an inner city?

I’ve been learning about soil in the past year or two. There’s so little I know and so much I want to understand. The ecosystem that comprises the first few inches of soil is so much more complex than any ecosystem that exists above it, out here.

The symbiotic relationships that exist make it hard to discern discrete individuals—isn’t it all just one big organism?

I read a book by Lynn Margulis recently, Symbiotic Planet: A New View of Evolution, that was really interesting. She believes that all higher life forms were created by incorporating lower forms. More complex structures or cells formed when simpler organisms fused together (mitochondria being one example). These simpler living structures were assured a greater chance of survival by incorporating into something larger—creating a cooperative, mutually beneficial arrangement. The mitochondria in every cell in my body give me energy, allow me to have life and to move and act in the world. The bacteria in my gut allow me to bring the outside in, to bring nourishment to my cells. So, this consciousness that I have—while it feels like the consciousness of a single entity—is really the sum total of all the life that comprises me. And the fact that I bring in and absorb other life, for nourishment, means that I am constantly cycling the consciousness of my environment.

I’m reading another fascinating book right now. It’s called Secrets of the Soil: New Solutions for Restoring Our Planet and it’s about Rudolf Steiner’s biodynamic methods of agriculture. I’ve always been grateful for some of the more mainstream applications that have come out of his work, but mostly his ideas were too far out there for me. But, now this book falls into my hands at a time when I feel primed to hear it. And I start to realize—there’s something here. Steiner may have been intuiting the forces of nature that science can barely begin to discern, if at all. How can I dismiss any of his techniques when for the past few years I’ve been learning by intuition, too? I just finished the chapter that showed there is now some scientific support for his bizarre practice of stirring preparations for an hour—repeatedly changing directions so as to creative a vortex, then chaos, then a vortex, then chaos. The studies are showing that this process charges the water electrically and creates stable colloidal particles which plants are able to uptake. It’s very interesting stuff.

I’m having trouble pulling everything I’ve learned together into something cohesive. I can sense that it all fits together and I have dreams filled with insight in the middle of the night that seem to be grappling with these issues, but I wake up with only the vaguest memories.

Everything I’ve been learning about in the past few years seems to be converging. It feels like I’m so close to seeing a bigger picture.

I really need to explore Edith Cobb’s ideas, especially in conjunction with Barry Lopez’s ideas about children and metaphor. But I also need to take it all a step further and pull in some of my own ideas about place and the living matrix we’re immersed in, as well as John Livingston’s ideas about levels of consciousness—how we downshift into the egoic self.

I believe that the developmental stages of an individual mirror the stages humanity has passed through over the ages. A child’s blissful fusion with place and the natural world is like humanity’s earliest days of pre-egoic fusion with nature. You can also see it in John Livingston’s way as a shifting up and out of the personality into a larger identity, but he leaves out the distinction between unconscious and conscious fusion. I suspect that children spend much more time unconsciously fused with a larger identity than we realize. What we note are the instances when children become aware of the fusion and can articulate it.

It wasn’t until I was eleven that I first was able to clumsily grasp hold of and articulate what I had felt my whole life. I wrote that I sometimes felt I was a million years old—that I had already experienced everything that could be experienced and that life (my individual egoic life) would never truly contain any surprises.

What I said was clumsy, but what I knew was something quite profound. It’s only when children approach or enter adolescence that they can reach or begin to have experiences of conscious fusion. Without a fully developed egoic mind they probably wouldn’t be able to name these experiences or to be conscious of them. Consciousness relies on persona. We have to downshift into persona in order to share our experiences of fusion.

If our next phase of evolution is to consciously fuse back into nature, how do we then upshift that awareness? This is where it gets confusing, but also where I feel that I’m getting very close to something.

How do you keep the best aspects of the individual egoic self—awareness—while discarding all the nonsense that comes from isolated dotness?

Little by little over my lifetime I’ve been shedding ego. Is it possible maybe that we could slough off all of ego except for a core of pure awareness? How would that be possible? It all gets so confusing.

I don’t understand the how of it, but I’m excited about the possibilities. When you shift consciously to the higher levels of the matrix—out of the persona—so much becomes possible. I can understand how weather could be shifted, how healing could be accomplished, how thoughts could be transmitted telepathically, how the land could be “read” and human endeavors harmonized with it.

I know I’ve said it many times before that one of my greatest gifts in this lifetime is to have such a huge store of past life memories. Whether they are ultimately real or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that they feel real. Their gift is that they give me the long view. I see this moment in history for what it is—a moment. I see my life for what it is—a brief flickering. I understand that I am much more than this life and this persona and I understand that humanity is much more than what is expressing itself here in our current civilization. I can grasp the brief flickering of Gaia’s life and recognize that’s not all there is. I can grasp the concept of eternity.

I can fully engage with the here and now—my individual circumstances and earth’s predicament—and yet not so fully identify with them that I despair. This is not all there is and this doesn’t ultimately matter. I wear my life loosely—not clinging to it as others do. I will easily shed this life when that moment comes because I know I go on. And when humanity dies, I will shed that identity too, and when earth dies I will release that body with grace.

The gift of these past life memories is not only that I see the long view, but also that it’s impossible to identify too much with the ego. I’ve been so many egos it’s easy to see I’m not ego. This persona is a cloak I will shed—the thing I drape around me to give me form temporarily, so I can play here. But I will shed it and go on to wear other cloaks. As I evolve awareness, I expect the cloaks will get larger and larger until eventually I outgrow all of them.

I’m starting to acquire an intuitive sense of what belongs. Pairing down my life to what matters most, and eliminating clutter, has opened up space for me to start recognizing what wants to manifest and what fits in here. I still have a long way to go in streamlining my physical surroundings, but I’ve also come an incredible distance already.

At times I find myself slipping into that different set of eyes—the one that sees nuance and layers. It’s when I look out of those eyes that it becomes glaringly obvious what doesn’t fit. Recently it was the realization (I know how goofy and trivial this will sound) that my black bag--what I used to carry my books and notebooks and whatever else I need whenever I go out--just doesn’t fit. It just feels all wrong, somehow. I can’t explain. I could get all rational and come up with all sorts of explanations for why it might not be a good fit, but really all that matters is I know it doesn’t fit.

Not that I have anything to replace it with—but now at least I recognize that it ultimately doesn’t belong.

This all presents a fascinating new approach. Imagine having this kind of radar on all the time. Being able to feel the pull of objects that want to belong in my space and sensing when the energy is all wrong. Imagine if everyone had this radar--what kind of “consumers” would we become? Consumers of beauty and harmony, maybe.

I’ve noticed though, too, that even when I’m totally immersed in the perfection of my surroundings there’s always a sort of tension. I might describe it as a yearning, or even a dissatisfaction. Here is utter perfection—how I revel in its bliss! And yet simultaneously there’s this tension or yearning. What is that?

I think maybe it’s just the pulse of creation. The blissful perfection of the moment is static, whereas life is ever-changing. The yearning, I think, is the universe pulsing threw me seeking the next moment, the next now. Reinventing and re-experiencing itself in each new NOW. The static present rubbing up against the forever malleable future means there will always be a dynamic tension existing in even the most harmonious of NOWs.

When I experienced bliss, and I want to know what I can do with it, that’s the pulsing of creation. That’s the dynamic tension of a conscious universe creating itself.

I’m still groggy so I don’t know if I will find anything to write about this morning. I would spend this waking up time reading, but I don’t have any good books right now. Collin was home sick on Thursday and Friday so I didn’t get to the library this week.

I have one book here that I tried to read last week, but I got really disgusted with it. I didn’t quite realize what it was when I checked it out. I somehow had the mistaken notion that it was legitimate. It’s in that whole genre of white person initiated into the secrets of the natives, like the Lynn Andrews books, Carlos Castaneda books, Mary Summer Rain books. At least those three could sort of pull it off. They were all good writers, good storytellers, and they were (though I know plenty of people will dispute it) tapping into Truth to an extent. They weren’t just totally spinning wild yarns. But this guy is so full of it. I can’t tell if he is doing it intentionally—making crap up—or if he has also deceived himself into thinking he has tapped into Truth. What especially gets me is that he goes around the country giving workshops and seminars on shamanism! What a charlatan.

No true shaman would advertise and promote himself. No true shaman would try to profit from his gifts. And no true shaman would try to deceive masses of people into thinking that they too could be a shaman if they took a few workshops!

A shaman must apprentice with the land and the elements. He must be willing to surrender the little self. You can’t teach that stuff in a workshop. It has to be lived out there in the real world.

This kind of hooey just aggravates me. Does he realize how totally disrespectful he’s being of the true shamans, how disrespectful he’s being of native ways and native knowledge?

Abram’s chapter on air was quite fascinating. I loved his introductory paragraphs which so beautifully expresses our immersion in this matrix:

[quote omitted due to length]

The one day last week I was sitting in the library parking lot, looking at a young well formed tree of maple, probably eight or ten years old. It’s bare branches stood out against the brilliant blue sky. I began to see it as you do those black and white drawings where if you focus on the black you see one thing (two faces in profile) but if you focus on the white space you see another thing (a wineglass). I saw the tree and its roots in the ground as the black field and I saw the air as an equally tangible white field. I began to see (and here I was imagining summer) how the white field didn’t simply touch the black field, but actually penetrated it through the pores in the leaves. I began to see the tree as this entity that stitches together earth and sky—it’s equally rooted in both elements.

You know what amazes me, what will always amaze me? It’s these ridiculous foreshadowings that happen all the time, the odd synchronicities. One day to be contemplating the tangible quality of the air, only to find a few days later a whole chapter in a book about the very same thing, when I had never seen a single person address the topic before! It will always seem miraculous to me every time it happens.

In the same way as the air enters the pores of the tree it also enters the lungs of my body. Abram discusses the sacredness of the breath and the spoken word. He mentions how the Hebrew language has one word “ruach” that means both spirit and wind. In the earliest verses Genesis, God is present as a wind. God blows life into Adam, and God flows through us with each breath. When Abram was discussing YHWH and the mystery and questions surrounding its pronunciation, I immediately intuited (thanks to Abram because he was discussing it in the context of the sacredness of the breath) that YHWH is simply the in-breath and the out-breath. A few paragraphs later I came across this sentence: “Some contemporary students of Kabbalah suggest that the forgotten pronunciation of the name may have entailed forming the first syllable ‘Y-H’ on the whispered in-breath and the second syllable ‘W-H’ on the whispered out-breath--the whole name thus forming a single cycle of the breath.” I find it exquisite to think of God moving through me with every breath. We are immersed in God, drenched with God. With every breath we are infused with God.

I finished The Spell of the Sensuous last night. I got the weird sense that this book was meant to be a sort of early graduation present. I feel like I’m about to graduate to the next level of my apprenticeship. Apprenticeship to what? Wisdom, I guess.

I feel like recently so many threads are converging finally—thanks to the writings or ideas of a host of people: Paul Shepard, Edith Cobb, Ellsworth Huntington, Nicholas Wade, Jared Diamond, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, Barry Lopez, even Jung and Wilber, and now especially David Abram.

I couldn’t help but give a little grunt of disgust when I saw his book was published in 1996. All this time, this book that I so desperately needed was already out there! But I’m sure I’m only completely ready for it now, or else it would have fallen into my hands sooner. Even a year or two ago I would have definitely grasped what he was saying intuitively, but I wouldn’t yet have actually lived it. Grasping in the mind is one thing, experiencing with the body is something different entirely, so layered, rich, nuanced and sensuous.

I loved how his choice of words were often similar to mine. Sensuous is one word that we share in describing direct experience. And matrix was a word he used quite a bit to describe the totality of the earthly environment we are immersed in.

In page after page in this book came validation for me. I’d think Yes! And remember how I’ve attempted to describe the same things in this journal, albeit so much more clumsily. I couldn’t match the beauty of his language—how divinely connected to the larger matrix he must have been as he wrote, to be able to express it with such truth and beauty. I’ve been so overcome with emotion to have found another human being writing about these things—NO ONE ELSE IS!

If I quoted everything that resonated or moved me in this book, I would have to copy the whole thing down. But I do want to include a few quotes.

Here he talks beautifully about the way in which we are created by place:

The human mind is not some otherworldly essence that comes to house itself inside our physiology. Rather, it is instilled and provoked by the sensorial field itself, induced by the tensions and participations between the human body and the animate earth. The invisible shapes of smells, rhythms of cricketsong, and the movement of shadow all, in a sense, provide the subtle body of our thoughts. Our own reflections, we might say, are a part of the play of light and its reflections, “the inner—what is it, if not internalized sky?”

By acknowledging such links between the inner, psychological world and the perceptual terrain that surrounds us, we begin to turn inside-out, loosening the psyche from its confinement within a strictly human sphere, freeing sentience to return to the sensible world that contains us. Intelligence is no longer ours alone but is a property of the earth; we are in it, of it, immersed in its depth. And indeed each terrain, each ecology, seems to have its own particular intelligence, its unique vernacular of soil and leaf and sky.

…[quote continues]

The library had a copy of David Abram’s book The Spell of the Sensuous, so I’m now in the glorious process of devouring it. There have been times in my life where I have been looking and looking for a book, never quite able to find it, only to be suddenly jolted into awareness that the book I’m searching for is my story. Which of course nobody else could write. But this book—oh my God—has come so close to that Eureka! experience I’ve often sought.

He articulates so well what I’ve been experiencing—much better than I’ve been able to. It feels incredibly comforting and validating. This is a gift—the perfect book to fall into my hands at this time.

I’m in the middle of his discussion of the significance of writing. It jives with my thinking about the importance of language but I’m disappointed that he hasn’t mentioned the connection to ego- and self- building. It’s not just that words separate us from direct experience, but that words create subject and object and a reflective egoic self. The egoic self then becomes almost self-perpetuating, creating more and more mental constructs that lock it out of the fused natural world.

I love that Abram talks about the magic of the written word. I’ve always found words to be mysterious and magical things. Lately, I’ve also been seeing them to be mysterious and magical as well, when they morph before my very eyes. It’s hard to describe what exactly happens, but it happens both with my handwritten words in this book and the printed words in the books I read. The letters take on a sacred quality. I see them differently as sacred symbols (which they are, of course)—it’s almost like they shift to some ancient script. Argh, I’m not describing this well. Often when this happens I get that weird Native American flavor, as if I’m seeing Native American symbols—yet I know they didn’t have a written language, so that’s not really what’s happening. It’s hard to grasp. I see the supreme beauty of the letters, but I’m seeing them with different eyes, seeing them as nuanced layers of meaning.

When Abram discussed the Hebrew alphabet, that’s kind of how I’m seeing. a–Aleph, meant ox—and you can see its ox-iness. m–mem—eventually became M—it was also the Hebrew word for water. That’s not exactly it, but it sort of describes how I’m seeing more than one thing at once.

When words morph they also become exquisitely beautiful. If you’ve ever seen some ancient language and were struck by its beauty and mystery, that’s how I experience my own language in those moments. I think when this happens I’m being reminded how utterly sacred and powerful words are.

On the Internet the other day I came across mention of a study that found that the more spiritual a person is, the less active are his or her right parietal lobes--the area of the brain responsible for what the researchers called “Me-Definers”. Interesting, since spiritual seekers are generally recognized as being less ego-driven and more prone to selflessness.

This ties in with my thinking about Asperger’s syndrome. Certain areas of the brain may have evolved because ego was needed to help humanity evolve out of tribal unconscious fusion with reality. But as we evolve to our next phase, maybe we’ll rely less and less on those areas of the brain related to ego, Me-Definers, and the little self.

I like the statement in the long passage I quoted on the previous pages, “For it is likely that the ‘inner world’ of our Western psychological experience, like the supernatural heaven of Christian belief, originated in the loss of our ancestral reciprocity with the living landscape.” (David Abram)

The inner world, created by a “me” that hadn’t quite existed in tribal times developed concurrently with ego. Without ego--no inner world. Without a symbolic, representational inner world—no ego.

But I’m quite certain we’re on a path of evolution that will have us living with immediacy again. The symbolic inner world will recede in importance as we learn to experience what simply is, with awareness. I’ve noticed since I’ve lived in Snyder and really embraced simple living than my inner world is much quieter than it used to be. I never neurotically fret about the past or the future. I’m not constantly rehashing events or imagining more favorable scenarios. My mind is quite clean and mostly able to just be here now. I almost never get caught up in the petty dramas of the ego.

This stage of loosening your grip on the ego is, I believe, absolutely essential in learning how to merge with the larger reality. As long as you identify with the ego, your mind will constantly be chattering. All of those egoic mental constructs--mental pictures of the past, imagined scenarios, obsessions and stories we tell ourselves--they all obstruct our ability to experience reality.

This life here in Snyder has been such an incredible blessing. There has never been a more fruitful time in my life. I can’t totally be a hermit here, but it’s close enough for now. I get enough silence, solitude, and simplicity for me to be able to slip loose from the ego from time to time.

I’ve started reading a book by a child psychiatrist about the importance of emotions in cognitive functioning. I think he’s saying that no matter how “logical” we think we’re being, underlying every decision is an emotional ground. First we have an emotional response, built upon all of the other emotional responses we’ve had in our lifetimes. After the gut reaction (which may or not may not even register) we may run things through logical filters, to bolster our argument for course of action, but it’s the emotional response that’s primary.

Which of course makes me think about how our “logical” brain functions are ego and self generators, while emotion is just our immediate perception of reality.

Emotion is kind of like a sixth sense, or it integrates the other five. But it’s also two-way--you feel as a response to what is, but then you also radiate that feeling back out. Others can absorb what you radiate and the emotion or mood becomes contagious.

If you are free of ego, and experiencing reality clearly, your emotions will be congruent with what is. So if others encounter you, your emotional state can spread contagiously and you create harmony. Egolessness equals congruency, harmony and integrity. Why else do people feel so of uplifted in the presence of a spiritual master? Because his or her congruency with the larger reality is radiating out contagiously.

Where emotions are concerned, it’s almost like we are a group mind--like a flock of birds. A person who “lights up a room” walks in and we’re all suddenly cheerful. A person is angry or stressed and we all become stressed.

The problem is that our emotional states are usually a result of egoic desires, needs, frustrations and fulfillments. So, usually they aren’t in alignment with the larger reality. The evolved person, who has transcended the ego, can radiate what is.

I came across a great article on the Internet yesterday. I just skimmed it and I need to go back and read it in full, and probably copy down a lot of it. It’s on a site that hasn’t had new content added since 2002, so who knows how much longer the site will be maintained.

Anyway, there was some really powerful food for thought in the article. It was talking about shamans and how they relate to the world. In a nutshell, the author was saying these shamans aren’t accessing some mystical otherworld of spirits, as westerners imagine. They simply are expanding their awareness to encompass all of the elements of their ecosystem.

When something is out of balance in the environment a person will become ill. If the shaman simply heals that person, while the imbalance in the environment is permitted to persist, the illness will simply crop up again in someone else.

This is fascinating stuff. So the illness is simply an expression of the health of the place. It sounds so obvious, but who except shamans recognize that? They’re able to shift from their identity with the little self, into that larger state of consciousness--the bubble of reality around them—a larger self encompassing the totality of the environment.

Last night I was soaking in the tub and had things begin morphing again into objects with a Native American flavor. It occurred to me that these things I see are not exactly Native American in the sense that they only belong to certain tribes of people. I think these things I see are objects that represent the energy of this place. The fact that Native American people have made many of these things means that they were wonderfully attuned to the energy of the place and manifested what wanted to manifest here. Some of the things I see are totally natural objects though, already manifest in the land. My left hand often morphs into the wing of an eagle. I don’t know why, but I guess the spirit or energy of the eagle is particularly representative of this place.

Okay, I just went back online and pulled up the article I came across yesterday. It’s actually an excerpt from a book by David Abram called The Spell of the Sensuous. Now I have yet another book I need to get my hands on!

I’m going to quote it here, because I want to be able to refer back to it. The thing that I think he misses is that we are the larger environment. He understands that the shamans connect with the environment “out there”, but not really that they actually are the environment.

[The quote is too long to reprint here without permission. For now it can still be found online here. The part I quoted consisted of paragraphs 7 through 12.]

Philosophically, where has the past year gotten me? The most important insight probably has to do with people and all life forms being an expression of place. I’m still working to deepen my understanding of it, but I can grasp it more tangibly than ever before.

What was it Vine Deloria, Jr. said? Something about the worldview of the red man being about place, whereas the white man’s worldview is consumed with time. The emanations of a particular place certainly would change over time, as global patterns changed and as a result of geologic and even human activity. But we should only concern ourselves with being here (wherever here happens to be) now. Now is always outside of time. Here is where we always are. Here may simply be another word for our identity. Even after death, as pure consciousness, even if that consciousness is diffused throughout the cosmos, it will always be right here, wherever we are.

This bowl of reality that surrounds me--this “here”--is me. I always have a bubble of “here” surrounding and creating me. I think my fuller self is that bubble--and maybe the bubble would expand as my awareness expanded.

I still really need to get a hold of Ellsworth Huntington’s books. Edith Cobb’s book too. I think ultimately, although they seem to be about entirely different subjects, they point to the same thing. You can call it environmental determinism if you like, but I think it’s deeper than that. We’re getting down to consciousness here--Earth’s consciousness--and this is big stuff we’re talking about, difficult for puny human beings to understand.

I keep coming back to my image of the conflict that encircles the drought-stricken lands. In my mind I see it as a ring of red like what encircles a wound. I see it now as an organic process of the earth, and it makes me wonder what other human predicaments are actually not human-created at all, but expressions of the land. What about the artificial environment of the inner cities? Maybe they are so prone to violence there because nature has been obscured and an artificial desert created. Without an active, diverse ecosystem--where there’s only concrete, steel, bricks, heat, weeds, and limited animal life—wouldn’t that push on a person’s survival instincts? Where there are limited real resources--no food, except maybe what could be scrounged, expensively, at a convenience store, or in a fast food joint. No jobs. No hope. A dead ecosystem. Life and death struggles come out of such a place.

And what about the Middle East? In a book I’m reading now (Common Wealth: Economics for a Small Planet, by Jeffrey D. Sachs) the author mentioned the increasingly dire water situation the Israelis and Palestinians are facing. What we think is an entirely human-made conflict may actually be an expression of the land. I wonder what would happen if the Middle East were green, productive and had abundant water resources? How would humanity express itself there?

Minus 11.1° this morning. Last night there was ice on the cat door in such a way that it could still open to let a cat out, but wouldn’t open to let a cat back in. I was paranoid about having a cat stuck outside overnight and freezing to death and since the lock on the cat door broke off long ago, I had to trudge out in the cold (even though I had said nothing could make me leave the house) and scrounge up little boards and sticks to wedge against the outside of the door so no one could get out. The cats were all out of sorts and mad at me, but this morning when I defrosted the door with my hair dryer and took the wedges out no one showed the slightest interest in going outside!

So here it is, the Christmas season again. How I despise it! Call me a scrooge, but the crass materialism of it just gets to me! I think it would be much more significant if the holidays when giftless. At least, giftless in the material sense. What if you only gave love, compassion, cheerfulness, the gift of your time and good company, thoughtful gestures and selfless acts? Wouldn’t that be so much nicer? This whole season just grates on my nerves. I don’t understand how material gifts give any satisfaction even. I guess if they are functional items, things you really needed, they could be satisfying. But frivolous gifts, things given out of a sense of duty, what’s satisfying about that? There are so many advertisements on the radio for goofy gifts--I think it’s the jewelry ads that grate on my nerves the most. I guess I just don’t understand status items, period. Rather than giving satisfaction, wouldn’t they always leave you desiring something even a little better, a little more costly, a little more showy? Whatever it was, it seems like it would never be enough.

Materialism is such a vicious cycle. It creates a continuous feedback loop. I believe ego, materialism and a general sense of dissatisfaction go hand in hand and feed off of each other. There was a recent study that found a causal relationship between materialism and unhappiness--not just a correlation--and I believe it actually went both ways. Unhappiness led to increased materialism and increased materialism led to increased unhappiness.

I’m at a point now, having escaped the consumer culture to such a large degree, that so much of it strikes my ears as being really odd. It seems ludicrous that people buy into any of it (pardon the pun).

I want to start looking back over my year now, in order to start planning where I want to go next.

Materially I’m still paring down my life. I was able to sell off two of my three industrial sewing machines this year and finally claim the sewing room as my bedroom. I built a bed from wood John gave me from his old water bed frame, plus one of my headboard samples. For a mattress I used a slab of foam left over from my headboard venture, topped with my old memory-foam topper doubled over. It’s a very comfortable little bed.

The whole mattress industry has been one of my pet peeves. They over-engineer these mattresses and then sell them for outrageous prices. You shouldn’t have to spend $1000 or $1,200 or more for such a basic item. And the amount of excess in the materials--foam, fabric, metal and wood--is obscene. I always thought it was outrageous when I had my drapery business to go into these homes and see toddlers sleeping in their own queen-sized beds. What wasteful extravagance!

Anyway (sorry for that little tangent) another thing I got rid of this year was my computer printer. It went haywire, and I just decided I didn’t want to replace it. For one thing, I prefer to have the extra space. For another, I find I’m obviously not printing off reams of stuff like I used to. I waste less paper, have far fewer papers to file and keep organized, and I’m not buying expensive ink cartridges constantly. I figured when I have something I really need to print I can do it at the library for 10¢ per page. So far (and it’s been at least six months I think) I haven’t had to do that yet.

I’m thinking about giving John my drill press as a Christmas present. That thing sits in the middle of my bedroom, of all places (trust me there’s no better place to store it) getting in the way, and for as little as actually use it, it might find a better life at John’s place.

I made a rule that for every new thing that comes into the house, at least one thing has to go and preferably two things, since I’m still trying to downsize.

I discover there’s a fledgling Freecycle group now for Brush and Fort Morgan, so now I have a good way to get rid of useful stuff. I think after the holidays I’ll put my tubs of fabric scraps on there and see if I can find any takers. It would be nice to start clearing out the storm cellar.

There are a few other things in the house I still need to get rid of, either by selling or giving away. I want to get rid of the computer scanner and also my cordless phone (I went back to corded phones because of my concern about the health implications of wireless devices).

I had been debating for quite some time whether to trash my antique waterfall desk. It’s half stripped--I had intended to refinish it--and I don’t know when I’ll ever be able to finish the project. I can’t really do it at this place. It’s too dusty outside and the fumes would be too much in the house. But, I finally decided the desk is worth keeping. It was handcrafted, with dovetailed drawers, some of the rabbets were hand-cut, and it really has the potential to be quite beautiful when refinished. It does have it issues, too--the dovetails coming apart, the veneer chipped off or scratched in places, and a thin strip of molding that broke off and was lost. But I’ve learned I need to pay attention when I can feel even a smidgeon of resistance to a course of action, and this was one of them where I felt conflicted. So, I feel great now that I’ve recommitted to keeping this desk (which I’m writing on at this very moment).

I love the way the house is becoming less cluttered. The simplicity of it is very soothing and satisfying. I’m not all of the way to where I would like it, but I’ve made huge strides in that direction.

And what have I have acquired in the past year? A water bath canner and some more canning jars, and the kitchen scale (it has been immensely useful). I bought one soaker hose for next year (I’ll need many more), but that’s about it for gardening stuff except a faucet adapter V-thingy, a sprayer attachment and some O-rings. I also bought a ten-piece deep socket set which I needed in order to take apart my one sewing machine. I honestly think that’s about all I acquired this year that wasn’t a consumable. Santa is bringing me a new set of sheets that he found on clearance in September. For now I’m down to just two top sheets, one of which has to serve as the bottom sheet. Oh, okay, I also bought three small Pyrex containers this year. And some clay pots (most were 25¢ clearance items). Okay, now I think that’s it. Well, except for the brush to clean the refrigerator coils.

I bought zero articles of clothing for myself and only a few pairs of jeans and a sweatshirt for Collin. But let’s not get me started on all the things I didn’t buy!

Yesterday it was 64° and I was out working in the yard without a jacket. Today I woke up and it was 6.4° and it dropped even further after that (to around 3°) before climbing up to a balmy 8° now at 2 pm. I so hate the cold! I’m bundled up to the hilt and you can’t make me leave the house for anything.

In a meditative state the other day it occurred to me that I won’t ever be able to embody my full human potential here in Colorado. I was seeing my earth meditation again--the way areas dry out and life flees and conflict ensues at the edges. I just don’t think arid regions contain as much active consciousness as more abundant places. They are dying places, not places of optimal health. Sure there are plants and animals who are adapted to such lands, but they are conservative creatures and will never be at the cusp of conscious evolution. Their expression will always be subdued in an arid land. I need to be in a rich, fertile, abundant place. My mind seeks its highest evolution. I need to be a part of a fertile environment in order to maximize my potential.

At the same time as I’m having these thoughts, can I really deny that this period of time in Snyder has been a fertile one? No, of course I can’t. But I just feel with such certainty that a much fuller expression of who I am could be found elsewhere, in a more abundant place. As I’ve said before, this is such a conservative, no frills place—both in nature and in the human community. There is a real lack of imagination and artistry here, no stepping out of the box, no wild exuberance. Just a plodding, tried-and-true, safe way of life.

The other day I saw a huge flocks of Canadian geese in the sky on my drive home and it just made my heart turn little cartwheels in ecstasy. As they rose and shifted directions I could really sense the group consciousness governing the flocks--how they acted as one emanation or expression of the land. They seemed almost magical--emissaries between earth and sky. Carrying out some vital function for the world.

I’m slipping into my December/winter night/self-indulgent/meditative mode. I love to sit here with just the Christmas lights on (we don’t have a tree yet, but we’ve got the colored lights up on top of the shelf in the living room along with the fake pine garland and real pinecone garland) listening to relaxing music and burning incense.

There’s something about the smell of the incense the just transports me--to my childhood and to other times and places. There’s one piece of music in particular “Fragile Majesty” by Eric Tingstad and Nancy Rumble that never fails to bring up all sorts of images and memories. Combined with the woodsy incense--I see a cabin nestled in the pines, smell the wood smoke, feel the cold, crisp air. I ache for Pennsylvania. I’m bathed in grief and relive feelings of grief and sadness from my childhood.

And even though I don’t often experience sadness anymore in my life, I recognize sadness to have been a very core part of my experience in this lifetime, and very integral in shaping who I am. The feelings of sadness and beauty have always gone together--a luscious ache. I think I was born with too big of a memory. I retain so much of what went before and carry the ache from having lost it. So much natural beauty and rich cultural beauty has been lost. The world has been incredibly uglified in the past few generations.

I’m still toying with my new way of framing consciousness. When I’m driving especially, as I’ve mentioned, I ascend out of the ego. I was thinking last night as I was driving back in the dark after dropping Collin off with P in Roggen--maybe the reason I tend to hallucinate when I drive at night is because I so easily slip the bonds of ego. With no reference points at night it’s much easier to do that in the dark. There should be some sort of warning: do not operate heavy machinery without an ego. It’s definitely dangerous because there’s not exactly anyone at the wheel.

The neat thing is that I’m catching hold of the experience as a slip into and out of that other state. I suppose all of the times in my life when I’ve experienced past life memories I’ve slip the ego and ascended to something else. It’s neat now to be more conscious of it and to recognize the absence of a little self.

What would it be like to move through life as an expression of place rather than as an isolated dot? To ascend to an identity that encompasses the environment, the whole ecosystem, of which I am a part? Can you imagine the depths of integrity I would embody? An aware expression of this place--how cool would that be?

But that gets me back to one of my major challenges in this lifetime--how would a largely egoless being survive financially in these times? I think I struggle so much with earning money precisely because my bond to ego is so tenuous. In other times and places where there isn’t a cash-based society I would do fine. That’s why I think I’m so strongly pulled toward homesteading and achieving self-sufficiency. There would be no more struggle if I just didn’t have to participate in the cash economy. Egos know how to earn money. The more ego, the easier it is to participate in the economy.

My newest dawning realization is how often I ascend out of my personality into some larger self that seems fused with the world around me. I notice it most often when I’m driving, especially crossing Wiggins hill, but it is happening everywhere. In those moments I don’t exist--not Melanie--not my personality. I think this has always happened. In fact, I suspect I spend a lot of time being more than ego and personality. I’m just becoming more aware of it.

That John Livingston essay, “Other Selves” gives me a nice way to frame what happens. To be in the personality is to downshift into a baser, grosser, clumsier way of being. Out of a larger identity we downshift into the most limited form. We really should be spending the least amount of our time as individual selves. Only in true survival situations--eat or be eaten--should individual self be necessary.

It would be neat if I could get to a point where I can be this larger self and at the same time also be actively engaged in the world. For now the shifts only take place when I’m alone or not interacting with anyone. To actually engage in the world of human interaction from that higher perspective--what would that be like? What would be possible in the realm of human affairs?

John Livingston speculates that perhaps individual self consciousness is our most primitive form of consciousness:

What is being suggested here is that individual self-consciousness has come to be held in such untouchable esteem within our cultural ideology that we have largely forgotten or ignored the likelihood that it is no more than the most basic, radical, and fundamental form of self-awareness. And it may be not only the most basic form, but in an evolutionary sense also the oldest and most primitive, to use the word much savored by the human chauvinist. I would suggest that this most elementary form of consciousness underlies more enriched and mature forms in much the same way as the ancient so-called reptilian brain is said to underlie more recently developed cortical material. If we must speak in progressive terms, as is the custom in evolutionary biology, then we could see a consciousness of group-as-self as something of a development.

I agree that individual self-awareness is probably the most primitive kind of consciousness, but Livingston doesn’t acknowledge that before individual consciousness there was a fusion with the group and with the environment that existed, only it was purely unconscious. To fuse with the larger environment as conscious beings is a new thing and probably we humans are one of the first species to attain that (not that we’ve attained it yet in any collective sense). But we’ve been fused with the larger environment before.

What could be the benefits of being consciously fused? I guess it would be impossible to harm the environment—you’d be able to sense clearly and actually, rather than metaphorically, how you were harming yourself in the process. But beyond that, who would you become? What would human activity and human culture look like?

I suppose there wouldn’t be too many large acts of disturbance, such as wars and exploiting resources. We’d live locally, of course, and practice some form of permaculture--probably a more advanced form than now exists. There would be much more harmony both human-to-human and between humans and the natural world. We would work with the natural order, instead of fighting against it.

It’d be kind of like when foreign bacteria became an integral part of the human body, necessary for its healthy functioning. We would finally become fully integrated into the healthy functioning of Gaia. We would have settled into our proper global niche.

Now this gets me back to thinking--mightn’t all these people with Asperger-type characteristics be those at the cusp of this evolution? We’re able to shift more fluidly to that larger state of awareness. We’re not identified with the group, which is a vestigial form of tribal unconsciousness.

Geez--now that reminds me I have research I want to do on Aspergers. There are so many lines of thought I need to follow up on.