I’ve been reading every book I can find on the subject of simplicity, trying to see what others have written about it to help me sort out my own perspective, to see what unique insights I may have to share.

 

I’m getting a little confused about how you evaluate what you should and shouldn’t allow into your life. All of the things I’ve let go of so far have been more or less no-brainers. It’s been clear that the negatives outweighed the positives. But then I encounter this confusion around books. How are books any less of a distraction from the essence of life than TV, the Internet, the morning newspaper or the radio?

There are hundreds of millions of books out there and if I read every available moment of my life I can’t possibly make even the tiniest dent. I have unquestioningly accepted the value of lifelong learning that leads me to always have my nose buried in a book. But what is lifelong learning? Certainly it doesn’t need to come from books. And probably the learning that takes place from my direct experience of my reality is of far greater value than the learning that comes from books.

 

Nevertheless, during the past ten months or so I’ve been on a huge reading binge and the same time period has been a very rich period in my inner life and the development of my thinking. So there does seem to be a clear value I derive from the books I read.

 

I think I worry that I should be doing something else of greater value with the time that gets “wasted” on reading. That reading can be an escape for me that keeps me from the more important things in life.

 

Because I’ve been reading so much I more frequently find myself with a dud. I find it very difficult to stop midstream once I’ve started a book, regardless of whether that book is worthwhile to me. Once I’ve started it, for some reason, I felt obligated to finish it. That is one thing I’d like to be able to stop doing. Just recognize that a particular book has nothing of value for me at the moment, set it down, and return it to the library unfinished the next time I go in. There are enough good, valuable books that I will never possibly have the time to read, so why waste my time on the mediocre or downright rotten ones?

 

Then let’s look at the books that do have significant value to me--like books on simplicity or environmental issues. Just how many books on a particular topic do I need to read? Do I need to read everything I can get my hands on? When do I set aside the books and just be, and do my own original thinking? Or write?

I’m not sure what to write about this morning. I’m sitting here at my “new” writing desk, sipping my morning coffee and looking out on the beautiful day. When I sit here, I can’t get over the perfection of this world and its forms. When I see Little walking by, so beautiful and perfect in her sleek, black catness, I’m overwhelmed with emotion. Even the view across the street, somehow in its exquisite dereliction, is perfect. The sagging trailer, the tall grass and weeds, the dead tree with its gnarled bare branches framed against the blue sky, the gray adobe bricks and rotting green roof of the boarded-up old house, the rusty clothesline poles whose cross bars have wilted--what makes this scene so exquisite? To most people, this is what you’d call an eyesore. How does this register as beauty in my heart? What is the quality present there that overwhelms my heart?

I think about the countless suburban neighborhoods, so drab and lifeless and sterile, that do nothing for my heart. Yet aren’t the gray adobe blocks drab? Isn’t the ghostly white trunk of the dead tree stark? How can I look at this scene and be uplifted? Maybe because I sense that it holds memories and history, it’s a place marker for what was. Because my soul needs to be rooted to the past and this scene reminds me that there is a past.

Part of the disease of modern culture, I feel, is that there is no honoring of the past. We’re not connected with anything but the superficial now. There’s no reverence for the past and no thought of the future. How can people have so totally forgotten the timelessness of their own souls, the ancientness of their own being? If we deny that even in our own selves we certainly won’t have reverence for it in the physical world. When you’ve quit tending to your own soul, the world correspondingly shrivels and loses all nuance. The outer world becomes a simple prop, a backdrop, for mindless humans caught in their own unconsciousness.

This time in my life is such a period of struggle. I want to live a meaningful life, and not just a meaningful life, because my life has always seemed quite meaningful, but I want to contribute something. I like that this urge to write has reawakened in me. I feel like I was asked to write by those spirits that were haunting me in March. As soon as I began to get the urge to write, the haunting imagery stopped. It was as if they’d finally gotten through to me. Now the burden is on me to make it happen. My path is somehow through my writing to share the Native American sentiment, which really is the fully human sentiment, with those who are asleep. I don’t think the first thing that I write for publication, or the second, or the third will succeed in doing that, but I will keep at it and at some point I may get there.

I’m thinking of giving up reading for the summer. Reading stimulates my thinking so much, but I spend so much time with it than I never get around to writing. If I need to do it to research a topic I’m writing about that’s one thing, although that’s dangerous because all of the reading I do is research anyway. I just want to be more mindful in the next few months about how I’m using my time. I want to make sure I’m writing something every day.

Lately I feel like I’m being remade. Simplicity is changing me. I’m not sure I could put it into words just yet, but everything feels different. Simple pleasures are confoundingly beautiful. I just don’t even know what to do with the joy that rises in my heart. It reminds me so much of the bliss I felt as a teenager--so in love with the sensuousness of the landscape that I longed to hug the hills. What do you do with bliss? It feels like you need to do something, but what?

One night last week I went out to pull weeds in the yard after we had an afternoon rain shower that had cooled things off into the sixties. The storm had been short enough that the soil still held the heat of the day. The humid warmth that radiated from the soil onto my hands was sumptuous. I can’t even describe it, but there was something very intimate about it. I think the heat felt like that which is given off by a lover’s body. It was the most amazing thing.

It’s a beautiful, cool evening. The temperature is in the upper sixties, the sky is the deepest, most incredible shade of blue against the fluffy white clouds, and the grass is absurdly green. There’s such clarity to the light today. It reminds me of other times and other places, other lives, and makes my heart ache.

I’ve been feeling strange all day, like something fateful is about to happen. I’ve got that odd sensation again in my solar plexus that radiates out from time to time as chills and goose bumps up and down my arms and spine.

Gosh, the shadows are so deep and luscious today; I just can’t get over it. The world is so perfect. Days like this make me miss Pennsylvania so terribly.

The day after I wrote the entry about wanting to get rid of the TV, VCR, and DVD player the VCR died. I thought it was just a fuse (it has clearly blown) but when I replaced it the thing still didn’t work. I told Collin I had jinxed it and he better watch out because the TV could be next.

Then, about a week after I started thinking it might be nice to live without a computer, it crashed. I guess I jinxed it too. But it’s actually nice. I like it. I took the computer off the desk and moved the desk in front of the front window where it is now serving as my writing and reading desk. It’s really pleasant to sit here and feel the breeze through the window, to take in the greenery, to listen to the rain and thunder.

I’m not going to be in a big hurry to get the computer fixed. In fact, I canceled my Internet service and, at least temporarily (if not permanently) took down my website.

This process of paring down my life to the essentials continues. I’m not really sure what will be left when all is said and done. To have a roof over my head and a source of heat, those are things I’d like to keep. Electricity isn’t so vital, but a way to heat food, at least some of the time would be nice. Clothing of course is a necessity, but it can be cheap, second-hand or homemade. Paper on which to write. Pens. Maybe access to books, but I’m sure I can also do without them. There’s not much I really need, not much I really can’t do without.

There’s still far too much clutter in my house. It doesn’t help that one whole (albeit small) room in this house is totally dedicated to my sewing stuff, which I don’t even use any more. I’m tempted to get rid of it all, change that room back into Collin’s bedroom and give myself a bedroom. That would mean I’d have to buy a bed, since I sold mine at our yard sale last year after having kept it in storage for a year.

The sewing machines would be useful to keep though. It’s just that they take up so much room. It’s a 500 square foot house, but only about 430 square feet is livable space because of the sewing room. If I could afford to, I’d build a shed and put the sewing stuff in the shed, but that’s not a possibility at the moment.

I’d like to buy some clothesline and hang all the clothes out to dry in the warm months. My summer electric bill only averages about $30.00 per month, but I’d like to see how much I could decrease it. I also need to replace all of my light bulbs with compact fluorescents. I attempted to start using them a few years ago, but they would flicker and go out a lot. However, I just read an article that said that compact fluorescents have improved dramatically over the past two or three years, and the price has dropped considerably too. So I may give them another try. I may get a timer for the water heater too.

I’m reading a really good book. It’s called Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. The author is Jared Diamond. I’m about three-quarters of the way through it. The last chapter, where he’ll be applying the possible lessons of previous cultures to our current one, should be the most interesting. But so far, he’s examined a spate of ancient cultures that failed (and a few successes) and several modern ones. I’m just starting on his chapter on China.

 

In my mind, China is what makes this whole end of oil, environmental crisis, climate change issue a runaway train that can’t possibly be stopped. Even if the rest of the world suddenly started living sustainably, China would take all of us down with her.

In my mind, there’s no stopping the fall of civilization worldwide that’s about to happen. What country is going to step forward to implement draconian environmental measures in their own land, when doing so puts them at an economic disadvantage in a world context? The economy within the country would crash, and it would then snowball around the world.

If leadership’s choice is between starting the collapse of society now, or putting it off until it just plays out in naturally unfolding consequences a little further down the road, of course they’ll wait. Why risk being overthrown and throwing your country into anarchy?

 

It’s just a runaway train were on. I’m convinced of that.

In playing with this in my mind, I’ve been trying to figure out, if oil runs out and society collapses, where the best place to be would be. I would love to be back in Pennsylvania. My dream is to have 50 or 100 acres, partly wooded, partly pastures and fields, and to live without electricity. That’s my “retirement” dream, to live self-sufficiently off the Pennsylvania land I love so dearly.

But were society to collapse, Pennsylvania probably wouldn’t be the best place to be. The whole eastern seaboard is one great megalopolis. When all of those millions of people are forced to leave the cities in order to survive, they’ll flee to the hills. They’ll chop down the forests for fuel and shelter through the long cold northeastern winters. The hills will become denuded and eroded and sterile. Topsoil will run off, down the rivers, killing fish along the way. People will fight over land and resources, the locals trying to fend off the invading city people. Even though the land there is so fertile, I think the stress of too many people, especially those who don’t know what they’re doing, will be its undoing.

And what if I’m stuck here when society classes? I’ve always thought this would be a horrible place. It’s high desert, so there’s not much rain and the soils are poor and sandy. Though if John gets his farm and I join him there, could we become self-sufficient?

 

The dust bowl is not so very far in the past, and farmers are still fleeing the plains, finding it too difficult to eat eke out a living here. Without irrigation it’s a very iffy proposition. John’s new property is not irrigated, but it’s on the floodplain of the river, so there may be somewhat more fertility there than elsewhere in our region. There’s a well for household use, but who knows ultimately how reliable that would turn out to be. You would want to catch all of the rain water from your buildings to use on your gardens and drip-irrigate and mulch heavily so as not to waste it. There would be so much to learn, and initially so many tools needed to get set up adequately.

But the good thing is millions of people wouldn’t be fleeing to such a marginal area. They won be that dumb. There would be virtually no wood to speak of. How would you heat your house and cook? If I saw society’s collapse coming and had the resources to deal with it, I build a small passive solar straw bale house with a masonry stove. Granted, you still need wood or some type of fuel for the stove, but at least it would use it efficiently. And the combination straw bale/passive solar design would go a long way in keeping the house warm on its own.

I’ve been in a rut for the past week or so, feeling kind of paralyzed. I can’t get anything done, nothing is calling to me. I feel no motivation.

This is a good sign, now that I picked up this journal and I’m starting to write. Maybe I can get the energy flowing again.

I’m still mulling over the issue of my place in this crazy society. I had a crazy, irresponsible thought the other day. If our consumer culture is destined to fall with the depletion of the world oil fields, why not hasten it along by consuming as much as I possibly can, and encouraging everyone else to do the same? The faster we deplete the earth’s resources, the sooner will come our culture’s day of reckoning. And the sooner the earth can begin to return to balance.

It’s clear no one is going to change their ways until it’s way too late, until there’s no time left to begin adapting to the changes that are necessary. People love to live in denial for as long as they possibly can. So they will, inevitably.

What could be happening, what should be happening, won’t. Moving out of the suburbs, developing local resources to meet the community’s needs for food and goods, getting rid of cars, re-learning the old skills--using draft animals, hand tools, carding, spinning, weaving, hunting, gathering, preserving food, saving seeds, chopping wood, making charcoal and lye, pottery, baskets, raising animals, butchering, smoking, tanning leather, developing true community where neighbors come together with neighbors to help build, grow, cook, preserve, or whatever.

It won’t happen. Who wants to give up what they have? Who wants to admit that their lifestyle is untenable, destructive? If the choice is between obliviousness and feeling the full moral weight of our choices, why not remain oblivious?

I’ve come across a web site on eremitism, which has been some really fascinating reading. I’ve always considered myself a bit of a hermit, but it’s been especially good to come around to these writings now, when I’m in the midst of my exploration of voluntary simplicity. Simplicity has led me to think more deeply about silence and solitude, which has brought me back around to my need for an eremitic lifestyle. In stillness and solitude, the world of spirit opens up. I long to inhabit the world of spirit.

If I didn’t have Collin I would be taking my experiment with voluntary simplicity much farther. I have the worst urge to toss out the TV, VCR, and DVD player. Granted, we haven’t had cable or satellite TV service for years, and since we moved to Snyder receive no over-air reception. So we have a TV set, but no TV service. Our TV is about eighteen years old, a small 13-inch color TV that no longer has a remote control. Collin uses it to watch his videotapes and DVDs. The only TV show we watch is “Survivor” (of all things). Collin has been following that show for several years, so we watch it at Di’s house.

I’ve been discovering the profound spiritual value of simplicity. One aspect of simplicity is silence. The noise alone of the television (let’s ignore the actual content for now) would keep me from the spiritual place of stillness that insight flows into. Would I be able to become who I'm meant to be with a television set blaring in the background?? I just don’t think so. I feel pulled to explore simplicity in even greater depth than I have up to this point. A quiet environment becomes a critical requirement for me.

I would love to experiment with giving up all TV, Internet, radio and newspaper exposure for a year, and minimize even telephone usage. I would totally give up the telephone if Collin didn’t require an easy way to reach P. But for now it’s a necessity.

 

Collin certainly wouldn’t like it if he had to give up the Internet. Of course, he would be forced to find other, presumably healthier, ways to fill the time he would normally waste on the computer.

And once Collin’s grown my real dream is to build a small passive-solar straw bale post-and-beam house in Pennsylvania, heated only by a masonry stove. There would be no electricity, but hopefully an indoor hand-pump providing cold fresh water. I would like to grow and raise more or less all of my food, have looms and a spinning wheel again, and woodworking hand tools. And be a writer. What a good life that would be.

The writing bug has been biting harder. I have the beginnings of a crude outline for a book as well as some rough ideas for magazine articles. Why have I continually overlooked the pretty obvious fact that I meant to be a writer? Granted, I need a lot of practice and refining of skills, but I have no doubt that will come. I’m intimately familiar with the creative process, the “zone” you enter where miraculous things happen. Writing is sacred in that you tap into the creative domain, which is really pure Mind. Mind manifesting in words, language. You never know where your writing will take you because largely you’re channeling the Divine.

When I try to imagine our human destiny, try to peak in on us in a little while, say in a mere 10,000 or 20,000 years, the world I see is not one of space travel and Jetsons cityscapes. Instead I see a return to living among nature in beautiful simplicity, with our energy spent on spiritual and communal living, living mostly as hunters and gatherers with maybe some supplemental cultivation and animal husbandry techniques thrown in. I see a drastically reduced human population and a return to balance and ecosystem health.

I stumbled upon a book at the library that addresses our future and makes me hopeful that my vision will become a reality. The book is called The Long Emergency, by James Howard Kunstler. It’s about the end of oil and the end of this crazy consumer-mad culture.

Before this book I had never completely thought through our immediate future, the next hundred years or so, or even the remainder of my lifetime. Most people would be horrified if reality plays out the way this author believes it will, but I am so excited by the possibility.

The decadence of the past two centuries, the rape of the planet, will turn out to have been a strange, temporary anomaly. All of the nonsense of our culture will be cleansed. There will be no more megastores with 30 styles of toasters to choose from, no Hollywood, or fashion industry, cars will become untenable. We’ll have to return to the land, living locally, and rebuilding true community. We will have to return to our rightful place on this earth, as a small part of the whole, letting go of our delusions of grandeur.

 

I know the readjustment will be tumultuous--there will be a lot of childish temper tantrums as nations and individuals revolt against the inevitable and necessary turnabout. Imagine how yuppie-dom will rebel as they’re forced to give up their behemoth cars, their lives in suburbia which can no longer provide for them, their gym memberships, season tickets, dry cleaning, cheap electricity to power all of their gadgets, trips to the mall, the cinema, the nail salon and tanning booths, their lattes and 57 kinds of imported artisan cheeses.

Imagine the unrest! And of course it will be more dire than that. In many places there will be mass starvation, disease, lack of health care, lack of water, depleted soils, and unpredictable climatic change. It’s all a recipe for war between and within countries, for mayhem and anarchy.

I understand the magnitude of suffering that will result and yet I celebrate our likely fate. This cancer needs to die off. This monstrosity of selfish, gluttonous, irresponsible “culture” (if it can be called that) that is our modern world needs to be excised. I don’t mourn the loss of human life, even possibly my own, which will result from this readjustment, because spiritually I know we all go on in one form or another. I’m excited for future generations who hopefully will have the opportunity to inherit a better world. Of all the lifetimes I sense I have lived, this has been the hardest to come to grips with. For my whole life I’ve been bothered by the excesses of this world. The grief I carry is terribly deep. The full realization now that this culture is a very temporary one comes as a huge relief.

Before I read this book, in working with my forest meditation, I had imagined that maybe someday, tens of thousands of years from now, this forest would again exist on this earth, and humans would walk and live amidst it and experience the radiant spirituality of these great beings. Now having read this book I think Yes, the great for us will return one day. What a miracle that would be.

So again, all of this thinking brings me back to my great moral dilemma, livelihood. What should I be doing in this lifetime given our situation?

The recollection of this ancient forest still has me mesmerized. What can I learn from this forest?

First, I think it’s another lesson in “Nothing Is Ever Lost.” I’m certain this forest existed. I’m certain it’s been gone from this earth for a long time, possibly thousands of years now. Yet I’m able to visit it, and more importantly, I feel it’s still there for me to learn from. I almost get the sense that this forest wants to be remembered now, in our time--that it has teachings for us, vital knowledge we have long forgotten.

I am so excited to have been given the gift of this forest. I’m interested in developing a meditation practice around it, to see what I can learn.

I’ve been exploring the energy of place lately. If our human potential varies drastically from place to place, even inches apart, imagine what I could discover if I attuned to the vibration of this sacred forest! I’ve said it so many times before, but as humans we have barely begun to recognize our full potential. I feel that this forest has a lot it could teach me about our potential.

I’ve become increasingly alarmed lately by the more and more dire reports about global warming. Polar bears will soon be extinct as the ice caps continue to melt. So many other species and ecosystems will be lost. I know in the whole grand scheme of things this is all just Mind dreaming Itself. Worlds and galaxies congeal out of nothing, then disappear. Spirit is the constant. But it’s hard not to feel sad and helpless, as a human, seeing all of this destruction we have caused.

I know if earth became just a big desiccated rock, I could still apprehend my true nature, without anything external to guide me. The physical world is just Mind made manifest, but Mind can be discovered in other ways too. The ancient forest is still a living, breathing reality and polar bears will always be a living, breathing reality too.

I finished reading the book Voices of Our Ancestors last night, the Cherokee book I mentioned. Late in the book I came across a sentence talking about body position. The author wrote “Subtle differences in position in different cultures point out the effects of bioresonance, how certain environment affects our thoughts and even our physical development.” This was in a paragraph on meditation and prayer postures, so she was really talk about subtle changes in position.

I love how the universe always affirms my thinking by sending along the right book at the right time, saying exactly the thing I’ve just been thinking. It’s my nod from the Universe that tells me, yes, you’re on the right track.

I had a dream last night. It was a very simple dream, but the effect on me this morning is anything but simple. There’s something here, something very significant.

I dreamed I was visiting someone at a small log cabin in the woods. Outside, talking to the person, I noticed off in front of me an enormous ancient tree. Its diameter was like that of a small room, maybe eight or ten feet across, and its canopy soared so high above us—150 feet? I couldn’t really say. The trunk was quite straight with a few, but not many, limbs down lower and gnarly roots around the base. I was immediately drawn to it, climbing up the roots in order to hug the ancient tree. I was in total awe.

Upon awakening, with this dream vivid in my mind, I was bathed in deep, deep sadness. I still am. I had the sudden realization that I’ve been dreaming about this forest of ancient giants since I was wee small. This is the first time I’ve ever remembered one of them. Often I have a sense that I go places in my dreams that I can’t recall, familiar places. This is obviously one of them.

The one thing I feel strongly is that this forest existed, and probably many others like it, at some point on this earth. These were not redwoods. It felt like a deciduous forest that would be somewhere in the northeastern U.S., or ancient Europe. The recollection of this forest feels like a past life memory, like I’ve actually walked beneath these giants before, but maybe they’re only inner symbols of my psyche, who knows?

I wish there was language to express the feeling-sense of my experience in this forest. I think it ties in with my recent line of thinking--when we destroy the earth, we destroy a way of knowing ourselves. These trees are containers of ancient wisdom; they are ancient beings, not only silent witnesses. They hold knowledge, deep, deep knowledge. I can’t imagine what it would be like to live among them. Who would I become?

It is hard for me to jump back and forth from my memory of the forest and the reality of the world today, where wood is a commodity and entire forests are clear cut.

I wonder what happened to the forest in my dream? It’s unimaginable to me that any human could stand in the presence of those giants and not be overpowered by the sense of the sacred. Yet, similar forests have been cut to the ground. How is that possible?

 

What would that do to a tribe if people who lived in such a forest? How could they go on, how could they bear it? How would they ever make sense of such an enormous act of desecration?

I wonder if I finally remembered this dream because just in the past week, in an effort to start writing again, I attempted to describe my experience with Mrs. Kaufman’s huge maple tree? I’ve always felt like I truly connected with that tree spirit and the senselessness of her death was just devastating to me. Trees are beings of great dignity. We need to honor them. They are so vastly more evolved than we are and we have much to learn from them.

The old ones though are mostly gone from this planet. Not for many, many generations will we have the opportunity to learn from these wise giants, and only if we return to balance first and learn to caretake for all of the beings here.

I’ve been reading a book by a Cherokee woman that’s quite different from the other Native American books I’ve read. It was written in the 1980’s and has a kind of a New Age flavor to it, which is kind of disconcerting and kind of good at the same time. A lot of what she’s saying connects with what I’ve been experiencing lately, especially about the land and energy.

Last night I kept dreaming on and on about how the position of my body during sleep affects the quality and nature of the dreams I have. This is something I’ve recognized for years, even back when I was a teenager. But I kept dreaming it. There was far more to it than I’m remembering now. I vaguely recall being delighted that these teachers were teaching me this now (what teachers?) and there was some instruction on the chanting of sacred vowels, something I’ve been practicing since reading another Native American book, Touch the Earth, in February. Mostly I chant “O”. That’s the most powerful for me, especially I think because of my mystical experience with it when Di was in labor. Powerful stuff, these sound vibrations!

I first encountered the concept of sacred sound back in 1991, while reading some arcane little book whose title eludes me. It felt so intuitively right, everything the author said about sound, and I knew he was on to something important. When I chant “O” it’s such a pure sound, that even in my deepest voice there’s also a higher tone present, like the sound of someone running their fingers over the edge of a wine glass. Often the human in me is lost. It all becomes pure vibration.

I don’t know what the teachers were teaching me in my dream. I wish I could remember. Lately I’ve had very vague recollections of receiving many teachings during the night, but I can never remember them by day. I guess it doesn’t matter. My dreaming self is likely the most receptive part of me anyway, so I suppose the teachings are being assimilated.

 

I’ve been feeling for years that I’m not meant to have any human teachers in this lifetime, yet I still have teachers. Isn’t that incredible! Clearly were not alone here. Clearly there is a whole universe filled with sentience.

I just had another vague recollection from another recent night of dreaming. Something about or related to that quantum physics reality of two particles staying in sync with each other even on other sides of the universe. There is no separation, I understand that, but there’s more here I can’t put my finger on.

Generally in my life I’ve been feeling a greater sense of oneness lately. There seems to be little separation between the cats, these wonderful marvels, and me. We’re emanations of energy from the same field or ground. We don’t really start or end as individuals because where we merge with the ground there is no separation.

And back to the sleep-position issue. If subtle changes in our position while we sleep have profound effects on us, then location is far more powerful than I ever imagined. Imagine what is happening in our waking day, when we’re not just turning from our left side to our right, or moving an inch or two here and there. We’re moving profound distances, feet and yards and even miles. And re-orienting our bodies, north, south, east, and west countless times.

And when I get in my car and drive all the way up to Boulder County, and two days later drive back, maybe that’s so disorienting to me because it requires too massive and quick a response to changing energies. There’s probably a possibility of deep teachings here, I’m sure. Hard as this back-and-forth lifestyle has been on me, maybe it’s teaching me about energy. I’m learning to feel the subtle differences from place to place. I think I need to make a practice of grounding myself in the energy of each new place as I arrive. It’s so disorienting as it is. I need to make sure I’m connecting.

Our human potential is astounding. The person we can become in response to the energy of just one spot is vastly different than the person we can become just two inches over. I’m sure of that. Place holds potential.

There’s something elusive hiding out on the fringes of my awareness. Not the big insight I’m waiting for, something smaller, but maybe related.

Something about this experience with simplicity. It’s changing me in a way I can’t quite put my finger on. Or, if I can describe it, it would sound so clichéd, because these metaphors have been so overused. Yes, there is a new clarity that simplicity is bringing to my life. But can I describe what I mean by clarity? It goes beyond, way beyond, clear thinking. It’s not a product of the rational brain; rather it’s a spiritual form of sight. It’s a different lens placed over reality, revealing a richness that’s impossible to see in a hectic life. And it’s not that hectic people are just too busy to see with this clarity. It’s not that they could see this way if they took a few weeks off and did nothing. It’s a total paradigm shift that I don’t think is possible without a radical, permanent acceptance of simplicity.

What did anything in that last paragraph just mean? Why does language fail around the most important things? What is it that modern life cuts you off from? What is it that is gained by slowing down and simplifying? Maybe it will be easier to express once I’ve been here longer. I don’t think I’ve fully made the change yet.

There’s some kind of ease I seem to be developing in shifting awareness. To what--how do I describe that? Expanding my awareness, just another overused phrase! Yes, expanding my awareness with just the subtlest little shift. How do I do that and why am I only able to do it now? I couldn’t possibly know how to explain any of it, yet it’s the simplest little thing. I think of all I’ve done is reconnected with the earth and with the sacred. To use yet more clichés, I’ve connected with my sense of kinship with all things. Is there any point in me trying to describe this? The words that are coming out bare no resemblance to what I’m trying to say. Yet it’s so darned simple! I’ve expanded my awareness. OK, we’ll have to leave it at that for now.

I was sitting in a parking lot one day recently when I was in Boulder County. It was around lunchtime and there was traffic zip-zip-zipping by incessantly. I wondered what our ancestors would think if they were with me in the car. All of this frantic rushing about. They would have to think people are going to something very important. Maybe the funeral of a highly revered member of the community. Or an important speech on something vital to the well being of the people. But no, all the rushing about was just to grab a burger or a taco. All of this madness and this ridiculous waste of fossil fuels just to deal with a mid-day meal. And most people alone in their cars, no connection with others, except the transaction at the drive-through window. Meal time reduced from an act of communion to this crazy detached madness!

And I’m always taken aback every time I go up there with the franticness of everyone in their cars. Why are they in such a hurry? Clearly it would be difficult to stay present when you are constantly rushing to the next point. Where is your mind? Not there in the car. Not there in the moment, I’ll tell you that.

That’s why I love the fact that people out here wave to one another when they’re driving. You have to stay present in order to be able to look at and acknowledge the other drivers. You can’t be lost in your own world or mentally rushing ahead to your next destination. Enough sense of community still exists here that we acknowledge each other, genuinely. We see individuals and families passing by us on the roads, not lifeless hunks of metal and rubber.

I’m getting the urge to maybe start writing. I don’t know exactly what, but something having to do with simplicity and my spiritual ideas. I don’t know who I would write for, am I thinking magazine articles, a book, or just more entries in my blog, which no one reads? Or newspaper articles, or other people’s websites? It’s not clear yet, so I’ll just wait and let the urge deepen if it wants to, until it can tell me what I'm meant to do.

I continue to inhabit twin realities these days. They run side by side crisscrossing and intermingling. I’m starting to think I’m haunted, or crazy, or both. Last Saturday it got so intense for a while that I truly began to question my sanity. I kept seeing things that aren’t there. Native American things. Even the letters on the pages of the books I read morph into Native American imagery. Images get layered over even the words in this book.

 

I know how crazy this sounds. Yet, I’m fairly certain I’m not crazy. And in the past week or so, in some of the books I’ve been reading, there have been statements that kind of lead me to believe that I actually might be haunted. Not in a spooky, scary, negative way. Just in a persistent way, to get my attention. By the spirits of Native Americans who died because of the white invasion. I think they think there’s something I can do to raise consciousness among us white folks. I think that’s where this urge to write is coming from.

In one of the books, and I’ll quote it when I find it, the author spoke about how Chief Seattle said hosts of Native American spirits would haunt the streets of the future city (Seattle I guess) trying to trigger maybe a remembrance and a return to balance. And then in another part of the same book, I think (I’ve been reading too many books lately) the author spoke about a prison guard who had witnessed a pipe ceremony. There were two guards, one who did and one who didn’t look at the pipe once it was assembled. Since the pipe is one of their holiest objects, it’s inappropriate for non-natives to look at it. The author spoke of his wish that the man who looked would be haunted from that moment on, not in a malicious way, but just that he would be gripped by a need to learn more, to see the reality of the native experience.

So, somehow I think I’ve got myself haunted. And that’s OK, as long as it doesn’t overwhelm me and send me into true madness. For now, I guess I’ll just wait and see how this develops and what it leads me to do.

Writing would be a good vocation for me. I’m just not very confident in my skills as a writer. Or in the self discipline that would be required. But I do think I have things to say that are worth sharing. So maybe…who knows?

Wish I knew what to write about tonight. I’ve been dying to get a chance to write, not because I have something specific to say, but because I still feel so maddeningly close to a breakthrough of some sort in my thinking. I guess I’m just hoping that the act of writing might help me along somehow.

 

For the past few weeks I’ve kind of felt like I’ve been living in two separate worlds. I keep shifting back and forth. I can’t really explain it, and if I attempt to, I’ll probably just sound psychotic. It’s just these tiny shifts during my day to day activities. Little visionary moments where I see another layer of reality. Everything is subtly morphing and I’m sensing just a deeper, richer, infinitely more complex reality. There’s so much more here, right under our noses than I ever imagined! I wish I could give an example. I will when I catch hold of one well enough to describe it. It all largely has a Native American flavor to it, but as I said in my last entry I believe the Native American spirit is an embodiment of what it is to be human. So maybe what I’m reaching is a deeper more complete embodiment of my human-ness.

Who am I becoming, and what do I do with it? I feel like I need to be doing something, but what? Will the answer ever com?

Hm. I just had a thought. It’s not anything new but it feels maybe a bit more profound tonight because I’m coming to it now just a bit more evolved than I have been before. It’s about changing the world by changing myself. I’ve heard countless New Age people suggest that since the world’s problems are too overwhelming to take on as an individual, that our task is simply to work on our own spiritual development. By doing so we can help to harmonize the world. It has always seemed important to work on the self, but seemed a little absurd to think that my own spiritual evolution could have any significant effect on world issues.

 

But, I’m thinking tonight about what I’ve learned about energy. I think a task for me now is to experiment with energy. I need to learn to resonate with bigger and bigger energy, or higher and higher, really. Right now, I’m humming with the Native American energy held here within the essence of this land. But next, I need to get humming with the land itself, eventually feeling my way into the vibration not merely of Colorado or this region, but finding the frequency of the whole earth and humming with that. That would take deep hard work, but if I can, then I’d become Planet Earth and I assume from the wisdom of that place I may find global answers and be able to influence the global consciousness.

 

Maybe you think I’ve lost my marbles. I suppose this all sounds like some magnificent delusions of grandeur. But I made the vow when I was fifteen that this life be a quest for wisdom, and I know I am firmly on that path!

I need to work with energy, way more deeply than I have ever done.

Again I’m feeling close to some breakthrough in my thinking. I don’t know what yet, but I’m working on it. It has something to do with simplicity, I feel fairly certain. Not only simplicity, but simplicity as a path to being fully human.

 

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and a lot of reading lately on a bunch of interrelated issues: materialism, consumerism, this modern industrial era’s quest for “progress” (whatever that is) and profit, at the expense of the earth and its inhabitants, the voluntary simplicity and back-to-the-land movements, and the Native American outlook. I’ve also been studying the issues of poverty and globalization, which seemed to be wickedly interrelated. And of course, the role of the corporation in the desecration of the earth. I could go on for pages if I wanted to write about my thoughts on each of these issues. The breakthrough I’m sensing will it in all likelihood be a synthesis of all of these thoughts.

 

The Native American stuff has probably been at the forefront of my thoughts. My new realization is that the native peoples embody what it is to be human. Anybody on this earth who sets out on a path to being fully human will eventually arrive at a philosophy of life that is very similar to indigenous peoples’ beliefs. They haven’t lost their way, as we have. They still know and have always known, what is to be human. We white folk have forgotten.

 

My own personal experiences and gropings have led me to this conclusion. Without a teacher, just feeling my way along, I’ve discovered some Truths. It’s so wonderfully affirming to find in Native American writings references to the same Truths as I’ve stumbled across.

 

Most notably are my experiences of the layers of energy in the land, plants, animals and people, and also with my understanding of Power. The native conception that everything is alive may seem quaint and primitive to us modern folks, but it is absolutely real. There is no way for it to be otherwise. I am an emanation of energy, as is everything else. I may have a unique vibration, but it is closely related to the vibrational fields around me and in fact is part of the fields around me. My skin is not a boundary; it does not mark where I end. In as much as I am in alignment with the energy of the land, I am one with it.

 

It’s been wonderful to find similar statements in Native American writings. When Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce said “The earth and myself are of one mind. The measure of the land and the measure of our bodies are the same,”--he meant that literally. In the past such statements wouldn’t really even register in my mind. I would take it as metaphor. But it is absolutely not metaphor. It is a clear, literal description of reality.

 

And I think it was in Vine DeLoria’s writings that I came across his explanation that each geographic locale emanates its own unique energy, and that people are shaped by the land. He said westerners recognize that there are regional identities (like New Englanders, or Southerners) but don’t acknowledge that it is the land that produces the humans. This is knowledge that I felt my way into when I moved to Colorado. I remember walking on the trail around our development in Erie and beginning to feel the unique (and sad) energy of the land for the first time. Well, not for the first time. I’ve always felt the energy; it’s just that it was such a constant presence that it was hard to separate it and identify it. Moving away from Pennsylvania, out of the energy I had always been immersed in, I believe, helped me to identify it for the first time.

I think I’ve said it before, but as we destroy the land we are literally destroying ourselves, or a way of knowing ourselves. There is so much knowledge and so much sacredness out there, it is so vast, but bit by bit we desecrate it. How can we live in such total ignorance?

In order to reconnect, there has to be a return to the land. In cities and suburbs, how will people ever feel their way into this knowledge?