Sep 4 2012

DIY Detox: Mostly Good

By Day 4 of the Detox Diet, I have slipped a couple of times but mostly stayed strong.

Ah, the word “mostly”. I AM happy to be mostly gluten free, striving to be mostly vegetarian, and when I can, aspiring to vegan. That is a bit of a challenge when it comes feeling great on the paleo diet but feeling that it is wrong for our times now to eat so many animals, to put it bluntly. But that will come later, when I come back to regular eating. For now, I am mostly eating vegetables and some berries, along with the other smoothie ingredients, with one mostly vegetable and legume dinner. And doing great great with the beverages except for… well, that first cuppa coffee with half and half is so wonderful. After that, I am good–oh so good, until well, yesterday my old friend and I sat looking out at the magnificent ocean water surrounding our island home and we shared some wine. Just a glass, mind you, and it was red, so I can pretend it is good for me and it is, mostly– except for when it isn’t– which is now. So there you have, blogger friends, I confess. Detoxing in the real world for a social animal like me with ingrained habits is challenging. I think I will be able to slowly do this right so that by the time I get it down, the detox will be over! I intend to detox, or even mostly detox until the Equinox, which is September 21.

Detox diets always start with the standard advice to “consult your health car professional before starting…” Excuse me, but from where I am sitting, that’s a big joke. Health care professionals know very little about detoxing or supplements or much of anything in the preventative department. Right now the biggest ally I have is Julia Cameron’s book, “The Writing Diet”. I think it is essential to become aware of how we eat as well as what we eat. Being on the Detox Diet enlivens my relationship to food and my body, writing about it will bring me home to why I want to eat THIS and not THAT. For that matter, how and why I use food to cover up other things I am feeling or to soothe the stress away. This is a good job for food, I think. And an old one. I want to do this without feeling deprived or too severely restricted so that I can come back time and time again to my smoothie or lentil vegetable laden soup and regard them as comfort food, not punishment. This is a journey. I will report the days as I experience them.

Sep 3 2012

DIY Detox Beverages

The Smoothie

Well, this is probably the most important “meal” of the detox. It is a cross between a beverage and a meal but I don’t count it as water. Here are my basic ingredients:

Scoop-Whey Protein powder

Scoop-Fiber (I use Smart Fiber)

1-2 Tablespoons Chia seeds that have been soaked in water for 30+ minutes

1-2 Tablespoons nonfat plain yogurt

Almond or hemp milk

Half to whole cup water

Blueberries or other berries

Greens: broccoli, spinach, purslane, cabbage

If you need it sweeter, try a quarter to half an organic banana. Or try Xylitol.

You can put a quarter of an apple, chopped, if you are not worried about insulin resistance. If you having a hard time losing weight, the newest research advises to limit fruit intake. Make berries your first choice.

If you like the taste, this would be a great time to add cinnamon, ginger or garlic.

Other Beverages

They always say drink plenty of water, but really—it is boring to drink that much water, especially if you live in the cooler climates. So, I find ways to make my hot drinks count! Here is my A-List to choose from.

1-Dandleion Tea or Dandy Instant Dandelion Beverage.

2-Apple Cider vinegar and honey (or use stevia) in hot water.

3-Master Cleanser (lemons, maple syrup, cayenne) in hot water.

4-Decaf green tea or herbal teas.

5-Teeccino Java Herbal “Coffee”

6-Ginger Tea—chopped ginger steeped in hot water.

Sep 2 2012

DIY Detox: Cleansing Supplement

In the spirit of Do It Yourself energy, I am entering September with a detox. Fall always arrives suddenly to me. I know it is the turn I denote by the calendar, but still, it seems startling when I walk outside and though the sun is shining, I sense the oncoming winter beginning to stir. It seems appropriate to make a change myself, allowing this human animal to channel an instinctual urgency to prepare for the shift in seasons.

Why to do this? This is best answered by motivation. I have plenty of energy and I don’t get many colds. However, I do have insomnia. And I would like to see if I can challenge my genetically inherited apple shape to lose a bit of its middle. And truth be told, I would love to see some of my former libido return. I want my moods steady and my mind sharp. Finally, it is the simple fact that I have lived for a rather long time on this planet by paleo standards. I have accumulated toxins I don’t even know how to pronounce. So, it seems like a good idea.

How am I doing it? Why, DIY, of course. I am taking a bit of this and a bit of that, to make the best detox for me and my lifestyle.

Start the say with Master Cleanse

You can google Master Cleanse and get all kinds of information. There are fasts that go with the Master Cleanse and diets that use it extensively. I like the taste of it, and so having it in the morning makes me feel good, and maybe also as a refresher in the afternoon. Here is the basic recipe: Squeeze Fresh lemon Juice, then add Maple Syrup, and Cayenne Pepper into Pure Water. Drink that one down before you drink your green tea, the alternative morning beverage to coffee.

Use a cleansing support supplement

All detox diets use a basic cleansing supplement, containing the standardized herbs that are known to cleanse and support the liver, kidney or blood. Look for milk thistle, dandelion, burdock. I use my own nettle tincture, made from the springtime fresh growing nettles in my backyard, but any nettle tincture or freeze dried nettle supplement will work. FYI: Take your herbal supplements once or twice a day with your smoothie (more on that tomorrow), not on an empty stomach.

As a budding herbalist, I love it that these liver strengthening “herbs” are Old World weeds that essentially followed us into the New World. One could say, out of the Plant wisdom and generosity, they knew we would need them.

One could get lost in the world of what to take for Detox Support. I know, I have done it. But I think I know enough now to begin the process, and that’s what’s important just now. To begin.

Jul 4 2012

Forest Dweller Portrait: David Suzuki

David Suzuki is 74 years old. He recently quit his Foundation in order to better be able to speak the truth. Listen to his message here:

An Elder’s Vision for Our Sustainable Future

This is the voice of a well developed Forest Dweller. He is the voice of what needs to be said. He is an Elder who has accepted the role. David Suzuki is someone who embodies generativity.

A quick bio from Wikipedia: David Suzuki, was a professor in the genetics department at the University of British Columbia from 1963 until his retirement in 2001. Since the mid-1970s, Suzuki has been known for his TV and radio series and books about nature and the environment. He is best known as host of the popular and long-running The Nature of Things, seen in over forty nations. A long time activist to reverse global climate change, Suzuki co-founded the David Suzuki Foundation in 1990, to work “to find ways for society to live in balance with the natural world that sustains us.” The Foundation’s priorities are: oceans and sustainable fishing, climate change and clean energy, sustainability, and Suzuki’s Nature Challenge.

Jul 4 2012

The Forest Dweller’s Mission: Tikkun olam

In my ongoing exploration of Forest Dwellers, I find there is a tension between the urge to go within and attend to the spiritual journey, or the inner life and the persistent throb of knowing that my engagement in the world is critical. And so is yours.

We are in strange times. Hard times. We live in a culture of fear that has anesthetized itself with material gain, social media, idolized Hollywood and forgotten most of the world. As a result, our country is the one that refuses to sign the Law of the Sea and most climate change or environmental pacts because we are afraid of losing our benefits. We would rather double wrap everything in plastic than to even consider seriously as a society how to change that.

Now, go back and look at those last few sentences and tell me where you can even utter them without losing your own focus to distraction or someone chiding you. Yet—it is true. So that little creature…the one who had the honesty and courage to utter the truth goes underground, confused. Try to imagine people deeply listening, contributing their own wisdom and then making a plan of action together. That nearly impossible scenario would make all the difference, and you would not only change the world, but you also heal the your own heart.

However, we don’t live in that world. We live in a world of constant motion and much distraction. The emphasis is on either chillin’ or getting ahead. But there is another path, and one that I am trying to keep and grow in my own life. Activism. I have learned (after many years) that I can’t save the world. Bummer. I really wanted to. But I can help repair the world. Do my part.

From Wikipedia: Tikkun olam is a Hebrew phrase that means “repairing the world” (or “healing and restoring the world”) which suggests humanity’s shared responsibility (with the Creator) “to heal, repair and transform the world.”

I think that’s what Forest Dwellers are about. Not to save the world. But to do what we need to do, both in our inner spheres and do our part to repair the world.

Spotlight on Wangari Maathai. She was the founder of the Kenyan Green Belt Movement and she was 64 when she became the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. Her simple message was that tree planting is a social act that restores both the land and communities and counters climate change and drought. Wangari Maathai said: “It’s the little things citizens do. That’s what will make the difference. My little thing is planting trees.”

The Green Belt Movement, following that simply profound concept, has planted over 40 milling trees in Kenya.

Yes, I want the inner life. It’s important that I attend to my soul. But I hear the call of Wangari Maathai and I cannot say no. Somehow, I will balance that tension and do both.

“Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life-support system. We are called to assist the earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own — indeed, to embrace the whole creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder. This will happen if we see the need to revive our sense of belonging to a larger family of life, with which we have shared our evolutionary process.

In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other.

That time is now.” Wangari Maathai

Jun 15 2012

Love, kindness and compassion are the jewels of the universe

One last post about my retreat at Indralaya with Nawang Khechog.

The lasting messages are these.

1-The Tibetan cosmology is filled with beings. Now Quantum physics is using words and concepts that describe multiple realities, multiple dimensions, multiple worlds and universes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse. Perhaps I am gluing them all together, but it reminds me of indigenous wisdom in which all things are sentient—even the things we don’t ordinarily think of—like the four elements of earth, water, air and fire. This talk had extra power at a Theosophical camp, where a long tradition of nature spirits assumes there are other beings in other dimensions beside us in the world.

Result—my world is more populated and magical than before. What I knew as a child is validated. I knew then that I inhabited a mysterious and awesome place as one of many beings. I have been reminded again of that.

2-Love, kindness and compassion are the jewels of the universe(s). Of all the human attributes—strength, intelligence, beauty—the jewels are these magnificent qualities. The greatest meaning of life is to learn to love all sentient beings.

3-The innate nature of all humans is to want happiness and to not want suffering. The basic nature of our mind is a luminous clarity, like a beautiful lake. Much of the time, we let the world and our brain ruffle the surface. Mediation takes you home to that luminous clarity, and gives you a place to rest.

4-You must take time to gradually transform, nurture and warm your heart. Mediation will give you the certainty in what you know. Deep conviction comes over time; like a gymnast who learns a move, practicing it over and over until it becomes 2^nd Nature, so do you approach meditation.

5-Enlightened beings are all around us. Their job is to alleviate suffering. But if they are not reaching you, it is because you are, essentially, blocking them with your mind. Once you can start to focus on loving kindness toward yourself and all sentient beings and your words and actions reflect this, they will be able to help you.

Lastly, when we asked about what to do in the world when you meet people who are not at all interested in loving kindness. Nawang smiled and said ah yes—they are selfish and –what do you call them? Brats? Yes, the Selfish Brats.

You try to teach them.

You become the example.

You look inside and keep working on yourself.

You keep practicing on your own work.

You minimize time with them until you are stronger.

Like on airlines, he laughed. Always put the mask on yourself first before you put mask on others. Be kind to yourself but push a little.

Thank you, Nwang Khechog. You have touched and changed my life.

Jun 12 2012

Growing Our Souls

“These are the times to grow our souls. Each of us is called upon to embrace the conviction that despite the powers and principalities bent on commodifying all our human relationships, we have the power within us to create the world anew.”

-GRACE LEE BOGGS

When I first heard Grace Lee Boggs, I was rooted to the spot, unable to move away from the radio. Her cheerful, strong 95 year old voice answered all the questions Tavis Smiley and Cornell West could muster. I’d never heard anyone talk about growing a soul or give such credence to imagining new ideas for our world. And the WAY she talks. “We have reached a time on the clock of the world where we need to make a new beginning, a paradigm shift in almost everything thing that we do.” I had my paper and pencil out– scribbling notes like a reporter, hardly daring to breathe lest I miss something. I know we need to create a new world order—I know it in every part of my mind, heart and body. And it all depends on our souls, Grace says, a power that can “make a way out of no way.” Smiley and West,www.smileyandwest.com/ — like me,sometimes look out at the current situation and only see how grave it is. And it is grave. Still, as Grave Lee Boggs says “the devastation opens the way.”

When they persisted with their questions, she retorted (kindly) “don’t preoccupy yourself with ‘them’. When you are preoccupied with the negative, you can’t see the positive that is exploding all around you. The negative is a challenge to create new positives.” Wow. Now that’s a fully realized Forest Dweller. She gives you an idea of how incredible it could be of Boomers were to stop worrying about their portfolios and numbers and start working on their souls.

Forest Dwellers, by definition, are aging. Those days when I could party, study or create all night and then work all day and do it time after time are gone. I am learning “chi running” because the bounce of regular running is too hard on my body. The signs of age 61 are upon me though my internal age varies between 16 and 50. It is a question that wants to be answered. If I am past my physical and mental prime, what is my path now?

Grace Lee Boggs answers me. What we can do is– grow our souls. That is the Forest Dweller task. It is everyone’s task but it belongs especially to this stage of life. From taking care of our parents, we see what the Renunciate stage looks like. It shimmers in the future, this specter of our lives to come. But it also reminds us that we are not there yet. Our children have gone from the Student to the Householder stage. We Forest Dwellers can inhabit each one of these stages at anytime—allowing Beginner’s Mind to let us be students again, learning the ropes of being a Householder in different circumstances, renouncing aspects of career, relationships, material goods and ambition. Through all of those steps, we can grow our souls.

And always, we come back to the Forest Dweller perspective, this longing to focus on the deep center of our being before it is too late. Those little wake up calls we get from the Universe remind us that the clock is ticking and at the end of the journey, the inner garden is the one we will harvest, not the outer accoutrements.

I will come back to the last post about Nawang Khechog tomorrow. Sometimes blogging turns out to be like surfing the internet. You start with one idea and end up with another. Once I got my teeth into Grace Lee Boggs, I couldn’t let go. Check the grand lady out, she is pretty damn magnificent.

Jun 7 2012

Forest Dwellers, Loving Kindness and Soul Wealth

I’m a thinker. That certainly doesn’t mean I am smarter than the average person. But I do think a lot, and it is not repetitive drama very often. It is how I make sense of the world; through a larger mind than my brain, organizing the bits and pieces of information it has and assembling them into meaning. I make order out of thinking and writing. So when Nawang Khechog explained Analytical Meditation, it caught my attention.

Most of the mediation we associate with Buddhism is Single Point mediation. To explain the difference, Nawang said to imagine milk. If you are making yogurt, you add the enzymes and then it must be left alone, and through that stillness comes yogurt. But you can also churn the milk to make butter. Nawang calls this “wisdom storming” and his eyes twinkle as he says it. “I made these words up,” he says, with his remarkable, inclusive laugh. Wisdom storming is like brain storming but you call in all the best wisdom you have access to.

Tibetan Buddhism considers the innate nature of human to be one that doesn’t want suffering and wants happiness. True for you? Analytical Meditation would say:

1-I want to be free of suffering.

2-I appreciate people who are kind/compassionate/loving to me.

3-All humans are the same.

4-Therefore all want to be free of suffering and all want kindness and compassion.

5-Therefore, I should strive not to make others suffer and to give them kindness and compassion.

The same mediation would lead us to the same conclusions with all sentient beings. We arrive at the truth of what is being chanted, said, written by our own logic.

Outrageous. How will you ever get ahead with such notions? What about people who are mean to you? The marketplace doesn’t give a hoot about this kindness stuff. People will take me to be weak. Etc.

So don’t consider this from any other perspective other than your deathbed. Mostly likely you are totally dependent on the compassion of others, just as when you were born. When my mom was in this stage of her life, she was poor in friends and loving family. She’d spent a lifetime being self focused and hadn’t noticed what that led to. She did observe the value of money, as most of us do, but she failed to see the wealth and value of friends and that love, compassion and kindness attract the same to themselves. The warm-hearted accumulate soul wealth as surely as the frugal or ambitious accumulate material wealth. It is a different kind. But it is the kind you can take with you.

Time for a laugh. Nawang would find a way to lighten this up. I am still learning, so I will simply laugh at myself, as he does himself. We are all just learning. But it is a conscious decision to choose this path. It is the hardest thing in the world. It is exceedingly simple and logical. It benefits you and all sentient beings at the same time. It is a lifetime practice.

More to come on this.

Jun 6 2012

Forest Dwellers and Loving Kindness

This weekend I was reminded of the transitory nature of life. What? Doesn’t sound like a normal conversation you hear in America? I know.

I started my journey by ferry through exquisite island scenery and landed just 40 minutes away from home on Orcas Island. There, I went on pilgrimage to my 5^th year at Indralaya. This leads me to one of the most important DIY tenets: To deepen the sense of your own life, go on pilgrimage. I arrived confused by people and worn down by bureaucracy. I knew nothing about the speaker. I only knew it was a beautiful camp that I dearly loved, with a small cabin that would be mine alone to roam, and that the theme was “Awakening Kindness”. Right? That much would be enough. And did I mention the wonderful vegetarian food?

The speaker was Nawang Khechog, a Tibetan musician who now lives in Colorado, and who studied as a monk for 11 years, 7 of which were as a hermit. So, my theme is out of the box aging and becoming a Forest Dweller and his is that kindness, compassion and love are the “jewels of the universe”. I know that the measure of my life is more than the work I have performed, and I hope it is more than what my increasingly forgetful brain can hold. I am on task to grow my soul. That is what my purpose is now.

Nawang speaks gently, reminding us that everything changes; each cause and condition create the next change. He asks us to deepen our hearts in this wisdom so that we are not surprised and confused when it happens. Aging will happen. Translate “I am getting old” to “if I am lucky enough, I’ll be a graceful old man/woman.”

“We have come to be in the mandala of kindness,” Nawang says in a voice so quiet I had to still my own breath to hear. “We are gathered to nurture our heart.” The heart needs to be warm, you see. The warm-hearted are benefitted with being inspired, uplifted and rejuvenated.

On that first night, my thoughts about Forest Dwellers settled into a deeper understanding. We have to be wise and strong…and humble… to adopt love and kindness and compassion as our creed. The strength of the heart will keep us from being easily discouraged. Loving all species that share this planet is not naive. It is wise. We do not lose beauty, we transform it by becoming more loving and kind and compassionate on the inside. Then, as Nawang says, “our wrinkles become like the painting of a great artist”.

If you are like me, you might think this seems like such a long way away, to aspire to live in such a space. I can’t help but want it now (read American). But “spiritual progress takes time” Nawang said, and having said it, he rocked back and laughed. It is funny. Does it make sense to try to do this crazy thing in a world of competition and one-upmanship? Answer that by looking at our world. Which one is crazy?

I will explore this further in the next few entries.

May 22 2012

The Seasonal Round

I am a big believer in the way the seasons teach us the way to be. We had a hard winter here. Or maybe I should say it was hard on me. In the way we match our environment, I grew misty and gray over the winter. It was then that I birthed this blog and also when I decided to leave my job behind.

Now in May, here in the San Juan Islands, all the world is green and alive with birdsong and light. The season is saying this is past time for dreaming. Take those melancholy and wistful dreams of winter and put them into action. I have started working with soul collages. I see the Elemental as the

key component of my nature. Whenever I have been stressed, I have held onto the most basic features of the landscape around me, the way the winter cottonwoods of New Mexico soothed my visits with my mother, the clouds and freeway trees of California helped me through fast moving Sacramento traffic, the dandelions and other bright weeds bursting up through the sidewalks of the cities.

When I have been demoralized by inhuman work, I have gone to Mexico and been healed by its elemental energies, the purity of air and sound and food and sea and palm tree. Thus, over and over I see in every collage I make, the elemental—stars and sky, rock and tree, ocean and wild. The movement of the human body. Reminders of real food. Here in the cold northwest, fire grounds me and the night sky uplifts me.