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In Times of Crisis, Look for the Lost Bird Tribes

During A Time of Crisis (Personal or Collective), Look for a Lost Bird Tribe

Whenever a person experiences a crisis or difficult period due to the death of a loved one, job loss, changes in family structure/cohesion, or anything that places an acute strain on the individual, the effects can ripple for years, decades, even the rest of their life. If a person has enough money, resources, and social status, they often get the help they need to weather the storm. However, a person lacking any or all of these supports, a time of crisis can quickly turn into a crushing time and potential collapse. In my experience during such a time, less robust friendships quickly dry up and disappear. If this happens, very often a person is left to tread the waters of distress alone in a growing sea of fear, sorrow, pain, grief, and abandonment. Digging deeper inside oneself is quite often the only pathway forward. This is when a lost bird tribe might show up. They are messengers and protectors of inner languages that have been lost due to overly busy and complicated modern lives. They remind us of what is really the most important to things to being alive.

One Lost Bird Tribe: Our Lost Inner Worlds

Right now, in the time of COV-19, hard times are being experienced by people around the world almost simultaneously. And these trying times are touching every echelon of society, even the very rich. It is a global crisis that is unprecedented in our modern age and one that is not only threatening human lives but economic systems that the Western World depends upon to thrive.

Just before COV-19 hit, there were big and little crises and civil unrest on the rise all over the world. One could feel this growing global turbulence and turmoil, but one could also still ignore it, concluding it was something happening in Hong Kong (the protests), not here, or something happening in Brazil, not where I live. Co-occurring with this was the rise of authoritarian governments in some of the most democratic countries in the world. People fleeing deadly wars (such as in Syria and Yehem), violence (such as so many countries of Central America), and starvation (such as so much African countries, Venezuela, or any place where conflict and lopsided economic systems ruled by the rich) were welcomed with closed boarders, walls, deportation, and blockades at sea. And, young people around the world who were making their voices heard about the dangers and coming crises of climate change were mocked, and even worse, ignored.

Rather than being brought together by our shared needs as human beings, rampant individualism seem rather to prevail–a type of focus that tends to tear at the fabric of our social structures rather than repair it. Before COV-19, the world seem to react to big and little crises more like a contagious disease to be contained. Barricades and a do not get involved attitude seemed more socially acceptable than providing help and care. And, watching crises unfold far away was strangely comforting as individuals went about their lives as business as usual.

What I am going to tell here occurred before the rapid rise of COV-19, but it is about dealing with crisis and it shows how Lost Bird Tribes can show up during such times to remind us of our lost inner languages–the ones that make us thrive and feel joy and help us heal. These powers come from inside. They are sorely tested during a time of crisis, but that is why the Lost Birds show up to help us find our inner reservoirs of strength, resilience, and wholeness. It is from a point of wholeness that all human beings are empowered to weather the most severe crisis or time.

Following are some of the Lost Birds I have found during my time of personal crisis as well as the ones my friend and colleague Donna Alena Hrabcakova has found.

The Lost Bird Tribe: How To Be Nice

After suffering another devastating personal loss when our beloved dog died suddenly and unexpectedly two days before Christmas. I barely had enough energy to go on any more. A decade of escalating crises had whittled me down to the point of personal collapse. The death of my father a year and a half before combined with the cruel act of my employer firing me while I was by my father’s bedside for 10 days before he died had left me at a point of psychology collapse. It is a place of collapse from which I almost did not pull out from. Many other things contributed to this as well such as most of my social support drying up, including friends, family, even pastors and bishops who looked the other way. But, my dogs did not look the other way. Especially my little brown dog that we called Cider. She stayed by my side night and day. She needed me, and I needed her. I know dogs died unexpectedly all the time. But, what made her death especially hard was that she had been there for me when everyone else was not.

I have written about and made a video (Tribute to Cider), so I will simply say after Cider died, I collapsed again, and it got really bad again. The only thing that pulled me through the aftermath of my father’s death was storytelling and art. And so, that was what I attempted to do again.

When a person creates a thing, it is natural to want to share that thing. One of the things I created was a one minute video. I used a template to create a short trailer using all the bells and whistles that iMovie provides. I selected a longer video I had made a while back about doing inner work to make a promo of. And so after making this, I shared it in several groups I belonged and in which I had shared very similar work previously. These groups had always welcomed similar work I had shared there before, or so it seemed. This time, one group refused to approve the video and another one deleted it. When I asked why the admin of the group that deleted the video, I was told:

“I did not see the link anymore between your personal experience and expression and the relation to us as a species in this time and place.”  

Really? That’s just plain mean.

The Lost Bird Tribe: It is OK to Get to Your Last Straw & Draw It!

That’s when I found my Lost Bird Tribe: The Last Straw Tribe. I terminated that friend on Facebook and left that group. Then, I purged many “friends” and left many “groups” because I finally realized a couple of things.

One of these things is that many of my “friends” were in a race to get to 5,000. That’s the limit of friends Facebook allows a person to have, but have you ever wondered how one person can really have 5,000 friends? Do you think the algorithms can even share your posts in such “friend’s” News Streams, even your most popular posts? But, I realized having them as my friend dilutes who sees my posts. And, these were individuals who even if they saw my post, they were not showing up for me. And because the algorithm feed it to them and they did not react, my post was shared less and less, meaning friends who might have seen it did not see it because the algorithms judged it unimportant. And so, these friends were really rather a burden to me. I was simply a bead on their necklace of getting to 5,000 friends, nothing more.

At the same time, I came to realize through a series of incidental conversations that I had “friends” not necessarily in a race to 5,000 but they had seen post about my dog dying in my arms as we rushed her to the vet, but they chose to stay invisible. They did not let me know they knew this, nor did they offer a word of comfort or support. They were just watching, which is a very odd feeling when you realize others are watching your pain. I know…it’s on me for sharing it. I take full responsibility for this. But, until this moment I supposed my friends were doing as I tried to do if I saw they were going through a hard or painful time. At the very least, I would let them know I saw their post. And most of the time, I try to leave a word of comfort or support. I understand that I miss many posts because I rely on the algorithms to show me stuff in my News Feed. I have thought many times that I should try to visit my friend’s timelines to make sure I don’t miss something important, but I always run out of time, just like everyone else does. And so, I rely on the algorithms, just like everyone else does. It is really a terrible way to be connected.

But now, I was realizing something I had not considered before: I had friends who were seeing my sad news but not letting me know they saw it nor offering a word of comfort or support. Rather, they were watching like voyeurs. If you look up the meaning to this word, it means a person who enjoys seeing the pain or distress of others. I began to feel like a Voodoo doll–a thing others can watch, perhaps even derive satisfaction or pleasure that the needles of pain and suffering were being visited upon me and not them. Have you ever watched a Reality TV show and said afterwards: “Thank God that’s not my life.” I began to wonder: Do we harbor as human beings somewhere deep in our collective psyche that our own personal pain and suffering might be averted by letting others suffer it for us? If so, this would be an ancient and unpalatable thing for a modern, civilized human being to admit, and therefore, it would have been forgotten by most. Indeed, it would have be buried deeply in our unconsciousness, but that doesn’t mean it went away…not at all, it’s still there lurking in our collective unconsciousness ready to pounce on someone else’s pain as if doing this could avert one’s own pain.

All this happened before COV-19 began its relentless march around the world, putting one country after another and another on lockdown. Before it became clear this was a global crisis that no one would be spared. If you are a human being, you are susceptible to becoming infected by this novel coronavirus because no one has immunity to it, and a vaccine may be many months away. It is an evolving situation, but so far this novel coronavirus appears to be 10 to 20 times more deadly than seasonal flu. Indeed, older people are more likely to go on to develop serve symptoms, but there are cases of younger people getting very sick too. And another novel feature of this virus is that some individuals may show little or no symptoms at all, but act like super spreaders.

This was, it is, a crisis that everyone is experiencing virtually at the same time. And, it is one that has removed almost every form of distraction we might have depended upon not to feel so bad about something we was or are experiencing. Sporting games have been shut down, bars and restaurants are being shut down, gyms and public spaces of every kind are being shut down. People must isolate, and if they got out into a public space, they must try to keep 6 feet distance. It is something we are not use to in modern, highly advanced, civilized societies, even though many, many people in the world have and are suffering much more everyday, but somehow we have managed to keep our distance from their pain.

The Lost Bird Tribe: Grow A Supportive & Caring Community Yourself

After this winnowing down of my online social contacts, I did something I didn’t expect to do. I created my own group. Yes, this was a crazy thing to do. I called this group: If you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust?  It’s a phrase Alan Watts said in one of his lectures. I started listening to a lot of Alan Watts after Cider died. I found his lectures strangely comforting. This particular phrase made a lot of sense to me as I was coming to terms with my fate and the world as it really is, and not how I wanted it to be. In a way, Watts was leading me back to one of my Lost Bird Tribes. He was helping me trust my inner knowledge and wisdom. He was helping me learn how to trust myself to take the actions I needed to take to heal me.

After creating this group, I invited a few friends who had stood by me. I really wasn’t sure what sort of group I wanted it to be, but I wanted a group that could honor differences between members with dignity and respect. I wanted a group that could foster deep conversations on issues that matter without being cruel to each other when we hit points of divergence on such issues as human beings are naturally going to hit because we are individuals. I had been in enough groups where I had seen the equivalent of online shouting (e.g., my idea or opinion is better than yours). It is a type of behavior that seems to have infected so many online groups and communities. I also wanted a group that could help individual members do things they felt deeply called to do but it can be incredibly difficult to do such a thing for doing so often requires a person to step back from the trappings and expectations of modern society and to live on shoestrings until something becomes self-sustaining, if it ever become self-sustaining.

The idea of creating a Swimming Pool for the Mind began to emerge. A place where friends can gather and share stories and ideas just like friends might do when they sit around a campfire. A place where we can grow a true sense of community like our ancestors surely shared when they came together to survive on the vast savannas and glaciers of long ago when humans did not rule the world. A place where we might discover moments of synchronicity that inspire or connect dots of thought or ideas. A place where we might go like a swimming pool to strengthen our body, but this was a pool for the mind to strengthen compassion, kindness, curiosity, and understanding. A place where we gathered to listen to each other and to grow in our individual beingness as human being living through extraordinary times that requires all of us to dive deeper inside ourselves and find inner lost languages and abilities needed right now to survive our times by making choices that regard the wellbeing and safety of others just as highly as the safety and wellbeing of one’s self.

The Lost Bird Tribe: We Are the Medicine of Now

Now is the time for our storytellers and artists and philosopher bloggers to shine a light forward; a way towards a kinder, a greener, a more compassionate future that has room for all living beings of Earth–the rich ones and the poor ones, the human ones and the non-human ones. We all go together and it is going to take every single individual making the choices that are as inclusive and compassionate as they can be to make it through our current crisis of COV-19 (e.g., maintain social distance and help to flatten the curve so that our medical systems don’t collapse and we do have enough respirators to help those individual who get severely ill from COV-19). It is going to take every single human being (rich and poor) to make personal sacrifices and choices to ensure and protect the greater good. We need each other doing this now to flatten the curve and avert the most devastating possibility this virus looks capable of inflicting everywhere where human lives.

And when our daily lives return to “normal” again, perhaps we can integrate some of the lessons we have learned about crisis and how we need each other most of all during these times. And, we can set aside our differences to flatten another curve of a catastrophic nature, the climate change curve, which also threatens human civilization as we know it.

Our individual choices hold the transformation power to hold COV-19 at bay and to mitigate the worst effects of climate change. This power resides inside of us. We are the medicine for Now. When we are going through a time of crisis, whether it is personal, regional, or global, the Lost Birds come to us through our nighttime dreams and daydreams, in visions and doodles, in flashes of insights and moments of intuition. They are the wings of wisdom that lift us above our circumstances to we can see a better way forward. They are the feathers of creativity, imagination, and artistry that reveal the buried treasures hidden in our souls.

They come in every shape and color. They can fly to the highest echelons of our minds or dive to the deepest, darkest parts inside our psyche. They help reconnect us back to the parts we have lost inside ourselves and show us how we to converse together again as one vibrant, alive Tribe of Earth.

What Lost Tribes and Languages wait to be discovered inside of you right now? Now is a gift of the most unique and unusual kind…it is the gift of time. We have all been knocked out of our usual routines and distractions. Perhaps with this time, you might catch a glimpse of one of your Lost Bird Tribes who can reconnect you with some of your lost inner languages. Now, you have the gift of time to venture an inner journey and become a legend. This is breaking the rules of modern life because if we truly find what matters to us inside, all the consumption and distraction and deadlines just might not matter so much.

Take now to recover a little bit more of who you are…who you have always been, it’s just been forgotten and buried by our modern, civilized life. Allow some of your Lost Bird Tribes to reveal themselves and show you beautiful things inside of yourself that can rejuvenate, inspire, and renew you, Now.

The Lost Bird Tribe: Be the Spark of Mutual Support & Understanding

One of the first conversations to emerge from this group was started by Founding Member Donna Alena Hrabcakova when she posted a couple of short stories and paintings that she called:

The Lost Bird Tribes and Lost Languages

— Donna Alena Hrabcakova — The Lost Bird Tribes and Lost Languages (Crisis and Lost Birds)

“TOP LEFT, AMERICAN GOLDFINCH, painted last night. I am deeply effected by the diminishing songs of the birds and I see less birds here in the Midwest these days. What would life be like without their sings and presence? So I dream of the Shamanic Birds whom lull me to sleep. Mourning. What will be their last proclaimation and who will be listening?  Translating for the birds. My last name Hrabcakova in Slovak means BIRD.”

— Donna Alena Hrabcakova

Night Shaman Bird: One Whom Flies With Elk

Night Shaman Bird: One Whom Flies With Elk — Donna Alena Hrabcakova

“THE LOST BIRD TRIBES AND LOST LANGUAGES 
Night Shaman Bird: One Whom Flies With Elk. 
More birds to be posted with writings. Sketchbook.
Good morning my fellow artists!”

— Donna Alena Hrabcakova

The Lost Bird Tribe: Be the Nourishing Rain that Grows A Conversation

Donna Alena’s two posts inspired another Founding Member, Ulrike Schütz, to share this:

The Legend of the Rainbow Crow

“The story of the Rainbow Crow is a Lenape legend, symbolizing the value of selflessness and service. After a long period of cold weather, the animals of the community become worried. They decide to send a messenger to the Great Sky Spirit to ask for relief. The Rainbow Crow, the most beautifully feathered bird, offers to make the arduous journey. He travels safely, and is rewarded by the Great Spirit with the gift of fire. He carries the gift in his beak back to his people, but upon his return, he does not appear to be the same bird that he once was. The fire has scorched his plumage black, with only hints of his previous color, and his voice has been made rough and hoarse by the smoke. In this way, his sacrifice is commemorated.

Another name for Rainbow Crow is Many Colored Crow. This is in reference to the iridescent feathers created from the fire that scorched his plumage black, with only hints of his previous color that reflect when sun light strikes them.” — Wiki

— Thank you Marianne Connor for sharing the magic of the Rainbow Crow.

Ulrike Schütz shared this picture as well, and she told how she had taken it just after hearing the story of the Rainbow Crow. The sky was retelling this legend and the crows were flying in the formation of a bird/crow. If you look for it, the way the clouds are shaped and how this flock of crows are spread out, they look like a crow in the sky. Ulrike said over the past few years she has developed a kind of communication with the sky that she calls Skylistening. Not only does the sky listen, but it can answer, just as the land, earth, and all the elemental forces.

This is a beautiful example of a synergistic conversation and how we as individuals can learn to tap back into our inner reservoir of wisdom waiting to help us, especially when we are confronting a challenge or enduring a time of crisis. Birds have always been messengers in myths and legends from around the world. And that makes sense because they are boundary crosser. In the normal everyday world, they cross the boundaries between land and sky. In the inner unusual world of the psyche, they can cross between boundaries of despair and hope, fear and confidence, love and hate.

This is what we need Now: To catch glimpses of our Lost Bird Tribes who will help us reconnect to our Lost Inner Languages and Parts of ourselves needed now more than ever to weather the storms we face, whether they come from inside or outside or regardless of it is it a personal crisis or a global one.

Here are a few more Lost Bird Tribes from Donna Alena’s beautiful series.

Lost Bird Tribe: Raven of the Night

“I woke up and painted this Raven of the Night.”

“It’s message: Art heals. Art is the Medicine of our times.”

Narratives. Bards. Poets. Painters. Storytellers. I think its message is to fly into the night and listen for the birds who are always singing, even during the Darkest Nights of the Soul.”

— Donna Alena Hrabcakova

Raven of the Night

Raven of the Night — Donna Alena Hrabcakova

Lost Bird Tribe: Lone Bird — The Language of Aloneness and Authenticity.

“Funny we don’t ask people who are alone, tell me about that…the world wants to share stores of partners, families, children etc…but I want to know about you in your alone moments? 
Who are you? 
What do you do? 
What do think about? 
Meditate on? 
Listen to? 
Read? 
Spend time doing? 
What is your passion in the alone moments that get you out of bed? 
That determine you had a satisfying day? 
That determine your sorrow? 
Sadness? 
Dreams? 
Happiness? 
Bliss? 
What do you dream of??? 
Tell me more about YOU. 

Let’s get to the SOUL of you because isn’t that what we are really hungry, no starving for authentic connection? 

Now that I am alone, not by choice but by fate rolling the dice, I think alot about who are we when we are alone? And why are many terrified of that. I struggle, yes, but I am finding peace more day by day. “

Lone Bird

Lone Bird — Donna Alena Hrabcakova

— LONE BIRD. Watercolor pencils. Sketchbook.

“I think this could be a beautiful collaborative blog if enough of us wanted to explore these very important questions. What are your thoughts?”

— Donna Alena Hrabcakova

Lost Bird Tribe: He/She Whom Crossed the Bering Strait. 

“I saw this one with wider features. He/she was covered in paint and feathers and crossed the lands that opened Pangea when we were all one continent. No borders. Ethnicities of every sort. Thousands of languages exploring the unclaimed landscapes trusting home existed somewhere. This was done in the night and I love how the colors turned out.”

— Donna Alena Hrabcakova

Acrylics. *Nighttime is a beautiful hour to paint.

CROSSING THE BERING STRAIT: MIGRATION OF THE UNNOWN.

CROSSING THE BERING STRAIT: MIGRATION OF THE UNNOWN. — Donna Alena Hrabcakova — Crisis and Lost Birds

Acrylics. *Nighttime is a beautiful hour to paint.

Lost Bird Tribe: Riven

“I just painted my fav painting thus far. I am taking a painting class MOTHER EARTH my teacher is the amazing Michal Shimoni. My art has truly shifted by practicing her techniques along with personal shifts in my life. Title: RIVEN: INITIATION. Riven is a Hebrew and British name meaning to split or tear apart. I had a dream 2 weeks ago I was in a painting class. I saw a book in the room I wanted to read but was told I could not read it by the Professor. I took the book and plastered it into the painting. The title was JE NE SAIS PAS. Which in French means “I don’t know.” My Slovakian Bubbie always said this. In Slovak it is YE NES NUM. I think art is a great mystery into the Darkness, the Void, the Unexplainable Places, I call them the Ancestors. There the Divine Spark is lit. I never know what I will bring back. Art and books can never be censorsed as it so much bigger than us!”

“Riven represents an adolescent girl becoming a woman. She is composed by the forest, a deep enigma carrying this forbidden book with her Shamanic bird companion. I saw her in a jingle dress and feathers. I lived on an Indian Reservation for years. She was apprenticing for this Sacred Calling. These women are the Medicine Dancers. I am so honored I walked on Ojibwa lands for 7 years. What a gift. Something has shifted in my art with this painting. I don’t fully understand it but we will see where it goes. I am honored and humbled to share RIVEN. Are you going on a personal initiation also?”

— In loving kindness, Donna Alena

Riven

Riven — Donna Alena Hrabcakova

Lost Bird Tribe: SPIRITS IN THE TREES: HOOVER DAM

“I was inspired by Hoover Dam this morning. Horses, Elk, Shamanic Birds, Tree Goddesses cohabitating in these magical landscapes of trees… Watercolor Pencils. Inspiration from Michal Shimoni my teacher abroad and our MOTHER EARTH PAINTING CLASS. Today was a hard day so I am happy with this. 💘”

— Donna Alena Hrabcakova

Spirits in the Trees: Hoover Dam

SPIRITS IN THE TREES: HOOVER DAM — Donna Alena Hrabcakova

Lost Bird Tribes: WHEN WOMEN WERE BIRDS.

“Well this seems like 1,000’s of layers. I see her as Persephone rising from the Earth being reunited with her Mother Demeter. It appears she is half bird a shapeshifter of some sort. I am thinking as we isolate more I will try and focus on my art even deeper. The ARTIST voices are needed now more than ever to transmute this energy we are faced with. The day is so quiet with snow falling it almost seems like the pandemic crisis of this virus is at bay but we all know better. I used quite a bit of molding paste mixed with spices, coffee, rose oil, dirt and more. I have stated earlier that my last name in Slovak means bird. Seems very fitting since I have painted them so much. I want to hear your songs, stories, see your art, poetry, writings and musings. Let us embrace the alone time to really evaluate what is TRULY important. 💙”

— Donna Alena Hrabcakova

When Women Women Birds

WHEN WOMEN WERE BIRDS. — Donna Alena Hrabcakova — Crisis and Lost Birds

More Lost Bird Tribes and Languages
Individuals Who Are Following Their Creativity and Passion

Here are a few more individuals who I know are doing wonderful things by sinking deeply into what they feel called to do right here and right now. Really, this is all we ever have is Here & Now. It is at this point where we can transform ourselves and the world. Each of us holds a critical pieces to a better future and to a more sustainable and compassionate world. How are you going to use your gift of Now?

My friend Reinhard Hopperger is launching a new website called GreenerAndWiser. This is a site that gathers together in one place information on current events, climate issues, Native American wisdom, spirituality, society, technology, economy, and more–basically everything that makes Now so very challenging to navigate, especially as a global collective whose footprint covers every nook and cranny of our world and whose individual choices that add up to a massive collective choice could determine the fate of our world. He also has launched a Facebook group with the same name.

GreenerAndWiser — website and group

My friend Ben Roberts is growing a global community to explore the art of being fully human in a time of crisis. Individuals gather from around the world a couple of times through a series of Zoom calls that explore relevant topics impacting participants. There is also a Facebook group where people gather to share ideas as well as many other innovative social platforms being woven together to create a new type of social platform to harness the good each individual seeks to share and amplify it through this growing collective. It takes the form of a global gathering and gift economy for collectively navigating the complexity of our times in order to support action, build community, foster healing, and unleash generosity. To find out more, visit Now What?! A new series of Zoom calls are about to begin on March 23, 2020, so go check it out.

Now What?! website and Facebook Group

My friend Alex Lavigne-Gagnon is an artists, musical, and philosopher blogger. Through his work, he shows us beautiful ways to reconnect to inner landscapes of musical expression or color or words. Each of us can find these inner-scapes through the act of creating. Here are just a few of Alex’s beautiful creations.

Nuit blanche – Improvisation

And on Reverbnation: Jonas-Thanatos the Engineer is a selection of songs he has composed and produced.

Jonas-Thanatos the Engineer — Singer/Songwriter

My friend Hannelie Sensemaker Worldpainter Venucia is helping people reconnect to joy through the Joy Generation. Check out her website and YouTube channel:

Joy Generation

My friend Jürgen Hornschuh writes thought provoking blogs and will soon publish a book entitled “Mach was!?” (Do something!?). He writes about the predicament of our culture, otherwise known as global industrial civilization. His book will draw upon the works of Daniel Quinn, John Michael Greer, Derrick Jensen, Thomas Henry Pope, Keith Farnish, George Gorman, and Charles Eisenstein, to name a few of the many sources of insight and inspiration for “Mach was!?”, which is a look at civilization from various angles in order to find out how we can face its omnicidal trip individually and collectively.

My friend Floris Koot also blogs The Gentle Revolution: Towards a revolution we all want to dance in, for a flourishing planet.

My friend George Chiger is a professional eater. Yes, you read this right. He trains as a competitive eater. This is a competitive sport that takes training. George is ranked 12th in the world. He is trying currently to reach enough views on his YouTube channel The Smorgasborg to monetize it. This will help him make this a self-sustaining profession. He dreams to leverage his success as a professional eater to help children and youth in the United States who do not have enough to eat to get enough to eat. If you are looking for interesting things to view on YouTube right now, check out George!

George Chiger on Porkroll & His Competitive Eating Journey

My brother is working to create innovative graphics for websites and social media that catch attention and are unusual and unique. He has created a self-evolving algorithm that evolves your original designs. All the moving featured images, website graphics, and even the moving spacers in this blog have been created using his WordPress plugin. He needs people to try things out and help him evolve it even more. If your interested, check out his website and for early adopters of the WordPress plugin, he may provide it free for a limited number.

Genolve website

These are just some of the people who I know sinking down into doing something they feel deeply called to do. Many have made sacrifices to do so. So find your Lost Bird Tribes, tell your story, create your art or music or movie. This is what leads us to the reservoirs of wisdom where our lost inner languages flow eternally, this is where we get our strength to survive practically anything. It is how we grow as individuals, how we find the courage to be compassionate, how we change the world.

Be the Most Creative You that YOU Can Be, Now, and Change Reality

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In the Heart of the Sea of Grief and Guilt

Recently, my husband and I watched the movie: In the Heart of the Sea. It is based on a true story about a whaling ship the Essex that was rammed by a sperm whale in 1820. The whale sunk the Essex about 3,000 miles from the shores of South America. Several books have been written about this disaster then and since. The movie is based on a book of the same name written by Nathaniel Philbrick and published on May 8, 2000. It won the National Book Award for Nonfiction that same year. The movie does an admirable job dramatizing events that led up to the sinking of the Essex and the crew’s 90-day struggle to survive storms, hunger, and despair. The movie also depicts how Herman Melville came to write his magnum opus, Moby Dick, though there are some inaccuracies in this part of storyline as well as in the main plot (see the video below). I think it is interesting to note that Melville was born on August 1, 1819 (one year before the Essex sunk). He died September 28, 1891. Moby Dick was published in 1851, essentially the middle span of his life.

The movie begins with Melville tracking down the last living survivor of the Essex, Thomas Nickerson (this is not historically accurate). 

From Wiki: “In 1850, author Herman Melville visits innkeeper Thomas Nickerson, the last survivor of the sinking of the whaleship Essex, offering money in return for his story. Nickerson initially refuses, but then finally agrees when his wife intervenes. The story turns to 1820: A whaling company in Nantucket has refitted the Essex to participate in the lucrative whale oil trade, and 14-year-old Nickerson signs on as a cabin boy.”  Wikipedia: In the Heart of the Sea

According to the movie, the rainy night Melville arrives, Thomas is consumed by his inner demons because he has never spoken about his ordeal. It is eating him up from the inside and causing hardships for himself and his wife. After some back and forth about the money Melville is offering Thomas to tell his tale, Thomas finally relents. Melville is shown listening and taking notes while Thomas sinks into the memories that are haunting him. I will not retell any more of the movie, except to highlight a few scenes that stood out to me as relevant to me personally and to our time, which is presently 2020. This is exactly 200 years after the Essex was sunk by a whale, which is weird… but I’ll get to that later.

The first thing that struck me as pertinent to our time was the importance of whale oil to the life and commerce of the early 1800s. It was whale oil that lit the Western World from Europe to the Americas, and then following the fracture lines of colonization to light the entire world. The movie does an excellent job depicting how the whaling industry operated. It shows how the corporations of this time were eager to mine the fortunes to be had from whale oil. And, it would become painfully clear just how willing these corporations were of doing despicable things in order to safeguard their money, their hierarchical structure, and their systems of commerce focused on profit at all costs.

At the end of the movie, there is a scene that hints at the discovery of oil that comes from out of the ground. It is a nod to the fossil fuel industry that will soon replace the whaling industry in less than 40 years after the sinking of the Essex. It is also a nod to the transfer of blueprints from hard-hearted industry to another. However, before the whaling industry would decline, nearly every species of whale is hunted to the brink of extinction. I could barely watch the scenes in this movie when the men of the Essex successfully hunted and killed a beautiful bull whale, then stripped him of every ounce of fat he had, which they boiled down to make the treasured Nantucket whale oil. By 1820, whales in the Atlantic had grown scarce. Thus, the Essex had to sail around Cape Horn, a dangerous strait between South America and Antarctica, to reach the whales in the Pacific. But, even here the whales were being hunted aggressively, and so they were moving further and further away from the continents to get away from man. But, man followed them.

* * *

The next scene I feel is germane to our time was when the men were boarding the Essex in Nantucket Bay. On the docks, there is a group of pilgrim-like people who are praying for the men as they board the Essex. You can see this scene at 6 minutes and 30 seconds in the video below. The preacher is heard saying: 

“Oh Father (…) ensure they return safely with a full ship, so that the white flames of Nantucket’s whale oil continue to light our homes and fuel the machines of industry that drive our great nation forward as our noble species evolves…”

Clip of the Preacher’s Prayer from In the Heart of the Whale at minute 6:30

This video is from The Cynical Historian who brings up a very important point about framing.

As you read the rest of this blog, consider the different ways humans frame reality. We can’t help it really. It’s the price we pay for consciousness. And, there is a price for being able to make a choice other than what instinct would have otherwise dictated we do. Time is a framing device that our minds use to distinguish between a moment in the past and a moment yet to be. Money is a framing device most people who live in Western Civilization must use to make a living and to acquire a station in life. Western Civilization itself is a framing device (For more on this frame of reality, see How to identify imperialistic thought (Yurugu series #2)).

Frames are helpful because they encode observations about when something like this happens that follows. Frames serve as shortcuts in thinking that can help us make decisions quickly when we encounter similar situations again. But, all frames leave out critical parts of reality. And, it is these parts that get left out that can really mess us up when we encounter a situation that we really don’t understand… like the men on the Essex when they encountered a whale that was not acting like any whale they had ever encountered before. Sometimes our misjudgments and lack of seeing reality as it really is results in terrible consequences. What is being left out of the dominant modern frame imposed by Western Civilization?

This idea of our species being noble and evolving ever forward plays out again after the Essex has been sunk. The men have been adrift for many days and nights and days. They are surviving on a single piece of hard tact per man per day, and a very small one at that. They are also allowed a single swig of water each day. Since the ship did not sink as dramatically as the movie depicts, the men had time to strip the Essex of her sails and supplies, but only what they could fit into the smaller boats they took out to chase whales, now turned into their life rafts. However, these three boats were hardly big enough to hold enough supplies so the men might survive their 3,000-mile journey back to civilization, especially since they were caught in the doldrums of the equatorial region of the sea. Thus, it does not take long before the men are slowly starving to death. Just before anyone dies, they come upon an island. It is a deserted island, but it provides a short respite from their ordeal. Soon; however, they eat up everything edible on the island. So, they have no choice but to shove off in their little boats again to try to reach the mainland if they want to live. 

This is where the next scene occurs that I feel is closely connected to our time. It is the night before they are to set sail to try to make it back to South America. The first mate Chase speaks with the Captain Pollard about their differences. He is making a peace offering because he knows there is no other way to survive but to set aside all differences and work together from a place of unity. Chase comes from a working-class background. He is a man who knows his trade, which is whaling, and he is very good at it. According to the movie, he was supposed to have received commanded of the Essex, but it was taken from him because of his social class. It was given to Pollard instead because he came from a rich family within the whaling industry. But, Pollard did not know his trade, not like Chase did. Needless to say, there were problems. Pollard accepts Chase’s peace offering, but continues to cling to the idea of the supremacy of man saying something like… “God put us here to circumvent navigate the world and rule over all creatures.” Chase replies, “Does it look like we are so supreme given where we are at right now and what has happened to us.” Neither men at this moment has any idea how much worst their situation is going to get, but I think Chase senses things are probably going to get worse before they get better. And, they do get worse–-they get a whole lot worse.

* * *

After the movie, I thought I might dream about a white whale ramming the Essex. But I did not dream about a whale. Instead, I thought about all the signs I missed one month earlier when my beloved dog Cider died in my arms.

ALL ALONG THE ANCESTORS WERE GUIDING ME HOME. Whale, Sea Turtle, and Heron by Donna Alena Hrabcakova
WATER AND BONES. Women with Rib by Donna Alena Hrabcakova
Cider Dog
Cider-Fox by Donna Alena Hrabcakova — Alena drew this picture about 3 weeks after Cider passed. My husband, I, and surviving dog Sasha were on a walk retracing the last run I took with Cider before she died. On that last run, Cider and I saw a fox. Cider was thrilled about seeing it and barked so vigorously. One would hardly guess she would be dead in less than 48 hours. She loved looking for foxes, and we saw them many times in the months before she died. While we were walking, Alena felt this image rising and drew it then sent it to me. We both felt it was Cider’s beautiful spirit saying: “I am still here.”

That terrible night occurred two days before Christmas. Her heart was racing so fast and her breathing labored. Her body was suffocating because it could no longer keep up with the depletion of hemoglobin in her blood. This was because she was bleeding internally, but we did not know this. The signs were subtle, even the doctors to whom we took her dead body in hopes they could revive her said it would have been hard for them to diagnosis her in time to save her. The symptoms she had displayed, I completely misread and misunderstood. I will not recap this super sad story. You can read it in the previous blog post, but her sudden and tragic death set me back adrift upon my inner sea of sadness, grief, despair, and now guilt, growing waves of guilt. It is a sea that has steadily risen inside me after a decade of struggle that got a whole lot worst just after our family vacation in 2015.

This would be the last vacation our family could afford due to mounting unfortunate and deteriorating circumstances. Now with hindsight (and this movie), I can see that this moment was when our family shoved off from our desert island. We had no idea we had already been rammed by the whale, or maybe I should say the buffalo or bull–or perhaps the buffalos were trying to bring our attention to our imminent danger just ahead of us in time. This really happened to us that summer.

After this trip, every fragile idea and frame of reality we had ever harbored about what it takes to create and sustain a home and maintain safety and security would be shattered, one painful one after another for 5 years in ways that were unreturnable to what we had known before. When people find themselves in such circumstances, overwhelming guilt is inevitable for how else can one confront such devastating losses and continue moving forward? The only other feelings I can say that I was aware of underneath the guilt was terrible despair, overwhelming helplessness, and a rumbling anger… a dangerous anger because this type of anger can blow up into hate, especially when a person feels abandoned, forgotten, or even worst, discarded, dispensable, disposable.

So, you see, guilt is a pretty good armor during times like these because it masks these other more threatening and extreme emotions bubbling up from unfathomable depths and threatening to submerge one’s already shattered ego. At least by feeling guilty, a thin veneer gets created, making a papery barrier that insulates the conscious part of one’s self from those other parts where these powerful emotions churn–and where one can feel these emotions could transform into forces that could sink the listing Ship of Self.

When our frames of reality are first shattered, the feeling of being cast adrift on a vast and foreign sea is almost inescapable. And perhaps it is necessary for these old frames pretty much have to be shattered or abandoned, just like the Essex had to be abandoned after it was rammed by the whale. This is so because they have failed us in significant and fatal ways. After one abandons the mother ship that had been carefully constructed by one’s former smaller frames of reality, one is suddenly confronted with a vast and bigger reality–one that is a great deal bigger–like Pacific Ocean bigger. And, this reality can be brutal. When one finds oneself adrift on this great Sea of Misfortune and Sorrow and sailing in a boat that is too small to sustain you for long, or even worse, clinging to a piece of wreckage, pretty much the only thing you can do is hold on for dear life. One also lacks the most basic tools to navigate by, so it can be hard to get one’s orientation. It is a lot like the situation the men who abandoned the Essex found themselves in without their tools of navigation, or at least, very few of them, which they needed to find their way back to civilization.

If you can hold on during such extreme times, and there is no guarantee that you can because I am talking about catastrophic circumstances that happen to perfectly normal and good people. These are events that come out of nowhere, they cannot be predicted, and they occur through no fault or short coming of the individual (well at least not from our current frames of reality, the ones we are taught from birth and punished if we don’t follow the rules our modern systems purport… so there is a bigger thing going on). These are events that just happen, and they happen to everyone like weather. They are crippling events, even lethal, regardless of whether they originate from inside oneself or come from outside like the whale who rammed the Essex. Now, I understand it is hard to spot a person in such a state. After all, they have ventured outside of the normal frames of reality in which we have all been taught to operate and to stay inside. Thus, such a person may be as hard to spot as the men of the Essex who were 3,000 miles from where most of the other humans who could have helped them were congregated. However, if you do happen to spot someone enduring such trauma and crisis, it is essential to believe this person and be kind to them. Pay them extra attention, so they know they are not disposable like a piece of trash to be thrown away because they are broken at the moment. It is important to do this because these individuals have survived a disaster, and they now possess information about reality that those of us who have not endured such a trial of survival still need to know in order to grow.

It is difficult and draining to support a person in crisis. I will not lie about that. And, inevitably survivors begin to grapple with the whys: why me, why now, why my beloved, why is the world like this? This is hard too, and these are not easy questions to answer. In fact, often they cannot be answered, only endured. But, catastrophic situations might be essential for our collective survival because they force us to confront our most cherished ideas, beliefs, and frames of reality. They force us to grapple with the unanswerable and re-examine how we have come to our beloved beliefs and mental frames, but ones that have kept vast parts of ourselves submerged in our unconsciousness–good parts and bad parts. When we begin to see these parts as a whole, we start to understand how they are essential to be integrated into our growing field of consciousness. Both superior and inferior qualities are essential to help us make more balance choices and live more wisely. With parts of ourself still submerged, we tend to move through the world in a lopsided way. We get stuck just like the men from the Essex who got caught in the doldrums. We do not move forward any more. Rather, we go around in smaller and smaller circles. It is only when we confront and integrate these lost parts of ourself that we can begin to move forward again. And, if bad things continue to happen, we have grown a deeper reservoir of fresh water inside ourselves, this is wisdom, and we can draw on it to help survive and recover from our ordeals a little more quickly.

Eventually, as we continue to do inner work, we also confront the knowledge that what we did not know or understand contributed to the situation that caused us so much pain and suffering and to those we love. This can be difficult knowledge to bear. However, it is precisely this sort of knowledge that help us grow and transform ourselves and our situation. It is a choice of course to grow, and if we do choose to grow, then a lot of work is going to be needed to build a bigger boat. In fact, you are probably going to have to grow the wood, to turn into timber, to build your shiny new Ship of Self because now you are working beyond the frames of reality most people still must work within. This not easy. And, it can be very lonely. And, you need to build it yourself because only you have the blueprint for who you are and what you need to do. There will be many setbacks and challenges because no one has tried to be you before, and so you have to figure it out the hard way, which means lots of failures. So, I do not find fault with anyone who chooses to go back to a smaller frame of reality because, heck, it’s really scary out there. And, now the world has shown you just how harsh and dangerous it can be. And, it has also illuminated how utterly helpless you are. The biggest problem doing this is succumbing to a bunker mentality. So, moments like these tend to mold and shape us in the most significant ways…for the rest of our life… and these choices can ripple backwards and forwards along our thin strand of time… the one each of us spins and contributes to our shared reality.

But, if you choose to build this bigger Ship of Self, then just like Captain Pollard had to confront the idea of human beings a noble species put here by God to circumvent navigate the world and rule over all other creatures, you have to confront it too because it is an idea that forms some of the foundational aspects of Western Civilization. But, are we really so noble? Do we really possess the intelligence and wisdom needed to rule? I wonder if our species might have been better named Homo intelligentes rather than Homo sapiens. It seems to me we are still trying to get there…to wisdom.

STANDING ON MY ANESTRAL LANDS: GIGLOVCE, SLOVAKIA by Donna Alena Hrabcakova

I can say with absolutely certainty that I am not noble enough to rule the Earth, nor do I possess the intelligence, or more importantly the wisdom, essential to reign as a supreme being. But now I want to transition from this speculative stream of thought, to say 2015 was also the year this movie In the Heart of the Sea was released. I didn’t see it then. It turns out a lot of people didn’t see it then. 

“In the Heart of the Sea was one of two flops released by Warner Bros in 2015, the other being Pan.[20] It grossed $25 million in North America and $68.9 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $93.9 million, against a production budget of $100 million.[3]”  Wikipedia: In the Heart of the Sea

But, had I seen it in 2015, I would not have the thoughts I have now here in 2020; not that they are anything special, except possibly to me. During, these five years of mounting misfortune, wreckage, and deepening despair, I often saw myself floating on a piece of wreckage on an endless sea that I dubbed the Sea of Sorrow. It was an inner sea; I drew it many times, as the image below shows (see blog The Sea Within Us). It was also during this time that I came to understand how this sea had been created by my own unconscious choices, but I was not alone in these choices. I had been taught to make them by my culture, by the collective systems within which I must abide to survive. These are carefully crafted frames of reality created by mere mortals who were crafting corporations and all sorts of other systems to run our shiny new modern civilization. And, there are many systems that rule our civilized world: systems of commerce, systems of class, systems of favoritism, chauvinism, sexism, racism, anti-Semitism, and many other isms and frames used to exclude certain people while elevating others.

The Sea Within Us by Bébé

And so, this is why I very much relate to the suffering and hardships of these men of the Essex. Though I must admit I also rooted for the bull whale protecting his pod after the men harpooned one of his females who had a calf. One might say I am divided individual, and Carl Jung would agree with this. Indeed, to be human is to be divided inside. It is another price for being consciousness. How we resolve this divide can determine everything.

After the bull whale successfully saved the mother and her calf, my sympathies returned to the men and their dire situation. Sure, they were surrounded by water, but it was water they could not drink. Sure, the sea was filled with abundant food, but it was food they could not reach. It was rather as if they floated on a vast desert, and actually that is what happens inside of us when we accept frames of reality that are ultimately too small for who we are and what we ultimately need to do in our life. The men of the Essex had most definitely ended up in the middle of the Pacific partly due to their own poor choices, but in a greater part, they ended up their due to the priorities and short-sightedness of the industry for which they worked. A system of commerce hungry for whale oil that made it impossible for the men to turn back home until they had filled their ship with this precious oil. A hunger that would soon be replicated in full within the nascent fossil fuel industry about to burst out of the ground–imagine that.

* * *

The next day after watching this movie and not sleeping very well due to my great guilt over Cider’s death, my husband and I went for a run with our older surviving dog Sasha. I pointed up into the sky and said: “Look — that cloud looks like a White Whale.”  

Cloud Shaped Like Whale — Masterfile

This was not the cloud I saw, but I think we have all seen clouds that look like White Whales at some point in our life. Captivated by the movie, and now by the cloud, a thought popped into my head: “The world has been struck by the White Whale again.”  

It is clouds, is it not, that are being screwed up by climate change? Either they are growing too big and dropping too much water causing torrential floods, which are only supposed to happen every 100 years or so, but now seem to occur every other year around the world. Or, it is clouds that blow up into mega-typhoons and hurricanes that are far more devastating and deadly with terrible winds and tidal surges. Or, it is clouds that just don’t form at all, evaporating before they can release their precious water further inland from the sea, leaving the land dry and parched and extremely susceptible to wildfires and devastating famines due to droughts that never end.

KOALA — I Weep for You Australia by Donna Alena Hrabcakova — This is just one of the precious species we are losing every day…

Today, we live in a modern world that is populated by nearly 8 billion people, most of whom no longer understand the wisdom of our ancestors or the people who still live closely connected to nature and understand the balances necessary to sustain life. We live in a world where we no longer hear the wisdom of animals and life all around us, really enveloping us and sustaining us. We have become a people who are blinded by ideas of success, glory, and riches to be had in our grand new industrialized world. It is a world we created, but one begotten by short-sighted schemes and greed. And, there is a price for this too.

Recent data shows 2019 was the second hottest year on record.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Screen-Shot-2020-01-20-at-12.44.03-PM.png
Popular Science — 2019 was the second warmest year on record—here’s what this means for our future: New government data shows climate change is (still) heating up — Kate Baggaley, 1/17/20

As our man-made world, powered now by fossil fuels rather than whale oil, pushes nature’s delicate balances ever more out of whack, balances that nature worked out over billions of years, our framing of reality is snapping–just like the timbers of the Essex splintered after the whale rammed the ship. It is 200 year since the Essex sunk, and in this incredibly short amount of time, Earth is breaking, all because of our extreme enamoration with oil and coal.

PBS NEWSHOUR: Could bushfires erode Australia’s climate change ‘inertia’?

The price for our collective short-sighted industriousness is going to be paid by all of us. No one will be spared the consequences of the choices made for far too long. We have changed the world to our liking, but it’s not to the liking of life. Despite this, corporate interests guarding their profit margins stay the course, like Captain Pollard going straight into the hurricane. It is a course that supersedes the needs of life on Earth… a dying Earth… an Earth rammed by the white whale. But this time, there is a twist to the story because this time we are the whale. We are the ones ramming our ship that is carrying us through the vast and desolate emptiness of space, and believe me, if we have to abandon this ship, where we end up is going to be a lot harsher than the Pacific Ocean, probably unendurable. This whale that is living inside us feeds on the powerful emotions that are found in great abundance within our inner Seas…of Sorrow, …of Despair, …of Grief and Guilt and …of Helplessness and Hate. Believe me, or don’t believe me, but modern life is full of people who have fallen into such seas.

If we happen to catch a glimpse of how our personal blindness and short-sightedness has contributed to this current moment, it is often overwhelming, and so, it is quickly concealed or we blame someone else for our sad and sorry fate. But soon, there will be no one else to blame. Soon, our individual seas will spill over and merge with every other sea spilling over to create one gigantic wave of despair for this will be the only emotion left to feel, if we survive that long. Much of this will be because of what our small frames of reality have wrought. Most likely, it will be a prolonged and brutal odyssey, just like the men of the Essex endured… unless we wake up, unless we change our frame of reality, unless we put aside our differences, unite, and help each other do the inner work essential to survive what is coming next. 

This is not easy or pretty work, but what lies ahead of us is not easy or pretty either. Even though the situation is dire, each and every one of us can take action this very moment. This action is to heal ourselves and to help others heal. It requires one magical, elusive ingredient, which is love. It begins by self-love and being gentle with yourself. Love is what can stop this wave of destruction. But, love is work. 

This is what I have learned about healing love:

Is quiet, unless it needs to roar.

Is kind, but not stupid.

Puts others needs above ones own needs and desires, but sees through false appeals for assistance and insincerity, then it simply nods and chuckles.

Listens, hears, and understands what others say.

Waits…sometimes a long time…without judgment… if judgement is necessary, love has a good argument with the Self… and pays attention to all the information, good and bad, then weighs it fairly with the intention of discovering truth and implementing justice.

Rearranges time to do the right thing… rescue a stray dog, listen to a lonely person, help someone in need… these are the moments that really matter… when someone else’s needs truly supersede your own.

Is inclusive knowing all beings are utterly dependent on each other to survive and thrive on Earth.
Protects the rights, dignity, and well-being of all living beings.

Penetrates through everything… it is the great mixer of the universe, but even as it passes through every visible thing in the universe, it does not change or destroy a thing or being in any way, not like hate does, which also penetrates everything, but when it does, it rips things to pieces… love unites, bonds, supports, comforts, and sustains.

There are many other qualities to love. I still need to learn more. But, I am ready to keep learning. I am ready to deconstruct and reconstruct my frames of reality daily, if needed. Are you ready to do intense inner work? Are you ready to build a bigger Ship of Self by growing your own inner strength, resilience, wisdom, and capacity to love deeply? All of this is absolutely essential to be ready for the Great Transformation or whatever is supposed to come next because it has begun. There is no time to waste. Earth has already started listing severely to the side from the ramming we have given her.

THE EL CAMINO OF GRIEF. 
A dream of me in my Russian fur hat on ancestral land — by Donna Alena Hrabcakova
WHEN YOU BECAME LOVE AND BLISS. Blair in the afterlife — by Donna Alena Hrabcakova



* * *

One final thought on the importance of doing inner work since I’m all worked up about it. Many people think that we are on the cusp of a Great the Transformation, a Shift, or Metamorphosis, or Great Awakening of Gaia…but if we have not done critical inner work to get ready for it, to grow big enough for it, whatever you think is coming next, will not necessarily be what you think it is supposed to be. Nature does not care one wick for the transformation of consciousness or even if we survive as a species (case in point, note what happened to the dinosaurs). If we leave it up to Her, we might just all be transformed into Banana Slugs (see the 2nd song in the video below: Muy Tranquil — it’s at about 8 minutes… ah Cider is in this video! It is a concept video for one of the characters in the story I am writing).  

We are the ones who stepped across the Matrix of Minds into consciousness (I explain what this is in the story I am writing, which you can read when I finally get the 1st book out; otherwise, just make up your own explanation). Now, we must make a choice. One of the choices is to learn how to love ourselves fiercely. And, I am not talking about narcissistic love. I am talking about the kind of love that leaves us in great grief when our loved ones are taken from us through death. This is how we save Earth. It begins with you. It begins with healing yourself, and then helping others to do the same. It is time-consuming, messy work, and one slides backwards all the time, it’s very frustrating… but one does not give up and one does not wince when another to small frame of reality is shed. Of course, this is painful, but without pain we do not grow.

I have included my friend Alena’s paintings, lots of them, because she is showing us through her art how to get back to inner, deeper spaces inside ourselves through dreams and visions and imagination. It is only here where we can see inner storms rising and circumvent navigate them in order to survive them. It is here where we learn that we can live a lot more simply and happily than we have been told. It is here where we can learn how to see, feel, taste, and hear our way back to what is really important, and that is love. When we love fiercely, we fight for truth and justice. We fight for life and self-determination. We help each other grow our fields of consciousness, so that we can all make better choices. Alena brought my attention to Robert Moss who recently published a blog on soul loss and recovery. Much of what I have written above can also be understood as soul loss. This is a beautiful analogy to what happens to us when we face situations and circumstances that overwhelm and crush us. He says: “Understanding soul loss and how our Active Dreaming approach facilitates soul recovery and helps us become shamans of our own souls.”

So, activate your imagination…make time to dream…find ways to re-engage your inner world, and most of all love deeply. When you find yourself in grief, which is a natural consequence of deep love, do not fear it… embrace it. Let it help you shatter your previous frames of reality because they were probably too small for your soul, which needs a bigger body and mind to do what it came here to do, so grow! All the while, love yourself and help others in whatever way they need. We will not survive any other way unless we put aside our differences and unite as a force of healing love for life.

Drawing by Bébé from video blog: It Came From Inside and Tribute to Cider

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Jewels of Indra’s Net

I wrote the following as a reflection from a series of conversations people from around the world had to discuss the climate crisis. As I looked through the wondrous materials considered and assembled by the Conference Weaving Now What? Deep Dives, I was dazzled by the jewels in the Now What?! Consciousness Deep Dive Conversation Harvest. Immediately, I thought of Indra’s Net. Before telling you why, it is important to understand what this net is. And, to find out more about Now What, visit the beautiful new site: Now What?! The art of being fully human in a time of crisis​

According to Wikipedia: Indra’s net is a metaphor used to illustrate three essential concepts:

Indra’s Jewel — Art by Bébé
  • Śūnyatā (emptiness) – This is a Buddhist concept that has multiple meanings depending on its doctrinal context. It is either an ontological feature of reality, a meditative state, or a phenomenological analysis of experience. [I believe for something new to emerge there must be space for it, thus this feature of reality both outer and inner is essential to all who seek to bring into the world a kinder, gentler, restorative reality.]
Indra’s Jewel — Art by Bébé
  • Pratītyasamutpāda (dependent origination) – This concept “is commonly translated as dependent origination, or dependent arising, is a key principle in Buddhist teachings,[note 1] which states that all dharmas (“phenomena”) arise in dependence upon other dharmas: “if this exists, that exists; if this ceases to exist, that also ceases to exist”.  [I cannot think of a more essential concept to consider as we engage together in these sessions and others along with the weaving done afterwards. I always need to be reminded what dharma means. There is no single English translation for this word. Essentially it is the behaviors that make life in the universe possible. I think fits beautifully with us joining together in conversations that seek to understand and uplift behaviors that sustain life on our planet. If we don’t understand each other, we are indeed stuck.]
Indra’s Jewel — Art by Bébé
  • Interpenetration (coalescence) – This concept developed from the Huayan school. It  holds all phenomena (dharmas) are deeply interconnected, mutually arising, and every phenomenon contains all other phenomena. Various metaphors and images are used to illustrate this idea. The first is known as Indra’s net. The net is set with jewels which have the extraordinary property that they reflect all of the other jewels, while the reflections also contain every other reflection, ad infinitum. The second image is that of the world text. This image portrays the world as consisting of an enormous text which is as large as the universe itself. The words of the text are composed of the phenomena that make up the world. However, every atom of the world contains the whole text within it. It is the work of a Buddha to let out the text so that beings can be liberated from suffering. [So, there you go. Perhaps this is why Indra’s Net popped into my mind as I read through the jewels, which is only a tiny piece of the harvest and this is even a tiny part of what is happening when we connect with each other and seek mutual understanding. We are indeed reflected in each other. We are the jewels in the Indra Net enveloping Earth.]

I imagine two wonderous Indra’s Net. One net holds our universe. It is woven by time and space that create the matrix holding everything we see in our universe. The second Indra’s Net is like the first, but this one wraps around our beautiful Earth. All life on Earth create the threads that are woven together to create this web. Humans have taken on an exaggerated importance in this web because of the level of consciousness we have attained. I am not going to delve into my thinking on this now…perhaps later… but suffice it to say we have changed the matrix from which we were born, and now we have a Herculean Task upon our shoulders to repair what has been damaged by us so life may continue to exist on this precious jewel in the larger Indra Net—Earth.

I think when we come together and listen to each other, we repair Earth’s net. Each of us has a special place and unique abilities that are needed to sustain Earth’s Indra’s Net. Each human being is informed by individual passions, interests, experiences, and failures. Some of us are really good at speaking, others are really good at organizing, still others are healers, and others bring visions. Each human being weaves part of this wondrous web enveloping Earth. To heal and repair our net, Earthneeds all our insights, energies, passions, and gifts.

So, this is the idea that struck me as I read the harvest material from the conferences, deep dives, and other conversations. It seems to me every human being is a jewel in Earth’s Indra’s Net. Through us the energy needed to repair, strengthen, and heal this netis made visible. We are essentially portalsof transformation, and it is going to take as many ofus pulling in the same direction as possible to change our collectivefate.

I have not had much time to read everything, nor did I have participate in the Deep Dives, but what I have seen is beautiful pieces of wisdom being pulled up from depths inside ourselves. Wisdom that has become submerged and lost due to current ways of thinking and living in our world. Let me stress the weaving being done through our collective action is utterly essential for the moment we are in now.  

Given limits on my time at this moment, I am only able highlight a few of the jewels that caught my attention as I looked through the excellent excel chart being created to preserve some of the harvest from this collective work. There are also notes and videos of Deep Dives and from parts of the conferences taking place around the world. My selection of a few of the jewels in no way diminishes any of the other jewels.I am a simple and small portal of consciousness informed by my individual experiences, passions, dreams, and failures. All this naturally limits what I can see and how I see it. But, then thisis the beauty of Indra’s Net. Each jewel is unique and reflects every other jewel in the net. I suspect there are as many jewels in Earth’s Indra’s Net as there human beings alive on the planet, and the energy coursing through the webbing of this net is the wonderous life alive on Earth right now.

Indra’s Jewel — Art by Bébé
  • The first jewel I want to highlight is one that I saw reflected in several discussions. This is the jewel of sacred ceremony. We need to remember our thoughts are powerful. They are able to collapse the infinite sea of possibilities in which we all swim into a single thread of reality. We do this by thinking, choosing, and acting (or not acting). Moment by moment we contribute our strand of reality to all the other strands being created by every living being on the planet. As the strands interweave, this becomes our shared reality. Humans have become particularly powerful in sculpting our shared reality by using our minds gifted with consciousness (or cursed – as many world myths account this moment as man’s great fall). I write about this in other places, so I will not delve into my meaning here, but only say humans emerged from a more primordial state of consciousness into the state we understand it as today. This singular accomplishment allowed humans to not only perceive the world, but to apperceive it. I will talk more about this ability to apperceive our world later, but for now, I will simply provide you with a definition of it: 

From Wiki: Meaning in psychology – In psychology, apperception is “the process by which new experience is assimilated to and transformed by the residuum of past experience of an individual to form a new whole.”[2] In short, it is to perceive new experience in relation to past experience. The term is found in the early psychologies of Herbert Spencer, Hermann Lotze, and Wilhelm Wundt. It originally means passing the threshold into consciousness, i.e., to perceive. But the percept is changed when reaching consciousness due to the contextual presence of the other stuff already there, thus it is not perceived but apperceived.

Apperception is thus a general term for all mental processes in which a presentation is brought into connection with an already existent and systematized mental conception, and thereby is classified, explained or, in a word, understood; e.g. a new scientific phenomenon is explained in the light of phenomena already analyzedand classified. The whole intelligent life of man is, consciously or unconsciously, a process of apperception, in as much as every act of attention involves the appercipient process.[1]

Indra’s Jewel — Art by Bébé
  • The next jewel is the significant of language in constructing our realities. Here again our ability of apperception is powerful for we have civilized and cultivated most of the world simply by seeing possibilities different from what nature originally provided for life to exist. And, so here we stand at the edge of every moment with this power to apperceive infinite possibilities, and language is the tool we use to share our visions of what is possible. So, yes, it is a commanding tool in constructing our shared realities because it allows us to cooperate in collective action. 

It also comes with peril, as this group of jewels point out, for we can misunderstand each other if we do not take care in truly understanding how words are being used and what is truly being said. Our ability for language is an ability that we have perhaps grown too accustom to wielding. I really like the idea of reconnecting with other cultures and languages. This is a beautiful way to understand how utterly diverse our ability to communicate with each other is… and through communication, our ability to co-create. Human cultures and civilizations have unfolded in so many incredible and diverse ways across space and through time. So, getting stuck in our head with words that have become too small for our current reality is a trap, and it is good to learn how to get out of our self-created thought traps. Gaining perspective of different languages, different cultures, and even different ways of communication (e.g., dance, visual art, dreamtime, empathy), helps us re-appreciate our ability to communicate with each other in so many different ways. This I believe helps us to perceive nuances better for every word is really a universe. Here is one of my favorite shorts by  Dr. Maya Angelou – Power Of Words. 

Indra’s Jewel — Art by Bébé
  • The next jewel is learning to let go of the story. Here the question was asked: What are the actions I might take now that allow me to fully offer my gifts in service to what is needed in response to the possibility that everything is going to work our just fine or it is not going to work out? I think this is wonderful because it helps one to understand they can take an active role in telling the story unfolding right now about Earth and her fate (or a passive role). I think most of us began to believe (for me it was around the 6thgrade) that our voice does not matter, that our thinking will never be good enough, and that our internal knowledge is wrong and has no place in the world of educated men (I do use men here purposively). 

To survive in our modern civilization, we learn how to bend ourselves and squeeze into the tiny boxes of perception and apperception that are allowed by the systems dictated to us by our modern, civilized world. Most of these systems come out of Western Civilization for this civilization has had a huge propensity to colonize the world with its particular brand of thinking and mindset. For humans living in modern Western systems, there are patterns for how to make money, where to live, how much free time to spend with friends, family, or anything else that is important, even how to think and use our minds. Since so many human beings are born into this system, we do not even realize how much control of our shared narrative we have given up by making ourselves fit into this story being told mostly by powerful ones inside of Western Civilization. 

Most of us do not realize how shallow the conscious waters have become inside of this great narrative. But, we have been told we must swim only in these designated waters—conscious waters that are too shallow to sustain us much longer. I think other cultures and civilizations have not taught this out of their people. This is why we need our indigenous brothers and sisters, but we do not need to misuse their precious knowledge (as another Jewel cautions), rather this knowledge is inside every person trapped inside Western thinking, we need to marshal our courage and venture back into the deep end of our conscious capacities. This is where our indigenous brothers and sisters can be guides, but we must do the work.  And, help each other to take a more active role in telling our personal story that becomes part of the collective story…this is so important. Active storytelling is a precious jewel—indeed, it is a super ability.

Another really critical element in this list of jewels is letting go of the ending of the story. When we let go of what we hope or want the ending to be, we put ourselves squarely in the present moment. This is where our power is. It is not in the past (we’ve already been there). It is not in the future (we are not there yetand thusour choicesare only future possibilities). It is NOW—this is where we choose our thread of shared reality. This is where our voice can help guide the flow of the collective story being told about Earth and its inhabitants. By letting go of our attachmentto what the ending needs to be or should be, suddenly all possibilities open up again. 

In this moment of infinite possibilities, we can get about doing what we are so good at doing. In fact, we have evolved as human beings to not only perceive the beautiful world around us, but to appercept it. I am using apperception in the psychological meaning of this word, as defined earlier: “the process by which new experience is assimilated to and transformed by the residuum of past experience of an individual to form a new whole.” With this ability, we become transformers. It is what we do better than any other species on the planet, and that is to take our individualized toolbox (the mind) equipped with individualized knowledge, experience, and hopefully wisdom and create something new. Even when we don’t employ our wisdom, when we choose from the infinite number of possibilities swirling around us every momentof every dayand act on one, we collapse the infinite stream of possibilities into one possibility. This becomes our thread of reality. 

Indra’s Jewels — Art by Bébé

So you see, we are more powerful than we think… and yet, just like the Buddhist concept of Pratītyasamutpāda, we are completely dependent on each other making the best choices possible to survive within our shared reality—the web we weave together. What a dilemma!  

The world cannot be saved by one human being, not even by the most powerful and rich 1 percent of human beings. I don’t know how many it is going to take to save Earthfrom the looming climate crisiswe have woven into the story, but it is probably going to take asmany of us as possible who are awakening to our new role as narrators in this collective story. So, releasing the ending you want is essential because to be a powerful narrator, it is essential to see the present moment for what it is and tell this story as accurately as you can… how you avoided the rocks or boulders in the stream, how you saw and out smarted the poisonous snake laying wait in the rocks, how you navigate the stream of possibilities.  

These are power stories. They have always been power stories from timeimmemorial.  Now we must learn how to tell these powerful stories about ourselves again against the backdrop of our modern age with all its distractions, pain, and fear thatcreates chaos meant to keep us docile and frozen in non-action. Or at least trap us in polarized action. Such action simply gets cancelled out by its equal and opposite action by others trapped on the other side of a false divide. It is a trick of the powerful narrators of our time who currently control most of our collective narrative. Too many of ushave fallenintotheir trap, makingus desperately grasp at things beyond our reach. This especially happens whenwe lose the firm ground of our inner reality; then, we are especially at the mercy of nefarious forces trying to control the collective story through fearmongering  and other dramatic techniques. 

We must grow stronger consciously. This is how we strengthen Indra’s Net because each one of us is a jewel in this beautiful net. We can help each other by giving freely our time and attention to lift each other when we falter or fall.  We don’t have to leave anyone behind. When we stand on the plain of our present moment and really see what is in front of us, we are powerful beings. This is a link to some of my early writing and visual storytelling about these ideas. This began to emerge inside of me more than two years ago: Consciousness Waves.

Consciousness Waves
Indra’s Jewel — Art by Bébé
  • Another jewel is pain. Here another critical question is asked: How do we create a space for pain? So much of Western Civilization is focused on avoiding pain at all costs. I don’t know about you, but I grew up feeling it was not OK to admit to feeling pain. Physical pain was fine to admit. Everyone can clearly see if you have a scraped knee or broken arm. But, emotional or spiritual pain…this was scary. Often it is assumed you did not follow the prescribed rules you were taught, and thus you are the cause of your own pain and deserve to suffer. No one deserves to suffer. Hardly any of us has such control over all the things that impact us, it is ridiculous to blame a person in pain for their pain. But, so often this is what we do. I have been going through a year of pretty intense pain, I can tell you one thing: Pain focuses ones attention and time like no other stimuli. Pain tells us something is wrong, and it prods us to seek solutions. When we are in pain, trivial matters, mindless distractions, the things that use to fill our time fade away and the mind focuses on finding solutions. [I captured this idea in a fantastical little story about my trials in The Divine Dodo – Hanga Dyra Mingja.]
The Divine Dodo — Hanga Dýra Mingja — Art by Bébé

So, yes, make space for pain. Do not be afraid of the power pain offers. Perhaps this is what victim blamers are really afraid of… the person experiencing pain finding their power making them no longer so easy to control. Finding solutions to things causing pain is absolutely critical. 

In this collection of jewels, there is also discussion about the power of music. I write about the power of music in another story I am writing, so I will not wax on about it here. I will simply say our ancestors understood the power of music and how it can inspire action in the minds of individuals and groups. We have forgotten the power that music and dance give us. We have let them become co-opted into the realm of entertainment and money-making. It is so much more than this. It is part of our internal guidance system. Find your song. Find your dance. This is how the universe moves and expresses itself through us. Our magical powers to transform reality rises from inside of us and through us… and it is through our collective action that what rises from inside our minds is made visible through our collective action in the world—this is our shared reality. 

Indra’s Jewel — Art by Bébé
  • Another jewel closely connected to pain is grief. Indeed, grief as this group discusses, breaks open the heart. The group also shares a beautiful poem expressing grief exquisitely. Grief connects us to our empathy. Our empathic powers are needed now more than any other time in human history. To me empathy is not just understanding that someone else is in pain or is grieving, but it is the capacity to stand beside the person who is suffering, to bear witness to their pain knowing we cannot take their pain from them, but perhaps we can help them hold it for a time… maybe help the person endure it, however long it takes. 

I think really powerful empaths can absorb into their own bodies other people’s pain, anger, grief, and the unbearable emotions. I think our ancestors and indigenous people understand how this works and know how to help transmute these powerful emotional states. But, this takes time and skill to understand and most of us in Western Civilization have lost this ability. However, Medicine men and women around the world still possess it, and known how not helping people navigate these difficult parts of the journey can impact the health not only of the individual suffering but of the entire group. In most modern cultures, we have lost the rituals of transformation that can transmute and balance these negative and destructive energies with their equal and opposite energies. It is here where we have our power as individuals and as groups in helping each other find and maintain balance so that wisdom can rise and shine brightly. 

This is all I have time to reflect on right now. I wish I could do more, and I am sure my thinking and efforts to communicate are inadequate for the rich reservoir of ideas, thinking, collaborative efforts transpiring through this collective work (collective action of transformation) unfolding right here and right now.  I can only encourage each person who has participated in the dialogues or who is just discovering these resources to use your own unique toolbox of thought, perception, experience, ideas to continue strengthening this net we are repairing together. We do this by providing our time and attention in whatever capacity we feel called to do and with whatever time we have available to do so. Time and attention are the most valuable resources in the universe. It really is all we need to be powerful narrators of our personal stories, which of course become a part of the collective story of Earth.

The Thing That Feeds on Fear and Sadness — Art by Bébé

Postscript

After writing this, I came upon readings and conversations about the importance of emptiness. I quite frankly did not understand how absolutely essential emptiness is when I wrote the above. I intend to write more about it when I have time, but for now I must devote most of my attention to finishing editing the story I began 7 years ago (almost to this day for I remember first finding the thread to the story I have been writing ever since late one September afternoon–this story is Sapience). And so I leave you only with a quote from Carl Jung whom I was reading and finally understood the power and importance of emptiness. He said:

“The archetype corresponding to the situation is activated, and as a result this explosive and dangerous forces hidden in the archetype come into action, frequently with unpredictable consequences. There is no lunacy people under the domination of an archetype will not fall a prey too. “

“If 30 years ago anyone had dared to predict that our psychological development was tending towards a revival of the medieval persecutions of the Jews, that Europe would again tremble before the Roman fasces and the tramp of legions, that people would once more give the Roman salute, as two thousand years ago, and that instead of the Christian Cross an archaic swastika would lure onward millions of warriors ready for death–why, that man would have been hooted at as a mystical fool. And today? Surprising as it may seem, all this absurdity is a horrible reality. Private life, private aetiologies, and private neuroses have become almost a fiction in the world of today. The man of the past who lived in a world of archaic ‘representations collectives’ had risen again into very visible and painfully real life, and this not only in a few unbalanced individuals but in many millions of people”

“There are as many archetypes as there are typical situations in life. Endless repetition has engraved these experiences into our psychic constitution, not in the form of images filled with content, but at first only as forms without content, representing merely the possibility of a certain type of perception and action. When a situation occurs which corresponds to a given archetype, that archetype becomes activated and a compulsiveness appears, which, like an instinctual drive, gains its way against all reason and will, or else produces a conflict of pathological dimensions, that is to say, a neurosis.”

— The Portable Jung, The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, p. 66-67

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PAUSING. REMEMBERING.

Painted by Donna Alena Hrabcakova‎

PAUSING. REMEMBERING

September reminds me of the days where one had the leisure

to jump into a pile of leaves 

carefree no worries about the existential crises of NOW.

Wind brings in the random dance of the falling ones 

turning into a kaleidoscope of magical hues.

My favorite being brilliant red and burnt sienna

Taking my breath away. 

PAUSING. REMEMBERING.

The cycle of Autumn presents herself in Her own timing.

I feel the rhythm within myself changing. 

What I see before me. 

Remembering why I am here. 

What my purpose is.

Are you re-remembering yours?

Painted by Donna Alena Hrabcakova‎

PAUSING. REMEMBERING.

Those whom passed in the summer and knowing it is a new season without them. 

I like to think an Ancestor will fly into my crabapple trees and visit. 

It happened for awhile this summer a beautiful red tail hawk hovered in my tree,

which seemed like minutes or hours all colliding. 

Our eyes truly connected.

I knew it was someone whom loved me once so much. 

I knew it was true. 

PAUSING. REMEMBERING. 

This Labor Day I reflect on the meaning of why I create. 

What purpose it serves and maybe it doesn’t move but only a few.

I am not needing to be famous.

I only want to be heard.

Connecting to the trees the leaves the intercommunication of the living planet

telling me it is time to release what no longer serves me. 

I feel the quietness moving inside me. 

The need for more psychic silence for the soul.

I don’t question it because it happens with every turn of the seasons. 

I must make the time to create and set boundaries that will not be interrupted.

These are the Sacred Hours of the Day.

PAUSING. REMEMBERING. 

I carry on one foot in front of the other and know each step holds the imprint

of my mother and father 

my grandmothers and grandfathers 

my great grandparents 

the beautiful lands they left in Eastern Slovakia. 

Each step 

Each word 

Each brushstroke is telling 

me this. 

Lest I forget. 

I do not want to forget. 

Autumn embrace me with all your narratives.

Let me be one vessel that carries it all back into the dirt and soil 

full of purpose 

communicating to all whom will listen.

Stories buried and released in the awakening that lies ahead. 

In Lovingkindness, Donna Alena 

THOUGHT FOR YOUR ART: What is your mission statement in your art?

Let’s think about why we create and what are we hoping to communicate in the forms of art we manifest or are given to us from Sources unknown.

What is your part in the collective unconscious of stories, storytelling, novellas, films, music and how you live and express yourself?

I am listening. 
Tell me your statement and I will begin my also. 

PAUSE and REMEMBER. 

These are my words today. 

OUR ART IS THE CEREMONY to heal ourselves and so many.  

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INTERCONNECTEDNESS

I laid in bed meditating on the last few paintings I created (with assistance from my subconscious helpers) on the AMAZON and the FIRES.  I asked for guidance what these paintings were about and what they were trying to communicate to myself and all of us.  I heard the word very loudly in my minds eye, INTERCONNECTEDNESS.  I thought of what the ravages of the fires meant in the Amazon with millions of acres burning, Siberia and all over the world currently. I knew since we exist on a living planet this effected us all because it is all energy and ripples to where ever we live on the planet.  I felt so deeply that my heart was hurting, what is this doing to us psychologically? The death of so many species of life discovered and undiscovered, animals, bird life, Indigenous Peoples and the changing of their narratives, stories retold, insects, the dependency of interspecies.  We are connected intrinsically.  Do you feel the burning of the Mother in some way? How? Does it effect you? Do you feel hotter than usual? Is your anger or grief manifested in some level unexpressed? Do you notice the disconnectedness we feel around us to avoid talking about what really matters now, how we continue to live on a planet that is burning, flooding, getting hotter and hotter year after year? Do you feel the avoidance? Do you see it with more acting out and violence? And, meantime shallow discussions continue, and we don’t address the core of what really is happening as denial feels so safe or at least it offers an illusion of safety that these events are not taking place? I cannot and refuse to live in that place of complacency and denial. 

First, I am an artist with every fiber of my being. I know the writers, artists, musicians, creators of gardens, novels, poetry, films, dance, storytelling can be a catalyst of change.  I would like to think as we get our work in the public domains that we can change the narratives.  We can write the truths, is it uncomfortable? Yes. Painful and even traumatic? Yes.  But we no longer have the luxuries of denial.  We depend on one another.

We are INTERCONNECTED.  What happens to humanity through devastating events trickles into our fields of energy.  We needed these plants, animals, people, villages, communities, stories to be a part of the Universal Narrative as they burn what does that mean to you and the place you live on the planet? Do not think the area you live in is not a possibility of future events?  This home is a living organism and it will keep having it’s evolution.  We absolutely cannot escape that.  I think at this time on the planet we are dealing with what is true and what is not. Climate change at the most intense and dire levels are being recorded now.  This is true.  There is a chasm between honoring and offering sacred reciprocity to the planet and honoring ourselves and others in a good way.  Do no harm. You ask how we can do that?

One small ripple of extending kindness is a start. A kind word.  Reaching out to someone in need with no concern of how it will benefit you but how it will help your neighbor.   Recycling, being conscious of your water intake, composting, zero waste, eating no meat, gardening your own organic foods with no pesticides we know of all these possibilities. Living in respect of one another and the planet is a act or prayer of gratitude.  Having deep conversations with others about these issues helps.  Reading literature and books that guide in changing the narrative helps.  Creating a painting of contemplation helps.  I know we are all so busy but what if we chose one thing to volunteer our time to weekly?  One hour or two? Giving back to a cause or agency you strongly believe in? I love teaching art classes to high risk students or working on creating safe environments for others to gather and share conversations with. Painting is always my medicine. Listening to your dreams and intuition, it rarely steers you wrong.  

AIRIA OF THE AMAZON, RAIN MEDICINE, ELLORA OF ECUADOR, and THE CHILDREN ON THE BORDER all came to me without premeditation. So many of my paintings do, I say this humbly as I do not know the magic that will enfold till I start the process.  Our paper, our canvases, music sheets are bursting to translate messages. This will be the new planetary language.  It is a new language we are learning through interconnectedness, one of co-existence.  We have no other choice if we really want to make it.  Our lives count on it.  Our breath and all that lives and breathes on this planet counts on this.  It’s beyond the stage of urgency which leads me to the next topic of being ECO GUARDIANS. I am still in the process of writing this entry.

Thank you for consideration of these words. 

I must write them.  I am asking you to please contribute your storytelling and narrative to this piece.  I want to hear from you.  I am counting on you.  Till we meet again…

In Loving Respect and Kindness, Donna Alena

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We Are All One Human Tribe

Enigma has a song called The Same Parents, and of the many videos of this song, my favorite one mixes a highly technologically state of being human with ancient states of being alive. This is something that fits well with me since I love skating back and forth across huge expanses of space and time searching for the visible and invisible forces shaping us all (e.g.,  What Do I Do With the Mad Inside Me? and Wake up, Wake up and Is Collective Transformation Possible and We Are All Connected).

ENIGMA – The Same Parents ( Seven Lives Many Faces )

Today, many people realize we are in a moment demanding deep wisdom combined with meaningful action and sacrifice so our children and grandchildren might inherit a world capable of sustaining life. At times, it feels like facing a massive tidal wave of indifference, denial, and unawareness of the growing signs that if we do not stop what we are doing to the climate (and very soon…perhaps less than 12 years!), then we won’t even be able to mitigate the worst effects of the ever increasing and more destructive climate catastrophes. Even worst, there are people in this world who do not want to change the status quo because they are profiting from the systems pushing us all over the climate cliff. These are powerful forces. They are unconscious in nature and surround us night and day as revealed by the confusion and division keeping us from working together to make positive and sustainable change. Soon Earth’s delicate ecological balances will be pushed too far.

As a ray of hope, I am dedicating this post to highlighting some of the people and groups around the world who are pushing back against these destructive forces… people who embody the changes Earth needs Now.

Kalinga Day — Photo: Cynthia Addawan
Kalinga Day — Photo: Cynthia Addawan

One courageous person is Cynthia Addawan who lives in a mountainous region of the Philippines where her people continue to live in tribes and protect their land from intruders. She told me how most of the young men in her tribe are still trained to go to war using spears and bolos and how the Spanish colonized her country for almost 333 years but were not able to conquer the mountain tribes (her people). Then, the Americans and Japanese came, but her tribe managed to retain their originality and culture (not easy in the face of the steady swept of Western Civilization bent on creating one gigantic monolith civilization). Over time, she described how her people adopted more peaceful ways of settling disagreements. Since the 1980s, there have been few tribal issues leading to war, and recently they celebrated indigenous month, which includes commemorations of ancient war dances. This festival is not meant to encourage young people to go to war, but rather to realize the richness of their tribal traditions and how the mountainous tribes have come to understand and practice more peaceful ways of dealing with differences and conflict today. Thus, the commemorative war dances celebrate their shared heritage and help the youth understand and value the journey the mountainous tribes have taken to avoid conflict and sustain peace. She read my blog about Mr. Rogers and is now reading some of his wonderful work to her classes for she is a teacher and understands how important it is to teach the children and youth about handling strong emotions. She is also working to establish a Climate School in the Philippines and collaborating with people around the world to do this. She says beautifully, “I am so concern about all the children—the little angels of this earth. We owe them a planet and a future. We have the power and responsibility to give them a better place to live, and one way to do this is to conserve the environment. This is one legacy we can leave them. Another is to help them control their mad emotions and to channel these energies into something that is beneficial both to them and to other human beings.”

Kalinga Day — Photo: Cynthia Addawan
Kalinga Day — Photo: Cynthia Addawan

Kalinga Day — Photo: Cynthia Addawan
Kalinga Day — Photo: Cynthia Addawan

Another person working to help save our civilization is Hans Jørgen Rasmussen. He sees helping children and youth in their activism worldwide as one way to help. With more than 30 years of practice as a psychologist behind him, he understands the dynamic forces confronting young people today. One of his approaches is listening to and being open to standing by a person who is facing a challenge or a personal crisis by availing himself to be supportive as a dialogue partner—you might call it a coach—whereby he gently helps people experiencing a difficult part of their journey by listening. He understands he cannot solve another person’s problems, but he can walk beside them in empathy and compassion. By doing this, he offers support as the person figures out a solution for themselves and finds a way forward, and while dealing with their challenge, they often find unknown resources in themselves resulting in an empowering process with personal growth a by-product of this process. Other ways he is helping to address the threat our civilization faces is by applying his skills in psychology, coaching, and teaching to: 1) start a Climate School in his home town & create a Climate website: Saving Our Planet; 2) build a collection of climate change related videos: The Climate Cinema; 3) co-found a NGO named Saving Our Planet that offers awareness raising concepts such as The Climate School free of charge to organizations, institutions, and groups; and 4) start a climate awareness project in collaboration with a large private school and a university in Turkey, where he spends the winter… and he’s just getting started. 

My friend Lucy Rist is founder and runs Girls in Sports—which is a Swedish-based charity that empowers girls through sports and outdoor adventure. Recently, Girls in Sports was selected as one of 5 international organizations that will work together through this international initiative called Girls in the Lead, helping girls become leaders. Through this initiative, Girls in Sports is collaborating with four other organizations based in South Africa, India, Germany, and U.S. to build capacity to empower girls around the world. 

My friend Alöna Litovinskaia is designing an innovative educational curriculum for children and youth that will help connect them to the enduring value of nature and working together. Part of the curriculum involves play where children and youth explore and engage together in a natural setting called Kid’s Land. In this space there are many challenges that require them to use their creativity and work together to solve problems in a playful, fast-paced world they are creating as a group. With the help of facilitators versed in art and architectural, management and psychological, as well as educational backgrounds, kids design, plan, build, and settle upon rules and laws to govern their country. She says, “It’s going to be a great and fun practical and social experience for growing minds!” To see more exciting elements of this new space and vision, visit Newa.

My friend Hannelie Sensemaker WorldPainter Venucia is on a journey to explore and embody Whole Person (Embodied Wholeness) Living, Relating, Creativity and Innovation. She is sharing her life’s work through the JOY Generation, which is an embodied wisdom and adventure portal helping to transform the world through JOY. The JOY Generation Portal is the playground where our younger generations can take part in self-discovery adventures and have access to wisdom, inspiration, and guidance as they engage with peers around the world. The portal offers access to 3 interactive web nests; namely JOY Planet, JOY Rides, and JOY Festival (JOY Generators believe good things come in 3’s!). Without a JOY Planet, we cannot thrive, and thus, this is the home of JOY Casts that talks with individuals across the globe who share wisdom, insights, and other possibilities in her series: Your World or Mine? The second aspect of the JOY Planet is the Joy Panorama Interactive Multimedia Multi-Sensory experiences that provides opportunity to explore phenomena and concepts impacting the ability of humanity to thrive. As humanity fails to find solutions to so many dilemmas, in JOYSense, Hannelie and the JOY Generation team share a variety of Collective Sensemaking downloadable, online, and physical experiences. Hannelie is a seasoned author, public speaker, facilitator, and radio host.

Fyodor Ovchinnikov is a facilitator for the Just, Sustainable, and Flourishing Future seminar, which is part of the Young Professionals for Sustainable Development Program. This program provides professional development for young professionals seeking opportunities to align their careers with the UN Agenda 2030 or to make a career transition to a different sector or industry while focusing on some or all of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Many participants report making useful professional contacts with mentors and panelists, building long-term peer support relationships, learning about relevant networks and opportunities, and feeling supported, inspired, and more confident integrating UN SDGs into their work as hallmarks of the program that they found genuinely helpful. If you are interested in mentoring our participants, apply here: https://www.una-sf.org/mentors. More information about the program: https://www.una-sf.org/ypsdg

These are just some of the compassionate and passionate people around the world working to make a difference to secure a sustainable future. We have a longs ways to go to ensure our children, their grandchildren, and 7 generations forward have a livable planet. This is our legacy. We begin by taking the first step together. No other time in human history have we been as deeply dependent on each other as we are Now. We need to hear every voice for today we stand as one global human tribe where every member’s choice is a vote for a sustainable and livable planet, or not. We have never depended on each other as we do Now.

Now is the time for wisdom and for working together.

Other Voices and Places Helping to Change the Tide:

In Seattle, a youth driven group has established Zero Hour. They have also taken the bold action of suing the state of Washington for not taking enough action for a sustainable future (WA State Children’s Trust Lawsuit), and they are doing so much more (visit their site)!

Also, checkout Youth4Planet International for innovative ways to help youth help the planet.

Teens Marching at the People’s Climate March of 2017: 

High School Seniors Who Skipped Prom at March for Science of 2017: 

College Students Marching at the People’s Climate March of 2017: 

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The Boy Who Ate the Wrong Part of the Crocodile

Chris Cuomo said on Valentine’s Day: “The opposite of love is not hate—the opposite of love is indifference.” When someone plainly sees an injustice or wrong occurring and does nothing about it, this person is choosing to let the fabric of our shared reality rip and become ruin. Cuomo made a direct link to the role indifference played in the rise of the three brutal Dictators of World War II. After the chaos of WWI and global economic depression, great numbers of people were left without means of meeting their basic needs. Many looked to strong men with bold visions who said things like: “I can fix this! I, and I alone, can make our country great again!” These strong men possessed an uncanny magnetism that attracted people to them—people being crushed by their circumstances. These men were of course Adolf Hitler of Germany, Benito Mussolini of Italy, and Emperor Hirohito of Japan. 

At the beginning of WWII, the United States refused to enter it, fed up after the extraordinary loss of life, resources, and money poured into Europe during the first Great War. This combined with the Great Depression left Americans sunk deep inside a well of isolationist thinking. Many believed Europe needed to work out its own problems, which they felt were rooted in ancient tribal differences and racists tendencies played out over centuries. This thinking prevented Roosevelt from sending U.S. ships to help Churchill get his army out of Dunkirk where they were penned in by Hitler’s army, which was sweeping across Europe in a frightening and virtually unstoppable power grab. I believe Roosevelt sent some airplanes, but they had to be pushed over the Canadian border, not driven or flown, so they could take off from Canada allowing Roosevelt to claim he was not helping Britain, Canada was. Churchill was left in an impossible position for he did not have enough naval ships to evacuate his men. Without a British army, Hitler would invade the island nation forcing Churchill to surrender. Imagine the world if this had happened. Fortunately, Churchill prevailed by using every private water vessel available to cross the English Channel to get his men out.

After Pearl Harbor, America could no longer remain uninvolved in the second Great War now erupting just as brutally in the Far East. To help change public opinion and prepare men for battle, the United States government commissioned a series of movies to explain and justify involvement in yet another war. One of these movies was Prelude to War made by Frank Capra depicting the Nazi propaganda machine and disinformation being put out by the 3 dictatorial regimes. Inspired by Leni Riefenstahl‘s Germany propaganda film Triumph of the Will, Capra sought to create a movie that would counter hers, but to do so, he knew he needed a powerful idea. From Wikipedia:

“Capra made his primary focus the creation of “one basic, powerful idea” that would spread and evolve into other related ideas. Capra considered one important idea that had always been in his thoughts: ‘I thought of the Bible. There was one sentence in it that always gave me goose pimples’: “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”[3]

As a result, his goal became to “let the enemy prove to our soldiers the enormity of his cause—and the justness of ours”. He would compile enemy speeches, films, newsreels, newspaper articles, with a list of the enemy’s hostile actions. He presented his ideas to other officers now assigned to help him: ‘I told them of my hunch: Use the enemy’s own films to expose their enslaving ends. Let our boys hear the Nazis and the Japs shout their own claims of master-race crud—and our fighting men will know why they are in uniform.’[3]

Weeks later, after major efforts and disappointments, Capra located hard-to-reach archives within government facilities, and by avoiding normal channels was able to gain access: Peterson and I walked away on air. We had found the great cache of enemy films—and it was ours![3]”

If interested in these historical strands of fate and destiny, watch Capra’s Prelude to War and the Darkest Hour (an interpretation of Churchill and Dunkirk). After watching or reading about this time, I believe it is possible to grasp just how precarious human time and attention was during this moment as strong men worked day and night to divert and misdirect human attention to obscure their evil deeds. It is a timeless story repeated over and over in the human world. However, Now, here we stand again, this time closer to the edge than ever before, and yet so many people seem blissfully unaware, or worst, indifferent to the danger. 

Or, perhaps it is not an edge at all. 

Perhaps we face a collision of two different consolidations of human consciousness. What if every moment of our lives and every other human being’s life leaves a trace upon the warp and woof of space and time? What if these traces create a substrate from which our shared conscious reality rises and is expressed? One of the most fundamental expressions of this consciousness is through relationships (i.e., family, friends, community, country, world). Sometimes these relationships are strong, balanced and healthy, and they put good into the world. Sometimes these relationships are broken and unhealthy, and they pour bad into the world. These bonds and the traces they leave behind are immeasurably subtle and elusive for they are of an emotional-psychic-spiritual nature, thus escape our eyes, and even our minds, but not our hearts.

What if these traces of consciousness, this subtle energy, bump into each other and form bonds just like electrons and protons do in the visible universe? What if these bonds glob together and create landscapes, even planets or consolidated bodies of consciousness? Of course, these places would be invisible to the eye for they are spaces created from psychological-emotional-spiritual expressions or memories of our collective co-existence as human beings up to this point in time. There would be beautiful and safe places in this realm as well as dangerous ones. There would be ancient places charted long ago by our ancestors but Now forgotten. And, there would-be dried-up places, submerged places, verdant places, and crowded places. One would need to learn how to navigate these terrains just as one learns how to navigate the physical world, and these places would create the bedrock for our collective conscious co-existence. In short, they form the fertile invisible ground from which new conscious life sprouts and is expressed through time. 

Now consider two different consolidations of conscious terrain have formed over the expanse of human conscious co-existence and share the same orbit around the sun of humanity’s awaken consciousness—just as Earth shared the same orbit around our sun with Theia , which is believed to have been a Mars-sized planet orbiting the sun in the same Goldie Locks trajectory as Earth. Scientist believe Theia struck Earth about 4.5 billion years ago in a collision so massive it knocked Earth off its axis, sending it spinning so fast that one day was completed in 5 hours. The colossal amount of debris thrown into space created our moon, which eventually slowed Earth’s spin from 5-hours to 24 hours and created Earth’s tides once water returned. As life emerged, Earth’s crooked axis was transformed into our seasons, and from this destruction and chaos, a new equilibrium rose—one where life could thrive.

Further imagine the destruction and tragic loss of human life that happened 100 years ago and again 75 years ago were near misses of this other consolidation of human consciousness—merely pass-byes, not collisions, but nevertheless capable of generating tremendous gravitational forces within both consolidations of consciousness, which would widen and deepen natural riffs existing within these spheres of consciousness. This fracturing would prevent either sphere from seeing or taking necessary action to avoid a collision with the other. The question becomes can we absorb a direct impact, heal from it, and return to a new dynamic balance—one that supports  life—all life. 

After writing these strange thoughts, a friend posted one of Rumi’s timeless poems. I believe Rumi felt the possibility of such other realities existing beyond our visible one. Born September 30, 1207, he says so beautifully:

“I have abolished duality from myself.

I have seen the two worlds as One!

One I seek, One I know,

One I see, and One I call.”

~ By RUMI

Returning back to Western Civilization’s definition of reality, Cuomo went onto connect what happened 75 years ago to what Republicans are doing now by protecting a person proving himself to be a pathological liar and holding the most powerful office in the country. Barely two weeks later, Michael Cohen arrived on Capitol Hill to testify before Congress where the gentle Republican men and women came at him hard, employing virtually the same tactic, which was to call him a liar, attack his integrity, and suggest he is simply seeking to profit by his lies. Many gave passionate 5-minute speeches to their base using emotion like super weapons to inflame them (e.g., “I told my wife don’t listen to this, please don’t listen and she said to me don’t worry honey, I won’t listen.”)—all to protect a man shown to have made 6,420 false or misleading claims since he took office (Washington Post, 11/2/18). Of course they were angry, Cohen was no longer lying to protect their man—the President. Many wouldn’t even let Cohen answer their questions saying things like: “This is my time. Don’t interrupt me!” Halfway through his testimony, Cohen admonishes Congress for by now even the gentle Democratic men and women are using their time not to question Cohen but to make counter statements to combat the highly charged mini emotional speeches made by the other side. The result was a shredding of any truth to be found and trampling on the remnants. One of the most profound statements Cohen made was that what people surrounding Trump are doing Now is what he did for him for 10 years, and they will end up where he is Now. He also said when Trump took office he became the very worst version of himself (I’ll get back to this). Don Lemon added later that people protect their own,which is tribal behavior (e.g., BBC interview of U.S. 2020 voters 3/7/19, “Do I vote for character? No, I don’t vote for character… character doesn’t put money in my pocket.).

This idea of social reality as tribal is critical to understand and get underneath in order to grapple with the realities facing us Now. Tribal co-existence is one of the most natural states for human beings to exist. Throughout human civilization, tribes have been the building blocks for how to live together. Tribes protect and nurture their members, and when threatened, fiercely defend them. With the rise and dominance of Western Civilization, the physical embodiment of many tribes around the world has been greatly diminished—which is a tremendous loss of the magnificent diversity and vibrancy of human civilizations as it has evolved on Earth. A question to consider Now is this (Western Civilization) the most stable consolidation of human co-existence we can create? Are there perhaps other more stable and life sustaining consolidations of human conscious co-existence that are more balanced and capable of recognizing and nurturing the realities of inner and outer space. 

Despite the dwindling number of so many of the world’s native tribes, tribal ways of thinking have not disappeared. Indeed, with the rise of social media, they are resurging in ways never previously imagined possible. And, why wouldn’t this be so for humans have always found tremendous comfort in groups of other liked minded humans. Tribes, as previously stated, protect and sustain their members from harsh realities of life, and this is true of virtual tribes as it is for real tribes. In essence, they create an external model of reality that reflects and protects the internal world experienced by most of its members. They also serve as effective mechanisms to teach young members about beliefs, traditions, rituals, and knowledge deemed essential for survival in an uncertain world. A tribe is not inherently good or bad—be it ancient or modern—rather it is as good as the human beings making it up and their thinking. However, if a tribe becomes off balanced, its members tend to become off balanced too.  

Veering sharply from present to past, I want to contrast current political tribalism with the challenges faced by a real, living tribe. I’ve selected two stories from the book my friend M. sent me to help me cope with my father’s death, child of the jungle, which is about the Fayu tribe in New Guinea. This tribe was facing a serious crisis after having become deeply knocked off balanced by vicious revenge killings. These imbalances permeated into every aspect of their lives, including how they treated their own members and families. As this more aggressive and cruel side of the Fayu’s collective psychic-spiritual landscape grew bigger, it submerged their more loving and nurturing side. Failing to recognize their lopsidedness, they became locked in a tangled web of cruelty. 

I am very aware how Western colonization often took place first through missionary work; however, through this story, I have come to understand it is how this work is done that makes the critical difference. In this real-life story, the father felt deeply called to be with the Fayu people, and he did so with a compassionate heart. He did not enforce his way of doing things, nor impose his beliefs, but rather sought to learn their language, engage in conversation, and demonstrate through his own life kinder, gentler ways of being and living together. This was not a one-way street either for he and his family learned from the Fayu people as well. In fact, the family’s very existence in the jungle was only possible because of the Fayu’s help and knowledge, which they shared freely and frequently to help the family live and survive in the jungle—a place of daily wonders and danger. Most importantly, it was only by the invitation of one of the chiefs who expressed how tired he was by all the killings that the family came to live with the Fayu.

Two key moments that vividly demonstrate to me just how far off balanced the Fayu had become are as follows:

Painting By Donna Alena Hrabcakova

Chapter: Nakire — The Woman and the arrow

“It happened while I was playing outside. Several women were heading into the jungle. The husband of one of the women called her back, but she did not immediately respond. When she finally did step out of the trees, he took his bow, notched an arrow, and shot her in the breast.

The Fayu are excellent marksmen. The husband knew exactly how much pressure to exert on the bowstring so that the arrow would wound but not kill his wife. The woman collapsed, groaning, onto the ground. I felt sick. I wanted to scream, to run away, to kill that man. Everyone could see that this woman was pregnant.

Mama heard the cries and came running out of the house. When she saw the scene, she lost it. I have never seen Mama roar as she did on that day. Mama ran over to the woman, extracted the arrow, and helped her to the house. The man was standing there, laughing at our reaction. I threw him a look of contempt as I followed Mama and the woman into our house. Papa was also very upset, but when he confronted the Fayu about it, they just laughed at him as well.

Today it is different. Over the years, the Fayu watched the relationship between my parents, and what they saw – their respect and love for each other – began to change the way they treated their own wives. It was a new concept for the Fayu that a man and a woman could work together, be happy at it and be able to incorporate humor into their relationship. With my parents, they could see how important love was and the argument didn’t have to be settled by arrows or death.”

Painting By Donna Alena Hrabcakova

Chapter: My Brother Ohri — Boy who ate the wrong part of the crocodile

“But this time our concern was justified. When I saw Ohri step out of the brush, I shouted for Mama and hurried to him. He collapsed to the ground, weak and with a high fever. I wanted to help him up but didn’t know where I could touch him. His entire chest was a huge, infected wound covered by a thick layer of green-grey fungus. The Fayu had shot him with an arrow and left him for dead in the middle of the jungle.

Mama came running and helped Ohri into our house, Papa asked the Fayu what had happened and was told that Ohri had eaten a forbidden piece of a crocodile. This was his punishment. They completely ignored him and acted as though he didn’t exist anymore.

I started to cry when I saw his pain-streaked face. He smelled like rotting meat. The wound was obviously gangrenous. I sat next to him and held his hand. Mama brought bandages and medication and rolled Ohir on to this side. She mixed potassium permanganate with water and poured it over his chest. An inch-thick fungal growth slowly loosened itself and fell off him onto the leaves we had placed underneath him.

Ohir was in great pain. His entire chest was an open wound filled with maggots. Mama cut a bedsheet into large strips, covered them in antibiotic cream, and bound his torso with them. She changed the bandages every day. Papa took the leaves and dressings out behind the house and burned them.”

Ohir would survive his ordeal, and he would be accepted back into his tribe. The author does not tell us if the Fayu changed their ways after this event, but you see love and compassion demonstrated by the family as the Fayu watched, and most importantly, paid attention. The author does say later: “Words alone are empty. You have to live out what you hold to be true. The Fayu needed to decide for themselves whether they wanted to change, for true change comes only from the heart.” Thus, it was the compassionate, tender, and loving side of the Fayu people re-emerging simply by watching and paying attention to how these strange, white people did things differently. This simple act empowered the Fayu to remember the submerged parts still existed inside of them (like an energy being activated through the mere act of observation). The change was slow, one person at a time, one choice at a time, but little by little they began to bring this side of themselves back into their shared psycho-social-spiritual conscious sphere. Thus, this is how a gentle transformation occurred. 

When we strive to become the best version of ourselves, we pay attention to our inner life as well as our outer life. We learn how to channel our most destructive human emotions and nature in less destructive ways. We help others learn how to do this too. This is love.  Love is simply paying attention to ourselves and helping each other do this too. It is doing what we can with what we have to make the world a little bit better. It is helping each other heal wounds (those inside of us or inflicted on us by outside forces or fate) for we are all human beings making a wondrous and perilous journey to become more conscious, and hopefully kinder and more loving beings as well, but this is a personal choice. The journey begins by looking inside and seeing and validating our inner truth and reality. This can feel risky and even dangerous because most of us are taught that our inner realities are nothing more than crazy mutterings, insane ramblings, or unhinged thoughts. Correcting this imbalance in our collective vision (i.e., verifying and validating the truth of each person’s inner reality in balance with every other person alive) may be the only way to move forward together. This can only happen by paying attention to what is happening inside and helping each other do the same—one person at a time. It’s not too late to change our shared reality. As long as we have life, we have choice, and until our dying day, we leave traces upon the warp and woof of space and time. 

* * *

One More Story about the Cost of Indifference: In this story, the price of indifference is human life. 48 Hours In Syria is a powerful story told by Kassem Eid about spending two years living in a city under siege. It began after he and his neighbors took part in the protests during the Arab Spring in 2011, Syrian President Bashar Al Assad began to punish towns like Kassem’s. His forces bombed them, surrounded them, and starved them. That’s when Kassem decided to fight back.  

The Dalai Lama Talks About How to Tackle the Indifferent Mind: How to Train Our Mind: His Holiness the Dalai Lama explains how to train the mind to tackle destructive emotions during his meeting with a group from India at his residence in Dharamsala, HP, India on February 11, 2019.

Stories About Weaving Strong (Even Destructive) Emotions into Making Legal Decisions: RadioLab: Null and Void – These stories tell about jury nullification with a particular passionate interview and story beginning at 40 minutes into the show. 

Stories About the Vortex of Conspiracy Theorists: Beware the Jabberwock: Stories from the upside-down world where conspiracy theorists dwell – These are stories about Lenny Pozner whose son, Noah, was killed at Sandy Hook. In the years after Noah’s death, Lenny and his family were harassed by people who believed the shooting at Sandy Hook never happened–that it was all a conspiracy. Until one day, Lenny decided to fight back.

1A: Male Masculinity in the 21stCentury: How to Raise Boys –  How do we teach men how to acknowledge that “I feel pain, I feel fear?” This is an in-depth discussion about the messages and confusing narratives that swirl around men and boys today and how it shapes their understanding of what it means to be a man and how they should act.

One Way a Different Consolidation of Consciousness Might Split Off from the Whole and Grow:  Conflict and strong emotions have always been hard for humans to navigate, especially in groups—be it a group of 3 or a country of millions—but navigating them together may be our only evolutionary option. Some groups favor acting on strong emotions and openly engaging in conflict (tic for tac approach), but this can escalate or lock a conflict into a static pattern. Some groups prefer ignoring conflict and strong emotions, pretending it’s business as usual, while the intense emotional energy is submerged into the unconscious realms where it tends to grow and morph out of sight of conscious awareness, typically transforming into something much worst (to play the unconsciousness game, see the animation-graphic above).

Unconscious Forces Rising — by Bébé

Some groups don’t believe they have any responsibility to guide the emotional energy of its members at all, rather believing this is the job of family and friends to soothe disaffected individuals. But we’ve seen this play out with middle income and middle of the country Americans, many who are white and feel the systems that once supported and elevated them left them behind. They face uncertain futures where they cannot care for themselves and their families. They feel pain and fear that can surge very strongly at times and need to be sorted and channelled. But with broken systems, their voices go unheard, and so they do talk to their friends and family, and they are angry too. The result is a splitting from the whole and formation of a consolidation of individuals who weld enough will and power to elect Donald Trump.

Whenever a whole is divided and becomes polarized due to lack of effective strategies to channel strong emotions that can flow from time to time within groups, the polarized sides can begin to fracture, allowing even more powerful, destructive potentials (forces) to fill the cracks. Repairs might be attempted on both sides (i.e., the stained glass), but without dealing with the originating causes of the fracture, these repairs are often too little, too late, and too weak to hold the whole, causing everything to break apart—a story as old as time. See The Divine Dodo — In Maidjan (The Corruption) for the story for which the gif below was created to tell.

Repairing the Cracks: Venus Rising — by Bébé

Thank you for your time and attention.

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Wake Up, Wake Up

The featured image of this post came to me in a dream two years ago, and just several days after the company I worked for laid me off 12 days before Christmas. I had worked hard for this company for six years, yet despite knowing who they would lay off more than a month in advance, they did not provide advance warning to allow me or the others to prepare. Quite the opposite, I remember the Human Resources guy calling me early in November to tell me I had 28 days of vacation. He told me he so rarely gets to share good news like this, so this was why he was calling me—to share this wonderful news! Little did I know this jolly news was soon to become my life raft for the company was in trouble. It had lost a huge government contract and was having a hard time reckoning with the reality of needing to sacrifice some of its employees for the good of the rest chosen to remain onboard the corporate ship (or perhaps it should be the corporate submarine). Of the small group of employees who were selected to be deep sixth (i.e., a nautical expression that acquired its idiomatic definition because something thrown overboard at or greater than this depth would be difficult, if not impossible, to recover), I was the only writer. Also, I was the writer who had been there for the longest consecutive years and one of the highest compensated writers at that time. Adding insult to injury, the year before my husband endured a similar sacrifice, though the motive in his case was to raid the pot of money sustaining his small department.

It took 7 months to find new job after my corporate Christmas gift, and the job I found paid far less and demonstrated extreme bouts of incompetence. Then, came a moment (a year later) when incompetence met competence toe to toe. In this short amount of time, I had written grants that brought in more than $500,000 dollars, but this little company was not honoring our compensation agreement, so I was calling them to task on this issue. After my father suffered a massive heart attacked and died 9 days later, the little company took that moment to fire me. None of this matters except in our human world people need jobs to live in houses, to buy food, to support their children, and to do whatever other things they must do to care for self and family.

As a younger worker, these cruel culling practices go mostly unnoticed. But, it happens, and it happens for many reasons—greedy corporate executives gamble and lose the companies money and everyone loses their job; higher paid older workers are pushed out years before they are ready to retire; a weak boss fires an employee perceived as a threat; jealous peers gain up to get an employee fired or laid off simply because they are demonstrating more competence than they are; and the list of reasons why workers are culled from the workforce goes on…often good employees are culled at the peak of their adult financial responsibilities (e.g., aging parents, children in college). It is humiliating to end up here, thus many workers who end up in this situation don’t talk about what happened to them and their families. However, once you join this club of culled workers, you begin to understand this is happening everywhere and at every level (blue collar workers to Ph.Ds.). Pretty much anywhere Western economic systems have been embraced, these cruel culling practices are employed. It is probably happening right now to someone you know, and it is not normal.

Just 100 years ago, at the beginning of the RISE of the mega corporation, it was different. In an interview about his new book Zucked, Roger McNamee expresses that back then employees were more highly valued than they are today. He said corporations invested in their workers, the communities where their employees lived, along with watching out for the interests of their stakeholders. Certainly, corporations were not angels back then with many guilty of significant human infringements (e.g., employing children, paying extremely low wages, making workers work excessively long hours and work weeks). However, it seems there was more resilience and balance in our system 100 years ago that allowed workers to RISE and demand better pay, more humane working conditions, and living wages within humane working hours. Many corporations learned (or listened) and amended their ways and/or new laws were enacted (e.g., 40-hour work week, child labor laws passed), resulting in a little bit of a balance between worker and employer to be restored.

Go back another 100 years to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution when most people still worked on farms or in cottage industries—the baker, the shoemaker, and the dress maker. Every town had a baker, a shoemaker, and a dress maker, and cities could support many individuals working in the same area to provide for the needs of the community. These individuals had self-agency, not that this made their lives easier or protect them from cultural biases or discrimination, but they were independent, not owned by a mega corporation or franchise.

Go back even further and sure life gets even harder, but individuals who could creatively problem solve were highly valued. Small tribes in these ancient times were faced with many challenges that threaten their survival and creativity meant the tribe had a better chance at surviving, especially during tough times. When we talk about tribalism today, we often only think of the savage side of tribal communities, failing to see the nurturing and protective side these small group of people enjoyed and thrived within.

It was during my second experience of being culled from the workforce that I came across an unusual musical group called Heilung. I could not understand what they were saying, but it was the only music that made sense to me during this time, so I listened to every song I could find over and over. Several of their songs made their way into The Divine Dodo series appearing as musical guides to help the poor Dodo escape the vacuous void he had become trapped inside. In a post to my small bubble of Facebook friends, I said: “It is not a modern musical group—let me just say this upfront—it is ancient and for most people it will not appeal to you in the least. But what they are doing is so important to modern man for Western ways have become fractured (i.e., mostly the male consciousness), and this is making the world very sick today. This group’s chants go to a very deep place in the human consciousness that reaches states people today might say is awake.” I did research on them and found some of their chants come from the Merseburg Incantations, which are some of the oldest known pieces of Old German literature dating back to the 9th or 10th century (maybe even 2nd to 5th century—this is still being debated).

Heilung describes its work as amplified history from early medieval northern Europe and not to be mistaken for a modern political or religious statement of any kind. They post with many of their songs: “Remember that we all are brothers… All people, beasts, tree and stone and wind… We all descend from the one great being… That was always there Before people lived and named it… Before the first seed sprouted.”

The song I wish to highlight for this post is Krigsgaldr. If you click on the embedded link, you will go to a video Heilung made to dramatize this song. They sing it completely in the ancient dialectic, so you will not understand it, but the emotions are clearly transmitted through their voices. What strikes me is the dynamic balance between the woman’s voice in contrast with the guttural, harsh Rune Reader’s voice as well as the warriors. It is absolutely beautiful. This masterful reimagining of our ancestors demonstrates they probably understood the power and ways of the human psyche and soul better than we do today.

In this version of the same song, the Rune Reader sings his part in English: Krigsgaldr with English portion sung by Rune Reader.  It is clear the tribe has been brutally attacked—their women and children killed. The Rune Reader says that they wish to live in peace, but the attackers only understand the language of war. Therefore, the tribe is invoking a ritual to plunge themselves into an unconscious state to protect what they love. Heilung can only reimagine how they might have done this, but what they have reimagined and perform for us is incredible, powerful, and terrifying for you realize how monstrous we can become when we descend into this place that is inside us all—a place that is capable of annihilation. I remember a documentary I saw some time ago that told how Hitler was fascinated by the ways of Germany’s tribal ancestors and wanted to bring them back. But he only wanted one side of them, and this is inherently lopsided like the Black Magician and White Magician from my post Is Collective Transformation Possible? Our ancestors’ held deep wisdom about the ways of the unconsciousness and the depths to which the human soul can fall. Thus, our ancestors performed elaborate rites and rituals to guide themselves through such journeys, especially the downward ones.

This is a similar understanding and ritual to what I write about in the post What Do I Do with the Mad Inside Me? In this post, I write about the elaborate war ritual that conflicting clans within the Fayu tribe engaged before the first arrows were released—a ritual that probably evolved over centuries. It was their way of channeling the Mad Inside them. It is very important to note that I am in no way glamorizing the ways of ancient tribes or saying our modern world needs to return to this state of being. In fact, several chapters later in the book child of the jungle, the author talks about the cycle of death that spun out of control between the warring clans of the Fayu tribe. In chapter 14, she describes how the Fayu did not understand the mechanism of disease or natural death, and therefore they attributed symptoms of disease and death to spiritual or magical causes. She says, “If a member of my family or clan died of disease, it would be my duty to determine who cursed that person. Then, I would be forced to avenge my relative. For example, an Iyarike would have an argument with a Tigre. A short while later, the Iyarike might die a natural death (e.g., from malaria). The immediate assumption would be that the Tigre must have cursed the person who died in retaliation for the argument they had. The Iyarike would then be obligated to kill the first available (i.e., most vulnerable) Tigre.” The Iyarike and Tigre were two clans of the four clans making up the Fayu tribe. The author recounts how this cycle of murder and revenge spun further and further out of control, resulting in the Fayu’s population dwindling from thousands down to several hundred. She says, “their culture had developed a singular focus on revenge without mercy or tender affection.”

We are all susceptible to psychic imbalances—ancient or modern. And, clearly having too little understanding for our outside reality (e.g., not understanding disease or natural death) hinders our development as a human being (and a species), but so too does having too little understanding of our inner reality; this also hinders our development. I do not wish to digress too far down this path for the focus of this post is our current economic reality. However, I would like to draw your attention to another of my older posts entitled The Collective Unconscious and the Oversoul. In this post, I quote Carl Jung who says: “The unconscious no sooner touches us than we are it–-we become unconscious of ourselves. That is the age-old danger, instinctively known and feared by primitive man, who himself stands so very close to this pleroma. His consciousness is still uncertain, wobbling on its feet. It is still childish, having just emerged from the primal waters. A wave of the unconscious may easily roll over it, and then he forgets who he was and does thing that are strange to him. Hence primitives are afraid of uncontrolled emotions, because consciousness breaks down under them and gives way to possession. All man’s strivings have therefore been directed towards the consolidation of consciousness. This was the purpose of rite and dogma; they were dams and walls to keep back the dangers of the unconscious, the ‘perils of the soul.’ Primitive rites consist accordingly in the exorcizing of spirits, the lifting of spells, the averting of the evil omen, propitiation, purification, and the production by sympathetic magic of helpful occurrences.”

In Heilung’s song, the tribe is choosing to descend, but they are attempting to guide (and perhaps control a little bit) their collective descent through an elaborate ritual that is balanced by deep love (i.e., the woman’s voice, their priestess). Today, we have forgotten this, and we do so at our own peril. Around the world, we see the effects of this forgetting for there are many warning signs. But getting back to the role of corporations, I would like to circle back to Roger McNamee and his book Zucked. In the interview I heard, he told Joshua Johnstone (the host of 1A) that what we have today is not capitalism as it existed 100 years ago, but rather a mutated and more predatory form of it. He expressed in this interview how corporations used to hold themselves accountable to their employees, their community, and their stakeholders (as I have mentioned), but now, they value only the stakeholder… the bottom line… profit. Comparing what he says with my personal experiences, it is my belief that when the stakeholders and profit becomes the highest value a corporation measures all its decisions against, they become capable of sacrificing the well-being of the human beings who work for them (or the human beings they say they are here to serve), often in the cruelest ways. Worst of all, this behavior is tolerated by many companies and indeed by us all. Perhaps this tolerance fits within our ideas about survival of the fittest for surely we want the strongest and fittest corporations to survive to protect us, but we have ended up with predators! Thus, this belief is as lopsided, and anything lopsided is going to spin out of control sooner or later.

McNamee is writing about Facebook because he mentored Mark Zuckerberg in its early days, and he is a stakeholder. When he began to see the lopsided nature of their business model and vision, he sounded the alarm. But by then, Facebook was too far in and committed to their model and vision. McNamee says this vision is shared by many modern companies and corporations not just Facebook (so this is a much bigger problem on our hands). In another interview he gave with The Guardian, McNamee talks about two important aspects of the NEW modern business model that has emerged. These are the questions he was asked, followed by his answers:

  1. When did you first realize that things had taken a turn for the worse: McNamee answers: “I met Tristan Harris, a design ethicist from Google, who talked about what he called “brain hacking”, a term that he invented to describe the persuasive technologies used by internet platforms that enable them to develop habits in the minds of the people who use the products. Those habits evolve into addictions, and that situation makes [users] vulnerable to manipulation. Like a stroke of lightning, it made me see what it was that had potentially influenced the election in the U.S. and had potentially influenced Brexit.”
  2. You said Brexit was a wake-up call. Why was that? Wake-up Call: McNamee answers: “It never occurred to me that there would be an asymmetry in the way that advertising works. That in order to command attention, you want to appeal to what [Tristan Harris] calls “the lizard brain”, the things that provoke outrage and fear. Things that essentially create a perception of reward. Those things, when you put them into advertising, can really be bad for democracy. Suddenly a neutral centrist idea gets very little traction on Facebook, where really extreme, emotionally charged ideas are viral. There’s evidence that in the US, the messages of the Trump campaign got 17 times the effective reach per dollar spent as Clinton’s messages, and that’s just a staggering advantage.”

I will not belabor these interviews for I think it is best for anyone who is interested in this subject to listen and read them for yourself and come to your own conclusions. I can only make my own conclusions based on my experience.

I will venture to say I believe we have been lulled into an unconscious sleep by the economic systems we have created to keep us safe. These systems have spawned giant corporations who have become increasingly lopsided in their vision, and they are gobbling up power, perhaps even unconscious of their unquenchable appetite. But, they crave it deeply—this power—and they will not let it go easily…not without deep conscious work. The corporations of today tell us that their behavior is completely normal (i.e., culling older workers, mass layoffs, putting stakeholders of big companies at the center of all business decisions). They tell us it has always been this way, but this is a lie. This type of behavior cuts us off from our shared humanity. It dehumanizes us by pitting us against each other and locking us into intense competition for who gets to stay on board the corporate ship (or rather the corporate submarine).

In this lopsided primal state, we are capable of tremendous cruelty for the sake of survival. But it is really corporate survival, isn’t it, and corporate survival is very different from human survival. Now, our collective human consciousness seems to be sinking faster and going deeper than ever before. One striking consequence of this rapid sinking of our collective consciousness is climate change that looks like it is accelerating faster and becoming much more destructive than we previously thought possible.

Thus, I have come to realize all of this is contained within the image I drew more than 2 years ago…that of reptilian instincts. Given my recent trauma, I animated this image to show an awakening—the eyes of which are distinctly human and clearly feminine—perhaps this is our lost or forgotten balance?

Wake up… Wake up — Art by Bébé – Cover for Sapience, which  is a story about climate change and consciousness. It is a story about wakening up in a world ravaged by climate change and ruled by corporations. It depicts human systems of governance and economics that work to submerge individual human creativity, innovation, and dignity. Such systems emerge from a deeply unconscious place within the human psyche that is more aligned with our most primal instincts to survive at the cost of all others who might threaten limited resources or that activates a burning desire to have the land or valuables this primal, unconscious psyche desires. 

I will add one final insight about this image that comes from a BBC report I heard on October 25, 2018. In this report, they said a mother’s voice works better than a fire alarm to wake children up. Thus, by adding a human voice to smoke detectors, we could save lives— children’s lives.

What if we are these slumbering children who have been lulled into a prolong and extended state of unconsciousness by the system(s) we believe to be designed to sustain us. Rather they are putting us to sleep and keeping us asleep. We need to wake up and make the hard choices required to mitigate the direst effects of climate change for these choices require scarifies. But really, the biggest sacrifices need to be made by corporations, and they really don’t want to change—I’ve heard Trump say these very words often (just replace they with I). Without dramatic changes Now, the climate effects we are witnessing Now (e.g., 1,000-year floods occurring one after the other, huge and deadly wildfires, prolonged droughts, polar ice caps melting, species and habitat destruction) will only get worst in this century. It is happening Now, to someone you know.

We need to hear our mother’s voice. She is trying to wake us up. She has been trying for many years, but we are deep sleepers. 

— Abiogenesis, Carbon Based Lifeforms

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Consciousness Waves

The Last DJ of Earth

Below is a concept video about the Last DJ of Earth who is a character in the fictional story Sapience (to be published soon). In this story, the Last DJ is trying to save the survivors of Earth after devastating climate change has utterly destroyed the world as we know it. Nation-states go bankrupted trying to engineer themselves out of devasting climate change events. Corporations bail them out—forever changing the social, economic, and political fabric of Earth. Only DJ is awake and trying to inspire the survivors of Earth through musical sermons to wake up too. In the concept video, DJ shows us how things have perhaps become more important than people (and life), how the transformation might not be what we expect, and how we need to let wisdom rise and lead us by becoming the best version of ourselves we can be. The opening prologue is the same as What Is Your Story that is posted on the About page of this site, then DJ’s musical sermons to save humanity begins.

The prologue came to me as a vision. The vision is as you see… from far out in space with the voice of a young girl narrating it (though I could not find a young girl). It was just before the 2016 election, and I had been listening to the powerful story Khizr Khan was telling us about his son–Humayun Khan who was a Muslim American soldier killed in Iraq in 2004 because he ran toward a suicide bomber to save the lives of the men he was in charge of.  Khizr Khan spoke with humility, compassion, and love about his son, their terrible lost, and then the incredible spotlight they has been flung into during this tumultuous time of U.S. history. His voice and his story about his son stirred me deeply. It mixed with the voice of the girl in my vision, and this lead me to understand the importance of each of our stories in creating our shared reality. Now, more than any time in human history, we need to tell the best stories about ourselves, about our families, our communities, countries, and world. We need to become the best versions of ourselves that we can be and help others do the same from a place of kindness, empathy, and love. After the prologue, the Last DJ begins his mission to help the Good People of Earth tell better, more conscious stories about themselves, their families, and world so they might heal and Earth might be saved.

I know this is an amateur video, but I have a dream to inspire hundreds of Last DJ videos with makers around the world who create their own musical sermons to inspire the Good People of Earth to save Earth, especially while there is a tiny bit of time left to save her (or part of her).  Anyone can play the Last DJ of Earth for DJ has a very active imagination, and well, we all really are the last DJs. 

All rights and acknowledgments of music go solely to the musical creators of these amazing songs DJ dramatizes. Music is elemental to us as human beings, and we need our musical creators now, more than ever, to inspire us to dive deeper within ourselves and become master story tellers of our lives and our families. Our communities, countries, and world depends on each and everyone of us telling the best stories we can tell… stories that come from wholeness and deeper consciousness… stories that draw from the well of wisdom existing inside us all… we just have become cut off from it. The Last DJ has many playlists such as Here & Now…Playlist, which is featured in another blog titled: Is Collective Transformation Possible? (@Sapience207) DJ is taking recommendations for his playlists until 2112…then… well… this is why he is the last DJ.  

Concept Video: The Last DJ of Earth — Musical Sermons to Save Humanity