mermaidcamp

mermaidcamp

Keeping current in wellness, in and out of the water

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Sand Mandala in Tucson

September 20, 2013 — 5 Comments

We are lucky to have a tradition of sand mandala making at the U of Arizona Bookstore. Monks have been visiting to draw them on the floor in the basement for years. This is the third one I have been lucky enough to witness.  This time they are making the Buddha of Compassion.  After they create the image the sweep up the sand and dispose of some of it in water, in a ritual representing the cosmos.  This demonstration of attachment and enlightenment is illustrated clearly when the sand is swept and the American viewers rush in to get a bag of the magical sand to take home and keep.  The monks don’t need to do that; they are off to draw and destroy many more mandalas all over the world.  They do it to show the futility of attachment. It is a beautiful way to illustrate the point.

Culture in Need of Lovingkindness

September 16, 2013 — 4 Comments

Today we watch another mass shooting unfold in DC like the reality show that it is. The constant reminder of violence must have something to do with the growth and spread of violence. Lovingkindnessis the remedy for our growing epidemic of right and wrong.  If everyone is busy deciding to be right and seek vengeance from those who are wrong who will get in touch with reality?  Have we given up reality to watch it on television and tweet it live?  How riveting will it be to live tweet the IPO of twitter?  While some see gun control or calorie control as the way to solve of cultural problems, I believe we are highly delusional as a society.  The guns and the health issues are symptoms of systems that do not work.  Our distraction is killing us as individuals and as a culture.

Numb and nihilistic as we witness weather and violent torrents of human hatred wash over our land, we twist the truth by looking for the single issue or party on which to place blame.  The events in the world must blur for those who play computer games as well as absorb world tragedy as it unfolds.  The digital distance we have from other other humans and the truth is dragging us in a downward spiral of delusion.  I wonder if people can wake up and think they are in the World of Warcraft…or some variation on it.  We are cultivating violence and maya, when our only hope is in truth and lovingkindness.  Each of us generates energy that fuels the hatred; none of us is perfect.  On an individual basis we must take responsibility to feed and care for the soul of the world until al beings are free.  This will require centering.  This will require a shift in focus and a pivot in the direction of our thinking.

Memory Bank

September 6, 2013 — 4 Comments

Sights, sounds and smells ignite memories.  There are strong connections of which we are unaware that link us to the past.  We are conditioned by both culture and anticipation.  If we remember (or think we recall) a season, an event,  or a place we create expectations.  I went to see my classmates last week in Pennsylvania to both test and fill my memory bank.  When I first arrived in the small town where I grew up I walked directly to my old home to jog my memory.   It did stir up both direct event recollection and a sense of the place.  It has not changed much.  I haven’t either.

You are what your deep, driving desrire is.

As your deep, driving desire is, so is your will.

As your will is, so is your deed.

As your deed is, so is your destiny.  – Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

Exorcist Archetype

August 24, 2013 — 5 Comments

What kind of power does an exorcist have?  Technically Catholic priests are in the business of exorcism, but in day to day life some people play the role of the exorcist to friends or family.  I personally do not have much experience with this archetype, but we all recently witnessed a bookkeeper in a school in Georgia display extraordinary ability to drain the evil out of a situation.  Antoinette Tuff  found the strength to talk down a deranged gunman with 500 rounds of ammunition.  Later in an interview she told the 911 dispatcher with whom she had been on the phone that she had been terrified.  She called the courage to act the grace of God.  I imagine that priest or not, it is always the grace of God that provides the purging of evil.  Do you have any experience with exorcist archetypes?

Shame

August 3, 2013 — 7 Comments

“Shame is a soul eating emotion” Carl Gustav Jung

Today shame is  often related to compulsive behavior.  It seems also to be the reason for codependent rather than meaningful relationships.   Everyone knows shame in some part of life, so it is a common denominator.  In small doses it is the element that keeps us from enjoying being ourselves.  In larger quantities it is crippling.  It’s a shame so much energy is spent on shame. While it cannot be avoided completely during one’s life it can be kept in check.

Alternatives to Dissapointment

July 21, 2013 — 7 Comments

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune are brutal.  If you find yourself in a world you never made looking for ways to avoid reality, you may be heading for the ultimate disappointment, the end of  your life.  You are heading in that direction with or without your own acknowledgement.  One of the important steps to take is facing mortality.  Your parents and all our relations have ,or will at some time, die.  Typically we never think of ourselves in this group.  The dead are like traffic; you consider yourself as separate from the activity even when you are in the middle of it.  Of course if you are reading this we think you are alive, but this is not a permanent state.  Eventually you will run out of time, no matter how you have spent it. You probably mind your financial accounts.  When will you begin to account for your time?

Time and responsibility are needed to create:

  • well being
  • strength
  • flexibility
  • humor
  • mental agility
  • strong constitution
  • social balance
  • family unity
  • community peace

Meditation, It’s Not What You Think

July 19, 2013 — 4 Comments

Meditation can take many forms, but it has been confused with nihilism.  Emptiness is a holy state  leading to enlightenment.  Nothingness is not the same as nothing. Jeff Zlotnik gives a simple demonstration of an easy breath following meditation technique in this video.  Calm, peace, and a sense of spaciousness are the results of time spent practicing meditation.  Thinking and reacting, compelled to control, we slip farther away from health and well being.  Doing nothing without freaking out is a skill to cultivate, no matter which style you choose to practice.  Breath is usually a component, but walking, painting, writing poetry, chanting, and archery can be formats for meditative practice as well.  Find a form that feels right to your physical and mental constitution, then practice.

Healer Archetype

July 15, 2013

Healers have obstacles to overcome in learning to practice their arts.  Today many must endure heavy hazing in the hospital residency period to become an MD.  The apparent cruelty is set up to show the prospect what to expect when entering a medical career.  Overworked and tired, those who survive will become the next generation of MD’s.  The training may not include any advise on self care or setting a healthy example.  Empathy is not taught, but acquired.  The mythical Chrion represents the fortitude and wisdom required to heal the bodies or souls of others.  The positive healer uses energy and talents wisely to benefit everyone.  The shadow healer harms others, sometimes unwittingly. The present system of health care in the United States qualifies, in my opinion, as a wounded healer that has yet to acquire empathy for the patient.

The Importance of Being Grateful

July 9, 2013 — 9 Comments

Practice defines our reality. We spend our time and energy as if we had no control over them.  We learn what we study and we believe what favors our own superior position in the human crowd.  Nobody survives alone without help from others.  In history we chose the people who prepared our food and sewed our clothing carefully to make the most of the means at our disposal.  We used resources in the same way because they were scarce.  Most individuals were not lavished with great luxury, but if they were lucky they had liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Today we know nothing of the people who prepare our food like products or sew our disposable fashion.  We may have a vague feeling that everything we use was made in China, but that is usually the end of it. Many seek pleasure in acquisition of goods and services just to be piggy.  This general shift in responsibility is sad in a big karmic way because we have essentially eliminated the need for gratitude to those who serve our material needs.  We buy the workers and then discard them like the objects they make for us.

Gratefulness.org is an organization created to enhance gratefulness around the globe in every way.  The offers and courses are imaginative and very helpful.  One can study on line everything from gratitude poetry writing to living the hours like a monastic.  Given the international state of affairs I salute the Gratefulness organization for addressing the main problems right at the root.  If you have not visited these grateful folks and discovered what they are teaching, you are missing an opportunity to be guided to a more grateful state of mind.  Grace is gratitude, gentle reader; don’t leave home without it.

Leaving Oakmont

June 30, 2013 — 7 Comments

I spent my school career through the 8th grade in the small town of Oakmont, PA, a suburb of Pittsburgh. This tiny, close knit (nosey) community was about the Oakmont Country Club and Edgewater Steel, and some other stuff. For kids it was paradise with millionaire robber baron neighbors providing lavish recreational opportunities.  My parents were Republicans who disliked JFK and did not play golf.  On one hand they were non conformist, and on the other, very concerned with image.  I had a running battle with my mother for my entire grade school career about bangs, permanent waves, and white socks.  These symbols of culture and control were so important to my mother that my wishes were never considered.  She stuck my hair in the sink and put stinky stuff and curlers in it against my will, and with loud protest.  She always cut my bangs off, mullet style.  The most important symbol to Ruby Morse was the little girl’s need to wear white anklet socks.  This was truly the most hated of all conditions, the white sock purgatory. Ruby Morse believed that wearing stockings was a sign of loose morals.  I believed she inflicted the white socks as a crazed statement of micro management.  We had deep, basic irreconcilable fashion differences.

Management of any kind was about to fly out the window when the family moved to San Tomé, Venezuela in 1963.  My father became the general manager for Mene Grande ( Gulf Oil) for eastern Venezuela.  This meant that I lived in a big house with servants and my father was the boss of everyone in the town where I lived.  My teachers in school worked for my father, as did all my friends’ parents.  Strangers constantly gave me lovely gifts, and it was obviously too hot to wear white socks.  I was the lucky imperialist 13-year-old with everything.  I lived in a remote place so radio was a lot less available than it had been in Pittsburgh.  The strongest reliable signal came from Radio Havana.  Fidel would hold forth for hours and then they played some music.  Live music was everywhere.  I had a harp serenade at my window by a guy who wrote the song for me.  This could not have happened in Pennsylvania.  Although San Tomé had a golf course, there was no other commonality with Oakmont, PA.  Nothing could have been more drastic, really.  I loved it, but when given the chance to choose where I would go abroad for 10th grade, I chose PA because I still thought of it as my US home.  I have not visited Oakmont since 1964.

I will return to Oakmont to see some of my school friends in a couple of months.  We have all traveled different paths, but mine diverged drastically and forever.  I am bringing back memories and enjoying the stories that my classmates remember.  Some scenes are vivid as I think of them, and some are gone.  I hardly remember any of the parents.  Our personalities are in tact, from what I can detect on our Facebook page.  We will go and physically be in the building where we went to elementary grades together.  I think it will be amazing..our own versions of what we remember.  I look forward to it with great anticipation.