mermaidcamp
Keeping current in wellness, in and out of the water
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Color Magic
July 23, 2013
— 3 Comments
Color has magical qualities. Color plays a role in ritual, in design, and in folk medicine around the world. In Feng Shui customs, cures, and auspicious building sites are color coded. Color and love are symbolically entwined, intrinsically related. Emotions are influenced by color. What do your colors say about you?
- Do you wear the same colors all the time?
- Do you decorate with the same hues?
- Is your wardrobe organized, or randomly stored?
- Do you have strong identification with one color?
- Do you have intense dislike of any color?
Look around today to learn more about your sensitivity to your surroundings. An interesting exercise to try is choosing one color, then noticing how you encounter it during the day. Notice if it is in your food, your work, or your fashion. Pay attention to the way you feel when you run into this color. Does it throw you off balance in some emotional way? Does it have meaning of a symbolic nature?
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.
Free Freedom
July 9, 2013
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amaryllis
sunflower
cactus
sunflwoer
ice plant
iris
sunflower
hollyhock
bee balm
sunflowers
Our relative freedom is under our control. We are sometimes the prisoners in our very own jail of procrastination, judgment, and something we call, running around. We often choose running around our decisions rather than making them, which, by default, makes them. If we can send armies to fight for freedom in harsh conditions what is stopping us from personally liberating ourselves to feel happy and free? Here are some places to look for or create more freedom in your life:
- Decide – No need to be rash, and you can change your mind later, but just do it when you have decisions to make
- Create – Any act of creation from cooking to sculpture to poetry writing gives us a sense of freedom. We have made our own. We do not have to settle for what everyone else has.
- Move – Sometimes a tragic byproduct of depression or physical discomfort is reluctance to move. Moving is freedom itself;the more you move and use your body in different ways, the more freedom you feel. The body responds with greater flexibility and range of motion, which itself feels really good.
- Choose – Make choices in your daily life to expand the horizon. If you have eaten the same breakfast for years, try something else. Small changes and personal touches are the essence of freedom. Allow yourself to make new choices for no particular reason. Find your own favorites you have not yet experienced.
- Allow – Free time is rare and fleeting with the electronic gadgets in hand all day and all night. Free up some concentrated personal time to be spontaneous and discover new worlds. Start small and build on this practice.
- Garden – We may not all be able to grow our own, but visiting gardens and other botanical spaces give us an expansive feeling of being part of nature. If you put in the hard work it takes to grow some food you like to eat you will be rewarded for those efforts. Picking your dinner is liberating and empowering.
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
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- 1963 San Tomé
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- not in Pittsburgh any more
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.
In Tucson and around the country damage from mold is a serious issue. This health hazard can be dangerous to humans and pets. It is most devastating to real estate value because insurance companies rightly treat it like the plague. Mold that is rampant must be treated and removed to avoid spread and contamination of the entire area. Since the property with an adjoining wall has been used to collect donations for a decade, the water has been leaking profusely for months, and everything points to heavy duty mold damage I have repeatedly asked the HOA board that collects the donations from the public to hire Rocky the Mold Dog, who appears on TV. He is a beagle with a nose for mold. He sniffs the property and helps the humans identify problems so they can be treated. All health department code has been violated in this building for more than a decade. The unsupervised food collection, storage, and preparation in a leaky environment is a very likely contributor to the growth of mold. There is probable cause to believe the building is completely infested with mold which is damaging my home every day.
There is much more than a conflict of interest between the HOA board members who run the charity scam collecting donations, and the property owners in this neighborhood. I had some work done on my home recently and was informed by the contractor who did the work about the level of danger to my structural integrity posed by the neglect of my next door neighbor. He took some pictures of the rotting roof piled with debris, and explained that the load of all that garbage was a serious threat to my home. He taught me a lot that I did not know about the dangers and damage that mold represents. I read my insurance policy and spoke to my agent who explained the complex and very depressing details of mold, what it does, and what happens to your insurance policy once it is discovered. I am officially freaked out about the physical damage the charity scam has done to my home. The donation traffic has slowed to nothing, the water leak was repaired a couple of days ago after leaking for at least 6 months. I need the people who took advantage of all their neighbors to begin to acknowledge reality and the neighborhood by getting a mold test to confirm or deny the presence of a very hazardous material. Their behavior suggests that they do no believe in cause and effect. Believe it or not, every action will continue to have an equal and opposite reaction.
Mold and Your Health
June 28, 2013
— 5 Comments
Betrayal and Trust
June 24, 2013
— 3 Comments
The decision to trust is a risk. Calculating risk should be a skill we develop and improve over our lives. The influence of relationships on our faith in others is central. Early betrayal can be a blessing because it can prevent deeper problems by showing true colors. Trust and the possibility of betrayal arise together. If we trust the government, or our spouse, or boss, we may find that faith has been misplaced. Few of us have the ability to accurately judge or predict the behavior of our closest companions. Being blind to imperfections is neither healthy nor honest. If we are honest we can admit our own imperfections, and our own potential to betray others. With perspective we can see how our national anger has damaged the entire society.
The rose-colored glasses version of America was a risk. The more we spun ourselves into the greatest country in the world, the more we found ourselves betrayed as a nation. The more we fought for our way of life around the world (whatever that meant), the more undesirable our way of life became. The more we declared war on everything from drugs to terror, the more ground we lost in the global trust department. Now American security is breeched on a regular basis in fairly spectacular fashion. It is lucrative, I imagine, for some, but it is becoming a badge of courage. If the seed of betrayal is trust, then it must also follow that after betrayal trust becomes mature and discerning. It is a cycle, gentle reader.
Transformational Groups and Language
June 13, 2013
— 1 Comment
I am in a chat group with some people who have been to est training or the Landmark Forum, but I have not done that. I enjoy their point of view, but am amused by much of the jargon. Recently somebody in that group asked if others had alienated others with special transformational language. I had to laugh and think of what my own transformational groups and languages have been:
- childhood neighbors
- early childhood school friends
- summer camp buddies
- petroleum camp amigos from Venezuela
- high school choir and drama students
- hippies
- spa bunnies
- swimmers
- vegetarians
- Swiss
There are sub groups,but these are the majors. I have recently been united with my early childhood neighbors and school friends, one of whom went to summer camp with me. I have also gotten in touch with many old friends and neighbors who lived in San Tomé, Venezuela in the early 1960’s. This mostly bilingual group has a language and a culture that is unique. I am not in contact with any high school or college friends, but a small group with whom I worked in a theater company in Cherokee, NC in 1968 has been drawn together through social media. The hippies, spa bunnies, swimmers, and vegetarians all switch places and morph into the current culture. I know a few of each group from the past. I stay in touch with Swiss friends, although I have not visited for a few years now.
The language, slang, and meaning of these transformational groups imprint on us as individuals, and as a collective groupthink. We share memories that fit together like jigsaw puzzles. In the last month I have been amazed to learn some of the things my elementary classmates remember about me, and what I know about them. The past plays back like a very funny movie, missing lots of dialog and motive. What seemed insignificant is memorable, and what was important at the time has lost significance. We do have a thread of common language, and some common ideas. Although we may no longer be a group who hangs out in real life, we somehow are still transforming each other. Even learning about the death of some of our old comrades shakes the foundation of mortality, the ultimate transformation.
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