Who I Am Version 2018

2018 is drawing to a close. 

Another race to the finish in a year of taking on so much information and then wondering what the hell to do with yet another year of all those details. There is no end to information. When I think of my spiritual life- I want to know many things. My spiritual understanding is that there is only Oneness. I am curious about how to both understand this very large container of truth and how to talk about it without sounding like a platitude spewing New Age idiot. I am a collector of facts about being human and what it means to be human. And as a specific human, I want to know who I am. 

I am lucky. My mind is not a steel trap. It is more of a steel sieve. I can’t retain any of my detailed information but I sure like to pour over it like my next cup of single origin caffeine. Because I have trouble retaining details, I have to constantly review my lessons…

Let’s review the lessons of 2018. What did you learn?

I learned that DNA tests are expensive and I know for sure that they are cheapest right after Thanksgiving. Like discovering a $200 55’’ 4K TV on Black Friday, you cannot afford to let that shit go unordered.

Maybe you are graced with thorough knowledge of your complete familial lines.  I am not so blessed. I have that family gift of being American. That means that I do not know when my people came to this country or where they came from. I know a few broad genetic and historical strokes. My father is Anglo and his Scots-Irish family left Northern Ireland in the early 1700s. I always thought they were fleeing from potato famine but that timing is not historically accurate. They were early land grabbers, misidentified as freedom seekers in our 4th grade history books.

The real reveal is on my mother’s side of the genetic aisle. 2018 is the year that I learned that she is 67% Native American. I learned that I am 32% Native American.  I could have guessed that from my lactose intolerance and my detailed personal history of sensitively crying while drunk.

Not one word of Native heritage was spoken to me. Not ever. Not in my entire life.

My mother barely acknowledges that she is Mexican. Being Native is not a big whoop in Mexico because it has the largest indigenous population in the Americas. 1.2% of the total Mexican population speak only an indigenous language. I learned more about the unimportance of being Native when I asked my Anglo dad about possibly being indigenous and maybe belonging to a tribe. He offhandedly said, “Everyone belongs to a tribe in Mexico.” That fact has caused me to ask the million dollar question of 2018- what people do I belong to? There was no family history or story told to me about our genetic lineage. It wasn't a topic of conversation among my fifty one first cousins. There is a small statement of facts within my immediate family that my grandfather, Tomas Garcia, worked as a baggage handler on the railroads and eventually settled in eastern Kansas with my grandmother, Simona.  I was in my forties before I learned that my grandparents left their eldest daughter, who was 2 at the time, with family because of a difficulty in crossing the border with her when they immigrated. They did not see her again until she was 24 and immigrated herself to join them in Kansas.

My mom was born the youngest of 11 live births. She spent her entire life building a life of secure whiteness. She does not speak Spanish which is notable because her parents did not speak English. When I had to choose a language in high school, my mom strongly suggested, demanded actually, that I not take Spanish, but instead choose a “pretty language. Like German.”  

2018 is the year that I spent the most time with my parents since 1980 because they moved 600 miles from Southern California and 2 blocks away from me in Northern California. Now my 82 year old mother has revealed that she was a migrant field laborer when she was young enough to pick potatoes with her parents and teen aged siblings, driving from Kansas to Minnesota in the early 1940s. They stopped working as migrants after a bad car crash left my grandmother severely injured. My grandparents bought a small farm in north Lawrence Kansas, on land that was formerly a reservation of the Delaware tribe.

I was raised a middle-class white girl.  I barely have access to the Mexican culture that is prized by my cousins. (Yes, I said I have 51 first cousins.) They speak with the second generation Chicano accent and I do not. I was not raised to revel in being Mexican because I barely knew that I am Mexican and I am even less knowledgeable of our indigenous truth.

As I said, when I think of my spiritual life- I want to know many things. I am a collector of facts about being human and what it means to be human. I want to know who I am. I want to know about the indignities my mother faced as a child that caused her to deny her heritage. More to my point, what caused her to deny my heritage to me? Because in doing so she denied the importance of me and the value of who I am as an individual.

These questions are spiritually significant and personally important in the context of understanding Oneness.  It’s true that all humans are 99% composed of 6 elements plus 5 more and some trace elements defined as necessary for life as we know it. Adults of average weight are comprised of 7 times 10 to the 27th atoms. All humans share the same chemical and atomic composition.

And yet…I am not you and you could never be me. Not that you would want to be me thinking these thoughts, incessantly researching them and almost instantly forgetting the answers. Putting aside the question of nature versus nurture for another installation of my ramblings about this human experience, we are 7.7 billion ostensibly separate beings. Exploring this belief that we are not separate requires that I investigate all the ways that we are distinct parts of a vast entirety, an entirety that may not be discernible to us because to us, with our limited perspective, it is unknowably boundless and we are the smallest of fractions of individual participants.

Because we cannot hold the miracle of our presence in this vast existence, because we may never have contact with any other conscious, sentient beings before we self destruct; I feel that our only job in the face of an infinitely opaque reality is to Know Thyself. This piece of advice has been floating around since before it was finally written down by Pythia, the Oracle of Delphi, around the 8th century BC.

You would think that in the nearly 3000 years of recorded history we would know that Know Thyself is just about the only thing we can know with real veracity.

My people flourished in Mexico for almost 4,000 years before the Europeans arrived.

10,000 years ago, my ancestors began to domesticate maize into corn.

Who wouldn’t want to know more about a lineage that has survived the five to seven million years since Ancient man decided to rear up and have a good look around while walking? We survived countless inter-tribal battles in Pre-Columbian Mexico and then the germ warfare that the Anglos brought with them. My line is a winner on this continent and I can’t help but wonder if we will survive whatever fate is lining up next for the human race.

My job in this life has been to Know Myself.  I am dedicated to a life of service. I am here to assist as many humans as I can to recognize their value, know their gift and bring it to the world. There is no time to waste. And we must do this knowing that we are intimately connected as a species, a species that cannot afford to pretend it is only a random collection of unconnected individuals.

We don’t have much time to know ourselves as intricately necessary pieces of this environmental perplexity. We will have to reorganize ourselves rapidly for the cultural, social, and economic changes that our planet will demand of us in the next decades.

How will you begin to know who you are and how you fit into the puzzle of life on planet Earth? Let's figure it out together.

Hope- An Update

I broke up with Hope a long time ago.  Some of it was politically motivated.  Coming from a liberal family, as our country moved steadily to the right, I felt my belief that we could always solve our problem through government slowly eroding like water on stone; drip, drip, dripping until my  Grand Canyon of political despair was formed. I wanted to believe this: “We are Americans!  We can manifest whatever future we want.  We landed on the Moon, right?”  I firmly believed Steve Jobs when he said, “the future belongs to those who make it.”

First and foremost, I am an American.  We are a culture of Hope.  The American Dream lures us into the promise that, with enough backbone, we can be rich and famous.  That anybody can be President.  Okay, well that one is turning out to be true.

What our American version of hope does not supply is the money to accomplish our wildest dreams.  That is the information that is not revealed in most historical scenarios of success in America.

Conventional wisdom of our country’s culture says, “The way to success is to work hard.  All will be given to you if only you keep at it.”  Meanwhile, your wage is not keeping up with rising costs because all the money is skimmed off the top. You cannot afford to buy a house because Air BnB has tripled the value of your rent and escalated the costs of buying in your neighborhood.

I invite you to re-look at the American Dream and how the myth was made.  The West was settled in part by  robber-barons, the 1% of their time, who invested in railroads and secured their empires by inviting the masses to follow them, on their own dime.  Set up the opportunity to sell something and they will come.  You can read that as a rephrasing of the Steve Jobs quote, which by the way, came from an advertisement.

The single cultural quality we share as Americans is hope. Hope that we will make it. Hope that our kids will make it better. Hope that if we vote it will all be good.

Michelle Obama is wrong. It’s not that we don’t have hope now.  It’s that hope is the wrong verb and definitely not the noun of today. We have to leave the current definition of hope. We have to leave the Merriam-Webster limitation of understanding hope as,  “ cherishing a desire with anticipation” and  return to the archaic use of the word as, “trust.”

How do we do this?  You know, you really know, what this looks like to you.  It lives inside you like a whisper in your gut.  Find your way to it.  Sit daily, comfortably and quietly,  for even five short minutes and it will whisper to you.  The more you listen to it and practice with it, the louder it will speak.

How do we know when to believe our smallest internal whispers? When, first all, no one is harmed.  If our actions cause pain and suffering, there is something arising that is tainted by our own self-reflecting motives.  When we unhook from the many layers within our understanding that we need to get something by taking from others, we open to giving ourselves in the world with a clearer certainty of delivering our gifts.

You must deliver your gifts to the world. Anything less is the human arrogance of playing small. Human arrogance has two sides. One side is the shadow side, the side that is fearful and meek, “How can I make a difference? I’m just one person?” The other is the hopeful, in the current use of the word, and overinflated, “Why shouldn't I be President? I’m fantastic.”

Move away from hope and into certainty. Hope is a mother f*cker.  It will disappoint you every time. Certainty requires action.  Hope lulls us into exhausted complacency.  Yes, there is much to do, too much to do, in this life.  Certainty is a springboard of life force, propelling you into all that we can do and be in our one precious life, to quote Mary Oliver.  Why disappoint yourself, your family, your friends, the world?  Give yourself the gift you need to move with what the Buddhists call, “right action.”

Leave the hope train and get on the certainty bandwagon.  We can no longer afford to hope this world will turn out okay.  We have to be certain and work to make that certainty comes alive.

Start with yourself, work within your family, offer your gifts and encourage each person you meet to offer theirs.  You won’t be disappointed. When you know what your gift is and are no longer hoping to find it, your “presence will automatically liberate others”, as Marianne Williamson so famously stated.

These times require our certainty so that we can stop worrying about the future and do the work that is required of us now.


 

The Spot in the Future

From Harbin Hot Springs Winter issue Quarterly article

This is a particular moment in our history together.  The moment when a tool of meaningful communication between two spiritual entities, the printed Harbin Hot Springs Quarterly and you, has run its course and completes its cycle of existence.  That needs to be marked as auspicious.  While it’s true that the past is here to be moved through and released, it’s also true that we must pause to give gratitude for all the steps that led us to this moment in the present.  Many thanks and acknowledgement to Ann Prehn for her faithful, capable and loving presence over these pages for so long.

I ventured onto these pages in the Quarterly 17 years ago when I first became a resident of Harbin Hot Springs.  I have grown in many directions over these years.  I became a business person, at first, opening The Blue Room espresso bar.  Then a mother of an indigenous Harbin son, born and raised in this large extended family.  I grew as a writer: on these pages I wrote a eulogy, poetry and pieces on my journey in founding the Lake County International Charter School, each piece marking my place on the path of this life shared in full view from your path.  I became a minister of Harbin Hot Springs integrating my truth as a spiritual being.  I continued my professional evolution from French chef to being fully versed in alternative cooking and the deeper value of nutrition in food, as medicine for the body and spirit.

And so this is the end of the printed Harbin Hot Springs Quarterly.  I am here to check in about the future.  I’m certain that as this form ends and we move towards electronic sharing of the life we live with Harbin, another communication form will emerge that continues to ask the implicit question, “What are you doing with your life?”

I’ve arrived in a future that, 17 years ago when I first became resident, I couldn’t have guessed would manifest.  I was a complete yuppie, back then, yearning instead for the deepest possible spiritual life.  I wanted my work to be evidence of a life firmly based in meditation, moving away from “What are you doing” and into “What are you aware of?”

17 years of personal growth later, I arrived at this point in the future.  I recently opened a new business in Middletown proper:  “The Spot” is an organic juice and wheat grass bar with an expanding repertoire of raw foods: salads, small plates, and desserts, with a dedication to healthy, fresh cuisine that focuses on gluten and dairy free fare.  We are sharing our location with Malcolm Gordon, another long time resident.  He handcrafts Healing Springs kombucha in eight flavors, jun (a sweeter kombucha) in two flavors and two flavors of apple cider vinegar refresher.

I’m aware of the need to provide an evolved business.  A food service that is sustainable, organic and most exciting of all, employee owned.  It feels right to offer the community members of this business the benefit of ownership.  We’re working together to provide service in the form of nourishing products that offer sustenance that is attractive to your soul.  I have been seventeen years cultivating a life’s work that is satisfying and deeply committed to what the Buddhists’ refer to as “right action.”  This business is a chapter in my life that serves my deepest desire to serve.  The gathering of knowledge accumulated over my life has led me to one thought regarding commerce:  There is plenty, in the benefits of any profitable business, to be shared among community members who work so very hard and with so much love to give back to the community that is served. 

I am committed to being as present and capably walking my professional path in service to your health and well being as I can be.  I am committed to showing up locally and making my contribution to the greater good of the planet.  Who knows what the future will bring?  All I know is to live in this moment touching into the pure positive energy of living a fully engaged and thriving human existence, feeling the deepest connection of spirit as your life touches mine.

That is what the Quarterly has done all these years of printed publication.  It has effectively rippled out from its particular point of time, space and knowledge to touch and affect you, where ever you have been in the past, up to touching you now in this moment of Presence.

Bless what came before.  Bless this moment now.  Bless what shall be.  A ho.

The Spot is located in Middletown at 21163 Calistoga Road, next to Mugshots Espresso Bar.

Hope, Love, Crack and Truth

When, exactly did I lose all hope?  I think it happened over the last six years, slowly and incrementally.  It happened in coincidence with my spiritual unfoldment and the last major breakup which, not so coincidentally, happened over the last six years.  As both love and psychological illusion fell away, hope went with it, tagging along for the ride.  I have to say, at this point, I’m not sure it was love at all.  It was another version of ego.  Another point of addiction by a mind that thinks it’s all knowing powerful and in charge of truth.  It was more like being a crack addict.  It probably seems like a good idea to get that high at first.  It feels unbelievably good, I imagine.  Like love.  Until it starts to take over and becomes less about choice and feeling good and more about not feeling bad.  I’ve tried, in my bad choices in love, to shore up hope:  hope that love can last, hope that the high won’t wear off, hope that I can finally feel good about myself.  Which is the catch-22.  How can you feel good about being an addict?  Love, not the addicted kind that I have preferred, hasn’t helped.  I’ve felt worse for the choices I’ve made and now I’m left without hope of ever changing this life through love. 

Without hope.  See, there it is again.  It washed off from me in the bath this morning.  Now it’s falling off my shoulders like a coat that is too small.  Every little movement shrugs it off.  In this moment, something has fundamentally changed.  This feeling doesn’t feel like despair, the opposite of hope.  In this moment, I experience a quiet solidity and a full body peace.  Love is not the point, not through the experience of love, anyway.  Hope is not the answer.  The doorway to Truth lies in letting go of both and realizing that no amount of grasping or clinging to what came before will satisfy this addiction.  I am more in love with this moment than I have ever been with a man or a hope.  They feel like paper dolls.  It’s time to put them away.  It feels like relaxing into the warmth of sunshine.  Melting into the golden radiation of life itself.

Occupy Your Life

I’ve been watching various grass roots movements since the Presidential election of 2008. I’ve greatly appreciated the movement away from a general cultural malaise and into the awakening of the 99%.  

I have noticed that the malaise has been identified individually as depression throughout the population. Many individuals have been medicated for years now. Long enough to get some perspective, and long enough for the medicated to know, that it’s possible to start asking what they really want for their lives. 

Depression has served as the more comfortable place because it’s easier to live caring more about how others feel than to live knowing we are 100% responsible for our experience. That doesn’t mean that others are not trying to victimize us nor that injustices don’t happen. It just means that there is 100% responsibility on all sides of reality. The powers that be know that you were easier to deal with when you were depressed because you stayed in your room and you didn’t bother anybody. When you move up the emotional scale into the more active energies of anger or rage, you activate your superpowers of strength and power, capacities that are the hardest forces for organizations and the people who seemingly have all the control within them to deal with. It’s the reason why we have been encouraged to become a nation of sheep. 

Once upon a time, we were a nation of rebels. As we stayed with and developed our greater cultural truth, we became a truer form of Patriot Act. We moved as a nation towards knowing and holding this Truth to be self evident, that all men are created equal. We moved towards Truth. We did not deviate and became an autonomous entity and gave the world a new model of self governing.
From our anger about not controlling our country’s destiny we gave up a path that was no longer tenable. In the truth of that, we did the right thing and it’s worked, more or less, until now. I hold that it’s still working and the beauty of the moment is that we are no longer be sheep, raised to be slaughtered on the alter of materialism. The call now is not so much about getting other people’s money. It’s not even about wresting control. It’s about personal power and living in our personal validation that strength and power resides within us. 

The mistake is to ask anyone outside ourselves to give it to us. It cannot be done. “Please may we self govern?” That’s powerless. “Can’t we do it differently?” There’s blame in that. We need personal acknowledgement, from that truly quiet place of power deeply held in the belly. We need to know that We don’t have to ask or to blame. 

Now is the time to listen to the guidance within the rage and anger, even in the depression that you may be evidencing and turn them into the power, strength and truth. No, it’s not easy. You will get feedback about where you are in this moment in time. The powers that be will reflect powerlessness back to you. You are easier to deal with by continuing to act like sheep waiting for your fate. Now try to move through the body, feel yourself through your heart and belly. Sit quietly for few concentrated minutes and ask yourself, “What is it that you really want?” Discover your superpowers. You probably have more than one. Take one and make a small act with it. Occupy your life. You will feel the power, the strength and the Truth of who you really are.

I'm Not Here, Please Leave A Message At The Beep

I am trying to get the hang of this.  I'm afraid I've reached a saturation point with technology at this age.  I'm still not sure that I can remember one more password. I'm also feeling attracted to the ability to randomly send out thoughts as they become important enough to feel like sharing them.  Kind of like a newspaper columnist.  I'm hoping that the string of thoughts aren't so random.  Maybe there will be a thread or an undercurrent of symbolism that makes sense.  I can't stand the need to say something meaningful with every word.  That's what I can't stand about Facebook posts.  It's either vapid, like "Banana waffles!"  or emotionally diffused. As if stating what is felt becomes too trite when shouted out over social networking.  The mind, and it's personality, love Facebooking.  They love to be "Liked."  I notice the wave of satisfaction that happens when my posts are liked and now you know that I'm registering how many and who exactly likes your posts too.

Maybe that's the point to this.  This blog is one more way to feel connected.  I've always needed a daily friend, and this blog is that for me now.  So follow along as I learn this lesson, the latest tribal version of throwing up smoke signals to see if anyone is out there paying attention.

There's nothing to do- except everything

Wow.  Here I am in another place that I know nothing about.  What I do  know is that it's true that in my life, the only constant has been change.  Once again I have no idea how to work this or where it's taking me.  Cue Talking Heads- "How do I work this?  This is not my beautiful life." 
So here I am truly ready for the next chapter. Bringing on my beautiful life by a consistent and persistent stream of change.  Can I blog it all the way through?  I feel I've fallen into a black hole where no light is escaping and everything solid has been broken up and dispersed.

My question is how to remain in the slip stream of all that is changing.  I've lived in the same place with the same community of people for 15 years.  I attempted to get in deeper in the business of the community only to find myself centrifuged out.  This place is a vortex of energy.  The magma is closer to the surface here.  I'm not just speaking metaphorically.  The hot springs here is not a symbolic pool.  It's a real place to soak it all in.  Maybe the hot springs has cooked me. 

Poke me with a fork to see if I'm done.