"May I write words more naked than flesh, stronger than bone, more resilient than sinew, sensitive than nerve." _ Sappho

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

A Life in Terror

The impact on families from mental illness in a parent, is very complicated when this reality goes unrecognized or just plain denied over a lifetime. Then again, support in the broader community is sketchy at best in many places of our nation, making it difficult to find the support many families need, not only to cope, but also to become educated and familiar enough to accept naming what is wrong inside that family, to the benefit of every member.
My whole life until now, has felt the impact of this terror which is still only slowly lifting after twenty-one years of what has included personal therapy; such as in depth exploration in Eastern healing modalities such as Yoga, meditation and much more. Nutritional wellness, rooted in organic nutrition, and a growing awareness of Ayurvedic practices, which includes relationships is an area of health and balance study that is all-encompassing. I call this process: personal healing work. Am I the one who is mentally ill in my family? No, though possible acute PTSD has been prescribed. In context, this is understandable perhaps.
What I have very recently come to understand, is that it is my mother who has always been mentally ill. I suspect this state is the result of her father's abuse throughout her childhood and the youngest of two siblings. Abuse so horrific, she will not speak of it, except to vaguely refer to animal torture that she had to be exposed to, according to his behaviors... I knew him as a mean drunk growing up. Laughing it up with you one minute and without warning, slapping you to the floor the next. No one doing a thing to protect you or comment on the inappropriateness of such treatment or behaviors toward defenseless children. I do remember my mother having very heated conversations toward us kids when we were back home and he was not around. My father was never going to be there. He came from his own family history, drank a lot, and never returned from Viet Nam. Missing in Action for twenty-three years, he was posthumuously decorated (unknown to us during those years), as a brave squadron leader whose remains were ultimately returning home in an ammunition box. We had closure and the highest honors by which to bury his remains at Arlington.
I don't even want to speculate what not recalling her own memories might mean for my mother, out of an uneasy respect for her resistance to her own past. It has taken me most of my fifty-four years now to arrive, mostly peacefully, to a healthy ability to be consciously compassionate for her state of fragility, and the reality that unspoken, this history has been a shadow in the corners of my own life and that of the whole family-of-origin.
Eventually, I will write more on my own transition from the past twenty-one years of healing work, to the rough transition that is in fact transformative work with which my life is occupied right now, after raising my child alone full time, and as I return to the world of fulltime work, and healthier adult relationships.
I am an artist and there is cathartic material waiting for me to speak to, as I transition. For example right now, this link will take you to an interview to listen to, about the Ayurvedic perspective on relationships, with many insights into self. I am finding this informative perspective very enlightening!

This link provides some indication how new this subject is, as it very newly comes into its own!

Monday, October 27, 2008

Conscious noticing and body wisdom

What is this life?

The opportunity for spirit to know itself consciously. I can only begin this entry this morning as I keep pace with all that I must accomplish in the course of this day.

How do we live consciously noticing in material life?

I do not pose this question simplistically. As a physical being, I am dominantly kinesthetic in emotional processing. I frequently seek relief from the course of the day through quiet stretching in alone time. Not realistic or easily feasible in this materialistic of all cultures on the planet. Perhaps the resources are in front of me and when I release the habit of taking responsibility that is not mine alone, I will free my attention to notice possibilities for the quality support my body craves.
Let it be so today_ may you consciously notice what you are truly needing to be your most well self.

Namasté

Thursday, August 7, 2008

The Ginger Path Back

I seem to be making steps back from the abyss of homelessness; a hard lesson in beginning to own other neglected facets of my own personal power. I am not quite 100% back on my feet, yet simultaneously, amazing acts of kindness and generosity keep showing up each time I renew my commitment to this developing stage of conscious attention to my own life. This has included a stay in the rural-side to doggy-sit my commission portrait subject, "Rufus." Yes, I have painted and made more progress on his portrait! I will upload photos of this stage in the painting when I can get a camera to do so. Meanwhile you can visit my main art blog here.

I will add that my life is ready to face my needs for engaged, meaningful, healthy friendships, and indeed online, this past year has seen some of that develop. I have traveled a long way on my own for way long enough now. Some of this history reflects flat-out wrong choices I made in earnestness and naïveté. I can say that I am more than ready to change this now. Stay tuned. Make contact. Do let me hear from you, won't you?

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Homelessness

I post for the time being as I venture into unchosen, unwarranted, circumstantial homelessness today, an essay on my own homelessness.
Many voices are sending their words of love and support to me. If you have such words, please post them here.
There is also room for other responses, especially to solution-find with me. Understand that within reasonable measure of my own endeavors along with your support, my conditions in this state will not persist for very long at all!

I will close by leaving a copy of a posting I submitted concerning my own impending homelessness to the local craigslist. It is confounding to me to realize what is happening in my life as the artist in America in the 21st Century. Arriving at this moment, I can see that in my future creative work, a book and a painting series will come out of what I've learned so far. For the sake of America's well being, invest your spirit and faith in what this country stands for in all her ideal by considering in your own communities, the pro-active ways you support the artists' fiscal access to an income much the way a plumber and electrician are enabled to support themselves:

My craigslist post of July 22, 2008:

A Call For Social Justice


Date: 2008-07-22, 4:28PM PDT

I am a fifty-three year old woman who has very recently completed 20 years of full time, single parenting_ yet not parenting itself, as one can never "complete" parenting. During that twenty years, I earned my undergrad degree and home-schooled my child. I built my foundation as a producing, exhibiting bartering/selling artist, while I negotiated all levels of cultural exposure, choices and access for my child through on-going activities and travel that has only added to the quality of experiences with which my child has grown up. I am skills-rich where work is concerned, and I have done more years of therapy, self-examination and spiritual enlightenment discipline, than many people my age it seems. In a nutshell, my child now a young adult, is doing quite well at a very good college with lots of scholarships. Likewise, I have finally been freed up to rejoin the world of healthy social connection and most importantly to work long and well! I relish this part of my path, except the on-going threat of homelessness that shadows my every step right now.
After many months of struggle pertinent to me, I have at last found wonderful employment. Yet, the benevolence of one who has housed me in my efforts to transition from a small town to the "bigger city" where more employment choices abound, has run its reasonable course. I must leave this coming week-end: 7/25/08.
I have titled my plea for reasonably supportive access, "A Call For Social Justice," because this seems to be all too common a scenario out here: women who have sacrificed willingly for the well-being of family to be faced with an uncaring society in large measure. This is simply a reality-based recognition. I understand the system very well, having made myself unfit for it by virtue of its challenges that a recipient better one's life. My own background of understanding, isolation and lack of traditional forms of support coming into this nature of experiences so many years ago, also plays a role. In effect, I am truly as unique as anyone in this world.
In greater advocacy for the well-being of our collective humanity, I do call on the greater community to cognizant(ly) recognize the wealth that is here in this society among everyone who is working, earning benefits, and able to care for a family. There are those among you all, who have gone without all those traditional mechanisms of support, courageously, ingeniously, persistently providing for self and family against all the odds, that have in other ways evolved by forced choice, yet have made it heroically nonetheless, most of the way to responsible social participation. I personally have done this in ways from which even the most materially successful, can learn. Creative business people take note. I embody those ways that can inform solution-building processes that do not have to leave human lives on the street with no place safe to live.
At this juncture, at this moment, I need your help to get into my own place to live in order to complete my return to responsible social participation. I may even have help for your own enlightenment on compassion, beginning with your own self. Simply. Not judgmentally_ that informs how others can also find solution for homelessness, for reasonable social access, education, and in natural health resources. Portland, you are not as enlightened or as organized or as motivated as you market yourself in the media. Please hear my in-earnest plea, for reasonably accessible support, to get on with my own successes for self and my child. Let us open a door together on possibility that can only result in what is always bigger than what any one of us can ever accomplish alone. My position of resource-lessness at this moment in my life, is truly only in-part, a reflection of my individual choice-making. Will you meet me in this opportunity where I am right now? To step into solution-building with me is to learn what is possible together for (your) own self and many more!
I am hopeful for this city and our country. I hope you will respond to my call for social justice, as compassionately as you know how. I am yearning for this in earnest.

Namasté


Look over my new blog. A calling card for a more streamlined manner to artistic employment, and to meet regular folk's incomes right where you are!

Sunday, July 20, 2008

LOVE


My generation! My generation, baby!

Creating my Somatic syllabus for teaching women inner, unshakable empowerment

Beginning with some paraphrased words from Eckhart Tolle in his writing from, "A New Earth:"
'And there remains always a still yet intensely alive space at the center, a core of peace in the midst of activity that is both the source of all and untouched by all.'

Saturday, July 5, 2008

Diane Musho Hamilton


Diane Musho Hamilton
I just listened to this woman speak. Wonderful, compassionate mind! She is the third to participate in a series of conversations that is currently being hosted by Bill Harris of Center Pointe Institute. It seesm to be his follow-up response to Eckhart Tolle's 10-week webinar appearances with Oprah; teleclasses she hosted on his book titled: "A New Earth."
Diane Musho Hamilton's website is: here.
I understand this is Bill Harris' offering to new seekers, a more fleshed out exposure to all that is out in the world, concerning the path of enlightenment processes, many of which are rooted in the great and ancient healing traditions of the world.
Blessings on the path.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

A Cool Drink from the Well

PAMELA WILSON, like most of us, realized as a child something was amiss in the world. The human condition of discord, dissatisfaction, and unhappiness was not appealing. TM, the Sedona Method, and sheer exhaustion dropped her at satsang’s door. Grace liberated her from society’s hypnosis, and Peace remained.
Pamela accepts invitations from individuals and groups throughout the world to hold satsangs and retreats and give private sessions. Her vision is the nondualism brought into focus so luminously by the great Indian sage Ramana Maharshi. Her satsangs celebrate self-inquiry, clarity, and kindness. Fellowship of the Heart is the church that supports Pamela’s work.

Pamela Wilson in The Translucent Revolution:

“There is a difference in the feminine invitation to rest as one's true nature. It is about being kind inside, including the arising emotions and contractions and the senses rather than meditating them away. It is gorgeous because there is always this balance of the fiercer masculine aspect, and the warm feminine voice of 'this too, this too, this too.' I find that sitting inside myself, just allowing everything to come rest, to invite it all in as an honored guest works really exquisitely for me. I notice more and more, when I sit with my friends, that it is a lovely balance to have the cool inquiry of “to whom does this come” and the warm invitation for anything to arise, to come to rest, to give it clarity and kindness."

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Consciously attending to major life-transtions well


In transition from full time, single parenthood back into single freedom-hood after twenty years. Back, yet different. Better experienced, better skilled at living the intuitive life in this body, creatively!

During this transition, I recognize there are deep levels of physiological fatigue in this body after the length of time put in single-parenting. We_ my daughter and I_ have accomplished a fine job to date! I say it this way in recognition of my child's inner emotional/psychological well being, as well as my own. Yet in my 'case,' there is quite the distinctions between physiological fatigue simultaneously parallel to other states of health and well-being. This can be disorienting at times yet, I trust it is only an intermittent state during this major life-transition now!

Consequently, I am very interested in spending the next two years experiencing therapeutic spa treatment in many forms that are fully organic in their process(es) & ingredients. Supportive in quality to how one can regain natural-health & recuperation. It is a context of healing body-fatigue, that is rooted in ancient, provincial European common sense as I call it. An experiential context full of personal memory!

***Look for continuing discussion on Breema, Yoga, organic nutrition, as well as creativity as healthy self-expression. Likewise, I am intuitively attracted to a certain variety of process-centered possibilities in body and overall awareness that are recognizable as nurturing spiritual health! An expressed artist's perspective!
What I know of life in the body is, all is process as I continue to learn what it means to live the highest quality of health, consciously in balance. Stay tuned!

Friday, May 16, 2008

Take a Meditation Break with Me




More than ever, this world of human experience is invited into greater and greater sanctioning to release all attachment and aversion, no matter how you may or may not understand this...

The invitation is to come into NOW each moment we are each in this life.

NOW and NOW and NOW. Drop everything else, literally. Can you see? Can you hear? Do you feel? Can you smell? Do you taste?

Yes! THAT. NOW.

Just that, right now.

Namasté

Thursday, May 1, 2008

"The Wonder of You"



In this prosaic overview, Deepak Chopra provides a synopsis on what science and human consciousness understand now as the mystery of your body. Your body and mind in (its) growth from a single cell to a symphony of activities, guided by an inner intelligence that mirrors the wisdom of the universe.

Only absolute stillness reveals this. Science merely confirms what already is.

Be still for even a moment and know this "thisness," as your own self. Not because being still and noticing is something new or trendy, but because this allness has always been that!
Not a "nature of," or a quality or an aspect of. Only NOW. The entire universe present in this single moment.

Every single moment.

Pay attention and know that you are that.

Namasté

Friday, April 11, 2008

An Article Worth Repeating


As posted on my art blog, I felt it appropriate to bring this article over as I had originally posted to my culture blog. I am seeking financial support to move forward toward my dream in Somatics. Please read on:

"I have discovered a very cool idea today! Read about it here!

This concept looks like one of the many enlightened work-culture environments of our children. Hybrid workers! Boarder-walkers! Creative culture of which I have been dreaming for a very long time, to one day be actively inspired by, as I re-emerge to help and participate in the world-at-large again.

Now that the child-raising years have shifted to greater independence for all within my family, there is new life-opportunity available for me at last. Time available to explore syngergizing areas of experience, thought and vision under which I have been building a longterm career foundation over parallel time.
A skill-set foundation to satisfy through meaningful responses, strong life-long intuitions for new forms of work: Somatic-centered studio work that benefits overall individual (particularly women & girls) well being, in community cultural well being! A continuation of parallel time perspective.

I am actively seeking investors! If you are the financially supportive type, of an innovative entrepreneur, you've come to the right place. Begin your contact with me here. Thank-you!"

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Dancer Jock Soto Looks Back on a Life in Tights (and Fishnets): Part of my own history and part of my own future health fantasies


Photo: Gwendolen Cates / ITVS

When Jock Soto retired from the New York City Ballet three years ago, he'd spent a quarter-century becoming one of the most celebrated male dancers in the company's history. Half Navajo and half Puerto Rican, stocky and athletic, Soto didn't fit the danseur noble mold, but his grace and strength as a soloist and fame as the surest of partners (famously to iconic ballerinas Heather Watts, Lourdes Lopez, and Wendy Whelan) cemented his reputation as one of the most universally beloved dancers in New York. PBS's Independent Lens today airs Water Flowing Together, a documentary about Soto's career and rediscovery of his heritage. Vulture caught up with Soto, who now spends his days running a catering business with his partner, and talked to him about the dances in his past and the cooking show in his future.

Now that you're retired, is it strange to see all this footage from your career?
I first saw it in San Francisco at the gay and lesbian film festival there, and it was kind of shocking! I felt like I was watching somebody else. It was quite emotional.

There's a funny story in the film about your dad taking you to your first ballet class…
My dad, he didn't know what to do. My mother told him he had to buy me ballet slippers and tights, and I had a little T-shirt or something. I took them out of the little bag, I was changing in the backseat, and he had bought me blue fishnets! He sort of didn't look at the package. I was like, Oh, God, what am I going to do with these? But I had to wear something! I think I probably put shorts over them.

When you first came to the city, what were your first impressions?
We lived on a reservation outside of Phoenix, so we didn't have big buildings, and all that is here. It was such a bigger scale of everything, I was just in awe. You think back on a situation like that. It's like you walked into Alice in Wonderland. I just remember the doors at School of American Ballet were huge; the studios were huge. I’d been dancing in a strip mall outside Phoenix. I didn't know what I was getting myself into.

In the film, we see how you appeared on Sesame Street, in People … it seems like another era, in which dancers really were stars.
Well, I never considered myself a star, I was just someone who worked and worked and worked and did my job every day. And there were times we were slammed by the press too. I would think of Suzanne Farrell and Peter Martins, when I was sneaking into the theater, starting at the top fifth ring and sneaking down. By the time Chaconne was being performed and I saw those two, they were stars.

You're also one of the most choreographed-on dancers in the company's history. Did that make you feel like you were abandoning the company in any way when you retired?
You know, it was time for me to leave. I felt it was a good time. I was 40. Everything started to hurt in the last few years. I wanted to be able to leave the stage, put on a pair of shoes, and go out and have a nice dinner, you know? Without sitting there and having my knee hurting or my back throbbing. And of course it's a big loss. But it's not brain surgery; anyone can do it.

Well, you've mentioned a dream of having a cooking show. Any chance of that soon?
Still workin' on it. If anyone has any ideas, they can contact me! The dancing chef. I'll do anything.
–Rebecca Milzoff

After watching this particular subject on Independent Lens on PBS Television, I had to post this article and thereby return even briefly to a significant shred of my own childhood roots!

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Is Seattle to be my new home?


I am looking for work in a setting where I fit basically. Fit into a mutually friendly work environment as a hybrid with real knowledge and experience. A cultural hybrid who has pioneered work and life in "alternative culture" from studio artwork to a past in traditional dance to research work on Women in the Arts to my long passion for nutrition as health, etc.
Of late, it seems as though critical mass is showing up on the horizon as I have renew ed my long "Artists & Somatics" Google searches, Very lately, I have actually been able to make contact with other forms of intelligent hybrid life-forms out there!
I am discovering women who have been pioneering in parallel universes combining earth-centered, body-movement integration with sustainable living practices in all the creative and initially innovative voices as can be imagined and discovered by one person searches!
After reading an incredible body-centered manifesto (see the pdf file: THE BODYBASED ACTIVIST: A PATH TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY WITH BODY AS GUIDE!), I knew I had to make contact with its author. Which has since led me to this person's work.
My writing style is not meant to be misleading or too mysterious rather leading to the discovery, so click on the links where they are inserted in the text! It is part of the adventure; to discover what is there awaiting your own discovery! Especially when those discoveries concern work that is occuring on this scale.
Since all of the newly discovered links referenced in this post are in the Seattle and near vicinity, I am wondering out loud... as well as planning a little exploratory trip with résumé(s) in hand, next week-end!

Let me know what you are finding, and what your discoveries make you think about.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Reposting: Somatic community call for input

Having just http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifreceived my first response to this post from October of 2007, I want to bring it forward for obvious reasons. If anyone out there is reading my blogs and can begin to see their interrelatedness, AND is interested in supporting me moving forward in my goals to earn my degree in Somatics, and/or my art projects, to make this bodysense awareness visual, please read on in an inspired manner!
My future posts will be an examination of the article: "Contents of the Somatic Practices and Dance: Global Influences," orignally printed in Dance Research Journal (2002) 34 (2) 46- 62, as written by: Martha Eddy, CMA, Ed. D. (Listed in the "Voice in the Disciplines" section of this blog!)
I invite you to respond to my inquiries and examinations, as well as, to the contents found in general in this blog as it motivates you.

The first response I post here to share: (Thank-you for this!)

April 2, 2008 4:09 PM

Santa Barbara Graduate Institute said...

Hello Somatikos,

My name is Alice from Santa Barbara Graduate Institute. Your blog caught my attention because we work with Martha Eddy and Moving On Center as well as other Somatic leaders such as Pat Ogden at the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute and Greg Johanson. I thought you might be interested in checking us out as SBGI offers the first doctoral program in Somatic. Christine Caldwell, Judyth Weaver, and Susan Aposhyan are some of our esteemed faculty. Our website is www.sbgi.edu or you can email me anytime for more information.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

March-whoosh!

WOW! A whole month gone and it has been a tumultuous one!

While I recently failed abysmally at being a back-up care-giver in the home of children with Sensory Processing Disorder, I have moved on. Wrestling with the return to art-making!

Reflecting back over my brief encounters, I know strong intuition crossed my path with this incredible family for many reasons. Reasons that that keep me moving toward my own goals. Goals that initially combine art with Somatics until I make enough credible visual/kinesthetic "noise," and accrue experience enough to combine together and begin the formation of a competent intuitive voice, attract resources that can and will help me put all combined to that point with education, to earn my degree in Somatic Psychology.

This is my field- body awareness, to exchange with the world and earn my daily bread, where the world is "conscious enough".

What more can I say until I know how?

A sudden flash of inspiration hits me! I am dancing my way to optimal health in the body/mind during this big transition time_ just the right resources are already appearing on the horizon! WOW! April, a whole new month! Stay tuned...

I have also wanted to reconnect with Breema recently. No better way than to start with the nine basic principles. Here they are:

The Nine Principles of Breema

Body Comfortable
When we look at the body, not as something separate, but as an aspect of a unified whole, there is no place for discomfort.

No Extra
To express our true nature, nothing extra is needed.

Firmness and Gentleness
Real firmness is always gentle. Real gentleness is always firm. When we are present, we naturally manifest firmness and gentleness simultaneously.

Full Participation
The most natural way of moving and living is with full participation. Full participation is possible when body, mind, and feelings are united in a common aim.

Mutual Support
The more our Being participates... the more we are able to support life and recognize that Existence supports us. Giving and receiving support take place simultaneously.

No Judgment
The atmosphere of nonjudgment gives us a taste of acceptance of ourselves as we are in the moment. When we come to the present, we are free from judgment.

Single Moment/Single Activity
Each moment is new, fresh, totally alive. Each moment is an expression of our true nature, complete by itself.

No Hurry/No Pause
In the natural rhythm of life energy, there is no hurry and no pause.

No Force
When we let go of assumptions of separation, we let go of force.

***A new fan to Breema.***

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

What I know so far_

Right at the moment, I have been in the "big city" for all of seven months, after living in a small town for twenty-eight years. I am employed and seeking THE job. It was in that small town, to which I intentionally moved that I have accomplished what has brought me this far on my own in life. Sounds reasonable so far, right? It is important to note that, I have been intuiting an individualized definition to heal family history since before I ever was able to leave my mother's house at age seventeen. Because in my next posting I will begin exploring on this blog what seems to make sense to me now, concerning THE potential job I do from here. How I get there, is why I post. Stay tuned.

What is to now my own creative, personally expressive life-path has served development of an equally personal greater good. This development is what I describe as having taken shape and solidity over the past twenty years, with the benefit of different guides of varying expertise along the way. Rather than having chased the socially conditioned building of material security, my reason for being originates in a deep deep sense of magnetism to know the truth of love in the world_ for my own sanity, health and reassurance. This definition of self in western culture for now, frames the extent to which I simply grew up in an instinctive recognition for very high contrast to the contrary; that the material was the way at the expense of love. This recognition is true for me since before I was born_ I just have always been about recognizing reality concerning health and well being. A composition definition of living that can be consciously centered in love without judgment; one in which is normal for any human to flourish naturally. I feel strongly I understand this perspective for living possibly because of the family of origin from whence I came! A FACT I will continue to clear up more in the next post and the next, and continue to do as life work as long as it takes for more people to get that there are real resources within human wisdom to be accessed during one's own lifetime. To learn to alleviate many forms of hunger. To wake up to self and one's own life while alive!
My journey to know this instinctive path more consciously came when, I left home when I was seventeen having just graduated high school. Looking back, I feel I made this passage with noting more than the afore-mentioned desire to know what life means beyond even the basic knowledge of how to merely sustain myself. I started this journey with what I call 'blood money' for college_ a "compensation" from the government for my father's death in VietNam. I tell the reader point blank do not presume to know how much that truth has affected my reality, consequently, do not attempt to denigrate what I share here with any negatively spoken reaction, as that may only truly reveal your own unresolved anxst. These are my personal statements, the affect of which may unwittingly provoke in you what belongs to your responsibility to understand consciously, clearly_ for you, about you.
My own life and the experiences that I recount are what I know to talk about. The path I have walked thus far has been fraught with one obstacle-ridden impacted contradiction after another, as well as the years of unraveling the chaos of origin that ensued. What I feel empowered to share, are the benefits I have gained internally as a result of choosing a life that focused on conscious self-awareness work rather than material, the pursuit of which now ought not be as obstacle-ridden. I see taking my experiences public as furthering my solution-building way. A way that is less private, more in relationship with this world I love.
From this place of direct personal experience I can teach from a state of grace, where you might be available to learn for your own self, what healing is important for you. That you may learn by listening to, and considering my story.
After rising from the ashes over and over and over and over and over again since at least 1972, I have made it to a very important plateau. I have done so with one twenty-year-old daughter who is at one the West Coast's best liberal arts colleges, where she is a music major!
SHE embodies what I have accomplished on what I call our own family's two-way street. We have always been a team. I have never married. It has always been only the two of us. Social services programs have been the facilitation of every ounce of hard work I have put in on healing my life for both our benefit during twenty-years of a chosen social isolation lifestyle. I have also earned my bachelor's degree. Once pregnant with my child, I chose those services every step of the way that I needed them. Now, I am proud to say that I have done many good things with my life for the two of us, outside the box of social expectation. I share my story to say, you can also choose to be proud, as this is a voice of freedom. Nothing less. My offering to what is also possible for anyone who can look, hear, and adapt.
As I say, I am now a teacher by direct personal experiences. I am fairly specifically looking for ways now to accessibly plug those experiences in. Plug in to gain what credentials the marketplace requires, so not only am I appropriately empowered to continue contributing to national healing work, but I can finally make a living to take care of my daughter in her young adult development, as well as myself. I would like real access to credit which fits my history and reality now. Those goals include my abilities to think in terms of choices beyond only disciplined responsibilities for a change. We have nobly earned this.
Responsibly, I know that my story is representative of many other voices of varying hues that live and struggle in this rich, "free" country_ HEAR US, so we can save each other without exception! Not reactionism. This call is included for those who make enough money, who may have two point five children, who have colored inside the lines all their lives, etc., etc., etc. No one is excluded from healing to know that unconditional love exists in the world when we know how to find it. This hunger need not continue unabated America.

Today's posting is also a segue, to feature a portion of the work integral to my journey. The work of this incredible woman was suggested to me by my former mentor five years ago. It belongs to Karla McLaren. Karla, took a hiatus right after she wrote the work, "Emotional Genius." I consider it an amazing manifesto of healing that one simply cannot read. With every word one works what is being taught about comprehending the actual genius in ALL of the emotions. You will not practice unconscious judgmentalism against any of the emotions ever again! I found one can reach a liberation for the validity of all emotions we each feel because, one can understand they all exist for damn good reason!
No! this book isn't the quintessential silver bullet fix-all in one place, America. For me, it is one very solid stepping stone in my PROCESS. Healing, waking up, is a process_ one of the main reasons we are alive in the first place from what I can see.
So without further adieu, I give you Karla McLaren in her own words in her very recent re-emergence,(hint it is also a link under the "Searching for this Teacher" catagory, in my links section):

One caveat, or WARNING!

SOME, DISCOUNT HER CURRENT INTELLECTUAL GROWTH AS "DISCOUNTING SKEPTICISM." AAH! AHH! AHH! THAT WOULD BE UNCONSCIOUSLY REVERTING BACKWARDS AGAIN. EMOTIONAL JUDGMENTALISM AND ALL THAT UNCONSCIOUS SKEPTICISM/CYNICISM THAT SWALLOWS SO MANY AT THEIR COMING INTO ADULTHOOD. IT IS A WASTEFUL DISEASE OF CONFIDENCE AND COURAGE THAT KEEPS A HIERARCICAL SYSTEM IN PLACE, ALLOWING GATE KEEPING TO DO MAINTENANCE ON OPRESSION AMONG THE OPRESSED! WAKE-UP! WAKE-UP! EVERYTHING COUNTS!

In Karla McLaren's own words: Sup?

"Thanks for asking. It's 2008, and I'm living with my husband and son in California. I ended my career in spiritual healing and all that stuff back in 2004, and I went back to college to get a degree in Sociology, which turned into a degree in Social Sciences with a concentration in Sociology and a minor in Career Testing and Guidance. Long story. I received my BA in May 2006, with Honors and lotsa cool medals to go with all my scholastic awards. Bling! And Sociology is the stone cold bomb! Sociology (and Micro Sociology and Social Psychology) is the most fascinating way to study humans and their behavior. Indeed!

Sociology also helped me understand my entry into, and exit from, the new age. I left my new age career for the same reasons I entered it: I was really concerned about the number of trauma survivors there, and how they were being confused and pandered to and marketed to, but not truly helped. I saw too many untreated anxiety disorders and too many untreated depressive disorders, and too many untreated PTSD sufferers, and it just got to me. I couldn't ethically support what was going on. And though I was a voice of dissent and I got pretty far in my years of writing and teaching, I realized that in my 30-plus years in the new age, I had seen no one get truly well. They had a better vocabulary for their pain, and they had more ways to soothe themselves than regular folks tend to have, but that was about it. And while self-soothing is very important, I found that the new age made too many promises with no responsible research behind them. No money-back guarantees, and lots of blaming the victim if the promises don't deliver (you must have negative energy, you're not praying hard enough, it's your karma. Feh.) No checks and balances, no consumer protection agency ... unacceptable.

In response to my concerns about the ethical lapses and the many ways that the new age trains people (especially women) to be unquestioning, undiscerning, and totally pliant consumers, I've allowed all of the books and tapes I control through Laughing Tree Press to go out of print, and I'm in talks with my other publishers to do the same. I am just now reopening this website after years of silence. But I'm really pondering my next steps. Some people want me to write a book about my unusual transition, but the intensity people have about their beliefs makes me queasy, and I don't want to be out there as an apostate flag waver, since the place I've come to in my thinking and in my studies doesn't really square up with anyone else's ideas.

For instance, I've found in my research that the skills I and other psychics have ARE understandable from a scientific and rational standpoint. Intuition is real, and it doesn't have to be paranormal in order to be fascinating and valid. The sense that there is an aura is also real, and an understanding of neural body maps, proprioception, and interoception makes for a much fuller, deeper, and more worthwhile explanation than a merely paranormal one does. Empathic abilities, which were my forte as a healer and teacher, are totally intriguing because they are also quite real. But until you have an understanding of interoception, mirror neurons, non-verbal communication and cues, animal behavior, and the kind of behaviors humans without functioning mirror neurons display, it is very natural to think that strong empathic (or intuitive) abilities are magical. They're not. And they don't need to be.

Wouldn't it be cool to be able to understand these skills without needing to rely on fables? And wouldn't it be even cooler to be able to gently let go of superstitions and delve into a deeper understanding of what it is to be human, instead of having to jump off the freaking cliff like I did when I left the new age?

Well, I have to think a great deal about re-entering the fray. I didn't enjoy fame in even the smallest way, and I didn't find book writing to be a good living. I gotta have me a real job and some real benefits.

Leapfrog!

Right now, my husband and I are playing a game that I call "degree leapfrog." When I was doing my new age career, I helped put him through his first Master's degree, and he returned the favor and helped to support me through my BA in Social Science. Now it's his turn again, and I'm working, or trying to, so that I can support him through his next degree, which is an accelerated Master's in Nursing. Very cool. When he's done, it will be my turn again, and I may pursue a Ph.D. in Microsociology or Social Psychology.

But now that I've left the world of spiritual healing and have been living in the everyday world – going to school and dealing with hierarchies and bureaucracies, working in condo associations and dealing with hierarchies and bureaucracies, and getting back into regular work in a number of ways – MAN, do I understand why new age promises and the idea of the spirit world are so important to people. Things can be really crappy out here among the straights and the stiffs! Back when I was a writer and artist and free spirit, I could just move along when people got wonky, or businesses couldn't function, or bureaucracies got so rigid that they couldn't respond to market forces (or anything, really). But now I'm trying to stay put and sort of live through what regular people put up with all the time – and I really, really get why the magic promises of the new age are so seductive.

That's something so many of the skeptics don't understand (the skeptics are a group of people I got close to and then walked away from because they were trying to make me their favorite reformed sinner or circus monkey or something). As I was leaving the new age, I wrote an article for the Skeptical Inquirer about why I was leaving. You can find it if you google my name. When I wrote it, I unconsciously adopted the style of Shakespeare's "Friend, Romans, countrymen..." speech, where I came in under their defenses and told them I agreed with them, and then gently but persistently asked them why they were such complete failures at communicating their concerns. The response was amazing. I only got one crank letter, and the rest were from smart people who not only could take a punch, but actually suggested that I hit a little harder next time.

It was so cool to write for people who weren't thin-skinned, because my experience of the new age reader was that I had to be so careful that I almost couldn't write at all. It's lucky I was born dyslexic, because I always had to find ways around my struggles with language. Writing dissent material from inside the new age (where dissent, judgment, and discernment are not welcome) was a linguistic challenge, but I did it well all those years, or as well as you can for people who were trained to ignore their own judgment. When I wrote my piece for that skeptical mag, it was nice to take off the gloves somewhat, say some very challenging things, and then have readers take the challenge and run with it. It was fun to have people actually ask to be argued with and challenged!

I also met some very smart and excellent skeptical people who agree that the skeptical approach doesn't really translate very well. Many skeptics also understand that you can be skeptical and be a new ager or a religionist at the same time. For instance, I certainly was a skeptic in all of my books and tapes, and a dissenter from many new age tenets. Check out my work on judgment, which was heresy. But it made my work interesting and fresh, not to mention useful. I never walked the line with new age ideas, and I wasn't anyone's butt monkey. The cool skeptics I met did not look down on me for an instant, though some of them had to do some mental calisthenics to fit me into their worldviews. Bully for them that they did so.

But I didn't find a way to be comfortable in the straight-up skeptical world. I don't feel comfortable with groups anyway. I am very skeptical, and I always have been, but I don't need to be a skeptic. Do you know what I mean? I don't need the T-shirt and the coffee mug and the card with my picture on it. It's an entirely different social world, and they've got rules I don't agree with. For instance, in many cases, arguing is pretty much the focus of skeptical discourse. For the most part, research doesn't happen there, but arguing about research does. And a lot of times, it's surprisingly untutored arguing amongst people who haven't got degrees or work experience in the subject at hand. So it's kind of like a fantasy football league of science fanboys. I mean, I was all D&D Sci-Fi geekgirl in my youth, so I get the feel of it, but huh.

Until recently, I was on a skeptical e-mail list where the arguing got so absurd that you'd think it was a Monty Python skit or something. It was like watching whacked out computers play verbal street hockey until one of them exploded. Oh my word, going from the extreme of new age consensus to the extreme of argumentativeness in the skeptical world was too much for me! Too much consensus is a stone drag, because what you get at the end is so often tedious and stripped of any originality. But too much argument is exhausting, and I began to wonder if the people who enjoy it have developmental delays. I'm not kidding!

These people who love to argue don't seem very sensitive to me, but the arguing may just be a cover for feelings they don't know how to deal with. I don't know. But I do know that there's nearly as much trouble in the skeptical culture as there is in the new age culture. It's a different kind of trouble, but it's trouble nevertheless, and I don't need to belong to yet another group. Never was much of a joiner. I also know that my smart, sensitive, emotionally aware, and artistic friends don't like to argue just for the sake of arguing. I think I'll hang out with them instead.

Now, having said that, I have to contrast the skeptical world with the world of scientific research. I had the great good fortune to work with two of my professors on research projects and books, and oh my word, research is the most fabulous thing ever. You don't just stand around pontificating, or taking other people's word for things. You work and think, and think and work, and challenge yourself, and open your mind, and you get to do and read some of the most amazing things! I mean, stuff that is so much more fascinating than anything I've ever seen or heard before. It's just so cool to get your hands on real research. Oh my! And real researchers, real scientists, are neither skeptics nor believers, because both positions ask you to make up your mind and become concretized in your thinking. No. Great researchers are adventurers, and visionaries, and astonishingly humble people, because they have to be able to balance their knowledge and expertise with the information that comes from the world they are studying. They have to be able to change their minds when the data disconfirm their cherished opinions. Genius!

Great researchers are now my model for how to be an exemplary human being, because they are smart enough to do the work required to question the universe, and humble enough to listen to the answers they get. They're also smart enough to stay connected with others in their field, and in far reaching fields, so that their dataset is constantly changing up and being challenged. I call these idealized researchers a model, because as you can imagine, scientists can be just as silly, myopic, egocentric, power mad, and wonky as anyone else. They can be jealous of others, married to cherished ideas, confused by data they don't understand or can't accept, isolated by their own sense of importance, hypnotized by fame, money, or power, or stuck in the morass of bureaucracy and petty infighting that occurs in academia. But even though there are tremendous obstacles in their way, we have been blessed with brilliant researchers and scientists who have helped us know more about our world. Bless their hearts!

Street Smarts and Karl Marx

Okay, so here's the thing that many people in the arguing skeptical subculture really don't get. The new age, and religion, and spirituality, and tabloid mags with wild stories and super fantastic health cures, and the diet of the minute, and beauty and longevity promises ... these things don't exist and thrive because the purveyors are manipulative money grubbers (for the most part). And they don't exist and thrive because people aren't smart (for the most part)! They exist for the reason Karl Marx felt religion existed: They are opiates for the masses.

But remember that when Karl Marx was alive (1818 to 1883), opium was not used primarily for the high. It was used as a pain killer. Karl was writing before modern painkillers, and before antibiotics, and before regular dental care, and before many of the advances conventional medicine has made. Life in Karl's day had lots of pain in it, and opiates were necessary. Opiates are excellent pain killers.

So when Karl Marx wrote, "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people," he wasn't saying that the masses were hopped up on the Jesus. They weren't strung out on the Almighty. They were trying to assuage their pain.

I saw that pain when I was up on stage being the spiritual healer gal, or the empath. I don't even know how to describe it to you – the sorrow, and the fear, and the naked longing that I saw in people's faces. There was this aching hope that if they listened to me, or if I looked at them in the right way, or if I said the right things, or if I wrote the right words, their pain would be suddenly healed and they would be able to breathe and live more easily. It was oppressive up on stage for me – to see all that, and to try to do something, anything ... to make it better for people. But while I could do a great deal just by being a highly empathic mensch, I can't fix a broken world and make everything all right, or make racism and sexism and classism and greed and stupidity and warmongering and abuse go away.

I think we can all create little sanctuaries for each other, and be as kind as we can while holding each other accountable, but the magic promises aren't changing anything for the better – they're only providing temporary relief from the pain. That's nice and all, but it's no solution. And as I saw endlessly in the new age, dulling the pain only helps people learn to tolerate it. In so many cases, that pain relief actually stops people from changing things for the better, because they're so inundated with an endless, serial pelting of magical cures that they sort of forget to ask why they are in so much pain to begin with.

A new respect for competent research and evidence-based medicine, but ...

Besides all the other stuff I left behind, I also left behind the world of alternative healing and alternative medicine. And now that I'm dealing with conventional doctors and conventional medicine, I can see clearly why alternative medicine has taken such a firm hold. MAN, American healthcare is really falling apart, and the insurance companies are making everything very unpleasant and stressful for everyone. I don't go so far into unsupported sensationalism as Michael Moore does in Sicko – because even a small foray into responsible research will show that he's off the mark in many ways – but MAN, the healthcare system is in crisis.

When I go into my conventional doctors' offices, they're noisy and sterile, and you have to wait, and it's very impersonal. Some are better than others, but none of them have the warm folksiness of my old homeopath's office, or my acupuncturist's office, or even my old health food store. This isn't an original observation, but I'd say that a whopping percentage of the healing people get in alternative medicine comes from the atmosphere itself. Most alternative practitioners totally understand how to create a welcoming and soothing atmosphere. So many conventional doctors get a D or an F in atmosphere, while most alternative ones get As and Bs. The promise of feeling better is palpable in the alternative world. It feels like a guarantee. I haven't personally experienced or seen that guarantee delivered consistently, but I totally understand why people choose alternative over conventional care.

Having said all that, I also have to say that I'm happy to be getting evidence-based medical care that is backed up by actual research. I can be a much more proactive partner in my health care now. It's also lovely to just take an aspirin when I'm in physical pain, and have it relieved (I was very proud of never using pain killers, which is sad, because you should definitely reduce inflammation and let your body rest instead of always toughing it out, as I had been taught to do). If the pain continues, I can go see my doc, but I don't have to just tough it out all the time because I'm alternative.

Hmmm ... there's something interesting about my new age refusal to dull physical pain, in contrast to the new age lust for dulling all psychological and spiritual pain. That's something to think about.

I'm happy to be out of that mindset. I'm glad, for instance, to use Abreva and stop a cold sore in its tracks instead of overdosing on Lysine, getting a painful breakout anyway, and treating it with magic salves for seven days until it healed. Did you know that the lifecycle for untreated cold sores is seven days? Doh! I was just wasting my time with all that Lysine magic (also called an unnecessary overdose). It's nice not to have to do that any more. And it's nice to be in a healthcare system that respects intelligence and research. Sure, a lot of it is wildly dysfunctional, and they've got to get this insurance thing dealt with right now, but I still prefer it to the alternative.

But that makes me unusual, because the massive injustices and problems in conventional healthcare have sent millions of people running to alternative practitioners. The alternative only becomes powerful when the conventional fails. Duh.

So what's next?

That's a good question. When I left the new age, my thought was that I would write to the center of it and maybe take it down a little ... maybe help protect people from the more horrible parts. Because I know from the inside where the bodies are buried. But I see now that I was being naive. My sociological training really helped me understand the power of culture, and especially the almost overwhelming power of the gigantic, multi-tentacled behemoth called the new age. I, one person, don't have the power to effect much change, and now that I'm out here being a regular schmoe, I can totally understand why the new age exists and thrives. I don't like that it's necessary, but I see that the new age and many other forms of painkilling comfort are necessary. I'm sorry when crazy crap happens in the new age and alternative medicine and alternative spirituality, and I'm sad when people waste their time and money on stuff that has no validity. But I totally understand the powerful, seductive pull of all those promises.

The conventional world doesn't offer a lot that's better. It's sad, but it's true.

So I'm in this very Taoist place about all of it. Very perhaps ... I'm glad to be out of the new age, because after more than 30 years, and after getting to the top of the mountain, I saw enough to know that there was nothing there for me. I no longer wanted to cling to a dream, or to support a group of ideologies that were not worthy of the people who were drawn to them.

But still, I realize that organized religion has lost its meaning for many people. It has let people down and chased them into alternative belief systems. Because something is still necessary, and the religious feeling is an inborn longing for many of us. It's hardwired. Alternative spirituality, which I like to call "the pick and pull lot of the soul" seems to have become the new opiate. And I think it's a better painkiller than traditional religions in many ways, because people get to pick and choose spiritual traditions for themselves, rather than having to prostrate themselves to Bronze Age religions that espouse so many outdated, absurdist, prejudiced, and mean-spirited ideas. (And let's not even talk about the modern-day twin opiates of consumerism and the endless products of the advertainment industrial complex! Wow – if our comrade Karl saw that stuff, he'd be on it like lightning!) I am sad that we still require such massive infusions of opiates just to make it through our lives, but none of them, no matter how damaging or how helpful, is likely to disappear in our lifetimes. It's just something we all have to deal with in our own ways. And hopefully, those ways will be compassionate.

My challenge to anyone who is concerned about the reduction in critical thinking in America – and the seemingly overwhelming movement toward magical promises – is this: Instead of haranguing people who are trying to soothe their pain, do something to relieve it. Fight not against the myriad opiates. Fight against the things that make them necessary. It's a much harder job, but in the end, it's one that will actually make a difference. Research shows that in countries with adequate social support networks (such as much of Western Europe), religious observance is very low. It's not just the generally higher educational levels that make the difference, though proper education is certainly a factor in adequate social support. And it's not just because, as older societies with a remembered history of the church wielding absolute power, the people in those countries are hipper to the downside of religion. It's that the people in those countries don't tend to require as many opiates because their social structure tends to be more functional and supportive.

There are of course arguments against this conclusion, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and float it here anyway. Social support is incredibly important; therefore, the U.S.-based studies that suggest that religious observance has a beneficial effect on health and psychological fitness leave me with a whopping big question: What would these studies show if there were a way to factor out the social support aspects of churchgoing, such as the companionship, the socialization, the emotional (and often financial) support, the fellowship with people who share beliefs, and the knowledge that one is not alone? The problem is, you can't factor those things out, because there's nothing similar to the support structure of a church in modern-day America, where people are so busy that they can barely make time to visit their own extended families! I see an absolute correlation between the lack of social support in modern-day America and the movement toward group religious or spiritual activities. Which is sometimes fine.

But if you're concerned about the concurrent movement toward magical thinking and fundamentalism (and the movement away from science), do something about the social structure in your area. Work at your local humane society and love up some puppies and kitties. Tutor people in school. Find a humane way to reach out to the homeless. Teach people who are not in school to read (check with your local library). Support the families of our soldiers (and end the war). Dance. Support medical research. Share your expertise. Support youth in taking math and science classes and finishing high school. Paint. Tell the truth. Be kind to service workers and everyone who is below you on the social ladder. Visit retirement homes and see what's needed. Work with autistic people, if they want you to. Sing. Do your art. Work with outsiders. Volunteer for your political party. Strive for excellence. Visit people in prisons. Think. Love. Be a mensch! Be a voice of love and reason. Hold people accountable. Be courageous. And post funny stuff on the internet! Embrace da lolcatz!

As for me, I'm finding my way in the world without my magic slippers and rainbow glasses. We'll see how it goes. I hope that you are doing well in your life, and that anything I've written or recorded has helped you live more comfortably in the often painful culture we humans have created for each other. I also hope that you are in an environment where you can wield the power of your mind, your judgment, and your discernment, where you can feel your feelings without shame, and where you are welcomed and loved and valued. If I have any magical powers at all in this world, then that's my wish for you."

Blessings and peace,

Karla McLaren