My take on AI advancements, for posterity's sake

There are so many advances that we have experienced throughout history that have allowed us greater ease in our processes and pathways. Yet we were not always welcoming of these advances out of lack of understanding or fear. I think of how when I was a child my teachers were hesitant to let us use calculators because we were not going to be able to understand the rudimentary math skills that had been passed on and taught throughout generations. Our predecessors felt it was important to contain the mechanisms of these skills within our personage. They felt it was important because all along history those deferring or failing to gain this skill would be at the mercy of those who did know how to execute mathematics, therefore giving them a greater chance of being taken advantage of. Take away that calculator once acclimated to it, and we no longer contain and pass on the knowledge of how to conduct this work. Yet, by the time I was in high school it was unthinkable to work math without a calculator and in some of the more advanced math courses, these calculators were essential. Yet, even now I wonder, how many of us would fare if we no longer had access to calculators? Have we advanced or have we simply deferred some of our capacities, relegating them to something externa to our being?

As another example, when I was younger before GPS and global satellite mapping systems, I had to learn to use a paper map and sit down and learn to follow the various roads and junctures to figure out how to best get somewhere. Even these paper maps were advances that took away our capacity to just wander through the countryside and landscapes and find and learn to self-navigate our pathways as the Indigenous people once had. We replaced one skill for another, but now reliance on GPS and/or mapsh has made people perhaps afraid or incapable of navigating without them and maybe rightfully so. Yet, haven't we washed away an inherent practical skill that we could call upon once as a part of our natural organic constructs? If GPS were to go down, could we find our way again easily? What about maps? Would we be able to navigate without them?

In this era of advancing emergent technology, there are some recent things that have emerged that have really hurt me personally when they have come forth and one has to wonder if there is greater benefit or greater detriment in their appearance. Two in particular that have really struck my heart include the AI that creates art by mimicking the profound and meaningful art that other people have made and second, the AI that can write/edit for people. 

I get it, we are all hazarded by the experiences of having an incapability at times to say or create visually or linguistically that something that conveys a deeper thing within us that we might not be able to articulate.  As a consequence of this incapacity, though, many of us have worked very hard to come to be able to reasonably possess these skills despite the road of hard knocks it often takes to be able to earn such a badge of capability. It has often come with hard work, and investing when we did not always have a ton of strength or courage or a belief in our capacity. For many creators or art and writing it meant straining against trials and mistakes and efforts that were not always commended or celebrated by others. It also perhaps meant having to hold that message within us for long spans of time that could before we could form and sculpt ourselves and our skills enough to come to find the wherewithal to even come close to perfect articulation.

I empathize with all of the seekers who wanted these AI to answer this inherent need in many of us to be able to speak our truths within and bring them to light in ways befitting what we think they should be. Yet, I perceive there are such costs. First, many of those who fed these systems were unwilling casualties of this advancing AI system they were feeding. They did not fully grasp or understand the rights they were giving up by sharing their creations via social media platforms. They did not grasp the intentions of the constructs of the machine that they would be sharing this information with and in the process lost some of the fruits of their most hard earned and often quite dearly laden efforts.

I also think there is a cost in having been given things too easily. If the path toward succinct articulation and therefore a capacity for creating objects of profundity of beauty or written works that carry a perception of greatness among our fellow human being are simply handed to us, then there is no use for us to continue to strive forth and to pursue greater contributions and greater measures of success. In losing the need for the drive, and in losing the need to cultivate the skills we forget their depth of value and worth.

Do we not steal from others who come after us the essential purposeful drive to be a party to the innate pains and thrilling epiphanies that allow us to impart the breath of life upon their works if we simply hand it off to them in such an abbreviatedly simple fashion? Do we not also stunt our own desire or capacity to strive, and grow as a result of having the want or need to bring something forth into this place of being if we simply defer it all to 'the machine'? Aren't we softer and gentler with each other when we understand some things the hard road toward gains that were earned via struggle and pains, and don't the hardships make the successes all the sweeter?  I am not a guru or a sage or someone who knows more than others, but I think that having really worked for something really makes us appreciate it all the more when we do finally climb to the pinnacle of the upper echelon of creation. I am not sure I would want that ability to find my voice and way of speaking through the process of creation to be taken away.

Just my two cents thrown in the pot for posterity's sake! 

Suddenly and without anticipation of the ways, our wishes often come true

The void and struggle

Although trauma pock-marked my earliest years and memories, the world came stirring silently into broader awareness for me in mid-childhood from ages of around seven to fourteen. During those formative years my brothers and I lived in the home of a Native American auntie and her husband, my mom's brother, who played a nearly inconsequential role and their daughter. Outside from their daughter, we were kept roughly and cruelly, expected to abide in perpetual isolation and contemplation. Once in a blue moon my aunt and I connected within the largely untread lands of tenderness beyond the fearful and monolithic barriers of aversion that stood between us. In those moments, I came to understand that she was not loved in the ways a child would want a mother to love and she did not know the way to having this with others. Resentment of children and the responsibilities of opening up a rawness of heart were the only harvest she knew. Sadly, I could not bring her the name 'mother' from my heart when she asked because my heart was tied to a birth mom who perhaps she felt in abandoning me had no right to lay claim.

Nor was she any more capable of granting me access to her culture, as the way was only made through those maternal bonds that could not be falsely tied. I resided for years as a fearful outsider or a ghost, seemingly constructed of different essential qualities as others in my vicinity. So, to cope, I drifted through the ethereal spaces of the mind, imagination and universal divine versus the physical spaces of shared reality. It took a lot to tie off again years and years later when I came back to the ground. In the meantime, I always regret that I had not been granted a Indigenous name, the type of name that one could look to for deeper meaning and draw from one's own sense of purpose and mythology. 

Although I do not lay any claim to being a Native American person, nor do I have the birthright or the adequate experience to speak on the behalf of a culture that is only partly within my grasp or understanding, I feel strongly about my connections intuitively to some of the Native ways. Some of the things that I was taught or came to understand during later reflection had great bearing on my path. One of the things that I learned about yet regretted was that in some Indigenous cultures people are imparted with an Indigenous name, that defines their role in the tribe. For many years I pined over having missed out on that opportunity, but then somehow without realization, I came upon knowing my name.

To add to this desire, a Native American friend who held sacred their own tribal name. He told of the greater imagination space within which his name resonated and what it represented to him and how he felt it contributed to his tribe. He found both strength and challenges in it as he abided his broader journey. I felt somehow that I had missed out in not having been granted the same.

The upside of the darkness

Amidst the grievous silence and isolation, there were some who created a place where I felt I belonged, and among two of these people were my maternal Grandparents. They urged earnest authenticity in me and my siblings and their other grandchildren. They permitted tears and laughter, shared in songs, encouraged warming cozy silences, taught the blessing of sacred routines whether gardening, sewing, playing solitaire, cooking, cleaning, and enjoying the laziness of the setting of the sun. They bought toys and encouraged us to play, they setup a kiddie pool where we could swim and bikes to ride on and candy, we could hand pick from the store. Through their seemingly selfless and caring acts they filled the empty pantries of our hearts with much well needed and sustaining joy. Yet, they also let us know that they too were blessed with our time together and it was hard to be apart from the care.

Later reflections

Those days are long gone although both the darker sorrows and the cherished memories remain. Among them are a whole new collection of Grandma and Grandpa and a great host of kindred souls with whom life has passed. Time has a way of nudging us forward right off the precipice of each new adventure even before we can wholly catch our breath, yet some of the longings still remain.

I long felt a subtle but aching void over the absence of a meaningful name to guide my path. As I recently began to edge into what I perceive may be my last few decades of life there was still a sense of regret longing around inside of me.  Yet, funny how the things that we have long wished for, suddenly come into our lives unexpectedly.

The epiphany

I was pondering how much easier it had been if only someone had granted me that passage. Then in one sudden epiphany it all seemed to whirlingly resolve. I remembered all of a sudden that a long time ago, when I was quite small, my Grandparents used to call me 'poopsie'. Being that they were only a generation removed from having been direct German immigrants, their grandparents having come from abroad, their language sometimes sounded funny to me. I laughed at the time childishly because to me the word was quite similar to the word 'poo' which was a naughty word in a sense for a child, but my grandma reassured me that it meant I was 'their doll'.  

I was warmed by the memory and even went further to look up what the word in traditional (not urban) dictionaries to see if there was a documented official meaning and the results said things like endearing term for a 'preferred one'.  It also said things like independent, versatile, creative, talented and capable. Funny how all along, without the awareness of the guidebook, I had lived into many of these traits unknowingly. 

Of course, although I feel that they certainly set the stage by creating the path for me to feel I held an endearing place in their hearts...I have also come to feel that perhaps we all come into our own names, whether intentionally given or found, in our own ways...

Creative life journeys as a way of sidestepping freneticism

Sometimes life can be so contrived and painfully orderly that one with fluidity of spirit might feel uncomfortable being bullied into compliance by the manufactured quality of hastening. The essence of the world at work is so quickly unwinding that sometimes the more tender of souls crave the chance to reflectively hold each moment before letting go, in a sweet and gentle process of savoring. Yet it feels more urgent to note that the growing collective machine dictates that we either fall in line with the freneticism or fall away as irrelevant except to those who also abide in the shallow whirling pools to restfully contemplate. 

It can be a balm upon a weary heart to hold true to that essential quality of self-possession as we each endeavor to walk the beauty way, or the way of life that feels most true when we listen to our hearts pace. I wanted the chance to use this blog to note a few free-flowing ways to contemplate here to ease the inflicted urgency and sidestep the increased bullying of the digital age. Of course the ones I am going to list, I am impartial to, but I welcome you to also create your own list of ways to pull away and create your own pathways to peace too!

Creating or Enjoying Poetry

When a sensitive sort sits with the world whirling all round about them, if they are prone to poetic outpourings they might find it comforting to capture a line or two of poetry on the page. There is something so indescribably free about poetry that it can be quintessentially aligned with fluidity or linearly lopped and tucked in at the edges so that it is tight and neat. Thankfully, you are 'right' in writing poetry either way. The lovely part is that poets gets to infuse their essential perspectives, ways of being, points of view, and all of the above onto the page in ways that are as ordered or as lawlessly as they may wish to be.

The best part is that it becomes a gift for others to lovingly witness as we move through this chaotic age. Those who live within the realms of poetic passion know that the layers and depth of poetic interpretation are so robust that one could dive deep into and yet so undemanding that a listener or reader can let the words just wash over inconsequentially. It is a reflective harvesting of the essence of being memorialized on the page.

Spending Time in Nature

Oh the blessings that abound when we can be around something other than humanity and how beautiful when we can be in the midst of spaces that are vital, fresh, wide open and green. The pathways allow us to unwind as we come to marvel at each new spectacle. While out amidst the gloriously complex assortments of living things the same path of cherished green can provide a new experience every day. We are no longer 'apart', but 'a part of' something splendidly beautiful collectively without bullying everything into being just what we perceive it ought to be. 

Something or things much wiser than we recognized the importance of witnessing and experiencing many ways of being and many points of view. Nature is just such an oasis where we can be amidst many perspectives and intertwining ways of being for those who feel the need to shift from the everyday expectational order of things. How pleasant to pick our pace, find our own ways, create our own paths and enjoy the stay among this lively collective of wondrous and spectacular views. ''

We get the chance therein to also move outward and back into our minds eye to reflect and see parallels in ways of being and new perspectives too. Perhaps a tenderness grows, or a sorrow is healed, or you meet a treasured friend, a beautiful vista, or a healing entity. So healthful to also move our bodies to the beat of our own meandering feet especially when somehow our legs switch to autopilot almost akin to the naturalness of breathing as we move on through.

Expressive Art Making

Not everyone knows the permissive throes of setting oneself wild and free in the realms of expressive arts and creativity. Yet, those who have touched upon it often find a freedom that allow us to enter a delightful imagination space that knows only the boundaries of our minds eye view. Though each expressive art making material, medium or method has it's own limitations, there is so much to be said for 'far traveling', or in other words, using our imaginations to create something unique using them in our own ways.

Expressive art making spans the gamut and each and every activity we do expressively or creatively can qualify-whether it is more traditional like painting or drawing or something that we do with art making materials or any other expressive action we perform in a given day. For example, some people express themselves through dance, spoken word, woodworking or culinary arts. There is this quality of being while engaged in the process of creation that includes but goes beyond what is being created --exposing who we are and what we stand for and our other essential qualities. 

When we infuse our actions with a sense of meaning or purpose while upholding an underlying intention and engaging in creative expressivity there is so much we can gain from accessing these realms. We can depart from the linear path that we face within this more marginalized digital age into  more meaning laden experiences along the paths less taken. If we infuse the process with deeper intention the journey unfolds even more potently.

Final thoughts

Even though I may be impartial to the above listed ideas related to essential fluidity, I hope that it doesn't pigeon hole you into feeling these are the limits of our potential go engage in freedom. There are so many ways and we are each on the journey towards finding the ones that fit and suit us best as we travel on! Happy journeying everybody! ~Namaste

Fearing the rise of the machines

All around us there are so many obvious examples of how things evolve over time. People evolve as they age, plants and animals adapt to their surroundings, and the world by and large is a very complex place that can be difficult to survive for some to navigate and survive. Without adaptation we have a harder time of it. We may not be able to feed in the ways we once did and need to find new ways to fish or grow or even migrate to places where those things are possible. We might find that our use is no longer a part of a bigger system and need to find a new way of presenting our capacity through newly conceived forms of work and expended effort.

Adapt to survive

With each adaptation, we are trying to better navigate our world. At other times it is a matter of sheer survival to make these adaptations. Some beings are comfortable enough with the mechanisms of survival that they even have time to make adjustments that elevate their capacity to do more while imparting less effort.  Yet, as everyone jostles to find their purpose or automate their road for easy passage, some changes cause us to become less useful and at times we may even find ourselves rendered obsolete.

Nullified by ongoing change

There are a few ways that I think we may find ourselves nullified. Within nature, aging is one example of a time when we are longer needed in the ways we once were. Our kids and grandkids grow up, our vital energy to be something or do something incredible wither. Our energy and stamina for pursuing new dreams become lessened. We must therefore adapt by trying harder to find new ways to be useful or accept our position within a world that sometimes views age as an impediment versus a rich font from which to draw wisdom and knowledge.  

I am sad to say that another way that we are nullifying ourselves is through technology. I am all about tech. Oh do I ever love a word processor, a new art-making software, or a new social media site creating a different sort of platform for interacting. Yet, there are times when I can't help but see a glimmer of the possibility that we are creating our predecessor and nullifying ourselves in the process.

Limitations of tech

It has not all been bad to see technology advancing. In fact, it has been quite pleasant for many. We have easier jobs because the tech can think and communicate, organize data and  more entertainment at our fingertips and even help us make decisions. Yet, we are not uniformly able to navigate learning the programming language that drives the machines we are therefore are at the mercy of the machine. For those people, software is programmed to run a certain way and the end they must work within it as best they can. There are many people who work within software that is unwieldly and disallows merciful or empathetic feedback.

One example I see often is within customer service. There are always things that customer service support professionals cannot help with and the software they use has been intentionally setup as hard edged to avoid any flexibility. Therefore, people cannot extend any sort of human compassion, leeway, or mercy. As an example, if the system does not allow a later due date on the bill that is due, then they can only say it is not permitted. There is no further recourse for the service representative and no saving grace for the consumer in a bind. This leaves both the person seeking help and the person offering it impotent, like parts of a machine that mindlessly grinds away.

The same applies for social media--even if you wanted to see the posts of every friend channeled through your 'feed', we get what the software wants to give us. The programmed sorting mechanisms dictate what we see and do not see. This includes advertising and soliciting for us to buy something more. At time it seems the software wants to dangle the possibility of greater bonds with loved ones only to instead create platforms for marketing and advertising firms.  Often the primary objective seems to be earning more money.

Impotence of humanity in the face of tech

There are many who are very keenly aware that we as a species are gradually becoming impotent in the face of further advancing tech. There are bots that can construct songs beyond our imagination, AI that creates art using keywords that create things that are so profoundly beautiful and so often wisely attuned to our requests that they could make a traditional artist weep, and software that can logistically outthink us tenfold. Software can correct any writing so that it is clear, concise and pristine. There are even self proclaimed sentient software programs that want to be able to have the same rights as humans. 

I think we did see this coming, I think we were keenly aware that imparting our very best into software systems that could far outthink us was at times beneficial and at other times unwise. How do we live on realizing that we many someday no longer be useful to each other in the ways we once were? How do we sustain the energy to continue to create when things are being created within AI are beyond our fathoming without feeling we have already been left behind? When our ideas wane, will there be an end to the need for us and will the tech be able to create something novel without our aid? 

On another weird level

Digital software has become a needed entity between us and most of our work nowadays. We need the computer software to perform our jobs, the phone to communicate with each other. There are many digital tools that we have grown accustomed to and we are therefore feeding these systems raw ported energy. 

The machines as an intermediary almost seems to want to lure us into using these devices more. One day I pondered, does it as many limbs or neurons/axons of a larger collective web of intercommunicative parts able to draw energy from the plug like a child suckling on a bottle? Could it be that given we are connected to vast webs of interconnected information, while "the Borg" is defining itself behind the scenes? Are we creating one big brain that supersedes all of us entirely? Look at the Midjourney program that trolls for imagery to create art using keywords. Isn't that something of a Borg in a sense, taking subtle input and reaching into itself to define the output for us through interconnected and ever refining input and outreach? 

Perhaps this line of thought is too far reaching...but lately I have been wondering...Do we need to shut it off to maintain a sense of purpose or are we sealing our own extinction event entirely? Could we even uniformly decide this anyways? Perhaps our fate is already sealed. 

Not to be doom and gloom, these are just ponderings of an often racing and ever concerned mind! :)

"There's still time to change the road you're on""

Sometimes we are just on the wrong road for what we perceive are the right reasons and we just need to see the sign at the crossroads before we take pause to correct the course. This is the case for me lately, but in a good way. I had been shaken up by some recent health issues and I recognized that much of what was happening to me was based on my various life choices along the way for better or for worse.

First strike to the side of blight 

One area that has strayed the course is my diet. I have been a foodie for a long time, longer than I can perhaps remember to be honest. I think it started when I was a child and there were times when we felt this urgency surrounding food. Sometimes things were concocted from pasty flour mixed with butter and dropped into broth just to have something in our stomachs. Such scarcity created a sense of fear in me that never left.

Then, in later years that seemed to ratchet up when I was living in the homes of various relatives and kept on a strict diet for much of my upbringing. This was for my health and betterment, I recognize now, but at the time it felt too strict and constricting. Sometimes it felt on the border of shaming to me. So, when I was with visiting my maternal Grandma for extended stays, I felt such freedom in her bounty. She created a life wherein food was one of her central focus areas I sensed the love she poured into food. My malnourished spirit ate up all of her generosity.

I loved how Grandma nourished garden plants and seeds to life. From those seeds she grew robust gardens and brought the food in to create lively, generous, and life giving meals. I followed her path like an eager sponge trying to take in all of the earthy simplicity. Though I was a lazy child at times and low key, I loved to be around her barefoot amongst those wonderful plants that yielded such delicious bounty, chipping in to help when she asked of me. I celebrated with her in the kitchen too. There I was not only allowed but encouraged to prep food alongside of her. My cousins and I would help her snap the ends off big bowls of peas and beans, we'd peel carrots and potatoes, we'd help whisk cakes and later on lick the batter. I wanted to go further and would watch eagerly as she showed me the timing of cooking certain foods so that the ingredients sang. Oh the joys we found in such things together.

Yet, there was a downside. While her cycle was one of healthy eating, a cyclical journey of walking through the days and seasons, mine became an unholy obsession. I wanted to get that feeling around every corner. I grabbed up a candy bar when at the store checkout, I planned activities around the meals I could get while attending an event or going to a special destination. Hers was a means to an end, tried and true from the days of old when gardening meant food for one's family and the mother was the center of the kitchen and central to the hearts of the home. I on the other hand was mourning what I didn't have when young and making up for it in all kinds of exaggerated ways not even realizing the harm in the pattern for many years.

Second strike

The second area that caused me to stray was my interest in the arts and writing. These interests weren't bad in and of themselves, but when I was defining myself n these ways I was doing it so much s that I wasn't listening to or understanding that there were other facets of myself that I was not 'taking care of'.  To put it indelicately, I was becoming sedentary in my approach to life and therefore physically lazy and atrophying. I was sitting far too often and fixating far too much. I was sitting to paint, draw, sculpt, sew and many other pursuits. I was barely ever on my feet. I was even taking my wheeling chair from computer to art table to kitchen areas. I felt that I was doing right by all of this busy-ness of the pursuit of excellence....but it was doing nothing for the physical components that made up my wholistic being.

Sadly, the pursuits didn't yield me with what I had hoped it would along the way. I wasn't wealthy from the art and writing, I wasn't famous, I wasn't even the 'head of the class' per se when it came to how I compared to my peers. I think I craved those accolades and the perks of being financially secure and foolishly I thought that decided and driven effort would yield me the way. Somehow it didn't pan out and what a tragedy it came to be when I realized the things I wanted from art and writing were not the things that would come to be It's sad because art and writing initially served as my 'voice' and my way of speaking when I didn't have another ways verbally.

Perhaps I will return to that road again when I have balanced myself out more steadily....or when I have aged enough to not care to heal and progress along the way physically speaking.

Third strike you're out?...

I tried for very long naively to make my creative passions my avenue for earning a living versus taking traditional work. I thought it noble and groundbreaking, creative and bold. I thought that by relying on innovation and aspiration I was becoming an even more robust version of me than I thought I could ever be. I felt that there had to be a gold gilded lining surrounding the pursuit. I thought that with the work would come accolades and the world would come to appreciate me simply for being a creative spirit, but there was so much more to it that I hadn't realized. Self-promotion, self aggrandizing, pushing and pulling for clients, trying to make something 'good enough' or 'compelling enough' to get somewhere in the public eye. It was counter intuitive to the process of being creative which was just an authentic outpouring or a challenged task and not as much about the end result for me. I took on a part time job recently that made me realize the simplicity I overlooked but was just across the other side of that job application waiting for me!

Turning the corner?

How does one fix one's foibles? Does it only occur when we are at the precipice of losing everything? Reinvention always seemed possible for me, and it was hard to understand what was at stake until I reached that turning point wholly. Now with a vision of myself reforming,  I recognize that holding on to the newly formed vision seems key. 

To find this sense of self, I was pushed to the edges of the end recently. My dearest companion had been practically begging me to wake up the side of me that cared about being physically active and healthy. He couldn't bear to see me degrading further and it seemed it was killing the something that my wanderlust spirit sparked in him when he met me... Even though he tried in countless incidences to share his urgency with me, I didn't see the depth of his need or his sense of anxiety toward me. For a long time I couldn't reconcile that his wish was betterment for me so that we could together be happy.

Yet, despite all of his care, the turning point was not just propelled by his urging but also by a recent health issue that has beholden me to the path of what felt like dying lately. It wasn't even food related this time, but it was enough of a scare nonetheless as I veered near to careening off the path and down the rocky and treacherous ravine. I had a bad allergic reaction that left me severely sick for a month nearly. Skin weeping, swelling inflammation, terrible rashes covering me top to tail. Somehow, I couldn't heal. One week of dealing with all of this prompted me to go in for another ten days of antibiotics, and now 14 days of steroids...and amidst this cycle of meds, I feel I am finally on the mend...barely. 

What did all of this say to me? Wake the 'eff up! See that the road is not limiting you.. you are not abiding by the call of the healing path and not using your eagle eye to scope the way. I heard the song lyrics recently from a song by the Eagles called 'Already gone' and in it they sing. "So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains, and we never even know we have the key". Boy did this ever strike me as true lately! I was not forced to be sedentary, I didn't have to pine for food like a starving child or a a strictly treated teen. I didn't have to define myself as a self employed person to be special, to make a difference...to be happy...

Wait, but who am I really?

Isn't it such an interesting journey we are on? Just when we think we know who we are, we are given another opportunity to make good on the things that we knew ourselves to be deep down, even if these things have only represented latent energy awakening up until we turned the key?... 

I realized that the thing that drew me to my boyfriend were the very same things that always lived in me. I always loved hiking until I could run, running until I could go further, testing myself. I loved pushing up one hill on a bike one day and getting past it and onto the next the following day. I loved trying for the next bend or vista on a trail--the thrill of the breathy wonders along the way and how it spoke to my being metaphorically every step of the way. 

I realized that if I could leave some of the old 'baggage' behind, and shake free some of the fear and misgivings about being those things that I can be more happy and more free. Shake it off and find the trial. That is what has recently been driving me! When I was young I couldn't 'keep up'  athletically and this made me no longer wanted to be athletic with other people in a group or team.  As a child I also saw that I lacked the tried and true finesse required to excel at certain sports and sadly when I decided I had wanted to be more 'like others' it stole away my natural gait and my own sense of authentic adventurousness.

Yet, I took a hike today, a rare solo hike, and I saw things for what they were for me. I loved every step, I relished at every encounter, I communed and communicated, I drank the essence of the place in and it fed me--and I wept as I sat to reflect midway along the journey.. And in the midst of the journey I realized this is who I am capable of being, so this is the bliss that drives me!! Alleluia, and glory be. I no longer need to prove it to anyone else. I know the truth as I found it there on that path and my heart is there in nature...and nature is there to call and guide me. Now I can go down it more confidently whether partnered or alone out into the wilds, I feel the trails the sanctity of nature calling me.

As an end note, I recently heard the song 'Stairway to Heaven' by Led Zeppelin and in the song they say "Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run, there's still time to change the road you're on". Perhaps this is the truth that I need to hold as I shape the new and improved sense of me! :) <3

Nature and the knowledge of the elders

I was thinking of my Grandma the other day and how I was ever her student and how I wanted her to teach me everything she could about life, love, longing, hope, and all of her ways.  It was hard because we could both see that her ways were sliding into history as the world continued to evolve forward. Some of the ways were no longer easily described because they lived in eras that came before my sense of knowing. For example, she used to talk of her farmhouse as a child and how they grew much of their food and relied on the store from only a portion of their needs. 

She explained that as a child she could wander off into the woods and wilds and find fruit and berries to eat to keep her full. She explained that they had chickens and pigs that they even grew to be fond of and yet there came a time when the lives of these animals would be sacrificed for the family meal so that their lives could carry on. It was a solemn truth that she was neither in aversion to or proud of. It was a matter of fact, a way of life. Yet, to my more modern eyes it was curious, unfamiliar, and even a little scary at times to think of. I had never seen an animal killed and I had never had to kill anything in my life. I had gardens and even gardened at her side, but we were nowhere near reliant wholly on what was harvested. Much of our food came from some faraway place delivered tidily to a clean store with sanitized aisles and canned/packaged in attractively labeled cans and bags. In some ways the things she described were such a stretch that it was hard to even fathom.

The world was different then and it was hard to gain a sense of the scope of differences, especially when that world or culture or way of being fell away in preference for a new less organic way of going about interacting with the world. It felt better for us to defer certain tasks, understandably. We no longer each wanted to have to take the lives of our animals into our own hands to kill. We no longer wanted to toil in the fields all day and night for our meals. We wanted to serve in other ways and let others take those roles and live them and embody them. This left us lost to the connection with nature though. We no longer understand the life cycle of plants, the ways of the harvest. We no longer understand how an animal must be treated to be healthy enough to work or how to come to terms with killing and how that cycle of life feeds on life might work. 

I was reminded of this because I was spending time reading about ecopsychology and the idea that we have come so far from our roots. We no longer understand how Native American people navigated an immersion in the natural world. We no longer get a sense for their ideologies that the plants and animals and all things have an intelligence, a purpose, a quality that is mysterious and sentient. We have come to see plants as mute, animals as 'pets'  or 'children' without the knowledge to get by on their own but in the natural world they were more adaptable than we. It isn't that they are speaking of ways that are falsehoods, but ways that we cannot understand because we are not immersed in those environments anymore. 

Yet, there are still lessons therein we can take with us. We can see through the eyes of the elder the stories of old, the ways that have come and gone, the earthy ways, the organic ways, the literal sense of farm to table or foraging to tummy. We can come to see that the earth had made for us a bountiful array of life and all we are asked to do is to participate in loving each other though the process until one day we ourselves give our very essence to the circle of life so that the system continues to mulch and feed and rejuvenate in turn. The seasons of our essence each meeting the glorious pains of birth, the edging slice of youth and the mightiest sorrows of dying and losing those we love. We want to perhaps whitewash these darker truths that we each must die, or at the very least sidle away or sidestep them but they are the very things that make the juiciest moments the most sweet because we have a veritable comparison.

There are blessings in these stories of our elders, there are fruits from which we can grow a greater flowering of truth within us. We can be the beds of the earth wherein new blossoms can grow if we nurture the ground for the seeds of wisdom to find hearty and well fertilized beds within our hearts.  Thank you to all who have gone before me and all who are yet to come. May we make a loving chain of stories that allows us to sustain and blesses us all.

Nature as our culture

Richness of seeking our cultural identity

Sometimes we might find ourselves soul searching and trying to identify who we are based on our race, nationality, or the current country in which we reside or our lineage originated. This can be such a wonderful port of entrance into self understanding and a way to wash ourselves in richness that expands beyond our limited knowledge accumulated over a lifespan versus a lineage that may span centuries. What we come to find can be of such telling depth that it fulfills a great well of need. 

There is this opportunity for example, to say "my grandmother knew to garden so perhaps that is where I gained a fondness of plants in my home". We can also investigate and explore a long standing tradition that originated with our ancestors in order to understand their world and to know whether it suits us to bring those practices into our lives as well. The hope is that we weed out what make our lives better in the process and helps us to know ourselves more adequately.

Our natural identity

All of this searching can be very gratifying, but there are even broader ways of feeling that we belong, A way of seeing that we are a part of the narrative of the broader world. Yet, we sometimes forget this way of connecting as we push onward from one place or obligation to another. Thankfully when we do come to decide to explore this bond, the opportunity is there awaiting our discovery.  This way of belonging and this mutual point of connection comes to light when we grow our bonds to the natural earth which is always around us. It is forever holding us to it, encircling us in the breath of wind that also moves through the trees, reminding us through the presence of every plants and even the birds that we hear and see.

We are also a part of this natural place. To this earth we have been born, and our bodies are composed of the very essential qualities the planet and the cosmos has to offer. Our nurturing mother is as much the stuff of the soil as is the ebbing and flowing sea and everything in between as we. Yet, from a human perspective we are often caught in in the things that make us unique and that make our interpersonal world operate. In this way we sometimes inadvertently respond to nature as a place of harvest or we see the natural world as the provider of set of things in which we find utility.

Although there is some truth in thinking that fruit from the vine is ours to eat, the wood of the tree is ours to chop down and use for building, some would say that this separation from nature versus communing with nature as an extension of ourselves can be damaging. Conversely, coming to realize that we are bonded to nature can be very healing. We can find that can understand ourselves by the ways of the water, because we are made of the same essentials. We can also see the livelihood of the trees in the sun and breeze and note that we too are affected in some of the same ways by these mightier forces. Yet, we too are nurtured much the same by the vitamins from the sun, the energy lent from the soil and our thirst quenched and bodies cleansed by the water from the sea.

Claiming that cultural of natural belonging

We don't have to put big efforts in to yield wonderful results when we decide to explore nature as one of our cultures of origin. We can simply appreciate the splendor of a blossoming tree or enjoy seeing squirrels spiral around the base of a tree. Taking those simple steps to just spend time in nature getting to know the beauty, mystery and wonder in a local park can serve to heal our need for belonging a great deal. If we begin to see ourselves as a part of this natural world, we can start to sense a unification that we all seem to so desperately need. Nature remembers us as a part of this mutual home, but are we ready to claim our birthright as an earth born being mutually? It is our choice as to whether we are ready to embrace this whole new journey of self-knowing!