“It takes courage to do what you want.” –Joseph Campbell
Sooner or later, one simply has to stop listening to the well-meaning people who think their plans for our lives are more important than our own plans for our lives.
Until then, we’re walking in everyone else’s shoes.
My “heropath” magical adventure novel “The Sun Singer” is set in a fictionalized version of Glacier National Park, Montana, a land of shining mountains often called the backbone of the world.
Within the novel’s reality, the mountains making up the crown of the continent are pristine because–you see–when a writer delves into fantasy and magical realism, the worlds he creates do not contain such pervasive pollutants as Sulfur Dioxide, Nitrogen Oxides, Carbon Dioxide or Mercury.
Glacier National Park has for more than 20 years been listed as one of America’s most threatened national parks.
To celebrate the third anniversary of “The Sun Singer,” I am donating 100% of the royalties from every E-BOOK copy of “The Sun Singer” purchased after June 1.
Each $6 E-BOOK purchased represents a $3 donation to the NCPA! The E-BOOK is available directly from iUniverse.
Airborne pollutants can lead to lung and heart damage and premature death, respiratory illnesses and asthma attacks, global warming and increased food chain toxins, and Impeded child development.
I don’t know how to fix the problem.
Together, perhaps we can do better than we have so that, insofar as Glacier National Park is concerned, it will once again be what naturalist John Muir thought it was when he wrote: “Give a month at least to this precious reserve. The time will not be taken from the sum of your life. Instead of shortening, it will indefinitely lengthen it and make you truly immortal.”
Air pollution is among the most serious and wide-ranging problems facing the parks today. Of the 390 parks within the National Park System, 150 are located in parts of the country that fail to meet one or more national healthy air standards. In spite of a 30-year congressional mandate to restore pristine air to the parks for current and future generations, many of America’s national parks remain plagued by airborne hazards. – National Parks and Conservation Association, in Turning Point (76-page PDF polution report)
I often wonder if those reading such comments as this–whether in news reports or conservation magazines and websites–decide that the problem either doesn’t really exist or is just too big to do anything about, what with the pressing needs of keeping up with “American Idol” and “Dancing With the Stars.”
According to the NPCA report, the primary air pollution threats come:
Sulfur Dioxide – this can cause lung and heart damage and premature death.
Nitrogen Oxides - a culprit for some respiratory illnesses and asthma attacks
Carbon Dioxide – A greenhouse gas associated with global warming and food chain toxins
Mercury – Impedes child development
Each of these polution sources also impacts park habitats and historic buildings and other structures. While some may view parks and their pollution as far away, the same pollution that threatens wilderness areas is also right outside the front door.
As the report notes, if you’re seeing it, you’re breathing it. You’re also breathing in what you don’t see.
Yet why the ho-hum attitude?
Fire (being), water (knowledge) and air (bliss) are traditionally viewed as pure elements or energy – they do not manifest without the fourth element, earth.
While the trump, or key cards, within a tarot deck correspond to the twenty-two foundation letters of creation (thence to the pathways on the tree of life), the court cards (knight, queen, prince, princess) correspond to the elements.
Air
Air, portrayed as the breath of God, is represented by the Hebrew mother letter “Aleph” and chemically corresponds to nitrogen and seasonally to spring. It has been written – soul travels on the wind.
Of air, Abraham wrote in the Book of Formation – “The twenty-two sounds and letters are the Foundation of all things. Three mothers, seven doubles and twelve simples. The Three Mothers are Aleph, Mem and Shin, they are Air, Water and Fire Water is silent, Fire is sibilant, and Air derived from the Spirit is as the tongue of a balance standing between these contraries which are in equilibrium, reconciling and mediating between them.”
Air is represented by the Fool, trump card 0 – a fiery intelligence standing on the tree of life between Kether with Chokmah.
Air corresponds to the swords (spades) suit – the seed of air is the ace of swords – the manifestation of air begins with the two of swords traditionally known as the Lord of Peace.
The four knights are the active forms of the elements (natural forces) they represent – hence, the Knight of Swords corresponds to wind or to storms – air’s fiery component – applied violence // an attack.
The four queens receive the energy of their knights – they function in the way Binah functions on the tree: as a womb – hence, the Queen of Swords corresponds to birth – air’s watery component // ideas perceived.
The four princes are the sons of the knights and queens – they combine the energy of their mothers and fathers – hence, the Prince of Swords corresponds to mind and mental processes – the airy component of air // mind applied to a purpose.
The four princesses are the materialization of the energy – crystallization as well as balancing – hence, the Princess of Swords corresponds to Heaven’s influence – the earthy component of air – often mediating – yet stern.
Traditionally, after creation, Aleph was the first mother letter to appear – the element “air” carries the material universe as a leaf on the wind.
When I notice the beginnings of anger, I turn to the principles of Reiki. While Reiki is a healing method with origins in Tibet, the principles have a wider application:
Just for today, do not anger.
Just for today, do not worry.
We shall count our blessings and honor our fathers and mothers, or teachers and neighbors and honor our food.
Make an honest living.
Be kind to everything that has life.
I have yet to change the world, pondering these. But I often change myself. And that’s always the first step.
The purpose of this experiment is to imagine sending energy rapidly to a succession of people you do know in order to achieve a sudden connection with those around you.
You do not need to be a psychic healer or faith healer to do this experiment.
Whether you’re using Reiki, or some other healing method, to “transmit energy” to another person, the key is being able to step back out of the way to allow the energy to flow through you. Beginning healers tend to mentally repeat phrases or consciously direct the energy during the process. This isn’t necessary.
The healer is always a conduit for energy that comes from “outside” himself or herself. The energy “knows” what to do. Talking, thinking, managing, and directing simply get in the way. This fact will help you in the experiment below where you probably will not have time to visualize each person to whom the energy is sent, much less think about what (if anything) might need to be done for each of them.
Since this exercise is done in a car at night, it includes NO self-hypnosis, relaxation or other mind-calming techniques that might impair one’s safety and driving ability!
I do this while driving, but you can also do it as a passenger as long as the driver remains quiet. In fact, it’s better to do it as a passenger this first time or so until you’re used to what happens.
This experiment is actually very easy even thought it takes a little bit of time to describe.
The Experiment
This exercise is done while driving (or riding) in a car at night so that everyone you meet on the road will be identified as a pair of headlights or tail lights. Using the lights as “signatures” for one or more people is not only wonderfully symbolic, but removes the awkwardness of recognizing people or being distracted or influenced (pro or con) by the people’s clothes, behavior, etc. inside the car.
It will be difficult to do this exercise in heavy traffic, since you will be imagining sending energy to each car. On the other hand, pick a neighborhood or route where you’ll see a steady stream of cars. Every car you see is part of the experiment, including cars on side streets, backing out of driveways, moving through adjacent parking lots.
Do this experiment as a passenger before attempting it as a driver. You will have better concentration and the operation of the car won’t be impacted by your reaction to the feedback you get.
Prospective Results of the Experiment
In a sense, this is “speed healing,” energy sent so fast that you don’t have time to get in its way, think about it, or turn your attention to thoughts of other things. As “speed writing” unlocks a person’s subconscious mind and shows you things about yourself that you may not have said had you slowly written a short essay or descriptive passage, this “speed healing” can start “feeding back” unexpected information about the individuals in the cars. (By “speed healing,” I mean that you are sending helpful energy, not necessarily “curing” the occupants of the cars of anything and everything.)
While focusing on a car, you may suddenly feel a burst of happiness, joy, anger, despair. You may know an individual in the car is suffering from one specific physical/mental ailment or another. You may learn of problems, goals, and challenges or even where the people are going. You will not learn anything that the individual, at a deep level of mind, does not want you to know, nor will the energy impact anyone who (subconsciously) does not give permission for your work.
If you do this experiment all the time—turning it into an exercise—then the feedback may begin coming back to you with the first car. The first time or so, you may not get a two-way energy flow happening until you’ve used up almost all the time you’ve decided to spend doing this. You may get random information or you may experience tiredness or satisfaction at the end of the experiment rather than bits and pieces of information/emotion along the way.
The primary goal here is achieving a sense of connection with others, with a large group of people whom you do not know and may never meet. This connection is difficult to describe here and isn’t the same for everyone. You are, through this “speed healing,” (a) acknowledging a common humanity, (b) helping others by serving as a channel for the energy, and (c) validating the joys and sorrows of others by “hearing” them at a deep level of mind.
Kabbalists often say that the best way to heal oneself is by healing others. Whether you are “speed healing” multiple people through this experiment or purposefully directing energy to a specific person, you—as the healer—always receive benefits from the energy flowing through you. This tends to be the case with most healing “methods” of the kind that direct energy from “outside” oneself (rather than attempting to use one’s own energy), including Reiki, the visualization of Hebrew letters or groups of letters in Kabbalah, or the use of the Rosicrucian absent healing technique.
And, as it turns out, all of this happens even if you’re not sure it’s quite possible for you to “do” any of it.
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“I saw myself as a hollow bone that is all shiny on the inside and empty,” said Fools Crow. “I looked around inside me to see if any obstacles or junk were left, and there were none. I knew then that I was ready to serve Wakan-Tanka well, and I held up my hands to offer my thanksgiving and to tell him how happy I was. Immediately, I could feel the power come into me.” from “Fools Crow Wisdom and Power,” by Thomas E. Mails (Tulsa, OK, Council Oaks Books, 1991)
This exercise will help you begin to reattune yourself with the natural world of the heropath, clarifying and magnifying the outer landscape through which you walk and the inner landscape through which you create.
Exercise Goals: (a) Observe in detail, with all of your senses, the natural world around you; (b) Focus your mind on the here and now of yourself in communion with the trees, grasses, flowers, birds, animals, insects, clouds, sky and wind.
(1) Find a quiet natural setting—-your back yard, a park, a favorite trail or beach.
(2) Take off your shoes, if weather permits, and don’t forget sunscreen and a hat.
(3) Look around you. As David Abram suggests in “The Spell of the Sensuous,” during this exercise, the present is everything from your vantage point out to the visible horizon, the past is everything beneath the surface of the ground, and the future is everything over the horizon.
(4) Use your favorite relaxation technique and become at ease. If you don’t already have a relaxation or meditative technique, here’s one you can try:
(a) Sit or lie down in a comfortable position with the soles of your feet flat against the grass, beach sand, or forest floor and focus on something interesting in the environment—a shadow on a rock, a flower, a tree branch, a blade of grass.
(b) Take three deep breaths, slowly exhaling each time and visualize the tension draining out of you into the earth through the soles of your feet.
(c) Then, slowly repeat (or think) the following: “I will now count from 10 to 1 and with each descending number, I will become more and more relaxed and rooted to the earth. Ten, nine, I feel myself relaxing and absorbing rich energy through my feet. Eight, seven, six…more and more relaxed. Five, four three…deeper and deeper into relaxation now. Two, one…I am now at a deeper level of relaxation, a level I can use to observe and communicate with the natural world.”
(5) Casually observe everything that interests you for as long as you can remain grounded in the present—10 minutes, 20 minutes, an hour. That is, when your mind wanders to yesterday’s joys and regrets or tomorrow’s challenges and excitements, pull your attention back to the environment—how the wind moves the tall grass or the waves, the shadows dancing in the tree tops, a line of ants moving across a flat rock, a bird looking for seeds or insects in the forest floor. What do you see? What do you hear? What does the air taste like? What do the things around you feel like to your bare feet, the caress of your hands? What smells can you detect? Move toward anything that draws you. Consider the possibility that everything you see can see (or sense) you and that everything that makes a sound can hear the sounds that you make; that when you touch a rock a woody shrub it is also touching you. Imagine that you are deeply engaged in a conversation with the plants, animals, rocks and earth, water, clouds and the wind and—like any other conversation—it would be rude, in a sense, if you allowed your mind to wander off in the middle of it to think about something you read in a book or something you need to pick up at the store.
(6) Over time, this exercise will help sensitize you to the environment and the lives and the information around you. Try different places, different times of day, different focuses for your attention, imagining with each visit that as you come to know and feel more comfortable at the places were you go, they too are coming to know you and trust you as well.
(7) After you have been going to one or more places for a while, also visualize going to them while you are relaxed in a comfortable chair or bed at home. Use a relaxation technique such as the one given in step four, close your eyes and then imagine yourself driving or walking to the selected place, sitting or lying down in your favorite spot, and looking around with all of your senses at the environment you already know so well. Pick a time when distracting household noises that will pull you away from the visualization are at a minimum and when your mind wanders off to other things, gently pull it back to your mental trip to your mental images of the natural world and what it is telling you.
(8) Experiment with both your on-site observations and your mental “trips” and discover what works best for you and what pulls you and seems important. If you wish, jot down a few notes and record your impressions over time. (Do this long after the exercise—while doing the exercise, try not to plan what you are going to say in your notes.) Like any good friend, repeated conversations with the natural world will impact your life, changing it and making it richer and deeper just as it always has done for seekers on the path and heroes on a quest.
(At some point, you may discover you’re not where you think you are. You may believe you have been meditating outdoors only to find yourself in a chair in your livingroom. Or you may believe you have been meditating in that chair, only to find yourself outside. Do not become alarmed.)
When you walk out into your back yard and look at the trees, do you think they’re looking back at you? In their own way, do they sense your presence, your participation in diverse but shared community?
Many of my two-legged neighbors are divorced from the world of trees. Sure, they appreciate the shade, grumble about the pollen, and swear at the pine straw and leaves that must be raked up.
Otherwise, trees are “plant materials” for the yard, prospective lumber, and elements of the undeveloped landscape awaiting the bulldozers and strip malls of progress.
One need not be a “tree hugger” to question our disregard of trees, nor do we need to memorize leaf indexes, tree profiles, or photographs of flowers and bark to question the ignorant or wanton destruction of forest land.
We have stepped so far into our worship of technology, that it’s no longer a societal norm to appreciate trees as they are.
And those who truly appreciate the beauty and wonder of the forest are often the ones who settle there beneath the sheltering canopy of needles or leaves and then draw to themselves the conveniences of general stores and gas stations and fast food places that will ultimately develop away the trees.
With my customary lack of tack, I am likely to ask why a man who would never shoot his dog is so quick to kill a tree. Admittedly, this kind of talk doesn’t increase the popularity of the neighborhood’s trees any more making lists of the scientifically verifiable good things trees do from producing oxygen to filtering pollutants out of the air to reducing soil erosion.
While I’m drawn to trees, I cannot claim that the ash truly brings me blessings or that the elder truly knows about good fortune or that the rowan brings me healing or insight. Yet there they all are, surrounding my house as one immense community of life, being there rather than asking anything of me except awareness, perhaps, and respect.
“Man’s life, his origin, his uniqueness, and perhaps even the continuation of his very existence, are inextricable tied to the life of trees. Had there been no trees, it seems more than likely that the human race would not have come into being; should the trees die, it is not inconceivable that man too would be come extinct.” –Andreas Feininger, Trees, The Viking Press, 1968.
Personally, I have no clue how anyone can justify allowing recreational snowmobiling in a national park. But, it’s been going on in Yellowstone despite the fact that it violates park service dictates that prohibit high-impact forms of transportation.
Even after some $10 million in studies, according to the National Parks and Conservation Association, have concluded that recreational snowmobiling disrupts wildlife, landforms, air quality, and the serenity of the wilderness setting, the park service plans to triple the number of permits in the park.
There has been a lot of public outcry against this practice, but still it continues. For more information–and to protest to the park service on line–click here
Protected land should be protected from this so-called sport no matter how much fun people claim it may be. The “sportsmen” are dstroying the venue and ruining it for everyone else.
The greatest treasure you are seeking may be found in the last place you want to look.
Looking is your journey, your alchemical process of transformation from who you have been to who you will be once the treasure is found.
As the journey unfolds, you will–for a while, perhaps several lifetimes–refuse to look in the last place you want to look because there are dangers there and because you can’t believe the universe would be so cruel as to hide the Holy Grail in such a place.
As the journey unfolds, you will hear that you will not be allowed to view, much less hold, your greatest treasure if you’re planning to approach it as you are rather than as who you must be.
If you had already found yourself, you would have already found the treasure and the journey is complete.
Yet, as long as you are who you are now, you will not hold the treasure. As with any other love, you must give your all for it and your life for it and throw away the “you” that you have been carrying around all these years from place to place.
Transformation is total change, not change with your fingers crossed, not change with one foot still firmly anchored in the status quo.
Treasure is a demanding goal. It calls to you always and expects you to bury your old self completely before you embrace the shining wonders in the last place you’re planning to look.
