Author Archive for jon

Peace Is…

jon published on February 6, 2011 in zeitgeist. 2 Comments

Peace is sitting softly in the throne of your heart.
Still and focused. Unwaivering in the chaos of mind or matter.
Peace is a frog on a lake’s edge. One with life noticed or not.
Peace is cement laid down in love by a modern-day forefather so we may march to the same destination.
Peace is a redwood tree, a fir, an oak, and elm. All alien, all feeding off light and rain.
Peace is everywhere the mind hasn’t served or corrupted.
Peace is the flag with or without the wind.
Peace is an ocean wave cresting miles from any shore. Egoless and salty.
Peace is a gesture, a smile, a look of recognition. The timeless gap between the iris and it’s observers.
Peace is every heartbeat beat in slumber – a trust larger than awareness.
Peace is play.
Peace is color.
Peace is an empty auditorium echoing with memories.
Peace is created.
Peace is here, now, ready and waiting.
Why are we waiting?
THIS is our opening.

The Gifts Of Community

jon published on November 27, 2010 in zeitgeist. 3 Comments

This was an amazing read all bout a gift economy. Sustainable. Self-fulfilling. Interdependent.

Lynne Twist said it best: “We need to transform gathering more belongings to a sense of belonging.”
Come unity!
http://www.realitysandwich.com/circle_gifts

An Introduction To A New View Of Love.

jon published on September 14, 2010 in zeitgeist. 4 Comments

Hi Superforest dwellers!
I’m leading my first Southern California Workshop and I know there’s a big SoCal SF contingent and I wanted to invite you all (near and far) to come and participate. This philosophy and view of life/love has radically transformed me and how I show up on and for this planet. It’s the essence of all the work I do in the world whether it’s art or activism. It’s the work of the heart which may not “make sense” – because it doesn’t reside in logic as we know it. Below is a course description, a flier, and a link to have you and or your friends and family register. I hope you’ll join me and that I’ll see you in our hearts! Love, Jon
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
What if love is a presence – a state of mind? What if all our relationships is about awakening to this realization? What if what you are hoping that money, a job, or a relationship can fulfill, can only be attained in your awareness? This course takes the stand that our human thirst is never quenched in the outer. That we are the source of our experience and life is an inside job! In this workshop you will learn the tools to be an ongoing activist in the cause of Eternal love. Focusing on three distinctions: Being, Clearing and Acknowledgment you will be trained by Cafe Gratitude community members who have stepped powerfully into leadership and are in service to the whole.

REGISTER HERE.

SuperForest Reads: “The Three Seeds”

jon published on August 18, 2010 in zeitgeist. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

Once upon a time, the tribe of humanity embarked upon a long journey called Separation. It was not a blunder as some – seeing its ravages upon the planet – might think. Nor was it a fall, nor an expression of some innate evil peculiar to the human species. It was a journey with a purpose: to experience the extremes of Separation, to develop the gifts that come in response to it, and to integrate all of that in a new age of Reunion.

The above excerpt comes from Charles Eisenstein’s “The Three Seeds”. It is an amazing read, and you can continue the story by clicking here.

I am responsible for the oil spill.

jon published on June 28, 2010 in zeitgeist. 14 Comments

Hi all.
I was in Matthew and Terces Englehart’s Kindred Spirit Workshop this weekend. For those of you who don’t know, they are the owners of Cafe Gratitude – a chain of Organic, vegan, mostly raw food restaurants in the Bay Area. The workshops are always incredibly powerful and provide an opportunity to sit and learn under two revolutionaries of our generation. (for a schedule of up coming workshops click here.) I have been to their workshops many many times and without fail, I always see something profound for myself. Matthew and Terces offer a view of life that invite you to take 100% responsibility for the all of it. That there is no “out there.” That any problem in your life is never an outside circumstance or situation, but who you are being about it, and invite you to look at any “problem” and see how you could actually take on being responsibility for it. It’s not, as they claim “the truth,” but the only powerful place to stand. Otherwise we tend to fall into some sort of victim mentality and think the world is happening to us, as opposed to us powerfully causing our lives.

The BP oil spill is something that’s been up for me lately. I’m not someone who watches or indulges in the news. Mostly the news occurs as static to me. An unhealthy recipe of separation and fear offered up in images and words. A noisy whiny interference that pulls at the hem of my awareness’s shirt kicking and screaming for me to pay attention to it. And when I do, I always feel helpless and angry. I blame. I point fingers. I say “this wouldn’t be so if…” I was at an airport when I first heard about the spill. CNN was all over it and every television monitor at the airport had that night-vision camera live feed of the oil gushing into the sea. It took me a second for my brain to wrap around what my eyes were actually witnessing. That essentially I was watching millions upon millions of gallons of oil being poured into our oceans as it was happening. It was like watching someone get stabbed slowly and repeatedly in the carotid artery, and that someone was Earth. It made me sick to my stomach. All of it. The news. The relaying of the news. The congestion and delay of the flight. The glossy magazine rack at the kiosk and complete lack of sustainable or organic products in the airport. The dim glow of so many television monitors. And the juxtaposition of a live catastrophe broadcast and the zombie-like apathy me and my fellow gate B10 viewers responded with. I stood there angry, helpless and with two handfulls of blaming fingers all pointing outward.

That shifted for me this weekend when suddenly I was reminded that there is no “out there.” That’s the incredibly elaborate and equally convincing illusion my mind has constructed. That actually I am just as toxic as that oil and the chemicals they are combating it with. There is no separation. My mind in a knee jerk reaction goes to blaming others and victimizing myself. I stop seeing everyone and everything as divine and as a reflection of me. And within that view, I realized I was responsible. I helped cause the oil spill. And my reactionary judgments and apathy were the equally harmful chemicals that in theory dilute the problem, but only exacerbate it.

So, I invite you all to consider blaming BP is the cowards way out. It’s easy. It keeps the problem “out there.” The real messy transformative clean-up that we can do wherever we are in the world, from the comfort (or discomfort) of our own body, mind and souls is to start asking these questions: Who’s addicted to oil? Who doesn’t like to do manual labor anymore? Who still consumes products without knowing where or how they came from? Who needs something as grave as a disaster to be called into action?

I can answer “me” to all those questions. Therefore, I am responsible. BP was only doing it’s job. Serving me and my conveniently amazing life.

And within that, I could go down some mental rabbit hole of self-blame with my head hung and feet scuffling in a defeated shame with images of oil-cover pelicans and ocean waves that look like salad dressing – but I am not. That too is an outdated paradigm. I choose to focus on the opportunity, to learn from this mess and ask myself these new clean-up questions that call me into action, and again, I invite you to do the same: Who would I have to be in the world to not have this ever happen again? How can I take on eliminating the oil I use personally and contribute to others using in my life? What can I give my word to that would have a dramatic ripple effect in the world?

Here’s what I have so far: I am giving my word to not getting in a car by myself. That any errand I need to run or trip I need to make I will either carpool, use public transportation, ride a bike, or walk. I will also continue to share my own transformation. To share the insights I see for myself knowing that: I AM and so are You.

Thanks for always listening and for always being in action SuperForest. We are the Superheroes and we get to say how this comic book goes.

Love,
j|o|n

The Vermonster in my closet.

jon published on June 3, 2010 in zeitgeist. 4 Comments

Hello SuperForesters, web browers, people like you, and people actually you!
I am writing from my home state of Vermont! I hadn’t been back in years, mostly because my parents got divorced between my junior and senior year of high school and I associated this place and this town with an overbearing psychological pain. I essentially held my breath for a year waiting to get to college to exhale. Which I did and vainly thought I dodged an emotional bullet. “Oh, I’m far away from that. No one knows me here. I can be anyone I want…and that anybody is sure as hell not bringing that baggage with me.” But let me be the first to tell you. That baggage follows you. Like a ninja. Or someone trying to track down Jason Bourne in a Jason Bourne movie. Except, in this case the baggage is Jason Bourne and way smarter and always 16 steps ahead of you. No pain or trauma will willingly go away without properly doing the rehab. You carry it with you, like a barnacle doused in krazy glue. And though I had my pain kept away all neat in tidy well outside the plain sight of my friends or anyone I encountered, it was always there festering and growing as emotional mildew, until one night I had this dream. This dream where I essentially saw (you’ll love this SuperForesters) the Divine Mother Earth’s energy personified (municipally) as my hometown, Rutland, Vermont. So picture Mother Earth is all of Earth, every geographic place is part of her body/essence. Well, I saw Rutland as the spokewoman/essence of Earth. Here she was loving me unconditionally as any mother would. Allowing me to grow up safely, jump in it’s lakes and rivers, climb maple trees in my front yard, learn how to draw and color, go to elementary school, play little league and then be awkward and prepubescent in junior high and high school. Then I left for college, got out of Dodge as they say, and have been shunning and shaming my town ever since. Claiming there’s nothing for me here. That it’s way behind the curve and will never grow out of it’s self-dubbed RUT. What I saw however, was that I actually had hurt her (Rutland’s) feelings. I’m not sure if any of you have ever had a dream/vision where you’ve hurt your hometown’s soul’s feelings, but it sticks with you. It’s not something I could just shake off in the morning. It propelled me into action. I saw other things in that dream and you can listen to a super fun and inspiring interview I gave about this trip here.

I talk about transformation and getting complete with my/your past. I highly recommend listening. First of all, I’m awesome. Second of all, I’m good at talking about talking about transformation.

So reporting live and direct, here and now form the trip I can tell you the coolest thing about the journey was I got to do all those things. I swam and jumped in it’s lakes and rivers. I had a Field Of Dreams moment with my Dad (he was my Little League coach) and played catch with him in my driveway. Then with glove still in hand, went and batted some balls around with my childhood friend and Little League teammate (and I crushed a few Definitely over the fence, but foul. It felt amazing). I walked through my high school and junior high this time confidently and with gratitude. I climbed that maple tree. I doodled. I stood at the doorway of my Elementary School. It was amazing. I totally rebuilt the psychosomatic bridge I had burned between my past and my now. I HIGHLY recommend doing the same in your life. Sure, it seemed terrifying at first, but to stare that terror in the metaphorical face and ask it politely to bow down is beyond exhilarating. Layers upon energetic layer fell off of me. I seriously felt like I was looking inside a miracle factory. Moments of my life colliding in a graceful interconnected bliss. Like a slow-motion pillowfight, but instead of feathers the pillows were stuffed with my memories and time-capsuled senses.

Ahhhhhh…

So I just wanted to share all of that with all of you.

And also this.

That is my brother Matt singing a song he wrote about not wasting the milk at the summer camp he’s a counselor at. Matt, as you’ll hear, is a musical activist of sorts. Writing tunes to inform the youth about conserving all of our resources. Be Careful. The chorus is SUPER catchy.

Much Love and full deep breaths from my homeland to yours.

xoxo

j|o|n

Harmonic Humanity

jon published on May 4, 2010 in zeitgeist. 0 Comments

Harmonic Humanity is presently producing a second compilation CD to be entitled “Relief” with Harmony Festival to feature talented “housed and un-house” musicians with the intention of distributing them to homeless individuals for them to profit from via street sales. The project has been supported by The Real Change Newspaper in Seattle and by the Coalition on Homelessness / Street Sheet in San Francisco as well as by What’s up Magazine in Saint Louis. The program is growing rapidly, catching the attention of outreach organizations and street papers across the country.

Vendors of the street papers buy the CD’s for $1 and legally resell them on the streets for $10 keeping all of the profit.

If you would like to support this project please let know how.  We are open to receive, and love big!

links:

http://harmonichumanity.org/

http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=117610061584292&ref=mf

Four. Years. Go.

jon published on April 26, 2010 in celebrity and zeitgeist. 3 Comments Tags: , , .

This video BLEW ME AWAY. So inspiring!

WE ARE THE RENAISSANCE!

SuperForester Jon Presents: “The Birth Of A Cultural Icon” & T-Shirt Release Party!!!

jon published on April 7, 2010 in art, celebrity, superforest journal and zeitgeist. 18 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Hello-ha!
That’s Hello and Aloha combined.

It’s fun to say.

Try it. Say it. Spread it, and together we will bridge the vocabular gap between wherever you are and Hawaii.

My name is Jon Marro! AKA  SuperForester Jon! I am the creative genius behind Blend Apparel.

I met Jackson on a plane to Hawaii. I liked him instantly.

We were attending a retreat on a biodynamic, solar/wind powered farm in rural Maui. Totally SuperForest.

Every morning we’d wake up to roosters. The real kind. Like the kind on the Corn Flakes box. With those crazy arching back feathers that jet skiers dub rooster tailing. I had encountered other roosters before, but honestly, to me they looked just like chickens, but with a red amoeba slab of skin on their heads. These Maui roosters had those too, and they tower over their hen counterpart. Like a matador bull to a milking cow. These were the Gold’s Gym of roosters.

Then Jackson and I would start the wood-fire sauna. We were an impressive team Jackson and I. The first morning, post-sauna, pre-breakfast, he and I went down to the ocean, held hands and ran in naked together.

I tell you this, simply because Jackson and I met for the first time as 31 3 year olds. Our friendship was birthed in arguably the most fertile fecund place on earth. Everything is larger and more saturated there. I think it’s where color was invented. The plants look like they’re from the Triassic Period and I think I saw a hobbit riding a dragonfly. Everything grows, and grows BIG. So, Hawaii was the perfect place for our friendship to germinate.

Because Jackson and I are up to BIG things.

Here we are talking about some:

I think I can. I think Icon.

I’m not sure what we’re talking about. Perhaps the film I’m writing, or the planetary corruption he’s ending. But it’s BIG, and just like the adage goes: “Misery loves company…and so does BIGNESS.”

Being the community builders we are we decided to join forces. We entered a sacred pact. An agreement signed in smiles. To both (help each other) become Cultural Icons.
He told me he had a righteous Blog, I told him I had a transformational T-Shirt company, and like Doc Brown at the end of Back To The Future, we connected the cords in the nick of time to bring you this! (Our first ever collaboration!)

I think SuperForesters are probably the coolest activists ever. I am so excited to share myself with you. One of the things I take on daily in my life is being a walking mirror. Asking the world “Can you see yourself in me?” Ultimately that’s all any of the art I ever make is asking. “Can this help us relate?”

So this post, my first of what I know will be many, is kinda a T-Shirt Release party! My T-shirt company Blend Apparel, just released 3 new designs and we wanted to cyber-celebrate. The first one is called eLOVEator (pronounce elevator with an emphasis on the LOVE). It’s all about moving from your head to your heart. We have a guys and girls version, but don’t let that stop you. And the other design is called: Transceiver. Consider that you are you’re own radio station. What are you broadcasting?

for the fellas...

hey ladies!

Amplify!

I’m not sure a T-Shirt release party has ever existed before, probably because throughout all of time and all of t-shirts, never was there such a perfect forum and friendship to do so. I get that if YOU are reading this, then you, like myself are a friend and an extension of Jackson. So really, that was me & you running naked hand in hand into the ocean hours after we had met. How awesome. Thanks for that. And as a acknowledgement of your awesomeness, I am sharing my shirts with you, because I know you’ll LOVE them. We have decided to give away 1 of each of the new designs to the brave little bloggers who posted their response to the posed eco-pop-quiz: “Describe how you are living out Superforest”

The following SuperForesters have “won” the Un-Contest!:
Strum, roll, please!

Mickie Warden!
Allie Rhea Sheetz!
Jenni Rempel!

I will be contacting the winners shortly and we’ll figure out how to get your prize to you. (the shirts are just as, if not more, excited to meet YOU!)

I was so moved but reading all of the submissions. I realized afterwards that next time I initiate a contest I will NOT make myself the judge. Too hard! Thank you all who shared. You amaze and inspire me! I hope if you’ve never heard of Blend Apparel, you now think it’s awesome and can join me in creating a world of connective communication. These shirts are seeds of love. Wearable activism. They are the coffee table book of Tshirts. They make a fantastic gift to yourself, your family, friends, or your planet. Thank you for welcoming me and all of my designs with open arms.

The world means the world to me.

Helloha!

j|o|n