THIS
REMINDED ME OF THIS
WHICH REMINDED ME OF THIS
And that makes my life worth living : )
Tag Archive for 'love'
I recently discovered Life Student and Founder of Hugnation John Styn when a friend pointed him out in the popular Burning Man video that I posted on SuperForest not too long ago. According to his website:
Hug Nation is a weekly, world-wide, Group Hug – started in 2001.
I really loved his recent post about the Greek’s three types of love:
He discusses these types of Love (spelling?):
- Phileo “brotherly/sisterly love”
- Eros “romantic, erotic.”
- Agape “divine love”
I feel a great sense of all of these loves from the SuperForest community (people are awesome, plants are sexy, and we are all amazing ahaha) and I am so grateful that.
Love more, Fear less. Float more, Steer Less.
Yet another SuperForesty voice in the world : )
Diamond Illustration by Kelly Cree
Today I discovered the lovely writings and creations of Jessica Mullen. According to her “About” Page she often writes about Life Design (which reminds me of permaculture… for people). Jessica says…
Life design is the practice of consciously shaping one’s life situation by starting with the seed of reality: thought. By deliberately choosing the thoughts we want to think, we are empowered to magnificently change our realities from random, uneasy experiences to brilliant, flowing expressions of love.
You already are the designer of your life: every thought you think and emotion you feel adds up to project a signal. That signal you send is then reflected back to you in your life experiences. Your thoughts are like a computer file and reality is the printer. Change your thoughts, print out a new reality!
Last month she published “A Life Design Manifesto”
A Life Design Manifesto
- Life is an adventure, meant to be explored, expanded and enjoyed.
- Each individual is an integral and perfect beacon of light, burning with the same source energy that supports the thriving of all life.
- We know the creative power of our thoughts and direct our focus accordingly.
- We project a vibration of unconditional love.
- We let go the of the drive to achieve and surrender to the ability to receive.
- We choose a gift economy so that everyone can play.
- The Internet is our church, a single meeting place to uplift, inspire and appreciate each other.
- Our mission is to raise the vibration of human consciousness to joy, love, and freedom.
- None of this is serious, it’s all just for fun.
- We say YES!
Do you agree with these principles? If you do, go live them, share them, and celebrate them! Do you have any principles to add, or any changes you would make? Speak loud and proud! Let’s make this life design one we all want to live in together.
This reminds me a whole lot of our friendly Humanifesto! I do not doubt that our movement towards love and a better world is growing in ways we are not even aware of! It is fantastic.
Happy Valentine’s Day, SuperForest! Obviously we don’t need a day to remind us to choose LOVE, but sometimes it’s nice to have a super-festive day to go overboard! Even for those of you (like myself) who don’t have a “valentine” today — allow me to suggest that you be your OWN valentine! Show yourself some LOOOVE! Listen to your favourite music, read a favourite book, sip a favourite wine, etc. etc.
You must first love yourself so get started now and have fun with it!
In celebration of the looming Valentine’s day, I wrote a letter to my imaginary unborn son to share what I know about love and hopefully he will learn from it. Here are excerpts that I particularly liked. You can read the full piece here.
Even after your heart has been broken into more pieces than you ever knew it was made of, I hope you continue to believe in love. Even when it seems that your heart is damaged beyond repair, still, you must mend that heart and love again like you’ve never been hurt before because if you want your heart to be alive and full, you must risk and accept this pain.
But here’s the good news. One day, when the universe decides so, you might catch a glimpse of the perfect woman for you. She will be the one with a soul that sings so beautifully that you cannot stop thinking about her in your waking moments and the only reason you go to sleep is to dream about her. Her absence will mean more than the presence of millions of others and you might find yourself either losing all verbal capabilities or suddenly turning into a poet and when that happens, you know that you’ve met the perfect one. However, I beg you to not confuse this with ”the perfect woman” because she doesn’t exist although one that’s perfect for you does.
Along the way, never make a girl feel like she’s not good enough and always show her how special and beautiful she really is. Remind her that none of her scars can make you love her less and then prove it with your actions. Do not let expectations and jealousy pull you down and try your utmost to be an oasis of calm that she would want to return to everyday but most importantly, always be fully present for her.
Know that there will always be another love out there but never the same love twice. The next girl will be completely different in every sense of the word so don’t impose baggage from your past onto her and don’t you dare use the same words that you’ve once told a girl to another because if she means that much, you will have words that are meant for her and only her. In the words of a friend, ”Don’t let your Antarctica dictate how you tell her how she’s your Europe.” Find the words for the feelings that you never knew existed until you found her.
Thanks for reading Superforesters. You can read the full piece here.
And yes, I will be a godfather to your son if you want me to:)
Love,
A
This should be our theme song! It reminds me of The Humanifesto! I can’t believe I never noticed it before : P
Old song but the message has never been more true : )
LOVE!
SF Jenni
A comment from Jackson on my last post, regarding creating sacred spaces in everyday life:
This is fantastic, Drake! The question I ask myself is: How big can I make my sacred space?
Can it be bigger than a room? Could it be the whole house? Could it be the whole street? Could it be the planet itself? Could I stretch out really far and contain the entirety of the Universe within my sacred space?If I did that, I would reside within my sacred space forever.
A reply, in three parts:
I. IMAGINATION EXPERIMENTS
You are in your backyard, an open winter’s plain, with a camera in hand, and a spindly birch stands alone before you. A sparrow flies to a far branch and begins to tweet, and you turn your head to the stimuli. The angle of vision shifts. Light and shadow form a new composition. “Snap” goes the shutter.
It’s the high summer. You are lying in bed, looking out the window to the same tree. Feeling hot, you switch on the fan above you. You look again at the cedar, now full and green. Coolness on your face brings your attention back to the fan. You look up, and follow one blade’s spin, slowing its orbit with your concentration.
That fall, standing in line at the grocery store, you are a bit bored. You need to get home, and the fluorescent lights give you a headache. Your jaw tightens. The cashier is taking too long, and the little kids up anew spots ahead are getting annoying.
Or, rather, you catch yourself growing annoyed, blink well, and exhale. You breathe down into your soles, let your arches rest, and feel the ground beneath your toes. Frustration melts into relaxation, and the environment shifts: the lights illuminate, the cashier is thorough, and the children’s whimsy delightful.
Light and shadow recompose. The blade slows.
A smile alights on the corners of your mouth.
II. PHENOMENOLOGICAL CONFESSIONAL
When I was a boy, I played lots of video games. I remember, in my early illiteracy, begging my sister to read to me the text of RPGs. As with many of my ilk, the screen, I think, shaped the way that I relate to myself.
I remember standing in front of the bathroom mirror, one of those places of childhood epiphany, and touching my face, thinking, “this is my body, this is the one I get.” I had, through the analogy of SEGA, thought of my body as something I was “playing,” the character given for this life.
Using myself as an example, I tend to identify with the witnessing screen of my consciousness, rather than this body, as me. And, contrarily, I tend to see others as their bodies; it takes consideration to realize that in this other collection of parts lives a consciousness, with a history of breakups and best friends and ice cream preferences. Unexamined, I harbor a frayed mind/body dualism: I am only my mind, they are only their bodies.
Descartes would suggest that this consciousness and this body are running parallel to one another, and do not intersect. This seems silly, as this mind and this body are constantly interacting. When I hit my head on something, consciousness knows it too.
Going back to childhood, the screen conditioned me into a mediated identity. There was the subject, consciousness, and the object, the body, which have a mysterious degree of separation. We often talk of “having” a body, but rarely of “being” a body. Perhaps this is a reason that so many, including myself, tend to neglect, or even harm, our bodies, which are somehow so far away. But it is in the body that the consciousness is in the world. Rather than being mutually exclusive, mind and body are mutually inclusive.
Our bodies are constantly communicating with us. “Listen to your body, listen to your body.” But what is it saying, and how do I listen? Most obvious is “HUNGRY” and “SLEEPY!” but what are the less obvious elements, the tension in the shoulders, the pull in the hamstrings, saying to us?
A teacher once told me that all body tension is emotional. And with meditation and yoga my incredulity had eroded. It seems that it is a sensitivity to these feelings that is needed to udnrstand them. It is a though my body is a class of students, and each part wants to be called on to say what happened over the weekend. That tension, or that peace, radiates in consciousness, and out into our surroundings. The mind is manifest in the body, the body manifest in the mind.
–
Relationship is everywhere, and everywhere we are shown ourselves. The other reveals us … The whole always throws the parts into relationship, polishing the mirrors. What we see happening in the external drama we can be sure is part of ourselves. It is said that a cow walked across the entire city of Baghdad and saw only some hay that had fallen off a wagon. Likewise, some people travel all around the world and report back that everyone tried to cheat them.
Coleman Barks’s commentary, The Essential Rumi.
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III. CONSCIOUSNESS AND ENVIRONMENT
When first laying eyes on the Himalayas, or Monet’s <em> Water Lillies </em>>, one may emit a soft “ah,” a soft vocalization of placid awe. This awe extinguishes anxiety, and the conscious mind rests on the beauty it beholds. Correspondingly, the body relaxes and releases. For a moment, the “I” and its projected barriers are gone, and consciousness is unseparated from its environment. The lover dissolves into the beloved, and this is, to me, the essence of sacred experience.
What is important to keep in mind is that consciousness does not exist somewhere else; the phenomena we experience through our senses are not behind a screen, the mind is not mediated. The state of consciousness is reflected in the body’s posture and movement, the tension of muscles and joints, in the tone of voice, in the feeling communicated by physical touch. As well, the state of consciousness frames, or perhaps even defines, what one takes away from a particular location.
Christianity and Buddhism agree that the body is a temple. The body exudes its consciousness, and if one makes safe refuge within one’s body, the way that the druid feels in Stonehenge, or the francophile in Montmartre, the sacred space of the mind expands, and the peace of that consciousness acts as a temple blessing to all those that interact with it.
Last summer in Dharamsala I received a teaching from the Dalai Lama, and walking from his throne to his car, he turned to his right and, for the briefest of moments, His Holiness connected eyes with me, and I froze in elation; all my ideas my ideas fell down, and he turned back to his path, and I cooed and clapped in a fit of Lama-induced love-hysterics.
What is the well-spring of said swoon? How is it that His Holiness radiates radical peace, through the medium of air into me? I do not know, but I sense that in that lustrous mind of his is a calm ocean, and that serenity of consciousness is manifest in the body.
In loving, we train ourselves to love more. In perceiving the beauty of the world, we make ourselves more vulnerable to seeing the beauty that is inside us. By stepping into the quiet beauty within consciousness, and gain an appreciation for this foundation of living, we in turn open our aesthetic aperture. In the calm abiding of sensing beauty in the “screen” of consciousness, one begins to appreciate the beauty of the body. This threefold sensitivity to beauty, at the seat of consciousness, as part of the body, and within space, creates a sustainable, positive, psychological ecology, transcendent of “everywhere.”
A SuperForest.
Love,
Drake
(via)
Gooood Morning Lovely SuperForest!
Since reading the book A Course in Miracles, I’ve been paying special attention to my body. My body, which I have happily ignored and reviled for years, has recently become a friend. A companion. A nice lil’ playmate.
So when my nice lil’ friend got a cold, I was keenly interested in what exactly was happening to it while I was “having a cold.” A Course in Miracles says that sickness is impossible if you are connected with love and eternity, so when I woke up with the sniffles, feeling congested and slow, I thought to myself: Great! Here’s a chance for the book to work.
Then I had to remember that the book did nothing in itself, that I myself was in charge. According to ACIM the sole reason that I was “sick” was that my mind was attacking my body. To cure the sickness, I had to identify which idea my mind was attacking my body with, an idea that my ego was desperately trying to hide from my loving attention. To accomplish this, I had to slow down and listen to myself.
The feeling of “having a cold” I quantified thusly:
Feelings of tension and tightness in my neck area, specifically where my head and neck join. A “swollen” feeling in my sinuses. Snot coming out of my nose. A feeling of lethargy and fatigue. A feeling like if I exerted myself too much, I would prolong the sickness. My eyes felt tired.
I would note this little laundry list of feelings with a kind of disassociated interest. The attitude I cultivated was one of happy interest in the fact that my body was alive and feeling sensations, but not trying to interpret those sensations in any way. Feeling neither negative nor positive about my “cold symptoms” I lobbed them onto an imaginary desk in my mind and asked please that they be whisked away from me.
In a whoosh, the icons of sickness I had created in my mind were whisked away, leaving the table clean. In that moment of imaginary clarity, I found myself exhaling fully, taking a deep breath, noting that I was thrusting my head forward at an angle. Breathing in, I felt my body soften, and resettle into a place of comfort and ease.
The cold symptoms I thus self treated for a few days. I would feel “coldy,” and I would instantly remind myself that my body did not have a cold, that it was my mind attacking my body with angry thoughts that was the cause of my unease. Much like a fencer will skillfully parry a thrust of the blade in his direction, the mind training taught by ACIM has given me the inner remove necessary for fending off what in the past would have effected me in a far different way. I could use my imagination to fight back the hateful effects of my ego as it thrashed around inside me, hiding from my thoughts, keeping my body distracted with “sickness.”
On day three I was lying down on our bed at the farm. Melissa was beside me. I had my face smushed into her back, between her shoulder blades. For days I had been moving at what felt like half speed, though we were still being as active as we normally are, more so even because we are about to move and there are many plates spinning. I had been asking myself over and over, what is the root cause of this feeling inside me? Thus far, I had received no answer.
Suddenly, like a Spanish galleon rising from the muddy bottom of a lake and rushing to the surface in a spume of white water, the idea that had been plaguing me surfaced and could be seen: I was mad at everyone.
Deep inside, there was a place in me that was really pissed at the human race. Our destructiveness, our needless enslavement of each other, our hundred million thousand daily cruelties. Why had we treated the planet and each other with such reckless abandon? Why had we destroyed so much and so many?
I was smiling as I thought this. Ahhhhhh, there you are my beauty, I thought. Like a splinter in my mind, the “everyone else is a shithead” idea had sat in there and pumped out toxic waste into my very central nervous system for nearly thirty years. This rotten creme puff of an idea had infected and inflected every decision I had ever made, every interaction I had ever had with anyone, ever. Until now, moth—–er, thought I.
This splinter I believe was the root of the separation idea within my mind. The final vestige of an Us Vs. Them idea that was firmly lodged in my operating system until I took the mental equivalent of a long, hot bath, and let that little sucker squeeze its way out of my ego, up into the bright attention of my will. Where I promptly flushed that lil’ nasty into nothingness.
There sits the wooden table, or the marble mantle, the surface upon which I place the things I wish to be whisked out of my mind, dealt with forever by something much more capable than myself. Upon the table I place the shabby little muddy model of the ship, now looking old, rotten, soaked, and tired. Please, oh Universe, take from me this rotten idea that there is a them to be angry at.
Whoosh!
And there I am left, clean and innocent in the present. The past has been forgiven. All sickness and symptoms and thoughts of unease have vanished. It took three days of focused breathing, soft attention, and compassionate self awareness to root out the cause of my cold, and when it came out, I felt immediately well. It’s funny to think that the common cold remedy is a form of amphetamine, meant to wind you up and keep you going. That’s funny because in my experience, if you want to deal with the root of the symptoms and not just treat the symptoms alone, you must slow down, breath deeply, and wait patiently for the Big Nasty to surface.
Sweating helps. The ocean helps. Tea helps. Lots of water and fluids help. Loving attention from others and a TOTAL denial of your “sickness” helps a great deal as well. Slow down and the funk will work its way out. You may feel a bit funky while it does, but once the idea is clear in your mind, you’ll be able to deal with it immediately and effortlessly. Well, effortlessly over time, with practice :)
Western style medicine pays no attention to the link between the mind and the body, specifically the link between our emotional state and the way we feel physically. That the two are linked is beyond question. Our culture has conditioned us to assume that when we are sick our bodies are fighting germs or infection, but if we shift the idea of sickness in our minds to one where the mind is trying to fight itself, then the power for our healing rests once more in our own capable hands.
There is no sickness. There is simply the mind trying to fight itself and attacking the body. Find the root idea behind the attack and you negate the idea of sickness. Eliminate the idea of sickness from your mind and you will never be sick.
I love you!
-Jackson
(via)
Number one: Figure out what you want. Do this by asking yourself A LOT of questions and listening to the answers that are returned to you. Beginning with, “What do I want?” I’ve found that simply being on the land helps me to quiet my mind. Sometimes by just sitting, other times by weeding the garden or walking silently, listening to what’s happening in my head. Then, when I receive an answer, for example, “I want to build a chicken coop,” I think about what I want that coop to look like. What are my reasons for wanting chickens? To feed my family? To feed the community? To sell? How many chickens do I have energy, money and food to raise? How much space do I have to dedicate to chickens? What materials are available to build a coop? Would I rather have a chicken tractor so I can utilize my birds for garden preparation and fertilization? Any question that I can think of, that seems important for my initial coop design, I have to remember to ask it, and listen to what comes in response.
Then, using free or cheap, found, recycled, donated, used, materials, I build Prototype A Chicken Coop. No need for expert skills, I cobble together a rudimentary first coop, get some chickens, put them in it, and see what happens. Does the cat get in and eat two of my ladies? Is it so good I don’t need to make any adjustments at all? Would I rather it have wheels for easier relocation? I observe and make adjustments. There are no mistakes, just experimenting, creating, having fun, learning and forward movement. I use prototyping for nearly all of my projects. It allows me to obverse and make decisions based on real events rather than trying to predict what will happen in the future. Here is a fantastic article SuperForester Jackson just found on Prototyping.
(via)
Next, Land needs people. Either paid help or work/trade/live-in help. Development can rarely be done alone AND happy and quickly and cheaply. So observe the land while asking for, meeting with and inviting your specifically chosen team to come join you to live on the land. Let the grass (if there is any) grow long and tall. Observe the paths that the people create in the un-mowed grass. Plant where the people Don’t walk. Allow them to create your map for you. Trust them. You’ve chosen these people for specific reasons like, you like them, they are skilled and valuable to you and your project. Treat them as such.
I’ve now co-created land projects twice, once on two acres, currently on nine, and (fingers crossed) moving on to five. With each project, the team of people was the most integral first step after: Do Nothing. Wait. Observe. Document (photo, video, write.) If you feel you can do this alone AND cheap, you’re likely mistaken. If you’re still interested in the monetary/employment, drive to work to buy this car, buy this car to drive to work system and you’ve got a lot of money and are willing to spend it, hire some awesome peeps to help you. I’ve used the live-in, work/trade, low or no rent method for both projects and have found it to be most fulfilling for the land, the people and our collective sanity.
Figure out where you’re going to set up each camp. When you allow each team member/family their own camping spot with room to ripple out towards each other and the common areas, you will be able to observe that wherever you place a human, the land around them will get cleared and cleaned and loved from the inside out, effortlessly. Again, trust your people. Don’t micromanage. With a common goal, that one you figured out you wanted in step one, the vision will come to fruition if you communicate with and trust your people.
Water: Wells can be ideal, but take time and money. So set up some rain catchment. You can use a simple tarp/55 gallon plastic barrel system that you can run through either a natural, plant, sand, charcoal filter or a Berkey or Britta system. Also, Is there a nearby fresh spring or a stream running on the land that you can utilize?
Poop: We call our method The Tree Machine. Dig a hole about 3-4 feet deep and 2-3 feet wide. Build a simple wooden box with a toilet hole and hinged cover, and place it over hole in ground. Squat on box and poop in hole. Place dirt or, preferably dry wood chips over each poo until hole is nearly full. Remove box, fill in remaining part of hole, let sit for two weeks. Plant fruit tree over it. Repeat.
Those are the basics I’ve used for the initial phase of land projects.
Aloha!
Gooood morning my friends,
It is 2012! Let the new year’s SuperForesting commence!
We have gardens to build, and minds to set free.
Our task is two-fold: We must garden the inside of our minds, and we must create actual working, food producing gardens. By doing this we will effect massive social change, for if ten percent of us started gardening intensively, there would be food for the other ninety percent. Food in abundance and world peace are the goals.
To begin, we must cultivate a state of willingness. The coming year will challenge us, provoke us, force us to learn on our feet, learn while doing. It will be great fun. Now is not the time to get all rigid in our thinking. Now is the time to get loose and floppy like a noodle. Remember that the strongest reed is the one that bends, SuperForesters. When we are provoked we will react lovingly, or not at all. The coming year will be full of provocation. Let us declare with joy that we are willing to do whatever it takes to have peace and joy throughout 2012!
We’ve gotta declare peace within our own minds, my homies. We’ve gotta start treating our friends and neighbors exactly as we would have them treat us, if we’re gonna make it through to the golden rainbow funtime sexyland garden paradise that awaits us. Are you willing? A little teeny tiny bit willing is all it takes. I love you, and I want you to be your brightest and best.
Here’s how:
(image via mi9.com)
1. You are not a person. You are the Universe.
Your whole life you’ve been taught that you are a person. You are this name and this is your background and these are your parents, and here is your school, and these are your friends, and this is your history, and that was your life, and one day it will all end with your death, and that will be the end of the story of you. That is the essence of our conditioning. We are humans. We were born, we live a short while, and then we die. Inside our fleshy bodies, we are separate from the rest of the world. There is the car, there is the tree, here I am, and behind me is a hill. Right? This isn’t anything new, this is fundamental. And sadly, this teaching, so fundamental to the way that we perceive the world is totally wrong.
We are not humans, mes amis. That idea is a needless discriminatory classification. We are taught that we are human, but we are not. The totality of what I am and what you are too and what we both share between us and what we really are is so huge and eternal and perfect that to try to cram all of that perfection and eternity into a bag of meat and call it “Jackson” is absurd.
Here’s the truth: We are the Universe. You. Me. All of us. Everyone that has ever lived or will ever live. Everything that has ever existed. All of that is us. We are the Universe. Everything is connected because everything IS everything. There is only unity because unity cannot by definition be divided.
If you are taught that you are NOT the Universe, that you are a finite little speck of a person (and all of us are taught that,) then you will treat the “outside world” with suspicion, hostility, and outright destructiveness. That is exactly how we treat the world today. We treat it and each other with terrible cruelty, and we pretend that we’re not aware of it. We think that we can get away with such behavior because “the world” is external, and is not a part of us. But in this thinking we are terribly mistaken. For the world that we mistreat and the creatures that populate it that we abuse IS US. There is no separation between the world and the humans. The humans are the world. The world is the humans. To call one “world” and one “human” is to separate what cannot be separated, and once that is realized, once that fundamental untruth has been corrected then you realize something utterly wonderful, and that is…
(image via sree.cc)
2. You are a mind, and your mind is connected with every other mind.
Everything that is is connected. If you are the universe that means that you have all the power the Universe has. That means that you can travel through space and time. You can live forever. You will never be sick. You can operate under a completely different set of laws. We are all of us enlightened beings, and to realize our potential, we need to learn to relax into our magnificence. To truly relax is harder than it sounds. Most of us have a lifetime of pain and suffering stored up in our bodies, or the ideas of our bodies, really. To learn to quiet the body and still the mind is necessary to realize the true scope of your powers. Yoga, massage, meditation, gardening, walking, running, building, cleaning; any action can be a “walking meditation,” where our every move serves to remind us of grace, ease, and deep connective joy. Our bodies are here solely as devices for communicating healing and joy. When all minds have joined together in the realization of our unity, our bodies will no longer be necessary. We will be revealed as beings of light.
Our minds are all the same mind. When we are calm, we can communicate with each other. There is great joy in this. To cultivate a state of deep calm, we must focus on our breathing.
(image via flickr user goingslo)
3. Breath all the way out.
Take a deep breath in, not so deep as to cause any strain, but a deep and full and satisfying breath of air into your lungs. Now, begin to let it out. Slowly. At the bottom of your exhale pause before your inhale. Hold right there. Now, continue EXHALING slowly and minutely for as long as you can. Most of us are very shallow breathers. We breath in a little, then out a little, seldom taking deep and full breaths. We usually have a big pocket of left over stale air at the bottom of our lungs that doesn’t get exhaled because of our shallow breathing. This exercise will help reverse that and bring consciousness to your breathing, which is ultimately the gateway to deep relaxed mental states.
Sit calmly. Be comfortable. Be warm and mellow. Take a deep breath in. Let your exhale stretch out as long as it can. Then stretch your inhale out as well. As you exhale, you can feel your heart beating, and you can use this rhythm to help you moderate your exhale, letting out a little bit of air with each heart beat. When we concentrate on exhaling fully, we bring our precious attention to our breath, which allows us access to deep, relaxed, connected states. Slow your breathing and your respiration slows. Your heart slows. Your mind slows. The world slows. Slow, steady, and soft are the qualities we’re cultivating here, qualities that remind us how very like the Universe we are, so alike as to be inseparable.
Once you’ve realized that you are totally connected to every living thing, that you are a wondrous part of the grand creation that is life, and you are happy to see that everything you perceive as the outside world is really YOU and treat it as such, then congratulations, my friends, you are a SuperForester.
What I just wrote is in essence just a grander version of the Humanifesto, which is the nifty little document that started this whole SuperForest shebang. It says it right in there: You are the environment. You have to be good to the outside world, because in the end, there is no difference between you and the outside world. We together are all the outside world.
Aaaaaaaannnd, Step Four!
(image via truespeechfiles)
4. There is no conflict.
You are the universe. You are the totality of everything. All of time and space exist within you right now. So all conflict is absurd. Beyond absurd, it cannot exist. What is one (and we are all one) cannot be in conflict because what is one cannot fight itself. What about wars and death, and disease, and suffering? As long as we choose to see them as such, and make villains of them, and fear them, and say that they are the opposite of life we are being mistaken, and are holding ourselves hostage to our own illusions. What if all of those words could be translated into love? What if war meant love? And suffering meant love? What if starvation and deprivation of the cruelest kind were only illusions, and that there was nothing to fear? What if everything ultimately meant love?
Life has no opposite. Life is everything. We are life. What we call suffering is life. There is no death. There is what appears to be suffering and war and death, but all of those things are only life being life. Life endlessly being itself. Life is love, as human is love, as planet is love, as solar system is love, as chimpanzee is love, as war is love, as button is love, as all are love. What truly is love can have no opposite and all is love.
The war is over. The need for conflict is over. The need for desire is over. We have outgrown these ideas. We can let them go. This is SuperForesting.
All attack is relinquished. All enemies are forgiven.
Here to replace conflict is golden peace.
Okay, that was a super heavy intense download. Go outside and run around.
(image via vistawallpaper.org)
Part Two – The Great Land Caper!
Mmmkay, here’s the thing. You need land. You do, you just don’t know it yet. You need about half an acre of land. You need to have a place to live and a garden bursting with food. Beyond that garden you need fruit trees and nut trees. Beyond that you need trees for firewood, and trees for building with. You need chickens and water tanks, and solar dryers, and wash lines. You need these things. Why? These things will keep you alive. If you live in an apartment in the city, move out to the country. Do this now.
Our system is collapsing. Notice I didn’t say “about to collapse” or “in danger of collapsing.” No, I said IS collapsing. Your ability to access the things that you need to keep you alive long enough to realize your full potential as a SuperForester is not going to last much longer. That means that food, water, and power are about to run out. That means that our money is very soon going to be both worthless and useless, save for starting fires. Our degrees, our job security, our pension plans, our wealth, all these things that used to protect us and offer us the idea of security, all of them have evaporated. If you have some land that you can begin cultivating very soon, you’re going to be sitting pretty and able to help your friends and neighbors. To truly help, you must be in a position beyond needing help yourself. To help yourself, you need land.
There is land everywhere. Everybody has a grandma or an uncle or an aunt or someone that has a big house on a few acres of land. Find those people, work that land. Or we need to start occupying any unused land and use it for housing, work space and intensive organic food cultivation. For to not have land and robust working living systems when the (fill in the blank) comes down would suck. There is land everywhere. Team up and find it. A few acres can feed a lot of people. Be the people with food pumping out of your gardens when cheap oil stops flowing, or the US invades Iran or whatever insane horror show forces the consumptive life we’ve all been living to a grinding halt. And good! No one likes living this way really. It is misery to live a separated existence.
Is it contradictory to say in one breath: you are not a body, and in another say: get some land to protect your body? Yes, I suppose it is. But on the other hand, even if you are not a body, you still have a body, and as I said before, bodies are useful for healing and communicating joy. We can use our bodies to heal the scars we’ve left on each other and the planet, and in doing so we will heal our own minds. We will realize the extent to which our interconnectedness offers us room for entirely new avenues of creation and communication. New arts, new sciences, new learning, all await us. We will use our bodies to create beautiful spaces to heal and help other SuperForesters transition to abundance.
These spaces are our gardens. Where we manifest our love for the earth and for one another. Where we witness the miracle of abundance as the efforts of one gardener feeds many hungry people. In our gardens we can heal the minds of our sick friends, taught that they’d been cast adrift and marooned away from the Universe and love. And once every mind has been healed, we will dance with this planet and with each other as never before, and all of us will be revealed to be the same golden light, the same extensions of perfect universal love.
When our gardens intersect and connect they form a SuperForest, and that is us. That is our shared purpose: to unite our inner and outer gardens.
All I’m asking is that we give up everything that we don’t like and keep everything we do like. Simple enough, right? That to me sounds like heaven. That sounds like a world worth creating. Great, let’s create it.
But how are we going to do all that? How are we going to connect and share these ideas that we need to thrive? How can we possibly accomplish such a task?
We’re doing it. It is happening. That is what SuperForest is for. That is what we all are for. That is what the internet is for. That is what the Universe is for. We have seen the writing on the wall long ago, and moved to support positive change. The world is waking up, and we are here to help wake it. The people are realizing their unity, and we are here to help remind them, to guide them. We are here to help our friends and neighbors, the people we love, to realize that they are perfect love, and that they deserve to live lives of perfect peace.
Your task is thus: Garden your mind. Garden your world. You are a SuperForester, get to it.
Here is where we share our journey.
Love,
Jackson
Tasting fresh coconut water for the first time is serious business…;)
Good Evening, SuperForesters!
As you may know, I boarded a plane this past August and visited the magical, beautiful island of Kauai. I also visited L.A. and B.C., but it was while I was on Kauai that I made some pretty amazing breakthroughs about love, life and self.
I don’t even know where to start when describing my experiences. It wasn’t my first time traveling alone, but it was the longest time period and furthest away that I’d been on my own. That in and of itself made way for much growth and stretching.
I relaxed, slept in, fell in love with a cat, made new SuperForesty friends, spent cherished time with SuperForester Jackson and SuperForester Melissa, and toured around the beautiful island, exploring and journeying, and learning!
Today I want to share with you something that I truly learned on this journey:
I learned to love myself.
It was a beautiful, calm evening and SuperForester Jackson was driving me home after he, SuperForester Melissa and I had spent the day together. We were discussing this theory, and the conversation turned to our grandparents and any similarities or differences we may have from those individuals. In comparing myself to my paternal grandmother, I did something that I didn’t realize I’ve been doing my entire life.
SuperForester Jackson quickly responded, “Ok, you have to stop doing that!” I had no idea to what he was referring…but he explained that since I arrived, I had been putting myself down left and right. Chalk it up to family patterns of overly extreme humility, added to my sense of stereotypical Canadian humility, added to … blah, blah, blah! It’s all excuses! Essentially, I was telling myself and everyone around me, “I’m not that great, so don’t bother listening to me/paying attention to me/loving me.”
WOW.
It took me a few days and a challenging hike to push past some of my fears and realize that I’d not been practicing self-love like I deserved. I had glimpsed this realization while journeying through the Peacemaker book, but it had not hit home until it was bravely, honestly verbalized to me.
We grow up learning about self-esteem, self-respect and self-love from friends, family, school, workshops, etc. etc. etc. Sometimes all of that learning is floating around in our heads, but we don’t feel it. For me, it took an honest conversation to wake me up to the destructive pattern I’d been self-inflicting. I didn’t think I was enough, I compared myself to others, and I was worried if I outwardly loved myself too much, I’d come across as cocky and self-absorbed. What I realized, however, is that I am a unique, amazing, beautiful person and I have a lot to offer this world — I just have to get out of my own way and love myself, so that I can find inner peace, a joy-filled life, and a loving life-partner.
So, SuperForest, I urge you to “love thyself”. Take a look at what that really means to you. Ask close friends and family to be brutally honest with you and tell you what you’ve been doing to yourself, perhaps without even noticing. It is a daily practice, but I am working on it, and I truly hope you all are as well.
I sincerely hope that sharing my truth in this post inspires one of you to love yourself more as well. It all ripples outward, SuperForest… but you knew that already.
You are Loved.
SuperForester Heather
Happy Birthday to the magical SuperForester Mathew!!! An old soul in a young body, Mathew brings joy, introspection, energy and love to SuperForest! I am sure I can speak for all SuperForesters when I say that I am very happy you were born, SuperForester Mathew!
Much love to you and I hope happy celebrations are in store :)
~SuperForester Heather
Hello Superforesters!
I just returned from my most recent artistic adventure in musiclandia, my second album!
It’s called “the V album” and it explores some outrageous and gorgeous reaches of the human experience~
You can find it on iTunes and www.theValbum.com!
I have scribbled a map, and now I want YOU to strap in and take off!
Listen to it!
Watch it!
Boogie down!
You know what I would love the most?!
If you learned a song and played it for me when you return!
Love!
TV
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