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Headspace App Review

May 25, 2017 by Dan Ma Leave a Comment

[fruitful_tabs type=”accordion” width=”100%” fit=”false”] [fruitful_tab title=”App Purchase Details”] Android Apple Category: Health & Fitness Content Rating: Everyone Free Offers in-app purchases

[/fruitful_tab] [/fruitful_tabs] A very good friend of mine told me she was having a great experience with Headspace, so a couple days later she was so kind as to send me a free month-long trial. I’ve been testing it out and I think it is perfect for those who have never done meditation and want to try it out privately without going to a class. Headspace would be useful for those who commute on a bus or desire to take work breaks at their desk. Headspace is a meditation application that can run on your computer and phone. In our busy modern life, anything that promotes meditation is a good thing. A lot of our energy and focus is being pulled out of us constantly with our fast-paced, media driven, attention-soliciting society. Meditation is more important than ever. Just think how much more peaceful the world would be if more people did meditation regularly. Paint a picture here: think of people letting go of frustration in the traffic lanes on their commutes, people gathering in the park for qigong, people pausing to think before speaking and acting, people who are emotionally accessible to their friends and families, in their bodies, and not distracted by the media onslaught.

Headspace is, in my and Veronica’s opinion, a great tool for the modern U.S. citizen who is in search of a tool for finding stillness and focus in the midst of what can easily become a hectic lifestyle.The 10 day free trial, which is open to everyone, makes available three levels of foundational guided meditation, which is very digestible and approachable for those who have never meditated before. The first 3 levels teaches us how to bring the mind to a place of rest and stillness for centering and balancing, and also to build inner awareness. The portable program of guided meditations has cute animations, email reminders to help motivate you, and some stats to track your progress. The app says meditation is good for treating decreasing anxiety & depression, blood pressure, heart rate, and stress. Headspace also says that regular practice of meditation improves attention, cholesterol levels, memory, and sleep. There are 5 sections in the series so far:

Sport
Health
Relationships
Performance
Headspace Pro

Each section has includes packs, sort of like sub-sections. . For instance, performance has these packs:

Creativity
Focus
Happiness
Balance

There is also a section of activities called “singles” which are designed to be helpful while you are doing specific actions. Here are a few:

Sleeping
Fear of flying
Walking
Commuting
Running

Another cool thing I like about Headspace is you can gift this app to someone special in your life that you think could benefit from meditation, but are unsure if they would like going to an expensive class, or are too busy to learn from a book or video. It is an easy noncommittal gesture that is different yet thoughtful. Currently you can gift a one month subscription for $12.99. I chose to gift this to someone close to me who is currently going through a really hard time, for instance, because I felt like he might like to try it out but might not purchase it for himself, but because it’s an app it doesn’t come with the pressure involved with taking a class. Andy Puddicombe is the founder of Headspace and is the voice who does the guided meditations. He started meditation at the young age of 11 when he went to his first meditation class with his mother. When he was in school he quit college to become a Buddhist monk to deal with his life issues, which was largely attributed to parental divorce and a car crash that took lives when he was growing up. Puddicombe is also the author of The Headspace Guide to Meditation and Mindfulness, and a Clinical Meditation Consultant in the United Kingdom.

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Secrets of the Lost Mode of Prayer by Gregg Braden Book Review

May 6, 2017 by Dan Ma Leave a Comment

[fruitful_tabs type=”accordion” width=”100%” fit=”false”] [fruitful_tab title=”Book Info:”] Author: Gregg Braden Publisher: Hay House Language: English Pages: 184 ISBN-10: 1401951929 ISBN-13: 978-1401951924

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Secrets of the Lost Mode of Prayer: The Hidden Power of Beauty, Blessing, Wisdom, and Hurt

Secrets of the Lost Mode of Prayer is the second book I have enjoyed from Gregg Braden. This book was less scientifically dense than The Divine Matrix, but it does have a good assortment of references to ancient texts, such the Dead Sea Scrolls, to be intrigued about. Braden shares a lot other overlapping stories as examples for the spiritual theories he is explaining. The book isn’t very long with 184 pages. I found a good amount of material in this book to warrant a recommendation. If I had my way, I would retitle this book as “Secrets of Living a Happier Life”. The book has five chapters, each one revealing a secret on how to live happier. The first secret wasn’t a very big secret for me because I came to the book with previous knowledge of qigong and the Inner Smile Meditation. I like to call this “lost mode of prayer” the Feeling Prayer because of the parallels to the Inner Smile meditation. According to Braden’s studies, the ancients believed that we have direct access to the divine and the power of creation. There is a powerful unified field that we can access through the lost mode of prayer. This field is discussed in much finer detail in his book, The Divine Matrix. In brief, this field connects all things in the universe, which means that everything is connected and not separate. Every possibility is in the field–every possible joy and every possible sorrow. The field is also holographic, in the sense in which a cell in our body contains all the information necessary to create another you. Similarly in the field, any part of the field contains every possibility, which means that one small change in the field happens instantly to the whole system. The field is also a mirror reflecting our true beliefs–it simply mirrors the quality of our feelings as the experiences of our lives. Because the field connects everything together, our collective consciousness plays a vital role in the quality of our world. We create by our act of observation, and the quality of our beliefs determines what our consciousness creates. If we choose to view our world through a quality of separateness, anger, fear, and hate, then the field will reflect these qualities back to us as such in our families, workplace, in our bodies, and all the other aspects of our lives. The power of the lost mode of prayer is that we can choose to view our world through the qualities of unity, gratitude, love, and wisdom instead. The understanding of “lost mode of prayer” and The Divine Matrix has supercharged the Inner Smile meditation for me, because it allows me to really believe in what I am doing has a real effect inside of me and outside of me. Some of my experiences have been so powerful that it moves me to tears of joy. The second secret is about hurt, and the realization that hurt helps us to learn. Hurt teaches us a great many things about ourselves and the relationships that we have.The greater the hurt, the greater the benefits of forgiveness. To be able to feel love, we have to be open enough to be vulnerable to our pain. Hurt is a way for us to understand how deeply we can feel–it shows us how deeply we can love. When we learn from our hurt, it then turns into wisdom. True wisdom is not something you can learn in a book, it is something you learn through feeling and experience. It has been scientifically proven that stress and emotional duress causes sickness in our bodies. When we don’t deal with bad feelings we inadvertently hurt ourselves more than if we choose to deal with it completely at the moment. It seems so very obvious to me in my life experiences that these feelings don’t ever go away if you don’t choose to resolve them. Have you ever known someone long enough to see a pattern of unresolved hurt continue to resurface? It is very sad to see this because you want to help, but it is hard to help them if they don’t want to deal with it. Sometimes hurt is bad enough that it is buried deep, that the consciousness cannot remember the event, but the subconscious remembers. When something triggers this hurt, you will follow a defensive pattern to deal with it, rather than dealing with past hurt and the new hurt. This pattern is a groove in your life and the longer you play out these recurring patterns the groove gets deeper and deeper. In some extreme cases hurt can be so deep that another identity is created to help keep it buried. So far this secret has been teaching me to be more critical about myself and my feelings. What am I feeling? Why am I feeling this? What is triggering this pattern? This is a lot different than placing blame outside of you. Instead it helps you find something inside of you to heal. It keeps me on my toes, because I never know when I may get triggered into a pattern. The hardest part is trying to understand where it comes from, but each time I am tasked I am always rewarded to surrender my ego and let go and heal. The third secret is a blessing. It is a tool in which to acknowledge the hurt in our day to day lives as well as the sufferings of the past. Bless those who suffer, bless whatever causes the suffering, and bless those who witness the suffering. By our blessings we temporarily suspend our hurt to make it possible to replace it with another feeling–you assume your power to let go of life’s deepest hurts and unresolved feelings. After all, the best learning we do is from these challenges that life gives us so from this perspective it is a blessing. Perhaps you can tell already that the secret of the blessing is very helpful to consider when using the secret of hurt as a teacher. If you are able to bless a hurt, you may be able to see it as it really is and regroove it into a wisdom. The fourth secret is that beauty is always present in all things–the power to see beauty is a choice. The power of choosing to see beauty in our lives is the power to see beyond the hurt and pain that world is offering us and recognize the beauty that exists in all things. The power to see beauty gives us a greater appreciation in our lives and those around us. When you are able to see the beauty in hurt you can bless it and move forward with better grace in your life. I am really interested in bringing more beauty into my life. How do I find beauty in all things around me, especially when there is so much ugliness being splashed around? Is it too impractical to be happy all the time? Is it even possible? Perhaps this is the beauty in salat, which is the obligatory prayer, performed five times each day by Muslims. Maybe this method invites us to bring more beauty into our lives. I also did some research about impermanence, which comes from Buddhism. In my understanding, the Buddhist philosophy of impermanence expresses that all temporal things, whether material or mental, are in a continuous change of condition. Maybe by applying this concept into things that we do not see as beautiful, we can remind ourselves that it has the possibility to become beautiful. I rather like this idea as it gives us a daily exercise for our creative powers that we all have within us whether we realize it or not. I am trying to be more mindful about taking the time to appreciate the beauty around me, and when I do see something beautiful, I like to think that life has put it there just for me in that special little moment. The fifth secret is that you are not a victim of life’s circumstances, you are a powerful co-creator, and we all participate in creating the world we live in. I came into this book practicing the first secret, which has been a huge positive change in my life and my relationships. I am interested in how the other secrets will further shape me. I already feel that I have more tools to help promote more happiness in my life. This is the result of searching for more meaning in my life, one of the reasons why I started this blog. All of Braden’s publications so far have all been positive and empowering for me. Although I have known to varying degrees about the other secrets (hurt as a teacher, blessing as an emotional lubricant, beauty as a transformer of hurt), I never understood them in the context in which Braden covers it in this book. I am able to incorporate them with much more clarity and vigor. I am truly grateful for all the information that Gregg Braden has made available, and I am glad that I have had the opportunity to come across them. I am also appreciative that I am able to share some of that information with you, and I would encourage anyone to take a deeper look. Have you had any experiences using any of these techniques? Please comment and share. From my heart to yours.

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The Inner Smile by Mantak Chia Book Review

May 5, 2017 by Dan Ma Leave a Comment

[fruitful_tabs type=”accordion” width=”100%” fit=”false”] [fruitful_tab title=”Book Info”] Author: Mantak Chia Publisher: Destiny Books Language: English Pages: 80 ISBN-10: 1594771553 ISBN-13: 978-1594771552

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The Inner Smile: Increasing Chi through the Cultivation of Joy

I don’t think I came across Mantak Chia’s information by accident, because by coming across his material he has helped be back onto a path of happiness. During my formative years I was practicing a form of chi kung that my father taught me, but I never knew the name of it to follow up on it. After three years of daily practice I gave it up to pursue other interests. Now I am in my 40’s, and a couple years ago I ran into this form of chi kung by Mantak Chia and with great surprise there is a lot more to learn. I bought his book, Iron Shirt Chi Kung, it highly recommends learning the Inner Smile and the Microcosmic Orbit (Awaken Healing Energy Through The Tao), which is what I did. Master Chia is the world’s most famous Inner Alchemy Taoist and Chi Kung (Qigong) Master. The Inner Smile is a thin book. The instructions on how to do it is actually in his other books and even shared on YouTube. I still wanted to buy the book, because other information varies a bit and I also wanted to understand it better. The general gist of how this meditation works is that you draw loving energy into your eyes, then let it flow to important regions of your body, or different lines, and smile to them one at a time. There is a front line, a middle line, and a back line. The front line focuses on bringing loving energy to each of the major organs. The middle focuses on the digestive system, and the back line focuses on the central nervous system. I learned the Inner Smile from this book and now look forward to attending the Mantak Chia PDX Workshop 2017 . This will round out my research and assure that I am practicing this meditation to its fullest. At first I found it hard to do and was unenthusiastic about the practice, but I kept at it. Then one day, maybe about a month later, I was able to feel a pulsing in my third-eye, a feeling I have never felt or noticed before. This was exciting to me and I felt emboldened in my resolve to practice more earnestly. Another discovery that has helped my understanding and practice of the Inner Smile, was when I started following Gregg Braden and learned his Secrets of the Lost Mode of Prayer, or Feeling Prayer. The Feeling Prayer super-charged my experiences with the Inner Smile meditation. Whatever background, religion, or non-religion you come from, you can benefit from it. Mantak Chia grew up in a Christian household and says his practices does not negate any religion. The Inner Smile has personally been such an extremely powerful practice in my life, I have insisted that my partner Veronica practice this style of meditation as consistently as possible. I am also trying to teach this meditation to my mother. I think very highly of this practice and invite the world to try it, which is a reason why I started this site! Thank you for your support! From my heart to yours.

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The Divine Matrix by Gregg Braden Book Review

April 19, 2017 by Dan Ma Leave a Comment

[fruitful_tabs type=”accordion” width=”100%” fit=”false”] [fruitful_tab title=”Book Info”] Author: Gregg Braden Publisher: Hay House Language: English Pages: 256 ISBN-10: 1401905706 ISBN-13: 978-1401905705

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The Divine Matrix: Bridging Time, Space, Miracles, and Belief

After reading The Divine Matrix by Gregg Braden, I feel inspired and empowered. However, if you are not open to spirituality and/or don’t like science, then this book is definitely not for you. This book is not intended to be a definitive work on the history of science, nor religion and spirituality. It is intended to be a guide or tool that everyday people can use to bring hope and peace into their lives, which is what I really need right now. Braden is able to explain really complex scientific theory as understandable takeaways for those who find dense scientific material challenging. Readers don’t have to be extremely left brained to get something out of this book, but Braden does reference scientific sources if you want to follow up with deeper inquiry. Braden believes that there is an intelligent field that is a container that holds the universe. This field acts as a bridge to create, and also acts as a mirror to show us what we have created. Emotion is the language that this field understands and through our beliefs and certain meditation techniques (the Feeling Prayer), we can focus our consciousness and communicate the positive changes that we desire. Gregg Braden is a New York Times best-selling author and has been a featured guest for international conferences and media specials for taking scientific discoveries and contextualizing them within ancient spiritual teachings like the Vedas and Dead Sea Scrolls. Gregg Braden’s 20 year exploration has brought him to remote monasteries and ancient temples to sift through forgotten texts and rediscover their spiritual meanings. The Divine Matrix: Bridging Time, Space, Miracles, and Belief, has three parts:

Discovering the Divine Matrix
The Bridge Between Imagination and Reality
Messages From the Divine Matrix

In the first part, Braden goes into why he solidly believes that this field that he calls the Divine Matrix exists. He cites many well respected and renowned scientists, ancient religions, and experiments that already recognize this field as a legitimate force in our world. In the second part, he describes his interesting travels to Tibetan monasteries to ascertain how we use and intentionally create with the Divine Matrix. The third and final part of this book, goes into questions of what it means to have a unified field of energy, how it affects the events in our lives, how we can recognize key changing moments, and how we can learn and grow from them. This is the most enjoyable section of the book for me because Braden shares many of his life events as examples where the Divine Matrix speaks to us, providing life lessons and challenges for spiritual growth. The thing that I most admire about this book is the hope and optimism that it brings during these times where people sometimes feel hopeless in a world that has lost all its morals. Understanding how the Divine Matrix works has improved my meditation work. I feel more empowered in my meditations knowing that my work not only has an inner effect, but also an outer effect. In this book he gives many empowering accounts of how we can change our life and this world into what we want it to be. Braden shares an experience he had with a woman who was documented on video to have miraculously healed herself from cancer within minutes by using the methods he describes in this book. This account helps reinforce my belief that we have a powerful technology within to heal ourselves and that we don’t have to rely on the pharmaceutical industry to solve our problems. Braden also shares scientific studies where meditation practitioners were able to consistently and accurately create peace at specific times and specific locations. In fact he goes on to share a formula defining the minimum amount of people needed to jumpstart a change in consciousness as equal to the square root of one percent of a population. These kinds of accounts help reinforce my belief that we have the power in ourselves to change the world. As I watch and listen to the news of how those in power continually make choices that benefit those in power, I am reminded that I cannot wait for them to make the right changes. The change has to happen in me so I can join those who already have peace in their hearts and help influence those who do not, as well. I am beginning to realize that when you hurt someone you actually hurt yourself–that every war is actually a war against ourselves. Fighting for peace is like shouting for silence. As I continue my pursuits of peace and meditation, I continually find those who share the same belief that if more people regularly practiced meditation that the world would be a much better place. There is something powerful about the nature of introspection, something that seems to be evaporating in our modern society as our focus and energy is constantly being drawn out from ourselves by the capitalist machine through its tools of media and technology. I feel as if this machine has raised us to become dependant on material things to feed our egos instead of cultivating our spiritual growth, because spiritual things have no monetary value other than the means of spiritual control. In the later chapters of this book, I was intrigued by The Fourth Mirror: Reflections of Our Dark Night of the Soul. The Dark Night of the Soul is defined in this book as life’s reflection of our fears and acts as a rites of passage to experience and heal our own great fears. I began to think about my own past and look within myself if I have had any Dark Night of the Soul experiences. I would like to share a story from my life to you.

The Dishwasher

My parents owned a Chinese restaurant in Astoria, Oregon where I went to high school. During those formative years of high school, my life was divided between school, being a juvenile delinquent, and being paid by my parents as a dishwasher. Soon after high school I enrolled in the community college and started to take school seriously. Most of my previous “partners-in-crime’ moved on to out of state colleges, so instead of causing trouble I found in myself the ability to learn and earn good grades for the first time in my life. In the middle of my community college experience I also found a relationship with a girl who was supportive in my new ability to get good grades, but sooner or later the relationship fell apart and it became really hard for me to focus on work. I decided to transfer to the University of Oregon. My experience at the U of O provided a lot of personal growth. I took a lot of business classes as that was what my dad wanted me to pursue. I quickly found out that business was not what I wanted to do, so I got a major in Fine Arts. This was not favorable in the eyes of my dad, but he did not protest. In the U of O art program I felt a powerful and meaningful way of self-exploration of my identity as a first generation Chinese-American. I was very passionate about my work and was given a lot of encouragement by my peers and from the faculty, which had a profound effect on my self-esteem. I also found an amazing circle of supportive friends whose positive influence realized in me a strength of character and self-worth that I didn’t know I had in me. Soon after I graduated my parents asked me to come home and help with the shop because it wasn’t doing very well and they were looking to sell the restaurant. I came back home to the small coastal town and realized how my life had changed, but returning to live in my parents’ basement and wash dishes in the restaurant made me feel like I hadn’t made any progress, like I was back in high school again and didn’t experience that growth. I reached a shameful level of depression and became an all around jerk. I think I had a pretty big chip on my shoulder. I was so miserable that I had with me a dark cloud that become problematic for those around me. I was even asked on a few occasions to leave by my parents, but I stayed until they were able to sell the restaurant.

Looking back on it now, I had failed to recognize it for what it was. It was an opportunity for me to show my parents that I had a positive transformation while I was gone and no longer identified with the juvenile delinquent days of selfish and destructive pleasures. Instead of showing them I had become a new, more self-confident person, I showed them that I had regressed from what they had thought of me from before I left for the U of O. My rite of passage into adulthood did not fulfill itself this time, but I think the experience had emboldened me to understand that I am the master of my own circumstances and I had the strength and power to do both great and not-so-great deeds. I think because of my failure to resolve my previous rite of passage with my family, life gave me another chance in resolution in a much more stark and brutal way. After moving to Portland and away from my parent’s house I applied to several grad schools to get into a Master’s in Fine Arts program. I was thrilled when I learned I had been awarded a full scholarship for the University of Illinois! Before I left, I found myself in a doctor’s office with my dad waiting to hear what was wrong with him. In the waiting room with my dad, I shared my good news about the scholarship, but he did not receive it warmly, saying, “…they must not have had a lot of participants.” Shortly after, the doctor had came in to tell me that my father had advanced liver cancer and there was not much that they could do to cure him. That episode of my life was very quick for me, and I don’t recall what kind of emotions circulated within me. I don’t really recall with any great clarity the time from when I learned about my father’s condition to when I moved to Illinois for school. Grad school in itself is a rather long and different story that I will have to set aside and deal with at a later date. It wasn’t until the end of my first semester at grad school before I got a phone call to come home as my father’s health had worsened. I decided I should cut my long hair that dad hated so much and left school to see my father on his deathbed. I was with my father from the beginning of being home in their newly built house in Portland, Oregon, to that night when my father would not wake up and we had to call for the ambulance in the middle of the night. From the hospital night when my father spoke to me for the very last time in Cantonese, which I didn’t understand a word of, to the very end when we cremated him. I was with him from the beginning to the end of his last days. I didn’t have much to time to mourn. My father had another business which he shared with a business partner. We had to involve lawyers. It was nasty, but in the end we severed ties with the business. In a very brutal way life had forced me into adulthood by dealing with the death of my father, the collapse of his business, protecting my mother and the rest of my father’s assets. The Divine Matrix by Gregg Braden, has helped me gain greater insight into a time of my life, which I would have had liked to have forgotten about, but by unmasking my fears I can attain a greater appreciation of it. Also… I suppose this gives me another opportunity, to repay my karmic debt with my mother and resolve some past suffering that I caused. Thank you for allowing me to share my experiences with you. I wish you the kindest success!

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Tomato Ginger Sauce over Rice Recipe

April 7, 2017 by Dan Ma Leave a Comment

Tomato Ginger Sauce Over Rice: An easy, no-fuss recipe for two hungry vegan tummies on a budget.

Serving for two

This recipe is extremely easy and fast. You could even put all the ingredients into a food processor and throw it into a pot of boiling water (half cup). You can easily customize it to your taste or make it work with what you have lying around in your fridge–it is also extremely flexible and tasty! I came up with this recipe in college. I think of this recipe as a really healthy and affordable comfort food dish–much better than ramen noodles!

Ingredients

Chopped Cauliflower and sliced ginger in a pot with a half cup of water.

2 – 3 cups of rice
2 – 3 tomatoes
2 – 3 cauliflower crowns
2 cloves of garlic
A chunk of ginger
1 – 2 Tablespoons of sugar (I like to use brown sugar)
1/2 teaspoon of sea salt
A dash of vinegar (I like red vinegar)

Directions

Get started by cleaning and cooking your rice.
Wash the tomatoes, cauliflower crowns, and ginger.
Chop your cauliflower crowns into small pieces. You can substitute this ingredient with potato or something starchy.
Thinly slice your ginger. I used to peel my ginger, but have since stopped after realizing it only serves for an aesthetic function. Should you want to peel your ginger, scraping with a spoon does a good job.
Put half a cup of water in the pot along with the chopped
Mushroom…Fun!
cauliflower crowns and sliced ginger and bring them to boil with a lid on top. Boil for about 5 minutes.
Dice your tomatoes and crush or mince your garlic and then putthem into the pot. Add the rest of the ingredients (sugar, salt, and vinegar) and lower the heat to medium if you haven’t already. Stir occasionally.
Simmer until the ingredients form a sauce like consistency.
As an option you can add any kind of mushroom you fancy, tofu, or any protein.

How Soon Is Now? Visioning workshop with Daniel Pinchbeck

April 4, 2017 by Dan Ma 1 Comment

I was visiting New Renaissance bookshop in northwest Portland, Oregon, as I frequently do, to have a look around. Dan and I were curious what meditation cushions went for. It turns out, we might resort to making our own, because these are some gourmet cushions with gourmet prices. As I was looking across the display of crystals and semi-precious jewels and jewelry, I overheard a clerk say to a customer, “We have a workshop with author Daniel Pinchbeck today at 2 o’clock!” I immediately felt a surprising gush of uncharacteristic adrenaline in my body. I didn’t realize I felt so strongly about an author who wrote a book I really enjoyed reading over 7 years ago. I had a lot to do that day, so I didn’t sign up for the workshop, despite my weirdly visceral reaction (and by weird I employ both the original meaning of weird to mean magically affected and the contemporary use as in strange). I went to my studio and worked steadily on a ceramic hand-building project for a couple hours, debating on whether to attend the workshop. The adrenaline didn’t subside. I discussed it with Dan who mentioned that perhaps the workshop would be beneficial beyond meeting an author and idea machine who I admire, either as something interesting to write about, or as an idea generator for my art practice. I was oddly nervous, so nervous that I didn’t want to call the bookshop to sign up for the class because I didn’t want to talk to a stranger over the phone. I think I had performance anxiety. I looked forward to talking to Daniel Pinchbeck about a lot of ideas I’ve had in response to his previous books, but tend not to speak well in front of crowds, and Portland is full of a lot of brilliant minds who I’m sure would fill up this workshop. My chattering monkey mind reasoned the workshop would sell out and I wouldn’t have a seat. So, Dan called and signed me up for the workshop. I walked the 7 blocks or so from my studio to the bookstore and browsed for distractions while waiting for the workshop to start, still trying to get a handle on my nerves. What in the world was triggering such nervousness? I thought I’d look at a book of bird’s eye view photos of the Earth to calm myself, but the book, as I flipped through, was about human impact on the Earth. Full spread aerial photos of strip mines, sprawling suburban developments divided into neat squares of green, agricultural grids, and shorelines cluttered with fishing vessels. Every image made me feel more anxious. I put the book back and doused myself with a rose water sample.

Finally it was starting time. I walked into the New Renaissance event center, one of four historic looking houses that the bookshop had converted into its business space. There was a semicircle of about 12 chairs facing a stool and a white board on an easel. Surrounding the space, on the walls, were about 20 large framed prints of portraits of spiritual leaders/icons including Paramahansa Yogananda and Sri Yukteswar. A couple who looked to be in their 60s (I’m horrible at guessing ages) came in before me. We were joined by a friend of theirs who I learned had a hand in developing the legalization of marijuana in the state of Oregon. Then entered a lady who worked as an energy healer, another woman who worked in shamanic medicine, and one of the bookstore clerks (the one who I heard talking about the workshop earlier) who is also an artist joined us, and of course Daniel Pinchbeck whose demeanor was uber relaxed and without pomp or pretension. This, I discovered, was not what I expected. Maybe my expectations rose from previous experiences having studio visits with mid-career artists who act like they have to prove how intelligent they are, and end up being inaccessible, often making for a disappointing, one-way conversation. Whatever the reason for my expectations and nervousness, they weren’t validated here, thankfully, and I was able to focus on the ensuing discussion. This guy reminded me a lot of when I saw Ringo Starr in concert. Ringo did not put on the rock star charade, he made the entire auditorium full of people of all ages comfortable, so comfortable that none of us felt too inhibited to participate in a full scale sing along of Yellow Submarine while both hands were up in the air waving peace signs back and forth.

At the Ringo Starr concert with my son. PDX 2016

Pinchbeck introduced his new book to us, How Soon is Now? -which I have just barely begun at this point (and hadn’t even known about before the day of the workshop). The big question that we started off with for discussion was, what are our goals? Pinchbeck noted how the Right Wing Republicans, who are now very much in control of the U.S. government, have very defined goals. Those of us who are alarmed by most if not all of these goals should define our goals in concrete visualizations. Although these goals are being enacted in the face of outcry, blatantly ignoring critical plights of ethics, Pinchbeck recognizes our travails as a nation as a “rite of passage” for humanity, a learning opportunity that will propel our “mature responsibility” as a species. He identifies these major issues as a “karmic comeuppance for the U.S.” and a “contraction before the next push.” Our group discussed what we could do to accelerate this maturity, or small steps we could take to create new models ready to go once this current model (an aggressive, competitive economy of unrestrained growth) finally bites the dust. I have been musing on this question for a long time, along with so many like-minded friends and colleagues. I thought of my friends and fellow alumni within Signal Fire, a nomadic residency with an environmental activist and outdoor skills curriculum for artists and creatives. I have wondered, how do we survive when we experience complete system collapse? At home, Dan has made a couple raised garden beds (dependent on a water supply) and a small, indoor aquaculture system (dependent on electricity). How do we overcome the reliance and helplessness we have complied with? This is part of the danger that presents opportunity for what Pinchbeck refers to as evolutionary growth. My version of this question is how to make people feel safe and encouraged enough to rely directly on the Earth rather than relying on the feeble, destructive, man-made systems that create poverty for many and wealth for few (while gobbling up Earth’s resources)? Pinchbeck illustrated three human structures that interact with each other and affect the reality we are participating in. Imagine these structures looking like gears that interlock to spin the others and contain within them contemporary practices or apparatuses: Technical Support Systems (energy, agriculture, industry), Social Systems (government, economics), and Consciousness (culture, media, education, religion). So, the question posed to us at this point is, how would things have to shift for humanity (and Earth) to thrive? Technical Support Systems solutions include actions like switching to renewable energy and reducing CO2 by 8-10%. Pinchbeck points out that we have the technology to replace unsustainable practices, such as farming practices that restore the topsoil, no till, permaculture, biochar (a.k.a. Terra Preta) which is a biomass energy source while also producing fertile tilth. Our group then discussed the prospect of hemp as building material and how if big oil went bankrupt a redistribution of wealth may follow. Pinchbeck referenced Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, asserting, “When a crisis happens, the ideas that replace the failed system are the ones just laying around.” This puts the onus on us to develop and prime these new systems and new ideas. These hopeful systems are being developed and we should be encouraged, but ready to pounce. We are living in a system of “conspicuous consumption and planned obsolescence,” Pinchbeck sites, and goes on refer to Cradle to Cradle by WIlliam McDonahue and Michael Braungart who document reworking production processes to be sustainable, substituting toxic ingredients with benign, biodegradable ingredients, and replacing plastic packaging with compostable/seeded wrapping. The social and environmental accountability of these examples are what is missing from industry practices left over from the 19th century. It’s time to start seeing environmental accountability as social accountability. The woman in this workshop who practices shamanic medicine repeated an amazing statement told to her by an indigenous healer from South America (I forget who and where exactly). When a community has epic struggles arise such as ours we simply need a new vision, or in the indigenous healer’s words, “We are lost because we need to dream a new dream.” Social Systems can be reformed, Pinchbeck posits, through decentralized, participatory government. We can develop these new visions together. Pinchbeck brings together ideas and models from Loomio.org, that facilitate democratic, group decisions, along with the left-wing political group known as Podemos in Spain whose main policies include promoting public control of economy, reducing poverty, instating basic income, redefining national sovereignty, healing the environment, and breaking down barriers of social stigma, increasing equality and liberty. Pinchbeck offered us a beautiful metaphor for our domestic situation in the metamorphic process of a butterfly. The caterpillar doesn’t simply become a skinny caterpillar with long legs and wings, the body of the caterpillar dissolves into a goo of genetic material. Certain cells, called imaginal cells, begin to rebuild the genetic material of the caterpillar. As this is happening, the caterpillar’s immune system cells attack the imaginal cells, which in turn makes those imaginal cells stronger. They finish their job and a butterfly emerges! (I haven’t researched to see if sometimes the imaginal cells are killed off and the caterpillar goo putrefies, but let’s not focus on that). So, we may begin to see that we are living during the process of political change where our burden is now to redesign ourselves, redesign our culture. Pinchbeck turns this into an optimistic venture, evoking “society negates the state” models where the collapse of authority results in cooperative problem solving, such as the Burning Man sub-culture where money isn’t used. He points to Hannah Arendt’s On Revolution, how “revolutions are often ruined by revolutionary leaders” and the importance of allowing people to work together directly, to self-organize. Here, I think about Modern Money Theory, which I know very little about, but find fascinating. Our current value exchange is designed to support competitive behavior. How may we redesign this to support cooperative behaviour? As a group we discussed the problems of corporate personhood, how corporations survive in the stock market game by self selecting sociopathic characteristics. How do we redesign the game to support the ecosystem as well as its workers? Consciousness is affected by social systems and technical support systems, but the reverse is also true. How do we change or expand consciousness? Of course these leads back to meditation. Pinchbeck reiterates sexual liberation as a path to social change and thereby a change of consciousness, and gives us the example of Tamera, Germany, a society that practices free love. I understand the desire for erotic abundance and satisfaction, as well as the results of sexual oppression (see The History of Sexuality by Michel Foucault) but I have doubts that a free love society is our solution here. I see sexuality as an extension of our beings, not an essence. While reading Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi, I became convinced of the relationship between sexual appetite and ego, that desire is an action of ego which produces attachment and discontent. Like any other appetite, if not trained it can result in destruction to the body and become an impediment to spiritual connectivity, right? In the movie Awake that talks about Yogananda’s life, one of his students is interviewed and recounts a conversation he had with Yogananda. To paraphrase, the student points out other religions that spell out a list of do not, shall not items. He asks Yogananda, his master, what may I do? Yogananda asks in reply, “Do you enjoy smoking?” Student: ”Yes.” Yogananda: “You may continue. Do you enjoy drinking?” Student: “Yes.” Yogananda: “You may continue. Do you enjoy promiscuous liaisons with the opposite sex?” Student: “Yes.” “You may continue to do all these things, but I cannot promise you that you will continue to do these things as you progress in daily practice of kriya yoga.” -something like that. I find this very interesting because it suggests that we don’t need anything external to change our actions in this world, we have the kingdom of God and access to inner divinity within. Pinchbeck suggests that we as a species invest in the exploration of outer space as well as inner space. He mentions global synchronized meditation and the evidence of global consciousness, that to thrive, humanity must find ways to sustain and regenerate itself. Too many of us, myself included, rely on these other systems to survive. Consider the medical industry and general knowledge of healing properties of plants. As naturopathy gains popularity, I can hope that this will shift, but in the meantime the general population of the U.S. knows very little about even identifying species of plants, let alone their healing or nourishing value. My gut reaction to this information is to research this topic and produce educational paintings that are also spiritual, reifying the importance of our mother Earth. Personally, as an artist, I have hope that images I produce can evoke healing and inspire empathy and awareness of our connected reality, and when I say ‘our’ I include everything nonhuman as well. As a mother I see the importance of intergenerational community in the variety of wisdom and experience that we humans can benefit from. Not only do children learn from elders but I can attest that I learn something new from my children daily, if I’m paying attention. The practice of meditation allows me to set an intention for my day and to slow things down enough for me to practice being observant, another aspect of being a visual artist that nurtures my being. Meditation helps me address my own complicity in the systems that need to changed, and until I can visualise change in myself, I can’t yet change my actions in the world. However, once I do change my actions in the world, I find I also change my expectations for others and myself. Like humanity on a greater scale, I am going through a rites of passage, but the journey has no final destination, it is a rites of passage that continues and sustains itself regardless of whether I’m making progress or not. If you have read or are reading How Soon is Now? I am interested in your thoughts. Do you think technological and social systems are affecting consciousness? Can we affect change by expanding consciousness? These are ancient ideas and I would like to hear how this manifests in your life at a practical level.

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