The Winter Season

Within just a few hours in early December, the ground color changed in our locale from mixes of gold, orange, and tan to WHITE! Then a few days later, when I looked out the window to the area of the two hanging tree feeders, as the snow fell softly, there were five red male cardinals and a number of female members flying about, while two squirrels dashed around the tree. What fun! And later that week, when I looked outside I saw at least ten Mallard ducks rather frantically scratching in the snow on the hillside under the feeders.

As I've been standing way back from the past, Seeing with increasing Clarity my own creativity, Jim's, and our interactive results throughout the years, expanding Understandings have emerged. Even though he and I now agree it's been a wonderful and wondrous trip together, we also agree it's been very difficult and hard work for each of us. And from my perspective, what I‘ve Seen is that in the past in many ways Jim and I were individually energizing some personal choices that were truly impossible to harmonize. Certainly, we each did the best we could within the matrixes we were each within, and the context of the times as we translated them. And of course there have been many personal energizations that did ring and sing harmoniously between us over the years, including a very deep Love. From one viewpoint, each of us has been perfect for one another by providing the opportunities we've had in all ways!

Nonetheless, Seeing the impossibility of a fullness of harmony has been part of my being able to completely Liberate myself from all of my ongoing energized forms … Therefore, as I understand “how it all works,” by Being truly effective, I'm no longer subject to many aspects of other‘s creativity as I was before, because there isn‘t an energy connection in the first place. Hence, effectively dissolving all dyadic designs recently was essential, as was dissolving all past energizations and connections. And Jim is recently stating that he too has been in a Liberating process, in his own way. Thus far, we‘re both pleased with the results about how our originations are playing out in our day-by-day Lives.

By liberating myself from all my ongoing designs with Jim and from my whole past, I‘ve been free to See everything that has taken place as potential fodder now for further Understandings and Expansions, while not being energetically connected with any of it. Therefore, within an immediate present, fresh perspectives are more available. I‘m also even more aware that literally everything I experience I‘ve chosen and energized within vaster dimensions of my composite Being, as my part of co-creative dances. This is certainly a big contrast to what I originally learned culturally!

Everything really is opened up now, as I had been inwardly hearing from divine guidance so often for many years—furthering my composite Being choices of which me, which matrix, which mind and brain, what kind of relationships do I choose to have, and which reality am I crafting to Live amidst?

Recently Jim and I, as multidimensional composite Beings, have been getting to know ourselves and each other on a daily basis in the present, that is, who each of us is choosing to Be each day, and what patterns each of us is energizing now, without the past continuously interweaving. It sure simplifies things! Additionally, with all this open space, energizations from the spacious present have more room to manifest, where I can then decide what to do about them.

This snowy season Jim and I are pursuing personal interests, which we oftentimes share with one another throughout the day. One of my current focuses is upon what I think is a basic of this reality system—the use of my imaginative capabilities as a two-way street process between me-as-a-spirit-being and my body organism … and becoming more skillful with them.

Then last month Jim and I brought two Bowflex exercise machines into our lives (one for each of our body sizes), for an at-home gym in our large walk-out basement. Jim used his past engineering skills to assemble them in a day-and-a-half (with small amounts of assist from me); and no pieces were left over! Our purposes are to build stronger bodies over the winter.

And, both of us as holistic Beings have continued to be informed about developing cultural events, locally, nationally, and globally...

More recent significances. Because golf and golfer Tiger Woods have been such a large focus in Jim‘s Life, and hence mine, to some degree I‘ve been following the unfolding story about Tiger‘s involvements with other women and his involvements in Las Vegas, etc., with some interest and considerable amazement. Moreover, I also wrote about him in my previous August 2, 2009 blog within the racial section. I have been questioning, Did Tiger somehow think that at least some of his other activities wouldn‘t come out in some way? … or maybe he didn‘t even think along those lines. He sure had me fooled (or more responsibly stated, I fooled myself): I thought his wife, Elin, and their two children were filling out the rest of his dreams. Jim‘s reactions? Jim thinks Tiger thought he was above it all, and with his great success he had hypnotized himself. (By the way, my current-day definition of being judgmental includes a type of evaluative right or wrong, whereas I just do the best I can in terms of seeing “what is ” as clearly as possible. And when I do have personal responses such as the above, to own and note them.)

Where I am in my Life today is that I often use a position of who am I to say what someone else should or shouldn‘t do, although generally-speaking, I do think that when basic trust is broken in a relationship, it can be very hard to repair. Nonetheless, I see this as an opportunity for Tiger to choose to Be a different self, one he doesn‘t need to hide portions of. That said, with Ease and Compassion, I‘m moving it all on and out of my psychic structure.

And so Jim and I as multidimensional composites of Being, are now into the fourth season of our natural world year, where the emphasis has been and is—New Songs, New Stories. Today is the winter solstice, the event in the natural world year of the shortest daylight hours.

Currently, Jim feels that for a long time in our lives he was completely consumed by what we had going, which took all his energies—and then some. He says that for a long time he had too much going on, and it was out of control … And now he‘s pleased he‘s dialed it back, where he doesn‘t have the excesses … but it is currently a full Life, and he‘d like to have more open spaces in it. My response is that as Liberated composite Beings, it will be interesting to experience what happens henceforth, on a daily basis.

In the immediate present, I‘m experiencing Jim and I as primarily Being individuals in matrixes and realities which are different than current-day cultural ones, while at the same time each of us is very fluent in the language of our society, with which we interact in various ways at times.

With increasing Clarity I've been Understanding that with a concept energy form—such as Something Completely Different—which each of us then designs and sets forth, our individual energy form oftentimes includes very different ingredients than those used by the other person. And, how are Jim and my individual matrixes and realities completely different than what we‘ve each done before? Well, each of us will have daily opportunities to play with our Life and find out what happens. Obviously, clear and easy communications can be desirable and helpful.

With Wondrous Seasonal Best Wishes, J.

More Results from The Troublemakers

In July, shortly after posting my third blog, “Females, Males, and the Balance of Power Between Them,” I felt a pleasant internal churning, like there was a developing group of materials that would be emerging as another essay.

Following an inner sensing, the first thing I was drawn to was a book Jim had read and recommended a few months ago about the history of black golf players here in the United States, Uneven Lies, The Heroic Story of African-Americans in Golf, by Pete McDaniel with the Foreword written by Tiger Woods. (Jim says that in golf language “lie” is a term meaning the way the ball lies as the game is played.) Both McDaniel, who is an African-American and Tiger Woods—who is racially a blend of African-American from his father, Earl, and Thai from his mother, Kultida (“Tida”)—told some very personal stories about their growing-up years and difficult racial experiences here in the United States.

I was touched and teary as I read McDaniel‘s and Woods‘ stories, including the one when Tiger played in the Masters at Augusta National as U.S. Amateur champion in 1995; he wrote that the first time he drove down Magnolia Lane he was thinking about all the great African-American players who never got a chance to play there. Woods goes on to say that when he was able to win the Masters at Augusta in 1997, he believes he brought a little bit of vindication for them. He talked about the life lessons his parents taught him: respect and appreciation for people of diverse backgrounds and colors, and knowing about those who came before him. His father had made sure Tiger was vividly aware of the earlier struggles of black golfers and baseball players. (Earl was a former college baseball player who saw a connection between the celebration of Jackie Robinson‘s defining moment 50 years ago—his breakthrough in major league baseball—and Tiger‘s that Sunday at Augusta.)

I could clearly see some direct connections with my previous gender essay—where I talked about leveling the playing field and the balance of power between Jim and me; and connections with the underlying ”troublemakers,” as I termed patterns of oppositional dualism, ranking of superiority/inferiority, either/or thinking, the use of fear, and a belief there is only One Truth. From my point of view, the troublemakers run rampant in race relations, too. In addition to the United States being primarily a nation of immigrants, it is also a nation with a history of black slavery—people who were brought to these shores involuntarily from Africa. And, it's a nation where people already lived on the land before the immigrants and black slaves arrived, people we now describe as Native Americans.

So race and racial relationships would obviously be one of the themes in this new essay.

Later that week—July 16th-19th—the 2009 British Open golf championship was being played at Turnberry, Scotland. It had been part of my attraction to the book, Uneven Lies, because Jim would be watching some of it for four days. Tiger Woods was a prominent participant early-on. He had won three previous British Opens, but this year he didn‘t make the cut on Friday, thereby being out of the tournament. Jim‘s interest in golf throughout his Life has continued up to the present. His direct involvement with it now is from the viewpoint of developing and increasing his skills, and playing in a few tournaments without using designs he culturally used in earlier decades for competition. It‘s also a type of exercise he enjoys; and he enjoys watching great players.

Furthermore, it was the week I would get the book, The Thing Around Your Neck, by the female Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

All together, I felt a lot of multidimensional simultaneousness and interrelatedness, where invisible connections flowed between me as a composite being and other spirit-being people, too.

And, I was being drawn to buy a twelve hour, twenty-four part audio CD presentation, “American Religious History,” one of The Teaching Company‘s Great Courses. It traced various religions from European backgrounds and those of native peoples at the founding of the United States, including African-American religion, up to the present. (In the past, Jim and I had seen some of The Teaching Company‘s video courses about music and French Impressionism, which we both had experienced as informative and well-done.) Here too—in my opinion, along with gender and race, the troublemakers play out extensively with people of one religion relating with people of other religions.

So I had the emphases for my next essay—race, religions, and more about gender—while seeing the troublemakers as underlying energies amidst them all.

When I was clear about the framework and major contents for this essay I spread it all out, to appropriately interweave with the multiple strands of my Life, Jim's, and our dyadic focuses. The lilies were blooming—orange day lilies around the pond and yellow ones in the front yard, with intense gold flowers that were a longer-lasting variety in banks in the bulb bed. Around the front deck were white, light pink, and miniature rose-colored hollyhocks. Then at the side of the garage, from the large trumpet vine on a wooden trellis there, orange flowers shaped like (what else?) trumpets were emerging. From the backyard, Jim was picking raspberries to add to our morning fresh fruit mixture, while eating them outside immediately—just picked and warmed by the sun—was a big-time Event. I was on Easy Street … and it was delightful.

Reading Adichie‘s book, The Thing Around Your Neck, added more to my Understandings of some fairly recent African immigrant experiences here in the United States, and increased my clarity about designs, past and present, that I believe are part of the composite psychic swimming pool of patterns for males, globally, and the contents of the composite psychic materials for the overall female psyche, globally. I also reread the section in Barack Obama's book, Dreams from My Father, when he described his trip to Kenya to visit relatives in his father's homeland, before entering law school. I saw that the tribal customs for gender roles in Kenya formed the fertile background prior to colonialism, and then the gender designs from European countries were superimposed upon and interwoven with the already-existing tribal patterns for gender.

As an example of Kenyan male gender patterns, in his memoir, before his Kenya trip Barack wrote about a meeting with his half-brother, Roy, (whose mother was a black Kenyan). The two of them had dinner one night in Washington, D.C., where Roy was living at the time. During dinner Roy had talked about his worldview: He was the oldest son, and in their tribal (Luo) tradition he was the head of the family now. Therefore, as head of the family, Roy believed he was responsible for Barack, Roy's sister, and all the younger boys. According to Roy, it was his responsibility to pay the boys‘ school fees, to see that his sister was properly married, and to build a proper house and bring the family together.

In the afternoon before watching President Obama‘s prime time news conference that evening—Wednesday, 7/22/09—I finished reading the Kenya section from his book, Dreams from My Father. During his press conference that evening, which was primarily focused on health care legislation, President Obama commented on a recent situation that had taken place between the black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and a white Cambridge, MA police officer, Sgt. James Crowley. Obama‘s comments that evening opened up even further many racial tensions, perspectives, and opinions across the Internet, the blogosphere, in newspapers, and elsewhere. Frankly, I saw it as healthy when both men—Gates and Crowley—talked about their realities, which from my point of view were each from within different matrixes. (The word “matrix” as I am using it is the belief structure a person is enclosed within from which he or she sees, reacts, and relates with others—who are also within their own matrixes.)

On Thursday, July 30th, Professor Gates and Sergeant Crowley met with President Obama and Vice President Biden in the White House Rose Garden. Over beers they talked about ways to move ahead and to make the racially charged controversy “a teachable moment,” to build greater understandings. Crowley and Gates plan to meet again soon for a further discussion.

I am seeing President Obama playing a part where he is the leader of a country where we are all Americans of many colors and races, who potentially are in a process of learning how to relate to and respect one another, building upon and expanding what those in the 1960s had begun …who were building upon what those who came before them had begun … which continues to be an ever-evolving process.

Even though I was spreading it all out, it became obvious I needed to rethink how much to put in the essay. Also, there were a lot of global, national, and regional developments to keep up with, including the ongoing racial perspectives and conversations which had been opened up from the Gates-Crowley incident, whose fires were added to by President Obama‘s press conference comments. And many other strands of Jim and my Lives were beckoning. Therefore, I decided to delve into The Teaching Company‘s audio series about religions in America at a later time. For years I had been accumulating materials around the theme of what made the land of my birth unique, and so sometime in the future I would listen to the American religion tapes and go through the rest of those materials.

With a feeling of relief I returned to read the rest of Pete McDaniel‘s book, Uneven Lies, The Heroic Story of African-Americans in Golf, recheck resource materials, do some additional research, and complete this essay. I thought McDaniel did a superb job tracing black players‘ struggles and successes throughout U.S. golf history. He wrote that when Joe Louis, the ex Heavyweight Champion of the World, went to San Diego in 1952 to play in the San Diego Open, Louis said they would have to tell him to his face he couldn‘t play. (There was a Caucasian-only clause on the PGA at the time, but Louis did play.) McDaniel stated that blacks were not looking for a handout, no special rules, they just wanted an even playing field. (Hence the other meaning for the Uneven Lies' book title.)

Summarizing the three major themes for now of “troublemaker” results:

*Race and racial relationships. My internal picture is one where each of us stands back from creating and being enclosed within the matrix of beliefs we personally use, clearly seeing them and their results in the past and present, with Compassion and Understanding for us all.

*People of one religion relating with people of other religions. A few weeks ago I read some writings by a renowned religious scholar who passed on in 1986. As I interpreted what I read, his central emphases was a belief in “the sacred” as the source of power, significance and value, where each religion approaches that dimension in their own way. I think that‘s a wise perspective to use about one‘s own religion and spiritual beliefs, and how to think about the religions and spiritual beliefs of other people.

*Gender. Ah yes, gender. Certainly I think race and religious/spiritual patterns are very important, and, I also think gender is an especially volatile area each one of us as humans, in all cultures, is directly enmeshed within daily. What patterns do I choose to energize? Which me do I choose to experience? Which matrix do I choose to live amidst?

Conclusion. Beginning in the early 1970s, Jim and I started our emphases of Something Different. Over the years it expanded to Something Very Different, and now after almost four decades it has evolved to Something Completely Different.

As I listen to other people, I am hearing a repeating theme of disappointment in President Obama and his Administration—where from many quarters he is not living up to what people had hoped he would be doing when he got elected—that he hasn't been going far enough (or is going too far). And my response is that I am no stranger to my own attempts to change myself and my Life experiences. In his case, he is trying to change a whole society, the United States of America, and its relationships with the rest of the world. I see it all as a huge job, and greatly admire much of what he's attempting to do, which I think is to succeed in stabilizing the economy, making the whole system fairer-for-all, and the U.S. more competitive globally.

To those who are upset that he isn't going far enough, I seriously question what else he can do within the current-day enclosed matrixes of cultural beliefs, nationally and globally. The only way I know to go far enough is to take the whole system apart and design from scratch, from the position of liberated and skillful spirit-beingness, both as individuals and as groups.

With Highest-Good-for-All Best Wishes, J.

Females, Males, and the Balance of Power Between Them

In my previous blog posting in June, I said I was convinced that gender identification and the disengagement from same as a spirit-being is essential to any real and lasting liberation and expansion. Since that time, from many places materials have been emerging into my life for me to write the forthcoming essay.

There are multiple perspectives and analyses about the causes of our current-day financial/economic crisis, ranging from what human nature is—sometimes said to be composed of both greed and altruism, bad/evil and good, or tainted from the start—to debates about the wisdom of free markets versus government regulations on specific activities. Adding my voice to all the viewpoints I've heard or read, I see culturally designed gender roles at the heart of some of the reality we are currently experiencing today, in all societies. And going deeper than that, I see some of our human species‘ core designs, “the troublemakers” as I‘ve called them, bringing forth many of the cultural patterns used globally by both males and females—and how they relate with one another.

Going back to some of the materials I wrote in 2000 that are in the three snapshots— “Problem-Causing Patterns,” “Females and Males,” and “Sexuality”—from the book Jim and I published in 2003, God's River of Love, the following synthesis still makes sense to me:

* Underneath cultural patterns for gender are more fundamental designs of oppositional dualism, ranking of superiority/inferiority, either/or thinking, the use of fear, and a belief there is only One Truth.

* When Jim and I studied our pasts, starting with our births in 1933 and 1932, we discovered that our early cultural sexual orientations included a lot of dualistic programming, where what one gender was the other one wasn't. Females were said to be emotional, while males were said to be logical; and females were said to be receptive, while males were said to be action-oriented.

* Then within the cultural schema of the United States during our J & J growing-up years, in the division of physical qualities between males and females, males were supposed to be the gender with the predominant sex drive, while only bad girls had sexual interests that could match those of males.

Hence, as the above illustrates, there were multiple potentials for power imbalances between males and females, and females and males throughout their culturally-lived lives.

Some of my personal experiences within the patterns used in the United States for females and males include: When I began my first teaching job in the fall of 1952 in southern California, we teachers didn't make enough money to support ourselves independently, and low wages for teachers were the norm for years. Because I lived at home, I was able to buy a car. In practical terms, we females had to get married. And social customs were such that men too had to get married because companies saw more stability with married men, and their jobs required such a concentrated focus the men needed a partner to take care of “all the little things.” (As a sidenote, about 1974 when Jim and I were both working, we laughingly concluded that in addition to the cleaning help we had, we needed a wife to take care of at-home matters! Our solution then was to decide he and I were the wife, sharing joint living responsibilities.)

In the 1960s, when I returned to teaching in 1963 after our daughter had been in kindergarden for about six months, my mother was concerned, telling me people would think my husband wasn't doing well financially—which could hurt his business. That is, it was the man's role to provide for his family, (and to bring about community respect). Many women I knew in the 1950s and 1960s loved being housewives, taking pride in their cake and pie accomplishments, while others were restless. The cultural message I got was that white females were second class citizens, while white males were the first class citizens. Why? Who knew … that was just the way it was.

Here in the United States, individual females certainly developed strategies to combat the imbalances of power, such as talking about their husbands as if they were little boys in conversations with other females, like their husbands were one more of their children. And to balance out the imbalances of power women have had in their primary male/female relationship, many females have had friendships with other females where they have given each other lots of emotional support.

Adding to my personal U.S. gender herstory. After my divorce, about 1968 while living in southern California, when I went to buy a new washing machine, even though I was a tenured teacher with a teaching contract, I couldn't buy it on credit. (I wasn't married and presumably not a good business risk.)

Coming to the present. From my point of view it has taken Jim and I decades to achieve what I think is an even playing field now, where we share the balance of power in our relationship with one another, which I believe needs to be freshly crafted by both of us daily. That is, it isn't some accomplishment we can say is done and fixed. Over the years we've both had to make many adjustments and changes, which we each continue to do!

In the U.S., along with men primarily controlling money in the past, which was part of the male domain's position of power and control, another male power and control area has been emotional anger, irritation, withdrawal—and sometimes violence. Certainly things have changed, where many women have been working for decades now too, but I also continue to see many men underwriting much of their family‘s standard of living. I also continue to hear a lot of aggression and edges to male voices in the present. What I'm saying here is that even though there have been various changes in the decades after the cultural revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s in the United States, I still see gender designs from the past continuing to operate, even though new ones have been additionally energized … hence they all mix together in a dance of ever-changing dynamics.

Where have I been going with all of this? Here in the United States I think many men have automatically thought of themselves in ways where their value as a male human being was and is tied to their money-making abilities and providing activities. And the more money and possessions they had and have, the more value they had and have in their own and other‘s eyes. (He who has the most toys is the winner.) So of course many males have sought to make as much money as they can, and in an increasingly competitive financial environment, the means to accomplish their goals have been dicey. In today‘s world, some men see their jobs even more strongly in terms of survival of the fittest, or at least the survival of their lifestyle.

Where do females fit within all of this as the other part of the gender divide? Well, a woman's attractiveness—beauty, sex appeal, and personality—were oftentimes her ticket to making a connection with a man who could provide for her and the children they might have. And females too have been in competition with other females. So of course more and more women have focused on clothes, makeup, hair styles, jewelry, and face lifts—all of which cost money. Some women who have been very successful in terms of their appearance in recent times have been called “trophy wives” and “arm candy” as the partners of powerful men, while also oftentimes being successful achievers themselves in business, finance, the law, and other areas.

One male writer I heard recently on NPR is suggesting that the loss of jobs for males in the United States is the beginning of the decline of macho here. (My online dictionary defines “macho” as aggressive pride in one's masculinity; vigorous; virile; red-blooded.) He was proposing that women could come out on top, like it's their turn at the tiller. But my question is, since here in the United States when a man's very identity, self-worth, masculinity and strength is extensively tied up with his job and abilities to make money, what else can he do and how else can he think and feel? And, I definitely think continuing to use patterns of superiority/inferiority and dualistic opposition is very unwise!

Then intermixed with gender patterns here in the U.S., this nation of immigrants, are also patterns from the past that are associated with race, class, religion, age, family, and regional customs. But again, underneath them I think “the troublemakers” weave throughout all these cultural belief constructions.

So far in this essay I've focused on the United States culture because it‘s what I am personally familiar with. But I have also studied gender relations for decades in other societies, past and present. On July 6th, when I heard Diane Rehm interview a female Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, about her new book, The Thing Around Your Neck, I ordered it. For years, along with listening to first-person accounts from many places around the world, most of my reading has been non-fiction, but I felt I would gain even more insight into the interplay of gender with what Chimamanda had written as fiction from an African and American viewpoint. One of her major themes, as I heard the Diane Rehm interview, was the power dynamics in male/female relationships, where in general we live in a world that favors men as a group.

Now Adichie‘s combined Nigerian and American perspectives will be in addition to what I read last May in Barack Obama‘s book about his early life, Dreams from My Father, especially the section describing when he went to Kenya, his father‘s homeland, before attending Harvard Law School. I thought he very graphically portrayed many of the underlying tribal patterns there for males, females, and their relationships.

Certainly there have been upsides and downsides for each gender in each society, but I do think that along with their gender entitlements and cultural positions of power, the patterns for males in general, globally, have also been enormously confining and limiting. Jim says the pressures from other males to “be a man” can be formidable!

Overall, as I understand it, there's been ample co-creativity by both spirit-being males and females, and spirit-being females and males—in the past and up to the present.

Then along with the results from various cultural gender designs, there are also the results from the thought patterns we humans use to relate with other species and the Earth system itself, which is the life-support system for all species members. Do I have an answer to this interwoven creativity and co-creativity? Yes I do! Get to know oneself as the essence of oneself, and construct a self and one‘s relationships afresh. Individually and together Jim and I have been in this process for decades.

Thus far Jim and I have been individually exploring and experiencing different matrixes, and at times have experienced other realities, but up to the present neither one of us has enough information about the steps to take to move effectively from the mass reality I think we are all currently co-creating and experiencing, to another reality. Nonetheless, we both expect to be successful in our individual ways—and I‘ll let you know what happens.

With Expanding Love,

The Summer Season Is Here

Last Sunday, June 21st, Jim and I celebrated the summer solstice with a small ceremony amidst the natural world. His emphasis was the Magic of Life and Being, and mine was Easy Street—all within the expanding and deepening matrixes of New Songs, New Stories, which we began dyadically in March for this natural world‘s four-season theme.

“Easy Street” was the title I gave to a large-scale dream I experienced in the later 1970s. In the dream I had been attempting to drive to the top of a steep mountain, using a more powerful car each time. Then when I got to the bottom of the hill for a third time, I decided to look at a map. What I saw on the map was that to the left of the steep mountain there was a flat and tree-lined road that went past beautiful beaches, with interesting little side roads I could explore off to the right of the tree-lined one. And the road to the left would get me to my destination. My initial interpretation of the dream was that it was telling me there were easier ways to accomplish what I wanted to achieve. It furthermore said that if I stood back and looked at a situation I would be able to figure out those easier ways. “Easy Street” has continued to give me specific ideas I have needed to hear in various circumstances at various times over the years. 

Since the late 1970s when I experienced the dream, I have learned a lot more about who/what I AM, the importance of my moment-by-moment choices and energizations, the importance of the process itself, partnerships, relationships, my body organism, letting go and moving on, and developing/expanding elements of my personal power. I've realized even more clearly that what “our” forthcoming experiences are depends upon the matrix I and my body organism are within, and who/what I/we are Being. That is, I can emphasize a specific energization, but the results are different in various matrixes! It's been fascinating to play around with specific patterns for the contents of an emphasis—like Being Safe—and how safety changes within various pattern constructions.

A central energizer and evaluator I and my body organism are using now is emotional ease and satisfaction with each and all activities or non-activities. “We” are putting more ebb into the ebb and flow of our Life, with more non-doing.

Jim and I/we have completed our thorough cleaning of the upstairs, and the outside plants are gorgeous. One night recently as we were going to sleep about 11:30, delicious fragrances from the dark purple petunia-supertunia plant on the front deck table wafted into the bedroom through the open window, and I told Jim for the moment it didn't get any better then that! Then the first peony from an abundance of buds on five vigorous plants in front of the front deck emerged fully on Wednesday, June 17, 2009, and a few days later peony blossoms dramatically came forth all at once on another plant! My body organism has decided to spread out our closet cleaning, taking the process only so far for now; I agree it's been much more enjoyable.

Random fun has been emerging and erupting in unexpected ways … at times I find myself saying with surprise and delight, “This is really fun!”

Yes, materials for a probable new manuscript have been and are emerging—some of which will be about the past/present patterns used for male/female roles and relationships globally. I'm convinced that gender identification and the disengagement from same as a spirit-being is essential to any real and lasting liberation and expansion. But so far I /we are not ready to write anything more than what we just said.

In response to the question of what are my thoughts about some national and global events, my initial reply is that most of the time I'm in a compassionate Observer mode. This past May, I carefully and slowly read Barack Obama's book about his early life—Dreams from My Father—first published in 1995 with an updated 2004 edition, which is what I read. The 2004 edition includes a new Preface and the addition of the Keynote Address he gave at the Democratic National Convention on July 27, 2004. While reading Obama's stories about his life as the son of a white mother and an absent black Kenyan father, (a couple who met at the University of Hawaii and were married while still in school there), daily news reports were also coming forth from the immediate present, where Barack Obama is now President of the United States of America. (During the lead-up to the 2008 election I had read his later book, The Audacity of Hope, published in 2006.)

I have been grateful I don't need to try to sort out the various patterns Obama and his Administration members are now using; I see them all as people of enormous intelligence, skills, and backgrounds. I think our national political leadership—by both the Democrats and Republicans—is very complex and intermingled amidst a shifting global culture that is also very complex and intermingled. From my point of view it was much easier to show the direct relationship between beliefs, their energizations, and then the results with the George W. Bush Administration, such as I did in my manuscript, Within. 

Nonetheless, I wholeheartedly agree with what I/we recently read from the book, The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Solve Our Two Biggest Problems by Van Jones. He was featured one Friday night on the PBS program, NOW. Bottom line: From what I read online from Jones‘ book, within the framework of the major emphases he's using, his is the most basically realistic and inspiring overall perspective I've heard or read from our current-day culture. Two of his main focuses are combining solutions to social inequality and environmental destruction. 

Jones is an African American. He was a 1993 Yale Law graduate. He's also the founder of the organization, Green for All. To my mind he has a very impressive activist background, and this past March he was appointed as special advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

The following are my culled quotes from The Green Collar Economy by Van Jones: “But even if our movement fails to avert (environmental) disaster, the work of building a national Green Growth Alliance to birth a green New Deal won't be in vain. The effort to reinvent the system will build up important knowledge and establish invaluable relationships. Even in the most dire, ‘hard-landing‘ scenario, we can redeploy that wisdom and those networks to make the best of even the worst situations … We should not let the possibility of eco-apocalypse paralyze us; we should let it motivate and propel us. Whatever our fate, we know one thing: hiding out or holding back won't save us.

“Many of the best people in the country and the world have not been heard from yet. Many of the best ideas have not yet surfaced or been taken to scale … Just as there are unimaginable bad things on the horizon, there are also unimaginable good things. And I am betting on them … Given the capacities available to us, our wildest dreams and biggest hopes are probably too small … Now is not the time to shrink from the challenge of saving our only home in the universe. Now is not the time to pull into ourselves, retreating into either a survivalist or an escapist mode. To the contrary, this is the time for titans, not turtles. Now is the time to open our arms, expand our horizons, and dream big. Big problems require big solutions … To prevail we will need tens of thousands of heroes at every level of human society … So each and every one of us should stop playing small and license ourselves to become one of the giants of the new century. We will need champions by the truckload.

“If we stand for change, we can spark a popular movement with power, influence, magic, and genius.  We won't just have the movement we have always wanted. We will have the country we have always wanted—and the world for which our hearts have longed. Now is the time for us to raise our sights. Now is the time for America to dream again. Even in the midst of new dangers, now is the time for us to unshackle our imaginations.” (End of culled quotes from Jones‘ book.) 

My sense about Van Jones is that he literally operates more expansively and consciously as a multidimensional composite being than most people do today—and as a multidimensional composite being I/we resonated with him! I think my worldview is a complement to his, where I fill in some more of the details of how.

At the end of my chapter from Within, “The Global Economy and Environmental Realities,” I talked about Lester R. Brown's book, Plan B, Rescuing a Planet under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble. I wrote: “For many years Jim and I carefully followed materials that came forth from the Worldwatch Institute, an organization Brown founded in 1974 and headed for decades. On a yearly basis they published the most accurate environmental information they could of what was taking place around the globe. I have a lot of respect for Brown, for his continuous diligence, and for his grasp of the connections between the various parts of the overall ecological and economic picture. I think his current-day ideas can be used as both food-for-thought and as stepping stones for wise changes in the present and on into the future, to move us beyond our current-day realities. And then as the process evolves and we become more consciously empowered, we can expand our visions.” Brown says the key to restructuring the economy is the creation of an honest market, one that tells the ecological truth, especially about indirect costs and future deficits.

While being aware of what is happening in other countries, I have been breathing sighs of relief about the freedoms we have here in the United States, including freedom of expression. In May, hearing about the protests by some abortion rights activists at the U. of Notre Dame over President Obama's forthcoming commencement address and his responses to them, I wrote in my journal, “Yes, this is my country, land of my birth, and I'm continuously Appreciating that we have the right of freedom of expression amongst a world where other people are being jailed, beaten, and killed for speaking out. Yes, it's messy when there's room for individual thinking and its expression within agreed-upon lawful limitations, but what are our alternatives?“ The inner answer I heard and hear is, “More expanded and deeper matrixes.” (I am writing this during the aftermath of the recent elections in Iran, where there have been street protests and violence about the legitimacy of the election outcome.)

As I listen and see President Obama emphasize common ground with other humans, my suggestion is: Why don't we make the natural world we all Live within our common ground, mutual centrality, and foundation for what we build upon together as the human species?

With More Best Wishes,

First Blog Entry

My first blog is an announcement that my partner, Jim, and I have successfully uploaded our new website—www.withinlovesriver.com—onto the server. What a joy it was to launch it! The site represents a dyadic culmination at this time, including computer and design skills Jim has been developing. We cordially invite you to take a look.

Our new website includes my recent manuscript, Within the River of Love, Translations and Applications, in its entirety; a place to order our previous book, God's River of Love; some of Jim's photographs; and the entry pages to both our blogs.

Because I think what I will be saying in these occasional blog postings will make more sense after reading the manuscript on our website, I suggest taking the time to do so. As I see it currently, with a blog I will be able to update previous writings about cultural events, describe some happenings in Jim and my lives, and reply to some emails. My email address is jacquiewithin@gmail.com.

As designers on the input side, Jim and I are choosing to keep our lives as simple and easy as we can amidst our current-day world of increasing complexity. Both of us are choosing to have ample amounts of open time this year, which for me will include large amounts of childlike play and random fun. My body organism thinks it has earned it!

With best wishes,