Mirai

Check out my sister and brother-in-law's new website for their Bonsai Mirai. Pretty Magical

Summer Harvest

 

My garden is bursting at the seams. I have been up to my eyes in cucumbers, tomatoes, arugula, pumpkin, peppers, eggplant—the list goes on! I try and dump produce on any soul who stops by the house, but it isn’t enough.

Mind you, this is my first garden, so the whole thing has been an experiment. My thoughts were, “is this shit even gonna grow?”—way back in April when I plunged my hands in the soggy manure-laden soil.

The gardening process has been a labor of love. In the beginning, I weeded every other day and took time to examine each plant in their fragile nascence. If the temperature dropped below 60, I quickly rushed home to cover the boxes. At my first harvest—mostly strawberries and spring greens—I was twitterpated. There’s nothing quite like eating a meal you have grown yourself. The food tastes so fresh! It’s almost as if you can feel the life force you are consuming. You realize how ‘dead’ grocery store produce really is; it’s no wonder when majority of our grocery fruits and veggies travel all the way from equatorial zones so we can be supplied with any and every lifeform we desire 12 months out of the year—its fucked.

In the modern world, we have become desensitized to many natural forces. We have let our seasonal compass rust and in that we have lost a sweet patience and connection to our food that is cultivated alongside the seedlings. There is no greater feeling than waiting for your berries to ripen or the tomatoes to redden, and then gorging for a few weeks at t time. Blackberry-flavored everything and bruschetta for daaaaayze.

Of course, it’s not always flower-children and Indian summer picnics. Nature is a reflection of our own internal seasonal energy—something I have never listened to before but is ripe with lessons. Leading up unto the summer solstice, we are all growing--planning, planting, watering, waiting for the sun to shine and our explosion of energy to begin. I certainly felt this way—manic almost, like I had a fire under my ass and I needed to do everything. In that time, I moved to a new city, got two jobs, a new house full of new roommates, and began training for a marathon—just for shits and giggles. This is spring and early summer energy at its finest.

Now that summer is waning, we’re all exhausted. The plants are dumping their energy into their fruits in a way of sluffing off that long-cultivated energy. Like, ‘here take it all, I’m done.’ We can recognize that same urge ourselves— ‘yeah, I’m ready to layer up for fall and tuck away my SPF.’

We’re over it. A tell-tale sign is the overgrowth that we see happening. At least with me, I went from over-mothering my garden to straight-up negligence. I was like, ‘come one come all—grow however you want.’ And now my garden is a disheveled forest of wiry, too-tall, indistinguishable specimens.

The waning of summer brings an insightful lesson of how things can “grow-over” in life. If you don’t take the time to prune the thoughts, actions, and behaviors that inhibit your full potential—things get overwhelming. We can’t distinguish one root from the next—good and bad.

There’s a difference between maximum growth and maximization of the plant’s properties. Lettuce, for example, if you don’t trim consistently will put all its energy into growing a super high stalk, and give tiny, bitter leaves. Similarly in my life, when I put all my energy into ‘reaching for the sky’, doing everything I possibly can to stay productive, even if it means working 7 days a week—my harvest is a fraction of the quality that it could be. Even though it’s tempting to shoot up as fast as we can, we must take the time to grow-slow, trim unnecessary influences and have faith that seasons cycle. 

Bondi Hipsters

 

This shit is pretty hilarious. Aussies never cease to amaze me with their spunky wit and no apologies comedy. "The hipster" and all the ironies that go along with it....is obviously a worldwide phenomenon. Living in Portland, perhaps these jokes really hit home because its so spot on. These are my favorite clips. Enjoy

Crazy Adaptive

 

             The first day I came to the facility I walked briskly through the neighborhood, scared of homeless people hollering at my interview outfit. I sat uncomfortably straight in the common area—politely smiling to a man talking to himself two tables down. I answered all the questions with poise and a conscientious grace, but in reality I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I had never worked with this population and frankly, I was naïve about the state of homelessness in this country. My ‘exposure’ was limited to armchair debates in upper level social work classes where most discussion circumvents an idyllic upheaval of the current system. Turns out, “there has to be a top-tier revolution” doesn’t comfort people receiving services on the ground. Similarly, knowing the DSM symptom criterion for a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder doesn’t prepare you for deescalating a client who believes the CIA has their room cased. The work—in reality— is a whole lot messier and difficult bear witness to. 

            As a residential counselor at a facility focused on supporting individuals with chronic mental health issues transition from homelessness into independent living, each day, in every hour, I am confronted with stigmas engrained in myself by society. People suffering from homelessness and/or severe mental health issues, ,as the two routinely occur in concert, are severely dehumanized in our culture. I see it on the street—people switching sidewalks to avoid the woman in a garish outfit mumbling to herself; using deprecating words to describe an interaction with a ‘bum;’ blaming social ills on these individuals or flat-out ‘othering’ their existence—a fascinating sociological phenomenon.

            These cultural constructs are fed by fear—fear of a reflecting humanness. It makes sense that people wouldn’t want to empathize with this population who suffers so greatly on a daily basis because people don’t want to believe that— if given the right combination of trauma, socio-economic circumstances, and lack of support—they too might find themselves ‘on the street.’

Trauma is the common denominator for most everyone suffering from homelessness and/or mental illness. A client I was having a conversation with last night couldn’t have put it better, “It doesn’t matter if it’s one big trauma or a bunch of little ones that culminate. Trauma is trauma,”—and it does wacky things to the mind and body. As a staff member, I have access to all of our client’s case files—their mental health assessments, family history, previous incidents at the facility—and it is heartbreaking to digest the vast history of even one person’s story. I can’t help but think, “No wonder their symptoms are so severe, given what they’ve been through.”

Our society labels these behaviors as ‘severely disturbing,’ and ‘unnatural’ to create a space between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ If we make a mental blockade around ourselves in which, all the thoughts and behaviors we exhibit are ‘okay,’ then we aren’t ‘crazy.’ Welp, if there is one thing I am learning with this job (which is a joke, I learn a million things a minute from these people), it’s that we all have the capacity to be ‘crazy.’ In other words, our mental landscapes are comprised of sedimentary experience layers that, if put under enough heat and pressure, will transform into dark metamorphic rock, or molten magma that will burn up your very understanding of your self in the world. What we forget to recognize, as “functioning” society members at large, is that our mental states are all made up of the same ‘rock stuff,’ so to speak, we’ve just all been exposed to different elements and to varying degrees of intensity.

When you start to think about symptoms and behaviors in context of the trauma in which the fragmentation was formed, it all makes sense. Viewing behaviors from the perspective of the person and their particular life-story, symptoms and behaviors to counteract those symptoms are easier to empathize with. Thoughts and behaviors in one circumstance may have been adaptive— dissociation, self-harm, or hypervigilance. When those behaviors become the ‘ctl-alt-dlt’ for any triggering situation after the trauma has ceased, therapy and social support can help re-write those patterns.  

Mental health professional Eleanor Longden gives a unique insider’s perspective into voice-hearing during her TED talk. Eleanor identified her symptoms as, “a survival strategy, a sane reaction to insane circumstances, not as an aberrant symptom of schizophrenia to be endured, but a complex, significant and meaningful experience to be explored.” I appreciate how Eleanor uses 'the voices' as a source of insight into trauma as opposed to demonizing them as 'abnormal' or 'crazy. I am fascinated by the idea of working with 'the devils' inside of us to unify the good, the bad, the ugly, and the traumatized into a whole person with whole experiences. Eleanor's eloquent commentary continues; “My voices were a meaningful response to traumatic life events, particularly childhood events, and as such were not my enemies but a source of insight into solvable emotional problems… The important question in psychiatry shouldn't be what's wrong with you but rather what's happened to you?”
              In psychiatry and society alike, a shift needs to happen with the way we approach 'crazy.' I would like to challenge people to simply have more empathy for the humanness in us all. Everyone has incomprehensible stories to share and everyone deserves the space, free of judgement, to actualize their wholeness. How can we expect to heal and progress as a society if a huge portion of us are cast out as social untouchables by virtue of our expression of pain, our calls for help?

It’s true; some stories are difficult to relate to, because they are so outside our own realm of experience. I honestly couldn’t imagine what it is like to hear voices or see things or constantly feel threatened and judged and persecuted, but I can resonate with the need to numb my own bag o’ anxious goodies with unhealthy habits or thinking patterns. I am learning that my role in this field is to offer a space in which unremitting positive support can be a grounding stone for hope in lives defined by instability. In the words of Becky Blanton, "The human spirit can overcome anything, if it has hope." 

Everything the Buddha Ever Taught in 2 Words---Benjamin Riggs

   

When asked to sum the Buddha’s teachings up in one phrase, Suzuki Roshi simply said, “Everything changes.”

Everyone and their mom knows, at least intellectually, that the whole of creation is in a state of endless revolution. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus famously said, “No same man could walk through the same river twice, as the man and the river have since changed.”
Impermanence is the very nature of life.

In fact, change is just another word for living—“to live” means “to change.” But few people go through life truly conscious of this fact. We “get it” but this knowledge fails to affect our behavior. We simply ignore the way things actually are. So the point of this discussion is not to explain impermanence to you, but to point it out; to wake you up to the truth of change.

Alan Watts used to compare life to music. The point of music is music, he would say. People enjoy listening to music for the rhythm, the stream of melody. No one is listening to music to hear it end. If they were then, as Watts pointed out, their favorite songs would be the ones that ended abruptly with one single uproar of noise. Life is the same way.

The point of Life is Life, to participate in the melody. Melodies are streams; they are flowing. You cannot frame them or dam them up. When you do there is no flow. That is death.

The only way to participate in the melody is through simple awareness. Simple awareness is fluid. A simple mind loses its sense of self in the music, whereas a self-centered mind keeps trying to pause the music. We are trying far too hard to hear what we want to hear, rather than moving to the music, living. We stand back as a spectator, a listener trying catch the beat. We want to grab a hold of it, own it, identify with it.

It is not enough to enjoy the music. We have to know the words. So, we keep pausing the song and rewinding it, in order to commit it to memory and claim it as our own.

The ego derives a sense of identity or meaning from its interactions with “other.”

These interactions produce vouchers, which the ego tries to collect and preserve. Rather than enjoying the concert firsthand, the ego takes pictures and films the concert, so it can talk about it and share the pictures later. The river of life is forever flowing, but for the ego, whose very existence is dependent upon freezing this stream of change, fluctuation is terrifying, which is why we call it impermanence.

From the pessimistic point of view of ego fluctuation represents a threat to its stability, but in the centerless state of basic awareness the space that enables flow or change is the womb of vitality. Life, adaptation emerges from this space. The ego seeks to ignore this space by stuffing it full of credentials and solicited testimonials.

The ego is the ultimate hoarder.

It keeps every voucher, every memory it stands to profit from. In an ego-centric mind there is no space, no room to breathe. But deep down the ego knows the whole thing may come crumbling down at any moment. It remembers the space, the silent gap between each note that enables the music to flow. This memory haunts the ego. It breeds paranoia and insecurity.

This insecurity is the benefactor that finances the ego’s obsession with collecting vouchers. An ego-centric mind is a co-dependent, and this co-dependency is all about avoiding space, fluctuation. The ego is dependent upon relationship or entertainment, which requires separation.

So, the ego has to think of itself as a distinct entity. It has to separate itself from life. Upholding this segregationist strategy is necessary, if any sort of exchange is to be possible. Separation is the foundation upon which the ego’s empire is built. As a result, it is chronically discontented or lifeless.
In addition to chronic discontentment, consider for a moment the problems one is bound to acquire, if they view themselves as an island or a solid entity in a fluid world.

Things change. However, the river is not the only thing that changes. According to Heraclitus, so does the man. But the ego sees itself as unchanging. When we stand in the river of life with our feet planted, like we are an island, life begins to feel like an overwhelming wall of water bearing down on us.

Take for example, the transition between being single and in a relationship. When you are single you develop a lifestyle that that doesn’t have to take into consideration another person. You can wake up in the morning drink your coffee, read the paper, have breakfast, go to work, go to the gym, hang out with friends, and watch whatever you want on TV. But when you bring another person into the mix you cannot continue to operate on the same schedule. The situation has changed, so your old schedule is outdated.

When ‘I’ is a fixed entity or a habit of thought, this transition is difficult. If you cling this expired image, the relationship will begin to feel claustrophobic. There will be one confrontation after the next. The intensity will continue to build over time until everything, your self image and the relationship—the man and the river—washes out.

What we think about ourselves is challenged by change. Many people say, “I shouldn’t have to give up who I am in order to be in a relationship.” I say, if you do not give up who you are, then you are not in relationship.

In fact, if you do not have to give up who you are every moment of every day, then you are not alive. To be alive is to be in a constant state of revolution. Changing situations should affect our behavior. That is sanity; allowing new information to inform my point of view. My point of view—the man in Heraclitus’ example—must remain open or fluid. “Everything changes.” That is the basic point, according to Shunryu Suzuki. Everything—the economy, politics, the weather, relationships, our beliefs, our very sense of identity—is in state of fluctuation. When we are open to change, the transition is relatively smooth. We are going with the flow. On the other hand, when we try to save all of our vouchers we drown.

We cannot swim with our hands full.

An open mind is a sane mind. An open mind is not a mind that gives due consideration to any idea, regardless of how ridiculous it is.

An open mind is a swinging door. It is a mind that does not resist change.  An open mind allows thought to be a reflection of change. From this point of view, thought is always fresh, because life is always changing. This is original thought, imagination. In basic awareness, the man and the river pour into one another.

We have to accept the fact that we cannot wrestle happiness out of this world simply by putting life in a head-lock and forcing it to play with us. We have to see that life is change, change is life; that they are one in the same thing.

Trying to organize impermanent phenomena into permanent categories of thought is like trying to herd cats. Furthermore, we are not somehow other than this change, we are Life. We are change. Confusion and discontentment arise from the mistaken belief that we are a noun. Contentment is realized when we stop swimming against the stream and settle into the fact that we are a current in the stream. The current is not other than the stream. It is the movement of the stream.

We are not a co-dependent noun standing on the bank watching life flow by, but a verb emerging out of the stream of life.

 This essay was originally publish on Elephant Journal

The Golden Eternity-- Jack Kerouac

 

I have lots of things to teach you now, in case we ever meet, concerning the message that was transmitted to me under a pine tree in North Carolina on a cold winter moonlit night. It said that Nothing Ever Happened, so don’t worry. It’s all like a dream. Everything is ecstasy, inside. We just don’t know it because of our thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever. Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, which was taught in immense milky way soft cloud innumerable worlds long ago and not even at all. It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity. It is perfect.

We were never really born, we will never really die. It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes into everything is one thing. It’s a dream already ended. There’s nothing to be afraid of and nothing to be glad about. I know this from staring at mountains months on end. They never show any expression, they are like empty space. Do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away? Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence of mind, the vast awakenerhood, empty and awake, will never crumble away because it was never born.

The world you see is just a movie in your mind.
Rocks dont see it.
Bless and sit down.
Forgive and forget.
Practice kindness all day to everybody
and you will realize you’re already
in heaven now.
That’s the story.
That’s the message.
Nobody understands it,
nobody listens, they’re
all running around like chickens with heads cut
off. I will try to teach it but it will
be in vain, s’why I’ll
end up in a shack
praying and being
cool and singing
by my woodstove
making pancakes.