When things get crazy in the world…

 … it's time to head home.  We are facing turmoil and division in America, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the civil war.  After years of political party warring, we have ended up with a cultural war masquerading as political discourse and sadly the truth was one of the first victims of this unholy war.  Not only has our country become divided, red states vs blue but our cities, towns, communities and even families, have been set against one another, leaving little room for peace, love or understanding.  

                                                                                                                                   Japanese Garden Portland

When things get so hostile there seems to be no possibility to a return to normal.  That is a very good time to press pause on our thoughts and reassess what’s happening.  Things can be made better, starting at level one, ourselves.  We don’t have to be victims of the current chaos, we can control our own thoughts and understandings. That is because we are the sole curators of our understanding of the world and are responsible for our own conclusions & subsequent actions.  Given all that, this moment of nation-wide confusion is one of the best times to reassess our individual understandings and actions to make sure that they still are valid and supporting us well going forward.  

We all have some work to do and paradoxically this might be the most appropriate time for us to do some of that internal work.  Revisiting our most fundamental beliefs and assumptions, asking ourselves how well these understandings are serving us now.  When the world is seemingly full of hateful discourse, it is crying out for peace like a toddler cries out for love.  That peace must first be found in ones own heart, because it is only when we are at peace with ourselves, that we can find peace with others.  Catholics have a prayer for peace that speaks to this:

Peace Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi

 Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:

 where there is hatred, let me sow love;

 where there is injury, pardon;

 where there is doubt, faith;

 where there is despair, hope;

 where there is darkness, light;

 where there is sadness, joy.

 O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

 to be consoled as to console,

 to be understood as to understand,

 to be loved as to love.

 For it is in giving that we receive,

 it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

 and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

 Amen.

The ancient Vedic tradition has a similar prayer:

Hindu Upanishads

Lead me from death to life,
from falsehood to truth.

Lead me from despair to hope,
from fear to trust.

Lead me from hate to love,
from war to peace.

Let peace fill our heart, our world, our universe.
Peace, peace, peace.

 - Adapted from the Hindu Upanishads by Satish Kumar

While writing this I am reminded of a suggestion made by one of my beloved yoga teachers; “A yogi only speaks when 3 conditions are met: that what they have to say is true, non harming and necessary.”

                                                                                                Japanese Garden Portland

I’m going to close my musing with a translation of the Gāyatrī Mantra:

  May all beings in the universe be peaceful.

    Take us from untruth to truth,

  From dullness to light, from death to bliss.

    For all beings: peace, perfection, blessings.

  That is perfect. This is perfect.

  From perfection the perfect thing arises.

    Taking the perfect thing, perfection remains.

                   - From the Rig Veda 

A home for wood

As the projects around the house slow down I've been able to turn my attention outward to the yard.  Several years ago I had built a Japanese style Ofuro soaking tub that has been giving me great pleasure ever since.  The water is heated via a wood stove that has a built in water jacket.  Thermal convection provides the flow.  It's simple, attractive and still works when the power goes out, in fact it provides emergency bathing during prolonged outages.  I'd been keeping the fire wood for that stove piled on the concert slab next to the stove & tub, covered with a tarp.  

After several years of tapping the firewood and not having the direst wood to boot, I decided to build a small wood shed.  

Since the tub was a Japanese style I decided to try to mimic Japanese buildings.  The result is so much more pleasing esthetically than a crumpled tarp and the wood stays dry and rot free.  

So the fire wood is much better off with it's on purpose built home.  It seems that some things need a home, or perhaps the very idea of "home" is so ingrained in us that we naturally assign "homeness" to the happy places where we store our stuff.  

Sun

Earth

Mother

Our body

Dwelling

Sub-dwellings

There is a Devine in there too, perhaps all of it.  Our life is what we see, what we believe and what we make of it, as best we can.  

Soaking in warm, calm water, under a wide open sky with the sent of wood smoke wafting by.  Oh my, that is one of the best ways to enjoy ones place in the universe.  It's also coincidentally a great place to drive the planet from.  

Home and Yoga

Coming home to my own seat, to myself, to yoga, coming home to the Padmasana Asana, the Lotus Pose, my spiritual seat.  It’s one of the oldest postures in yoga and forms the basis for meditation, breathing practice and spiritual development. I’ve been away from this house for a very long time.  Frankly I’d given up hope of ever enjoying this pose again but amazingly, almost unbelievably, I’ve been slowly making my way back to this sacred home, this beloved posture, for the past several years.  Home to the yogic way of being.

In the past, I had found shelter, comfort and connection in yoga.  Shelter from the chaos of the world, comfort in my body and connection to spirit.  Two hip replacements and one new knee over the corse of a decade made yoga practice difficult to maintain.  Gratefully, blessedly, with the help of modern medicine and plenty of mat time I am starting to enjoy and benefit from this ancient practice again.  That is a homecoming is as joyful as it is improbable.  Something that feels like a miracle to me.  

Yoga is my spiritual seat in this world and I am so very grateful to not only revisit but also to re-engage and return to one of the most effective and pure spiritual practices that I know of.  The experience of returning to yoga is a gift that engenders a deep and profound gratitude.  I’m even more grateful to be able to not only do yoga but incredibly, be able to make a little progress with that practice in spite of being an old dude (age 67).  When I was young I never expected to live nearly this long, but here I am and, and, and I’m enjoying a remarkably blessed & fulfilling life. 

May you be free from suffering

May you find joy and happiness

May you be at peace

             

                                                           om shanti shanti peace, 

                                                                                           dan

                                                                                                                                                                  

The delightful mystery of what it's to become...

...the small house that is.  It started out as a niggle as I got to know its predecessor, Sara's small house. It was too hot in the summer and quite hard to heat in winter.  All those cracks and unchecked openings also let to an invasion of all manner of crawling & flying insects.  The very simple gray water drainage system had to be cleaned out periodically because an inaccessible T-Y joint had been installed backwards, creating a built in waist trap.  The house's layout was also extremely flawed by design that had several unusable spaces, no space for socializing and with an open toilet in the kitchen was an unusually bad idea.  Oh, and the roof had a permanent leak that had to filled with tar from time to time.  Sara did a lot to make that place habitable but there is only so much one can do once the beast was formed.  

Sara passed on in her own way and time.  Her way of life and especially the way she died are a deep source of inspiration for me to live the remainder of my life more consciously and intentionally.  I didn't have a clue what to do with it until a friend in crisis found lifesaving refuge there for half a year.  Enough time to put his life back together and rejoin the world.  My friends transformation was a magical thing to behold and gave me an inkling of what that little place could become and the spark of energy to get started on it.  

Shelter is a basic human need, one of the 5 basic requirements of life along with; air, water, food, sleep and clothing.  Those are considered the bare necessities for one's survival.  This small house can, by itself can satisfy 4 of those needs.  Things that most of us take for granted, that is until they are gone.  Pretty impressive for just one small place. 

I don't know how or when it might happen or if it will ever happen again but I do know that that little spot is capable of facilitating some major transformative magic.  It's more than ok with me that I don't know the 5 Ws of it all.  In fact the total uncertainty of it may be another essential ingredient while it's mere possibility is surely its most eventual ingredients of any transformation.  In the mean time it will provide me with countless hours of building fun.  

Home & Homes

I had met a unhoused man a few years ago in Eugene who told me that he didn't consider himself homeless.  "Even though I don't have a house, I have a heart, the place where the home lives, so I will always have a home, no matter were I am as long as my heart is beating".  I like that idea and have taken it as guidance and a lesson going forward and at the same time recognize that our hearts may not be our only home.  

In thinking about my home and the concept of "home", I considered all the many homes that I seem to have.  There is my primary residence of course but surprisingly there are many more.  Like the homes of friends who welcome me, the hearts of all those that care for me, special places in nature, all the waters of the world, my body and the most important one of all, my own heart.  To that impressive list of homes I'm currently in the process of adding two more.  The first lyes near my primary residence, just out back in fact.  It's my friend Sara's old place, sort of.  She had a tiny house build for herself and asked to put that in my backyard.  I said yes.  

That was an arrangement that lasted for several years until sadly, Sara succumb to a hart condition and passed.  Sara was a very bright and determined woman who died the way she planned, in her own bed, in her own home with a good friend at her side.  

I spent last summer stripping Sara's tiny house completely off its trailer and salvage most of it to use in the rebuild and other projects.  I then modified the trailer to better accommodate a house being built upon it.  I cut to off the fenders as they are not needed, were hard to seal and transmitted heat & cold through the floor that they penetrated.  Then the building began this past summer.  

 

I took my time building the the first floor, making as flat, level and strong as reasonably possible. I used a high quality, tongue & groove, 1 1/8' CDX plywood for the subfloor. 

Once the floor was secure I started building and raising the walls.  That went fairly quickly and easily with the assistance of a wall jack.  

I used "advanced framing" methods such as 6" studs, spaced on 2' centers, corners that are open to insulate in order to optimize insulation and minimize thermal bridging.  Sara's house had been hot in the summers and hard to heat in the winter.  I want this house to be as comfortable and easy to heat & cool as possible.  I think that comfort & economy can go had & hand to make a cozy, affordable home going forward.  

It was fascinating for me to watch the transformation from open space, to a deck like place and then the walls really started to delineate a living space.

All the lumber used on this project was transported here via my venerable minivan, even the 20' 2" x 4", 6" & 10" wide boards.  

It was once the ceiling joists were laid down that the place started to feel like a shelter.  Somehow, even without plywood sheathing, the framing members alone were enough to suggest a habitation.  

Once the second floor went up things felt noticeably different.  The stairs were a relentless reminder that there was more that meets the eye to the 1st floor.  They served an invitation upwards to another, associated but separate space.  The view from up there is pretty nice too.

Building the hip roof was a challenge for me.  I'd never built one before and looked forward to the challenge.  

The hip roof is more complex to build that I ever imagined.  It's also more that a interesting architectural feature.  Turns out that it's an excellent way to distribute the roof loads evenly and does a great job of tying the 2nd floor walls together.  I could tell that because as it filled in with rafters; king, hip & common, the 2nd floor got stiffer and stiffer.  

The small house is located right next to the garden which seems to be attractive arrangement.  

I had started this project in the spring determined to get a roof on it before the winter rains started.  I didn't quite make my goal but got close enough.  The hip roof took longer than expected and the rains came a bit early and heavier then usual.  I wanted a metal roof but had never installed one before.  So I decided to hire a roofing crew to get a roof on before the the whole thing became waterlogged.  I had always wanted to try doing a metal roof but am glad I decided to forgo that experience for now and ever so happy that I wasn't out in the winter rains trying to figure out the intricacies of such a thing.

Now that the roof is on I should be able to take a breather once my fall yard chores are complete.  I'm looking forward to that break and also to getting back to work on the small house. Next the windows need to be determined and framed in.  Then I have to rebuild the scaffolding, removing all the horizontal 2x4s that tie the outer supports to the house so that I can finish the sheathing.  

Home and Hound

Homes both large and modest, lavish or plain, cold or hot, all benefit greatly with the presence of a hound in my crumbled opinion.  A creature that loves you unconditionally, absolutely openly and freely.  One that inspires and entertains you, and, and, and I, dear reader have acquired such a creature.  One that is light, fleet of foot, unencumbered and open like the sky.  An earth bound sprit, friend, guide, living work of art and personal inspiration.  Her name is Rowen.  

She is a great house hound, wise beyond her age...

...and seemingly comfortable in almost any position.  

Rowen finds great comfort at home, a lounge master to be sure but there is another place where she seems to become vividly and fully alive. She is very comfortable in almost any place in the house but she seems to have an older home that nourishes her.  That place is the great house of nature which is, to my great joy and enrichment, is someplace she's willing to share with me.  

Whether it's in the house, the field or forest, I feel quite blessed to share space & time with this magnificent creature. I try to do my best to fully understand and live up to my part of this cross species friendship.  

A wonderful thing a whippet is...

                       ...and I am over the moon with this one.  

Mind trip follow up

Rowan Sleeping

Rowan runs through her days with wild abandon 

and at night she dreams of running wildly through her days…

I'm ready to do some more psychological self-exploring.  It's been 5 months since my last trip, enough time to fully process and integrate that experience.  I'm left with a strong sense that I was releasing hurtful body memories.  

Some background on body memoire from Psychology Today 8/27/17: ...we could do therapy for years, talk all day, and if we don’t address your body not much will happen for you.  When something traumatic happens, the brain functions differently. 

Anytime that we process information, we form explicit memories and implicit memories. Explicit memories are the factual information, general knowledge, and autobiographical information. Implicit memories are the emotional responses and body sensations—this part doesn’t have to do with fact, but feeling. These two types of memories travel in different pathways in the brain and have to be integrated later to form one unified memory.

In a traumatic situation, your “fight or flight” response gets triggered. Your body senses danger and sends out red alert signals in the form of hormones. Your bloodstream is swimming with chemical messengers that tell you to “get out now!” The primary goal under these circumstances isn’t encoding the memory, but getting you to safety. This is the reason that so many trauma victims have gaps in memory: the attention was focused on getting the body to safety. The symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress, and often anxiety itself, are the same signals that the body sends when you are in danger: your heart beats fast and your breathing races to get oxygen to the muscles to run, your body shuts down extra impulses like hunger and needing to use the restroom, your palms sweat, adrenaline fuels your energy so that you can get out- sound familiar? These are normal responses to stress in the short term. The problem is when you get stuck.

When you get stuck, your amygdala—the primary culprit in the fight or flight response—gets really really sensitive...This part of your brain screams "get out" when It feels that you are in danger. Your brain stops processing and focuses all of its energy on getting you away from danger. The memory doesn’t get fully processed and is fragmented in the brain in chunks of implicit and explicit memories. This is why sometimes a smell, the way a person touches you, or even tone of voice can trigger a trauma victim.

Here’s the problem (and this is important): your body cannot tell the difference between physical and emotional danger...Your brain, the very primal part of your brain involved here, thinks that you are in physical danger, which is why you have the physical symptoms.

We need to address the physical in order to solve the problem. So the issue is twofold: we need to bring the body’s response down, calm down the hormonal messengers who are telling you that you are in danger and then we can work on the mental and emotional aspects. Otherwise, we are setting you up for failure.

So, the next time that you are struggling with healing from your trauma, remind yourself that your body is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. It is protecting you. You just need a little work on recalibrating the alarm system. 

Recalibration, understanding, feeling, clearing, letting go physically, that's what I've been doing and I sense that I've go more work to do in that way.  I've been doing yoga several times a week, meditating and tuning my mindfulness practice towards my physical & psychic body. All to good effect.  I feel better both physically & emotionally.  My range of motion in the leg that had it's knee replaced is way better and almost 100% as good as my other, uninjured knee.  The range of motion of my whole body had significantly improved.  My physical stamina too is much better.  As to my emotional wellbeing, I'm feeling quite well lately.  

Houses - Our mothers might be considered out first houses.  Beings that provided us food, shelter and protection every before we were borne.  Our minds might be considered our second and possibly our most important house, the home that we grew up in might be our third.  Later, dorms, barracks and apartments may have followed on later until finally many of us are fortunate to own our homes but in this case I've always felt that I've never owned any of my homes even the ones I've owned free and clear including one I built myself when I was in my 20s.  All those houses will probably outlive myself, going on to have lives that are completely separate from me.  The one home that I'm the closest to "owning" is that of my mind but the jury is still out at to whether it's truly 100% mine.  I'm still considering that.  My father died from complications related to Alzheimer's disease.  I watched as his very fine mind seemingly dissolved within a healthy body.  Homes, it's probably better to not become too attached to any of them.  

There was something else that happened in that last trip too, something that was something quite as subtle as a mere change perspective.  It took a wile for me to notice.   It happened in my reflections upon the original trip and when the realization finally dawned upon me it felt obvious.  One of the strange feelings that I felt leaving myself during and after that trip was a sense of unworthiness which is an odd thing for me to contemplate as I've felt a sense of self-assuredness most of my life, but there it was.  I didn't believe or credit it at first but then I realized that it was one of my main drivers most of my life.  The thought that I wasn't good enough as I was and that meeting expirations was never enough.  I had to work extra hard no mater what I was working on in order to exceed.  

Circling back to the original topic of self-exploration of my mind, I'm ready to peal back some more layers if posable and continue to explore.  To that end I'm planing on another taking another psychedelically enabled mind-walk at the earliest opportunity.  It's a tough thing to schedule in as it takes up pretty much of a full day to complete.  As my fall to-do list shortens I'll be on the lookout for that preface day...