temporarily... wuf-ta

Momentary deviation on the blog for my own sake, needed a booster shot. Extreme physical work ongoing, and wondered if I was making any progress - the 'to-do' list seems to be just as long as it was a year ago!

So I looked through photos of the house and yard last fall (the work was demanding then, too). I didn't have to browse too far to recognize, "Yeah, I got something done."

Only a small part of it is in these photos...

Last September, golf-course side of the house (ahem, 40+ year-old double-wide)

The current photo of this area, deck and door removed.

This is the 'old front' - pretty ugly.

This is work in progress - banked up this side with dirt from digging a pond area (giving water runoff down the driveway a place to go). Cut the door in on the left, my first time with a saw-zal... I now have my own saw-zal, so I don't have to borrow my son's!

Yeah, something's getting done? What's not shown is behind my Acura is another 4 bags of cement.

About 90% of this has been done by Yours Truly, hands-on with elbow grease and a foggy idea of how to go about it. There's a ton more to do, but I think for now I can tell myself, "Good Job."

Y'all think so? And if anyone's bored (ahem, Becky, want a vacation? - sister in Alaska) I want to tear off the porch steps and redo this area in the near future.

Wuf-ta.

Everything is Beautiful...

I was replaying The Celestine Prophesy tapes while I was driving. I love analyzing the intrigue and story lines that accompany spiritual insights in these. One section, in a garden, was discussing the beauty of things. You know those moments when something spectacular is before you, so much so you're mesmerized? A breath-taking sunrise from a mountain or lake (where you can sit still, not busy with traffic) qualifies as one.

"Everything is beautiful if we see it as such" was the main message, and in the seeing, we become expanded. Of course I was agreeing and a bit re-enchanted with this luminous vision, feeling all euphoric in a warm, cozy way. Of course me being me, I passed it on to the trees and plants and clouds and critters as I drove.

The day wound down and I went to bed, my mind still expanding this concept as sleep was approaching.

Then a large black spider ran across the shelf right next to my face, one of those aggressive-looking black spiders.

Instantly awake with a bit of fright, I knew I couldn't sleep well with the thought of a spider in the bed seeking dinner or taking a taste of a warm-blooded creature (me). Generally I have a catch-and-release jar in my room for such occasions, but the best I had was a small bottle. Fast little bugger, too, so it ran here & there while I tried not to squish while I saved it and me from night terrors.

Gave me the heebie-jeebies, even as I tossed it out the door back where it belonged.

Back in bed, where I belonged, my mind twisted me up with, "So everything's beautiful, hm?..."

Okay. I got the message. I couldn't find beauty in the spider or its appearance in the dark of night. I had admittedly tripped over myself. The opposing views within my head blended when I finally found The Beauty.

There is beauty in snuggling in bed without a spider.

That's the best I could do, but it works for me. :)

Getting Serious - California, Anyone?

I'm going to mash my class in 'Integral Health' and extend it to 'Economic Health - USA Style'.

Integral Health means everything impacting one's being; this is physical, psychological, social, emotional, physical, spiritual. For decades, medical practice treated symptoms as isolated aberrations and tried to eliminate them by drugs or surgery. Emotions and attitudes linked to illnesses were dismissed until recently.

The edge of health care is now encompassing all aspects instead of focusing on one single, universal cure for a given problem. Instead of arguing who's right and who's wrong in medical treatments (from physical to spiritual), they step outside of this level to a higher view of interconnectedness.

Let's give California the same treatment as 'a body'...

Financially, this state is perceived as 'gravely ill'. So far, they're correct. Within the paradigm of known finances, California is facing paralysis, amputations, infusions, excruciating pain and desperation. There are the self-righteous saying "They deserve it, they've earned what they're getting, it's their fault, they made the mess." Attempting to heal itself, the state is trying to gouge its own body - drastic cuts on beneficial programs to individuals, increasing taxes, selling off parts.

We are talking about the world's eighth largest economic power. It's part of the USA family and economic impact; it is a global player in the world's economic stage. It's home to silicon valley.

I am now going to leap above this symptomatic tug-of-war to a higher view. First point, California is newsworthy only because it is large; many states are facing the same dis-ease, as are a massive number of individuals at home and abroad. Second point, what affects California affects us, because it truly is a part of us. Economics in a system flow the same as blood in a physical body. Any infected part left untreated and unhealed impacts the whole body, even 'unto death'.

This has to be true. Californians travel, spend money, pay federal taxes, provide products and services along with being a distribution port of global proportions. To think unemployment and chaos there doesn't affect us is ludicrous. To blame them for the financial disease they're riddled with is equally absurd - as 'one body,' something is not functioning properly to keep this critical leg healthy.

Blaming the leg as separate from the body is irrational, and we can't start amputating limbs as a method to try and control the disease! It will not stench the systemic bleed-out. If we step to a higher level of 'Integral Financial Health,' we have to examine the system that generated this crippling condition.

It begins simply with being a debt-based economy, borrowing 'our blood' (i.e. dollars) from the Federal Reserve (privately owned, not federal, no reserve) banking industry - with payback of interest (more blood) above and beyond our original infusion. Since the Federal Reserve is in charge of our financial blood-bank and all transactions flow through them, every issuance of 'blood' comes with a demand for increased payback. As long as we require blood and promise the payback in ever greater quantities, we seem to be healthy...

Until the payback is so high we're desperately applying tourniquets in an attempt to not 'bleed out' and demanding our own bodies to 'generate more blood for the blood bank'. The irony is that it was our blood in the first place and we gave control of distribution and 'banking it' to private individuals whose goal was not maintaining our health but to increase their 'blood wealth'.

There is a visual of this as a marble game at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so7Joh6Gj3o

After you view this, merge my 'blood bank' with the marbles, and a whole new image of California comes into perspective. They've done things wrong, as we're all have, but a radically different view also presents itself: California has been 'borrowing blood' that flows through our whole system and helps keep us all alive in simply greater measures than the rest of us (I do my part). Whenever they've increased their debt to this bank, it infused our system with more blood, not less. No one can 'pay back' the system adequately for their debt without squashing others. This is true of California, too.

It's a completely backwards truth from that which is presented under the old financial paradigm. It didn't matter what California borrowed the money (blood) for or how it was spent; the greater recognition is these infusions flowed into our economy and created a false sense of healthiness as it circulated. Everyone felt better from the infusions but we were still connected to the machine that was also siphoning off our blood at ever-increasing rates, forcing larger infusions. (California, as a major artery, allowed a larger IV entry point to keep us, as one body, alive.)

How healthy is that?

Rather than taking an integral view of this issue, the current clime is to blame somebody else. Before California, it was the housing market and the credit card holders. We're blaming those 'that borrowed blood into the system that we perceived as healthy' and missing the cause of the disease. We're treating symptoms as if they're isolated cases separate from the body. This fails medically, and it fails financially. It also fails spiritually, psychologically, emotionally and logically.

You'll enjoy this animation of Mr. Nice Guy; apply his dilemma to California, and you'll see 'a symptom' of the disease - not the disease itself. I love 'Mr. Nice Guy' -- know him personally! Mr. Nice Guy Gets Screwed - it's at:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axT4s0nEXYc&feature=channel

We are all in distress, we are all diseased, we all share the same malady.

It seems "We" are California. We should not blindly attack our own limb as a means to stave off cancer that has impregnated the whole system. Only by understanding and treating the cause in a wise manner will generate true health.

(And I sure hope my instructor reads this!!!) Blessings to all - elaine