Your Story Matters Chapter 32, What's A Channel?

 

        

Chapter 32

What is a Channel?

 

It's a ravine, a ditch, or a device through which water flows, right?

 Or a person who represents another and appears to speak for them. 

 One night, a group from The World Healing Center gathered at someone's house. There we were, sprawled about on the floor, heads on people's laps, some sitting lotus-style, all of us watching the recording of a channel called Ramtha.

 When I saw J.Z. Knight channeling a warrior from 35,000 years ago, I thought it was the best show going. I had to investigate.

 After my World Healing Center experience, I declared I wanted my next teacher to be a master, and for a while, I thought Ramtha was—at least, I was giving him a try.

I attended many retreats, and eventually, Ramtha formed his attendees into a school. I always had doubts about it. Was he/she for real? Or was she an exceptionally verbal person who could spout spiritual concepts and tell us she cared about our immortal soul?

 Being told that if I quit the school, I would be standing alongside the road with dust on my eyelashes while watching the other students march ahead didn't bode well with me.

 I quit the school.

Even though I declared myself my own master after the Sai Baba experience, it took me a long while to integrate that belief.

A significant part of the Ramtha experience was when a group of women started a weekly meeting where we shared our feelings and what it was like to have a spiritual life. We read and spoke of science, what new or unique was happening, and we liked each other.

As a result, two women and I decided to leave the school and give ourselves a graduation gift. After reading about an Indian woman called Mother Meera who lived in Germany, we decided to visit her. (Frequent flyer miles to the rescue.) 

 So, we three flew to Germany and, in the evenings for two days, we sat in darshan with the silent guru called Mother Meera. She was a beautiful young woman dressed in a brilliant orange sari who didn't speak while in the room.

 How does one tell if the "master" is fully realized?

 Beats me. 

And really, there should be no separation between the master and the servant. For you never know who the master is. You could walk down the street and pass one without knowing it.

It was fascinating that she had a metal gate with a peacock embossed in it.But then peacocks are often displayed in Indian art.

There must have been 100 people in the room, on chairs or cushions. One by one, we went up to her, knelled at her feet while she touched our heads, and supposedly removed tangles from our brains.

Her presence and the room's ambiance were so silent it felt like swimming in warm Jello. No one wiggled, coughed, or cleared their throat. I left the house in a warm bubble and thought I would never talk again. 

 That was the experience. And I'm talking.

 After visiting Mother Meera, I was appointed the designated driver as we three toured Germany. The Autobahn taught me to use the rearview mirror as much as watching the road ahead. Those Mercedes, BMW, and Porsche drivers will bump your rear end if you don't drive fast enough or are not over in the right hand and lane. 

 I had a problem while in the right hand lane, though. I would suddenly find that we were off the Autobahn and would have to circle around to get back on. I never figured that one out. I learned that "Ausfahrt" means exit, and a sign with a straight line means to stop or don't go in there.  I drove through a street that was so narrow that we could pick the flowers displayed outside a shop from the car window—but didn’t.

One evening meal recommended by our B&B host was a restaurant above a horse arena. We had our dinner, exquisite white wine, and stunning fresh salad greens. (I don't know how they do it, but Germany had the best salad greens.)  Our entertainment was watching a girl ride her horse in the arena below. The host must have seen me coming.

 After walking the path built into the wall surrounding the medieval city of Rottenburg, we entered a restaurant where Sue suddenly said, "Hi Steve." 

Steve Reeves was sitting at one of the tables, reworking one of his travel books. We were using one of his books to find Zimmer Frees—B&B homes that would rent for the night.

 The owners of various homes would place a sign in their window, "Zimmer Free," which meant a room was available. So, you could simply drive into a town and look for the windows. Everything turned out great—down comforters and breakfasts served--usually similar to the others: a boiled egg in an egg cup, cold cuts of meat, bread or muffins, coffee, or tea. 

 One house, however, looked as though it was taken from the set of The Addams Family TV show. Upon knocking on the door, it opened to a c-r-e-a-k. We looked at each other, beat feet out of there, dove into the car, and broke into a laughing fit.

 We skipped that house.

We drove into Salzburg, Austria, to visit the location for The Sound of Music, and saw the famous Gazebo where two romantic scenes from the movie were filmed. The first scene was of the romantic dance of young Liesi and Rolfe. The second was where Captain von Trapp gave Maria that long-awaited kiss.

When I looked up the Gazebo on the Internet, I found that filming those two scenes was wrought with trouble. In the dance scene, Liesi leaped upon a bench, slipped, and crashed through one of the glass windows. She wasn't severely injured except for a sprained ankle. She finished the dance on medication, a wrapped ankle, with added stockings to cover the bandage. If you look closely you will see that one leg is larger than the other.

 When Captain Von Trapp was about to kiss Maria, the lighting in the Gazebo farted.

Thus began a laughing jag from which they never recovered.

 Julie Andrews said that every time she and Christopher Plummer were about an inch from each other's faces, the lighting would give a raspberry, they would begin laughing, and fail to complete the scene.

 The kiss was added later in silhouette. 

 It's a good thing they don't make pretzels in my hometown like the ones in Germany; I had one at every opportunity. 

 Those pretzels were about a foot in diameter. That shiny, coarse, salted dough had been twisted so that the top was thin, and the bottom was thick at the twist, bread-like. That way, you had crispy and soft.  Just writing about them makes my mouth water.

 Much to our surprise, we three agreed that the pizza in Germany was the best we had ever tasted. And eating leftover cold pizza for breakfast on a hillside in Germany is an experience I wish for everybody. (Maybe their dough is better there. That would help account for the excellent pretzels and pizza crust. 

When my two friends and I were preparing to leave Germany, Maryanne, one of the friends, and I took the rental car to the Frankfort garage under the terminal while Sue guarded our luggage. A man in a white jacket said he was accepting car returns, so I dropped the key into his open palm. But as I began to walk away, I had a foreboding feeling. It didn't seem right. The man was sweating and seemed to be, as my mother would say, "Three sheets to the wind." Meaning a little inebriated.

 He was trying to steal our car!

 I turned around and said to him, "I left something in the car. Can I have the key to go get it?" The moment I had that key in my hot little fist, Maryanne and I began to run as though being chases by a wolf. We stopped at the car rental kiosk and breathlessly rattled out what had happened. She confirmed that, indeed, he was trying to steal the car. 

Thank you, God. Thank you, thank you. I'm grateful to this day. What would have happened if he had stolen the car? Would I have to pay for it?

 

 

Warrior Women Unite. We can Keep Trump out of the White House.

Remember what a wise matriarchal mare does with a bully? She drives them out of the herd until they shape up. (Out of the herd is the worst punishment for a horse.) Once they have learned their lesson, they get a lot of love and wither scratching.

That's a momma.

Many of us are mommas, and those who aren't are imbibed with care.

Does money win elections?

I thought votes did.

Are you so undecided about what to do that you are swayed by an ad each day?

Throw money into the campaign and think that you will win it. More ads, more name-calling, more exposure, more bluster, more rhetoric. The media gets richer, the people get poorer, and the leopard doesn't change his spots.

Haven't you made up your mind already?

Don't we have a determination that doesn't rely on money?

Social media drives people. Influencers, they call them. It's free. We have voices, we have pens, we have lofty visions of a greater tomorrow. We have determination and belief on our side. Our visions are ahead, not back to lawless, gunslinger days where the little woman was kept barefoot, pregnant, uneducated, and subservient.

Women, we can win this election.

Women voters outnumber men by about one million. And we have many men behind us who also think letting a criminal slip through the cracks is criminal. Do ethics and morality matter anymore? Are blatant lies normal?

Someone asked the anthropologist Margaret Mead when civilization came into being. She said, "A femur bone."

The day anthropologists found a healed previously broken femur bone in a skeleton marked civilization's beginning.

It used to be that if someone broke a bone, they were lion fodder. If you found a healed femur bone in a skeleton, someone cared for that person and nursed them back to health.

Are we worth saving?

I hope so

The animals and the earth depend on us. Let's not screw it up.

 

“If you need time to chill out, refresh, and just sit quietly with what has transpired the past 24 hours, you aren't alone ...

“All I know right now is this: Vice President Harris has my full support.

“I will be looking for the rainbow after this angry storm we’ve been through, but right now I am going to just sit with all that has happened, and let things be.

“I’ll pivot in my own way, and on my own good time, thank you.

—(D Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. Follow @EarlofEnough and on his website.)

By Jo at 6:13 PM

 

Your Story Matters, Chapter 30, Judgments

 

Thank you all you readers. I appreciate you!

Here we go...

 Chapter 30

Judgments

 

Yesterday, I was listening to an audio tape in which a woman asked for help with what she felt was her problem: judging people.

In many of the metaphysical circles I've attended, one central question is, "How can I get rid of judgments?"

 You can't.

 And why do you want to? 

The person speaking on the tape was being bossed by her mother-in-law. I would expect her to be angry. But women aren't supposed to be angry.

 No, it makes others uncomfortable.

Anger is a step up from depression. The lady on the tape needed to take back her power. It was her house. Her mother-in-law was a guest. 

 And, from the sound of it, her mother-in-law was a pain in the butt. We understand. Although we are looking in from the outside and do not have the emotional attachment that the lady did. It's easy for us. Isn't that what therapists and coaches do?

Supposedly, they are unbiased observers who can see what others, under the influence of adrenaline, or ego, cannot see. It was dis-empowering for the mother-in-law to live with her son and daughter-in-law, yet it was her daughter-in-law's house.

I am growing into the philosophy that we aren't broken and do not need fixed.

 We need to grow.

 You are a discerning person. You will judge.

 How would you know if you wanted to befriend that person? How would you get the message that you should stay away from another? Did something tell you they were dangerous? How could you see that you are being manipulated and that being a doormat does not serve your magnificence?

 Being made small in one's own home is not an option.

 Do not wipe out your intuition under the guise that you are judging. Loving unconditionally is for yourself, to see yourself as whole and capable of judgments that serve you and others.

We notice what is right and what is wrong. We notice when justice is done, not injustice. We see when we are being stalked under the guise of love. There are many ways in which judgments are valuable.

 Remember the children's story The Emperor Has No Clothes?" It took a child's discernment to say, "You guys are nuts; that Emperor is butt naked."

 However, if you judge a person to be a certain way because they are different from you, black or white, male or female, child or adult, and you have categorized them before you know them, maybe you should think again. That is prejudice—to pre-judge without the facts.

 Isn't a judge someone who decides to impartially resolve a dispute?

 The impartial aspect—that's the rub.

 All too often, when people judge, they look for faults that will make them feel superior. 

 "To find the medium takes some share of wit, and therefore 'tis a mark fools never hit." —William Cowper.

 Once, I crawled the length of a football field, then back again, and my instructor was ready to ask for a return trip when someone intervened. I was supposed to have some sort of "Breakthrough," but to this day, I still don't know from what to what. 

They wanted me to believe something I couldn't accept. And they couldn't force me into it. Stubbornness built in by my mother in trying to spank me into compliance.

 I used to think self-growth had to be hard. And I admit that changing is. However, that unwritten law that we are broken and need to be fixed needs to go.

 Growth is our desire, our natural right, and our heritage. When something stops growing, it becomes stagnant and dies.

 Let's not do that.

 

 

Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right

Women, stop this atrocity!

If the Republican party can't find a better candidate for the highest office in the land, one who respectively represents us to other countries, one who has the people's interest at heart instead of his own, they ought to be kicked to the curb and be overrun by the independents.

·         Oh, it can get worse. The Republican nominee can choose a running mate that has supported a nationwide abortion ban and even criticized exceptions for rape and incest. The candidate said, "Two wrongs don't make a right."

·         He has called Social Security and Medicare "the biggest roadblocks to real fiscal sanity."

·         He said women should stay in violent marriages.

·         He admits he wouldn't have certified the election results immediately on January 6 if he'd been vice president. He even said he's "skeptical" that Pence was in danger.

 (I guess a gallows doesn't represent anything. And then we're surprised that we have shooters in America?)

And why is the US—the land of the free, home of the brave, afraid to have a woman as President?

The suffragettes fought to give us the right to vote. Ladies, it's time to stop supporting the errant child.

A mamma horse has enough sense to kick an errant foal out of the herd until he shapes up. A mare is the Matriarch of the herd, the one who runs the day-to-day living. The Stallion is the sentinel and the protector.  A physically strong male passes on strong genes to his children.

·         People should stop giving the center of attention to the errant child.

·         (Remember women, The Trojan Women stopped the warring by refusing to sleep with their men until it stopped.)

·         Stop listening to the Pundits 24/7.

·         Stop giving the Republican Party money--oh it's the billionaires, Well, stop giving them your hard-earned money.

·         Stop allowing the candidate and his cohorts to stack the deck in their favor and take away our rights as women.

Remember Franklin D. Roosevelt? He set America back on its feet again after the Depression, and he had help walking to the podium, as he wore steel leg braces because of infantile paralysis. However, the government wanted to present a strong president, so no pictures of him in a wheelchair were shown.

John F Kennedy said, "The one who governs best is the best governor." What a concept.

We revere Cleopatra—once a Pharaoh of Egypt (for 21 years), touted as a seductress, she was actually noted for her brains, highly educated, had great command of oratory, and an ability to speak seven or eight languages—thus a good negotiator.

Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel, 69-74: "There is only one thing I hope to see before I die and that is that my people should not need expressions of sympathy anymore."

Eva Peron, the first lady of Argentina, champion of the working class and the poor, won the nomination for VP after she was diagnosed with cancer. (She stepped down.)

Eleanor Roosevelt is ranked ninth on a list of the 18 most admired people of the 20th century. She was the first lady of the US and served as the US Delegate to the United Nations Assembly from 1945 to 1952. She had a leading role in designing the text and gaining international support for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Old story, I've told this a few times:" Dr. Gabor Mate, MD, who treated people with addictions, believes that most addictions are caused by childhood trauma, even ones we weren't consciously aware of at the time.

Mata's mother called the pediatrician when Mate’ was an infant. "Little Gabor is crying all the time."

"All the babies are crying," responded the doctor. Germany was about to invade Poland, and the mothers were anxious. The babies were responding.

What are we doing to our people?

Your Story Matters, Chapter 29, "Thursday"

Chapter 29

Thursday

Natalie Goldberg tells of a writing retreat where she read a poem about going for one's dream and asked the class what they thought the title was. "Go for a Dream, To Dream," etc. "No." she said, "Do you want to know the title?"

 "Yes."

 "Thursday."

 They all laughed. 

"The best titles are like that," she said. 

 On a Thursday many years ago, two friends and I visited the Taj Mahal in Agra, India.

 Florencia, Sherrie, and I traveled with three others who had prepared the trip to see Sathya Sai Baba, a supposed Holy Man. We had seen a film where he produced Vibhuti (holy ash) from an urn, and it just kept flowing, more than you would assume that the container would hold. A trick? I don't know. Sai Baba could produce vibhuti from his hand. I questioned his ability to produce trinkets out of his hand, as they looked like the trinkets being sold at the gate of the area where his audience assembled.

 If you want to impress a devotee, produce a trinket with their image instead of your own.

After visiting Sai Baba in New Deli, as we were having dinner in the courtyard behind our rented house, someone yelled over the fence. Sai Baba was going back to his Ashram in Puttapartti. We shook our heads in wonder at the grapevine—a curious thing in some parts of the world.

We bought thin mattresses and strapped them to the top of our taxi. The driver took us to Puttapartii, where I commented that I wanted to see Sai Baba's elephant. The driver drove us right to it. She was not colored with chalk as I had seen in pictures; she was just an elephant, quietly munching hay.

 We slept on our mattresses in a cement room and attended Sai Baba's Darshan. Once, we ate rice with our fingers at the cafeteria, but the rest of the time, we subsisted on Cayenne peppered cashew nuts and lime soda. We also had been drinking water through a straw laced with iodine—it tasted awful. But we didn't get sick.

 We left our mattresses behind for others to use and got a train from New Delhi to Agra, across India's countryside, to visit the Taj Mahal.

At one train station stop along the way, we saw a couple washing their baby's bottom from a bottle they had carried for that purpose. 

Toilet paper is in short supply in India. The trip preparers had told us this before the trip, thus, half of our suitcases were filled with toilet paper. The residents use faucets often supplied beside the toilet. If I can be indelicate, taking or giving food with the right hand is customary. People without toilet paper but with water wipe their bottoms with their left hand.

On the train to Agra, we had a compartment to ourselves. It had bare board walls and a flop-down platform for a seat or bed. Sherri and Florencia took the drop-down bench. I took a small bench on one side of the window and stretched my legs to another bench on the other side, hanging between the two. That way, I had a panoramic view as we rattled through the Indian countryside.

 I wondered why the dogs I saw had a red clay-colored stain on their hindquarters up to their mid-belly.

 I laughed when I got the answer. A dog sat in a large red mud puddle, with the water coming up to his midsection, exactly where the other dogs were ringed. He was a perfect half-dog, half Indian red-clay dog.

 Before the train stopped in Agra, young men jumped on board, offering themselves as guides. That way, those men would beat out the other guides waiting at the station. We had one such man for a time, but he was so tenacious that Florencia finally got tired of his persistence and chased him off. 

 The reflective pool in front of the Taj Mahal was dry. The guide said they only filled it for celebrations, as the water quickly evaporates. The following day, we heard that it was upwards of 120 degrees. Could that be right? It didn't feel that hot.

 Our summer before last here in Oregon felt hotter.

 My first glimpse of that magnificent Taj Mahal left me completely dazed. I would have sworn that the building was vibrating, about to launch into orbit. The collision of sunlight on that swan-white marble embedded with semi-precious stones caused it to shimmer like Apollo 11 before the rocket ignited.

 At the time, I didn't know the Taj Mahal was a mausoleum built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan to immortalize his wife, with whom he was inseparable during their 19-year marriage. The Shah was grief-stricken when she died giving birth to their 14th child. To commemorate her life, he built the Taj Mahal, now considered to be one of the 7th wonders of the world. It would have taken billions of dollars to make in today's market. When it was built, 1000 elephants hauled materials, and 20,000 artists crafted the structure.

 We removed our shoes and slipped on paper booties before entering the temple. There was a sarcophagus on the entrance room's floor, a dummy of the real one that lay beneath the ground floor. I wonder if that fooled anyone. However, that structure was an architectural marvel with towers on either side designed to look straight when viewed from a distance.

 A ghetto surrounded the Taj Mahal, with many vendors producing art pieces using the inlay method, such as the artisans employed in the white marble of the Taj Mahal.

 What did I get from viewing Sai Baba? 

 "That no man is my master."

 I saw how desperate we are to know ourselves. We will tolerate the piercing heat, sleep in cement rooms, and expect someone to give us answers. I think Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz had it right: "Click your heels together three times, and say, there's no place like home. There's no place like home."

 Home is not our physical dwelling but the home we carry inside. And perhaps the home we will go to eventually. 

 Don't ask me how that works. While searching for answers outside us, we discount the answers that lie within. 

 The travel itinerary was mysterious in India, for we went to Agra in a cattle car and returned to New Delhi in first class. I don't know why the cattle car was more fun. In first class, I watched an affluent young couple with a baby about one year old. That baby behaved as I would expect of a child that age. He bounced all over both parents. The babies we saw in the ashram and on the streets were subdued.

 Florencia and I had been in The World Healing Center together, and we traveled together to see Sai Baba, who had a school at the ashram and said not to give to the beggars as it encourages them. Our other traveling companion, Sherrie missed her husband and went home before us. So, Florencia and I traveled together.

 Florencia liked white wine, and as the sun dropped low in the sky, she would give forth her husband's battle cry, "Is the sun over the yard arm yet?" I would answer, "Someplace in the world it is," so we would dive into the in-room refrigerator, for it often contained a bottle of wine, or we would go to the restaurant for a glass. Once in such a hotel, we went to the restaurant for a drink, I didn't order wine, but Florencia did." "White wine," she said, and they brought an entire bottle. She was shocked when she got the bill. Forty dollars. Outside, we had ridden a rickshaw taxi for 10 cents, and inside a hotel, we were drinking a forty-dollar bottle of wine. The contrasts of that land and the guilt of travelers.

 On the way home, Florencia and I stopped in Copenhagen because I loved it from Neil’s and my earlier trip. From hot India to cold Copenhagen where we had to buy sweaters. And there, I purchased an Icelandic Porcelain Polar Bear, about a foot and a half high, that I had seen at the Scandia House in San Diego. It cost a quarter of the price of the one I had seen in the States.

 The store where I bought it packed it in a three-foot-by-three-foot wooden box and shipped it for me. My daughter, Lisa, used the box as a house for Thumper, her rabbit, for a few years after that.

 We stopped in London on the way home and saw a stage production about a Girl's School. It tickled me how the British can stretch a short word, like a girl, from one syllable to about four.

 I told you all that so I could tell you this. Sometimes, the things we ask for and then forget about (or take our energy off) come easily. When I began the six-month training at the World Healing Center, the instructors asked us to list what we wanted to accomplish in the next six months. I don't remember my list, but I remember the afterthought I scratched at the bottom of the page. "Oh, I want that porcelain polar I saw at the Scandia shop in downtown San Diego." 

 When I wrote my list, India was the farthest thing from my mind, and I knew nothing of Sai Baba.

 I bought the polar bear, and it has moved with us—from California to Oregon, from Oregon to Hawaii, back to California, and back to Oregon. It now sits in our living room, a reminder of the power of asking and receiving.