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Friday, December 16, 2011

Autopilot or Awake

Early last week Dwight attended the Occupy Sebastopol Town Hall Meeting.  As we talked about both The Occupy Movement and his experience with the meeting, I moved to the computer and Dwight in English Prof. mode edited.  The below "commentary" will appear in the next issue of The Sonoma West Times and News, without the pictures of course.  Your comments, thoughts, feelings are welcome!


And we are reminded of our global connection with Time magazine announcing their chosen Person of the Year:  the Protestors from Arab Spring to Athens, from Occupy Wall Street to Moscow.  The articles are attribute to awakening.  Heartful, certainly, for all of us.

Blooming Christmas cactus

Each of us has been afforded an opportunity by The Occupy Movement to awaken.  There are 9 billion of us on Mother Earth.  This is too many with each of us participating in too much consumption/entitlement.
In a recent issue of Sonoma West Times and News Marty Gerber provided an 11 point ‘occupy’ plan, “goals that need to be achieved in order to salvage our nation”.
We live in a country that is chaotic at best, destructive at its worst.  We are a very young nation with behaviors often seen in the rebellious teenager.  We cannot focus on fixing or salvaging what is irredeemably broken.  Like the phoenix arising out of the ashes, awakening and turning our attention to the consequences of our own individual choices fueled by our own attitudes, values and behaviors is essential to finding a way for all living creatures, including humans, to cohabit our planet.  Waking up to our every day choices and their consequences will affect the people around us as well as the 1% that now brain wash us to do their bidding. 
Rather than remaining on autopilot we can choose to practice “essential living by BEing rooted,” aka awake, and create a conscious connection to where we live, like noticing which native plants grow here providing the basis for a whole healthy, evolving ecology.  When we are rooted in our spot on the planet, we become awake to our learned habits, attitudes and behaviors.
Most importantly, BEing rooted/awake allows us to embrace the whole and release our tightly held viewpoints.  The Occupy Movement is showing us that we are all in this together.  If we choose to face the chaos humans have created on Mother Earth, we can heal ourselves and the planet.   Choice opens BEing with the whole rather than accepting the either/or thinking our culture supports.  Peace/war, male/female, physical/spiritual, birth/death, health/disease, awake/autopilot are part of the whole.  The key to BEing awake is awareness of choice and ensuing consequences.  Remember the 1% want us to be asleep victims so their bottom line is unaffected.
LESS is better than more, for us individually and collectively.  Choosing less is simple, not easy.  Our young dog Rose was diagnosed with a malignant tumor in her left hind knee.  In obvious pain with limited mobility she participated in an amputation.  Six months later Rose with 3 legs does everything she did with 4.

Rose running along the gravel road from Test Station Road to Lee Vining Creek
Mother Earth has not the resources to allow each of us to continually shop to fuel the economy. So we might, for example:
1.  share jobs that are available
2.  stop driving everywhere with only one person per vehicle
3.  grow some of our own food using GMO free, open pollinated seeds or at the very least buy locally grown organic produce at our nearest Farmers Market
4.  stop spraying Roundup and other toxins in our yards and roadsides
5.  use less water by taking out our lawns and replanting with drought tolerant natives, installing low flush toilets and eliminating swimming pools
6.  buy organic clothes, household goods and cleaning products 
8.  feed all our children, of course organic food
9.  embrace death rather than seeing death as a disease that can be defeated for megabucks
10.  take responsibility for our own health instead of waiting until you are sick then seeking quick fixes of the symptoms
11.  seek out health promoting practitioners instead of disease care ones  
12.  choose financial institutions that welcome our money and redeploy it locally instead of diverting it to its top executives
13.  support education that prepares our youngsters for everyday life 
BEing rooted/awake has an enormous ripple effect.  We are filled with gratitude that there are individuals, i.e. The Occupy Movement, who are choosing awake rather than autopilot, benefiting each and every one of us.  May more of us make this choice so that being awake predominates in our country.




Monday, December 5, 2011

Welcome Opportunity Plus Great News

Walker River running East of the Walker River Lodge
We have returned from our annual Thanksgiving/Anniversary celebration in the Eastern Sierras.  After 20+ years of this tradition we have decided, finding the Walker River Lodge no longer a hospitable place to stay, this year will be the last.  This decision opens another doorway through which to travel.  Shifting from our usual mode of business to a state of BE-ing and enjoyment right here at MuRefuge seems to be a welcome opportunity.  As we began our road trip Rose looked at me in her quizzical way, clearly asking "Why do we have to get in the car to go someplace to relax?"
In the Eastern Sierras the weather was glorious . . . cold at night of course but warm and sunny during the daytime.  Rose did NOT like the car ride to and from.  However, she reveled in returning to all of the good smelling hiking places, running with abandonment, 



tuckered out each evening!


Unlike last year when snow was in abundance, we saw only skiffs of it while we were crossing the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  The aspen trees as well as all the other deciduous bushes and trees were without their leaves.  



The colors in the Winter sunshine low to the horizon were nothing short of awesome, causing our souls to celebrate in the great fortune of BE-ing present in such beauty.


The Matterhorn from Doc 'n Al's
Robinson Creek near Doc 'n Al's
Mono Lake's Tufas viewed from the West side
Rose and Cathie looking East towards Mono Lake with Lundy Canyon in the background
Spectacular Lundy Canyon rocks
Dwight with Rose and more spectacular Lundy Canyon rocks
Mono Lake in the background
Rose, Cathie and Dwight in the foreground
from the Visitor's Center
Even though we returned almost a week early, we enjoyed our traditional pinyon pine tree cutting on our way back to MuRefuge through Nevada on Highways 182/338/208, connecting with Highway 395.  This drive affords barren beauty which both Dwight and I find spectacular. The National Forest Service charges a whopping $5 to cut a tree on their land AND, in many areas where we have cut our trees, the NFS is felling pinyon pine trees to provide more habitat for the sage grouse.  We love bringing home a pinyon pine tree to decorate for our Christmas tree which fills the house with that wonderful pinyon pine fragrance.



  


Tufas in and out of the water
Mono Lake

And upon return we received the news below from the Mono Lake Committee. 

Dear Dwight and Cathie, 

We did it!
Congratulations! After a six-month grassroots public effort, the Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve has been officially removed from California’s 70-park closure list.

For Mono Lake friends and supporters this is certainly a moment to be thankful for, and cause for celebration.

Upon hearing the news yesterday our Board of Directors Chair, Sally Gaines, said, “This is the best Christmas present we could ever wish for.” I couldn’t agree more!

Thank you Mono Lake Committee members and Mono Lake fans near and far for writing letters all summer, opposing closure and offering possible solutions. Over 4,000 letters and petition signatures were hand-delivered by the Committee to decision makers in Sacramento. This huge show of public support, combined with dedicated work from our Committee team, lead directly to this success.
 
You can check out their web site for additional information about Mono Lake and the Mono Lake Committee's mission at  http://www.monolake.org/.  This is great news for all of us who so love the small part of the Planet that offers so much to all her inhabitants.

We finished decorating our tree for the holidays just in time for Rose's Auntie T's visit. 



Please share your own "welcome opportunity" below in "post a comment".