Love, Weather, and Mindfulness

Sunrise

I recently saw a local production of the rock musical, Hair, which was a Broadway hit in 1968.  I first saw it in the early 1970s, performed by a travelling troupe in a “Broadway at Duke” series.  I liked it so much then that I bought the album, but I didn’t remember that the show was about a “tribe” of hippies whose leader, Claude, was considering burning his draft card in protest against the Vietnam war.

They use the word “love” a lot in Hair, and on this viewing, the opening song, “Aquarius” brought tears to my eyes.:  “When the moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars, then peace will guide the planet, and love will steer the stars.  This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius . . .”

It reminded me I have the moon in the seventh house and Jupiter aligned with Mars.  I didn’t know that in the 1970s, but peace and love are guiding principles of my life, although no one would suspect it, not even me, sometimes.

At the end of Hair, the protagonist, Claude, after deciding not to burn his draft card, gets drafted, goes to Vietnam, and gets killed.  I commented to friends afterwards that we have come no closer to peace and love since the 1960s and 1970s, when kids our age were so idealistic.  We as a generation have become jaded.  The death of our hopes may have been predicted by Claude’s death in Vietnam.  But the Age of Aquarius is just beginning, and astrological ages last 2000-2500 years, so there’s still time for peace and love to evolve.

A few days later, in Barnes & Noble, I encountered a cute black man at the condiments bar.  I was complaining about the hot weather. He said something about cold, and I said I prefer cold to hot.  He said it’s “God’s weather.”  Later I thought “How quaint,” but at the time, I replied rain and breeze are God’s weather, too.

Yes, it’s all God’s weather, even climate change.  As I’ve become more attuned to the infinite and subtle variations, moment-to-moment in the “climate” of my environment, I’ve come to appreciate how useless weather predictions are.  A 90-degree day can feel hotter if the sun is intense, the air humid and still, or even if there’s machine noise or mosquitoes.  All increase levels of discomfort.

I avoid thinking in terms of God, but it’s convenient for encompassing ideas of totality.  All-That-Is, Seth’s (of the Jane Roberts’ series) name, carries less baggage, and Westerners don’t understand the Oriental concept of qi.  For me, this totality equates to the energy of universal love, pervasive love, all-inclusive love—an Aquarian concept–but “love” is another baggage-loaded term.

According to Seth, to some Native American traditions, and to the mystically inclined, the weather responds to human thought and will.  In order to hone my climate-changing skills, I figure, my intent must be clear and considerate of all who are affected by it.  To pray for rain, as former Georgia governor Sonny Perdue did, could cause flash floods in the mountains.  To ask for weather that makes everyone more comfortable implies rain without telling “God’s weather” how to achieve it.  Cloud cover, breeze, rain, nightfall—all these make everyone more comfortable.

Along these lines, I looked at a special issue of Time on “Mindfulness” and noticed this is the cover subject of National Geographic, too.  There is so much attention given to this lately that I find it amusing, in a smugly cynical way.  It smacks of “Agenda” from the urbanites, who are suddenly praising the benefits of office plants to relieve stress.

There were multiple references to “we all,” who feel stressed by competing demands on attention and how TV news is depressing, but “The Agenda” doesn’t suggest turning off the TV.  No.  Even Psychiatric News, which expresses concern about loneliness, suicide, and the overuse of social media, only calls for increased funding for treatment.

I also read some of the National Geographic issue on mindfulness.  The entire issue was apparently written by some life coach type who fills it with mindfulness rules, or guidelines that structure every minute of the day, from wake-up until bed.  While some of the ideas are good, the slant was one of goals and performance.  The practical value of hugging (releases oxytocin, the emotion hormone, we are told), gratitude, volunteering in the community, eye contact and presence were stressed. It impressed me in one specific way when it recommended being grateful.  Awareness of gratitude implies appreciating the things that go right and shifts focus away from worries and cares.

Animals are mindfulness gurus, but nothing I read mentioned that.  While “The Agenda” wants to sell mindfulness through teachers, courses, methods, books, videos, and apps, I think about all the ways it can be incorporated into daily routine.  Brushing teeth with the non-dominant hand comes to mind.  This is reminiscent of Carlos Casteneda’s Yaqui Indian mentor, don Juan, who recommended putting on the other shoe first, to make a conscious variation in a daily habit.

Seth of the Jane Roberts series recommends bringing mind back to the body, even for just a few seconds, to generate a sense of safety.  It’s a way of grounding oneself in the moment in space and time.  I’ve found that sitting at stop lights can provide opportunities for taking deep breaths and consciously relaxing tight body parts.  It seems driving has become more stressful over the years, with traffic heavier and more impatient.  Mindfulness is watching the chickens, or the clouds, or opening my senses while shutting off thought, which is easier said than done.

I realized while reading that these authors are at least a generation younger than I am, immersed in child rearing, work and other commitments, and don’t have the luxury of laziness.  But people my age and older, too, are imbued with the work ethic, which never retires.  Even I have a compelling need to “be productive,” to “make good use of time,” to “accomplish.”  Even when I’m lying on the lawn watching chickens, I’m “being mindful.”  Mindful is an ant crawling on my arm.  Mindful is anything that makes me uncomfortable.

 

 

Following Formalin

 

Introduction:  I wrote the following speculative fantasy in February, 2010, before I researched formalin on Wikipedia last week.  “Formalin,” I learned, is an aqueous form of formaldehyde, the simplest aldehyde in chemistry.  Formalin contains 40% formaldehyde, 10-12% stabilizer, usually methanol, and the rest water.  90% of formaldehyde occurs naturally, through decaying organic matter.  It does not build up in the environment because it is quickly broken down by sun and bacteria.

Formaldehyde is a known human carcinogen, but used extensively in industry.  Major products are composite wood products, like laminates, particle board, hard plywoods, and fiberboard.  Its use in embalming is well known.  It is also used as a pesticide in animal foods, and as a disinfectant.

The primary effects of formaldehyde toxicity are respiratory, with burning eyes and nose.  It can worsen asthma.  Long-term exposure is linked to leukemia.

The formaldehyde toxicity associated with FEMA-provided trailers in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina, was possibly caused by the high concentration of new particleboard in poorly ventilated trailers.

Industrialization has raised the amount and diversity of environmental toxins to immeasurable proportions.  From the particle board in kitchen cabinets to the PVC in water pipes, we are living in increasingly toxic conditions that we only worsen with our wasteful, consumerist culture.

While others worry about “climate change,” I’m more concerned with the growing generalized effects of environmental toxins, not only on humans but on all life.  Flint, Michigan is unlikely to be the only city in the US with poisonous water.  Industrialization has led to contamination of water everywhere, differing only in degree.  Even bottled water—and maybe especially bottled water—leaches hormone-altering plastic into the water.  Single-use packaging is particularly hard to justify.

“STRANDS OF CONSCIOUSNESS” FOLLOW FORMALIN

            February, 2010–Seth in Jane Roberts’ Seth series talks about “strands of consciousness” reaching out and entering others, but they are no more invasive than the leaves on a tree and depend on each other for survival—their very existence.   Every atom and molecule participates in a dynamic that can take it from rock to human to animal to insect to marsh grass, to every corner of the earth and dimensions unimaginable.  The atoms and molecules have a kind of memory of their histories, traces, and essences, that contribute to the greater understanding of the whole.

Man is not diminished but expanded by that, because he feels less alone and more connected to the larger dynamic.  We have created god in the human image, without recognizing god is as impersonal as a housefly, as placid as a mountain, as enduring as the galaxies, as strong and gentle as a spider’s web.

A dust particle in the air attests to god’s expansive creativity, and the dust will respond to the sun’s rays in its own way, as will the air molecules that hold it aloft.  All are expressions of the infinite creativity of god –All That Is, in Seth’s terms—the multi-sexual expression of pure energy.  The human division between life and death is arbitrary.  A “dead” human is teeming with other life forms, bacteria and the like, so it is only dead from a human perspective.  The other life that feed on it and helped it survive—as normal flora does—lives on and may not even notice the human identity’s passing.  Until the formaldehyde hits, that is.  Then all bets are off.

“But hey,” says the Cosmic Improv Group, that army of nags inside my imagination, which has lots of strands of consciousness invested in keeping me alive awhile, “Formaldehyde has feelings, too.”

“You betcha,” I reply.  “Not to demean formaldehyde, but I’d rather not party with it, if it’s all the same to you.  Let it play its role with other people.

“Formalin, actually,” say the medical experts.  Formaldehyde has carcinogens and toxins that are believed to be carcinogenic, as I recall, but don’t trust memory on this.  Formalin is supposed to be better on living bodies for preserving dead ones.

Go figure.  All this so the body won’t stink while people gawk over the plastic model of the deceased soul.  Be careful not to shed your tears on the make-up.

But the formalin goes into the ground, and into the sewer systems with the mortuary’s waste, and with the body’s interment.  People dry their tears and start fighting over the estate, and life moves on.

The formalin continues in new forms underground, freed from human bondage, and off to have new adventures.  Because it has the authorities’ seal of safety—was that the FDA, DEA, Cancer Society, Dow Chemicals, Pfizer?  Who decided formalin is less toxic than formaldehyde?  It is allowed free rein in the environment and can join its fellow non-toxins in joyful salute to the demise of mankind.

Now, that was not my strand of consciousness, certainly.  Why would I go off on a tangent about formalin?  Well, I was trying to understand formalin’s point of view, actually, to send a strand of consciousness to the probable life of a formalin molecule, and to enter its world.

Was that invasion?  No.  It was an appreciation for the greater unity that created my consciousness, the tools to make it conscious, and the formalin molecule, too.  I guarantee no formalin molecule is equipped to write about its own life, so who will do it if I don’t?

My experience is minimal, so my imagination limited.  The few anatomy cadaver dissections I participated in in medical school.  A month of a pathology elective, in my senior year, where I spent most of the time studying sliced placentas.

But hey, I’ve probably inhaled more formalin than most people, so its molecules have entered my body and communicated in the way only formalin can.  We just don’t know all the ways it can communicate with us.

 

 

 

The CIG Hosts Body Parts

The Cosmic Improv(e) Group
hosts BODY PARTS
of katharineotto.planetearth,
independent country of one

 by Katharine C. Otto
October, 2005
(Updated February, 2017)

Seth* validates my deepest beliefs.

The only reason for suffering is to learn how not to suffer, says he.  So, I flop on the couch and send healing energy to my painful, throbbing left foot, but I haven’t learned how not to suffer yet.

My foot and gut are having an argument, because the couch flop followed a gustatory fest that made my stomach hurt, too.

“I wouldn’t hurt so much if you didn’t weigh me down,” says Left Foot.

“I would eat less if we could walk,” Gut replies.

“Hey, guys,” says my Total Self, “We all have to live in this body, so can we find a way to get along?”

Then I fall asleep.

Then I wake up, limp to the kitchen, and eat some more.

The Cosmic Improv Group–that gaggle of nags inside my imagination and unheard by others–steps up to the plate.

They remind me I’ve had a busy, active week, have spread understanding far and wide, and have penetrated the local Shape Shifting Alien Reptiles’** lair at their eminent domain meeting.  Yes, I lanced that abscess, burst that bubble, and shriveled those egos.  My foot begins to hurt immediately after that.  My heel, actually.

Heels that they are.  Heal myself.  I decide the SSARs in local politics sent a thought bomb to cripple me, aiming for my Achilles heel.

“Sure, Kath,” says the CIG.  “As if they care enough to hurt you.”

“I didn’t think so, because I was okay with it.  Yes, I unsettled them, but they are used to boring each other to death.  My departure should have let them return to status quo.”

“You know it didn’t.”

“I didn’t know they could get to me this way.  Seth says trust your impulses.  I say fine with me, but not if my impulses cause me pain.”

“You underestimate your power,” they say.  “This is why you must up-level it.  Your pain shows you are not ready to release your passionate appeal.  It will assume a painful timbre, and this is not your intent.”

“You’re right.  I want to uplift and inspire.  My foot pain is associated with many (possibly imagined) lives, in which it manifested in different contexts—shackles, mine fields, frostbite, gangrene.  Bound feet as an Oriental woman.  It is symbolic of my fear of entrapment, limitation, and imprisonment.  Burned as a witch, too, feet first.  Burned again as a monk heretic in the Spanish Inquisition.”

I talk to my left foot and discover it feels “left” out, ignored, and unappreciated.  It reminds me I have lived many lifetimes (possibly) with dysfunctional or missing left feet, and lifetimes with “two left feet.”  I’ve been “left to heal or die.” An image of a wounded foot soldier in Stalin’s army during a cold Russian winter comes to mind.

“You are crazy,” says the CIG.  “Don’t tell anyone but us this, because they will lock you up.”

“Not for long, because the jails are too crowded.  They won’t put me in a psych hospital, either, because I refuse to have health care insurance. Ain’t that swell?”

“Crazy like a fox.”

“Lack of insurance keeps me safe from hospitalization.”

So I decide to make a concerted effort to bring the foot back into the fold, to appreciate that it is a perfectly good foot this lifetime, and its pain is karmic memory.  Up-level the memories, release the grudges and resentments, and the foot will heal.

Same with sacrum, which I believe is associated with my lower body stiffness and pain.  Here, the root chakra blocks qi in a defensive strike position.

The female body is a symbol for humanity’s greatest creativity, passion, and fear.  I hated that my body was female, because I believed it disappointed my parents.  Both parents misunderstood and were unreasonably afraid of feminine power, but so is the world.  We have few role models for fully creative feminine expression.

My physical body is my greatest asset, on this material plane.  It is my science lab, an instrument of pleasure and pain.

If, as Seth says, groups of people reincarnate together, everyone on the planet shares past and future memories. Puritan Salem comes to mind, and Cotton Mather, when I think about the eminent domain meeting.  I was a witch or prostitute, or perceived that way.  Perhaps I was just too independent to be tolerable.  Either way, my contempt for them made a victim of me.

I want to play it smarter, this go-round, and the foot pain reminds me not to move too quickly.  I am more out of phase with the environment than I know, and it hurts me first if I try to try to force it.  I want to be a catalyst for change, a destroyer of limiting beliefs and outdated systems.  At the same time, people have to be ready to change, or you set them up to fail, and they become more afraid than before.

On October 4, weight is up to 143.5 pounds.  Ibuprofen, 200 mg came to my foot’s rescue sometime between five and seven a.m.  I’d taken it at 3 a.m., too, in obeisance to Western medicine, which does some things right.  Just took another one.

I just poured my third cup of coffee, complete this time with real half-and-half and brown sugar.   “No, no,” shouts the CIG’s Should/Shouldn’t Chorus.

“You should only have two cups of coffee in the mornings.  You shouldn’t put sugar or real half-and-half in them.  You weigh 143.5 pounds, remember, when you used to weigh 123.  Disgusting.

“And you know coffee raises your blood pressure, which is borderline high, already.  Remember your bleeding disorder?  You are setting yourself up for a stroke or a heart attack, like the one that killed your father, or pulmonary embolisms, like the ones that killed Rhea, your mother.  Dump a third cup of coffee in that mix, and we can’t be responsible for what happens to you.”

I take a sip of coffee and contemplate their suffering.  I have heard this song before and have learned my stomach will tell me when to stop.

“143.5 #,” say the devils.

“That’s only 65 kilos, another excellent reason to convert to the metric system,” I reply.

“Your stomach has its own agenda.  It wants to hoard fat fuel in the Greater Omentum.”

“Are you saying my stomach is an energy hog?”

“Just look in the mirror at the facts.”

“The coffee doesn’t taste that great, anyway, but it gives me an excuse to sit.”

“So do I,” says Left Foot.

“Indeed you do,” I reply.  “and I’m practicing taking better care of you.  I took 400 mg of ibuprofen this morning, because the pain was so bad last night that I thought something was broken.

“Drink less coffee,” it says.  “The caffeine causes vasoconstriction in your extremities and starves me of oxygen.”

“Thanks.  I suppose you’re going to tell me to lose weight, too.”

“It would sure take a load off me.”

“Fat cells have rights, too,” my Greater Omentum chimes in.  “We’re just doing our job.”

“How’s about shipping some fat to the bottom of my feet,” I say, “to add some padding on my heel and some lubrication in my leg joints?”

“We’ll vote for that,” say the feet.

“Us, too,” say all the lower joints.

“How much will you pay for my largesse?” asks the GO.

My other body parts and I consult with each other.  We don’t have a ready answer.

I speak first.  “I’m about ready to invite a stroke, heart attack, or pulmonary embolism, preferably three all together, so they take me out completely.  That would cure the foot pain.  But please, please, please don’t cast me on the health care system,” I beg.  I take a sip of coffee.

“Remember how hospital coffee tastes?” Fukyoo asks.  “It’s gotten worse.”  Everyone except me laughs.

I dump the last little bit of coffee that was doctored the way my taste buds like it.

“Thank you,” says Left Foot.

“At least you fed me some peanut butter and wheat wafers,” says the Greater Omentum.

“I want you to share that,” I tell the GO.  “And not with the Lesser Omentum, either.  Send that fat downstream to my legs and feet, where it can do some good.

“Oh, all right,” moans the GO.

“Make him dance, too, lying on the floor, so we don’t have to carry him,” say my lower body parts.

“That’s called sex,” I reply.

“Whatever,” say the feet.  “Make him have sex, then.”

“Other body parts may have something to say about that.  Vagina?”

“No way, Jose.  Don’t inflict any barbarians on me.”

“Well, I haven’t found anything else.  I respect your right to opt out, since you’re not overweight.  You don’t need to dance.”

The Should/Shouldn’t Chorus is grudgingly relieved I sacrificed the last of my coffee.  One looks at a watch.

“Well, she hasn’t gone overboard in her caffeine addiction yet, but it’s just a matter of time.”

“Sad, isn’t it?” says another.  “Tomorrow it’ll probably be five cups, then six, and the next thing you know, she’ll be in ICU with a Broca’s area stroke, unable to speak or communicate in any way, but understanding everything around her.”

“Not so different from the way things are now, if you ask me, only my living room isn’t as noisy or expensive as the hospital.”  I say.

“We didn’t ask you.”

“Nope.  Proves my point.  You just tell me, don’t you, then prophesy dire consequences if I put sugar in my coffee.”

“Want to step on the scales and say that again?”

“Nope.”

“At least you didn’t stuff yourself with peanut butter on salty wheat wafers, this time.”

“Right,” says Right Foot, which has been doing double duty since the left went out on disability.  Both benefit from the rest, I figure.

“I like walking,” says Right Foot.

“Well, you two need to get together and discuss your relationship,” I tell them.  I put my soles together so left and right feet can bond.  Toes of right touching heel of left, cold toes to hot heel.  “We can start by evening out the temperature gradient.”

Yes, my feet are connecting on a sole level.  They both feel good about it.
*Seth is the channeled entity of the Jane Roberts’ Seth series.
**The concept of Shape Shifting Alien Reptiles (SSARs) comes from David Icke’s Tales from the Time Loop, 2003.