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"Honoring the Talents, Abilities and Uniqueness in Each of Us,
as Strengths
that can Benefit
All of Us"
"... because we have more in common as a world, than we have differences between nations."
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Sites:
-One World Flag
-Hyphenate Productions
-DoingIt!-- a journal of positive living
-Joan Clark's Palais Aromaetica
-Powerful Passionate Women for Peace
-New Civilizations Network
-PenMark Potions
-Rock and Roll Stories
Blogroll:
-Joan Clark's Palais Aromaetica
-Joan Clark on BoomerGirl.com
-Powerful Passionate Women for Peace
-Flemming Funch: Ming the Mechanic
-Rock and Roll Grandma on Boomergirl.com
Syndication:
 ![[Valid RSS]](http://www.newciv.org/pic/valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS feed")
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 10 Apr 2008 @ 01:20
[excerpted from DoingIt!, May, 2006]
We need to be for... more
than we are against.
May 1st. May Day. Traditionally a day of workers and the downtrodden of many cultures standing in unison against oppression and inequities of all kinds. A good day to be playing with the following concepts.
Earth Day. Martin Luther King Day. Bastille Day. Demonstrations, rallies, boycotts. Many days, many festivals, many protests… many occasions for the socially-conscious to show their support of the world and each other… by exposing that which they are against.
I have really been looking harder at current practices and ways of being in the world of causes and activism, how their effectiveness in many ways seems to be lagging, and how the well-intended and action-oriented seem to be chasing off a significant number of the like-minded. Of late, I have really felt myself leaving events organized by these well-intentioned ones with much heaviness, and fighting a sense of having less hope than that which I came in with. I support the ends of these, my people, but see that there is a disconnect between these and their means, that needs to be remedied here.
In seeking to create our shambhala, our place in the sun, our heaven on Earth, our peace… we need to remember to begin first with finding that peace within ourselves and bring that forward. More >
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 10 Apr 2008 @ 01:03
The Battle of the Lightworker: A Challenge to Continue Dodging Fear in a Fear-Filled World
[excerpted from DoingIt!, April, 2006]
Joan and I were talking one night recently—having one of those long, rambling talks that don’t necessarily end up where you think they would have based on where they started. Where neither is trying to be right and both come out with a new understanding and an entirely new perspective. Almost like an archaeological dig where the team knows there are some bones and fossils and shards present—without knowing what those might be or having any at-stakeness in what they might reveal-- and new knowledge of the past is achieved based on unearthing and piecing it all together.
We came up with what feels—deep within me—like an awareness of what goes on with us “lightworkers”—any who fall under a heading of maintaining a focus on possibility and betterment for the human race, the planet and beyond-- and why we, as a group, tend to feel the urgency to change for the better as swiftly as possible.
You can try this on by first remembering where you and/or others ever voiced something to the effect of—“I am doing everything I can to get it right this time… because I am not coming back into a body for another reincarnation.” Or something like that.
I have said this. I have felt it. I have had conversations with numerous others and overheard even more spiritual folk, workshop junkies, healers, etc., voice this motivation, this drive, to shed every degree of attachment and resistance, small living and karmic debt… from deep places of seeming exhaustion, having gone through countless lifetimes of what is absolutely no longer desired. Been there, done that. Bought the t-shirt.
Joan and I wound our way through a lot of backstreets and alleys of dialogue before she stumbled back on what I consider a main thoroughfare toward some degree of enlightenment on this subject when she began recounting her sense that…
…perhaps our urgency to get “there”, is based first on remembrances of where “there”—home—is; then on numerous recollections of times we were “almost there” and didn’t quite make it; on the disappointment inherent in each round of having to begin again at square one, like a kid on a limited allowance having to drop another quarter in a pinball game upon the flashing red of another “game over”. All of those accumulated points and tokens… gone. Back to level one. Dejection. More >
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 10 Apr 2008 @ 00:40
[excerpted from DoingIt!, March, 2006]
“We teach… what we most need to learn.” This concept was brought up again in my life a few months ago by a dear friend and brother, and it has really been working on me. As such, a lot of corollaries of this tenet have been presenting themselves as layers and layers of its wisdom unfold.
Where I believe I am in possession of enough life wisdom and experience, and am of a mind to drop breadcrumbs along the paths of others as they have been left for me… I often seek moments and openings where something I believe I know might help another.
I feel I do a decent job at crafting these toasted gluten cubes positively, and work to deliver them without causing the other to feel accused, judged or nauseous [I season lightly and bake at 425 degrees for 15-20 minutes]. “Speak to the highest in another and that is what will respond” was the lesson of another teacher I long ago took to heart.
But of late I have gotten a glimpse of another style of my intentionality where others are concerned: What if I take all those things I want to say… and don’t say them? More >
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 8 Apr 2008 @ 17:54
[excerpted from DoingIt!, November, 2005]
More and more I am looking into eyes that I recognize—familiar, diverse, joyous faces, notes from a distant (but yet not so) past, singing along with the words of tunes I’ve never heard before, stepping and swaying together through time that expands and contracts like the bellows of an accordion, always on the syncopated beat, playing my part, in cadence, on the instrument that is me.
More and more I sense the unseen Conductor carrying us like marionettes suspended from the tip of the baton, and leaving clues to follow, hiding there in the silent rests between phrases.
I see the Trickster behind the tune’s temptation, Pan behind the pain of the prelude, and feel refreshing cool counterpoint seeping through stanzas previously perceived as simmering over intense heat. More >
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  8 Apr 2008 @ 16:47
[excerpted from DoingIt!, October, 2005]
It was a morning on the cusp. One zig where I could have zagged and the day might have been lost… or at least very different. Not as productive, not as… zen. Certainly not as fun to observe myself being moved around the gameboard.
It was the day after a pretty peak day, and I know that sometimes such days are letdown days. Knowing this I also know I do what I can to not devote any energy to them having to be that way.
This being a couple day’s after a long journey… prior to a job requiring my complete attention… and with more than enough nervous energy devoted to each, I allowed myself to sleep-in a bit before even thinking about diving into my relatively long “to do” list.
My head was in a place I recognize, generally: with an awareness of the universe swirling around me and possibilities present to coax me with their almost imperceptible touch should my senses be tuned finely enough to move with that energy. I was beginning to feel much like the wooden planchette that group energy moves around the Oujia board; which was ok, since I trust that only benevolent spirit directs me (and usually doesn’t just mess around and make me spell out cuss words!). More >
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 8 Apr 2008 @ 16:40
[excerpted from DoingIt!, September, 2005]
As I was working this morning on a freelance article for another magazine I really found myself loving what I get to do in this life. I get to visit, talk to people, see them in their environments, hear their stories, and be a professional buttinski!
As a writer, photographer, maker of documentaries, scribe of many past lives, etc.-- all of which boil down in my mind as coming from the same perspective of observer, appreciator and librarian of sorts-- I get to not only record the peak moments of my own and those of others … but I really get to get in there and dissect and experience them in microscopic detail.
Like the angels in the Wim Wenders film “Wings of Desire”-- who note moments of life in their journals… moments of sadness, doubt, joy, peace… all of human experience as relayed through the running monologues of the earthbound --I have somehow always been fascinated with it all; the highs and lows, and especially, what facilitates lows into highs, less light into more light. Like those angels I, too, feel pangs of something missing when the scales are out of balance between too heavy on my observing and too light on my participating (without ruining the film-- which also got remade by Hollywood, in color, in English, as “City of Angels” with Nicholas Cage-- one of the angels decides to “fall from grace”, with the mindset that feeling anything-- pain included if need be-- is better than not feeling at all).
Beyond the normal experience of picking snippets out of life and savoring them, I really get to get in there, and see and hear things that might have otherwise escaped me, repetition after repetition after repetition. More >
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 8 Apr 2008 @ 16:32
[excerpted from DoingIt!, August, 2005]
Darkness ("evil" in the parlance of some) is only light disguised. No more, no less.
It is here and real and necessary… up to the point that everyone will have chosen to not be tempted or tested by it any longer, and thus have chosen more light over less in every instance. At that time all may drop their disguises and reveal their true spiritual essence. This will be the time of ultimate celebration and final return to Oneness…
… and one might presume… will be the downtime before the next play or level of “the game” is gleefully launched.
The work is for each to find their true connection with Spirit, to stand in/for their largest Self, to undergo every last test and temptation to choose to live smaller, in less light… and come out the victor.
All the imagery—archetypal imagery—is ingrained in us as a set of clues (breadcrumbs, signposts) on the way back to Source. Through such myths and fables, stories and metaphors, we know of battles—symbolic or otherwise-- waged on our behalf. We resonate to these because they mirror the battles we fight deep in our own souls. We have an array of experience of deeds done and lessons learned by family, friends, characters in stories, books, films, our younger selves, etc., that illuminate the direction of our paths and speak to our movement and progress along those paths. More >
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 8 Apr 2008 @ 15:55
[excerpted from DoingIt!, July, 2005]
As sort of a part II to last month’s article written from the place of “in the soup” in the wake of the France trip, I wanted to delve into what I consider some common nuances of peak moments as I have experienced them—this perhaps as a means of distilling them to the point of being able to reproduce them on a more consistent basis (for all of us).
Where I have, on occasion, written certain pieces for DoingIt! while listening to a piece of music repeatedly (really repeatedly, as in programmed on the cd player or iTunes to just keep playing the same song over and over), my article on France (and this one on the heels of it) was written under the influence of the first track of the “Motorcycle Diaries Soundtrack”. “Apertura” is a kind of sweeping piece that slowly builds from sparse acoustic guitar strains to bold passages that feel to me like—flying, having broken free of a body, triumphant, liberated… in other words, in that unfettered place I have been in about all of the peak experiences of my life, whether back to the fast downhill bike rides or swingset incidents of my youth; near weightless immersions into pools, lakes or oceans; peak sexual experiences; the epiphanies of various healing excursions; or other mind-altering events of pure and natural causes.
I have to believe that such places are common to the experience and memory of each of us. They are individual expressions of where we get to on the wings of divine revelation, artistic fervor, from the runner’s high to the symphony to that crème brulee’ or event that takes you out… for whatever timeframe… and remind us that perhaps beyond or underlying the individual aspects… is the more profound common creative source point to which we all yearn to return. More >
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8 Apr 2008 @ 15:39
[excerpted from DoingIt!, July, 2005]
["What's Working" is a regular feature from the magazine-- that includes uplifting accounts, success stories, etc.]
One of my favorite teachers is Sandra Ingerman. She continues to be one of the most authentic, intentional, powerful yet basically egoless people I have met. Her “Medicine for the Earth” book and workshops are causing much positive change to be initiated in the world by any who wish to contribute to transformation and transmutation of toxins, internal or external in the world, on however large a scale to which one might commit.
Once, in a class I attended, she introduced the concept of allowing the “spiritual pressure” to build in oneself during a peak experience. I found myself really drawing upon this lesson recently, during work of my own that broke me through to a deeper connection with Spirit in my own life (outward manifestation) and a greater awareness of who I am and what I came here to be and do (inward manifestation).
In using the example of a Native American power dance—in which one sits still, invokes spirit, listens to the power of the beating drum, and waits to see if a power song will come— Sandy conveyed how any rocking of the body or making of sounds or squirming by participants… would most likely dissipate the energy attempting to come forth, and ultimately lessen or prohibit that experience. More >
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8 Apr 2008 @ 15:18
[excerpted from DoingIt!, June, 2005]
“Let the World Change You…
and You Can Change the World.”
-- from the DVD menu of “The Motorcycle Diaries”
Place. A sense of place can impress itself upon us whenever we give it a chance. It can be a familiar spot we visit each day, or one faraway, but it needs a still and willing audience to allow it to do its magic. Place needs to be in partnership with one willing to see things differently, one willing to hang out with those differences for however long their significance takes to reveal itself.
“In the Soup”. A place I feel myself consciously walking through on occasion, when numerous related or unrelated events are working, swirling, congealing, sometimes inter-connecting like random puzzle pieces, some passing through consciousness without perhaps tying into the whole, others striking certainty broadside, most not the moments or snippets one would believe would be the life-altering ones.
It is a space I feel coming on slowly, as a reality or awareness incrementally dissolving into the fore, as pre-conceived notions, in agreement, fade to black. Food I eat, paths I walk, stimulus I feed upon—all are dictated by “the soup”, and my willingness to comply, built on the trust that this process has always yielded consistent value, benefit and context to my being. Sometimes these bouts lead to epiphanies and changes in the contours of the map that is my life; others glance off and veer tangentially, having served as feints, teases, the odd red herring… or time-released conclusions only to achieve their maximum strength and effect at later dates.
The symptoms of oncoming or ongoing excursions “in the soup” can include: lightheadedness, flashing light from hidden corners of the mind, the awareness of a deepened heartbeat, a lump in the throat, welling of tears of any sort in the corner of the eyes, a steadfast and reverent breathing/walking/ attention, ever-cautious of continuing to “get out of the way of it”. They can portend of exhilaration, resonance, clearing; dark emotions resolving themselves into new dawns or starry skies; stillness in the face of awe or a knowing that any movement—physical or mental—might upset the delicate balance needed for fragile and tentative meaning to slip from whatever other world into this, from the sigh of potential into wispy existence. More >
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An International Symbol of Diversity.
A "Bigger" Flag to Fly.
Since 1996.
Here you will find
postings from
the One World Flag
website and
articles excerpted from
DoingIt!--
a journal of positive living...
... each aimed at raising
the World Joy Quotient
one way or another.
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