los angeles, i love you
I’ve started and stopped writing this post a few times.
I go from feeling really hermit-like and needing to recharge, to wanting to help everyone and shake the world awake.
At best, this past week has been a really confusing time to live in Los Angeles. Are we safe, do we need to evacuate, are our friends, families and neighbors safe? Are the winds done? Will they return today? etc…
At worst, this time has been absolutely tragic. I’m sure you’ve seen videos and images of the destruction, whole neighborhoods and wilderness areas gone…
I’ll also say this week I have seen a lot of the intrinsic goodness of humanity writ large. As of yesterday, most donation centers are not taking any more in-kind donations other than water or gift cards, because people already donated so much. Of course, $$$ donations and disaster-specific items and foster homes for animals are still critically needed.
I actually have a lot of things to say about this whole experience, but, after meditating, I got the message that this is not the right time.
So, instead, I offer you The Healer. This is a meditation I recorded in 2017 and I’ve used it A LOT. The best way I can describe what The Healer does is by using a video game metaphor. Let’s say each day I start out with a certain bandwidth of power that’s reflected on my “power bar”. As the day goes on, I use up portions of my power and my power bar depletes. When I meditate with The Healer, my power bar refills. The more times I consciously refill my power bar the more my bandwidth, my stamina grows. As my bandwidth increases I become more able to help refill the power bars of others.
Whether you are in the thick of it in Los Angeles, or are thinking of us all the way across the world, I am sending you giant waves of love and appreciation.
Until next time,
Jess
There is so much love I know there will
not be enough time to love it all
I did not have to have been born but I was
and I enjoy the difference that I make
I think about my life and move in one direction
slightly and the whole web of it pulls with me.
- Greg Kuzma
“To fully understand ourselves is to comprehend our relationship to the abundant forms of life expressed in nature. Humans tend to be both chauvinistic and anthropomorphic. We are sure that we are the most intelligent species, and any concept of supreme being would have to look like us. This limiting notions keeps us from regaining the vast potential for help and knowledge available to us from our relatives in the plant, animal, mineral, and spirit kingdoms.
…Communication with deities, totems, or archetypes is achieved through resonance, based on congruence between ourselves and beings in other dimensions. The song of our own vibration, the chord that we generate through our being, harmonizes with and then joins for a moment the field of the being to which we are connecting. Within this resonate the exchange of information takes place. The moment itself within a timeless, infinite realm outside our “normal”, ordinary reality structure.”
- Nicki Scully
"Deep in the wintry parts of our minds, we are hardy stock and know that there is no such thing as a work-free transformation. We know that we will have to burn to the ground in one way or another, and then sit right in the ashes of who we once thought we were and go on from there."
- Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D
"There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song - but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny."
- Pablo Neruda
"So the myth in our society is that people are competitive by nature and that they are individualistic and that they're selfish. The real reality is quite the opposite. We have certain human needs. The only way that you can talk about human nature concretely is by recognizing that there are certain human needs. We have a human need for companionship and for close contact, to be loved, to be attached to, to be accepted, to be seen, to be received for who we are. If those needs are met, we develop into people who are compassionate and cooperative and who have empathy for other people. So . . . the opposite, that we often see in our society, is in fact, a distortion of human nature precisely because so few people have their needs met."
- Gabor Maté
“We feel overwhelmed. The situation seems bigger than us. But meditation restores us to that calm, without which we cannot face the truth of our condition and think clearly about how we can get out of our predicament.”
-Ben Okri, “The Role of the Artist in a Time of Crisis”
“When all the ordinary divides and patterns are shattered, people step up to become their brother’s keepers. And that purposefulness and connectedness bring joy even amidst death, chaos, fear and loss.”
-Rebecca Solnit
"In fairy tales, power is rarely the right tool for survival anyway. Rather the powerless thrive on alliances, often in the form of reciprocated acts of kindness - from beehives that were not raided, birds that were not killed but set free or fed, old women who were saluted with respect. Kindness sown among the meek is harvested in crisis."
-Rebecca Solnit
“Though we do not wholly believe it yet, the interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world.”
— James Baldwin
Are you Earthseed?
Do you believe?
Belief will not save you.
Only actions
Guided and shaped
By belief and knowledge
Will save you.
Belief
Initiates and guides action —
Or it does nothing.
- Octavia Butler
“Kindness eases Change.”
- Octavia Butler