Go to Where Your Spirit is Invited to Open Up

Tomorrow starts a new series, on Relationships, Love and Sex – with Valentine’s Day coming up, this is the perfect topic.

But before we begin the new series, today, as a brief interlude between the new series and the one that just ended on Longevity, we have an article guest written by poet and essayist Susan Jefts, entitled Go to Where Your Spirit is Invited to Open Up.

Susan, whose work has appeared on the Low Density Lifestyle website before, most recently with her article that featured her poems, The Poetic Nature of Life, is a poet who lives in Saratoga Springs, NY. She runs writing groups in therapeutic and community settings using poetry as a tool for exploring life issues and healing.

Susan teaches writing and advises students for Empire State College and has had her poetry published in several journals and books regionally and throughout the country, including Big City Lit, Parnassus Literary Journal, The Hudson River Anthology and Metroland, among others.

Her website is www.saratogapoetryroom.com.

There’s nothing more central to living a Low Density Lifestyle than having a sense of inner peace. This article is about finding that sense of peace in the silence and stillness of winter.

Here now is Susan’s article, Go to Where Your Spirit is Invited to Open Up:

Sometimes it’s in the most unlikely months and times of year that our spirits are invited to open up the widest. For instance, I think winter can in many ways be a time of discovery. Of being taken unexpectedly, much like a good poem, to new places both inner and outer.

Like many people, I have mixed feelings about winter. But I believe that certain experiences of this season can carry us, if we let them, into both the magical landscapes around us and the deeper regions of our hearts.

It is true that there is indescribable beauty to be found on a snow-covered lake while small clouds dance with sunlight on the summits high above you. Everything literally glistens, and the silence is impossible to describe. I can only think of it as the kind that one finds while moving into deep meditation. Only you get to keep your eyes open.

I am thinking of a particular place in the high peaks area of the Adirondacks, one that has been with me since I skied there with friends on a sunny thirty-degree day in early January. Although, really it has been with me since I first hiked there one summer almost twenty years ago. But this was the first time I had been there in winter.

After the 3 1/2 mile ski on an old road through the woods, we arrived at the long narrow lake, its icy cliffs and steep mountains hugging the shoreline. I had never been out on the lake and knew this was a big part of why I’d come. To ski down that long frozen waterway, to experience the intense beauty of this setting from deep inside it rather than from the shore, where you can only look longingly down its length.

I’ve always been drawn to exploring lakes, but certain ones hold a unique allure, and this was one of them. It had to do, I think, with the particular arrangement of water, cliffs and mountains. And the presence of several high peaks looming above, invoking a strong feeling of awe and wonderment. But it has to do with something else, too, that I’ve been trying for years to name.

I set off skiing down the lake below its hovering cliffs with no audible sound but my own breath-ing and the swish of my skis. My friends had chosen to stay behind on the shore to eat their lunch, and while I had been delighting in our camaraderie and sharing that day, I didn’t mind set-ting off for a while on my own. Every few feet was a new experience for the senses: a cliff of ice reflecting the blue gray hues of the clouds, a small rush of cold air in the shadows, a feeling of inner expansiveness as I rounded a bend allowing me to see further down the lake.

This place had for a long time beckoned me with a force and beauty I couldn’t quite comprehend. I had read stories about others’ adventures down this lake and onto the next, the two separated by only a few hundred yards. And from there to who knows where. More lakes, mountains and passageways.

There are energies, I feel, that are unique to places like this. Some are from the glacially formed lake, some from the jagged mountains, some from the transient clouds changing the weather from one minute to the next. The longer I stayed, the more I felt the confluence of these energies within me.

There is an honesty in places like this that becomes almost palpable. It’s in the landscape and it starts to be in you too. You are alone and you are quiet. You feel an immensity that is undeniable. It presses down upon you, or lifts you up; perhaps you’re not sure which. I’ve often felt that mountains have spirits, and much more influence in our lives than we are aware.

I recently read a reviewer’s description of an actor in an off-Broadway play who said his performance was so complete that it had a tendency to highlight the deficiencies of the actors around him. Although I wouldn’t choose to think of people or nature in terms of deficiencies, perhaps a bit of an analogy can be made. In a place of such natural resplendence, one affect can be that our lives are reflected back to us. We can see where we feel replete and impassioned, and where we don’t. Sometimes I think I come to such places in part to learn this: to feel what is going on in my life, or not going on.

At times I’ve come away from such places with only what I arrived with and maybe a renewed appreciation for nature, and sometimes that’s been enough. But lately, like this time, I’ve come away with something more. A feeling of inner expansiveness and far reaching beauty, and a greater sense of what I’m capable of in ability and in compassion. Of harnessing possibility and passion and putting it to meaningful use.

I have felt this at times from other experiences, like meditation and yoga, but something about this was different; it was as sensuous as it was spiritual, like a great sky and lake had opened up inside of me.

And a few weeks later, they are still with me.

Winter truly can be an opening into new regions of ourselves. It might happen through an outdoor adventure as it did for me, or a more subtle experience. There are opportunities in the depths of the cold and darkness, or the brilliance of a glittering day. My experience would not have been the same in July. The energy of winter is unique and deeply spiritual.

What I learned from that day is this: Go to where your spirit feels invited to open up, wherever that might be.

Top Ten Ways to Start Living a Low Density Lifestyle Now

In yesterday’s article I explained What the Heck a Low Density Lifestyle Is.

When you read the article, you should be able to wrap your mind around the concept pretty quickly, and I think you’ll agree with me that it makes a lot of sense.

Tomorrow I will begin the first series of the year, and it will be on Longevity. As you probably know, once I begin a series, I spend a few weeks looking at the theme of the series at an in-depth level. So in a couple of weeks, you’ll know more about Longevity than you ever thought you did.

But before I begin the series on Longevity, let’s examine the top ten ways you can start living a Low Density Lifestyle right now.

Yes, right now. Not tomorrow. Now. So let’s begin…

1) Open your mind. When you talk to someone, do you have a knee-jerk negative reaction to what they say? Open your mind to the possibilities that are out there, because it could cause you to change your thinking and expand the way you see the world. When you are closed minded, you shut off 99% of the world.

2) Listen to others. Don’t just be the one talking…listen to what others have to say – you will learn a lot that way.

3) Watch your expectations. It’s easy to expect others to do what you think they should do, or what you think is the proper way for them to behave and act. But everyone is different, and you should never impose your beliefs and standards on others. If you think someone is acting improperly, be aware if your perception is clouded by the way you expect them to act.

4. Beware the Curse of Knowledge. Don’t act like an expert, even if you know everything about the subject at hand. This ties in with the first point, to open your mind. The Zen master Shunryu Suzuki said, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.” You may know a lot about a subject, and may be the go-to person on the subject, but at the same time, it’s best to be humble about your knowledge, because there is never an end to what can be added onto the subject. For instance, the Nobel-prize winning physicist Richard Feynman once said, “I was born not knowing and have only had a little time to change that here and there.” And if anyone had the right to claim firm knowledge on a subject matter, it was Richard Feynman.

5. Laugh. A lot. We all have a tendency to take ourselves too seriously. When you laugh you start feeling lighter of body, mind and spirit. You can just feel yourself open up.

6. Move. As often as possible. Especially in ways that accentuate flow. Try this: when you’re home, turn some music on that has a good beat to it, and start moving to it. In whatever way feels right. It doesn’t matter if you have two left feet, just visualize you’re channeling your inner Fred Astaire. Or inner Michael Jackson. Or better yet, inner you.

7. Dream. Dream big. Or even dream small. But just dream. John Lennon once said, “The dreamer lives forever.” And Mick Jagger, in Ruby Tuesday, said, “Lose your dreams and you will lose your mind.” We all have great dreaming capabilities, but it gets suppressed. You can dream at night during sleep, or during the day, in what gets misnamed daydreaming. It’s not daydreaming you’re doing when your mind wanders during the day. Instead you’re doing what we all have as an innate quality: seeing ourselves in a greater capacity, seeing ourselves in the life we were meant to live.

8. Think abundantly. It’s easy to think from a scarcity perspective, in which you see a world in which it’s every person for themselves, and you have to get yours before someone takes it from you. But what if you perceived a world in which it was ok to share and be generous and be compassionate with others? Remember the popular best-seller called “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,” by Robert Fulghum? That was the gist of the book, that what we all learned in kindergarten – to share, to play, to have fun, to enjoy each others company – are really the true lessons of life.

9. Live and practice a healthy lifestyle. Eat a whole foods oriented diet. Breathe deeply and relax. See a health provider who helps you to cultivate and enhance wellness. Don’t take drugs, or take as bare minimum as possible, and see them as a temporary bridge that you take only until your health is much better. Instead of drugs, take herbs and supplements.

10. Sign up for the free email course on this site. See the sign-up box on the upper right, below the video, or you can put your name in the pop-up box that shows up when you first come on the site. The course will help reinforce everything written about in the above list. And keep coming back to the site to read the articles. There are new articles on this site four days a week – Tuesday through Friday – on different aspects of living a Low Density Lifestyle. The different aspects are covered in a series format, and each series is written about for a few weeks. You’ll be glad you did.

Ok…So What the Heck is a Low Density Lifestyle?

Having started the new year off with poetry – which was the nature of all the articles last week, from the poetry of David Tucker, to Susan Jefts, to the odes to the New Year, and finally, to the poetry of Leonard Cohen, I will be beginning a new series, on Longevity, in just a couple of days.

But first, we interrupt this message to give you an important message from our sponsors…

Ok, it’s not exactly from our sponsors, the message is from me. You see, it’s almost a year now since I started the Low Density Lifestyle website. I’m starting to do radio interviews, and here’s the schedule of them; and my book The Low Density Lifestyle will be coming out in the near future; but…

People still want to know, What the Heck is a Low Density Lifestyle?

The concept is amazingly easy to grasp, but allow me to explain it to you…

Have you ever had a time in your life when everything seemed to be going just right? When everything flows and you feel like you’re clicking on all cylinders? Maybe it was when you were on vacation, or when you did something you felt passionate about. Maybe it was when you were absorbed in nature, listening to music, or perhaps even in the middle of a crowded city street.

Ultimately, where you are when you experience this isn’t so important, because in the end it’s really a state of mind.

This state, which occurs when your body, mind and spirit are in such resonance that you feel like you are in the zone, is called a Low Density Lifestyle.

When you are living this way, you are living in a more relaxed, less stressed, and calm, clear and focused manner on an everyday basis. It can lead you to better health and happiness, along with a more fulfilled, successful and enlightened life.

When you live a Low Density Lifestyle, you have less density, rigidity and tension in your body, mind and spirit—this means there are fewer blockages obstructing the dynamic flow of energy circulating throughout your body. You are more fluid and flexible, and less inflexible, rigid and uncompromising.

Paulo Coelho, the author of The Alchemist, said, “Be like the fountain that overflows, not like the cistern that merely contains.”

In essence, this is the formula for living a Low Density Lifestyle: if you let go of your densities and rigidities, and overcome your blockages, you will be like a fountain. You then become a circuit of energy, flowing infinitely, much like an unimpeded electrical circuit in which the electricity freely courses throughout.

How do you achieve a Low Density Lifestyle? Like anything in life, it takes a commitment, but the investment you put into it in terms of time and energy pays itself back with tremendous dividends.

You can start just by doing some simple things—eat more vegetables, grains and whole foods, and less animal foods; turn on some music and let go, moving and swaying to the beat as you feel it move through you; stop doing the same routine that you always do, instead doing something different everyday.

For instance, brush your teeth with your right hand if you always brush with your left, or sleep on the other side of the bed, or take a different route to work.

Make room for quiet time everyday, whether via meditation, walking in nature, or sitting quietly in your living room; and say “yes” instead of always saying “no.” See the Jim Carrey movie “Yes Man” to help guide you.

I have put together a 12-step guide to living a Low Density Lifestyle, which explains how to do it.

If this 12-step guide sounds complicated or overwhelming, let me distill it down to its essence: a Low Density Lifestyle is about being fluid and flexible of mind, body and spirit. From that starting point, all the benefits—better health, happiness, self-mastery, more joy and passion, fulfillment, success and inner peace—ensue.

Ultimately, the key to fluidity begins in the mind. How unbending are you in your beliefs? Are you a flexible thinker or someone who can be stubborn and dogmatic? Even if you eat the best vegetarian diet in the world, if you do it out of a rigid and holier-than-thou sense of what’s right, you may be doing more harm than good.

Now I’m not saying not to eat well, because that is an important component; however, a fluid and flexible mindset is what’s most important. It’s really the most important aspect to living a Low Density Lifestyle.

If you don’t live a Low Density Lifestyle, you may find yourself trapped in a High Density Lifestyle, a realm in which the burdens of stress and feeling overwhelmed can lay heavy on you and cause you to feel dense, tense and rigid.

If you feel heavy, and weighed down in your body, mind and spirit because of stress, poor eating, lack of exercise, a rigid belief system, unethical behavior, or a negative world view, then you are caught in the treadmill of a High Density Lifestyle. Billions of people on this planet are now caught in the trap of a High Density Lifestyle, and the increasingly fast-paced lifestyle of the modern world is to blame.

According to a survey by the American Psychological Association, in 2008, more people reported stress-related physical and emotional symptoms than they did in 2007, and nearly half of adults said their stress has increased in the past year.

A High-Density Lifestyle causes people to become physically ill, as well as mentally, emotionally and spiritually dense and rigid. This is evidenced by many of the common ills plaguing people today—weight gain, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, depression, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and numerous other chronic and degenerative health problems.

So which would you rather live? A Low Density Lifestyle or a High Density Lifestyle? I think the choice is obvious. I invite you to be a part of a Low Density Lifestyle world.

And if more people lived a Low Density Lifestyle, we could then imagine the question, What Would a Low Density Lifestyle World Look Like?

The Poetry of Leonard Cohen

I end this inaugural week of 2010, and the poetry articles that ushered in the year – as a way to help get us in a Low Density Lifestyle frame of mind – with the words of a master poet, Leonard Cohen.

Cohen, born in 1934, is a well-known singer-songwriter and author of many classic songs, including “Suzanne,” “Sisters of Mercy,” “Hallelujah,” “So Long Marianne,” “Who By Fire,” and “Everybody Knows.”

A few months I wrote an entire article about Leonard Cohen because of his fascinating life journey – the article was called The Spiritual Odyssey of Leonard Cohen.

He is truly a gifted individual and it’s safe to say, an icon.

At the top of the page, you can view his spoken word poem, A Thousand Kisses Deep. Here are the words to the poem:

Don’t matter if the road is long
Don’t matter if it’s steep
Don’t matter if the moon is gone
And the darkness is complete
Don’t matter if we lose our way
It’s written that we’ll meet
At least, that’s what I heard you say
A thousand kisses deep

I loved you when you opened
Like a lily to the heat
You see, I’m just another snowman
Standing in the rain and sleet
Who loved you with his frozen love
His second hand physique
With all he is and all he was
A thousand kisses deep

I know you had to lie to me
I know you had to cheat
You learned it on your father’s knee
And at your mother’s feet
But did you have to fight your way
Across the burning street
When all our vital interests lay
A thousand kisses deep

I’m turning tricks
I’m getting fixed
I’m back on boogie street
I’d like to quit the business
But I’m in it, so to speak
The thought of you is peaceful
And the file on you complete
Except what I forgot to do
A thousand kisses deep

Don’t matter if you’re rich and strong
Don’t matter if you’re weak
Don’t matter if you write a song
The nightingales repeat
Don’t matter if it’s nine to five
Or timeless and unique
You ditch your life to stay alive
A thousand kisses deep

The ponies run
The girls are young
The odds are there to beat
You win a while, and then it’s done
Your little winning streak
And summon now to deal with your invincible defeat
You live your life as if it’s real
A thousand kisses deep

I hear their voices in the wine
That sometimes did me seek
The band is playing Auld Lang Syne
But the heart will not retreat
There’s no forsaking what you love
No existential leap
As witnessed here in time and blood
A thousand kisses deep

And here are some additional Leonard Cohen videos:

The first video is Cohen doing his haunting and beautiful hymn, Hallelujah. Of this song Leonard Cohen says, “It’s, as I say, a desire to affirm my faith in life, not in some formal religious way but with enthusiasm, with emotion…. It’s a rather joyous song.”

The second is of singer/pianist Allison Crowe performing the same song – it’s really an amazing performance that will truly touch your soul. Many people have done this song; it was Rufus Wainwright’s version that was featured in the movie Shrek.

And the third video is of Leonard Cohen singing Who by Fire. The song features a saxophone introduction by the legendary sax player Sonny Rollins.

Have No Fear! We’re Ringing in the New Year With Poetry Far and Near

To start the New Year, I thought it would be a nice and very Low Density Lifestyle thing to do to usher it in with poetry.

We first heard from poet David Tucker, and then the next day we heard from Susan Jefts.

Today I offer a collection of poets who offer poems for the new year.

These are poems of optimism and hope. And that’s the best way to ring in the new year – to be full of optimism and hope.

First up is poet Kim Addonizio with her poem “New Year’s Day,” in which she finds a blessing where few would think to look for it:

Today I want
to resolve nothing.

I only want to walk
a little longer in the cold

blessing of the rain,
and lift my face to it.

Next up is poet Margaret Avison with her deftly written “New Year’s Poem,” in which she finds a new appreciation for home and her own space:

Gentle and just pleasure
It is, being human, to have won from space
This unchill, habitable interior
Which mirrors quietly the light
Of the snow, and the new year.

Next we have poet Philip Appleman, who finds beauty in an unlikely event in “To the Garbage Collectors in Bloomington, Indiana, the First Pickup of the New Year”:

O garbage men,
the New Year greets you like the Old;
after this first run you too may rest
in beds like great warm aproned laps
and know that people everywhere have faith:
putting from them all things of this world,
they confidently bide your second coming.

And last, we have poet Susan Elizabeth Howe’s poem about New Year’s optimism undeterred by some bad news from a fortune cookie. Here’s an excerpt from “Your Luck Is About to Change”:

Ominous inscrutable Chinese news
to get just before Christmas,
considering my reasonable health,
marriage spicy as moo-goo-gai-pan,
career running like a not-too-old Chevrolet.
Not bad, considering what can go wrong:
the bony finger of Uncle Sam
might point out my husband,
my own national guard,
and set him in Afghanistan;
my boss could take a personal interest;
the pain in my left knee could spread to my right.
Still, as the old year tips into the new,
I insist on the infant hope, gooing and kicking
his legs in the air. I won’t give in…

The Poetic Nature of Life

Yesterday’s article, Onto a New Year, was the first of the new year. I said in the article how I wanted to start the new year off in a Low Density Lifestyle kind of way, by featuring poetry all week long.

In yesterday’s article, I featured poetry by David Tucker. Today’s article brings a new guest poet, Susan Jefts.

You may remember Susan from a few weeks ago, when she guest wrote the article, Life is Poetry.

Susan is back today with some poetry to help get us in a Low Density Lifestyle mood, to help us feel lighter of mind, body and spirit.

And if we were to have any type of New Year’s resolutions, that should be it – to feel lighter.

And so, without further ado, here are some poems, by Susan Jefts.

BARDO* OVER THE HUDSON

Words. Born out of vibrating air
at West 26th street, air of myth and poetry.
Words. Some danced patterns for me outside
on the sidewalk as I headed toward midtown.
Words. I ran into more the next day
below the Columbus statue in Central Park,
arranging themselves on purple pansies that
startled me out of any remaining winter.
Words, hanging languidly outside the window
at Café Europa, their fairy bodies hovering
between creme brulée and Carnegie Hall.

Words, at the wide throat of the Hudson
as my train rambles northward. These words
flicker like unborn fireflies unversed
in the art of direction, or rhythm, or sound.
They are the ones I want.
These in between words, lingering low in that
bardo like place, the sacred gap the mystics so honor.
Here, that place floats on smoky mist over the Hudson.
Air between Gotham and Lake Tear of the Clouds,
life receiving and life giving,
Between being and becoming,
the word, the image,
Poetry.

*Bardo: a word of Eastern origin describing the continuous state of oscillation between certainty and uncertainty, bewilderment and insight, that characterizes all of life, a state that by its nature creates gaps, spaces in which profound chances and opportunities for transformation are continuously flowering – if they can be seen and seized.
Tricycle Magazine, winter 2001

NIGHT FLIGHT IN VERMONT

I am looking for poems tonight.
I’ve just pulled one from this leather couch
and another has risen from my jasmine tea.
There is at least one written along the white ridge
of the mountain visible from the window
and another along its gradual southern slope.
I think about the one I can’t see
where the mountain meets the valley
and the valley, the village,
or perhaps it’s a river and
the wild moan of the trees. The gasp
of the night owl on her flight
through the black and ash pattern of the forest
under the broken light of the moon
that leads to an open field,
a small lit farm and the rise of a hill.
Winter appears there as in a Chagall,
blue horses in the field rise up, float with candles
in the heavens, drift back down to the river -
river sacred swirling myth that flows from
the once golden valley, from the mountain
that sits like a chapel, reflected light
and a pinnacle of breath.

WHAT REMAINS

Late afternoon

two days after Christmas

snow has fallen.

A carol sounds from the kitchen:

Greensleeves.

The carol stays with me

and Christmas drifts further away.

What remains is this.

Silence after snow,

long blue shadows,

a white farmhouse

and not far off,

a stand of evergreens.

BEFORE COFFEE

I don’t know how to put together

the world again, I can’t stop

the February rain. But I know

these few moments this morning -

before thought

before coffee,

when words are starlings

flitting in and out of my mind

and all I know is this space inside

that feels a little

like God – nothing to fill,

nothing to say,

just this pause

this place

before poetry.

AT THE RUBIN MUSEUM

The Bon people of the Himalayas believe a little imbalance is a good thing and portray this in their art. Everything is a little off, on purpose, and everything is needed and everything is good.

Snow dragons above

lotus to the left

mandala in the middle.

Always

unity and blossoming mind.

Snow dragon says

wrath and fire

peace inside.

The yin and the yang

the four directions

the wrathful one and the protector.

Fear and love

all inside the lotus.

Onto a New Year

Happy New Year! And may it be a Low Density Lifestyle year, all year long.

I want to start the year in a nice way. No, I won’t be talking about New Year’s resolutions. That you see written and talked about all over the place, so I won’t bore you with that kind of thing.

Instead, I want to start the year off right, in a Low Density Lifestyle kind of way. For this entire week, before I begin writing on a specific series, which I will do next week, I will feature poetry.

Life is Poetry – poetry can make us feel lighter of body, mind and spirit, and often can speak to our soul. It talks to us in ways that prose often cannot, in rhythms and cadences that can reverberate and resonate with our deepest longings.

It can also help us be more in touch with the innate low density nature we all carry within. It is this instinct that propels us forward in life; it is a natural drive we all have, one that desires happiness, love, joy and peace.

Unfortunately, it gets muddied up and lost. And it is poetry that can help us find it.

And so, each day of this week we’ll hear from a different poet.

Today’s poet is David Tucker. I’ll let David tell you about himself:

“I am a poet who lives in Vermont where I struggle to dig from the rock of mundanity formed by the details and disappointments of life the images that will startle us and remind us how we are connected to each other and to all the universe.”

Here are some poems of David’s, to help us ring in the New Year and put us in a Low Density Lifestyle frame of mind.

David’s email address is davidshawnee@mac.com.

To Learn How to Love

It is so beautiful,
this life,
the sun,
Vermont,
evening creeping in
over the Green Mountains.

It is light,
sweet,
so beautiful,
this life,
that we are given
that we might
learn how to love.

A simple lesson
I cannot catch.
A lovely butterfly
too light and quick.
For weeks now
I grab
and cannot hold
how beautiful,
how sweet,
how light
is this life
we learn
how to love.

As the Morning Glory
buckles into the night
I crumple into
fear,
anger,
darkness.
I think
I may die soon.
I think
How quickly it passes.
I think
What have I accomplished?
I think
It is not fair.
I have forgotten.
I came here
to learn how to love
and
in the evening light,
in the sweet approach of night,
I remember,
this minute
is enough,
to love
is what I came to learn.
It is enough.

Sabbath,
For Catherine

I woke this morning
paused
only a minute,
ate a tiny slice of peace,
sipped a thimble of light,
jumped up
and put on
my harness,
walked to the field,
head down,
up to the plow,
snapped on the line,
flexed my thighs
and prepared to pull.

Then stopped,
staring at the clods
and broken sod.
What, oh Creator
do you have planned
for me
today?
Pulling this plow
is my idea.

I looked up,
unsnapped the line
and
suddenly
the air was full
of butterflys,
cobalt blue wings
with
eyes as gold
as daffodils.
I broke up
the plow and made a drum.
We danced,
stepping and leaping
on the hard ground,
broke it into velvet loam.
Ready
to receive
the seed.

Meditation

You cannot trap

the sunshine

or

capture love

Maybe

for a minute

or a night

but

time

always shows up

cuts their chains

and

they escape

into the hills

Relax

stop pushing

let it go

let it all go

There is a trap door

in the top

of every second

Lift

Enter

The Gods will pour

cups of quiet

tap the drum of peace

fish diamonds from your soul

and

kiss the scales

off your eyes

till

you see

this is the only place

your enemy

time

cannot enter

to steal

your sunshine

and

your love.

Have a Low Density Lifestyle Holiday!

Today’s article is the final one in this few weeks long series on What Would a Low Density Lifestyle World Look Like?

It’s a video montage I put together in celebration of the spirit of the upcoming holidays.

It’s an homage to peace, love, trust, hope, belief, and the knowledge that we can make this a better world, a peaceful, sane, healthy and happy world, a Low Density Lifestyle world.

I hope you enjoy the video, and you find it inspiring.

I’ll be on hiatus for the holidays until Jan. 5, 2010, so until then, be well! See you next time.

I wish you a happy, healthy, joyous and Low Density Lifestyle holiday season.

Life is Poetry

What Would a Low Density Lifestyle World Look Like? That’s the question that this few week series has been based on.

I’ve written articles during this series on peace and war being over, on being bold, on listening to your heart and following your creative pulse, on working together to make this a better world, and on people who are helping to make this a better world.

Ultimately, a Low Density Lifestyle World is one in which our heart and soul resonate with the poetic lyricism that fuels the universe.

When we feel lighter of body, mind and spirit, that is when we are living a Low Density Lifestyle; and when we feel lighter, we are truly poetry in motion.

With that being said, today’s article is about poetry and is guest written by Susan Jefts.

Susan Jefts, MS, is a poet who lives in Saratoga Springs, NY. She runs writing groups in therapeutic and community settings using poetry as a tool for exploring life issues and healing.

Susan teaches writing and advises students for Empire State College and has had her poetry published in several journals and books regionally and throughout the country, including Big City Lit, Parnassus Literary Journal, The Hudson River Anthology and Metroland, among others.

Her website is www.saratogapoetryroom.com.

Meeting a Poem

First, something catches. The movement of a word on your tongue or a spark from its flight through your throat. Often it’s not the one you’d expect, not what you were thinking about or where you were going that day. But there it is, like beautiful music or a call from a cherished friend. And so you listen.

To know what a poem is about for you, look to the images that most speak to you, the ones that linger in your ear or on your tongue, or hover in your soul. It is after all images that feed the soul. And it is in metaphor, the heart of poetry, where psyche (soul) and soma (body) meet. Metaphor comes from a Greek word meaning to transport or carry across. We can be transported by poetry, if we are willing, to new levels of experience and insight, places where the soul and spirit are more closely involved.

The following poem How it is by Peter Everwine, is one I’ve had in my favorite poem folder for years. I knew upon first reading, that this poem said far more than its ten short lines and that I would return to it again and again. I find it an especially rich antidote for a busy life, as it speaks to the reader of what returning means, of what actually being in our life means.

This is how it is –
One turns away
and walks out into the evening.
There is a white horse on the prairie, or a river
that slips away among dark rocks.
One speaks, or is about to speak,
not that it matters.
What matters is this –
It is evening.
I have been away a long time.

There is a strong presence from the start of the poem of something beyond words and feeling. And a strong sense of seeing, a kind that only evening allows, as it is a time of day for nuance, both visually and emotionally. What is described is a white horse on the prairie. But right next to that is a river “that slips away among dark rocks.” Right away, we are presented with contrasting images and a sense of paradox, with the first image suggesting stillness and permanence and the second one, movement and impermanence.

Soon we know we are not in a world of ordinary language but it feels very real; the language is open and encompassing, and we are pulled into its richness and wholeness. Good poetry is like that; it allows room for everything. And as in many poems, there is more going on here than first meets the eye. Listen for what is going on for you. Is it the image of the white horse that speaks to you, the dark rocks, or the river that slips away? Perhaps it is the “turning away,” or a subtle feeling of the poem that speaks to you. What is it about that image? Pay attention to the ones that speak to you, as they are likely speaking to your soul.

While there may be a sense of leave taking in the poem, there is also a sense of opening to new awareness. The speaker at first appears to be turning away from something and finding escape or solace in nature. But soon we see that he is really returning. Re-turning to a kind of purity, to something beyond words and images. Returning to what is essential.

And in the midst of all this turning, there is a sense of embracing and of being embraced. “I have been away a long time,” he says. We almost wonder and know, both at the same time where he has been and what he is returning to. The specifics of those places will vary for each of us, as will the messages they carry. Where have you been, and what are you returning to?

Another Person Who is Changing the World

In the previous article in this series on What Would a Low Density Lifestyle World Look Like?, I discussed 50 People Who Are Changing the World.

Today I will discuss another person who is changing the world, and making it more sane and peaceful. He wasn’t on the list, because he deserves his own article.

He is Greg Mortenson, author of the 2007 bestseller Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission To Promote Peace…One School At A Time, and the recently released sequel, Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Mortenson is the co-founder and director of the non-profit Central Asia Institute, and founder of the educational charity Pennies For Peace. He’s a humanitarian, international peacemaker, and former mountain climber from Bozeman, Montana.

The mission of the Central Asia Institute is to promote education and literacy, especially for girls, in remote mountain regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

He was a finalist for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, and in March 2009 received Pakistan’s highest civilian award, the Sitara-e-Paskistan (The Star of Pakistan), in recognition of what he’s done.

What exactly has Greg Mortenson done? To answer that question, let’s first look at how he got to where he is now.

In 1992, Greg’s younger sister Christa passed away due to epilepsy.

In 1993, to honor his deceased sister’s memory, Mortenson went to climb K2, the world’s second highest mountain, in northern Pakistan. After more than 70 days on the mountain, Mortenson and three other climbers completed a life-saving rescue of a fifth climber that took more than 75 hours. The time and energy devoted to this rescue prevented him from attempting to reach the summit.

After the rescue, he began his descent of the mountain and became weak and exhausted. He took a wrong turn along the way and ended up in Korphe, a small village where he was cared for by the villagers while he recovered.

Once Mortenson’s health was restored, he felt a debt to the remote community for their compassion, and said he would build a school for the village. After a frustrating time trying to raise money, Mortenson convinced Jean Hoerni, a Silicon Valley pioneer, to found the Central Asia Institute, with Mortenson as the Executive Director.

The Institute began its work, yet over the years, in the process of building schools, Mortenson has survived an eight-day armed 1996 kidnapping in the tribal areas of Waziristan, in Pakistan’s  North-West Frontier Province; escaped a 2003 firefight between Afghan opium warlords; endured two fatwas by angry Islamic clerics for educating girls; and received hate mail and threats from fellow Americans for helping educate Muslim children.

Mortenson believes that education and literacy for girls globally is the most important investment all countries can make to create stability, bring socio-economic reform, decrease infant mortality, decrease the population explosion, and improve health, hygiene, and sanitation standards globally.

Mortenson believes that fighting terrorism only perpetuates a cycle of violence, and that there should be a global priority to promote peace through education and literacy, with an emphasis on girls’ education.

“You can drop bombs, hand out condoms, build roads or put in electricity, but unless the girls are educated, a society won’t change,” Mortenson says. Because of community buy-in, which involves getting villages to donate free land, subsidized or free labor, free wood and resources, the schools have local support and have been able to avoid retribution by the Taliban or other groups opposed to girls’ education.

As of October 2009, Central Asia Institute has established over 131 schools in rural Afghanistan and Pakistan, which provide education to 54,000 students, including over 44,000 girls. Pennies for Peace is a program Mortenson launched to involve American school-children in fund-raising efforts for the schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

You can hear Greg Mortenson explain his work in the above video, and as you listen you will see why he truly is helping to create a Low Density Lifestyle world.

To learn more about his work, check out his website Three Cups of Tea.

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