Positive Possibilities Mellow Hotline by Josephine Laing

Over the past year or so, I’ve noticed that if I’ve shaken the  reins loose and let myself indulge in sugar for a time, like I recently did over the holidays, then I’ll tend to find myself more  capable of digressing into rants while in conversation with others. Rather then listening and sharing, I pontificate.  The rants are  always, from my point of view, well justified and they fully warrant  the fervor of their delivery.  But really, they are just emotional  outbursts based on my opinion in the moment.  And one days sugar  indulgence inevitably leads to the desire for another day’s  indiscretion, holding the potential for endless reiterations.  So,  mostly, I try to remember to bring the raspberries with which to adorn a celebratory cake and eat only those instead.  And, most of  the time I succeed.   Recently, I borrowed a book from a friend titled Fleeing Vesuvius. Vesuvius, you may remember, was the volcano that blew some  two thousand years ago, smothering the Roman city of Pompeii in pumice and ash.  The book gives a well documented, scientifically supported account of the very real potentials and abrupt changes we  may all well experience with our current looming economic and environmental collapse scenarios.  The authors rightfully suggest  that cobblers and wheelbarrows may well take on renewed importance.   Hollywood’s recent contribution, a movie called “Contagion,” hit the  theaters with images of mass epidemics.  A few years back, they gave  us “Escape from L.A.”  All chilling possibilities. But, as one of my dearest wise friends once told me,  “Josephine, if you want to look on the dark side, you can go deeper  then you could ever imagine and still there will only be more and  darker events and potentialities to dwell on.  Or, instead you can focus on what’s right and good and beautiful.  Then the amount of  inspiration and new heights of appreciation and gratitude for the  many blessings in our lives will astound you with their awesome  magnitude.  You can take your pick.”  And I think she’s right.  Back in the 1970′s, while Frank and I were still in high  school, just a few short years after  San Francisco’s “summer of love”  and the cultural revolution of the hippie movement, many social groups arose.  These groups created support networks and the free  clinics for health care were born.  Along with this progressive  movement for change came the “Hotlines,” which are various telephone  networks available for people to call when in need.  So naturally, as  teenagers, we came up with our own hand jive expression for a  hotline.  Holding our hands up near our hearts, thumbs hidden and  fingers pointing down, we’d separate our pinkie and ring fingers, holding those two close together and spreading them apart from our  index and middle fingers to form the letter M.  Then we’d move them  all back together pointing straight down again and then open them up again like a flashing marquis, intermittently forming a capital  letter M.  While doing this, we’d say, “Mellow Hotline, where’s your head at?” as if we were answering the phone.   In those times of more gentle recreational drugs and the peace  and love movements, a good rant was seen as a disruption to the equanimity and calm.  But, we were all exuberant young folk after  all, so we occasionally had spurts of often sugar fueled outbursts. Still, there is wisdom in the mellow hotline gesture and it’s  intention to call our attention back to which direction our focus is  drifting.  Are we headed down into the depths of disintegration and  despair, or would we prefer to acknowledge what is right and good and  find peace in that?  Or, should we do as the Buddha urgently advised  which was to “Do nothing, (because) time is too precious to waste”  and instead sit in the place of non-duality and non-judgement.  Personally, I think that the Christian teaching story of the  final judgment day holds the potential of being very profound.  But  my interpretation of the material is a little different.  Rather then going up to a big gate in the sky, and having some guy in a white  robe decide if we can enter the clouds or must instead be thrown down  into the fire, I think the final judgement day comes when we all  finally stop judging.  Then we can enter the nirvana of heaven right here on earth.  And I’ve recently come across an example of just that.   Some of you may have heard the noteworthy news story of Dr. Hew  Len, who worked at Hawaii State Hospital for the criminally insane some twenty or thirty years ago.  At the time he began his job there,  many of the inmates were in permanent residence and were often held  in restraints or in seclusion.  Violent outbursts, both physical and  verbal were not uncommon and due to the chaos all of this created, it  was difficult to keep the facility in good repair.  The turn over  amongst the employees was high. Most would have agreed that it was a  very depressing environment with little to no hope for a brighter  future. But then Dr. Len, a student of the ancient Hawaiian practice of  ho’oponopono (pronounced: hoe oh poe no poe no) began to work there.   He calls his practice of ho’oponopono “cleaning.”  Dr. Len would go  into his office each day and spend his time looking at the files of  the patients who were in residence there.  He was not reviewing the  files to see how many demented atrocities against society his inmates  had committed, but instead he was looking at them as an opportunity  to clear his own beliefs, from within himself, about who the inmates  were.  He felt that seeing the charts and photos of patients who had  murdered and raped or stabbed and believing that that was the reality  of who they are, held those inmates to that identity like a  contract.  Instead, Dr. Hew Len did his “cleaning” on himself, assuming 100% responsibility within himself for his role in creating  that reality for them by holding onto his negative judgments and  beliefs about them.  In his office he would observe his own negative  viewpoints about each inmate and acknowledge his own subsequent  participation in creating that reality for them.  And then he would  simply let those negative beliefs go by using ho’oponopono.  He would sit and look at reports regarding conditions in the hospital or he’d look at the inmates files and notice the beliefs or  “data,” as he calls it, within himself and say to that belief or fear  or judgement, that he may have been holding in his mind;  “I love  you.  I’m sorry.  I’m so grateful to have this opportunity to clear  you.  Please forgive me.  Thank you.”  This is quite an extraordinary practice. And Dr. Len feels  that when we do this consistently, we can  free ourselves to our own  divinity, to our source, to our core.  And when we thus free ourselves, we allow inspirations and manifestations to spontaneously  arise from that pure potential source which we all share, instead of  from our judgement and our adverse belief systems. Dr. Len says that this is not about petitioning divinity to  change the other, it’s about speaking to the inner child within, the  part of ourselves that believes what it is told by others or by  ourselves, and asking it to let go of those beliefs.  Because it is  only from that state of neutrality or clarity, a clean slate, that we  can allow divinity to percolate up as an inspiration. From this standpoint change is free to become a manifestation from source.  We hear from the spiritual teachings of the world that we create our own reality.  Yet we wonder how that can be so in the face  of trauma or disease?  None of us would consciously choose to create that.  But maybe on some unseen level, our judgments and belief  systems do affect our reality.  Dr. Hew Len and other proponents of  the practice of  ho’oponopono think that they do. While Dr. Len was clearing his own self, cleaning up his own  opinions and beliefs about his external world in this way,  spontaneously that external world began to transform itself.  It  became progressively more and more free to become a different  expression of itself.  Without any outward action on Dr. Len’s part,  the staffing problems in the hospital began to resolve.  The repairs  and general cleanliness and order of the place began to align  itself. Programs for cookie baking and car washing and tennis  tournaments for the inmates started to emerge.  And all of these occurred not through any direction from Dr. Hew Len, but  spontaneously, on their own.  The shackles came off of the inmates  and the seclusion rooms, formerly full, gradually emptied out.  The  normal turn around time for inmates began to shift.  Instead of many  years of internment, their problems were resolved and they became  able to rejoin normal society in a much shorter period of time, like  three or four months.  Even the number of criminally insane people in  the state’s population diminished.  Eventually the hospital simply  closed.  It was no longer needed.  Isn’t that amazing!  Earthwise.org  has a YouTube interview with this humble yet extraordinary man  describing this experience and his practice.  And a man named Joe  Vitale wrote a very popular book on the subject called Zero Limits. And I think that’s were we want to go.  Bad things may happen,  but we don’t need to hold them hostage to that reality.  We are  creative beyond our wildest dreams.  We are, by birthright, a part of  source. One of the meditations that I’ve enjoyed and have shared with  others for years is what I call “seeing the god in everything.”  It  only takes a second, (or three minutes, or thirty if you like,) to  quiet the self and to ask divinity to show itself to you, in one of  it’s multitude of guises.  So, today, it arises in my mind’s eye as  an incense cedar wearing a cloak of white, standing tall on a  hillside of snow.  Tomorrow, it’s a herd of gazelle grazing on a  plain or a comet passing through a universe of stars.  The next day  it’s waves crashing on a rocky shore, or a child bone thin with pleading eyes.  It’s all god.  All of it is an opportunity to see the  divine in everything.  Our problems are here to awaken us.The Buddhists teach that fear, Maya, is the illusion.  And  Christianity teaches that it’s all only love.  But, we don’t need to  go outside of ourselves to find this.  We don’t need a middle man to  tell us what’s in our source.  We only need to clear away our  judgments and allow that clean slate of pure potentiality within each  of us to percolate up through us.  Because we all  spring up from source. So, that is why I remember “Mellow hotline.”  Can we let go and  clean and clear our minds and free ourselves to our equanimity?  Can  we remember our source and allow the creation of inspiration, beauty  and joy in all aspects of our lives and our earth experience?  I know  that we can.  Because “it’s all good.”  Or should I say, “it’s all god?”

As an eco-feminist and a practicing medical intuitive for the past 25 years, Josephine Laing sees the emerging role of women in our culture as an essential element in our human transformation away from the dominator model of society into a golden age of peace which celebrates life in all of it’s astounding creativity and diversity.

Here we are at the time of the Winter Solstice.  December 21st  was the shortest day of the year.  This is the time of long nights  and cold days.  But already, though it’s barely perceptible, the days  are starting to get longer again.  Many of the ancients noticed this pattern in the natural world.  They saw the return of the cycles of  light and dark as familiar and dependable and used them as metaphors  for life.  This time of year, the quiet cold time, was seen as the time of the seed, or of gestation, the babe waiting to be born.  Then with the first lengthening day, just one day after Winter Solstice,  the babe and the year is born anew and the cycle of life begins again.  Then with the first lengthening day, just one day after Winter  Solstice, the year is born and the cycle of life begins anew.   Directly across the wheel of the year is the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year.  This is the time when the nights are short.  In the metaphor of a human life, this was seen as full  adulthood, the time when the productivity of our lives shines most brightly. Halfway between the two solstices are the two equinoxes.  These are the times of the year when the days and nights are balanced in equal length.  One equinox is in spring and one is in fall.  The Spring Equinox, also known as the Vernal Equinox, equates to the time of life when we are leaving our childhood and entering adulthood.   Whereas, the Autumnal Equinox equates to the time of life where we leave adulthood and enter into old age.

If the wheel of the year is a circle and we place the solstices and equinoxes on the rim of that wheel, equally spaced apart, then one can envision the very ancient symbol of the equidistant cross inside of the circle representing those four phases of the year. Now, between each of these four holidays are four more meaningful points on the wheel. These are known as the cross-quarter holidays and were celebrated as just that, holy days, along with the solstices and equinoxes.  This resulted in a total of eight significant dates worthy of note each year. The first cross quarter holiday has now been supplanted by Groundhog Day, February 2nd. But it has long been known as Imbolc,  the day of new lambs, or Candlemas.  The days are still short and the metaphoric new babe is just a child. Which direction will she go?   Most often the young already know their heart’s desire, the true  intended trajectory for their lives.  They know what they love.  So this is the time of year for dedication, deciding what direction  you’d like to see your life take for the coming year. The next cross quarter holiday is Beltane.  Beltane or May Day was the time of year when the ancients would take to the fields with  gay abandon.  It was the one time of year where free sexual license was granted and children conceived of those unions were considered  sacred to the group.  And those human seeds spilled on the ground in procreation at Beltane brought promise of a fruitful harvest.  This is the time of year and of our lives that is ripe with creativity. After the Summer Solstice comes Lammas, the third cross-quarter holiday.  Lammas, August first, is the time of first bread. The grain in the fields has ripened and the rich rewards from life’s efforts are beginning to be shared.  In old Europe this holiday was known as Lughnasad and is still celebrated in some areas with bonfires and dancing, with some frisky young folk even leaping over the flames. With the Autumnal Equinox, the great wheel of the year has taken another quarter turn and this is followed a month and a half later by Samhain or Halloween.  This is the time of the year that represents the dying time.  The last of the harvest is taken in.  The grasses have set seed and that seed falls to the ground.  The chill settles back on the land and it seems as if all is gone.  Even the trees loose their leaves and stand naked against the cold sky.  The  old man and woman of the year pass and like the seed, they too go into the ground.  All is quiet, awaiting the birth.  And then it comes, with the Winter solstice.  Her evergreens holding the secret  truth.  The days start to get long again, the babe is born and the cycle begins once more.  I think it’s nice to think of the year as a circle. As a woman, I like the roundness.  Unlike the more masculine image of time as a straight line, seeing time as a circle is more reminiscent of an ovum or a womb.  It comes round again and again.  And the two solstices and the two equinoxes along with their four cross-quarter holidays hold present in my mind the metaphor of the wheel of the year.  And this wheel has it’s eight sturdy spokes which serve as markers of the dance of life, while round and round we go, singing  the old folk song. “Round and round we go, we hold each other’s hands. Weave our lives in a circle. Our love is strong, the dance goes on.”

As an eco-feminist and a practicing medical intuitive for the past 25 years, Josephine Laing sees the emerging role of women in our culture as an essential element in our human transformation away from the dominator model of society into a golden age of peace which celebrates life in all of it’s astounding creativity and diversity.

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°° °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°° °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

21 November 20111 05 views No Comment

Poop!  by Josephine Laing

Positive Possibilities A Gift by Josephine Laing

When I was a girl, my aunt threw a party for dogs.  She invited  all of her friends who had dogs and most wonderfully, she had  arranged for an animal communicator to be her featured guest.  This  woman had communicated telepathically with her own pets as a child,  like many of us did, only she had retained the skill as she matured  into a woman. When my mother told my brothers and me that we had been invited  and could bring our little part Dachshund, part Cocker Spaniel dog  named Pookie with us, I was ecstatic.  All of the dogs were very  happy to be there.  They were all leashed, cleaned and coifed and very much enjoyed the separate table full of tasty dog treats that my aunt had prepared just for them. After a sufficient meet and greet time, Pat, the animal communicator got down to business.  One by one, she accepted volunteers to come and place their dog on an empty table in the middle of the patio.  The rest of us sat with our pets in a large circle around them.  The volunteered dog would settle down, on the table, give her their attention and she would begin a conversation with them.  She was much like a friendly counselor during a first visit.  She started by complimenting them on their nice looks or their athletic ability or any other trait that she had noticed, and then very casually she’d begin to ask them details of their family life.  She’d ask what their favorite things were, what they liked, what they didn’t like.  The dogs would look thoughtful or interested and cock their heads.  They’d lie down and rub their faces or sit up and gaze off into space, occasionally glancing at her or giving her a little lick.  All of these gestures indicated and idea or a feeling about what she was discussing with them, and she’d comment on and  converse with them about their movements and gestures.  Pat would pause and listen to the dogs, then she’d share with the group the most amazing revelations and funny stories and escapades that the dogs had shared with her through those telepathic pictures which they had placed in her mind. When our dog Pookie went for her turn, I stood with her and she told Pat how she got to sit at the table with us on Sunday mornings, in her own chair, and eat pancakes. She said that my mom would make them for all of us by turn.  She loved that she got to eat hers off of her own plate at the table while sitting on a chair with a booster seat.  She loved them with no syrup, but lots of nice butter.  She described how my dad always walked real fast and never seemed to pay too much attention to her.  She said that he spent a great deal of his time with papers upstairs (in his office.)  She told Pat that she loved chasing the chickens and riding in the very front of the boat, when we’d go out on the lake.  She described how if we kids got into the boat without her, when she wasn’t around and she’d see us or hear  us out on the water, she’d come running and would stand on the shore  and bark until we came back to collect her. We were all thrilled and delighted to hear our dogs each relate these very personal and unique stories to the group.  Now, I’m sure  the skeptic could say, “Well, obviously, your aunt new these things and told them to the woman in advance.”  Not really.  She didn’t know  about Pookie’s boat ride barking.  And I’d be mighty surprised if she  knew one tenth of the details from the lives of the friends she had  invited, plus several of them had brought their friends whom my aunt  had never met before.  But skeptics will be skeptics and I’m happy to let them be.  It’s a little sad though, because I feel that it’s  always our limited belief systems that hold us back from our natural  human development and evolution. Being as this party took place while I was still a girl, it  helped me to realize at a young age that maybe I could do this sort  of thing too.  I loved animals and played with all of ours, yes, the chickens too.  And began to try a little telepathic communication with them.  I’m not so sure how successful I was, but I enjoyed trying it for a time.  Later as an adult, I  began actively practicing methods for developing my psychic ability.  And since then, I have enjoyed engaging with my companion animals on this level once more.  I’m no where near as good as Pat was that day, but I’ve attained a beginners level of proficiency at it. One of the most simple exercises in developing this aspect of  our natural human capacity falls under the category of Plant  Communication and/or Nature Mysticism.  And I’ll share it with you  now.  Most likely you’ve already done it yourself because it’s a very  natural part of who we are and what we do as humans.  It’s very  simple and goes like this. Think of a problem that you may have, any problem.  It can be big or small, but it should be something that has been lingering in your mind a bit of late.  Write it down.  Then bring your journal and  go out into nature.  Anywhere that calls to you will do, even if it’s right outside your door.  But it should be somewhere with a beauty  that appeals to you, or somewhere that holds a curiosity for you.Let yourself get comfortable and sit there awhile. There’s no need to think about your problem, you already know what it is, and  you’ve already got it written down.  Just let it go and let your mind  wander and the answer will occur to you.  Sometimes all we get is the very next step to take.  But this is often all that we need to know in life, just the next step.  In actuality, we rarely know every step along the course of a solution.  That would most likely be too rigid.  But we can feel confident with and easily proceed with the next step.  So let it the answer come to you and jot it down. Now you might think, “Oh, I’m just making this up.”  That’s  okay. If it serves your well being and makes you feel better about  the world, then it’s right.  It might just seem like a hunch.  That’s  good too.  Most intuition arises this way, as just a hunch.  Trust  the process.  And then go ahead and take that next step.  After that,  most likely, you’ll know the next step to take and then the next. When we worry about a problem, we are holding onto it tightly and can’t let it go.  When we give our problems over to a bigger part of ourselves, as we do in this exercise, giving it to nature (of  which we are just a small part,) the answers will come to us.  When  we worry, we hold onto our problems too tightly with our finite  little consciousness and we inhibit the greater whole from acting.   In giving our troubles away, we receive the gift of our solutions. So that is my gift for you this week.  Let yourselves relax in  the beauties of nature and receive whatever it is that you might need.  Happy Holidays.

P.S.  I’ll be teaching a class in Plant Communication at Cuesta  College this spring, out of their Community Programs department.   Look for it currently on-line, or in their catalogue when it comes out in the first week in January. I’d love to see you there.

Josephine Laing As an eco-feminist and a practicing medical intuitive for the past 25 years, Josephine Laing sees the emerging role of women in our culture as an essential element in our human transformation away from the dominator model of society into a golden age of peace which celebrates life in all of it’s astounding creativity and diversity. Positive Possibilities Natural Healing Disclaimer and Warning by Josephine Laing I need to make sure that everyone understands that I am not a licensed physician.  I have not had any official training nor am I  certified or licensed in any form of alternative or complimentary healing arts services.  However, I am a person who has done years of  personal research and one who has had a fair amount of experience  with natural healing materials and methods. And, I am glad to say that I have been granted the right within  the First Amendment of our Constitution to freely share my  experiences and express my viewpoints on all matters of public  concern.  So I take the liberty to do so here in hopes that it may  help you as it has helped me.  However, pharmaceutical companies and  medical groups have made it so that I must legally give you the  following

WARNINGS: Any healing modality, including standard western medical protocols in addition to natural therapies, can cause harm rather  then the benefit you seek.  Just like medications, sometimes herbs,  foods, or other natural substances can cause allergic reactions or  they can have side effects which can be dangerous.  After all, some  individuals have been injured or even killed by ingesting  strawberries or peanuts.  So please understand that any of these  natural healing suggestions that I write about may be potentially  dangerous, or even lethal for healthy people and they may especially  be so for people who are ill.  Thus before you begin any healing  modality, I need to ask you to please consult a Medical Doctor. In addition, if you have been diagnosed with a disease, or if  you are ill, I must, for my own protection, insist that you Ask Your  Doctor First, before attempting any natural healing programs that I  may refer to in these articles.  But please remember that due to  their lack of experience and lack of education in natural healing  methods and herbal medicine, most Medical Doctors will probably  attempt to discourage you from trying these natural therapies. I would also like to mention that Naturopathic Doctors, Doctors  of Chiropractic and Doctors of Oriental Medicine are also licensed  physicians.  They are typically trained in a variety of healing arts  and natural healing modalities often including homeopathy or  herbology.  I have personally availed myself of the services of all  three of these types of complimentary or alternative doctors and have  generally found them to be kind, knowledgeable, patient,  understanding, dedicated and very helpful. Josephine Laing

Positive Possibilities A Refreshment by Josephine Laing

One of my teachers used to refer to meditation as “a refreshment.”  Too often meditation is looked upon as a chore, as one more thing to do.  But really, I think it’s the opposite. Of course there are schools of meditation which are quite strict, and I’m sure  those types of meditation can seem very much like a duty or one more thing that you have to do. But for me, meditation is much more free than that because I hold a very loose definition of meditation.  To me, your meditating when you’re putting your feet up and gazing out into the trees or when you’re walking the dog on your own.  And time spent like that is indeed a refreshment.  It’s as relaxing as sitting down to a cup of fresh herbal tea. And we all know that studies have shown how beneficial meditation is for our health.  It lowers stress and blood pressure.   It normalizes our pulse and heart beats.  It calms the mind and  relaxes the body. What’s not to like about all of that.  Plus it  opens the window for solutions to our problems to float on in through. So, I like to meditate and try to remember to give myself a little bit of refreshment every day if I can, especially during the holiday season when everything around us seems to be ramping up.   Here are a few of my favorites. And all of these can be done in as short or as long of a time as you like, with eyes opened or closed, seated or standing or even walking if you’re comfortable with that.  I’ve done some of these while waiting in line at the grocery store or while riding on the bus.  But of course, one would never want to be meditating while operating machinery, like when driving a car.   Pretend that you are waiting for a slow moving train to pass by.  Let each passing train car represent one of your thoughts.  It’s okay to think, but within a moment or two, let that thought pass by and think a different thought.  Notice that there are brief little spaces between the train cars or your passing thoughts, that have no  thought, holding nothing.  Then go on to think a new different thought.  The benefit of this meditation is that it helps one to begin to control their thoughts, so that we are not so much at the mercy of our internal dialogue, but can begin to direct it a bit.   This next meditation is really more like a mantra and it’s from  Thich Nhat Hanh, the buddhist monk who has been so instrumental in teaching non-violence both during and after the Vietnam War.  To do this one, simply silently repeat to yourself these two sentences,  “Breathing in, I calm my body.  Breathing out, I smile.” This is very helpful as it let’s us take some conscious control over our breathing and our state of mind. I like to do this one while I’m in the tub.  It’s a little bit of a challenge.  While totally relaxed, try counting while breathing.  With a small breath, inhale for a count of one, then exhale for a count of one.  Then with a slightly bigger breath,  inhale for two counts, one, two.  Then exhale for two counts, two, one.  The repeat for three, inhale one, two, three, exhale three, two, one.  Let each subsequent breath get a little deeper and take a little longer.  Take care to be gentle and not over-extend your lungs.  Once you get up to ten, reverse the process and start back down with nine to eight and so on.  Now, for the tricky bit.  Try doing all of this without thinking a single thought.  Focusing on the  counting can occupy the mind, so just count and breathe.  In all of  my years of trying this, I’ve only made it up to seven without a  thought.  Then something like, “I think I’m getting it,” pops into my  head.  And I have to start all over again at one.  Sometimes I never  get beyond three, or just do one over and over again.  But, no need  to play by the rules here.  If you just want to count and breathe and  think away, all at the same time, be my guest, and enjoy the ride. It’s a lovely nice long soak all the same and very relaxing.   One of the very best meditations that I know is listening for bird song.  Simply going out into nature and listening for birds is  one of the easiest ways for us to rest our thinking minds and open up the gap between our thoughts.  And why do we want to open up the gap? Because this is the way that we can let our busy conscious minds move aside when we need to and let a deeper wise part of  ourselves be heard.  This is how we can let our god-connected,  loving, joy-filled, deep-knowing, inspired part of ourselves have a say.  And that’s a great thing to practice and to work on gaining  access to. I’ll leave you with this last one.  I call it, “Seeing God In Everything.”  This meditation can take two minutes, or two hours if  you like.  It’s very easy.  Simply close your eyes and ask God to  present her/him, itself to you in one of it’s, his/her many  disguises.  God may appear as a pink rose, blushed by the sun with a  single drop of dew on a newly opened petal, or as a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis.  God may appear in the form of a slowly swirling Spiral Nebula out amongst the heavens or as a tiny microbe amidst a sea of life in a drop of water.  Whatever comes to you is yours for the day.  I’ve seen a sailing ship dash into the rocks or a star burning bright in the sky, all in my minds eye, all expressions of the divine.  Let them come as they will and know that they are all of God. May we all have a relaxed and lovely holiday season.

As an eco-feminist and a practicing medical intuitive for the past 25 years, Josephine Laing sees the emerging role of women in our culture as an essential element in our human transformation away from the dominator model of society into a golden age of peace which celebrates life in all of it’s astounding creativity and diversity.

29 November 20111 62 views 2 Comments

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°° °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°° °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

Positive Possibilities 11 – 11 – 11 by Josephine Laing

November 11th, 2011.

My niece told me that she’s been thinking about this unusual date ever since she was a little girl, wondering what it would be like.  And now, here it is, this coming Friday. Just another day.  Or is it? I can remember reading in a  numerology book, years ago about how the number one is supposed to be a master number.  It said it was the Christ consciousness.  Out of nothing came the one. The number eleven was described as a double master number comprised of two ones. With this date, we have three elevens, using the short hand that we all use for writing dates. A triple-double master-number may well be worthy of note. Another interesting observation is the phenomenon of 11:11. How many of you happen to notice that time on the clock, regularly? Join the club.  You’re not alone.  I started noticing it a few years back.  Though I don’t often watch the time, I’m surprised to find  that  when I do glance at the clock, quite often it just happens to be 11:11. Who knows what this means.  But I like to think that we are evolving.  I think that growth is only natural, no matter what our age is.  When we’re young we do a lot of growing  physically, but life is always best when we are growing mentally, emotionally and spiritually irregardless of our age.  Children often go through growth spurts. Sometimes, as adults, we go through growth spurts too.  This tends to happen when the going gets a bit rough and we are forced to take a good long loving but truthful look at ourselves.  If we do this and take the time to search out our role, whatever our part has been, in the current predicament, we can often learn and grow from it. Looking at humanity as a single consciousness, we certainly have gotten ourselves in a bit of a pickle.  One percent of the population owns ninety-five percent of the wealth.  That’s like an advanced stage terminal cancer using all of the bodies resources for it’s growth.  We’ve got the vast Amazon region, likely the largest forest on earth, the lungs of the planet, now largely clear-cut for cheap hamburgers and mineral exploitation.  (Go to google earth and see for yourself. It’s shocking.)  We’ve got melting polar ice caps and over population.  We’ve got vast populations all living on glacial melt-water with their glacier all but gone.  We’ve got the first world massively and blindly creating the poverty of the third world and devastating more formerly intact, functional, sustainable native populations every day. The ozone hole, polluted groundwater, fracking, defense spending, acid rain, GMOs you name it, it’s getting pretty hot out there.  So, maybe the time has come to take a careful look at ourselves, lovingly recognize our part in it and open up to a growth spurt.  When we hit bottom, we finally surrender and open up to a new way of being in the world.

So, my friend Aya decided to celebrate 11-11-11 with a ceremony dedicating ourselves to living in harmony with our mother the earth. She’s inviting everyone to come and you’re all welcome.  It will be at her house, 14903 El Camino in Atascadero, just north of Garden Farms, Santa Margarita, this Friday, the 11th. She’s starting at 10:00 a.m. with a meet and greet, followed by a fire ceremony and dedication at, you guessed it, 11:00 a.m. For the afternoon, she and her friends, are offering a variety of classes, workshops and  demonstrations on: Acorn Food Preparation, Healing Herbs in the Garden, Preserving Your Harvest, Composting and Worm Bin Construction, Plant Communication, Personal Readings and Fruit Tree Pruning Basics.  Folks with homemade crafts or environmental information tables are welcome to come and set up.  And there will be free baby oak trees and medicinal herbs to take home and plant if you like.  So, if you’re interested, come on up.  Maybe I’ll see you there.

As an eco-feminist and a practicing medical intuitive for the past 25 years, Josephine Laing sees the emerging role of women in our culture as an essential element in our human transformation away from the dominator model of society into a golden age of peace which celebrates life in all of it’s astounding creativity and diversity.

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°° °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°° °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

11 – 11 – 11 Fire Celebration and Holistic Earth Fair

To Honor The Earth and To Commit Ourselves To Living In Harmony With Her

At Aya’s near Garden Farms 14903 El Camino, Atascadero All Day, November 11th, 2011

10:00 a.m.  Meet and Greet delicious herbal teas home baked  goods welcomed

11:00 a.m.  Fire Ceremony with a dedication and gentle dances for peace

12:00 Potluck Lunch and 6:00 Potluck Dinner bring something to share

Free Afternoon Classes, Workshops and Demonstrations: 1:00 p.m. till 5:30 p.m. Acorn Food Preparation, Preserving Your Harvest, How to Make a Scrying Deck-A guide to personal  imagery Healing Herbs in the Garden, Plant Communication, Fruit Tree Pruning Basics, Make a Genesa Crystal Personal readings by Charlo “A Peek Through the Veils”

Craft and Information Tables Welcome call Aya @ 438-4534 to reserve a space

Come Celebrate With Us and take home some Free Medicinal Plants, Free Oak Trees, Free Fruit and Shade Trees

As an eco-feminist and a practicing medical intuitive for the past 25 years, Josephine Laing sees the emerging role of women in our culture as an essential element in our human transformation away from the dominator model of society into a golden age of peace which celebrates life in all of it’s astounding creativity and diversity.

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°° °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°° °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

Positive Possibilities Three, No, Four Lovely Ghost Stories by Josephine Laing

As I may have mentioned, I have psychic ability on both sides  of my family line. So, I grew up with the life-saving blessing of  premonitions and several other helpful paranormal experiences. For  my own part, along with my empathy, I’ve been blessed with a few very  loving visitations from those on the other side, those who have passed into the phase of life that we know of as death, those who  have dropped their bodies and are one with spirit.  I’d like to share  a couple of them with you now.

The first one that I’ll share happened when Frank and I were in  our late twenties. My dear Uncle Vernon had passed away on a Wednesday.  My older brother was informed and was asked to tell the rest of the family that the funeral would be on Saturday, down in Vernon’s home town of San Pedro.  Somehow, my brother forgot to call me up here in San Luis Obispo until Friday night.  This was a favorite uncle of mine, so I really wanted to go, to honor him. But,  I’d just put in a new garden and needed to arrange for it’s care as  we were planning to be gone for several days. Our animals would need  someone to look after them, the house was a wreck from the week of  work and we had no clean clothes.  So, somewhere around 2:00 a.m.  Frank and I finally got into bed after having attended to all of  these details. But, in order to make the 10:00 a.m. funeral, a five  hour drive away, we we’re going to have to get up at 4:00 a.m. so we  could get out the door shortly thereafter.Exhausted and buzzing from the evenings frantic preparations,  which came after an already long work day, I lay in bed dozing with  my eyes not quite completely shut.  Through that hypnogogic state, of  not fully asleep, nor fully awake, I became drowsily aware of a soft  glowing light right near my small bedside table. Slowly, the light  began to call me up toward consciousness and as my eyes began to open  a little bit more, I realized that it was my Uncle Vernon there,  smiling at me, so lovingly.  This woke me up a little bit more and I  lifted my head a little to get a better look.  He was wearing his tweed sport jacket and had his jaunty golf cap on, tipped off to one side of his head, like he always wore it.  He seemed to have green and blue colors around him and he seemed to be present only from the  chest up, like a living bust.  Now I was waking up!  Though still a  little bleary, I hoisted myself up onto one elbow and he smiled big  as life and said with a chuckle, “You kids stay home!  I know that ya  loved me. ” And then just as quick as that, he faded away and was gone.  I lay there astounded for a moment or two, but was really glad  for the message.  I rolled over, tapped Frank awake and told him to  turn off the alarm clock, that Uncle Vernon had just visited me and  told us to stay home.  Frank said, “Gladly,” and we both went back to sleep.  The next morning, we woke in time to call Aunt Rita and  explain that we wouldn’t be coming.  I told her about our situation  and about what Vernon had said.  She accepted the news graciously and  said that she’d give our love to everyone there.  Some of you may know that driving when you are badly sleep  deprived is very like driving drunk.  Reaction times are slower and  nodding off at the wheel can seriously endanger many folks on the  road. I think my Uncle Vernon came to me that night to save not only  our lives, but possibly many lives, and I’m very grateful to him for  it.  I’m sure it’s no small effort to reappear like that once you’ve gone.  I think it takes serious concern and lots of love.

This next story happened to the father of one of my best  friend’s.  He told it to me while we were all in High School. At the time this took place, he was studying to be a chiropractor, and he  had reached that part of his education where he was to begin his work  with cadavers.The event took place in one of those old colleges back east.   The classroom was on the second floor of an old brick building and  had windows that looked out into the tops of the nearby trees.  Each  student had been given a body to study.  The cadavers were on  separate tables and had been lightly draped with white sheets.  My  friend’s father had been told that the body he had been given was of a woman who had recently died in an automobile crash.  A he gently  lifted and peeled back the sheet he saw that she was beautiful and  young, maybe in her mid-twenties.   He was instantly overwhelmed and  pulled the sheet back up over her naked body and face as he reeled  with nausea. He didn’t think he could go through with it.He walked right over to one of the windows to try and calm  himself and gazed out into the green leaves of the trees with the lawn and college grounds beyond.  As he was looking out, he became  aware of a soft white light beginning to form among the nearby tree  tops.  It began to take shape and he saw that it was her, in a  flowing white gossamer gown.  Her long light brown hair played about  her face and she looked him deeply in the eyes.  She held his gaze for several moments, neither were smiling, just gazing into each  other’s souls.  Without words, she communicated to him that she had  purposefully left her body to science for a reason.  She explained  that she had gone to the trouble to do this so that he, himself,  could learn from it.  This was done intentionally by her in order to assist him, in the future, with the healing of other people whose bodies had experienced trauma.  People who could benefit from his help in healing properly.  She gave him her blessing and her love and  urged him to go on with this sacred act, which was so necessary for his education.  With that, she faded away. He stood there a moment longer, then he turned and with clarity and comfort, set himself to work.   René’ Descartes, one of the fathers of modern science said that  everything had to be provable and repeatable, in order to exist.   Unfortunately, this prevailing belief in our culture precludes a great many of these types of experiences and disregards them as false or else labels them as anomalies and then disregards them. So, even though a fairly significant percentage of our population, (including some of our own trusted friends or loved ones,) experience events like these, (or other paranormal experiences like the very common  deja vu,) somehow, we mostly still all agree to pretend that they  don’t exist.  But perhaps someday soon, we’ll all acknowledge the flaw in Descartes theory and start to wake up to and embrace our  whole true nature which includes our natural human capacity to sometimes experience events like these.

The third visitation that I’d like to share, happened to me late one night when I was about sixteen. I had been a misfit in the elementary school where my mother  traded her teaching skills for her children’s tuition. I hated the wool skirt and knee socks of our school uniform and always kept mine  bunched up or shoved down to get their itchy fabric away from my  skin.  My hair was thin and wispy and looked like straw and I was too  shy to have many friends.  Fortunately, a young boy in my class named  Ricky Swallow was similarly  left out of the “in crowd.”  He was a  little overweight and a bit too lively and candidly funny for most.   So he and I got to pal around a bit together.  The school had a music teacher who was a true delight.  She pulled beautiful four part harmonies from us students every year for  the school’s Christmas choir show.  During practice and performances  Ricky and I got to stand next to each other on the risers.  He in the  tenor section, me with the altos. Anyway, by this time, I hadn’t seen Ricky in years, but our former teacher was taking her new young choir students to perform at  the local Mortuary, Forest Lawn, near my family home in the North  Hollywood area.  Not only did I want to see her and hear all of the old songs, but I thought just maybe, Ricky would be there too, and he  was.  After the show was over, he and I stood out by the cars reminiscing and having one of those lovely long chats as everybody  packed up their things, locked up the buildings and left one by one.   Pretty soon, Ricky and I were the only ones left, so we thought  we’d better take off.  He hopped into his car and sped off down the hill and I got in mine. True to form, it wouldn’t start. So I got  out, wiggled some wires, rummaged around in the back, found some  Spray Start, opened the carburetor, sprayed it in, managed to get it  going, shut the hood and thought I’d better let it warm up awhile and  remember how to purr smoothly.  There was a really good song on the  radio, I think it was the Moody Blues, one of those long late night  radio treats that disc jockeys sometimes give.  So, I sat there listening and remembering fondly the evenings events and childhood  days gone by.  Then, it was time to go. So off, on down the hill I  went.   When I got down to the main gate, I was astonished to see that  it was closed.  The radio announcer had just said that it was past  midnight and there I was confronted with these ten or fifteen foot  tall vertical black metal fence spikes with little black metal flames or leaves adorning each one at the top, a virtually unclimbable  barricade, many hundreds of yards long.  The mortuary building, off  to  my right, was dark with only it’s porch lights on. The crypts and   mausoleum were up on the hill behind me, also all shut down, and I  was flanked on either side by literally hundreds of acres of manicured rolling hills filled with graves.  It slowly began to dawn on me the depth of  this tactical error that I had inadvertently made.  I sat there with my motor running and  the headlights on, wondering, really wondering, exactly what I should  do.  This was long before the days of cell phones and I couldn’t seem  to muster up the courage to get back out of the car. So, I just sat  there. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed some movement, way off to the left. I looked, and there in the pitch dark was a man, a  very elderly man, tall and thin, walking along the fence line.  He  steadily made his way toward the gate and as he came into the distant  light of the building far off to our right and then into the light of  my car’s headlights, I saw that he was wearing a formal tuxedo with  long tails, a starched white shirt and astoundingly enough, a top hat. Appropriate attire for an undertaker, perhaps a century ago. He walked  right up to the electric mechanism of the rolling gate, touched his hat in my direction and gave me a tiny upward wave of his  hand without looking at me, fussed with something, maybe pushed a  button, escorted the gate as it slowly slid open and then stood by  it’s side, waiting. Not knowing exactly what to do in a situation  like this, I gave him a little wave, also without looking at him, as  I drove on through and then headed directly for home.  Now, who he was, and what he was doing way off in the bushes,  in the dark, I don’t know.  Maybe he was an employee.  But I don’t  think so, I think he was an overseer of that sacred ground and came  forward to help maintain the peace, both in the cemetery and in my  heart.  And I am heartily grateful to him for it.

Okay, one more, a quick one.  This on happened in New Zealand.   Frank and I had just arrived in Wellington from the Ferry and hadn’t  yet rented a car.                 So we shared a taxi van with several other  travelers and set off to deliver all of us to our respective destinations. Frank and I had been availing ourselves of farm stays and home  stays and had arranged with an older woman named Sylvia.  She had  shared with us on the phone that she was looking for a way to make a  little more income and thought she’d try opening her home to  visitors.  We were to be her first guests.  As the cabby and I were busy rearranging and unloading bags  from his trailer onto the sidewalk,  Frank, alternating with a  stately elder gentleman, were shuttling our bags up to the front door of the house.  The man smiled and murmured a few words in my  direction as he gathered up our things and I looked forward to being  properly introduced at the door, once we were all ready to go in. When I got there, I was cordially greeted by Sylvia and she showed us  to our room. Frank went with her to see the rest of the house as I  excused myself to briefly freshen up.  Before I had made ready to  leave the room, Frank returned and said that the place was very nice  and that Sylvia loved tennis and was in the middle of watching a  game. I asked how her husband was and if Frank had enjoyed meeting  him.  He said, “No, Sylvia shared that her husband is dead. He and  their two teenaged children died in a car crash late one night the  previous year.”  I said, “Well, who was that man then?”  Frank asked  “What man?”  I went on, “The older gentleman who was collecting our  bags.”  Frank said he hadn’t seen anyone.  He went on to say that  Sylvia had shown him a photo of her family.  It was up in the  kitchen.  I went up and there he was, smiling at me with Sylvia and  their two children by his side.I suddenly knew that being as we were her first in-home-guests,  he had come to make sure that all was well before she embarked on  this new venture.  Frank and I had apparently passed his purview and  were welcomed by him into their home.

With love, only love, a very Happy Halloween, Dia de los  Muertos and All Saints Day to each of you.

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°° °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°° °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

28 October 2011 341 views No Comment

The Amazing Bioneers by Josephine Laing

Trip and Fall  by Josephine Laing

Positive Possibilities Falling In Love…Yet Again by Josephine Laing

I fell in love last night.  This was not the romantic type of  love between two people that is so often ripe with the promise of  sexual union. Nor was it likely to be the chummy light sort of  connection that men so often share which is typically based around a  common interest or activity.  No, this was much deeper than that. This was that amazing woman love, one of life’s great delights.  We  are so blessed to be able to jump into that wonderfully all  encompassing feeling that only women friends seem to be able to share. I had been in the Co-op, getting some groceries a few days before, and as I wheeled my little  cart past the bulk herb section at  the back of the store, there was a young woman there, busy with the herbs.  She was long and tall and quick to smile and very apologetic,  having six or seven jars of herbs out and occupying most of the  counter space.  I just needed one herb, goldenseal, the queen of  healers.  And I squeezed out a little spot to scoop and fill my  measured amount of the fine golden powder.  The young woman was  discussing some of the properties of the herbs that she was  purchasing with one of our co-op regulars who said, “You two should  meet.” So, we introduced ourselves.  I was curious what she might be concocting with such a great variety of plant healers.  With a little  flush of embarrassment and that quick and furtive smile, her arms flew up in confession as she exclaimed that she didn’t know anything  really about herbs, but that she wanted to learn.  My kind of girl!   So, I shared that that was exactly how I got started. And so it was, and in that very spot, the back wall of the Co- op, some twenty or thirty years ago. I had purchased a similar variety of roots and sticks and powdered leaves, getting about a dozen different herbs.  And they sat in my cupboards for a number of  years, tentatively coming out from time to time for a trial run.  And  one of those first herbs was goldenseal root powder, the very herb I  was buying the day that I met lovely young Paige.  Goldenseal has  since become such a love of mine that I carry a tiny jar of her most  helpful golden powder with me in my purse.  (Please see my Natural  Healing Disclaimer and Warning posted in my Positive Possibilities column before using any natural cures.)  Though she has many uses  that I won’t take the time to list here, I will say that goldenseal  is perhaps my primary first-aid herb.  I have found goldenseal to be  very effective for packing wounds, especially deep wounds, to help  stop bleeding and to prevent infection like tooth extractions. Goldenseal also soothes the sting and pain of injury.  And, she is  great, I mean really great on burns, even bad ones like second  degree. One friend of mine liberally sprinkled a badly burned foot  with golden seal powder.  She then placed her foot in a light weight  plastic bag to keep it dry and then submerged it in a pail of cool water until the pain subsided. She kept it clean and dry and wrapped  it daily with fresh sterile gauze, and reapplied the goldenseal powder from time to time.  With this as her only treatment, the wound  was largely healed in four days time. Our healing herbs which slowly and steadily support and build  the body have had their value diminished in western culture.  This is  not unlike us women who have also had our values diminished in  preference for the more masculine view of asserting ones self  physically into the other’s realm, both in the culture and in healing  practices.  But here, with the herbs, I digress, because this story  is not about the love that women can feel for herbs though we can and  often do so, it’s about the love that women can choose to let  themselves feel with other women.  All we need to do is to be bold  and let ourselves reach out and request them. So, back to Paige, my new love.  Here was this beautiful,  lithesome, budding herbologist standing before me and sadly, I was  running late and had to dash.  So, I said, “Why don’t you come with me and Frank to the movies Wednesday night?”  We had planned to see  “MissRepresentation” at the Fremont Theater.  It was a special showing to benefit the Women’s Legacy Fund, presented by the San Luis  Obispo International Film Festival.  This film is a deeply meaningful  and well crafted documentary about how women are misrepresented in  the media to the detriment of everyone who is exposed to this culture  of ours.  It showed interviews with young people who are totally fed- up with the whole body image baloney that Hollywood and advertising  companies continually spew forth influencing young minds into believing that this is the ideal.  By using some unattainable,  airbrushed and photo-shopped images of women for commercial purposes,  they create a trite and mindless value system along with massively widespread feelings of inferiority and debased self-worth especially  among the young women of the world, who are continually slammed with  this imagery. And it stunts the minds of our men too, crippling them to an emotionally juvenile state. And because the women have been so debased and thus disempowered, the men get to lead. This leaves our  world dismally in the hands of an adolescent masculine mentality. And it’s not good for any of us, male or female.  So we’ve got to stop it. I’m reminded of the Nestle boycott in the 1970′s.  Nestle was making infant formula for the third world, which was nutritionally  deficient and they knew it.  I stopped purchasing Nestle products then and there.  And peer pressure was a big part of the boycott.   People would say, “Why do you want to support them, don’t you realize that they are killing babies?”  Nestle had to back paddle for years  to regain consumer credibility.  And I don’t think that they ever  fully recovered.  We women are responsible for 86% of all purchases made in this country.  I could see something like the Nestle boycott  happening again in regards to all of the media and advertising  companies which cast women in a trite or unattainable light. It’s no wonder to me that years ago I spontaneously stopped shopping in regular stores and abandoned T.V. altogether, because it is truly pathetic out there.  I came away from the movie feeling that this film should be required viewing in every school in the nation.  Even better, let’s make sure it is seen by our sons and daughters  throughout the western world, or wherever our advertising media, television and film promoters may reach their many tentacled and  prying hands.So, after the movie, we were all excitedly talking about the importance and timeliness of these ideas while we drove another  friend of ours, Mary, to her home.  Mary had fallen in love with me right after we met, too.  She shared with me later that she had first realized this when she got to see the pure joy that I feel while dancing.  We had been at a Midsummer Night’s Dream party together, a  magical garden affair where fairies and musicians abound.  Our dear  mutual friend Susan creates this event at her home every year for all  of us to enjoy. This was Mary’s first time coming and she was so  delighted to see me, a woman with a less than perfect body size and shape, having so much fun twirling and reaching and lunging to the music, that she fell in love.  She has told me twice now that she thinks that a picture of me dancing should be in the margin of the dictionary, next to the word joy.  Isn’t that a great compliment. Naturally, I welcomed this love and invited her to slip into the warm bath of friendship and women’s circles that help to make up the really fun part of my weekends and evenings.  So now, Mary and I get  to spend a lot of good time together which we both love.  Easily in her fifties, Mary admirably and exclusively uses her bicycle for transportation.  She does this for many reasons: exercise, carbon footprint, expense, etc.  Since it had been raining off and on that  day, I had called and invited her to join all of us, and had offered  to give her a ride. Meanwhile, to my delight and surprize, I discovered that Paige lives only a few doors away. So, after we had returned from dropping  Mary off, I offered to walk Paige home.  She sweetly slipped her hand  into mine.  She had made and was wearing knitted palm mittens,  allowing her fingers to be free.  And off we went.  As we passed it,  I pointed out one of the gardens I help with on the corner.  It has seven baby fruit trees, all in their third year now, with most of  them starting to give a little fruit.  This garden also holds one of  my prides and joy, a fifty foot long sidewalk herbal apothecary. Mixed in with a variety of common landscape perennials are about twenty different medicinal plants all growing between the sidewalk  and the lawn.  I pointed it out as we happily chatted away.  Then, a  few steps further on, Paige stopped and looked up at the sky.  And  there, we both were surprised to see a beautiful white ribbon  undulating it’s way across the sky, like an aurora borealis,  magically getting brighter and brighter before our eyes.  Within a  moment or two, the quarter moon emerged from behind the moving cloud  revealing her mystery to us and we giggled with delight. Then we were at her front yard and Paige showed me their raised  garden beds, all ready to go with amendment and baby plants in  containers.  I couldn’t believe my eyes.  Here was truly a young  woman after my own heart.  I felt like Mary had.  Falling hard and  fast.  Then Paige took me by the hand again and led me around the  corner of the house, ducking under the branches of a low hanging tree  and there opening before me in the moonlit glow was a gigantic  parklike lawn, ripe and potentially ready for a garden full of fruit  trees.  Yippee!  (Landlord and tenants permitting, of course.)  Paige  thought it sounded like a wonderful idea.  And she led me to a lone,  mature fig tree whose sweet abundant fruit plopped softly into our  hands, bringing the luscious taste of late summer to our night softened lips. But, it didn’t stop there, beyond the lawn was a giant fully  mature mother oak tree, in all of her majesty, boughs spread wide and  high and low, heavy with acorns and with a deep litter of her leaves  blanketing the rain softened earth.  Tentatively feeling our way  among her roots in the dappled moonlight, Paige led me beyond the tree, to one last patch of lawn.  In the center was a low meditation  deck, a work in progress, being made free-form by one of her  roommates. There it was, right in the middle of this little private  lawn, snugly nestled between the oak and Garden Creek, bathed in it’s  own patch of moonlight.  Simply magical.  We laid down on our backs, head to head, on the damp wood and laughed and spoke of life’s  mysteries and the many promises of our human evolution and of the  golden age of peace which I feel sure that we are all on the verge of  entering.  And both of us could truly feel it in the deepest part of ourselves in that moonlit, rain-washed, star-clad night air. Frank and I had recently heard a talk by an intriguing man named Lee Carroll.  Did you know that twenty years ago, all of the  countries in South America had dictators?  I didn’t realize this, until he mentioned it.  And then, Lee reminded us, that they all now have presidents instead. I think that’s a pretty good sign.  Don’t  you?  Despite immediate appearances, it seems to me that we are  steadily heading in the right direction.  The Berlin Wall fell.  No one saw that coming. The inter-net has helped us to become close with everyone around the world.  How extraordinary is that!  Even corporations, in their mad dash for profits, now know that generally  speaking, war is bad for most businesses.  And now we are opening our eyes even wider to the need for women’s values and views in our culture and how we’ve all suffered for the lack of them. And there is still even more good news, 2012, the end of the  Mayan calendar, is not just a one day thing, it’s a thirty-six year  shift, and we are already sixteen years into it.  The ancient Mayans understood, and also so has a recent award-winning quantum-physicist,  that time is not linear, but is actually a circle.  And the Mayans  indicated that certain key moments on the circle of time allow for huge potentials in human evolution.  This thirty-six year span of time is not only one of those moments, but it’s the one that they  thought held the highest potential for the development of human consciousness.  And, amazingly enough, there are more people on the earth right now, then there have ever been on the earth through all  time.  In other words, we have all shown up for this big shift. Astronomically, very recently, our solar system has aligned  itself in the same plane as our milky way.  Now, that’s a pretty  amazing thing.  And last December 21st, on the winter solstice of  2010, we had a total lunar eclipse which meant that our moon was lined up with our earth, which was lined up with our sun, all on the  same plane with the rest of the planets in our solar system, which  have lined up with our galaxy, the milky way.  Many astronomers feel that this was a significant part of the big event that only happens  every twenty-six thousand years.  They call this event “the precession of the equinoxes.” And this precession is what the astronomers and creators of ancient calendars (Mayan, Vedic, Toltec,  Druidic, Aztec, Egyptian) were heralding.  Alignment.  Not the end of  the world, but a big shift in how we view the world, our sun, our  solar system and our galaxy. And I see this alignment with these heavenly bodies as if it’s  an alignment with our mother and father creators, majestic and  beautiful and each worthy of our love and respect.  My feeling is that this time is here with us now, to help us move beyond our  current world view which I think is not unlike one that an infant has  at the breast, squalling to suck it dry, loving the mother, but completely oblivious to the mother’s own identity, balance and  needs.  What I see is that we humans are finally leaving our  childhood and gaining our maturity.  And doesn’t it feel good to be growing up.  It’s what every child yearns for, to eventually have an  adult relationship with their parents. So Paige and I felt that all of this was truly worth celebrating and we couldn’t hold back our laughter as we laid there  wiggling with our arms and legs held high up into the night air with  glee.  And our sounds of pure joy rang throughout the neighborhood. Together we summoned forth that unstoppable nectar of joy, ever able to arise from the depths of womankind.  We are the bringers of life after all.  And I’ve heard it said that a joyous woman controls the energy of the universe.  Haven’t you ever noticed how a joyous woman turns heads, no matter what her age or body type?  Everybody wants  some of that good stuff. It’s love, it’s life!  It’s why we are  here, to find and give forth our joy.  So, naturally, Paige’s young male roommates, hungry to share in  what we had, were waiting on the back stoop to greet us and give us  warm hugs when time called us away from our magical hour.  And I’ve  been dying for a free moment to sit down and call her for two days  now, ever since I fell in love.  And why not?  Why not fall in love  with the joyous girl who is diving head first into herbs? And for that matter, why not love the older man who used to  always pump the gas into my little truck with a friendly joke and a smile?  Why hold back when there is so much love to be shared in the  world?  There is so much love to be enjoyed!   Ram Dass says that the doors to love open from the inside. Meaning that we, ourselves, hold the lock and key, and that anytime we want to, we can open the doors to our hearts and let the love flow.  So, why not set yourself free?  Follow your heart where she leads you.  Be bold and let yourself jump into love all over again  like my friend Mary did, and like me, with someone that you’ve just  met.  And let your own laughter ring from the boughs and clouds in the dark of night, just like Paige and Mary and me.

5 October 2011299 views2 Comments

To Be, or Not to Be…a Mom   by Josephine Laing

Positive Possibilities Oaks, Our Food Trees by Josephine Laing

Five hundred years ago, this area was one of the wealthiest in the world.  Of course, there wasn’t a monetary system, but the land itself provided the wealth.  And that wealth blossomed forth from the bosom of our oak trees.  And it still does.  These magnificent, beneficent beings live for three hundred or more years and offer a bounty of acorns from among their numbers every year.  We also have  the bounty of the ocean and back then the meadows and woods were teaming with wild game and birds of many colors.  Times have changed and our natural flora and wildlife populations have diminished significantly.  But our majestic old oaks still litter the ground each year with their rich fruit. Acorns are packed full of nutrition and provide 4% protein, between 4 and 20% fat (depending on the species) and a whopping 56%  carbohydrate. All of which are needed for healthy bodily metabolism.  In a good year, one tree will yield several hundred  pounds of acorns.  And, oak trees grow on almost every major  continent of the world. Acorns were a staple in the diet of the local Chumash and many  other of the first nation peoples.  When California’s original inhabitants would prepare acorns, they would first grind them into little bits with some of it as fine as flour.  Locally you can still come across their mortars on top of large granite boulders.  The women would grind enough acorn from their stored reserves to feed their families every morning.  Then they’d leach them to remove the tannins.  The people of the Sierra foothills, where sandy soils are common, would form a shallow basin near the shore of a creek or river  and line it with leaves.  They’d put their ground acorn in the basin  and then gently pour in water over their fingers.  Once the basin was  full, the water would slowly percolate through the leaves, down into  the soil, carrying the water soluble tannins from the acorn meal with  it.  The Chumash used a shallow basket suspended above the ground  with a reed framework for the same purpose.  Other tribes buried the  whole hulled acorns for several days in the soil beneath the water, right in the creek.  All of these methods of leaching would remove  the mildly toxic bitter flavor from the food. The Chumash would then place the wet acorn meal in finely woven sturdy water tight baskets.  They’d add a little more water and then  drop in nice smooth rocks, each with a hole at one end, which had  been thoroughly heated in the morning fire.  The hole allowed the  rocks to be easily transported using a wooden stick with a hook  formed at one end.  The hot rocks would instantly bring the wet meal  to a boil and the women stirred the contents with wooden paddles to  avoid burning their fine baskets.  Within moments, Viola!, there was  the morning’s porridge, soft enough for even the toothless old folks and the babies to chew.  The people would eat their acorn with  whatever else that they had on hand, be it roasted ground squirrels  or fish.  Everyone would start their day, most everyday, with this  nutritious meal, and then off they’d go about their business. The Dos Pueblos area of Santa Barbara had two very large  villages.  It is believed that there were a thousand people there,  living on both sides of the creek.  It was one of the largest  settlements in California.  And how could so many people living so  densely support themselves on the land within their immediate walking  distance?  You guessed it, acorns from oak trees, the staple of their  diet.  Of course they also ate other plant foods, fish and abalone. They gathered seeds from the fields into their baskets, which were  designed to allow them to harvest as they walked along. They ate the  Islay cherry (Prunus ilicifolia) which also had to be processed  before eating to remove it’s toxins.  And wild game was abundant. But their mainstay, which fed them every day, was the acorn.  It  being easy to gather, store and prepare. Learning about all of this fascinated Frank and I and we  decided to try and make acorn flour “the white man’s way.”  So, we  laboriously hand peeled them with sharp paring knives, or split each  one with a pliers and wrestled them from their hulls.  We ground them  in electric coffee grinders and dunked them in boiling water bathes  to leach them.  All of which took a tremendous amount of time and  yielded varying results. Then one day I just got fed up and went out back to the  concrete patio, swept off an area and hit one with a clean, hand- sized rock.  Presto!  The hull popped off and the acorn was reduced  to small chunks.  A few more handfuls of acorn, each getting a good  whack and I soon had enough for a nice meal.  We scooped that up into  a bowl and Frank finished it off into fine flour in the coffee  grinder.  We then found out that hot water locks the tannin into the acorn meal.

So, cold water does the better job for leaching acorn. Hoping to imitate the creek-side leaf-basin, I took a tea towel  and placed it in a colander and then filled it with my acorn flour.   I then partially submerged the colander, tea towel, flour and all in  a large bowl of water.  After an hour or so, I lifted up the  colander, letting the newly brown tannin filled water drain from the  flour through the cloth and refilled the bowl underneath with fresh  water.  I repeated that process a couple of times till the meal lost that black-tea-like tannin after taste.  Then it was time to make  biscuits, a-corn bread or pancakes, replacing the wheat or corn flour  in the recipes with the same quantity of acorn and reducing the  liquid in the recipe a little bit since the flour was already wet. Many of the first nation peoples stored their acorn in baskets in their homes or in caches up in trees lined with cedar leaves. These helped to keep the insects at bay and the hungry animals away.   But first, they would spread the acorn harvest out on mats on the  ground in the sun for a couple of weeks to dry the meat before storing them so they wouldn’t rot or mould.  Most would also hull the  acorns before storing them.  The people would do this by delivering a  well aimed blow to the base of an acorn which was balanced point end  down, using a small hole in a rock.  They would then dry the hulled  acorns a week or so longer.  Then they’d rub them in shallow baskets  to remove the papery brown seed coat from the fruit.  This allowed them to store only perfect acorns which were ready to quickly grind  up fresh into flour every morning. Frank and I use the guest bed under a sunny west facing window  to dry our acorn.  That way the critters won’t bother them.  We used  to use the back of our little black truck, it was so nice and hot.   But then the raccoons caught on to it and had several all night  parties in there, so we switched to indoors.  And he and I don’t need  several hundred pounds of acorn in the house, thirty or forty will  usually do.  So, we just store ours in the hull.  A friend of ours gathers her acorn in low boxes and baskets and then leaves them in  her car for a few weeks to dry.  I hear she makes a wonderful acorn  enchilada. Being as the Chumash had a diet rich in carbohydrates and  animal proteins with comparatively fewer high soluble fiber vegetable  and fruit foods, they needed to take steps to avoid constipation.   Because of this, they preferred the coast live oak (Quercus  agrifolia) for it’s high fat content.  And if needed, they used the bark from the coffee berry bush (Rhamnus californica,) as a tea, to  regulate their systems. But our modern diet is rich in fruits and vegetables, so, though it  has a relatively low fat content, Frank and I treasure the blue oak  (Quercus douglasii) for it’s sweet meat and mild level of tannins. Sometimes we only have to leach it once before cooking with it. We’re so lucky to have the blue oaks here.  Like many oak  species, they are endemic to our area.  Blue oaks grow only in  California and don’t appear anywhere else in the world.  All of the  oaks in Heilman Park, adjacent to Chalk Mountain golf course, are  blue oaks.  And the grove runs in a line from Atascadero to the  coastal mountain range.  Their leaves have a light blueish cast to  them and look like a cross between the loose lobed softer valley oak leaves (Quercus lobata) and the shiny, more leathery, cupped and  spiny coast live oak leaves.  So they are lightly lobed, mildly  cupped with an occasional spine and that blueish gray tint.  But all  oak acorns are edible and nutritious, so it really doesn’t matter. And we all need to plant oak trees too.  Every year, from my  stored reserves, I walk out into the wild places, and send my hiking  friends out too, with a pocketfuls of acorn to plant. In the past thirty years, living here in the city, I’ve noticed  the bird populations shift and change.  At first we still had Orioles  nesting in the yard.  Then a decade later, we had robins and  steller’s jays.  Then we got western scrub-jays and mockingbirds.   Now we only have the crows.  And we love the crows.  But, it’s the  jays who have always planted the oak trees.  They cache away their  larder in the ground, often forgetting where they’ve buried it. While the jays lived here, we had oaks popping up everywhere in the  yard.  It’s been five or ten years since they’ve moved on and so our  baby oaks have gone. Then in the fields and hillsides, the cows browse on the baby trees.  So we now mostly only have older oaks growing on our hills  and in our valleys. So, it’s a good idea to plant them.  Take a  walk, with a good stout stick, after a gentle rain.  Poke a hole about two or three inches deep in some nice soft soil where you could  imagine a tree, preferably on the far side of the fence from the  cows, and drop in an acorn.  Then go on, one pocketful at a time, to  plant yourself a hundred trees. And if you happen to be lucky enough to live near an oak.   Remember that lawns and gardens, as lovely as you may think they’ll  be under the shade of a tree, will kill an oak in just seven or eight  short years, bringing it’s centuries long life to an abrupt end. Because, oak trees can tolerate No Summer Water beneath their  boughs.  Moist soil with summer heat invites soil funguses which  thrive and choke the roots causing these majestic giants to buckle  and fall, long before their time, reducing their once life sustaining  branches to a quickly vaporized fuel for someone’s backyard bar-b-cue. Plant beneath the boughs if you must, but only so long as you  can leave that garden to dry all summer long.  Better yet, leave it  bare beneath, the easier to rake those excellent leaves to make your  compost or spread sheets onto which you can reach up to shake or  knock the branches with a pole and let the rain of plenty fall in the  form of acorns for you to dry and store and enjoy. Frank and I store our acorn in canvas grocery shopping bags.   We line them with cedar leaves and hang the strong bags full of acorn  on sturdy wooden coat hangers in the spare closet along with our  other stored foods and emergency supplies. It’s a joy to gently bump the plump swaying bags of acorn as we  reach in among the shelves for our dried beans and apricots sitting  side by side in neat quart glass jars.  And an even greater joy to  reach in for a couple of handfuls of the smooth round and pointy  acorns in their sleek, shiny hulls, taking them out for a good whack  on the patio, knowing that pancakes will soon be in the pan. So long as we all have oak trees nearby, we have no need for  food fears, because we will always have plenty.  Abundance is  nature’s way.  And our oak trees are treasures groves of food wealth  and health.Josephine Laing As an eco-feminist and a practicing medical intuitive for the past 25 years, Josephine Laing sees the emerging role of women in our culture as an essential element in our human transformation away from the dominator model of society into a golden age of peace which celebrates life in all of it’s astounding creativity and diversity.

Positive Possibilities Natural Healing Disclaimer and Warning by Josephine Laing

I need to make sure that everyone understands that I am not a licensed physician. I have not had any official training nor am I  certified or licensed in any form of alternative or complimentary healing arts services.  However, I am a person who has done years of  personal research and one who has had a fair amount of experience  with natural healing materials and methods. And, I am glad to say that I have been granted the right within  the First Amendment of our Constitution to freely share my  experiences and express my viewpoints on all matters of public  concern.  So I take the liberty to do so here in hopes that it may  help you as it has helped me.  However, pharmaceutical companies and  medical groups have made it so that I must legally give you the  following WARNINGS: Any healing modality, including standard western medical protocols in addition to natural therapies, can cause harm rather  then the benefit you seek.  Just like medications, sometimes herbs, foods, or other natural substances can cause allergic reactions or  they can have side effects which can be dangerous.  After all, some  individuals have been injured or even killed by ingesting  strawberries or peanuts.  So please understand that any of these  natural healing suggestions that I write about may be potentially  dangerous, or even lethal for healthy people and they may especially  be so for people who are ill.  Thus before you begin any healing  modality, I need to ask you to please consult a Medical Doctor. In addition, if you have been diagnosed with a disease, or if  you are ill, I must, for my own protection, insist that you Ask Your  Doctor First, before attempting any natural healing programs that I  may refer to in these articles.  But please remember that due to  their lack of experience and lack of education in natural healing  methods and herbal medicine, most Medical Doctors will probably  attempt to discourage you from trying these natural therapies. I would also like to mention that Naturopathic Doctors, Doctors  of Chiropractic and Doctors of Oriental Medicine are also licensed  physicians.  They are typically trained in a variety of healing arts  and natural healing modalities often including homeopathy or  herbology.  I have personally availed myself of the services of all  three of these types of complimentary or alternative doctors and have  generally found them to be kind, knowledgeable, patient,  understanding, dedicated and very helpful. Josephine Laing

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°° °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°° °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

7 September 2011410 viewsNo Comment