seventy-four years ago today, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the wake of WWII and the Holocaust… Eleanor Roosevelt—the principle architect of the declaration—understood and personified the power of wise leadership… she knew that the most effective way to lead is by example—by living our values… when we live up to the declaration’s ideals, more people can live in freedom, with dignity and agency, and share their gifts with the world… we know that respect for human rights is foundational for peace, justice, and security and that in this new millénium, we extend this declaration to be more inclusive and declare the rights of nature including all our relatives…
here’s a link to hear Eleanor read the eight page document: https://www.unmultimedia.org/avlibrary/asset/1093/1093412/
listen now to Yurii, head of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement:
“For decades, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights reminds us that reason and conscience, spirit of brotherhood in a large human family, equal and inalienable rights are foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. Now, in cold darkness at midnight, I must say the foundation is broken. Ideals of universal brotherhood and sisterhood are abandoned after dark temptations of nationalism and great powers megalomania. Welfare replaced with ugly weapons and serfdom of conscription. Deafness to calls for ceasefire and peace talks prolong bloodshed and devastation. But when we follow our conscience, we have a hope that in the world where everyone refuses to kill there will be no wars. So, in time of darkness let’s uphold light in our hearts and minds, freedom of conscience, human rights to peace and nonviolent way of life.”
may the the Universal Declaration of Human Rights be a global beacon – shining a light for dignity, equality & well-being for all and may we extend its reach truly to all as the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Nature…
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All the Hemispheres
Leave the familiar for a while. Let your senses and bodies stretch out
Like a welcomed season Onto the meadows and shores and hills.
Open up to the Roof. Make a new water-mark on your excitement And love.
Like a blooming night flower, Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness And giving Upon our intimate assembly.
Change rooms in your mind for a day.
All the hemispheres in existence Lie beside an equator In your heart.
Greet Yourself In your thousand other forms As you mount the hidden tide and travel Back home.
All the hemispheres in heaven Are sitting around a fire Chatting
While stitching themselves together Into the Great Circle inside of You.
WE ARE EARTH. JUST LIKE EARTH, OUR BODIES ARE 70% WATER, WITH THE SAME PROPORTION OF SALT AS THE OCEANS. OUR BONES ARE MADE STRONG BY LIMESTONE THAT COMES FROM PREHISTORIC SHELLFISH. EVERY ATOM OF OUR BODY HAS BEEN A ROCK OR A BUTTERFLY OR A DAISY OR A LION. WHAT WE CALL MOUNTAIN, AIR, AND OCEAN ARE THE BONES, THE BREATH, AND THE BLOOD OF OUR MOST ANCIENT ANCESTORS AND OUR FUTURE DESCENDANTS. WE BELONG TO EARTH.
let us come together in this moment of eternity from across the planet, our island home, to wage peace and take action for our earthmother, our one body, our home…
may we open to the complexity and mystery of our relationship with Earth and develop ourselves so that we can hold more of the whole and respond to life from that wholeness by connecting with the truth that we are one body, anyway we hurt mama gaia, we hurt ourselves and anyway we hurt ourselves, we hurt pachamama…
our earth mother’s heartbeat echoes through all our relations… feel the momentum building as more and more of us hear her call to rise up and stand together as one large orchestra playing a seamless symphony re-joy-sing in the harmony we embody as a beautiful wave now encircling the cosmos – peace prevails on earth, love is all there is… peace prevails on earth, love is all there is… peace prevails on earth, love is all there is… peace prevails on earth, love is all there is… yes, even in these painful, stretched to the max times at the ending stages of a long drawn out pregnancy, peace prevails in the core of the earth of our interbeeing…
join with me now in breathing deeply into the womb of interbeeing while placing a hand on your heart and with each deep breath, feel your heart, our one heart, opening a little wider re-membering we all belong to each other, each of our individual destinies is tied with our one collective destiny… to journey to the core of our interbeeing, to our heart of gold to be our original face of radiant love, dancing with rainbow mystery…
today’s pilgrimage continues a waging peace vigil which feels so right, so synchronous on both this 42nd anniversary of the death of john and bodhi day, the day of awakening and the day of a rainbow stretching across the river as i began ceremony…
in his honor, in honor of all our relatives, all awakened hours of this day and every day, i am imagining… everyone living in the moment… letting it bee… looking from our real eyes and real-eye-sing we are one…. all our relations living in peace… all of us dreaming the same dream into reality… sharing the world freely and generously… knowing no one is free, happy, healthy until we all are…
what a legacy! how fully you served in your four short decades on this planet before being cut down so abruptly forty-two years ago… thousand fold thanks, dear poet rebel with a cause… thousand fold thanks, cosmic ambassador of peace…
blessed bee!
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Imagine
“Imagine there’s no heaven It’s easy if you try No hell below us Above us only sky Imagine all the people living for today Imagine there’s no countries It isn’t hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too Imagine all the people living life in peace, you You may say I’m a dreamer But I’m not the only one I hope some day you’ll join us And the world will be as one Imagine no possessions I wonder if you can No need for greed or hunger A brotherhood of man Imagine all the people sharing all the world, you You may say I’m a dreamer But I’m not the only one I hope some day you’ll join us And the world will be as one”
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may we all awaken as Buddha did on this day to a new understanding of reality and the meaning of life and real- eyes what we’ve been seeking has been here all along, right in front of us, in our own backyard, in the core of our beeing… as simple as it is to meet each moment, it’s not so easy to meet each moment openly, with beginner mind, without preconception and what a joy to experience this liberation… may we all shine on, like the moon and the stars and the sun…
welcome to the final full moon of this calendar year and the first full moon since he eclipse season and what a potent dragon moon in gemini conjunct with mars and venus so that you may well be joining me in feeling the electric twins energies of shaking things up simultaneously with the eclipsing energies of overwhelm as we come deeper and deeper into the culmination of so many cycles in this turn around the sun of transformation moving from death to resurrection…
so, let’s come together in these oh so powerful energies to cultivate bodhicitta, the awakened heart, by joining our hands and feeling the love we are passing from one to another to another and with each passing of this peace passing all understanding, the love quickens and progresses geometrically as we slow down syncing in rhythm with our earth mother as we breathe her deeply into our bellies radiating her unwavering support into all the trillions and trillions of wild cells of our one body…
and now, let us call in and thank all ancestors as we take our seats around the fire with the seven generations that have been and the seven generations that will be tuning into our one heart of boundless love and listening for what our awakened heart wants to tell us in this moment… breathing in suffering, breathing out liberation… breathing in dying to the old, breathing out rising into the new…. breathing in release, breathing out celebration….
and if we are called to do so, release with love any hurts, things that do not nourish any longer into the fire thanking these teachers for all they have contributed… when the last peace is released into the fire, embrace a bit of the sacred fire and bring it to the heart igniting a re-membering of all the love we are and how that is to inform, ensoul our every breath, our every moment of eternity…
may we be filled with lovingkindness and compassion, may we be well, may we be peaceful and at ease and may we be free to be the fullest expression of our awakened heart one with the tides of whatever is…
now that we are of one heartmind, i invite our taking a few moments to gather and collect our attention through the art of inquiry, asking repeatedly the same question ( a la A H Almaas) leaving empty space following the asking of each quest ion for us to listen deeply as our deep breaths through the core of our being take us more and more into the stillpoint, the great silence, the great cosmic womb, birthing circle of creation…
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tell me a way you experience the deep radiance of the present moment…. thank you…
tell me a way you experience the deep radiance of the present moment…. thank you…
tell me a way you experience the deep radiance of the present moment…. thank you…
tell me a way you experience the deep radiance of the present moment…. thank you...
tell me a way you experience the deep radiance of the present moment…. thank you…
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as we rest in the vast spaciousness of this moment, the only moment, may we look through the eyes of the stillpoint of creation seeing the beauty and love and gratitude and wisdom and wonder before us behind us beside us below us above us encircling us in an ever-widening ring of compassion radiating out and in in rhythm with the breath…
“may the tide that is entering even now the lip of our understanding carry you out beyond the face of fear may you kiss the wind then turn from it certain that it will love your back may you open your eyes to water water waving forever and may you in your innocence sail through this to that”
~ Lucille Clifton ~
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blessings beloveds, safe passage on the deep sea journey…
awakening butterflies
greet this moment of eternity
breathe in and breathe out
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animated motion
in still wave’s sacred center
breathe in and breathe out
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walking through shadows
surrendering to the unknown
breathe in and breathe out
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enter deep mystery
trustingeverything is unfolding for our benefit
breathe in and breathe out
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a wing, a prayer
carrying us all to there
breathe in and breathe out
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light, radiant light
at the end of each dark night
breathe in and breathe out
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we are home sweet home now
welcome to the other shore
breathe in and breathe out
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always breathing in and breathing out through the core… deep peace of the flowing river…
as we are now in the radiation of the full moon in gemini, let us come together with singing in the spirts, the ancestors who are with us always and feel their presence as we gather round the holy fire of inspiration looking deeply into the anima mundi, great mystery seeing the shimmering thread calling out to each of us to pickup and weave into the seamless world wide web of life, the circle that can never be broken irrevocably…
inspired by the fire, our roots deeply grounded in earth with our branches reaching high into the sky, let us dive deeply into the ocean of being to re-member, to member again a cosmos of heart consciousness, of harmony and peace and compassion and wisdom as we swim in the rhythm of waves that echo to us when we listen that the cosm is a vast spaciousness of original blessing supporting us unconditionally with an ever expanding wingspan…
looking into the fire, i see and hear the world restored, radically regenerating as we midwife the rebirthing of a world where rights of nature is the only law, living each moment as sacred ceremony in right relationship with all creation is the way of this world where we are liberated to be whole with our muscle for pushing, so important in birthing, exercised moment by moment to see and be the truth, to tell the truth of every walk of life so that we live in balance, in interdependence…
and what is the world you see forming and hear breathing when you look into the fire of inspiration and exercise the birthing muscle of pushing to accomplish what may have falselyseemed an impossible and overwhelming task until you do it and real-eyes nature has the final say?
right now, it’s like this in this moment of eternity, this moment of celebrating the astonishing light of our interbeing calling us to shed tight shoes and girdles and shells that constrict… calling us to an inner journey of re-membering the dream of the beautiful world we are which reminds me of a divine dream on this very day eight years ago when i had just moved into an unknown space… it came in the wake of leaving my motherland and returning home to a new space i barely know… in the dream i am so very pleasantly surprised to find my new home is not the small space i remembered but a far more expansive space that has more than enough room, a space filled with treasures and natural delights, a pond of flowing water filled to overflowing with honu which i love as they are endangered and here they are in abundance…how amazing the weaving of grandmother spider – it seems this dream was foreshadowing the space where now i dwell with today marking the one turn around the sun of being here… thanks to all the beautiful beings walking this path of heart, inspiring me and all others… today is a day of wu wei complete with our first snow, a perfect backdrop for listening deeply to the wisdom of the keeper of the sacred white buffalo calf pipe:
“I, Chief Arvol Looking Horse, of the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota Nations, ask you to understand an Indigenous perspective on what has happened in America, what we call “Turtle Island.” My words seek to unite the global community through a message from our sacred ceremonies to unite spiritually, each in our ways of beliefs in the Creator.
We have been warned from ancient prophecies of these times we live in today, but have also been given a vital message about a solution to turn these terrible times.
To understand the depth of this message, you must recognize the importance of Sacred Sites and realize the interconnectedness of what is happening today, in the reflection of the continued massacres that are occurring on other lands and our own Americas.
I have been learning about these important issues since the age of 12 when I received the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe Bundle and its teachings. Our people have strived to protect Sacred Sites from the beginning of time. These places have been violated for centuries and have brought us to the predicament that we are in at the global level.
Look around you. Our Mother Earth is very ill from these violations, and we are on the brink of destroying the possibility of a healthy and nurturing survival for generations to come, our children’s children.
Our ancestors have been trying to protect our Sacred Site called the Sacred Black Hills of South Dakota, “Heart of Everything That Is,” from continued violations. Our ancestors never saw a satellite view of this site, but now that those pictures are available, we see that it is in the shape of a heart and, when fast-forwarded, it looks like a heart pumping.
The Diné have been protecting Big Mountain, calling it the liver of the earth, and we are suffering and going to suffer more from the extraction of the coal there and the poisoning processes used in doing so.
The Aborigines have warned of the contaminating effects of global warming on the Coral Reefs, which they see as Mother Earth’s blood purifier.
The indigenous people of the rainforest say that the rainforests are the lungs of the planet and need protection.
The Gwich’in Nation in Alaska has had to face oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain, also known to the Gwich’in as “Where life begins.”
The coastal plain is the birthplace of many life forms of the animal nations. The death of these animal nations will destroy indigenous nations in this territory.
As these destructive developments continue all over the world, we will witness much more extinct animal, plant, and human nations, because of humankind’s misuse of power and their lack of understanding of the “balance of life.”
The Indigenous people warn that these negative developments will cause havoc globally. There are many, many more original teachings and knowledge about Mother Earth’s Sacred Sites, her chakras, and connections to our spirit that will surely affect our future generations.
There needs to be a fast move toward other forms of energy that are safe for all Nations upon Mother Earth. We need to understand the types of minds that are continuing to destroy the spirit of our whole global community. Unless we do this, the powers of destruction will overwhelm us.
Our Ancestors foretold that water would someday be for sale. This Prophecy was hard to believe! The water was plentiful, pure, full of energy, nutrition, and spirit. Today we have to buy clean water, and even then the nutritional minerals have been taken out; it’s just clear liquid. Someday water will be like gold, too expensive to afford.
Not everyone will have the right to drink safe water. We fail to appreciate and honor our Sacred Sites, ripping out the minerals and gifts that lay underneath them as if Mother Earth were simply a resource, instead of the source of life itself.
Attacking nations and using more resources to carry out destruction in the name of peace is not the answer! We need to understand how all these decisions affect the global nation; we will not be immune to its repercussions. Allowing continual contamination of our food and land is affecting the way we think.
A “disease of the mind” has set in world leaders and many members of our global community, with their belief that a solution of retaliation and destruction of peoples will bring peace.
In our Prophecies it is told that we are now at the crossroads: Either unites spiritually as a global nation or faced with chaos, disasters, diseases, and tears from our relatives’ eyes.
We are the only species that is destroying the source of life, meaning Mother Earth, in the name of power, mineral resources, and ownership of land. Using chemicals and methods of warfare that are doing irreversible damage, as Mother Earth is becoming tired and cannot sustain any more impacts of war.
I ask you to join me in this endeavor. Our vision is for the peoples of all continents, regardless of their beliefs in the Creator, to come together as one at their Sacred Sites to pray and meditate and commune with one another, thus promoting an energy shift to heal our Mother Earth and achieve a universal consciousness toward attaining Peace.
As each day passes, I ask all nations to begin a global effort and remember to give thanks for the pure food that has been gifted to us by our Mother Earth, so the nutritional energy of medicine can be guided to heal our minds and spirits.
This new millennium will usher in an age of harmony, or it will bring the end of life as we know it. Starvation, war, and toxic waste have been the hallmark of the vast myth of progress and development that ruled the last millennium.
To us, as caretakers of the heart of Mother Earth falls the responsibility of turning back the powers of destruction. You are the one who must decide.
You alone – and only you – can make this crucial choice, to walk in honor or to dishonor your relatives. On your decision depends the fate of the entire World.
Each of us is put here in this time and this place to personally decide the future of humankind.
Did you think the Creator would create unnecessary people in a time of such terrible danger?
Know that you are essential to this world. Understand both the blessing and the burden of that. You are desperately needed to save the soul of this world. Did you think you were put here for something less? In a Sacred Hoop of Life, there is no beginning and no ending.”
the awakening of the rainbow light of awareness is the beautiful moment when the central sun breaks free within illuminating the soul’s journey on the pathless path…
today begins in a soulful space of re-membering dreams/waking reality of buddhic beings filling life so richly with their unbounded, joyful exuberance of peaceful presence, yes, as the outer day breaks so, too, is the inner day with a dream of my golden retriever bounding wildly through the front door in all his joyous puppy dog energy, yes, riever had come home after being away for 33 years, he had come home to the heart and i re-member our long swims in the sea and wandering in wonder on the beach sands of existence and my longing to live as simply as he which totally mirrors today as i spend so many inner moments of eternity with another golden retriever though this one is of the two egged variety,,, and a little jingle arises in me with the rising of the outer sun…
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live simply, live free, live in open, spacious reality
die to the old, birth in the new
enter the cave of dreaming womb, transmuting seed into radiant bloom
flowering now in a garden of delight, greeting this day of joyous light
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i so love dwelling in this spacious field of gold rainbow light and receiving this gift of a golden key of life – to live simply, to live free, to live in open, spacious reality – which has been re-joy-sing me all day long prompting the re-membering of an old shaker song arising from the same open source…
“‘Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free, ’tis the gift to come down where we ought to be, and when we find ourselves in the place just right, ’twill be in the valley of love and delight. When true simplicity is gained to bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed, to turn, turn, will be our delight till by turning, turning we come round right.“
on this anniversary of the twenty-sixth moonth of birth, thank you, chase the rainbow, for stopping the world and inviting our meeting each moment fully, greeting each moment with aloha spirit and staying nestled in downy nests in the dream cave of beloved grandmother spider where in the spaciousness of timelessness we are given the gift of co-weaving the world with wisdom and wonder… blessed be…
“let tenderness pour from your eyes, the way sun gazes warmly on earth”
~ Hafiz ~
synchronisticly, Oregon’s state logo, She Flies with Her Own Wings, is a perfect turn of phrase for this moment of eternity when we are poised to fledge, to take flight into an openhearted consciousness… this moment is also one of slowing down, turning inward and deepening into the watery depths taking this moment to bathe in the illumination of the central sun within, and luxuriate in her nourishing radiance…
like my state and you, this moment i’m flying on inner wings across a timeless landscape drawing down and up the energy of the self organizing intelligence of the cosmos, of the implicate order, to open our one cosmic heart ever wider to the flow of compassion and lovingkindness that is the very air we breathe…
will everyone join in a moment of gathering the quintessence and our attention and intention in a moment of silent metta, lovingkindness, emanating and radiating from the deep inner ground of being?
may we return to this mantra in sync with our ultradian rhythms which occur every ninety minutes or so and harmonize our nervous system with its natural healing cycle…
may we all be filled with lovingkindness
may we all feel safe and at ease
may we all accept ourselves just as we are
may we all be deep peace
how delighted am i to continue wandering in wonder and awe in the outer and inner dream caves, the stillpoint of creation, the silence of the tiny space of the heart that is breaking wide open in this beautiful moment of presence, of be here now, now here, no where, everywhere in the timeless zone where we are all gathered in the one sacred heart out beyond and deep within listening to our sacred soul song…
“Our greatest endeavor in this life must be to make ourselves irreplaceable, so that no one else can fill the gap that will be left when we die. Each of us is unique and irreplaceable; our soul that is, not simply our life.”
~ Miguel de Unamuno ~
welcome to one of my favorite of the moons – deepening december where we extend our roots ever more deeply into the earth and sky and soul and spirit of our interbeing…. today’s picture honors a wise elder who transitioned three years ago on the day before the day of mourning/thanksgiving day in the usa… known as a “Living Treasure” by her tribe, the Confederated Tribes of Siletz, and as a “Living Cultural Legend” by the Oregon Council of the Arts, Grandmother Agnes Baker-Pilgrim as an ambassador for our earthmother touched and touches the lives of people from many lands, helping us remember sacred ways of living… almost eight years ago, a dream took me on a mission to gather sacred water to anoint all bodies of water i met along the path reminding me of Grandmother Aggie, listen now to this irreplaceable soul’s message from eight years ago…
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“I’ve been talking about Water around the world for about 15 years.
The Creator called upon me to be a Voice for the Voiceless and for a long time I didn’t know what that meant. But then I hit upon that one of those, that needs our voice, is Water.
And spirit said, all humans came from water in the amniotic sac of our mother’s womb and that Water is our first medicine. We are to take care of it and guard it . Not just for now but for seven generations to come in the unborn.
Water is very sacred. We are all born in water. We have an obligation to take care of it.
75% of our bodies are made of water. There’s water in our blood, water in our tears, water in our spit, and water in our brain. The brain has zillions of cells and each one needs to be coated with water. The elements that are in good water are what we need to oil our joints. If you’re an elder like me you listen, so you can have those elements flowing through your body.
And I found out water can hear. So talk to the water inside of you and thank it for your life. When I use water — whether I’m drinking it or cooking with it, taking a shower, washing my hands, washing my clothes, brushing my teeth of flushing the toilet… Wherever I use water, I bless it.
Ibelieve that if you do a ritual with water every morning and thank it for your life – even if you do that for two weeks – you will find a difference in your body.
Here I am going on 90 years. Water keeps me agile and strong and well because when I drink my water I tell it, “I love you! Do whatever you need to do to take care of my body. You know your job and I will always bless you.”
When I’m standing in the shower, “Bless me. I love you.”
When I’m driving my car over a bridge of water anywhere in the world I say, “Bless you water. Thank you for all that live in you and drink from your banks.” And I thank it in that way.
When I’m in an airplane and I look out the window and see lakes and rivers and oceans, I bless the water. I thank it for taking care of the habitat and the whales and all those that are out in the water. Us humans, us two-leggeds are the caretakers of this planet. It is our job.
A long time ago the Beloved Creator woke me in the Dreamtime and he said, “Go and be this Voice for the water. Tell everyplace you go about water, that it is our first medicine.”
Everybody has to take care of the water. Not for the adults so much, but for the children that are going to come after you and for the next seven generations of the unborn.
Water should be everyone’s concern. Without water we all die. All life dies. Water is precious.
I pray that whoever sees this, that you too will take care of your Mother Earth wherever you live and you will care for the water that surrounds you and the water that is within you.
Thank water for your life.“
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in this moment of eternity sharing the astonishing light of interbeing, there is another to be honored for sixty-seven years ago today, Rosa Parks, another wise and adventurous rebellious spirit stood in a state infamously known for racism and acted from a stance of quantum love holding nothing back when she refused to move to the back of the bus, an action which galvanized a yearlong community boycott and ushered in a new chapter on the freedom road…
courageously asserting and honoring all peoples’ inalienable rights, Rosa was not the first to be arrested on a bus nor was it her first act of resistance against second-class citizenship; Rosa symbolized the black community’s refusal to be pushed around. Her aim was both local and global – to end all oppression. 382 days later, Montgomery buses were integrated and a young Baptist minister, Martin Luther King, Jr would emerge as the leader of the civil rights movement inspiring us to keep moving onward and reminding us that only light drives out darkness and only love drives out hate… thousand fold thanks and deep bows for all the irreplaceable souls who listen deeply and follow their weird, their genius and weave a culture of care and compassion, a world of peace built on justice and guided by love…
