2013 Moon Festival

In traditional Chinese Culture dating back to the Song dynasty (960-1279), today is the Moon or Mid-Autumn Festival.  Today marks the full return of annual yin.  In Chinese Cosmology, it is possible to explain the movement of all things in terms of the years qi (pronounced chee -- no English word equivalent exists; qi is most often referred to as energy, however, this is not the full story) broadly viewed as a cyclical pattern of yin and yang which is easily seen when looking at the seasons.  Winter being the time when Yin (earth, mother, stillness, cold) is at its peak and yang is most diminished.  Summer being the time when Yang (fire, heaven, father, movement, heat) is at its peak and yin is most diminished.  The moon festival is the celebration and recognition that yin is the new yang, baby!  White is out, black is back.  

Farmers the world over are now harvesting the bountiful fruits of summer (yang).  The Moon Festival marks the time to take these fruits indoors for nourishment and storage in preparation for the big yin of winter.  Externally we are gathering and storing qi, but the Moon Festival also marks the time for us to recognize this change-of-the-guard internally as well.  

The roots of the fruits that will come to pass over the next several months have already been laid down via yang over the course of spring and summer.  The moon festival is the time to formally acknowledge black is back and yang aint no thang.  In other words, chill out, rest, relax, reflect.  In action, be more reluctant as opposed to relying on impulsive actions aimed at getting what you want.  What occurs over the next several months already has the momentum to carry itself through towards the ends that were clearly laid down while yang was growing and strong in the spring/summer.  Any amount of undue force exerted on circumstance from here on out will bring about conflict, disaster and perhaps even untimely passing (2013's Water Snake will bite if yang fails to rest).  

So if you have moon cakes, eat them today and nourish yourself with the great grounding yin of the moon.  No moon cakes?  No worries, simply take a bit of time and acknowledge that you actually don't have any control over the circumstances you find yourself in; that yang is great and all, but curled up with a warm fuzzy blanket on a plush couch with tea sounds like the better idea compared to a sweaty jog around the lake.  Put your feet on the ground.  In order to walk any path, your feet must first be on the ground. 

Chinese Astrology for Thursday, Sept 19, 2013 as interpreted by Liu Ming:

The moon is full. Today in the Chinese Almanac is called the Mid-Autumn (or Moon) Festival an important annual festival since the Song dynasty (960 and 1279). This full moon designates the return of annual Yin is in full swing. It is appropriate to raise a toast (unfiltered sake in a black bowl) to the moon and welcome her back to power. Thank her for recalling your spiritual aspirations and resolving the conflicts of declining Yang. Read her a poem or two. Medicinal baths and soaks work wonders. The day supports a new resolution about diet.  

Human Health

What does it mean to be healthy? 

After six years of self-reflection, study and experimentation in an attempt to discover what it means to be a healthy human being, I can finally say with certainty, I don't know. 

As it turns out, it is not possible to determine what health is without defining what we are as humans.  Since it is not possible to describe what we are as humans with words and solid concepts, it is therefore not possible to define what health is. 

Having that been said, there is one excellent measure of health.  One's capacity and ability to adapt and change along with the present moment.  If there is one constant aspect of life that we can all agree upon, it is change.  To the extent that one is able to change free from struggle and conflict is to the extent one is healthy.  A healthy individual moves as the circumstances move.  On the flip side then, ill health or dis-ease is characterized by solidity and rigidity, ie non-movement. 

As westerners and as Americans, we have been taught that through the accumulation of knowledge and skill, we can learn to be successful, healthy, and free.  In our culture, smart is the ability to show off one's extensive collection of ideas and skillful capacity.  Yet knowledge and skill have little relation to health.  In fact, it may be that the more knowledge one collects, the more difficult it is to adapt and change.  What good is being "smart" if knowledge collection makes it less possible to move/change/adapt? 

In reality though, I cannot speak for other's experience, only my own.  It is only I who can look inward to see if there is really any struggle or conflict in relation to the present circumstance.  And as you know little of my internal experience, I know very little of yours.  Therefore, only I can say if my actions or inactions are healthy or unhealthy. 

In which case, as a culture, it makes no sense to make a solid idea of what health and success are.  It is up to you, as an individual, to look inward at your own experience.  And if doing so is a big confusing muddle and you feel you need help in doing so... look not towards those who tell you they know what to do or how to do it.  Look not to the churches, to the healers, to the gurus, to the CEOs or the rich.  The people that tell you they know the way are simply trying to sell you something, or trying to make their delusions reality.  Look to the one's who change with the wind.  Look to those who ride life as though as though it is no big deal.  Look to those who adapt and let go with ease.  These are the people that can point in the right direction.  These are the people that we ought to look to as models for our newly emerging modern world-view.  And yet these people may have very little, if anything to say and nothing at all to teach... because it may be they know nothing at all! lol...

Smart is so overrated. 

Observation, Meditation

Life is so strange and beautiful in all its complex manifestations of simplicity.

I worry I may forget there is never anything to worry about. I long to connect with everything that I am already connected to. I exhaust myself in a struggle to gain that which I already posses. When the desire to change ceases, a different sense of aliveness is present.

"I don't know" may be the most powerful statement one can proclaim, and yet modern society, in an attempt to control everything, strives for mastery of knowledge.

Acting from a false concept of what we are, we meet life in an incomplete and divisive manner full of conflict and struggle. This struggle indicates there is something inherently wrong with the ground upon which we have built our ideas/concepts/truths. This ground is the concept of a uniquely separate, differentiated individual called "I." Upon the idea of "I" are constructed our individual realities based on knowledge, which seem very real as they are lent credibility by all others acting from the same false ground. Our personal false reality joins a collective false reality that feels real and impermeable.

To question this ground in thought and/or action is a challenge to most people's perception of reality and is therefore often met with immediate resistance. Most are not willing or ready to confront the possibility that they do not exist. Instead, we tend to spend our lives replacing the ideas built upon the false ground with a different set of ideas in the hope that this will alleviate the pervasive sense of "something is wrong, I must change." Be it fear of death or an addiction to struggle, few are willing to look critically at this false ground. Fewer still are willing to look at it with a perception free of all the ideas they have accumulated while believing themselves to be a separate self.

If one examines oneself with the intent to change the false notion of "I," frustration and confusion are bound to occur. To see that which is taking place in the present moment — which includes, but is not limited to the "I" masquerading as a false ground — requires observation of a different sort: observation without intent/focus. This observation cannot be classified as "my observation" or "your observation," rather it is simply Observation. We all have individual access to Observation, but it is not personal or divided.

Observation is always operating, but our belief and action from the false ground of "I" hinders (or even prevents) this type of observation from touching the conscious awareness of "I."

In the relaxation of all movement externally and internally, we may come to a point where the compulsion to change reality ceases and allows for Observation to touch the individual. This relaxation can be termed meditation. Meditation being performed with the "I"-driven intent to gain or change anything will only strengthen and more deeply solidify the idea of an individuated self and is thus not what is being termed meditation here. One cannot sit down to meditate in the hopes that it will bring about that which "I" wants. Meditation in the true sense is action, or inaction, wholly without motive for any outcome. Action without a past or a future.

A New Definition of Human Success

We in the western world commonly define life success through our capacity to access goods and services.  Money provides a unified system of access to goods and services and has become the most important of all commodities due to its function in providing said access.  Thus, the abundance of money in a person or group’s pocket has come to be equated to life success.  A lack of money is then equated to being unsuccessful and can lead to a devaluation of human life.

Besides human devaluation, there is another major problem with defining success through money.  Money, like all material resources, is finite; there is only so much to go around.  In order for one person to get money, he or she must take it from another; in so doing, robbing that person of their ability to access goods and services.  We spend most of our waking lives in an effort to take money from a person or group while thinking of more and more clever ways to do so.  We define ourselves as individuals by the means through which we take money from others, i.e. one’s job.  Consequently, equating money with success creates a competitive reality which divides humans from each other and forces them to compete for access to the worlds goods and services.  This atmosphere of competition breeds distrust, fear, hate, greed and loneliness as humans are constantly struggling against one another to be successful and survive.  When we come to the understanding that equating money with success ultimately divides humans against one another and creates a devaluing of human life, it becomes clear that as a society we need to redefine what it means to be a successful human being.  

How can we redefine what it means to be successful to allow full access to goods and services for all humans while maintaining, and even encouraging, trust and love between people?  If we define success in terms of how much of a finite material good an individual or group has, this will divide us against one another as there is only X amount of any material commodity to go around.  What would happen then if we defined success according to something that was infinite as opposed to finite?  

A human’s capacity to give is infinite.  Giving is not restricted to any material good or service.  The act of giving has a value which is not proportional to the thing which is given.  There is value in the act of giving itself, and our capacity to give is limitless.  What then would the world be like if success is defined by our acts of giving as individuals and as groups?  What if the act of giving became the new currency?  If acts of giving defined life success, then the greatest gift a person could give another would be to increase that person’s ability to give.  GDP (Gross Domestic Product) would become GDG (Gross Domestic Giving) as we shift towards measuring how many acts of giving we are producing as opposed to how much product we are moving.  Commodities would continue to exchange hands; goods and services would be abundantly accessible for all; a new incentive for the creation, advancement, and implementation of technology would arise.  To define human success through acts of giving would create an atmosphere of trust instead of distrust, love and compassion instead of fear and hate, generosity instead of greed, and community instead of loneliness.  

Imagine a world where we collectively derive meaning and purpose in life from our limitless acts giving.

Giving for a Living.  

Occupy Your Street

We try and drown our negative feelings in external experiences.  Anger, fear, pain, sadness, hatred.  We believe these feelings to be so overwhelmingly powerful that it is better to hide, bury, run, destroy them than to feel them.  So we go out for a night on the town, get drunk, watch a movie, eat until we cannot eat anymore, cut ourselves, go running, play a game, buy a toy, watch TV, surf the internet, call a friend, have sex, go to the gym, focus on the positive, spend money, make money, work, sleep, blame it on others, make others hurt...anything but feel what we are experiencing.  Anything would feel better, we believe.  Why not just feel what we feel?  Why not be aware of what is going on in our own minds and bodies.  We cannot control these feelings so does it make any sense to condem them? 

We are trying so hard to protect ourselves.  We work so hard and making life bearable.  We do not wish to be numb to life, numb to our feelings, but the fear of those feelings is so strong and overwhelming.  What if actually being present with our feelings and expressing them would help our lives be more bearable than it is when we are fighting them?

What if we all came together and made the intention to express our emotions?  What if we created a place where it was okay and safe to be afraid, to be sad, to be lost, to be angry, to have hate.  What if we witnessed each other feeling these emotions and gave loving attention to each and every one of those emotions, no matter the circumstance?  What would your life be like?  What would our world look like?