Song of the Trees

We just had an ice storm here in Carbondale, leaving much of the region coated in a sheet of clear ice. Luckily, the blacktop stayed warm enough to prevent too much driving difficulty in the city. But the freezing rain transformed the entire region into a beautiful ice sculpture.

I can't help but notice that my ability to resist the cold continues to improve. It's not perfect -- when I'm feeling very drained emotionally and physically, I still get almost as cold as I used to. But when I'm feeling good, I want to play outside in the cold like a kid again! Today I spent a good deal of time walking around in the fog that accompanied the melting ice. I often pulled my hood down so that I could enjoy the rush of the cool air on my face and through my hair. And my feet are halfway to becoming Hobbit feet! Even in sandals and a single pair of socks, I felt more than warm enough in the near-freezing weather. A year or two ago, finding such joy in a frozen landscape would have been unthinkable. But this winter, enjoyment of the weather has been the norm -- and today was no exception. I even played around in it a bit, stomping on ice chunks and pulling sheets of clear ice from nearby objects just to toss them as far as I could across the grass. It feels so good just to let loose and be myself again!

I still have my tough spots in life -- slow cash flow, slow progress in my journey toward physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health -- but on the whole, I feel like life is a gift again. So what if I'm surrounded by an empire of death consciousness... the Earth itself is still a wonder to behold even in the midst of it all, and I can feel the life slowly but surely reawakening in me.

We'll have our Spring soon enough... in the meantime, I might as well enjoy the chill of Winter.
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So there I was, a victim of my own misguided emotion-binding spell, unable to accept and experience my own feelings. It wasn't a good place to be, to put it mildly. But now comes the fun part -- healing!

As with other aspects of my healing, I felt it starting when I first became involved in activism. I couldn't help but be emotional at the sight of the planet's destruction, and I couldn't help but express my feelings on the issue even when doing so was considered inappropriate to the point of incurring the wrath of the State. I truly cared about the Earth -- and my feelings on the subject soon became clear to all who knew me.

But that only worked up to a point. Soon enough, the tables turned, and activism served to perpetuate my supression of genuine emotion. With the fate of the Earth supposedly in my hands [ah, what youthful arrogance], there was no place for any feelings of fear or despair that might slow down my efforts. I just had to get the job done -- and force myself to feel whatever it took to do it.

So, I was stuck just one small step closer to health. Then, I came upon my healing studies. For most of my year at the healing school, this emotional rigidity persisted. Then, when we actually explored the Rigid character structure, I really started to feel all of those emotions that I'd held back for so long. Anger, fear, sadness, even love and happiness all started flooding back into me in fits and starts. They had always been there, and I had always known it, but they were so terrifying to me that I would never allow myself to really FEEL them.

That was a big breakthrough for me. Now, I'm going through another one as my physical body slowly starts to recover from the effects of having the life choked out of it by my own defenses for a good ten years. As with all healing, it's a long and tumultuous journey, but I can already feel myself loosening up and letting my true self shine through.

So how does this relate to healing the planet? I've got a better question -- how could it NOT relate?

Number one, this is already starting to make my life SO much more personally fulfilling. I actually get to be myself now, even if I'm afraid other people will find it "totally inappropriate." It also allows me to help others and the planet because I actually FEEL like it, not because it's the proper thing to do. Oddly enough, the more my heart's in it, the more I get done too.

Number two, it lends me one more insight into the nature of healing and the human heart. If I can unbreak my own heart, I'm well on the road to helping others do the same. If we can all reclaim our personal power and feel good about ourselves, we'll stop believing the lies of a system that tells us that we can get our sense of fulfillment by consuming, exploiting, and polluting the planet.

So there you have it. If I can turn a human being into a emotionless machine, then I can surely breathe life back into that machine. Once I do this for myself, I can help others to do the same. And then, the days of the insane cyborg death machine that is today's society will be numbered.
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Here's the latest on Stage Number 47 Million of my effort to heal myself and thus also learn how to heal the planet:

When I was going through adolescence -- sometime between the ages of 10 and 14 -- I had what I feel is an uncommon experience. Simply put, I consciously willed myself to stop having emotions.

For most of us, it's easy to believe that it was the world that "made us" shut down our emotions. Maybe someone hurt us a long time ago and we started shielding our heart for fear of another betrayal. Maybe we felt an impulse that we thought wasn't appropriate and held back our true feelings because of it. Whatever the details were, most of us believed that it was the world's fault -- that something bad happened to us, and that the bad event was what "made us" guard or hold back our feelings.

I blamed the world in this way for the longest time. However, a little self-exploration eventually reminded me that it had been a conscious choice on my part. By the time I'd reached adolescence, I'd watched plenty of sci-fi movies with superhuman robots that felt no human emotion. As my feelings churned out of control, I would often sit alone trying to figure out what to do about it. One day, I decided that I would will them to go away entirely so that I could become a robot.

It wasn't as vivid or exciting as my lifelong Superman fantasies -- but for better or worse, it worked. Even in that moment, I felt my emotions pull back a bit. Over the next few years, the process continued. Even as my inner turmoil increased exponentially, it was always held back, kept under control so that I wouldn't be further paralyzed by anxiety or lash out in a moment of rage. There were still some moments in life when I felt safe about having feelings -- during computer games, tv, movies, the better moments with family and friends -- but on the whole, I had succeeded in holding back my emotions even from myself.

On an energetic level, I had basically gutted myself. There were other problems going on at the same time, but when it came to holding back my genuine feelings, the front aspects of my second, third, fourth, and fifth chakras were simply crushed in the process. Once the choice was made, it was no longer a conscious choice -- I literally COULDN'T feel or communicate in an authentic, personal way anymore, even if I wanted to.
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Now that Yule [aka Winter Solstice] has passed and the days are growing longer, it's time to start looking toward the coming Spring. Last year's life cycle has left many seeds in the soil, waiting for the right moment to sprout. What are those seeds, and how can we prepare them for the coming season of growth and development?

In my own life, at least two things come to mind: permaculture and my writing.

While I was working at Rosetta yesterday, I read a nice little book called "Permaculture in a Nutshell" by Patrick Whitefield. His examples of permaculture mostly included animal and grain foods that I consider inedible to human beings, but even so, I felt he provided a wonderful introduction to the basic concept of permaculture.

Reading this book renewed my inspiration for permaculture. WE CAN DO THIS!

We can create human societies that draw their inspiration from ecological systems and work in harmony with our living Earth rather than seeking to dominate and consume. We can organize ourselves according to bioregions rather than random political boundaries scribbled on a map by some conquistador to divide and conquer. We can start by doing 'ecological restoration' on our own inner terrain through a live foods diet, energy-conscious exercise such as t'ai chi and yoga, and healing work. We can expand this transformative work into our communities through social and ecological re-organizing -- creating the organs, the body of a free, cooperative, ecological society.

Even as the upper levels of today's political and economic hierarchies make their final power play to take over the world, we can grow a new society from the ground up and unseat the dominators before they even know what hit them.

And it starts here, now, with us.

I don't know how yet, but this year is going to be a permacultural year for me. I'm going to work within my local community to develop a permacultural movement. It's going to take me time to figure out the details, but mark my words - as this bioregion awakens from its winter slumber, the seeds of permaculture and bioregionalism will sprout here just as surely as all of the other seeds in the soil.

Look out, minions of death consciousness - your days are numbered! Life itself is about to rise up in defiance of your empire! Muhuahahaaa...

Speaking of all of that, the other big seed that is starting to germinate in my life is my writing. By this point, my acquaintences and loved ones must be wondering what happened to my aspirations to be a writer. It's been years now, and still no luck on completing my first book. Have I given up? Has my professional writing career ended before it even began?

If you've asked yourself these questions, take heart! Don't be fooled by appearances. The experiences of the past several years have sown the seeds of my current projects. This fall and winter have offered me the final moments of rest beneath the soil as I've prepared myself for the coming Spring.

Before, it took incredible effort for me to write. My sense of creative vision was so powerful that I could barely stand NOT writing, but I couldn't focus my thoughts and wasn't sure that I could convey them properly. Now, the words are starting to flow like the first streams of water bursting through a crumbling dam. To give you an example of this, I recently wrote an entire article for a magazine in a one or two hour sitting and sent it off to the publisher that same day. In the near future, there will be more articles - and not one, but TWO books.

So what is this second book? I've been working on the non-fiction Warrior Healer book for a long time. Now, I've begun work on a fiction piece that I may even complete before the non-fiction one is published. The current working title is "The Warrior Healer: Basic Training", and it's the first in a trilogy of Warrior Healer fiction.

Remember my post earlier about telling stories? It's one thing to talk with someone about ideas of how we can transform the world; it's another entirely to tell a story about it. My non-fiction "Warrior Healer Revolution" will still be a very useful handbook in the art of conscious revolution, but the "Warrior Healer Trilogy" will offer a compelling narrative that paints a picture of what that revolution may look like.

The first book, "The Warrior Healer: Basic Training", tells the story of a young man who, through a chance encounter at an El station in Chicago, soon finds himself on the fast track to becoming a Warrior Healer. The adventure introduces him to a series of people, places, and experiences that challenge his very understanding of who he is, how to find meaning in his life, and even the basic nature of his reality.

I could say more, but why spoil the surprise? :) You'll be able to read the book yourself soon enough!

So there you have it. Permaculture and writing [which includes permacultural themes] are both about to sprout in my life. There are times when it still seems hard to believe that I really have it within me to create what I envision. I feel this doubt the most when I'm assaulted by the daily distractions of living in this parasitic Empire of toxic consciousness. The madness is all around me, and simply by living here, I can feel a part of it within me. But the seeds of a new life have already started to germinate - and let me tell you, it's been a long time in coming!




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