Spring is finally arriving here!  Everywhere there's melting, melting.  Last week's new nine inches of snow is gone; the sun steadily shines on the two feet of remaining snow.  The sap is running in the trees and the people now seem to smile more easily, finally emerging from the depths of winter.

One of the best parts of spring for me is the ability to finally walk, unencumbered, free, in any direction.  During the deep snow months, you're limited.  You stick to roadways and plowed paths.  The more adventuresome put on skis or snowshoes, but there's an effort to be expended.  It's not easy.  Especially if you live in an area with hills or ravines, it's harder to move through the snow and delight in winter's pristine beauty.

This winter was especially challenging wtih thick ice that turned the driveways to skating rinks at least three times.  You worried about pregnant women and elders.  Now there's just glorious melting snow and mud.  The mud is even delightful.  (well, now I may be exaggerating!)

When spring arrives with the freedom to easily walk in any direction, I often think of awareness and its paths.  The neurons in our brain fire on well-established routes.  Especially as humans age, the routes can become well-worn grooves in patterns.  We do the same things, day in and day out.  We're not really free to walk in any direction without a great deal of energy. 

During the fall and winter, the energy has often moved inward.  Our society usually doesn't honor the rhythms of nature.  This winter, especially, I found myself traveling deep inside.  What did this mean?  Instead of reflecting or thinking about self as much as in previous winters, this meant becoming experientially comfortable with challenging parts of self, with challenging parts of awareness.  Learning to abide in the deepest reaches of silence.  During much of my adult life, friendship and "helping" has been an important theme.  However, this has altered, and now the Silence itself becomes alive, beyond the "I", without the needs of the "I".  (except, when the I re-asserts herself.)

Now springtime re-emerges, the freedom to walk in any direction summons.  The question many of us seem to be facing:  How do we walk that freedom, talk that freedom, live that freedom?  I know the answer won't come through any words or thoughts.  It will come from the next movement of awareness, the next movement of the seasons within us.

I'm marveling at the winter and this never-ending snow!  What happens when we look at never-ending snow through fresh eyes, instead of the cultured brain's eager anticipation of spring?

Without thought's analysis and judgement, the snow is just snow.  It's unlike any snow we've ever seen before!  It's spring snow, sticky snow, heavy, wet, dressing thet trees in overcoats of splendid white.  Now there's the wind howling and whipping around the snow-branches of the trees, and snow falling all over.  The outside air smells of spring (how odd!) and the snow condenses beneath the boots to several heavy moist inches of wet. 

If you listen to the mind, it's all over.  If you just relax into Being....what could be better?  A late spring snowstorm, another late spring snowstorm, a snowstorm like we've never seen exactly this way before, and we'll never encounter it again.

A random thought has been niggling all afternoon, since viewing Christos' blog (Boundless Freedom) which showed a video "Unmani speaks about the paradox of separation".  Unmani speaks about enlightenment and invites someone to be in a space without name, without occupation, without definition.  The space of "don't know."

Here's the crazy thought that has been around since then.  What are the similarities and differences between an enlightened being and someone with Alzheimer's?  A person with Alzheimer's may forget his name, where he leaves his keys, how to cook a meal.  Has that person crossed over to simply a diseased state, or could there be subtle similarities with the enlightened state?

This would have never occurred to me before listening to a video yesterday by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor.  She is a neurosurgeon who experienced a stroke and had the experience of Oneness.  It's an incredible inspiring talk.  She talks about both sides of the brain, and she basically tags the right side (I think) as the side of Being, and the left side as the Thought and Analysis side.   It is fascinating as she describes the experience of her stroke and talks about the brain and its processes.  I recommend everyone listen to it....it's about 18-20 minutes long.  (PS right after watching this video I clicked on 1 of One's page and met Melynnda who also had a link to this video of her blog!)

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229

I'm not sure, but think that Ken Wilber has a book in which he describes different neuroses and psychoses as spiritual stages that have somehow gone awry.  So could Alzheimer's be a disease where people enter into that self-less thought-less state without having the tools to travel back and forth between the different hemispheres of the brain?  Or without having cleared away enough mental clutter or debris to be able to recognize Oneness while there? Is there any connection at all?

I do realize Alzheimer's is a terrible disease for many people (the one woman friend I know who suffers from it cries often and seems completely disoriented, unable to care for herself.)  But is there some way that perhaps the natural journey away from the rational-oriented brain goes all wrong, and the person is jettisoned away from the familiar "assemblage point" into new worlds before being ready?

I also wonder, being at this age where it becomes easier and easier to forget.....is there some process, as we age, that leads us towards that gate of enlightenment or awareness, if we're but ready?  But many people panic when we forget names or places.  What IS it like for someone like Unmani, living in a place without a name or address or occupation? 

My dad and I had a huge joke this week.  He's in his 70's.  Neither of us could remember the name of a very familiar restaurant.  He felt perhaps like he had a better excuse, as he's a bit older.  But I felt like the name of that restaurant was so inconsequential to the moment, to what was important.  How much of forgetfulness is simply living in the moment, attending to the Present?  Where do the lines blend from immediacy to Alzheimer's?

And.....I suppose it doesn't really matter.  To the side of the brain without thought, it sure doesn't!

My heart is so sad right now.  Just returned from a walk across the road, a mostly snow-melted walk, skirting mud and jumping over small puddles in the woods.  The land across the road has been sacred land to me for maybe 25 years.  There are old hemlock, cedar and spruce mixed with poplar and maple.  It's been a place for deep communion with the sacred, finding new plants, admiring the angle of a little oak tree.   There have been many personal ceremonies and dreamings here, gifts to the woods, communication from Spirit.

During the winter we knew a logging crew was working up the road.  A husband of a spiritually-oriented friend helped put in the logging road.  They've logged there before, usually much farther down the trail, and I never once thought the logging might venture off to the east, into that special walking area.  We heard the chain saws and sighed.  You get used to logging around here.  Trees are considered a crop.   Plus, we burn wood to heat our house, have wood walls and wood furniture.  We read books and my husband works for a newspaper.  We're certainly not purists; we use wood.

But here was the sacred ground:  logged.  Dead tree tops everywhere.  Branches, mud, snow, stumps.  My eyes filled with tears and my heart began to ache.  For the death of this beautiful forest, as we knew it.  For the majestic trees, fallen and gone.  For the life stripped away.  For the plants that needed the shade of the trees.  For the eyesore, for myself, for our planet, for our greed, for my own greed....

I wanted suddenly to live even more simply and mindfully.  To not need any more than necessary.  To want many others to feel the same way.  To want us to, as some Native Americans once said, "Take only what you need.  Ask the Great Spirit first.  Fast in preparation for the hunt.  Use all parts of the deer.  Share any extra with the People.  Give thanks."

At the same time the tears flowed down my face, another part of awareness simply witnessed.  Observed the pain, the land, the fallen trees.  From that perspective "I" could see that there was nothing wrong and could hear the steady honk of the returning geese overhead.  "I" was the tears, the fallen trees, the mud, the spring, the geese, the precious plants, everything. 

Because I'm all of it, it's all laid open on my heart right now.  And maybe the rain of these tears will nourish something new.  Right now, I just want to cry.

I just returned from walking down the road with a plastic garbage bag, picking up road litter for spring clean up.  We've been doing this most years near Earth Day (if the snow is melted) since the kids were little.  The most interesting item tonight was a half-bottle of "Temptation Liqueur."  Never seen that brand before.

I thought about Oneness, and my eternal quest to experience it, and began to widen my peripheal view to feel and sense everything in the universe as one.  As often happens, my eyes began to ache. 

Suddenly, in a flash, I had this inner knowing that the search for Oneness had so often just been a grasping after a concept.  It was just another concept, a spiritual concept for sure, but another concept.  Same with enlightenment.  Just another thought.

And looked at the world and knew that Oneness was just this.  No trying.  Just the world its Oneness before a single thought, before a single concept, before a single trying.  This seems way too simple.  Hardly enough to mention.  Who knows if it will make any difference in action?  Who cares?  I am so tired of searching for 21 years, of never being completely One in what is.  And yet, at this moment, it seems utterly clear that I was one it what was, and yet somehow had managed to deny it.

Silly humans, we are.  (P.S.  I am not claiming enlightenment or anything here!  And don't even know if this will be remembered in its clarity tomorrow morning....)  Time to finish bagging up the garbage from the road.  Part of the Oneness in which we are.

What is Gaia?  Gaia is a fireball of consciousness, extending out in all directions beyond time, a pulsating beating awareness of what is.  Everything in the universe is Gaia.  We are.  It is.  The universe is.  Gaia is the breath of the Infinite.

What is Gaia?  Gaia is an on-line community where people gather to blog, share ideas, join and explore in pods, discuss books, form and communicate goals, post photos and meet friends. 

What is Gaia?  Gaia is the energetic network of stories and ideas pouring forth, a continual stream of energy.  It is the songs, the teachings, the criss-crossing of human stories inspiring and breaking into new paradigms.  Many thoughts birthing new thoughts.  Many feelings birthing new feelings.  Many actions blossoming into new actions.  Many awakenings every day.....

What is Gaia?  Gaia is the individual from many places around the world.  The small individual life, attempting to make a difference.  The vulnerabilities, the strengths, the challenges, the thoughts, the desires....the fragmented piece of the whole writing its little stories, sharing its little triumphs and pains, attempting to connect with something larger than itself.

What really is Gaia?  Is it smaller individual separate selves meeting themselves as something much larger?  Could all the fragments of people on this website simply be the expressed larger Being of which we are?  When we meet Jane, Anna, Rachel or Mark, Thomas, Jake.....are we simply meeting those parts of ourself that we don't yet know? 

When we meet and like someone, are we not meeting and liking that part of ourselves?  When we meet and are challenged, are we not being challenged by that inside of ourselves that has not yet been met with peace, equanimity and love?  Are we not all each other, unique and different and multi-faceted? 

What is Gaia?  Wikipedia says:  The Gaia hypothesis is an ecological hypothesis that proposes that living and nonliving parts of the earth are a complex interacting system that can be thought of as a single organism.   

The single organism of our joined small selves, pulsating and pulsating into infinity.  A mirror of what is.   A person typing in front of a computer.  A single action that resonates outward into the universe.

For a cool visual on this, check out:  http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/
This is a cool view which looks at the earth from 10 billion light years away, and then zeroes in slowly until you get to the level of quarks.

It's turning cold here in the Upper Peninsula again.  They're predicting MORE snow by early next week!  Is that allowed?  Oh, worse than that, I think there's flakes of snow coming down right now outside the window.  The wind is blowing fiercely and old leaves are coming down everywhere.  It's raining leaves, snow and buds from the trees.  But it feels so nice and cozy and warm inside with the woodstove humming in the basement.

My friend turned 53 today and another friend and I offered to help her clean her house.  She was in a terrible accident ten years ago, an accident that left her brain damaged with many challenges.  She has difficulty completing simple tasks like organizing and cleaning, and it's really disorganized now because she's hired someone to build shelves and closets and there's totes everywhere.  This is our second weekend of helping.  Last weekend we sorted boxes and bags for recycling, giving to St. Vincent de Paul's, and throwing away.  She is one of the most loving hugging people in the universe, a real joy. 

I don't have much to say today.  What else?  It's time to go study Spanish this afternoon.  A bird outside the window keeps singing, "whee, hee,   whee hee".  There's much work to be done for my two jobs (I work at home part of the time, so it's always here.)  Tonight Barry and I are splurging and eating turkey with brocoli and rice for dinner.  This is a huge splurge, as we're mostly macrobiotic.  However, the turkey was a gift from his boss at Christmas, and we don't believe in wasting food, so....  

Guess that's the update for Saturday!  Hope everyone here is doing well this weekend.

When we sit down at our computers to write a blog, what is one of the first words we may choose to write?  We use the word "I".  We say "I think...", "I believe...", "I am...." and many times we really believe that we are a consolidated separate self, apart from everything else with its concrete opinions, judgments, likes and dislikes.

If we go deep into silence, beneath the eternal yakking monkey-mind, we begin to glimpse that we are not anything that can be defined.  We are not that little "I".  Look across the room at the couch or table or chair.  If you're silent, ask yourself who is looking.  If you look deeply, there's no self that's looking.  There's just awareness of the furniture.  (which may not even be furniture, but that's another story....)

That awareness--undefinable by any single human word and certainly not existing as an "I"--is who we are.  There's just Life dancing out and around and moving and appearing as form.  It's here and it's gone.  You could say that everything is "I"....the whole landscape of perception is the big "I" of awareness.  Or you could say that nothing is "I", because there's no "I" to be found.

Having said that, I do love the stories of the little "I".  Who is it that can make statements like that?  Who is saying the word "I" and sounding like she's a solid being?  I think there's energies and thoughts that just come through us, just appear.  When we attach to those thoughts or emotions and hold tight to identification through them, then we're stuck.  When we watch the energies coming through, we're suddenly playing.  We're witnessing.  We're flowing Life itself!

So an energy or thought comes through and says, "I like pistachio ice cream" or "That person is rude" or "The sum of Pi squared =...." can we really claim creation of those thoughts?  Can we really claim that's who we are?  We are the emptiness behind the thoughts and feelings.
So who are these thoughts? 

I believe they're energy patterns just coming through, passing by.  And what matters is our relationship with and awareness of those thoughts.  Instead of identifying with them and getting attached, can we expand our awareness beyond the duality to the place where "I really don't like pistachio ice cream" or "That person is acting out of pain or fear" or "The sum of Pi squared really might not be what we think" is equally as true as the initial thought?

There's a lot more I want to say (and yes, there's the part that doesn't want to say it, but oh well....) but today is a busy full day.  This "I" needs to write a couple emails, get dressed, go to a Spanish lesson, have lunch with a friend in town, accomplish a half dozen errands, make a Triple Grain Waldorf salad, and then go to a Book Club tonight.  Oh "I" love days like this!  The sun is shining and everything is so shimmery and thank you thank you for this space to write thoughts and musings (and read thoughts and musings) here on Gaia.