Animá Lifeways & Herbal School

Intro: I never fail to be impressed by and grateful for the folks in our lives who honor and tend their commitments… to us, but especially to themselves, their studies, processes and dreams.  They are made special by their rarity, for staying focused in face of distractions, remembering the reasons for their promises and then unfailingly keeping them.  In Anima we teach that any pledge worth making is worth keeping, and that anything not worthy of that effort and devotion shouldn’t be promised to in the first place.  While relatively few may actually donate to the School’s needs or commit to a Sponsorship, you do so with unerring faith and follow-through.  And while none of us are flawless in this way, among the most dedicated and dependable are the Anima students devoted to their studies and practice, and the allies who support this work.

Commitment & FollowThrough

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

www.AnimaCenter.org

What in the world, is this world coming to?  Increasingly we are becoming a one-world society made up of city-states, where neither individuality, privacy or honor have any real significance.  We’re taught to compromise our beliefs, whatever the heck they are.  We’re fed salvational technologist lies, as personal responsibility is replaced by avoidance, compromise and obedience.  Instead of a code of honesty and compassion, we have a million and one complex new laws on the books regulating every element of our lives.  Rather than seek out what are at times unpleasant truths, a growing majority of people would rather pay for the paddings of comfort with their precious mortal hours, and trade in their native rights in exchange for the illusion of safety.  Outside of the cranky, archaic and highly opinionated rural towns of the West and South, it’s getting progressively harder to find anyone willing to “tell it like it is” no matter what the consequences, folks who live up to their oral contracts as well as the binding written ones, who make it a point to keep their word once given.  Rare indeed, is anyone willing to commit… even to the very people, ideas and things they themselves most care for and believe in, let alone to fully follow through on those commitments.

I spent some of my teen years hanging around rowdy, socially deplorable outlaw bikers who – in spite of their numerous and indefensible bad habits – curiously demonstrated a considerably greater degree of commitment and loyalty than the average citizen, including those politically correct and particularly sweet Peaceniks who nonetheless tended to look down their noses at my greasy-jeaned, saddle-sore buddies.  And of all the truly deeply caring, alternative type folks I have known since, sadly only a much smaller percentage seem to have taken in what it means to commit to a relationship or a project, or to follow it through on something to completion no matter what the obstacles or reasons.

Maybe it’s living in close proximity to the land that does it, setting the example with nature’s intense determination, extracting or inspiring a greater degree of authenticity and response, but I know far more cowboys and farmers that actually do what needs to be done, manifest their ideas in the real world and real activities, or bring to a finish what they once set their minds to.   My rural neighbors from Montana to the Mexican border often set the example when it comes to living their dreams, holding a marriage together, keeping a promise or completing a self-assigned task.  As it was in the days of the pioneers and before, if someone says that they’ll cover a debt later, they usually do.  If they tell you that they’re going to punch you, it’s time get out the rag for the inevitable bloody nose.  But when they pledge their friendship, we can generally count on their help and support no matter how odd we were at the time, or how unpleasant we might have since proven to be.

There are some basic tenets or beliefs that both the intense Anima teachings and the West’s largely conservative rural population generally hold to be true, that:

• A commitment is an unbroken promise.  And a pledge, deliberately and continuously fulfilled.
• Commitment is the full investment of the self – with no provision for default, no requirement of success, and no room for regret.
• Commitment binds us to that which we are committed to.
• Taken together, commitments form the foundation for relationship.
• It is better to fulfill commitments to a very few things, than to commit to many and fully honor none.
• We earn credit for the depth of our intentions, the degree of our commitment, and the extent of our follow-through.
• Commitment requires regular attendance: For example, one cannot claim to be committed to a buddy or spouse, unless we are there for them when we’re needed.  Or to a goal or practice, that we only honor one day a week.
• Commitment requires hands-on effort.
• Commitment begs for completion: We can’t say we’re truly committed to a process, unless we’re braced to stick with it through the very end.
• Commitment requires insistence: One isn’t truly committed, unless that commitment survives every distraction, challenge and test.
• It can take a hundred promises kept, to balance out a single commitment failed.

When folks are called on to define what’s best about “old-timey” or “country ways,” they often mention the qualities of gumption and completion, commitment and follow-through.  In the real world anywhere, one is measured not so much by what we think or say as by what we actually do.

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Late Night Prioritizing

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

Anima Lifeways and Herbal School

Intro: The following is an excerpt from a recent letter to an understanding friend, summoned forth by the knowledge that my feelings as well as song of purpose would be truly heard.  As personal as this missive is, I have decided to share it here, in part in order to aid my readers’ comprehension of what our healing cause requires and our creative surges put us through.  Such late night or pre-dawn contemplation need not be perceived as torment, however.  By following the cycle of considerations through to a point of clarity, we come not only to acceptance and resolution but excitement and renewed vigor!  From these thoughts below, came an action list of change and development for Anima and our sites, approaches and means, which we may also share with you in a month or two.  We appreciate your company and support, in this life and work inseparable.

The days have finally gotten to the sweltering, with the dimming of the sun each afternoon a comforting relief.  Comforting, but a graying as well, in which the colors of my world seem a little more subdued, the facts of society and politic even more ominous.  The thunder is a relief in contrast, a dismembering of the gray sameness with a stroke of a lightning cutlass.  We could use more rain actually, and less build up, warning and hesitance, fewer intermediate shades.

I’ve woken up at night a few times lately, occasions where my mind has stirred itself in search of some new or enhanced recipe.  During such periods, it feels good to know those I am responsible are sound asleep as the hours of darkness pass into light, but I am also pleased not to have missed the sounds of the elk on the river sands below, the cries of rabbits at the clutch of an owl, the whispered lapping of the river’s waves… nor to have missed the ideas and insights that may arise only at such deep and undistracted times, or missed out on even the darkest of worries or heaviest of considerations that revolve like ghosts in the dark.

At such times, I may think of my wishes for the land and the threats to it, the sadness in certain special people that I can bring some balance to but never affect a cure, falling old growth redwoods and the FEMA regulations passed in part to control Americans with their own military, and every other detail of the sometimes pernicious web of human dictates and distress.  But what I most consider whenever I am awake in the predawn, is how to best utilize my gifts and knowledge, and further my purpose.  Such could well be one’s focus no matter how young, and certainly as one gets old enough to contemplate the truly finite nature and number of mortal moments in this form.  Not a second to waste, whether set to great tasks or given to rest and enjoyment, and again all the more so when there’s a sense of mission.  The question for me, of course, is never what my reason for existence is, or where I belong, nor even the essential elements of liberty and land restoration, teaching and writing, but rather the audiences, venues and means.  When writing, would I touch the hearts and lives of the most people by self publishing my essays, expanding course curricula, or writing fiction so that more people can be reached and my talents in that area utilized?  Historical or speculative and mythical?  How much time to the promotion and distribution of each, that might otherwise go to creating ever more new works?  Which audiences, the nature lovers, homesteaders, urban activists and wise herbalists who are already determined to live lives close to the earth, or the folks furthest from the land’s truths and values, who might do the mast damage or need our message most?  And what about oral, audio tapes and blogs or feeds, since it takes less time than typing and can be heard better with the inflection, rhythm and tone?  If so, how and working with what or whom?  And video, which is the way that most people today get their information, a series of YouTube and subscription stories, tales, lessons?

If the lifetimes were available, I would simply and gladly do it all, every way and means of communicating truths and tools, inciting as well as providing insight, entertaining in the ways that plant seeds of ideas and feelings, rock boats, rattle cages, heal wounds, promote wildness and heal separative wounds both physical and psychological.  I would do it if it won me no recognition or credit, if I did the work under a pseudonym or anonymously, if it cost me income or threatened my freedom or survival.  But there are only so many moments in a lifetime, and no matter how much or how little one sleeps there is a limit on what we can experience, create, affect or accomplish.  To do one thing, means that we are not doing others.  If I am giving much of my day to organizing a healing conference or writing a book, the result is however many hours of not drawing or painting, playing drums or making love, gathering medicinal plants or planting food, frolicking in the river or tracking the outlaw wolves, hours not given to fighting the system more blatantly, not demonstrating under threat of fines and jail, not being filmed or recorded in some nature-lover’s music studio.  The questions for me and those like me, are always “what is the priority this very second, what serves my spirit and purpose best, what ways will I be most powerful, helpful and effective?”  What audience, what article topic, what voice and information?

“Listen to your heart,” I might counsel others, but when I hear mine it is fully convinced in the value of whatever project it is I am working on at the time… as well as an uncloaked desire to still do everything.  It is how I learned, combining school and street life, reading and doing, martial arts and anti-war protests, making them all work together.  And it is how I most like to teach, connecting the myriad dots, the social and ecological, artistic and polemic, political and personal, soil depletion and the oppression of women, fungal communication and the power of prayer, historical events and future possibilities.  So when I am not actively doing, when I am listening the night’s quiet and the kindly silencing of my mind, there still seems to be a subconscious sorting of criteria and potentials, a weighing and measuring, assessing and apportioning.  It needs no words, measuring the way an old woman at an outdoor market might, by feel and not sound or sight.

I look around me, like a hunter-gatherer, seeing what rocks have the best shape for tools, what tasks and lessons await my attention, watching for new connections and helpers that might signal time for a shift to a new medium or media, an editor anxious for my next Medicine Woman short story, a film maker ready to roll.  But getting up with the dawn’s bright bird songs, there is no waiting, only some number one task that I am equipped to complete, and a sense of ever re-prioritized elements and redirected moments in my being more than head.

It is this, that I wake to, morning or nigh, and celebrate.

And it is mostly for this purpose, that I ever rest.

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Tales of a Runaway:
The Problem With Lines, and the Makings of a Proud Misfit

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

Anima School  www.AnimaCenter.org

I’m often asked for the story of my first leaving home at age 13 and again at 15, as the first peach fuzz began to form above my lips.  Their queries are usually a response to the way I present my teaching credentials, offhandedly describing myself as nought but a self taught, onetime 7th grade runaway with a certain talent for detecting bullshit and intuiting truths, connecting the dots and rocking the proverbial boat.  I would never have used such an expression in the day, however, being far more focused on those things I was running towards than anything I might have been hoping to escape.

That said, I was without question running – not walking – in what often seemed the opposite direction of my family, fellow students and neighbors, supposedly representative government and the vast majority of humankind.  For whatever strange reasons, I could somehow relate better to principled oddballs like Quaker pacifists and gun toting guerilla soldiers, to socially stigmatized bookworms, bookies and bootleggers, troublesome juvenile delinquents and maverick hard-spurring adults than to the well behaved who blindly toed the line.

It was the toeing that I had least use for, growing up a witness to all the fearful folks remaining rigidly within the boundaries that others proclaim, the children ordered to line up and fly straight, the teens told to get their futures lined out, the wives who never speak up because they might sound out of line.  I blatantly disrespected and stepped over established economic lines and race lines, national borders and social boundaries, ceilings and caps, lanes and limits.  I eschewed using lined paper and avoided any people who seemed to strictly follow party lines.  I snuck into theaters, or else waited until the long line of movie goers were seated before making my way inside, and I would have rather eaten out of a dumpster any old day than to have stood for even an hour in a welfare line.  I had – and still have – a problem with any person or agency trying to line me up or line me out.  While youngsters I knew were trying to get on a football squad or nail down their first job at the phone company, I found I had no desire to become either a linebacker or a lineman.  Nor did it matter if my ideas and direction were aligned with either special interests or the common-sense trumping majority.  I ignored the so called fine line of the law, in favor of doing what seemed right, avoiding hurting people because of either inherent compassion or the usual absence of a pressing need, rather than because some instrument of law chose to proclaim it illegal.  I made plans early to one day be buried under a tree, and not planted in a root-resistant coffin in some cemetery’s grim grid of lines.

Not even sitting in a line of school desks was easy for the wild-card boy looking for freedom, experience and adventure.  I inevitably scooted mine back or forwards just a little, in allegiance to my sense of aesthetic and order even as – from the first grade on – I alternately got into trouble for either asking too many challenging questions or slipping out the window to wander and play.

It was in military school at age 12, that the full extent of my aversion to straight, unwavering lines came to light.  I was enrolled there not as punishment for home infractions but at my own request, in preference to the noodley anarchy of “progressive” schools as well as the paradigm reinforcing public campuses with their often low benchmarks and even lower expectations.  I asked for that opportunity to prove myself and to excel, to study the classics and learn to shoot, in spite of being subjected to a degree of regimentation that I knew from the get-go was going to drive me up the proverbial wall.

Or, rather, drive me up a tree… specifically, the thick gnarly limbs of a giant avocado at the edge of the school’s marching field.  I was content enough during lengthy classes since the teachers let me progress through the material as fast as I was able.  Unfortunately, every afternoon we were compelled to march like trained ants in the heat of the sun, something I couldn’t seem to tolerate.  By taking the position of guidon at the rear of a squad, I was able to drop out at just the right moment and quietly clamber up the avocado’s trunk without ever being noticed, so fixed were the eyes of my fellow students on the placement of their feet, and so unwavering their attention to orders!

This fortuitous tree was situated adjacent to one of the ten feet high concrete walls, built to both provide privacy and effectively contain the academy’s spirited young cadets.  From my vantage point, I was able to view the straight-arrow students – marching in straight lines on a perfectly flat and well-mowed plane – in contrast to the scene on the opposite side of the wall, with its dirty faced street kids wildly wrestling and reveling there, with its overgrown and highly uneven terrain.

These days I am far more likely to think of rivers when making an analogy about lines, such as how unhealthy they are when deforestation has them running fast and straight, flooding often and carrying away their precious burden of finite soil, or how the healthiest watercourse is usually the one with slowing curves and restful meanders.  Back then, though, it was boxes and cages that I visualized as the marchers traced repetitive squares with their measured steps and abrupt ninety degree turns, while it was the sirens of liberty and magic that I believed called to me from the other side.

My inevitable emancipation was gradual and incremental, beginning with my waiting until the rest of the cadets were snoring before tip-toeing out of the barracks and into the streetlamp glow of an urban night, stuffing the uncomfortable metal bunk each time to make it look to the officer on watch as if were securely asleep.  In time there could be no more returning, of course, a moment when risky sojourning would take ultimate precedence over finishing the semester, graduating with a high school diploma, going on to college, getting a good paying job or being able to afford insurance.  This I knew even then, and freely chose.

Dropping out worried my mom, of course, but not because she wanted to push me into becoming anything in life except other than what I myself wanted.  Nor could she realistically expect me to be concerned about a future steady income, given the archaic emphasis on honor and adventure that I’d so often professed.  What worried her most was that her “baby” would end up unhappy, due to never having learned how to fit in.  After all, what employer, sports team, association or club would ever have me, when I rejected not only uniforms but uniformity, took pride not in likeness and team cooperation so much as in individual initiative and dramatized dissimilarity?  If I’d gone into the army, it would have had to special forces doing self directed recon.  If I’d been cut out to be a doctor, it would have had been in the field or jungle and not the harsh lined cubicles of a modern hospital.  Fit was, quite frankly, one of the very last things on my mind.  Too snug a fit, I realized, could be like a fashionable garment whose design restricts movement.   Too comfortable of a fit, and one could end up less inclined to try out either new venues or vessels.

If anything, it was precisely the fitting into predictable and acceptable norms that I was running away from.  Even as I looked to what I ran so purposefully toward, I clearly also sought distance from the normality of passive acceptance, placation and resignation, restrictive customs and rigid rules, from linear process and mechanization, predictability and conformity, stock solutions and any certified assistance.  On a quest for the unusual and exceptional, I did all that I could to leave behind my rote personal habits as well as the controlling regulations of both the academy and of society in general.  I sought to emulate the twisty individuation of artistic root structures, the insistent growth of the outlaw bamboo busting its way out of every yard’s confines, and the rascally dandelion poking up through the subversive cracks of predictable sidewalks, unstoppable by herbicides, absolutely determined to do its dandelion thing.

Unlike many another urchin who’s ever slept under a freeway bridge to the hum of passing traffic, I certainly didn’t run away from home due as a result of neglect or abuse.  I had parental support in taking art lessons, martial arts lessons, and lessons in motocross racing.  Heck, on the day I announced my departure my dear father offered to buy me a car to take my leave in!  I gave it some consideration, but clearly accepting such help would have been contrary to my aim of opening up to and facing the test of a chancy, difficult, and ever changing real world.  What I sought to escape from was not violence or deprivation but security and sameness, the trap of everything being taken care of for me.  I ran from what I’d come to see as the oppression of the sterile suburbs, the matching white stucco walls in every cookie-cutter tract home, the painfully bright and nearly incessant incandescent lights.  Shallow conversation, faux woodgrain, mass trends.  The artificial, the replicated and the horrendously generic.  The contrived events, faked satisfaction and often phony “I’m okay” smiles.  The trained politeness, masking honest dislike and obfuscating our caring intent.  The gerbil-like rush to consonance and accomodation, even at the cost of personal tastes and opinions.  Just getting along and accepting things the way they are, when it is exploration, investigation and alteration that is needed most.  Tolerating what should be intolerable.  Sacrificing excellence and distinction for refuge in feigned sameness.

Feigned, I say, not because people have some self destructive desire to be phony, but because the premise and goal are impossibilities.  Humans can be pleasantly or painfully similar, but we are never exactly the same.  Not even twins with apparently duplicate DNA are truly indifferentiable.  Nor is sameness anything to strive for, as individuals with very distinct manifestations and blends of potentials and unique collections of experiences, varied natural abilities and propensities, personally defined and expressed purpose and seemingly customized calling.

I subsequently spent many years on the streets hustling to get by, and on a chopped Harley acting wild, cooking on low fires in the wooded corners of remote public parks well past the age of 18 when the youth authorities no longer cared where I was or what I was doing after dark.  This was followed by more years on a long and windy road, in a search for my self and what it might mean to feel totally at home in not only my place but my purpose.

In the ensuing decades my image and designs have evolved, my horizons widened and means increased.  I’ve even grown to the point of valuing natural and personal boundaries, the defining and sometimes protective perimeters sketched around my healthy being, known truths and what most matters most.  That said, any boundary of mine will always be an infinitely adaptive and highly uneven one, and not an irrevocably straight line… proof there are at least some things in the universe which change little over time.

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Mulberry Wise

Garnering Lessons For Humans From a Tree

By Jesse Wolf Hardin

www.AnimaCenter.org

One of the most sacred places to either ponder or pray has got to be outside, under a temple of overhanging ponderosa pines, surrounded by the beauty of creation.  And some of the best places to learn about life are far from school, in swim holes and Indian caves, on secretive hunting trails, and in patches of edible plants as you harvest them for a Southwestern meal.  The two best teachers of all time are experience, and the natural world.  We can learn a whole lot about life from hard work on the family farm, from sailing a small boat through choppy seas, or from spending the day picking sweet red candies off a wild mulberry tree.

My “edible plants” book claims that the one’s we find scatted around this area are “Texas Mulberries,” but it simply can’t be so… after all, this is New Mexico!  So let us call them Gila Mulberries instead, native to this county where I’ve long lived, cherished as well by the ancient Mogollon tribes that fed on them, and a treat still to any cowboys or backpackers lucky enough to stumble on one on a hot day in June.  And there is so much to learn climbing around in their giving green boughs, our mouths and fingers stained with berry juice.

Here are some typical silvan insights, and the potential implications for our personal lives, informed by the Earth, mulberry wise!:

1) Well managed orchards are impressive, but the rareness of wild mulberry trees make them the most special of all…

The lesson: Seek friends and lovers, causes and careers, places and moments full of character and meaning — rather than those that conform best, or produce the most.

2) Hikers that are too busy talking, can walk right under a tree’s branches without noticing its berries…

The lesson: The entire natural world is constantly trying to teach and nourish us. There are lessons, gifts and miracles all around, if only we’d wake up and open to them.

3) Turn or duck your head even the slightest bit, and you may spot berries you hadn’t previously seen…

The lesson: In life, the slightest change in our perspective often bears fruit.

4) The sweetest berries nest high in the tree, and it can be dangerous getting to them…

The lesson: Special rewards come to folks who are willing to risk a fall.

5) At the same time, we often we reach out far for what looks like a special berry, only to find sweeter ones right under our nose…

The lesson: Things tend to look more exotic and appealing at a distance, but don’t forget that the greatest treasures in life are those close at hand.

6) When high in the tree, the careful gatherer keeps a firm hold with whichever hand isn’t busy picking…

The lesson: When taking risks and making changes, it’s important to keep a grip on the here and now, the certain, the reliable, the true.

7) Carefully sample the strength of any branch, before putting all your weight into it…

The lesson: It’s smart to test any options– any forks or branches in the trail of life– before we fully commit to them.

If the tree gets no rain it’ll die.  Yet if over watered, its fruits turn out colorless and bland….

The lesson: We need sustenance and attention.  But those who are fussed over and smothered, who never learn to do without, are often the least interesting and effective people of all.

9) Some wild foods spoil more quickly than others.  This is why ground squirrels carry most of the acorns they gather home to their nest, but eat any mulberries they find right away…

The lesson: The wise person knows when to store and save, and when to just take it all in and enjoy.

10) The softer the berry, the sweeter it usually is…

The lesson: We may pride ourselves on our toughness, but it can leave a bitter taste.

11) It takes a lot of roots to hold a tree upright during the windy days of Spring…

The lesson: Family, community, history, tradition and relationship to place are what keep us grounded in the face of disruption and change.  If we’re to avoid being toppled, we’d better hang tightly to our roots.

12) Some of the tastiest berries can be found lying on the ground…

The lesson: Along with the sugar of life, comes a little grit and dirt.  And for some of the greatest gifts of all, we have to be willing to get down on our knees.

13) A wild mulberry tree only has fruit for a few short weeks each year, and the committed berry lover will make sure not to miss a single day…

The lesson: Sweet life, at its best, is relatively short.  Be there for it– eyes wide, mouth watering, heart willing… and fully thankful.

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(For more nature-informed insights, got the Anima website, and consider committing to an Anima Home Study Course)

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Rhiannon’s Wild Turkey:
A Lesson in the Gift of Death and Resilience of Life

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

www.AnimaCenter.org

Life is neither as fragile nor as tenuous as we are led to believe.  Women are not generally in danger if they give birth at home, not all health conditions require pharmaceutical intervention, and the loss of liberty is more of a threat than any terrorist.  We are bombarded with stories and images of violence and illness in part because the medical and insurance industries profit from and work hard to heighten the fear of death, and most or perhaps all governments depend on a constantly aroused sense of insecurity and vulnerability to win either our acquiescence or support for their amassing of power and the abridging of our rights.  Even the natural world, increasingly tested by every manner of extraction, pollution and abuse, is not brittle and morbid but adaptive and resolute.  A marvelous force, life is defined not by each individual’s eventual demise but by the inherent preoccupation with living.  Harm it, and – like our physical bodies – it seeks to heal.  All we need to do to help in most situations, is to step back and leave it alone.  Suppressed in one way or place, life will seek to burst up and through, new species arriving to fill in any emptied niche, coyotes having more pups during periods where they are being hunted hardest, plants developing resistance to herbicides, and people filled with the energy of life whenever not manipulated into focusing on risk and end.

We are, however, endangered by ailments, and responsible for our health.  The health of the natural world that we are part and extension of, is to a degree our responsibility too, as we act to help make whole what has been put asunder, to mend what’s been damaged, to heal what’s been dismembered.  We tend body and land through blatant activism, educating, protesting, organizing and agitating, but also through the growing or gathering of food, healthy nourishment and caring for ourselves, through care-taking and stewardship and trying our best to learn to do what’s most right.  Fragile it isn’t, but when it comes to the continuance and quality of life, we do in many ways hold both its potential and its fate in our hands.

This was driven home for our young daughter Rhiannon recently, in a canyon given lesson that she is not likely to forget.  When she was five we had a wonderful white rat named Lydia that she apparently wasn’t old enough yet to have much interest in, but in the years since she has increasingly wished she had a pet.  The Anima Sanctuary’s protective land covenants prohibit dogs and cats here, due to their substantial impact on the local wildlife that we’re committed to restoring.  Not that Rhiannon would even be satisfied by a domestic dog.  “I don’t want a pet to be caged or have to be with me all the time,” she explained.  ‘I want a fox that will play with me but have its own mate and den, or a raven that will come be my friend and let me pet it each day before flying off with it’s friends again.”  We’ve known it was just a matter of time before she would show up one day with a juvenile packrat or cuddly skunk, approaching us with the Otter Girl’s most imploring look.

Rhiannon had it with her for two days before feeling ready to tell us about it, a baby wild turkey that she had run and caught as a hen’s brood scrambled to keep up with her.  The reason we hadn’t seen it, and that it had been so content and quiet, was that she had been keeping it warm in her hat… on her head.

Our emotional response was mixed, first of all touched by her love for it, then proud she could catch one, and finally concern over what we would do with it.  We gave up trying to raise chickens long ago, when no amount of fencing could keep out the chicken munching owls, hawks, coyotes and raccoons, and we could just picture what would one day be a 30 pound bird holed up with her in her 8X10 treehouse.  Kiva did research and discovered that unlike other species, the mother turkey would likely not kick the baby out over the human smells left by handling, but the chances weren’t good for getting that close to the flock soon enough.

There was something so beautiful about the many expressions passing across Rhiannon’s face, as she kissed and petted her feathered charge.  Apprehension over our reaction, and its needs.   Uncertainty over what to do, and wondering if she had done the best thing.  A desire to keep it as her canyon companion, and a burning desire to somehow tend then set it free.

As she fed her baby with ground up acorns and water from an eye-dropper, it proved impossible for us not to imagine her attended by the grown turkey, defensive of her and distrustful of strangers, not large enough to ride like Princess Mononoke’s wolf but a faithful and brave compatriot even if not the smartest bird on the block.  It would come when she made a low clucking sound in her throat, or when she called its name… something both mythical and noble sounding but a unique Rhiannon creation, such as Sigfeather or Theobold.

“We’re sorry,” I had to tell her, even as it burrowed into her hat nest and petitioned to be put back on her head.  “Its chances of survival away from its mother when it’s this young are very slim,” I had to be honest, “you’d better love and enjoy it while you can.”  The consequences of her decision to bring the bird home sunk in the next morning, when she awoke the next morning to find her beloved stiffened and cold.

Other chicks from the same brood will die from other causes, a freak malady or the expected closing of a peregrine’s claws or canyon fox’s jaws.  But others will live on, dodging predation and growing to raise their own hopeful young, part of life’s relentless surge, life’s demonstrative will to be alive.  Though not fragile, it is of course mortal, and in that mortality lies the weight of our fateful choices as humans.  It is the price of consequence and the certainty of death that brings the tension and excitement to each being’s personal act of living… and that makes so precious and powerful, the sight of her other chicks growing in awareness and strength, celebrating what are all consequential moments on the river beach below.

(For more writings by Wolf Hardin, go to the Writings Page on the Anima Lifeways and Herbal School Site)

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Student Stories:

Tobi’s Essential “Journey Begins” Lessons

Anyone planning to take Anima lifeways or herbal home study would best consider signing up for the introductory “The Journey Begins” course first, a foundational program of self exploratory questions and assignments for implementation.  Defined therein are the principals of Anima, dangerous illusions and pitfalls on the path, and the means for effectively acting to actualize our needs, vision and purpose.  Even those who are focusing on herbal studies find it useful, making the connection between healing others and tending to, growing and healing our selves.  From time to time we ask permission to run responses from students, and below you will find a list of lessons learned that is both as succinct and powerful as any… from the healer Tobi, who heartfully puts into practice everything she learns and makes use of all she discovers. The additional remarks in italics are mine. -Wolf

Dear Wolf-

Your comments were all very helpful, but a few things stand out for me:

- That I can get away from making judgments – thereby removing an either/or I was stuck in – without sacrificing conscious discernment.
(The desire not to be judgmental can result in our being uncomfortable with making distinctions, appraisals, standards, pronouncements and decisions… especially in regards to other folks.  And yet, it is the work of deeply caring people that can most benefit from discernment, distinctions and decisiveness.)

- That social and environmental justice issues are not US vs THEM… but are simply standing up for what’s worth standing up for.  This really helps with yet another either/or situation I’d set up in my mind.
(It’s important not to let our desire to avoid conflict stop us from assigning responsibility to perpetrators, or from assertively confronting whatever threatens what we value most.  It’s wrong to think of people in black and white terms, as wholly good or evil, but this is all the more reason for us to distinguish harmful policies and actions and do what we can to forcefully stop or transform them.)

- Again with social justice issues, that I act from a place of considered necessity, not anger.
(This is crucial, whether imposing consequences on a young child for misdeeds, defending oneself against an attacker, or standing up for life and freedom against intolerable injustice.  Anger is bitter, whereas we act because we care.  And it is punitive, while even our strongest responses are intended to remedy not punish.)

- Be ready and willing in spite of incomplete preparation and in the face of appropriate fear.  YES!!!  This is extremely helpful with the very subtle puritanical thinking that I believe holds me back in many ways.  So recognize that I may be incompletely prepared and scared, and do it anyway.
(The world and the moment’s context are forever changing, and are forever mysterious and unknown if certain ways, therefore one can never be fully prepared… only ready and willing.  And in Anima we make no case for fearlessness.  We teach the value of fear in informing us about obstacles, neurosis and real threats… and the utilization of fear as fuel to act.)

- That leading requires followers – I like this total reframe of stepping into my power and supporting others: “awaken, inform, equip, stir, inspire” – forget about leading!
(Our work is to direct them to their needs, priorities, gifts, skills and callings, so that might find and follow their own particular path rather than trying to copy ours or others.  Gurus and Generals lead; Anima teachers provide perceptual and practical tools with which to find one’s way to authenticity, wholeness and purpose.)

- We need “purposeful disruption” in our lives to help us on our journey.  I like this so much that I have used it with a couple of clients.  I hope I’ll remember it when that purposeful disruption applies to me (and I think I will!).
(Customs and assumptions without the ongoing test of experience turn into increasingly unrelatable and restrictive dogma.  Unconscious acts become habits that aren’t always beneficial.   Endlessly accumulating ideas without the disapproval and rejection of others, without the upsetting of comforting concepts and familiar paradigms, leads to an unactionable morass.)

- Ask for clarification!  DON’T ASSUME ANYTHING!!!  How many times have I heard this, and yet, I keep falling… yes, I know, it’s a process…
(The more we know or are able to accurately intuit, and the more often that we prove right, the more of a challenge it becomes to hear what is meant instead of what we expect.  As we learn to jump further, we do indeed have further to fall… with consequences that we are more painfully aware of than the average.  On the positive side, many of the most powerful insights, lessons and gifts will come not as expected, but as unforeseen surprises.)

- Don’t soften the suggestions I make too much – they lose their power.  This is a very useful suggestion to remember.  How can I be fully in my power, if I soften my words so much that they don’t convey any of that power?  Of course!
(In addition, constantly softened counsel and an even tone fails to communicate the value, import and urgency, relegating our offerings to a single flat plane of undistinguished ideas, filed away rather than processed and acted on.  We know when what we have to give is grounded in truth and earth, usable and valuable, and when its communication and utilization is essential or urgent… let our words and tones impress that, adamantly loving and lovingly adamant.)

There were many more gems, Wolf, but this gives you a good idea… I have taken your words to heart.  Feel free to share them any way you like.  Thank you again, and blessings to you all.

-Tobi

(You are welcome to forward or repost this, and I’m sure Tobi would appreciate reading your comments here)

(For more information on the “Journey Begins” course, go to our HOME STUDY page.  Or click here for a Registration Form to enroll: Home Study Courses Application )

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Intro: The recent Mother’s Day intensified, as always, my full range of feeling about motherhood, and about my own complex and wonderful Mama.  On one hand, motherhood has never been the equivalent of sainthood, and a good deal of our neurosis can honestly be attributed to our usually well meaning moms due to their disproportionate influence on our psyches and lives.  The people who hurt us most are some times our parents, and often times the mothers or fathers of our children.  Loba is still dealing with the fear of not living up to real or imagined motherly expectations, as Kiva struggles to forgive her mom for not protecting her from her abusive dad.  On the other hand, an intense bond exists from the fact of being birthed from our progenitors’ bodies, from being suckled, carried and cared for.  And in the case of most of us, our mothers provided a level of acceptance, love and support that we are forever grateful for.  To the extent we have emulated their faults, it is our responsibility to heal the wounds that feed them, our calling to change and improve.  To the degree that we inherited or learned to embody their abilities and qualities, it is up to us to make best use of them.  And seeing them as whole, complex beings instead of as saints – as both fallible and valuable – makes our own self acceptance and work towards wholeness more possible.

MEMORIES OF MAMA:

Acknowledging and Recalling All Sides of One of the Most Significant Persons in Our Lives

by Jesse Wolf Hardin
Anima Lifeways and Herbal School

Those who have lost a mother they loved, will know what I mean when I say the pain never goes completely away.  But then neither does the often satisfying sense of her still being a presence in our lives.

We carry her genes, of course, and in that sense alone she continues to survive and have an effect.  Her spirit, you may believe, can reassure or arrest, remind and instruct even after death.  And unless we have deliberately purged or repressed them, we carry for the rest of our days her persistent memory, any possible unpleasantries as well as mundane trivialities and those qualities that we loved best.

Things that I remember, now and always about my own beloved mother:  The sound of her comforting heartbeat.  Being held when I hurt.  The feel of her fingers brushing the hair off my hot forehead.  Her singing the song that my Grandma once sang to her whenever I couldn’t sleep, “I’ve a dear little dolly, and his eyes are bright blue….”

And well I remember:  A woman that was perpetually moving, from room to room, from chore to chore, and from one home to the next as well.  Wearing holes in the knees of my britches, from crawling so fast to keep up with her.  Handmade costumes every Halloween, one year a cowboy with a Hop-Along-Cassidy style vest and a bandit’s grin, another time a barefoot caveman with a faux leopard wrap and natty beard.  Making a landlady furious by painting what what all must admit was a beautiful mural on the rental wall.  Encouraging me to pursue anything that interested me, and paying for tap dancing, guitar lessons, judo and military school.  Taking me to mountains, beaches and backwoods creeks, even though she’d rather we’d gone to a shopping mall.  Telling me to follow my dream, even if it was completely different from what she would have wanted for me.

I recall:  Being 6 years old and on vacation when she drove miles off the planned route to buy me a Viking figurine, knowing my obsession with pillaging barbarians and dragon ships.  Mama embellishing everything she brought home from a garage sale or swap meet, adding pretty painted designs, tassels or fringe in a line.  Clever hand-drawn cards crafted for everyone she cared about, on each of the holidays as well as those special holidays that she would make up herself, such as First Day of School.  Son’s Day.  Daughter’s Day.  I will ever value how she made everything more beautiful that she touched, made everyone she came into contact with feel wonderful and loved.

And I also remember:  A sadness and fear she seldom showed.  Pride, to the extent of not being able to express her needs.  Independence, to the point of not being able to accept help.  Perfectionism, to the point of not taking enough credit or satisfaction.  Fear of lightning, poverty, disability, and rejection.  Unplugging the TV whenever there was thunder.  Refusing to think about or talk about certain things in her life that she couldn’t face.  Regrets about not having had enough time with her own beloved mother.  Sadness over aspects of her marriages, and the hidden secret of a dear daughter given up for adoption by the then teenaged mom.

I remember too:  Mama brazenly tossing milk in my face when I wised-off as a muscle-headed teen.  Her loving to sit in my lap like a little kid right up to the end.  The look of a needy little girl, on a truly formidable woman that never said the words “surrender” or “quit.”

I recall:  Her wishing I’d shave my beard, so that I’d “still look like her baby boy.”  Her worry that no woman would ever live with me “in the middle of nowhere”.  The adventures and travels we experienced together over the years.  The look on her face when I showed up on a skate board carrying a glass vase, a birthday present I’d purchased with my first ever paycheck working at age 11 in a tropical fish store.  And the sound of her scream, the morning that a certain mischievous 5 year old boy got out of bed before dawn to conceal his rubber iguana under the soap bubbles in the pre-work tub his dear mother was filling.

And how could I ever forget: The smile on what was then an old lady’s face, as she went up and down and round and round on an old time carousel horse, a ride I insisted she take after hearing how sad she’d been picking a horse that didn’t move the only time she ever got on a carousel as a child.  Taking her – in her 70’s, and even after she’s broken her hip – to a nearby cowboy bar to dance.  Letting us dress her up in an uncharacteristic bonnet and dress when chemo and cancer had both had their way.  Her squeezing our hands and winking, after a stroke paralyzed half her body and face.  And a lifetime of her shaking her head in denial, whenever anyone tried to compliment her on her impressive skills, her creative accomplishments or her endless resolve!

And I especially treasure these things at the very end of her life, when everything seemed turned around:  The feel of her soft hair on my fingertips as I gently stroked it off her hot forehead.  Holding her as she hurt.   Singing to her the words of that old-time song, “I’ve a dear little dolly, and her eyes are bright blue”… and the comforting memory of her still palpable heart.

——————-

(Post and share freely)

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Introduction: Because of where – and how – we live here at Anima Sanctuary, whenever we are off the computers it can feel like an earlier century: surrounded by the homestead tools and aesthetic embellishments of the Old West, the pre-invasion tribes of America, the Middle Ages and even the ancient Pleistocene.  And away from our creations and belongings, it is wilderness such as howled, pulsed and flourished long before the first human beings arrived here.  With no noises that aren’t natural , it is easy for me to slip into an archaic or even timeless state at the touch of the canyon winds and under the influence of its wild sights… that is, for the length of those undisturbed periods between overflights by prop planes or jets.  We aren’t at all unusual in this regard, with freedom from man-made clamor being yet another liberty lost to increased population and pervasive technology.  If there is a positive consequence, it is the degree to which such noise makes us better notice, savor and appreciate the sweet sounds between.

QUIET TIME
The Music of Sound,  & The Value of Quieting in Our Clamorous Age

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

Parents often set aside a little “quiet time” for their fun loving but frantic kids… and it is something we could all benefit from ourselves.

Scientists tell us that sounds are vibrating air molecules, defined by pitch, tone, volume and duration.  Loud sharp sounds – from someone yelling to the snap of a tree limb – alert us to the possibility of immanent danger, and thus wind us up.  Longer, softer sounds tend to relax and soothe us instead: the sighing of the wind or trickling of a river, the creaking of a weathered saddle and the steady hiss of a steam kettle on a Winter wood stove, the breath of a sleeping lover, the cooing of a baby and her mama’s sweet lullaby.  And a moment of relative quiet, rare as it may be, allows us to emotionally respond and wordlessly reflect.

This is one reason for the “moment of silence” we observe when we hear that someone has died and again when we lay them in the ground, when a prayer is concluded and when some great accomplishment or mission is first dedicated, committed to and launched.  But more than that, a pause is of help in a conversation every time something really significant is said, giving time to allow the idea or insight to sink in.  A quiet mind preceding and following our busy thoughts is like having open land, hay fields or wildness surrounding our not so quiet towns.  If it wasn’t for the spaces between musical notes, even the most beautiful instruments would produce nothing but a wavering drone.  It’s during the quiet hours away from the yammering video screen that we get to love and tend one another in the ways our hearts are led.  And as delightful as the squeals of toddlers can be, there’s also something special about those moments of quiet after the last kid’s tucked in bed.

We live in a world of sound, beginning with the heartbeat that comforts us while still in our mother’s womb. We are informed not only by the lessons we are taught, but by the actual tone of the teacher’s voice.  A special song can lift our spirits, but on the other hand, we likely become both less alert and more agitated the more clamor that assaults the ears.  Men employed in the loud machining rooms of major factories not only suffer hearing loss, but increasingly lose the ability to notice and respond to other sounds when they’re away from work.  Those who grow up in urban neighborhoods tend to seek refuge in their heads, missing out on the sensory clues in their surroundings as a result of their subconscious attempts to escape the nonstop noise from freeway traffic and sidewalk boom-boxes, street sweepers and road graders, police sirens and car alarms.

A healthy town is never without some noisy activity, and there can be both a certain comfort and music to the hum of creative human activity there, the raucous laughter of children on the playground, the rhythmic clatter and tinkle of valued dishes being washed and put away.  And while sirens roaring engines are decidedly unnatural, the wind I love in the trees of my home are reminiscent of the pleasant whirring of sewing machines producing the clothes that we wear, and the grousing of an old couple – heard from a distance – sound remarkably like fidgety, boisterous ravens.  The problem is when man-made noises are not only loud and abrasive but constant and perpetual, leaving no sonic space, leaving us with no chance and little desire to make out the subtle sounds of our lives, sounds meant to warn, inform, and sometimes please us.

And this problem is not limited to our busy cities.  Acoustical researchers have traveled all over doing audio recordings in the wildest and most remote portions of the planet.  Incredibly – and thanks in part to the perpetual overflights of admittedly convenient modern jets – there’s evidently nowhere that they can set up for even a short time without inadvertently capturing the noise from some man made invention or device.  There’s apparently something a bit distracting about the pipes of a kick-ass snowmobile in the middle of a rare bird recording.  Or a bit disquieting, might be a better way to put it.

The main racket blocking our awareness of our world, however, is not outside our ears but inside our heads, the nearly ceaseless commentary and analysis.  The consistent self criticism and common critiquing of every one and every thing else.  If silence were truly golden, you wouldn’t know it by how quickly we tarnish every still moment with internal conversation.  And whenever there’s no intelligent thought, our brains are likely to repeat phrases or hum stupid commercial jingles just to fill the presumed vacuum.

There is, of course, no such thing as true silence outside of regions of airless outer space.  Nature without the sound of factories and jet airplanes is not silent, but a dynamic symphony that is best heard without the distraction of our own roar and clamor.  And people who meditate don’t drift off into the void when they are finally able to derail their train of thoughts, but rather, other sounds suddenly rise to the forefront of consciousness, along with other feelings, the world becoming more present, discernible and knowable for them.  This meditative moment is a peaceful analog to the hunter’s silent mind when it’s time to pull the trigger or release the arrow, and the wordless state of hyperawareness that comes with a jolt of adrenalin in a moment of screeching tires on pavements or other apparent threats to our lives.  The gift of our quieting is not retirement or resignation, sedation or relief, but reengagement and reawakening… making possible more powerful acts, and more sense-filled and satisfying lives.

(Please post and forward this piece freely)

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To further explore quiet and sound in your lives, we recommend enrolling in the Awakeness and Awareness correspondence courses.  Full information is found on the Courses page of the Anima Website, and you can download the application here:  Correspondence Course Application

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IN COMMON:

An Anima Exploration of the Meaning & Ramifications of Community

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

Anima Lifeways & Herbal School <www.animacenter.org>

We had some folks down for dinner some years back, lifelong residents, and proprietors of the only grocery store in our remote little town.  I can’t tell you how good it felt when the gentleman shook my hand, looked me in the eye and said “You’re really a part of this community now.”  He wasn’t saying that he agreed with everything I think or do, only that I’d “earned my spurs” through years of hard work and unshakable commitment, through the relations I’ve built as well as my refusal to let anything drive me away.  His point wasn’t that oddball, braid-wearin’, gun totin’, cactus huggin’ anitauthoritarian me is either blameless or unblemished… only that I belong.

There’s hardly a community anywhere that doesn’t contain people with conflicting religious and political lifestyles and beliefs.  The only exceptions are cults and one-party countries where a guru or dictator wields total control over the residents.  Forget politically correct complete consensus, healthy community isn’t a matter of everyone agreeing.  At its core is a shared identity and basic, deep seated values that by their very relevance and power manage to supersede most differences.  Like wolves packing up to bring down game much too large to be taken by a single individual, a community’s members gather not so much for company, as to accomplish or realize shared goals.

The very term, “community”, derives from a Latin word meaning “common.”  The glue that binds a village or society together, then, is made up of those things its residents and participants feel, exhibit and act on, their common intentions and common needs, contributing to a common body of ideas profoundly affecting both the ways we live and the nature and quality of our lives.

Communities, activities, schedules, and even our very characters are often defined by the experiences, landscape and climate that we share in common.  In rural America, ideas are shaped by the independence and self sufficiency that comes from living on parcels or ranches scattered far apart, where because there’s no specialty shop around the corner, most of us can make repairs with a little “spit and bailing wire.”  Those of us out here in “the sticks” have been taught patience and fortitude by Summers of failed crops, and by those long drives to the grocery store or social events.  We’re carved by the knife of the land that we live on, much the same way that these sandstone cliffs are sculpted by the Southwest’s hot and blustery winds.

A healthy society takes its cues from the natural world around it, and responds to the needs of the land even as it provides for its own.  Such a community is “native”, as embedded in a certain region as plants are bedded in their native soils.  It is this rooting that provides the wisdom of stewardship, and a real “sense of place.”  And a healthy society is also traditional, in that it takes the most proven and healthy ways and lessons of the past with it as it makes its ride into the unforeseen future.  We show our respect for our pioneer fore-bearers, and for the very first Indians that ever occupied this land, by proving that we can take care it, by making sure our children and their descendants inherit a region no less beautiful or bountiful then we ourselves were blessed with.  Rural, land based community is, as much as anything else, a shared fate, with its residents affected by the same floods and droughts, thin times and bountiful harvests.  Whatever befalls the land we depend on, must in the end befall us.  And with its many different interdependent relationships, whatever suffering is brought upon one segment of such a community is likely to be suffered to one degree or another by the rest.

These days, in fact, what happens a not only a county but a a continent away can often potentially affect us wherever we are.  Winds spread fallout from the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl to families, crops and water sources all around the planet.  The water flowing by towns lying downstream have always been subject to both pollution and depletion by the cities above.  But now, it is as if we’re all situated downstream of somewhere, sometimes benefitting from the accomplishments of distant communities, other times paying a high price for their mistakes.  An increasingly globalized economy means that the shenanigans of bankers on the Atlantic has in many cases determined whether someone in New Mexico or Oregon lost their job, and the flow of oil from Arab nations being the biggest factor in the rising price of gas.  Ideas good and bad – from caring messages and helpful tools to rabid jihad and our own government’s culture of lies – travel faster than ever in this highly technological age, require that we become all the more aware, knowledgeable and discerning.

On the other hand, to some degree these same technologies are able to help foster the formation and functioning of not only virtual community but communities in a very real sense.  This becomes true as soon as people interacting through internet forums and chat rooms around a shared interest or priority, sharing feelings and stories, exchanging information and inspiration, and offering advice.  And even more so, if as a result they end up shopping or bartering with each other, sending trade items or sending gifts snail-mail that can be used and held in the physical.  Or if they stir each other to change their lives for the better, to sign a petition or join in a purposeful campaign.

Unlike in rural areas, in many cities we may find we’re as strangers to our nearest neighbors, unaware of their joys or troubles, enjoying different hobbies and voting for opposing candidates, identifying not so much with a place or each other as with the slant of a certain news program and the culture of our vocational career.  In some cases the more genuine and interactive community may be found online, allying with and meeting the social needs of people who speak the same “language,” pursue similar passions, and support the causes dearest to our hearts, even when they seldom or even never get to meet outside of the computer screen and telecommunication.

As a kid I never settled down in one place.  My mom moved us so often that I wouldn’t have had time to even build friendships, and I’d use that as an excuse for any of my unsocial tendencies… if not for the fact that I weirdly enjoyed being a loner from the time I was very young.  I could relate to largely solo athletic pursuits like gymnastics and mountain climbing, but from the get-go I avoided team sports like the plague.  No club ever interested me, I felt innately suspicious of conformity-building uniforms and fraternity pledges, and neither of our two main political parties has ever seemed authentic enough to tempt me to join.  The leaders of the communes that I visited as a runaway from military school at the close of the 1960’s, somehow came to the conclusion that I was “a bit too much”, to intense or out of control to fit into their mellow scenes.  Even now I live primitively, at the far wild edge of the remote rural community I’m a proud part of.  And while I am increasingly connected to, care about and act in coalition with a like minded community of wonderful folks from all around the world, I still largely use the internet like a hunter-gatherer collecting information, or a public wall where I spray my never ending stream of graffiti opinion, story telling and soapbox agitation… in every case entering stealthily, filling my gatherer’s goat-skin shoulder bag, rattling cages, making my mark, then slipping back out again to the edges of the unwired forest.

Over time, however, I’ve come to recognize the value of clustering together with other like minded folks, ideally sharing both a common caring and common vista, standing together against the incessant pressures from without, joining with them in deeply identifying with the places that we live in, love and learn from.  I hold up the community garden as a perfect example of the way, the means and the benefits.  I’m in many ways a community healer as well as firebrand, as I do what I can to not only awaken and enlighten but aid and improve.  And I now see, ever so clearly, the importance of our working together in a great cycle of giving and sharing – even those of us who may never meet – using our uncompromised freedom, varied perspectives, skills and knowledge to create a society that we can all be glad to belong to.

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Intro: We were sitting around yesterday talking about Wolf’s last post, and how uncomfortable it probably makes people, with the aim of awakening and informing.  That reminded me though, of how many of us spend our lives quashing our “unreasonable” or discomforting thoughts, women being afraid of sounding hysterical if they include emotions, men afraid to risk being wrong.  Our lack of self confidence and our need to be liked can mean we filter what comes out of our mouths, and adjust the tone all the time, until we hardly every say anything but what we think people want to hear, and are too repressed and unsure of ourselves to even sing in front of others!  At worst, our very voice gets choked off, and it takes someone helping us to let it out again.  The following essay of mine, tells the story of one such woman, and the moment she started to reclaim her opinions and emotions, her song and life.  Hope you enjoy it!  Sing out!!

Finding Our Voices:
Harmony & Expression

By Loba
Anima School: www.animacenter.org

A woman named Rachel came to retreat and learn with us in the spring of her twentieth year. In her capacity to feel deeply the pain and wonder of the earth she was way ahead of her peers, and yet her lack of confidence made it hard for her to share her beautiful heart with others. She wrote to us before her arrival, expressing a desire for us to help her “find my voice”. “How can I ever begin to find my purpose and place in this world, if I can’t share what’s inside me? I feel so much every day that I don’t know how to release, I feel like I’m being smothered.”

Soon after her arrival, we spoke about how hard it is to express our truest selves when we’ve been hurt or rejected in the past for showing vulnerability or depth. How essential it still is to continue to seek out ways to express ourselves wholly. And ideally, to find the means to share our undiluted expressions with others. We spoke about keeping journals and writing poetry, using paint and clay, dancing… and when we spoke about singing, tears flooded her golden brown eyes. She’d always wanted to learn how to sing “well”, but was told that she was “tone deaf” by a teacher in school. “There’s just some people that can sing, and some who’ll never be able to”. More tears.

We sat at the base of the medicine cliffs, on a large flat rock at the edge of the Healing Pool. We were at least a half a mile away from any other humans. I asked her if she wanted to try something that might help, and when she agreed, I told her to come sit cross-legged across from me, with her knees touching mine. First I encouraged her to take some slow deep breaths. “Now open yourself to all the feeling in your heart, and see if you can sing it out, in one note. It can be as loud as you want”.

She sat for a while, quietly breathing, hugging herself, and rocking back and forth with her eyes closed, making small sounds. Finally she found a note that expressed herself, her pain and bliss and hunger. It was like a baby’s cry, and a victim’s cry of rage, but also as pure and ecstatic as an eagle’s screech or the calls of the elk on the river where I live. I matched the note and volume for a moment, and then I shifted down in the scale, leaning forward so that our foreheads were nearly touching. All of a sudden our tones were different but in synch and harmony. It was like a vibration that just suddenly got ten times more powerful than what either one of us had been able to create alone, and we could feel it clear down to our toes, and in our bones. We were each expressing our truest selves without fudging or hiding anything, but the way we fit together is what made us something more.

Harmony is the opposite of the army where the drill sergeant chants one line, and then the troops all follow. And it’s more like African polyrhythms than it is like African call and response. All the world is singing at once, the mountains and rivers, the birds and bees, wind and waves, and the spirit of every person. Each of these songs, and every note and detail in them, are overlapping with others. No sound or expression or spirit ever really stands alone, and so it’s a matter of how they go together. If we don’t care about or pay attention to the expressions of the other singers, the forests or our friends, we’ll very likely end up with a disharmonious song, and a discordant world. But if we really care, and we pay close enough attention, we can find ways to express our personal songs that resonate with the songs and needs of the rest of the singing world.

A large part of my life is now consciously dedicated to bringing all the parts together in a way that contributes to the harmony and wholeness of all. Sometimes that means one part has to shift and be just a tad bit higher, another may need to drop down lower than usual. I help stretch the women I work with emotionally and in their lives, assisting them past what they are used to or comfortable with, just like I help someone stretch a note until it resonates with all the notes around them.
I have to really work at bringing my many diverse parts together harmoniously. Like most everyone, I suppose I’m a complex stew of energies, kind of a little girl/wise woman, introverted extrovert, wounded healer, wild woman-fairy princess! No small wonder that I spend too much time sorting things out, trying to figure out priorities and what my realest deepest feelings really are. Feeling things out with my heart and body, and not so much with my easily confused head. Bringing myself out of fairy princess land and back to Earth is a constant effort as well. It really helps to let go of the harsh judgments my wounded self has about many of the different parts, and to allow for their expression in healthy ways. Chopping wood, harvesting and cooking wild foods, playing in the river, letting myself cry when I need to, leading sweat lodge ceremonies, allowing myself to imagine that I really can make miracles happen, are all ways that I give these parts of me expression… and live the song of all I am meant to be!

I feel so incredibly blessed to have so much support in living this life that is such a strange and wondrous expression of harmony– something of a hermitage that still reaches out to the world every day with its song of wildness. That I wake each morning miles away from any power lines, television and phones, and rest my eyes on sun-streaked cliffs, listening to the undiluted harmonics of wildest nature, the bugling elks and cawing ravens, whistling hawks and singing frogs. And yet there is the little satellite dish on our cabin roof that connects us to the internet. It seems a bit incongruous, but it helps so much in our efforts to share the blessings and teachings of this place with the many students and guests that make their pilgrimages here, as well as the wonderful women that read this amazing publication. As much as I cherish the times of quiet between the busy spells, it wouldn’t feel very harmonious or right if we neglected to share the power of the energy here in whatever ways possible.

It seems to me that all of nature, even the smallest dandelion thrusting itself sunward from between the cracks of the sidewalks, is trying to teach us how to achieve truest harmony, how to be all we are, with no apologies, insistently and joyfully. How to sing out with every cell of our beings the miracle of life, and the wonder of getting to live each day. Instead of trying to teach everyone who comes here how to live in the wilderness, our goal is more about empowering each person to discover for themselves what harmony with nature, including their own nature, feels like. To give them the opportunity to know themselves as one with Earth and Spirit, to open to her song, and to let the song of Gaia sing them back into wholeness. To know and feel themselves as a part of the song of the natural universe, so that when they leave here, they may commit to being truer to their selves than they may have ever been before, no matter how difficult or disharmonious things may have to be for a while until the necessary changes are made. And giving them whatever guidance they can make use of, to achieve that feeling of resonance in their daily lives.

I feel in harmony bringing tea to those I love when they’re busy writing, picking up pieces of kindling from the ground, knowing that I’m reducing fire danger near our structures. I feel in harmony harvesting the tops of the nettle plants, knowing that they’ll grow back, and wandering the river to harvest watercress, so I don’t take too much from any one of the small patches that are still growing back from the last flood. I feel in harmony every time I coerce a bee that’s trapped in the kitchen to sit on my finger, and watching it fly away once I take it outside. I feel in harmony giving prayers, time and energy to honoring the wild animals whose lives we take and eat occasionally. I feel in harmony baking extra muffins to give to the man who sells us eggs from his chickens, to the postmistress who spends extra energy dealing with our mountains of mail, and to the town grocer who gives us credit at the store when our finances are low. I feel in harmony whenever I remember to sing while I’m hauling water, or notice the light dribbling through the grape leaves by the mulberry tree. Whenever I remember to see all the beauty of the earth as a reflection of myself in the mirror of creation. When I look to the cliffs above me to recall who I am, and why I am here. To be a part of this place, to feel the changing sun and seasons and moons upon my face, and from the joy of that, to sing.

Rachel and I continue singing together for a what seems like a very long time, our voices weaving and cascading, dancing through the canyon. Every time the song pauses, we hear our voices ringing back to us, many times over, bouncing off the canyon walls like a pair of far away flutes. Finally there is a long note that feels like the end, and we stop and look at each other. Her face is streaked with tears, and she beams at me with the most joyous smile. “Wow,” she says, “that was really something. I’ll never forget this moment. I sure needed that.”

Looking up at the cliffs, feeling Gaia herself vibrating with the pleasure of the gift of her daughter’s long suppressed song, I add, “And the Earth needs you, and your song too.”

(Photo of singing at our Wild Women’s Gathering (c)2008 by Jesse Wolf Hardin)

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