Animá Lifeways & Herbal School

You may have noticed the change in the Animá Blog banner, with the addition of the words “Nature Awareness, Healing & Rewilding Skills,” a line that will be added to the Animá website splash page as well as soon as limited time permits.  This description is meant to further define our work and in particular what is meant by the term “Lifeways.”  Lifeways are not vaporous ideas or lofty philosophy, but a way and means for connecting with the natural world and our own natural selves, tools of empowerment with practical application in the real everyday world.  Herbal and Awareness courses, for example are made up of not just information and exploratory questions but also extensive assignments for immediate useful application.  When we do our Wild Child course, it will be with hands-on techniques for empowering and growing our offspring and students, the ReWilding course a set of steps to becoming indigenous again, restoring the land as well as our natural beings and dreams.  Our earlier name change to “School” made clear our mission to teach, now at the onset it is made obvious that we are offering, and what we are all about.  Nature Awareness covers not only nature reconnection but using the awareness and lessons that the natural world provides, wild foods gathering and paleo diet, self sufficiency, self authority and activism, plant medicines and natural healing methods.  Skills for knowing, being, and especially doing….

This blog began as a means to share with a growing number of the wide-ranging Animá community, and it continues to accomplish that near as we can tell.  But these days it is increasingly serving to affirm, stir up and provide information to a widening swath of people from all walks of life.

We hope you like it.  Some of you have been with me since the initials to this project were “ESP” and my teachings mainly shared through esoteric, activist oriented “Medicine Show” concerts, and it hopefully feels good to have been a part of and reason for the transformation and growth.  Personal thanks to Kiva for facilitating so much of the valuable shifts in organization, language and packaging, making Animá all the more accessible and effective, and to Resolute and our Supporters for doing so much to make each step possible.  And thank you from the bottom of my heart to our students and readers, for being a part of the work and blessings, inperterbable principles and organic changes of this evolving mission and purpose.

Love and Blessings, Wolf & All

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Depths:
Affirmation River, & Mountain-Style

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

www.animacenter.org

After a series of eastward-blowing storms, it’s been brilliantly sunny again.  Besides the pleasant warming ambiance, it has meant the ritual snowmelt, with the quickly saturated ground giving up its overflow in a convulsion of water.  Migrating in sheets off the steep cliffs and mountains, it breaks up into liquid fingers gurgling down parallel gullies, then plummets from the ledges in 2 feet, 6 feet, or 100 feet drops.  No matter their individual mini-headwaters, their destination is the same, gravity combining with earth’s ecosophic purpose to feed a quickly swelling river.

Quickly, I say, sometimes rising from a foot deep to over 20 feet deep, and from gently moving at a relaxed pace to madly rushing like a herd of bison stampeded by lightning.  Today the Sweet Medicine River varied from 3 to 5 feet depending on its width, as well as on the holes scooped out by the swirling force of eddies.  At such times it would be reasonable and perhaps even wise to stay at home here, in wood heated cabins perched far above all but the most biblical flood heights.  Reasonable, however, does not determine my actions when there is a cause to be championed, an innocent to be defended, a mission to be furthered… mail to be mailed, or cream, butter and treats for the gals to be got.

The adventure begins with taking off my pants and shirt and rolling them up, then holding the bundle of boots, clothes and outgoing mail above my head while stepping off into cloudy swirling waters where I can’t see the bottom.  From the second I touch bottom on sucking sand or bruising rock, the current pushes me hard down the canyon and to the southwest and Arizona and Mexico when I need to remain determinedly pointed to the east.  To compensate I set off 30 yards upriver from my preferred landing spot on the opposite bank, then bounce across in leaps that give in equal proportions to the diverging directions of man and river.

I’m very warm blooded, but snowmelt anywhere above the thighs is stunning to say the least, a jolt that arrests all thought even as it so loudly reminds me through every sense that I am alive.  Getting out onto largely muddy ground with clean feet is a trick best accomplished by holding onto railings of exposed Alder roots, and then squatting and dressing in atop its foundation of shore-clutching arms.  The climb to the waiting vehicle starts out at a 30 degree incline, and any thought of being cold is gone within the first third of the ascent.  Sitting for hours writing articles, books and emails is poor exercise and preparation, and my legs begin to complain.  When I was in my 20’s, I made it a practice to run as fast as I could without stopping for the entire 2 mile climb, carrying a pebble in my mouth because I had read the Apache ensured breathing through their noses that way, causing greater stamina.  Now I considered a satisfactory feat just to be able to scramble up its sides on deer trails that for a deer would be a relaxed pace.  And while the snow lay only in patches at the bottom of the canyon, with the first 500 feet of elevation increase the snow had thickened to a 18 inches or more, obliterating any sign of the winding way up.  With familiar landmarks draped or obscured and the ground appearing but a single precipitous angle, I was likely seldom if ever actually a trail, making headway by thrusting the sides of my boots into the snow for each step, and proceeding more sideways than forward myself.

Increasingly aching legs and ever more slippery and indecipherable terrain inspired even greater attention to each committed step.  A slip could mean plummeting at breakneck speeds checked only by collisions of flesh against bark, careening pinball style off one ponderosa tree after another.  The Winter is found no less lovely by the trekker, knowing that growing stiff and weary, or stopping and taking too long of a rest could mean never getting back up again.  There is only continuing as an option for life, as it is with all life forms empowered by this force and will to live, the anima.  And less dramatically, there is never any stopping and giving up for me.  Older and less exercised limbs showed no sign of giving out, but only signs of continuing to give their all.  In fact, the aching actually eased for the most part at the point when the climb was most difficult, and in that I found great encouragement.

The microclimate shifted with each few hundred feet of ascent, such that near the 7000 feet level I found myself walking into a cloud, a strata of airborne strata so pronounced that for a moment I could see my boot clearly while everything at head height was covered by mist.  Like the entrance to Avalon, all magic seems to be veiled for protection by a cloud of unknowing.  But for me then, it was a knowing instead, the knowledge that once in the cloud I was essentially at the mountain’s top and a waiting snow-tucked vehicle.  As always, the cream in our coffee will be made all the more enjoyable by the means through which it was obtained.  The books sent out will have an extra story to go with them, recounting their untypical journey.  And the where and why of our lives is yet again reaffirmed, not by the ease of our admitted paradise but by what we are willing to do for and because of it.  Affirmed mountain and river-style, instead of through its vista and sparkle we come to know its measure by its depth.

(Post and share freely.  Photos (c)2010 by Jesse Wolf Hardin)

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When the familiar and welcome sun came back out, our batteries were so low that the panels surged to 34 amps and freaked out our charge controller.  As of last night we had already stored enough juice to be back up to 80 percent.  While dealing with the natural ebb and flow of electricity here in the canyon, we had no idea that the entire county had been suffering an outage for 4 whole days, with gas stations shut down and only the clinic, courthouse and little grocery store running on generators.  It was a reminder of how fragile even “self sufficient” minded communities are, large or small, that a storm-dropped tower can render it helpless, with houses unlilt, cars parked for lack of fuel.  And it was encouraging, to realize again not only how blessed – but how truly possible – it is to depend on oneself and alternate technologies instead of on a system that makes us dependent.

Today I walk out, wading the thigh deep ice melt river to get to Resolute’s Owl Rover vehicle and on into town for vittles and mail.  For the first 3 years I was here I walked the entire 10 miles to the village, so these days a short walk to a warm car due to washed out crossings seems like nothing but a minor adventure and opportunity to trade hours on the laptop for awakened senses, a gratified heart and chilled feet.  I start by following the rabbit tracks in the snow, bounding as best I can through the entrance to life’s Wonderland.

Whatever your own adventures today, we hope you make sure they serve you as well.

-Wolf

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Preface: Thank you for the dozen requests for my recent piece on the topic of authority.  I hesitated to run it here only because it was written in the intemperate tone I relax into when writing from a rural or general audience, rather than the less expletive ridden and hopefully more professional tone and language of our Animá articles and books.  I would like it if you not only learned and were inspired by the following, but if you were to enjoy it as well.  -JWH

Because It’s Good For You:
Insurgent Thoughts On Authority, Certification & Law

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

My advice is not to trust all authority, but to find the authority in ourselves
to know who and what to trust!

“Because I told you so!” was the answer I often got as a youngster, when – from parents and teachers alike – I’d routinely ask the reasons for what it was I was being told to do.  If the adults in charge had simply explained the reasoning behind the order, custom, protocol,  tradition or rule, there’s a chance I would have a considered it the beneficial and honorable thing to do.  But telling me “because I told you so” is like saying “because I’m bigger than you,” “older than you,” “better connected than you,” or “better armed than you.”  This is the limited reasoning and self justification of bullies, whether it be an expansionist empire or playground antagonists.  Having such advantages might mean that they can make us do something, but that doesn’t mean it’s right to force us to bend or conform, nor does it mean that the ways they want us to behave are necessarily good or just for us, the human spirit, the things we cherish or the larger world.  I wouldn’t buy it back then, I’m not buying it now.  I would have much preferred the exhortations of the wise and caring mother, the caretaker, the healer: “Because it’s good for you!”  And even then, I would have wanted to know exactly why, how, and under what circumstances and amounts any medicine or course of action might be best for me.

I was willing to heed, but not heel.  And what I most readily heeded was counsel and direction from people who clearly knew more than me, who were more experienced and appeared to have grown or learned something from their experiences, who acted out of a deep sense of caring and strong set of principles, with allegiance to truth and to justice.  As a teen runaway, I took advice from old bikers on which year Harley-Davidsons had the coolest ride, and I had no objection to coming to a stop when ordered to by a life-saving traffic cop.  I kept the counsel of well meaning hobos who had “been around the block,” trading normalcy and security for a life of minor privation and immense freedom.  I took to heart the lecture of a drawling rural Sheriff who kindly counseled me not to do stupid illegal things I didn’t even believe in, and from a confirmed outlaw who talked about it being just as important to break those laws that we know to be “wrong-headed” or unconstitutional.

That I could respect and listen to individuals on both sides of the law, is an indication of how little significance I placed on costume and insignia.  Then as now, I couldn’t understand the military expression “salute the uniform, not the man.”  A person who was worthy of being respected, listened to and followed seems just as worthy to me whether out of uniform, off duty, retired or fired!   Conversely, those unwise or unworthy in character remain ignorant and unworthy regardless of what official clothing they might don, or what agency or administration finances and directs them.  And just because something is either mandated or banned in one of the hundreds of thousands of laws that govern every aspect of our civilized lives, doesn’t make it right… nor make it honorable for us to obey.

Authority is simply not something that a government or agency can give someone.  Genuine authority cannot be “vested” as they say, it can only be earned.  And because it has to be earned, it can also be undermined through unfair application, squandered away on superfluous regulation, and overturned if based on or upheld by false premise and manipulative lies.  It’s not authority without the weight of truth, it is only base imposition and oppression.  And the problem with exercising power over someone or something, is that it only works so long as enough pressure can be put on.  Somewhere, sooner or later there is a break, a lapse or loophole through which not only truth and liberty but all kinds of trouble can arise.  The wife-abuser is only really in control until he falls asleep, as a number of angry men have found out to their horror.  The schoolyard bully can hold you down with a head-lock for only just so long, the second he stops to rest there’s nothing except possibly fear or self doubt to prevent you from retaliating or remedying.

If there is authority in a truth, standard or directive, it retains its influence without mandates, manipulation and control.  It rings true when we are alone and our acts unwitnessed, as surely as when we are being closely monitored or working under the gun.  When such is the case, we do not need the force of law to rein in our actions nor compel us to act.  As herbalists, it isn’t certification that determines how effective we are, it’s our actions, means and results, and government inspection of plant medicines will never be the reason why we seek to use the finest quality and teach the safest methods and amounts.

We’re unlikely to ravage and steal even though no one is watching and there may be no price to be paid, if we feel deeply that rape or theft are wrong.  And hopefully, we don’t obediently toe the line, surrender our rights and liberties, compromise our beliefs and march to the orders of the established powers… just because they happen to control the military and the most awesome weapons ever developed, will soon have video surveillance cameras on every street corner, have planted informants among every activist group and provocateurs in every citizen militia, wield a court system that functions to protect the elite and punish the independent, can count on the connivance of “new world order” strategists and the support of multinational financiers, and have made the building of new jails and penitentiaries the fasting growing industry in America.  I agree with the prickly ex-Colonel in the movie Legends of the Fall, and his feelings regarding this nation’s ruling administration and its morally compromised minions: “Screw ‘em,” he said in a voice slurred by a powerful but obviously not debilitating stroke. “Screw ’em!”

The origin of the word “authority” is from the Latin auctoritas, from the word auctor which means both “originator” and “promoter.”  Our authority is our ability to affect and influence, as parents and teachers, craftspeople and gardeners, artists and healers.  It is a result of what we put forward and promote, and as such, it can only originate with us.

———–

(Share and post liberally.  To learn more, go to the Writings and Correspondence Course pages of the Animá School website at: www.animacenter.org)

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Skepticism and Hope

A Reason To Feel Encouraged by the Latest Negative Polls

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

As someone who has witnessed again and again the miracles of nature and potential for extraordinary human feats, I am not inclined to be a skeptic.  I do, however, like to expose harmful illusions and challenge manipulative lies.  And in the face of a climate of increasing unquestioning acceptance, adherence and obedience, I’ve actually come to find reasons for hope in periodic eruptions of skepticism among the general population.

For example, I periodically read various accredited national polls, in an attempt to gauge the mood and test the knowledge my fellow citizens.  It can be unsettling, realizing how little most voters know about the issues they help decide, or about the legislation their elected officials sign into law.  I am most alarmed, however, not when there is great fractiousness and diverse opinion, but when a uninformed consensus forms in blind allegiance to dated illusions, or else in knee-jerk reaction to unexpected situations.  Any President getting an 85% approval rating exposes a degree of self serving delusion that bodes poorly for any nation.  And we need to beware any constituency we ever see lock-stepped in near 100% agreement.

It is encouraging to me, on the other hand, whenever both doubts and expectations are reported on the rise, and the poll numbers again indicate a taste of reality if not genuine sober reflection… that it’s just possible we may may as a nation not be as easily fooled as the bulk of evidence would seem to indicate.  I actually found this week’s reported low appraisals reassuring in a twisted sort of way, with folks starting to act like auction goers who too recently thought they’d bought themselves a priceless antique and then finally discovered it was a fake.  People surveyed gave the floundering Republican party a dismal 26% approval rating, while the bankrupting, over-legislating Democrats did only a little better at 39%.  Both earned a failing grade, it should be pointed out, by the standards of even the least demanding school board.

And this at least temporary holding-to-task didn’t end with elected leaders.  In an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released a few days later, I was relieved to see that a mere 17% of us trust the health insurance companies.  Only 65% of us reported that they could trust our government to do the right thing even “some of the time,” while 11% reported “never!”  Only 39% have any confidence in the Supreme Court of the land, 24% in the Federal Reserve and 19% in the U.S. Treasury.  The ignoble winner turns out to be the U.S. Congress, with only 15% of respondents trusting their Senators and Congressmen as far as they can throw them.

Not to be outdone, I have conducted a little poll myself, drawn not from anything like a fair cross section of the population but from the thoughtful, heartful, sensitive, radical, passionate, self motivated, questioning, un-bought, tree hugging, adventure taking, home schooling, medicine making, chicken feeding, wild foods gathering, cage rattling, garden tilling, song singing types with whom I have the privilege of mainly dealing with.  I’m pleased to report that only a very few believe in the lies handed out by the powers-that-be or the lap-dog media, and that the 3 or 4% who do, do so not out of obedience but a deep need to imagine the best in everything and everybody.  The folks I know consistently rate the dominant cultural paradigm low, with no gold stars for either low morality wars or half fought efforts.  Less than 5% trust what they read in the papers, the slant that school textbooks put on world events, or the purity and sanctity of a majority of official religious leaders.  And it can be said that only the same incredibly low number have any confidence at all in lawyers or legislators, recent vehicle quality or modern product warranties, advertising claims or flu vaccines, carbon credit programs or weight loss plans, in government action on global warming, tax fairness or hair restoration.

Likewise, a high percentage of these confidants value the very things that modernist techno-culture obscures and the powers-that-be threaten.  As with all polls, the replies would depend on how I phrased the question, but even at that, the folks I know are special and a good portion of them would be certain to come out in support of personal liberties and individual responsibility, at a cost to so called “security.”  Of privacy, as well as the right to express ourselves, and of justice for all just as the Constitution says.  Of the sanctity of home and family, the importance of regional governance, the vital nature of community, and the protection of nature.  Of not just less pavement but more trees, breathable air, drinkable water, habitat for more than simply the human species.  Support of more natural health care, and healthier-lived lives.  Of the old ways and land based traditions, and a lifestyle more conducive to our own truths.  Of more truly precious time with our loved ones, and for a world with both more truth, more courage, and more love.  Of those challenges that inform us.  Of the struggles that strengthen.  And support of any opportunities to distinguish ourselves, tend who and what we most care about, to serve a larger purpose or calling, or to simply savor the awakened moment.

It remains a positive thing, nonetheless, that there will always be a small percentage among my students, friends and readers who insistently think and do the opposite, who buck even what I know in the very marrow of my bones to be right and healthful… who through either rampant optimism, deep generosity, fool hardy acceptance or simple downright obstinacy ensure that I – unlike various corporations and despots, gurus and dogmatists – will never have to suffer from the uniformity and ignobility of unthinking agreement.

(to learn of the ways and practices of Animá, consider an engaging online 8 Week Course, possibly beginning with Orientation, Principles & Pitfalls: www.animacenter.org)

(please do post and share freely!)

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Pitfalls
On the Animá Path of Self Growth, Self Realization, Service & Purpose
by Jesse Wolf Hardin
www.animacenter.org
Part 6 of 7

The following is the sixth in a series describing dangerous or limiting pitfalls on the path of personal growth and purpose, misconceptions and maladies that can hinder our understanding, development and manifestation.  Please feel to share these with friends:

•  The Goal Of No Suffering
Religions have long promised an end to suffering in the “life after death,” while some New Age and Eastern dogma promises techniques to rid us of suffering right now.  Avoidance of all suffering in this life, however, can be counterproductive.  The expression “no pain no gain” is true in matters of personal growth as well as bodybuilding.  Pain is not punishment, but a call to attend.  It is not our duty or karma, but rather, the balance to exquisite pleasure.  It is the counterweight against which we pull, and it is that pulling which provides the strength of our joy.  Pain is not how we pay the fine for past crimes, but how we pay the dues of our membership in the rolls of the aware.  It is, in one form or another, one of the prices of heightened sensation, and part of the reward of being a heartful feeler.  And beware the draw of drama: The trick is to be awakened and deepened by it, not addicted.

•  Misconstruing Illness & Vilifying Death
It is wrong and harmful to imagine that good health and long life is proof of one’s spiritual level or personal powers.  At its worst, such thinking can cause the ill to feel at blame for their maladies, and make death seem like a defeat instead of a teacher and unifier.  Additionally, while healing oneself physically is important, it’s not as essential as learning from our every illness or disability.  It is the practitioner’s sometimes painful lessons and trauma-instigated transformation that affords her the power and wisdom to assist others.

•  The Cult Of Happiness
In the pursuit of happiness, some spiritual approaches recommend we avoid negative influences.  However, it is exposure to the so called “negative” that tests and fortifies the positive.  Systems, habits and regulations are potentially more dangerous to one’s spiritual path than chaos or disruption could ever be.  Besides, nature teaches that happiness is too easy a goal for our fleeting finite lives, too low a mark for our aims, too little to ask for one’s primary prayer.  Better we covet childish exhilaration and sensual ecstasy, strive for quiet contentment and raucous excitement, pray for the realization of our truest, responsive, sensate selves!  Better we seek the fullest expression of that being, suffer the price of our increased awareness, and bear the utter joy that is then our reward!  After all, joy and suffering are polar twins, pointing to the same capacity and willingness to feel.  Together they widen the scale, expand the measure of how alive we truly are!  Happiness is the mind freed of immediate worries, the basket of our lives emptied of all disruptive input.  Joy, on the other hand, is an ecstatic disruption – that together with longing and sorrow – fills that basket to the brim.  Happiness is comparatively shallow and inevitably conditional, whereas joy is so deep it remains undefeated, even with our honest embrace of the saddest of events.  Animá teaches us to embrace both, and to give thanks.  For to really enjoy, one must fully enjoin… and fully rejoice!

•  Transmutation Of Desire & The Distrust Of Instinct
At times bosses, husbands, priests, politicians and gurus alike have taught that we can’t trust our intuition, because it’s what tells us that “something’s wrong with this picture.”  All vested authorities should fear the power of our inherent, native intuition, for it’s what warns us when we’re being disempowered, and what begs us to strike out against what binds us.  It’s a red light designed to warn us about the hours of our lives burned up without engaging in truly meaningful activity, the days spent stuck in artificially lit boxes, our earth damaging or soul deadening careers, and any partners we might live with who don’t love and honor us like they should.  Intuition is simply “body smarts,” ancient corporeal knowledge directing us to what best serves our real needs and authentic selves — and away from anything failing to serve us in this way.  It’s fulfilled by mindful food gathering whether in a store or a field, but it recoils at standing in line.  It’s attracted to learning, but suspicious of schools.  Our deepest instincts are the still-valid messages echoing the cumulative experience of our evolutionary past, and the forward looking intentions of the Whole.  While ideas can be independent of and even contrary to the direction of earth and Spirit, instincts are inseparable aspects of anima inclination and will.  Teachers can pass on all the best ideas and processes in the world, but we still need to develop intuition, instinct and discernment in order to personally know how, where and when to apply them.

…to be continued

(To further deepen your study and practice we recommend enrolling in the various Animá 8 Week Courses described on the website, especially the introductory “Orientation, Principles & Pitfalls” and the new course on “Awareness”)

(Forward, copy and post freely)

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We’re Not Here to Accept Reality

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

www.animacenter.org

Since I was a little kid, people have been telling me to get more practical, tone down my expectations and accept reality.  There is something to be said for such advice, given my impractical and expectant history.

Practical?  It’s true that I repeatedly chose the adventure of life over school, and barely-paying work like art and writing over basically anything that might actually have made me a decent living.  Like the scene in the great “Legends of the Fall” movie, I would sit for hours in front of the gelled oatmeal or waxy canned carrots rather than get it over and eat them like a good boy.  I still can’t fix our Jeeps when they are frequently in need of repair, and sabotage at least one potentially profitable arrangement per month by insisting on putting honesty and honor ahead of civility and income.  I am admittedly far better suited for shooting recalcitrant old appliances than for fixing them, and can’t leave this desk for any outside chore without ending up on a long unplanned walk or spending hours sitting gazing at critters and flowers.

Too high of expectations?  I suppose, though I don’t really “expect” so much as require what some might consider to be too much:  That people be real with me, whether sweet or obnoxious.  That the conversations that take up part of my finite life be either relevant, meaningful or both.  That the fruit in my bowl be bite-able and not literally tasteless plastic decoration.  That my child be protected from all threats, and that I effectively guide her past her own corridors of darkness or doubt more ably than I have ever helped anyone.  That I live up to my ever greater standards for authenticity and responsibility, no matter how high the price.  That the government, if it cannot truly represent me, at least back off enough to give us room to do the right thing.  That I can and will spend the rest of my days in this place that I so love and so deeply learn from, and that with all my unpalatable orneriness and outlaw zeal, I will be loved enough to have my bones interred among the roots growing down into this special land.  Even more than expecting, I ridiculously insist upon freedom, liberty and both nature-given and constitutionally-given rights.  I insist on the existence of undeveloped and ungovernable places that show us what we are made of, and on my taking every opportunity to naturally discern, choose, manifest, improve, heal or create…

But learn to accept the way things are, in a time with so much we think and are told is a lie?  When so much that is beloved is endangered?  When so much that is irreplaceable is vanishing, from crucial fertile soil to quality regionally-produced products, from personal liberties to essential wisdom and values?  When legislation is continuously enacted by both governing parties of this country, increasingly micro managing every aspect of human existence and experience?  When somewhere, every day of the year, little girls are being abused and scarred for life?  When our taxes are used to prop up mismanaged banks, fund bizarre studies, and bankroll wars that are questionable in necessity and inevitably poorly managed?  No way!  In this case, I am unquestionably guilty as charged, guilty of seeing reality as a shifting field that we are each and every one of us responsible for the constant co-creation of.  It’s vital that that we as individuals, Americans and humans, learn to set aside our comforting illusions and state foisted untruths,  be honest with ourselves and deal with what is.  On the other hand, honestly recognizing and dealing with isn’t the same as “accepting” reality as it is.  It is for us as conscious, caring and thinking beings, to make choices and act with the intent of changing what needs changing, resisting what needs resisting, and personally contributing to the goodness and wholeness around us through whatever great or minor means.

When I was a partying-too-hearty youth, an “altered reality” was something brought on by too many hours at the wheel of a car, or from drinking hallucinatory Tequila or even less socially respectable attitude adjusters, and anthropologists still use the term to describe their Native American subjects after a hot sweat lodge or days of dancing skewered to a Sun Dance pole.  To my current way of seeing things, however, all reality is actually “altered reality,” in that it’s affected by both what we do and what we fail to do, as well as by how we perceive and the ways that we’ve been trained to think.  Our lives, our future and our world need not be only a result of fate, outside forces and circumstance, but also a product of our wisdom, intention, will and action.  By whatever divine or otherwise amazing force you think we are here, we are blessed with the awareness of choices and are thereby made responsible for them.  We all help to alter unfolding reality whether we’re conscious of it or not, and whether we like it or not.  The option is for us to make our effects deliberate and informed, purposeful and will-full.

If much we hear on the news shows sound like somebody’s nightmare made real, it’s because it is!  And just as our fears, hatreds and illusions are recreated in day to day events, so can our best intentions, hopes and dreams help in part to create a present and future reality that we all can fully live with.  We’re not here to accept reality, but to each do our individual and collective part to help change it.

I close, unapologetically accepting nothing at face value, filled with the (okay, impractical!) expectation of helping to make things better.

-Best always, JWH

(Above will appear in Jesse’s upcoming book for the general public “The Town that Waves”)

(Freely Post and forward)

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Turning Over a New Leaf:

Resolution Every Day

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

The first of the Julian calendar year is a time when we in this culture traditionally make resolutions to ”turn over a new leaf” – a remarkably nature based metaphor for doing better in the future.  For some, this may entail changing those habits that fail to serve us or further our aims, or the creation of new ways of being and acting that do nourish and assist.  Resolutions may involve leaving a bad situation or moving towards a more satisfying relationship, job or home, or perhaps providing for ourselves or others what has too long been neglected.  This tradition is founded on a desire to develop and improve that it is as old as life itself, in the end not only making things easier or more bountiful for the one doing the changing, but also often improving things for each being’s family, community, genus, regional ecology and the larger connected planet.  When it comes to humans – and arguably, at least some other species as well – resolutions can be more than a matter of subconscious, bodily and evolutionary resolve.  Indeed, in our case they may include choosing to alter, arrest, develop or otherwise make personal shifts out of a conscious concern for the well being and betterment of self, loved ones, and beloved life and earth.

Judging by a random survey of New Years celebrants in Times Square, however, resolutions are neither always so generous nor always so deep.  When asked to name them this holiday past, recorded responses were more typically to make it to a certain concert they’ve been longing to see or to go skiing more often.  The more self-demanding promises seemed largely limited to ones like “I want to lose 30 pounds” (even if her weight were actually healthy) and “I’m going to phone home to Mom more often” (no doubt whether he enjoys it or not).  And more significant than even their content, is the fact that so many resolutions fall by the wayside and are either only temporarily or never followed up on.

Let us be clear here.  To make a resolution is to make a determination to act.  It is not by definition a suggestion, recommendation, hope or guideline.  It is – at the point that we recognize a problem or need – the best and therefore the sole real option, and deliberate, assertive, proactive action must unfailingly follow.  If it is in the best interest of ourselves, who and what we cherish, our purpose and intentions, then our resolutions need the loving force of our commitment to adjust, remedy, aid, beautify, heal and make make whole.  This is surely true whether the pledge is great or small, particular or encompassing.  If we really do have too little or too much weight for our well being, needs and purposes, then we need to act decisively (though not always continuously or successfully) to keep our dietary commitments.  If the main thing someone can think of to change is to stop dating a certain boyfriend or girlfriend who doesn’t treat them right, then separating becomes essential.  If improving that relationship is the resolution, then it is every day, and in not only large but little ways, that we must fully invest ourselves to that end.  We need not have accomplished a shift or aim in order to have demonstrated resolve, but we need to be actively moving ahead on our intentions through the inevitable periods of difficulty or exhaustion, distraction or mistake, as well as through the times of rapid progress or enhanced results.  What there cannot be and still use the term, is great avoidance and denial, neglecting and qualifying, the compromising of truth and purpose, paralysis or retreat.

I myself don’t make any New Years resolutions and never have, but not for a lack of commitments.  I make additional significant resolutions and pledges nearly every single day.  This is because in the practice of Animá, every moment can be a decisive choice, a commitment at least to the fullest living and realization of each of our finite moments.  As such, each conscious choice by nature requires our attempted implementation or response.  This commitment and investment of caring, time and effort may go into a short-term and readily bettered situation, or into a process that will knowingly take either years or a lifetime.  I, for one, am right now aware of my long-term resolve to always give of myself without denying my truths, but also of my resolve to make this essay as helpful and inspirational as possible in the next little while… to create works like the “I’m a Medicine Woman Too!” book that can encourage self confidence in generations of children I will never meet, but also to commit my investment of self in this very second in time, to the allies, family, offspring and friends that are themselves demonstrating resolve in their connections right now to me.  I can sense my resolve to thoroughly notice, taste and enjoy the honeybush tea with intense presence and focus even as I seek to get this piece written, along with my resolve to do all I can to have a lasting and powerful affect on into the distant and largely unseeable future.

The word resolution has an illuminating subsidiary meaning, that of returning from a state or period of dissonance to one of consonance, as is in musical compositions… and the return of the parts of our bodies from a condition of dis-ease and imbalance to one of harmonious processes and mutually beneficial relationship.  In the Animá healing tradition we never speak of curing, but rather, of assisting or resolving.  What we are dedicated to do as lifeways counselors and herbalists, is to contribute to the harmonic resolution our clients entire physical, emotional, energetic beings… an alliance of their bodies’ natural tendency towards wholeness and health, and our resolve to find natural ways to help.

I expend so much time writing because I know that changing perceptions is often necessary in order to accelerate positive changes in attitude, behavior, cultural trends and prevailing politics.  I also know that acting to make new and sometimes difficult changes can inspire new ways of seeing and perceiving.  With this dimension of the word, to act resolutely is to make possible a wondrous revealing – and re-revealing – of the limitless aspects and characteristics of what currently is, as well as helping make possible what is yet to be.  In this way, in our hearts and minds all things are made fresh and new.

If you are to make a resolution, let it be not just a singular pledge marking the onset of a year demarcated by the too-influential Roman Empire.  Let us resolve to be wholly committed, instead, to the necessarily personal process of actively bettering and beautifying, aiding and healing, intently turning over a proverbial new leaf untold times each and every awakened day!

Let us resolve there be no incidental, unintentional, frittered or unattended hours.  No feelings unnoticed or needs untended.  No love or purpose neglected.  No calling spurned.  No retreat nor deliberately looking away.  No leaf unturned.

(Photos (c) 2010 by Jesse Wolf Hardin)

Animá Online Courses: www.animacenter.org

Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference: www.traditionsinwesternherbalism.org

Please post and forward freely

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Celebrating Solstice: Listening to the Shadows
by Kiva Rose
http://animacenter.org

Darkness is your candle, your boundaries are your quest… You must have shadow and light source both. Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe.
-Rumi

Today the sun begins its return to our hemisphere, and though it will be many weeks before most of us notice the subtle lengthening of days, we celebrate this turning point with a festival of candles symbolic of the growing light. Each day forward from here, the nights will grow slightly shorter, and gift us with a little more illumination through the many cold moons left to come. Especially in the holiday rush and cultural obsession with bright lights and shiny things to keep the dark out, it’s very easy to forget the unique opportunity that winter presents us with. Understandably, most of us feel an urge to rush the seasonal shift, and to focus on the arrival of the greener, warmer days rather than stopping to dwell in the moment and appreciating what this time has to teach us.

In this crux of dark and light, we reside in a world rich in shadow and many shaded colors. For shadows aren’t just some indeterminate grey area between two polarities, but rather the complex subtleties of a wide spectrum. We tend to prefer the light and to cling to the familiar and seeable world – and yet, depth and detail are often best noticed by twilight or the shadows passing storm-clouds. Just as the contrast of light created by shadow often makes for the most striking of images, so does the darkness of these days present us with the ability to see deeper into our own lives.

Winter is the story telling time, a period in which to remember and to ponder. A place in which to dream. It’s in this space that we often begin to understand what the intense experiences we had in warmer months have to tell us. It’s no accident that in folklore, the faery and all things magical are most likely to appear by dusk or at the cusp between seasons. These times of transition hold the secrets and potential of what can be seen or experienced.

In the dark of this season, the weight of memories and past grief can seem heavier without the reassuring guidance of light just ahead. As the sun has waned to a brief  glimmer and the nights grown long and still, it can be difficult to remain sure of our footing and certain that we’re heading in the right direction. In this way, the dark season teaches us to be still, to listen and to practice awareness with each step we take, to feel our way through the sometimes labyrinthian paths of our lives and emotions. By recognizing this, we can experience the time as the gift is.  Instead of fleeing from the onslaught of sensation or trying to take control of the situation by incessantly moving, we would do best to give ourselves to the earthen rest we’re offered.

In half-light and shadows are the reminder of mystery, and the inherent magic of our world. In the cold moons are the opportunity to nourish ourselves and rest, to remember and replenish, knowing that the light will soon be returning and now is the time to give ourselves the space to go within, until the light calls us forward into the next turning.

With that in mind, I offer you my own celebration of the Solstice, a lullaby for the dreaming time.

The Story Telling Moon
by Kiva

tell me a story, love
in the dark down
in this leaf lined log
where we lay together
and dream
root tendrils
into blooming

dressed in fur
your hair wild
and twisted with braids
and dried flowers
you touch my cheek
we curl together
stalking lunar circles
tracing sun spirals
on each other’s skin

the clacking
of small bones
between us
the stories we tell
of green buds
adorning brown sticks
of warm sweet honey
sticky on our lips

in the dark our tree
buried by
a thousand sparkles
by so many feet
of snow we speak
of swimming
to the cold surface
just to taste sunlight

but I breathe your scent
curl against your chest
arrange our blanket of moss
and brown leaves
turn with the moon
drink stars
and go deeper into darkness

———————–

(as always, please post and forward freely… photo of the Animá Sanctuary (c) 2009 by Jesse Wolf Hardin)

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I want to thank the literally hundreds of people who have written with their support and love, in emails and FaceBook comments, in what has been a grievous time for me.  I have been touched to the point of grateful tears.  Appropriately, the following is an excerpt from my novel currently being revised, “The Kokopelli Seed.”  Appropriate, because it tells in fictionalized form the story of so called “troubled youth” first laying rocks to acknowledge their long unacknowledged losses and pain… and then ends with them ready to build a second cairn representing all the things they had to be thankful for.  From personal grief to a larger grieving for the world, followed by the sweet savoring and giving that is sorrow’s balance.  So-called novel or not, it happened pretty much as it is written here.  I know, I was there.         -Love, JWH

The Grieving Cairns

By Jesse Wolf Hardin

“ You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from a master.” (St. Bernard of Clairvaux)

The last kid put his personal rock with the others’, fitting it carefully into its place in the pile they called a “cairn.”  Then he stepped back to wipe the sweat off his brow.  It was important that they had each selected their own stone, and then carried it themselves the long distance uphill.  The kids’ long-haired counselor smiled at the feat, knowing how tempted they were to think him a kook and drop out of the two week program, to head back down to Taos and party until the next time they got in trouble.  And frankly, there was plenty of reason for them to bail out, from the difficult hikes to the kinds of truths they were made to face.  But then there was something cool about the crazy things their counselor had them do, about being listened to for the first time in their lives, that caused most of them to stick it out.

The counselor understood what his kids felt.  The youngsters weren’t “apathetic” – as so often portrayed by the media and officialdom — they were simply pissed-off, and paralyzed.  There was no excuse for some of the rotten things they’d been busted for, but any major changes in their lives would first require an understanding why they did what they did.  The bad drugs and wild lifestyles, all the cheap and dangerous highs were just their way of pushing to make their lives seem more real and significant, just a push to experience more, and feel more.  They saw life as a flexible membrane, and were determined to stretch it as far as it would go.

He had finally got what he wanted so bad: his own “Disenfranchised-Youth Franchise”.  He would go back to his treasured mountain cabin after each session, wondering how the kid’s were doing since he saw them last, and practicing the new dances they always insisted he learn (even if it meant breaking his glasses from doing break-dance spins on his head).  He didn’t care what the kid’s interests were, so long as they applied themselves at something, anything.   What he’d say he hoped for them was to distinguish themselves at whatever “tripped their trigger.”  He loved these unhappy crews, felt the need to protect them from their addiction to being victims.  Children and flies are some of the few creatures that will rush back to the exact spot where the swatter struck.  In a sense, these young men and women had each packed their own weighty “rock” long before working their way through the confusion of broken homes, boring schools, and finally detention.  They’d packed it all the way to the start of this oddball wilderness program, to this, their best chance to come to know and respect their selves.  And first-ever permission to grieve.  Only by opening to their pain, he knew, could they trust their bliss.  And only by honoring what had been lost, could they appreciate the advantages blessings that remained or the blessings still to come.

For the cairn exercise, the kids were instructed to focus on some wondrous element of their past: some special person, place or living thing that made their childhood meaningful —  something that had since been disgraced, defiled, stolen or destroyed.  For some this meant the family they never had.  Or some “Enchanted Forest” that may have been no bigger than a single undeveloped lot, that they watched covered over with asphalt for a new highway.  For another, it meant the tiny run-off creek with the polliwogs in it, that nonetheless appeared to the boy as big and mysterious, as complete as an entire wild river ecosystem — later channeled into culverts and sewers.  A special old  apple tree in the backyard that held not only fruit in its branching grasp, but fruitful wisdom — cut down while the children were at school because some idiot gardener told dad it had “bugs.”  One stone was placed for the crazy old lady with the twenty-seven Siamese cats, found frozen to death when the city turned off her gas over an unpaid bill.  Another stone represented a failed teen romance, and true to form, insisted on rolling to the bottom time and again.

The cairn had grown over the course of the years, and in time featured a rock for nearly every threatened paradise, every nearby rural community turned into another Aspen for the rich.  Not a few had ached for what they thought of as the “Wild West,” a place where eccentrics where valued and promises kept, a place more free than the imagination itself.  Wild mustangs and thundering bison, chased by eagle-feathered braves, cowboy’s and outlaws who stood up for what they believed in even it was wrong.  And it seemed like everybody’s kids hurt over the loss of freedom and privacy, the absence of opportunities for adventure and purpose.  The bigger the pile got, the more vanished loves and dreams, critters and playgrounds it came to stand up for.  Here was a monument to that which was no more.

The boy they called “Frog” left one for the amphibians no longer heard singing from ponds poisoned by acid rain. “Charity” came forward with a rock alarmingly shaped like the body of a baby, placing it in the conical pile for “the child I’ll never be again,”  They all looked at each other, the toughest playground bully or cafeteria arsonist swinging around to take the trail back, hurrying on rather than let their buddies see the tears welling up in their eyes.

Soon every kid but one had added his grieving stone to the rest.  Finally “Punky,” the smallest of the bunch, came huffing out of the thick brush.  In his arms, covering much of his face, was a boulder at least half his own weight.  They watched as a tiny hero, the champion of some unknown cause, completed what appeared to be the impossible.  Dropping the monster stone high upon the cairn berm, Punky fell to one knee, gasping for air.

“So whatcha’ grievin’?,” Dag asked.  But the sage counselor already knew.  He could sense the little fellow’s grief over the mother that passed away, the father who didn’t try hard enough to understand him.  And more than that, he could feel the way the kid suffered over the uniformity of shopping malls, the disappearance of cowboys and the urbanization of Indians.  Gone, the likes of Chief Joseph and Billy The Kid.  Gone, the grizzly bears and grizzly fighters, the code of the West… and all the rest.

“Everything,” Punky answered, trailing off to a whisper.  “Every-darn-thing.”

The shaggy headed counselor smiled to himself, thinking how tomorrow was as good a time as any to start up the equally important “Gratitude Cairn,” in a secret glen he knew about next to a sacred spring.  There were, after all, no shortage of rocks, as well as no shortage of hills still to climb.  And no shortage of blessings to notice and gifts to savor… people and places to thank, and awakened lives to wholly celebrate.

(post and forward freely…)

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