Thanksgiving

So . . . Thanksgiving is over for this year . . . or is it? Can we live in Thanksgiving mode? It would make a better world I am sure.

Around our small table of three, plus the cat, we had plenty to eat, two good wines, and fun with Trivial Pursuit. Even the cat had special treats and a tiny taste of turkey.

One of my companions recalled a small dog who snatched a chicken left marinating to go on the grill, and then ran with it. They recovered the chicken and put it on the grill!

I recalled the Thanksgiving when my dog friend Shama did something more drastic. Shama was a Fila Brasilero, which means 100 pounds BIG. Just standing still she was 3 feet tall, and if she stood on hind legs she was much taller than I. My housemate had bought and roasted the turkey. After the meal I went to my room at the back of the house, while she cut the meat off the turkey and started soup with the carcass. When I came back to the kitchen a while later, I saw the platter of meat on the counter. Shama was eyeing it. So I warned my housemate, who said she would take care of it in a minute. I shrugged and went back to my room.

A while later, I returned to the kitchen. I saw Shama flopped out and an empty platter on the floor beside her! My housemate did not say a word about it.

My goal for the next year is to remain as thankful as I have been this week. I count my blessings.

Flower Essences

More than twenty years ago, my dear friend and astrologer, Barbara Shere (who die about four years ago), told me that she saw me making things to empower people. "Flower essences, I think."

At the time, I thought "I don't want to learn anything new. I have plenty to do."

Then, about seven or eight years later, I found myself in a garden I had designed and created - backbreaking work and all. I was making a flower essence. As I remembered Barbara's prediction, I smiled. When I was finished with the essence, I went inside and called Barbara.

"Do you remember telling me I would make flower essences?"

"Yes."

"Well I was just in the garden making a flower essence from my own garden!"

We laughed and talked for a bit, and then I went back to my work.

Eventually I had made more than fifty flower essences, and a number of crystal essences as well. I began muscle testing and making essence combinations for anyone who would sit still long enough to let me work. I learned a lot. I also used my own self as a test subject, learning how the essences worked, subtly and powerfully.

These days I test myself daily, and seldom get a "Yes" on the question "Do I need an essence or combination?" Recently however, I got the inner nudge to test myself for essences. I kept testing and taking the essence that tested positive for me, until I finally got to a combination of three single essences plus a combination a friend had made. I laughed out loud when I read the definition of the first essence, Calathea. It helps one to follow a single thought when there are many thoughts and ideas crowding the mind. This is something I work on all the time. In our busy world many of us attempt to multi-task. It never works. The other essences were equally powerful, lifting anger and opening the heart. I am taking it for many months - in fact as long as I am also using a process from Perelandra Ltd. called a "calibration."

The calibration, as I understand it, "unsticks" energy and patterns that are jammed or not moving for some reason. In working on burning the excess fat off my body, I realized I needed help. What came up for me was to do a calibration every day for a long period of time. My muscle testing for the essence combination gave me a twice a day dose for the same time remaining for doing the daily calibration. I don't understand all the reasons and what exactly is happening. I do know it is working for my highest and best.

This is one small example of how essences can work.

Gratitude

Yesterday I did my grocery shopping. More than ever, I noticed how kind people were with me and with others. Almost everyone I encountered smiled, and everyone I talked with wished me a Happy Thanksgiving. I wonder whether, in the midst of economic challenges, knowing how many people are losing jobs, money they've invested, and sometimes their homes, we are all the more aware of what we have to be grateful for.

Tomorrow I will roast a turkey, and gather with neighbors and friends to share a holiday meal. Interestingly, we all eat somewhat differently. One friend is a vegetarian, another eats "All American", and I eat no grains and not much in the way of starches. The turkey will have no stuffing, and there will be no pie. Tee will make and eat her favorite vegetarian Mexican soup, Tee and Bill will eat garlic mashed potatoes and home made rolls, Bill and I will eat turkey, and we all will eat salad, asparagus and acai sorbet that is to die for. What we will have in common is a our friendship and our gratitude.

Somehow I am reminded of the first turkey I roasted. I was in my second year of law school, married less than a year, and my parents came to visit in St. Louis for Thanksgiving. I had not used the oven yet, and did not realize that the thermostat didn't work. Our turkey was done in half the time! Remarkably, it was one of the best turkeys I have eaten. When we took it out of the oven, we scrambled to finish fixing the rest of the meal, and had a good time together.

I was grateful that the turkey turned out despite the faulty thermostat, grateful for family, and grateful for the wonderful man I had married (later we divorced, not having had the skills to get through the rough times . . . and now we are just friends).

Gratitude is what this holiday is all about. I am grateful for a safe and comfortable place to live, for family and friends, for physical healing (I have some of the best doctors I know of), and for all that I have learned in my life. I am especially grateful to be doing the work that I was born to do: healing and writing.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Essential Sprays

Another way to use flower essences is in a spray. I have a group of "Essential Sprays." They contain carefully selected flower and gem essences, along with essential oils.

Scent is very evocative, as we all know. A recent buyer told me his deceased wife loved one of my sprays, Clear Space, and he has been using the spray because it reminds him of her and comforts him. It has a clean scent at the same time it energetically cleans the space.

Abundance, with flower and crystal essences as well as oils of Myrrh, Oakmoss and Tangerine, is just what it says, an assist in manifesting what you ask for - abundantly.

Angelic Rainbow attracts angelic assistance with Angelica flower essence and Angelica, Rose, Rosemary and Lavender essential oils.

Blessing is Lavender flower essence with Lavender essential oil. Lavender is an amazing herb and flower, with antimicrobial properties. Most people enjoy the scent as well. It is relaxing and clarifying.

Focus is just what it says: use it to help focus - when you're on a tight deadline, when you have a an important meeting, or when you need to have a serious conversation - anytime you need to be clear and focused.

Harmony contains flower essences that promote calm, serene heart focus in any situation; clear thought; clear, peaceable communication; and the ability to see other points of view. The oils are Bergamot, Lavender, Rosemary, Vetiver and Ylang Ylang essential oils.

Sweet Dreams is soothing and relaxing, and enhances dreaming. It contains Saint John's Wort and Lavender flower essences and Essence of Herkimer diamond. The Herkimer Diamond is very useful in clear dreaming and remembering of dreams. The Oils of Lavender and Jasmine essential oils are relaxing as well. Mimosa essential oil opens the heart to unconditional love, and also facilitates intuitive and spiritual connections in the dreamtime.

If you are interested in further information, go to http://www.dragonflyessence.com/essences.html to get complete definitions and to purchase.

Be well!

Tools for thriving

So how did I continue to thrive through all the intensity of the current administration (endless war, shenanigans beyond belief, and greed running rampant) and the political campaign that seemed to last forever? Flower essences were part of the answer. Believe me, flower essences are potent and wonderfully easy to use.

The first flower essences were made by Dr. Edward Bach, a respected surgeon and general practitioner in London during the early part of the last century. He went on to create homeopathic remedies, and then created what are still know as the Bach Flower Remedies.

Another doctor, Dr. Bjorn Nordenstrom, gave us the next piece: the human electrical system. In the 1950s, he pioneered a series of radical innovations in radiology that are now routine at every major hospital in the world. He was then promoted to the most respected position in his field: head of diagnostic radiology at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute. In 1985 he served as chairman of Karolinska's Nobel Assembly, which chooses the laureates in medicine. He was a brilliant, very innovative, very imaginative scientist, who has made significant contributions to radiology and medicine.

In the 1960s, he saw something on an x-ray that he had never seen before, and set about finding out what it was. In the process, he discovered that our bodies have an electrical system, and it is way beyond the system described in acupuncture. The circuits are switched off by an injury, an infection, a tumor, emotional upset, or even by the normal activity of the body's organs; voltages build and fluctuate; electric currents course through arteries and veins and across capillary walls, drawing white blood cells and metabolic compounds into and out of surrounding tissues. This electrical system works to balance the activity of internal organs and, in the case of injuries, represents the very foundation of the healing process. It's as critical to the well-being of the human body as the flow of blood. Disturbances in this electrical network are involved in the development of disease.

He started to work with patients who had gone through every protocol and still had tumors. He experimented, manually connecting the electric circuits of the body through the tumors. Most patients were cured just by that treatment. The rest, who still had some tumor, were treated with very low doses of chemo and became cancer free. And they stayed cancer free long enough to be considered "cured."

In 1983 Nordenstrom published a 358-page book covering more than two decades of experimental work, entitled Biologically Closed Electric Circuits: Clinical, Ex- perimental, and Theoretical Evidence for an Additional Circulatory System, and it's about electrical activity in the human body – the biological equivalent of electric circuits.

At this point, it is still cutting edge in the scientific world. Okay, so why is this relevant to flower essences? Because flower essences are essentially an electrical pattern. The flower petals that are floated in water in the making of the essence hold the electrical pattern of the flower. Each flower has a healing potential that can be used in repairing, balancing and stabilizing other electrical systems (human, animal and so on). So if we select the correct essence, we can easily repair our own electrical systems.

How do we select the correct essence? That too is easy. We use our body's electrical system to tell us which essence will repair, stabilize and balance our own electrical system - through applied kinesiology, also called "muscle testing." Muscle testing uses the electrical circuits of the body to accurately answer any yes or no question. Many of us are already using the simple technique to repair stabilize and balance the electrical systems of our bodies. Flower essences, properly selected and used, keep the electrical system working properly, which brings the whole body into greater balance and health.

In my practice, I have had so many clients look at me and ask some form of "How did you know that was an issue for me? I haven't told anyone" or "How did you know that is what I am working on in therapy?" The answer is in the electrical system. It still amazes me with its simplicity and absolute elegance. And it works so well.

Until next time. . . .

Grief and Blessings

Yesterday I learned that a friend died. She actually died more than a year ago, but I didn't know. That was a big awakening for me - that in my daily busy-ness, I need to remember to connect with the people with whom I share a heart connection. I am glad, at least, that we had a very sweet time together not so very long before she died.

There has been a lot of mourning in my life, particularly in the last couple of years. An Uncle died suddenly of a cardiac arrest. His wife, my Mom's sister, is still in mourning. She doesn't want to be alone. I know why. It's because she feels her grief more when she is alone. I understand it helps to have support. I also know that mourning, in the end, is a lonely process.

My cat friend Misty died 16 months ago. I cried a lot alone in the evenings for most of a year. Every time I cried, Misty was present and comforting me. Even when I laughed, she showed up, thinking that I was crying (I guess the laughter sounded a lot like crying).

I am writing a book about animals, their souls, and their dying. It brings back all the wonderful animals who have shared my life and home, and I have grieved again for each of them as I write.

Not so long ago, Misty came and told me she wants to come back to me in a new body. Then another cat friend, Samantha, who died when Misty was about 5, said she also wants to come back. And then Coco, one of the dogs who lived with Misty, Sam and I, said "Me too!". I had to tell them to wait a bit, so I can make a place for all of us (right now I live in a very small apartment). There is life after death!

I also have mourned my own limitations, which have been quite present in the past year and a half, with two foot surgeries and a great deal of pain. Thankfully, I have found ways to minimize pain and inflammation. I am stubborn, and I refuse to live on anti-inflammatory drugs or even worse, methotrexate or Enbril or Humera. Through diet, and natural supplements, I can move through my days and through my life. Hurray!

Through letting go of people and things, I have learned to open my heart even more to receive the blessings. And that is a good thing.

Alice Walker's Letter to President-elect Obama

Nov. 5, 2008

Dear Brother Obama,

YOU HAVE NO IDEA really, of how profound this moment is for us. Us being the black people of the Southern United States. You think you know, because you are thoughtful, and you have studied our history. But seeing you deliver the torch so many others before you carried, year after year, decade after decade, century after century, only to be struck down before igniting the flame of justice and of law, is almost more than the heart can bear.

Alice Walker.

And yet, this observation is not intended to burden you, for you are of a different time, and, indeed, because of all the relay runners before you, North America is a different place. It is really only to say: Well done. We knew, through all the generations, that you were with us, in us, the best of the spirit of Africa and of the Americas. Knowing this, that you would actually appear, someday, was part of our strength. Seeing you take your rightful place, based solely on your wisdom, stamina and character, is a balm for the weary warriors of hope, previously only sung about.

I would advise you to remember that you did not create the disaster that the world is experiencing, and you alone are not responsible for bringing the world back to balance. A primary responsibility that you do have, however, is to cultivate happiness in your own life. To make a schedule that permits sufficient time of rest and play with your gorgeous wife and lovely daughters. And so on.

One gathers that your family is large. We are used to seeing men in the White House soon become juiceless and as white-haired as the building; we notice their wives and children looking strained and stressed. They soon have smiles so lacking in joy that they remind us of scissors. This is no way to lead. Nor does your family deserve this fate.

One way of thinking about all this is: It is so bad now that there is no excuse not to relax. From your happy, relaxed state, you can model real success, which is all that so many people in the world really want. They may buy endless cars and houses and furs and gobble up all the attention and space they can manage, or barely manage, but this is because it is not yet clear to them that success is truly an inside job. That it is within the reach of almost everyone.

I would further advise you not to take on other people's enemies. Most damage that others do to us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion. We must learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise.

It is understood by all that you are commander in chief of the United States and are sworn to protect our beloved country; this we understand, completely. However, as my mother used to say, quoting a Bible with which I often fought, "hate the sin, but love the sinner." There must be no more crushing of whole communities, no more torture, no more dehumanizing as a means of ruling a people's spirit. This has already happened to people of color, poor people, women, children. We see where this leads, where it has led.

A good model of how to "work with the enemy" internally is presented by the Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts the Chinese government that invaded Tibet. Because, finally, it is the soul that must be preserved, if one is to remain a credible leader. All else might be lost; but when the soul dies, the connection to earth, to peoples, to animals, to rivers, to mountain ranges, purple and majestic, also dies. And your smile, with which we watch you do gracious battle with unjust characterizations, distortions and lies, is that expression of healthy self-worth, spirit and soul, that, kept happy and free and relaxed, can find an answering smile in all of us, lighting our way, and brightening the world.

We are the ones we have been waiting for.

In Peace and Joy,
Alice Walker

Young and Political in the 60's

After Eisenhower, there was John F. Kennedy. Wow! Was there an uproar about a Catholic President! There was actually less , at least in my awareness, about President-elect Obama being an African-American man than there was about Kennedy being Catholic. Perhaps it was just my milieu at the time.

Kennedy, for all his human foibles, was what the nation needed at the time he was President. He inspired us.

When the Bay of Pigs crisis came, I was living with my parents across the river from Omaha, which was the headquarters of SAC, short for Strategic Air Command, located at Offut Air Force Base. This was considered a very likely target if war actually happened. Thankfully, it did not!

Anyone who was old enough in November, 1963 remembers the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and remembers exactly where they were when they heard. I was in Spanish class. School was suspended. I became glued to the television.

There are many parallels to President-elect Barack Obama, another inspiring and for some, controversial leader. I pray that he remains safe.

At Kennedy's death, there were 16,000 American military advisors in Vietnam. Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ as he was often called) got us deeply into the conflict there. The young men of my generation were being slaughtered. I was at the University of Iowa during the late 60s and in the spring of 1971. I listened to Dick Gregory, scarecrow thin in the middle of his hunger strike, speak about war and peace. I walked in more than one peace march. And when guns were fired into a crowd of students at Kent State, I was in shock.

At the U of I, the state guardsmen were called in. Why on earth would the powers that be decide to set up an identical situation? All I know is that it was terrifying and also an opportunity. As the Chinese would have it - both a crisis and an opportunity.

The opportunity came in the form of speaking engagements across the state of Iowa. I lived in a nominally Christian living community, and those who were our mentors arranged for us to visit church groups across the state to dialogue with people who were interested. It was quite a time.

The other major event in that era was the passing of a Constitutional Amendment (the 26th) to allow 18 year-olds to vote. The prevailing sentiment, and underlying reason for the change, was that men who were fighting, and dying, for their country in Viet Nam, had had no say in politics that got us into the mess.

I was already 21 when the Amendment passed. I voted against Nixon.

Politics of Peace

I have been busy with other work lately, and yet I have been remembering other presidential elections. The earliest I remember is listening to the 1956 Republican Convention, in which Dwight David Eisenhower was nominated to run for re-election. I was only 7, so I didn't understand a lot at the time. What I know now is that Eisenhower was a pretty good president: he warned us about the military-industrial complex, and he gave a speech called "the Cross of Iron" - both of which are still very pertinent today.

Here are some excerpts:

In this spring of 1953 the free world weighs one question above all others: the chance for a just peace for all peoples.

To weigh this chance is to summon instantly to mind another recent moment of great decision. It came with that yet more hopeful spring of 1945, bright with the promise of victory and of freedom. The hope of all just men in that moment too was a just and lasting peace.

The 8 years that have passed have seen that hope waver, grow dim, and almost die. And the shadow of fear again has darkly lengthened across the world.

Today the hope of free men remains stubborn and brave, but it is sternly disciplined by experience. It shuns not only all crude counsel of despair but also the self-deceit of easy illusion. It weighs the chance for peace with sure, clear knowledge of what happened to the vain hope of 1945.

If we changed the dates a bit, this could describe more recent history.

The way chosen by the United States was plainly marked by a few clear precepts, which govern its conduct in world affairs.

First: No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice.

Second: No nation's security and well-being can be lastingly achieved in isolation but only in effective cooperation with fellow-nations.

Third: Any nation's right to form of government and an economic system of its own choosing is inalienable.

Fourth: Any nation's attempt to dictate to other nations their form of government is indefensible.

And fifth: A nation's hope of lasting peace cannot be firmly based upon any race in armaments but rather upon just relations and honest understanding with all other nations.

In the light of these principles the citizens of the United States defined the way they proposed to follow, through the aftermath of war, toward true peace.

Have we followed these precepts?

And so it has come to pass that the Soviet Union itself has shared and suffered the very fears it has fostered in the rest of the world.

This has been the way of life forged by 8 years of fear and force.

What can the world, or any nation in it, hope for if no turning is found on this dread road?

The worst to be feared and the best to be expected can be simply stated.

The worst is atomic war.

The best would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and the labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American system or the Soviet system or any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the peoples of this earth.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.

It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.

It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.

We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

These plain and cruel truths define the peril and point the hope that come with this spring of 1953.

This is one of those times in the affairs of nations when the gravest choices must be made, if there is to be a turning toward a just and lasting peace.

It is a moment that calls upon the governments of the world to speak their intentions with simplicity and with honesty.

It calls upon them to answer the questions that stir the hearts of all sane men: is there no other way the world may live?