Requiem For A Flag

GemFireAir
Requiem For A Flag
© marty kleva
July 4, 2008
permanent url


There are times when images represent an underlying reality of the accepted societal illusion. For me, such is the case with the photo “Requiem”, a sight that I came upon one day while I was on a walk.

I can understand why I had passed it by so many times before without notice. It’s colors are the almost unrecognizable red, white and blue, altered into a dull combination of faded colors and weather-beaten fabric.

Noticeable only by its position of prominence, the wooden dowel of the once brilliantly hued flag of the U.S. stands propped upon a stone wall beneath the portale, and against a hand-hewn pine viga post. Likely it had been carefully placed there on some former Flag Day, Memorial Day, or even some Fourth of July. When I first noticed it, I continued walking on by. I got about ten feet past, and as if something called to me, I looked back and saw the photograph to be taken — not a pretty one — nor even one that might attract a lot of common interest — but to me one that is archetypal and so very symbolic of what I have personally experienced in this country as an American.

To me, this flag expresses how more and more Americans are tired and feel battered; some few very conscious of the reasons why, the great majority not able to explain it, just that they sense that there is something very much amiss in this country. They are so busy complying with all the requirements placed upon them in order to keep a job or two that they have little time to investigate their concerns. They can only rely upon what the system has put in place from which to gather information and trust that they will be told the truth.

While the majority of these Americans have been going about their busy lives other things have been happening:

— the September 11-event that is greatly suspect — with a Commission Report that does not stand up to scrutiny and would not stand a chance in a true court of law.
— a “Patriot Act” that ironically categorizes patriotic Americans to be suspected terrorists.
— a foreign war in Iraq that has been proven to have been initiated for false reasons, those reasons highly suspected to be directly connected across party lines to politicians’ bank accounts.
— Billions of dollars that are admittedly lost by the Pentagon — lost to the military industrial corporations that cannot prove that the expenditures match the payments they have received.
— a President who continually requests more billions to create scores of U.S. military bases and an embassy that resembles a palace — all in Iraq.
— A Congress that continually signs the check for those billions the President asks for.
— A Federal Reserve that under the last and present governors has totally demolished the American Dollar — a currency that is used by the entire world to do business since the Bretton Woods Agreement was signed in 1945.
— A stock market that is not even a Bear Market vs a Bull Market but a totally Manipulated Market that hangs by a thread.
— A banking system that is based on air, having convinced the American people to exist by using “credit”.
— A court system that is no longer run under the Constitution.
— A system that codifies a ‘person’ — like you and me — as a ‘corporation’, not a full live man/woman. Unknowingly, we agree to this when we sign our children’s Birth Certificates and forms to enroll them into Social Security. This then makes us and them the fiduciary to the corporation whose title on the form magically matches our own personal name.

This already too-long list does not even begin to tell the full story of the history of such abuses and treachery against the American Constitution and the American people by some of the elite and major political parties.

However, items similar to those here and others are what finally woke me up sometime in the year 2000 — and like so many of us who are in a deep sleep — it is such a nasty experience to be shaken awake. I wanted to turn over and ignore the screeching alarm.

The once so dearly held so-called American Dream is not just a faded glory, but one that has been literally ripped out from beneath Americans. The disbelief by Americans is almost incomprehensible as I see and hear more and more, “It will never happen in America.” But you see it has already happened, we have just not been able to be awake enough to see it. We have been deluded by the mantra that “America is Safe, America is Free.”

Once this deception is clearly seen, the illusion can never be restored.

For me, it was then a simple matter to understand that what I believed to be a two-party political system is nothing of the sort. It is a conglomerate group of elitists playing their version of Summer Camp Color Wars that convincingly creates a place in the parade for victory to have the common man believe that he/she participates.

When an illusion like this breaks up, it is more than uncomfortable, it is downright devastating and creates an environment that is shaky at best. In this place you try to find others who have also been shaken awake and try to establish some common ground, only to find that even here there are great divisions, and people believing that once they now see clear of the illusion that their main goal is to resist all it stands for and to declare their own personal war upon the illusory beast.

I too struggled with this and more fortunately than many others, realized that resistance is debilitating and can be destructive and dangerous, but learning and further self-education is empowering. I went through a time when I wished more than anything that this country could turn back the clock to the original Constitution, what I mistakenly thought to be idyllic times.

But illusions are not simply cleared nor do they go away quickly. They linger and it's like walking through a deep penetrating fog that begins to shift back and forth and eventually opens into a light mist where the rays of the sun barely shine through. You have to wade through it all to come out on the other side. The important thing to remember is to keep moving and be aware of the many mirrors inside the illusion where one can be mesmerized and unfortunately become frozen and paralyzed by an illusory reality created for our distraction and entertainment by the producers of the carnavale.

I stumbled onto these places — and in some, I battled ethereal windmills, while in others I studied my surroundings very carefully before moving out of the warped maze of mirrors through the one opening that was an aperture to escape the perpetual circle of deceit.

Over and over the lesson was repeated for me. I felt great need to stop and rest and sometimes I did if only from the sheer exhaustion. However, a great internal force of tension kept moving me onward. One thing I was sure about is that when I no longer felt the need to resist then I would have made it through to the edge of the great penetrating fog and no longer under the sole influence of its power.

Once there, it is as if a binding shackle has been shattered. The release from such a force can be extreme and disorienting. This is new territory and the terrain is not familiar. You don’t know what’s what or who’s who and you must figure it all out from scratch.

In between there is a slight window of time when one can step back, back into the deep penetrating fog if one chooses to — and some do.

It is here at this edge of the unknown light before you that all your doubts and demons are summoned to the surface. There is that innate knowing that one more step forward is the one that crosses the Rubicon. I decided to make the crossing and find myself here today knowing that the illusion, the list of distractions and entertainments have not been solely created in my lifetime, but have been steadily added to since before the advent of the birth of this nation.

The difference is in the knowing — knowing that you live in a house of cards and mirrors is entirely different from the one that is lived believing everything is built on safe granite.

Coming to terms with feelings that are thought of as negative greatly adds to the knowing, and as one works through the anger and resentment, rather than insist they do not exist, the journey opens further, and continues to unfold into a clearer understanding of the difference between where you’ve been and where you now stand.

However, much overlooked is the process of grieving, for even the grief felt from leaving an abusive environment is painful. If the pain is buried and never acknowledge, it becomes a festering wound that will eventually show up as a major event in the future.

So I am of the thinking that the process of grieving is a bridge between the past and the unknown future yet to be created — a possible step into a new paradigm. Having come to this place after eighth years of waking up to this situation, and after six months ago coming upon this symbolic scenario that had been created by time and events long past by someone I do not know, a photo resulted, one claiming all the pieces in one click of the shutter that has enabled me to culminate the process of waking up and seeing the illusions I have lived in — at least to this moment of time.

Only here, and after an expression of grief will this country be able to step forward into a new future without the constrictions of the past or the agenda of those who would have us believe in their new illusion of 'one size fits all’ called a ‘one world order.’

To this end, one of a new paradigm, a future yet to be hewn and carved by conscious choice, I offer the following — “Requiem For A Flag.”


“Requiem For A Flag.”
© marty kleva
7-2-08

Lamentably where once this country invited the ‘tired and poor’ onto these great shores
— the tired and poor now rest upon them.

The once noble nation for which this flag gloriously flew in honor of the inalienable rights of freedom
— now decomposes into its elements of corruption and putrefaction.

The once grand and stately flag, shamed and defiled, hangs limp and weathered, unkempt and ragged
— its red and white stripes reduced to sackcloth and ashes.

The once blazoned stars of extraordinary vision no longer rest upon a field of midnight
— poked out of the fabric meant to fuse this country’s ideals.


There is a great and vainglorious rift that has rent the heartland from its moorings
— as it drowns in a flood of tears.

The people mourn the loss of a dream once lived
— too short.

The Republic has been beaten and battered into submission
— by the sleight of hand elitists who have duped the world in the aftermath of a blustering silent coup.

Now it is reduced to a dream that has no more substance
— than an ad agency’s shallow hype or the politicians eternally empty promises.


A dream so many have lived and died to experience
— just one more day.

A dream of freedom that is now awash in a sea
— of unprincipled lawlessness and illusion.

Where once there may have been statesmanship
— there is now pernicious political greed.

Where once there may have been integrity
— there is a vast integral of unpardonable criminality.


It is a time of mourning
— for this once greatly esteemed nation has lost its centerboard.

Its sails droop
— for there is no longer a clear breeze to fill their wings.

The captains
— have been intoxicated with demented power.

And the crews
— dare not even turn their mutinous backs upon one another.


Where once this country was a shining light to all
Where once the trumpets blared with symphonious ruffles and flourishes
— there remains only a dim resemblance of such sight and sound.

Now decomposed into a dissonant dirge
— at the hands of those whose watch, the lit lamp is snuffed out and the harmony reduced to a cacophonous Babel.

The Death Song is heard in every land
— across every sea and over every mountain.

The procession of plodding and persevering mourners deplore the end
— swaying like willows to lament the loss.

We/They go forth to put the final fist of earthly dirt upon the coffin of our dreams
— to unleash the unseen specter of Retribution upon those who have so miserably betrayed their oaths.

And to finally set free the Spirits of Redemption and Resurrection.


with ‘hayam’ — love that wanders the earth,

~ mek


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Santa Fe Youth Mural Project: SpaceBall—A Pitch To The Stars

GemFireAir
Santa Fe Youth Mural Project: SpaceBall—A Pitch To The Stars
marty kleva
April 6, 2008
permanent url


Movie — Santa Fe Youth Mural Project: SpaceBall—A Pitch To The Stars
View the entire set of photographs in the Gallery section.

In the high desert country of New Mexico, nestled against the backdrop of Mt. Baldy and the Sangre de Christo Mountains, lays the city of Santa Fe. At an elevation of 7,000 feet, here brilliant blue skies and artistry are de jour against the unusual effects of the Southwestern sun lighting the landscape of pinon pines, cactus, and aspen trees.

The name Santa Fe means “City of Holy Faith” and Santa Feans extend that faith to embrace a heartfelt love of beauty that encompasses artistic expression, group diversity, and the Earth’s wisdom, and where the art gallery mailboxes on Canyon Road are artfully painted.

This place is home to the area of many Native Pueblo tribes who, since before New Mexico was first known as a territory, have integrated the culture and religion of the Spanish Conquistadores as well as the occupying forces of the United States. Today it accepts the mixture of Hispanic, Native American, Mexican, and Anglo descent with a grace seldom found elsewhere. Santa Fe is a city that allows an expression of diversity where each culture has learned how to respect the other. It is not called “The City Different” without reason.

Here one finds lovely gardens, pueblo-style architecture, and the low profile adobe homes for which Santa Fe is renown. The earth-tone adobe is used as a foil for splashes of outrageous colors — turquoise, lavender, pinks, and tangerine that reflect the hues of our legendary Southwestern sunsets.

In town, around the traditional Spanish Plaza is the Atomic Grill, a reminder that Los Alamos is only a crow’s flight across the valley to the northwest in the Jemez Mountains.

During Indian Market Celebration you can spot a Harley on the plaza, children garbed in their native Pueblo-style dress, a “tourista” marketplace replete with bleached out cattle skulls, the traditional red and green chile ristras, and off a side street find the Loretto Chapel with the famed one-piece wooden spiral staircase.

One block from the Plaza is the Basilica of St. Francis; its first Bishop, Lamy, famed as the subject of Willa Cather’s novel “Death Comes To The Archbishop.” These are some examples of the integration of Native Spirituality and the Christianity of the area's Spanish heritage.

New Mexico is famous for its chile crop and here the main cuisine question is not would you like your meal with or without, but “Would you like that red or green?”

On a Spring day in April 2007, from a perch high above the city we can look down and find a group of artists who are meeting for the first time. The artists Luke Aiello, Peter Costas, Clark le Compte, Alana Sandovol, and Sarah Velez are led by professional mural artist Jenn Costas. The team is just forming to create and carry out a public mural project for the City of Santa Fe Arts Commission underwritten by a local organization Warehouse 21 through the direction of Ana Gallegos y Reinhardt. The project’s goal is to reclaim the buildings at Franklin Miles Ball Park from tags and graffiti that have accumulated over time and from those who believe that a blank wall is the equivalent of a bare canvas and an invitation to indulge in their idea of art.

Started in the mid-90’s by the Mayor’s Youth Art Council, the plan is to incorporate young artists to create and carry out such mural projects to prevent visual destruction of the city’s infrastructure. The thinking behind this is that those graffiti artists who are statistically younger will respect the artwork of their contemporaries; a premise that seems to hold true the majority of the time.

Managing director Jenn and the group of artists make a preliminary visit to the Park to survey the condition of the buildings and assess things like the wall surfaces, the number of buildings and walls to include, and the overall visual relationship of the structures to which they will be adding the mural. The main challenge of this site is to integrate numerous outbuildings with the central ball-field and adjoining dugouts.

After a whirlwind of brainstorming creativity that brings their ideas together, the artists agree to meet again, and with Jenn’s unflagging guidance she moves the group through the creative process. She skillfully calls upon the unique skills and background of each artist, utilizing them to the full potential of their talents. Here, Peter Costas also a ball player is used as a model for the athletic movement of a pitcher inspiring the other artists to sketch images to be used later for the mural.

Following weeks of meeting, planning and drawing sketches, the artists arrive at the tongue-in-cheek theme “SpaceBall—A Pitch To The Stars”, and in June they begin to put the paint to the walls of what is now in their view called Spaceball Stadium.

Jenn has gathered all the tools of the artist on the move; assorted brushes, buckets of colorful paint, handiwipes, sunscreen, and a full tank of drinking water — all arranged on the tailgate of her vehicle, while the team has rearranged their work and school schedules to accommodate the project’s fulfillment.

Soon the artists discover the many different obstacles to outdoor painting, where beneath the hot Mew Mexican sun in June paint dries very quickly, almost instantaneously even at nine in the morning. Although there is plenty of water to drink and food to fuel their energy, working without shade has its toll on the artists.

It is not long before the painting schedule changes from starting at eight or nine AM to beginning at six AM. This change is further complicated by the necessity to assure the safety of the artists, and now Jenn must reschedule teams of both male and female to be present at such an early hour, even if the guys are there catching a few z’s in the car.

Soon each artist finds their niche in the project and applies his/her unique style and methods to the murals. Some artists are quiet and methodical, some flamboyant in their expression, and some find they like to work in teams while others prefer to work alone.

With the team members each logging in over 400 man-hours of painting, the project progresses through June into July. This does not include the times they have met to plan and brainstorm. The schedule moves overtime into August when finally the work is done and can be viewed as a cohesive unit meant to humorously convey a baseball game between earthlings and a visiting team of aliens from another planetary civilization.

The vibrant murals appear on the dugouts, the refreshment stand, an equipment shed, and even on an electrical box that sits practically in the middle of all the rest. The colorful murals depict a witty alien play-by-play announcer and worker at the refreshment window with a combination of earth/alien fans lined up outside to buy tickets and snacks. One mural shows a tall skinny fluorescent green alien up to bat, and others actively leading off and sliding into bases. There is a futuristic Earth team pitcher, catcher, in fielders and outfielders, all in dynamic positions of throwing, catching, and diving for the ball.

Inspired by New Mexico’s love-hate relationship with prairie dogs, the artists insert an entirely new perspective by incorporating these little controversial critters in a unique system of snagging outfield balls. The artists paint an underground subway system full of retrieved baseballs making their way back to the home team infield via the assistance of prairie dogs wearing clear bubble-like space helmets. Very ingenious indeed!

The home team dugout is an awesome space ship while the other dugout, consigned to the visiting aliens, is seemingly in the outer limits of the park and is a stand alone mural of the one word “SpaceBall” in all its otherworldly explosion of letters going off in every direction.

Months later into the Fall, the project has met with the approval of the players, fans and local community alike, and has the official recognition of the City when the Mayor hands out “way-to-go” awards to the mural team for their artistic accomplishment of covering the nucleus of walls at the ballpark complex.

The tagging that had continued at the beginning of the project has since stopped — the ultimate goal of the mural projects across the city. This project has brought fresh dynamic dimensions to Franklin Miles Park and adds to the excitement of the players who play ball here.

GemFireAir wishes to thank Jenn Costas and her team for their kind agreement for the author to follow & photo-document this project from its inception to completion. Over 1000 photos were shot and a generous sampling of them can be viewed in the Gallery Section.

Also available is a 10-minute photo-video composition — a first for GemFireAir. Much credit and thanks goes to my friend Robert Hutwohl, MAC tech, not only for his suggestion to use KeyNote software, but also for his extensive assistance in response to my cries for help! Without his expertise and patience this project would likely never have gotten off the ground, much less completed.

I hope you will give it a go and view it — would also love any feedback.

May the beauty of expression make an indelible impression
on the heart of the world.

Ciao,

~ mek

All rights reserved — copywrite of marty kleva & GemFireAir.
Material may be freely distributed with proper credits given. Not to be used otherwise.

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Fear As Ally

GemFireAir
Series on Fear-III: Fear As Ally
marty kleva
February 13, 2008
permanent url


About 10 years ago I read a news account of a very savvy elementary school teacher in Boulder, Colorado who taught a science lesson to his class involving the planets and their place in the galaxy. He had the students make mock-up planets in scale and then took them to a large outside yard to demonstrate the lesson where he had the students set up our heliocentric galaxy and figure where each of the planets would be accordingly located within the parameters of the yard.

When the planet positions were all in place, and the students discussed the different aspects, there was one overwhelming point that came to the forefront. The teacher said that what he could vividly realize by this elementary yet inspired demonstration is how little of our entire galaxy is made up of hard physical matter— both seeable and touchable. The flip side of that is that he, and eventually his students, also realized how much of our galaxy world is made up of something else which seems to be purely non-tangible empty space.

Given this model it could be said that in the entire universe of all matter, the percentage we usually believe to be reality can be represented by a number of infinite (0.00000’s+1%) — I’ll call this Reality #1 — and the remaining reality by the number 99. + an infinite number of 9’s (99.99999+%) which may actually be reality — but regardless of that near unbelievable statement, I’ll call this Reality #2.

Almost the entire amount of the Reality #1 is concentrated upon how one person/group can overpower another and impinge their beliefs and value systems upon the other, including the so-called religious righteous.

Out of Reality #1, in what we now call America, over 85% of the $2.7 trillion 2006 federal budget was allotted to 1) War: $580.5 billion; 2) Disease: $614.1 billion; & 3) Debt held against the American people: 1,115.4 billion.

These three top expenditures make a gigantic statement within the infinitesimal Reality #1; they are all founded upon FEAR—FEAR of other nations and people, FEAR of dying, the FEAR of not being able to make enough money if one is poor or struggling, and in the case of the wealthy, the FEAR is of a) not being able to manage their money, and b) of someone else taking it away.

Not to be simplistic, but this is Reality #1 in a nutshell, and if it is anywhere near the Truth of things, then one must wonder about the make-up of the remaining 99.999+%!

What is Reality #2, the 99.999+% of all that is, in relationship to Reality #1, the infinite number of 0.00000’s+1%? The comparison between the two is startling.

Now think of all that is in Reality #1 that we believe is important; those physical so-called needs we spend the majority of our energy in the form of time, money and worry, trying to acquire, or create. Think of the 2.7 trillion dollars within this context, and think of the FEAR that is related to that 2.7 trillion.

Stop reading and get the entire picture clear in your mind before continuing. Get the galaxy model set up in a large park and cordon it off as if it is the entire galaxy and work within this framework. All that you see of the physical planetary models is the only hard matter that exists. All the rest of the space around and between the planets in three dimension is empty — at least it appears so to our untrained eyes and senses. Science calls this remaining empty space ‘dark matter’. (See article here)

What we are concerned with here for the purposes of this article is what we call Reality #1, and its make-up of FEAR.

In today’s culture we are taught to not be afraid as we bluster through scenarios that appear to be dangerous. We are cosseted and kept safe by laws, ordinances, and decrees that are only the cover for the reality that escapes most of us.

We live in the Piscean Age that has its own repercussions by its Neptunian nature that translates to watery, and at its best, is illusory. This is the reality that we live in and the challenge is to understand that this is what we deal with daily — an illusion of the reality #1—so that even the print on the newspaper can be an illusion, as can the sounds of speech that we hear from those who represent the financial/political scene and those that report for them to us. The problem comes from believing without question that it is all-true.

Those who are familiar with this site know that my one stipulation to bottom-line thinking is that it leads to a quest toward the next one. Perfectly okay to reach bottom lines — it is in believing that they are the end of the road that shuts down all further inquiry.

Certainly we can take rests to enjoy the destination that we have reached, to explore it further and become familiar with the terrain there, but to live out the belief that this is all there is truly bespeaks of fear that is stuck where it first erupted — in the Root Chakra.

We depend on our survival-based root chakra to invoke our fear for good reason. This is an innate system of warning for us to be alert about what endangers our living, which can be anything, to knowing that we cannot simply walk out onto a busy highway, to someone holding a dangerous weapon on us, or that our health is threatened by the misuse of chemicals.

Healthy fear is when we can get angry enough to move the 1st chakra fear into our 2nd chakra and onward to engage our power in the 3rd chakra to action. Then over time, unless we move this raw unconscious knee-jerk reaction into the 4th heart chakra we remain forever on the wheel of karma, perfectly oblivious to everything else that the universe represents except for that one day when we wake up to find that we are powerless to have any say in our lives.

In order to be conscious, Fear moved forward by Anger and engaged in action of our Power center must also be ingested and integrated with the 4th chakra element of Love — the Universal Dispassionate Love for both ourselves and others where decisions are not made based on anger, hatred, etc., but upon an unbiased equanimity simply because we can also see ourselves standing in the other person’s position. We can recognize the hologram that reflects the raw unbiased Truth that we are no more, no less than that person we face, whether it is in an embrace or with a difference of opinion.

The point that our total health may rest upon is the foundation of balance. Fear is an extreme — so is bliss! We are meant to find the point of positive balance between them. They both will become negative influences if we stay on the exponential curve of either one too long without seeking the remedy. The remedy of balance is brought about not by simply tossing aside our fear or bliss, but learning to recognize them and giving them our conscious awareness.

Both fight & flight can be productive as there is a time to engage in each. The key is to know when we are engaged in either one that we are in an exponential curve to pull together and heighten our body’s defenses. It is important to not stay on that exponential curve, for if our body continually stays at full alert we are like a loaded dump truck going down the interstate with the engines at full throttle but in first gear.

The negative aspect is getting stuck in the upward curve and not coming off the mountain. Here is where Mindfulness practice is a way to rock the stressors by using breath awareness — observing the breath as it moves in and out of our body, feeling the air as it rushes past our nostrils, sense its temperature and velocity, then notice how that action coincides with the movement of our chest, how it expands and stretches the spaces between the ribs, and the fact that it also expands the belly as the diaphragm drops to accommodate our expanded lungs. Using these awareness practices allows the body’s wisdom to take over — and it will — to bring the hormones of fight or flight back to a normal reading.

Accumulated stress is a product of our reaction to fear that never finds resolve.

In the Buddha of Fear, in the time before I realized that my black haze was my fear, I was on that curve; so was the year that I spent every Sunday at the Cathedral in the throes of bliss. Once I acknowledged my fear and began to work with it using Mindfulness practice I began to ameliorate the exponential curve of negativity. I used the same practice with my ecstatic experiences in the Cathedral, but I neglected to monitor the amount of time there and thus became addicted to the bliss without realizing the pitfalls and possible dangers to the amount and power of Light I ingested.

Fear is such a complex emotion. I learned that my anger was fueled by my fear and that beneath that fear was also excitement, but most of all impacting upon me was to discover that by slowly walking step-by-step through and with my fear, I walked in to pure Love. Never before in all my life when I walked away from fear, or denied it, or got over it, or put it aside, or conquered it, did I encounter love like I felt and experienced when I walked with my Buddha of Fear.

Fear is out of the base chakra; bliss is from the 7th and beyond. The most powerful use of either is when they meet in the middle 4th, or heart chakra. This is where the most powerful experience of the love orgasm springs from, the union of these two extreme chakras at the heart.

Were we to push away all fear in our lives we would also miss out on excitement and a good healthy adrenalin rush, like that which occurs in the ultimate expression of sexual orgasm where our entire being — all our physical and energy bodies are thoroughly engaged. This does not necessarily need to be experienced with another person or with one of the opposite gender, but I do believe that if solo then we will also have had to do a lot of masculine/feminine integration of our subtle energy bodies.

This brings us closest to what the experience of death can be. Petite mort is simply an experience we achieve with all things in balance at the moment. It is a signpost for us to follow and explore in greater observation. For when a person fully surrenders to their own true self — the will of the soul — then life becomes centered in the heart chakra — not alone by itself, but with the streams of all emotions from the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd rising up to meet the downward streams from the 5th, 6th, and above chakras. When they meet and mingle in the heart chakra, then a wisdom arises out of the mix to determine our actions, not out of fear alone, nor from bliss alone, but connected and integrated in what we know as Universal Love or Non-Conditional Love.

To reach Love one must also come to know Fear.

Love is the full spectrum of emotions that streams through the center of the apex to merge into the Light. Fear may be the emotional spectrum that mirrors Love, similar to the phenomena of the mirrored light spectrum being reflected in a double rainbow.

I know enough now to not ignore my fear, not to allow my critical ego-self to say “I’ve been there, done that.”, because I’ve also learned that fear is not some linear emotion that picks that same criteria or set of circumstances to express itself — the next time. Fear is not a two-dimensional or even possibly a three dimensional emotion. I find it to be the mother/father of all emotions within the lower three chakras and find it to have a multidimensional spectrum that could appear to be spherical or holographic. It is connected to the root of our very existence and therefore may also be the connection to the transcendent.

Fear is no wimp to ignore or try to put off because being imprinted into our DNA, it is always present, at least for as long as mankind exists. So we must learn to ID it and then to acknowledge that it is ours and not project it onto others. Until we shift our relationship toward fear, it will rule our lives as it now does in this modern world of 2008.

We have devoted all science and technology to creating a world that appears to make us safe and protected from everything under the sun. We have lawyers and insurance to protect us from lawsuits. There is a medical world that has developed ways to artificially alter the body with implants and machines so that we achieve longevity.

We have gone so far in all our developed external technological systems of safety and progress that we are at the ultimate stretch of use/misuse of technology, and it has now turned in on us and instead of protecting us its use has become the very danger it was initially designed to protect us against.

We may in actuality be no further ahead in any form of enlightenment. Instead, we may be in decline since we have signed over all our power out of the 3rd chakra to something that exists outside of ourselves. We are no longer safe. All that which we believe to be in place to keep us safe is an illusion that’s been created and paid for dearly from our own pockets and with our own lives. We have no one else to blame for it as we take the hook every time the issue of safety arises and have given someone else the power to deal with it. We no longer believe that we ourselves can keep us safe. We look to buy our safety on the merits of someone else’s say so.

Fear has become the world’s greatest commodity. The sale of everything from war to identification is based on how much fear can be induced into the public to buy the product that promises protection or security. The irony of it all is that the very thing that was sold as protection has led to a massive invasion of further technology that threatens our safety and ability to lead a private, independent, and self-advised life.

The products that demand us to provide further information and disclose deeper layers of our unique features such as fingerprints and iris scans are the very ones that are now attached to our birth records, work history, medical history, our purchasing preferences, places we have visited and lived, and with the use of cell phones our exact physical location within fifty feet.

These safety features have turned a free country into a prison all under the auspices of wars waged on our multiple fears. As a collective we find ourselves acting out when we buy insurance of all kinds including life insurance, renter’s insurance and travel insurance to name the obvious. Then there are the more subtle products like cell phones for children and our elderly parents. These very systems that we believe and rely upon to keep us safe have failed to do so, and what ensues is that these systems go further to convince us that we now need to inject an ID module under the skin so we can keep track of our children and pets in case they are taken. The move is always to up the ante with the onus on us.

GPS features in the more recent vehicles are commercialized as the latest gadget to acquire, and we are sold the Madison Avenue line that they will also help anyone who is stranded on the road. All you need to do is call the GPS monitoring system and they can tell exactly where you are. Whatever happened to the good Samaritans along the road? Whatever happened to us taking care of us?

Our entire infrastructure of community has been infiltrated by the discount brokering of fear.

The foundation of our entire monetary system is also run on the emotion of fear. The stock market totally exudes fear — watch as moment by moment the NASDAQ & DOW figures go up and down according to what the President, the head of the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Secretary, or CEO of the largest bank and brokerage house happen to mention out loud or write about or hint about to be announced in the next two days time.

Religions of the world — I can speak to the Judeo-Christian religions in particular — are based on the fear of God and all actions are geared toward acting the perfect Christian because if a person does not, he/she will go to hell and Christians are taught to fear hell.

No matter where we go fear is used to sell us on whatever product the commercial world wishes us to buy. Remember too that our government here in America is no longer a republic, nor is it a constitutional democracy; now it is a commercial corporation just like ENRON, HALIBURTON, CITIBANK, MORGAN STANLEY, WALMART, etc.

It is this unconscious collective fear that adds to the collective stress that activates the fight or flight syndrome and refuses to let go. Fear does not need to be eradicated from our life, that’s impossible to do. What needs to happen to turn this entire package of fear that is being sold to an entire culture is for us to shift our perspective and attitudes toward fear itself.

Fear is a true teacher of values. To recognize it in all its subtle aspects demands savage honesty, and to face it demands an intrepid heart. To deny it is like turning our back on a cobra, a position much more dangerous than facing it, even as that might be terrifying.

It was easy for me to relate to my Buddha of Fear after the fact of discovering what it was — but prior to that moment of discovery, I had no idea what I was facing and it was terrifying.

It is never my recommendation to approach fear head on or with hubris. To approach with gentle caution is much more workable and is more likely to produce positive effects. It is also more preferable to approach without the usual ego-driven agenda of specific results; here I could almost guarantee that at its best this will backfire and at the worst it will look like a cure that later manifests to a discovery that our fear has only been buried deeper than before, and down the line apiece it will act up and act out in our personality and even in the form of dis-ease.

All of this I am describing is inside of Reality #1! Can you even fathom what Reality #2 is about? If anything we can use just the comparison of magnitude and size to help us keep a perspective.

Collective Addiction To Hype

In this culture of more is better and best, where our today’s performance is never enough and we are forced in our jobs and thinking to constantly strive for a higher level of everything — we have become addicted to the feeling of hype — the sound media especially bombards us with commercials that are too loud, where overtly brash actors must yell at each other and us at a speed that defies nature, to get it all in a 30 second sound bite.

TV news shows look and sound more like a shouting match in a bar. This is violence at its most subtle execution that serves as a model for collective behavior. These same high profile talk show hosts display abominable behavior denigrating guests who may disagree with the host’s views.

The level of stress on such shows is at the extreme — guests must not only compete with each other for their points of view, they must also compete with the host for the time to speak it. This type of display on public TV bleeds into the collective angst and raises the stress curve around the world. It incites higher levels of stress in both the the participants and the viewers alike. Evidently this is the intent of the producers because it seems that this is what gets the attention of the masses that watch TV. Little do the masses seem to understand what they are participating in and how it ultimately is affecting their health.

Stress: The Phantom Menace

Around my Buddha of fear there was this shroud of darkness. I could have tried to ignore it, wished it to go away, to get over it and get on with life. I decided rather to further investigate it. I knew it was a cloud of energy that had been opened by the accident fracturing my aura — unleashing all the past fears I had so well ignored and gotten over. This time it would have to be different.

Those other times when I have known fear and climbed over it to act fearless, I am aware that my actions were truly fueled by the very fear I denied, and those actions were like a man running from a tiger oblivious to all that is in front of him, only knowing the fear of being hunted, chased, to be outrun and caught by the tiger. That is the purest form of 1st chakra ‘survival’ energy in action.

One of the underlying causes for collective stress is that we do not know how to protect ourselves from those who convince us that they have jurisdiction over us. When we give over personal information to people we are not even acquainted with, it is at great cost to the subtle systems of our physical body. The cost over time may be much greater than the advertised rewards. This is an insidious element in our world today that on one hand promises protection and security, yet on the other erodes the very protection and security we thought we were buying.

The body’s systems when constantly barraged by such attacks go into the exponential stress curve, and without relief begin to break down creating greater number of dis-orders and dis-eases.

What to do about it?

First notice there is always 1) a cost up-front & center — the cost that we pay for our base desires — like the latest car model, latest designer jeans, newest computer, cell-phone electronic gadget, or the bars, clubs and memberships that promise exciting yet impersonal sexual encounters.

Behind all the merchandising of these base products is also 2) a hidden cost to our present and future existence.

We know and feel something is not quite so when “Energy In” is NOT EQUAL to or greater than “Energy Out!”

When we figure out what that cost is, not only in dollars, but also in the decreasing quality of life, then we can see that the disparate equation of energy is a negative cost to us personally and/or our family and community.

It is the complexity of fear that makes it difficult to understand, difficult to distinguish which end of the spectrum one is experiencing and knowing which feature of fear is the true catalyst behind our actions.

Different degrees and layers of fear evoke degrees and intensity of the emotion. There are also the different sources of it that incorporate different degrees of risk and danger with varying degrees of consequences.

All the symptoms of fight or flight can also be evoked by meeting someone of attraction, ratcheting up the pulse & heartbeat with blood rushing through our vessels, or merely by the anticipation of skydiving, preparing to go onstage, or entering into a sporting contest.

Like people, emotions are never what they seem — especially fear. Emotions can be so powerful that we are afraid of experiencing and expressing them. When our emotions are buried we act tired, dull, bored, sophisticated and politically correct. We feel dead and weak inside. We are empty, insensible, feel hopeless, and have no direction from within. Hidden feelings can be described in words such as afraid, scared, terrorized, raw, having a feral need to survive, and find us sucking in air with desperate pants.

Fear can be painful as it forces us to feel something — to feel alive— and gives us purpose. However, if we do not understand what is driving our actions then we are no longer at the reins, but are now in the harness.

What is it like to seize the reins and learn to handle them for our benefit? To do so in the face of fear, we need to get down into the base chakra and root out the information of what is running the fear. We need to learn how to pay attention to the emotions that are in reality in perpetual motion. The executive function of our brain is only the receptor and perceptive identifier of the rush of emotions through this gateway.

Emotions, specifically fear in this context, that initiate from the mind of the body, are the molecules of communication between that and the mind of the brain. They are like the wellspring of a river’s source. It is up to us to investigate, locate and begin to know them for the sustenance they provide.

Like our attention caught upon a colorful, flamboyant silk scarf being drawn out by a sleight-of-hand artist at a magic show — all the while reality is hidden elsewhere.

Sending the LOVE of 'hayam’ to illuminate the way.

Con Amore,

~ mek


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Winter Solstice 2007

GemFireAir
Winter Solstice 2007
marty kleva
December 21, 2007
 permanent url

Winter Solstice Greetings
from Santa Fe, New Mexico
Hello Everyone,

Here we are once again @ the Winter Solstice, today December 21, 2007. In the winter skies the sun has just made its entrance into the constellation of Capricorn, the sign of the Sea-Goat that is under the rule of the planet Saturn. Lots of responsibilities are carried beneath this sign, or I might say upon the shoulders of those who have not only been born with the sun in this sign, but also for those who have a major aspect, such as the ascendant, mid-heaven, and those who may have the moon or a significant planet there.

The Solstice of course marks the point where the sun is at its greatest distance from the celestial equator, and shining directly over Earth's tropic of Capricorn. What we experience here in the northern hemisphere is the longest night of the year and what we call the beginning of winter.

The origin of the word solstice, comes from Latin solstitium, from sol, “sun” and -stitium, “a stoppage.” Following the winter solstice, the days begin to grow longer and the nights shorter. Personally, I can mark the place that the sun shines into my living room as I have watched it progress across the carpet since the Autumnal Equinox to now where it reaches across almost the entire width of the carpet to hit the sofa on the opposite wall.

With the world in such a state as I see today, it is difficult to only point out the fact that this is the time of Celebrating Light, something which is reflected within the many and various religions of the world. Within my experience, the emergence of light can be many things; light can illuminate that which is hidden by the dark and thusly expose secrets and those parts of ourselves we would not readily wish to look at or see. Light can also be so blinding that we are like the deer caught in the path of the headlights. Here we are blinded and cannot see what the light illuminates.

Many choose to see only what they would refer to as the good that light represents. In today's world, I believe that we cannot be so naive to believe that there is only that, especially when we look around us and see more violence being perpetrated upon so many others beneath the guise of making ourselves feel safe; when, if we look there are more people who are homeless, and more people who have been foreclosed out of their homes.

If we were to truly look, we would find that almost all if not most of the banking world has been playing with fire and have only begun to feel the singe of the heat. If we were to truly look, we would begin to be able to read between the lines of the newsprint and hear the nuances of the spoken words of mainstream radio & TV, and we would know that there's much going on within our own business & government that is not illuminated.

We cannot depend upon others to hold the light on those things which affect us daily. We must learn to hold and direct that beam of light ourselves. Only we are ultimately responsible for the state of our world and our actions, not others.

And so within this day that marks the beginning of the return of Light to our Earth planet, I propose to be aware of the incoming light as it increases each day and to mark the difference it makes. In light of my own inadequate words to mark this time especially, I came across this poem by Yeats that I would like to offer for reflection during this Season of Lights.


•• In memorium to my friend and writing partner Karen Bolander-Claus ••


≤≤≤≤≤≤≤≤≤≤≤≤≤≤≤≤≤≤≤≤≤≤≤

THE SECOND COMING

W. B. Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all convictions, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.


Surely some revelation is at hand.

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image of the Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight; somewhere in the sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man.

A gaze blank and pityless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again, but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?


With expectations of many things to come — and also pass.

Con Amore,

~ mek

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The Buddha of Fear

GemFireAir
Series on Fear-ll:The Buddha of Fear
marty kleva
7-5-07
permanent url

marty is scheduled to present @ the
3rd International Women’s Peace Conference
~ Empowering Peacemakers ~
July 10-15, Dallas Texas



Before I relay the story of the Buddha of Fear, there is some background information important to the context. It has to do with Mindfulness, and how this word is used and heard.

For the purpose of this story, and for that matter of this site, the source of the word Mindfulness is from an ancient Buddhist practice of training the mind to be fully awake to all its activities as a means to know oneself. From this place we can then recognize all thoughts, feelings, sensations, and sounds without the need to overlay additional meaning to them or to deny their source. First hand, with this practice we can discover that most of our reality, if not all, is but a mind construct. Knowing this point can be very helpful as we live in a consensus reality that the collective mind of our modern world has created.

Like the thresher’s screen, the practice of Mindfulness helps to separate the wheat from the chaff. It is not used for us as a means to live in another world—it is used for us to be fully awake to this one and to provide further access to what also lies beyond.

A person need not be a Buddhist to practice Mindfulness. Mindfulness can be applied to everything without distorting the origin. Therefore it can be practiced throughout all religions, philosophies, and belief systems without concession.

In Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, this practice is highly successful in lowering the effects of stress. Medical doctors recommend this to their patients, and research studies show that its use is highly effective in reducing the symptoms of numerous illnesses and conditions such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, chronic pain, high blood pressure, and anxiety, naming but a few. As this New York Times article reports, Mindfulness has also been instrumental in assisting children to lead a balanced life.

After over ten years of regular Mindfulness practice with the use of additional tools I acquired in the area of subtle energy practices, and given that my training also included the applied psychology of phenomenology and somatics, I felt that this background would allow me to further explore the phenomena around my accident trauma using Mindfulness as a center pole and anchor point.

In all my years of Mindfulness practice and training I learned that no matter what aspects of doubt or fear I experienced, there was one thing that remained true—that being the knowledge that however awful I thought I was or that things were, I understood that none of it was the sum total of my life, but that this too was a mind construct passing on its way through my awareness.

Many times the darker doubts and fears overwhelm the lighter aspects of our being. What I have also learned from my observations is that if I ride only on the light, it can be a very shallow body of energy to surf. For at its edge and below it all resides a depth that by its very nature is dark. The point is to not give a different set of values to either one, but instead to see each as part of the total picture and acknowledge them for the valuable contribution they make to the whole. Simply put, it is the Tao, the yin-yang symbol in real-time.

To further describe the practice of Mindfulness in as clear and concise a way as I can, it consists of sitting quietly and paying acute attention to the breath in all its aspects. Once that is established, then the practitioner moves on to recognize thoughts as thinking, noises as sound, and different inclinations of the body and eruptions of emotions as feelings.

Despite the brevity and apparent simplicity of this explanation, it is a lifetime of work. When a person undertakes this challenge, he/she soon learns that the mind has a will of unbridled energy that resists being trained to pay attention because it believes that it already does pay attention, and that it needs no one else to teach it anything. So this person is surprised to learn that while they believe they are paying attention to their breath, they suddenly discover their mind has wandered off to other pleasant pastures of remembering the party last evening or some item in their appointment book set for next week. In this practice, the training is to then very gently turn the wandering mind back to the attention of the breath and begin all over again.

This is Mindfulness practice, both at its most rudimentary and it highest form. I have often remarked to myself that this practice is fueled by a lot of beginnings!

Armed with these tools I allowed myself to further explore the regions of trauma-induced emotions, taking my lifeline of Mindfulness with me. So there is no misunderstanding, I must also say that some of what I did is counter to the practice of Mindfulness as described above.

By this time, my breath awareness was well ingrained and I used Mindfulness to dwell longer and deeper in these states of emotions that overtook me in order to observe and study them as they swept through my body. In the pure practice of Mindfulness, a person would let go of the emotion on an outbreath and immediately return to pay attention to just the breath, thinking, etc.

As a phenomenologist, I took advantage of my long-term practice to move through the immense amount of trauma my body endured from the accident and to also investigate deeper into the darker realms of the psyche to those places where the most recent trauma event cracks open old wounds that have been scarred over and armored so that we can no longer feel them. Old wounds, for all their armoring continue to effect our lives because regardless of all the armor, they remain unhealed.

If I ever doubted the power of unhealed wounds of the psyche, my encounter with the angel soon dissuaded me of that belief as in one single swipe of the blade the angel unleashed all my past unhealed wounds. It was so apparent that as I saw them come forth I did not need to be given an explanation.

I knew then that if this is what was happening to me then according to the statistics, there were millions of other people who were experiencing similar phenomena in their lives; the difference being that I had a unique set of tools to work with to identify and sort through the terrifying aftermath of such trauma.

This then is what I set out to do; determined to learn the substance and structure of my own trauma, to map it like an explorer maps new territory using the practice of Mindfulness as my compass.

Be forewarned that I am not recommending this for anyone without a well-trained guide in Mindfulness practice, just as I would not even consider going into the dessert without the presence of a seasoned tracker who has not been there before. In my observations, the mindscapes of trauma present difficult ground to navigate. The landscape of the desert, much like the mind is forever changing as the winds shift the sands across the terrain, and illusions appear as myriads of mirages that can fool even the veteran tracker.

In my attempt to map out this environment, I do not profess that all I saw and learned is all there is to learn—it is only my experience of it. I have tried to document it as accurately as I am capable of so that those who come after may recognize themselves and know a way through the desert of the mind.

For a person who has had a recent trauma event, it is important to know that there are both appropriate and inappropriate times in which to initiate the practice of Mindfulness. A person who is in combination both a long-term practitioner and one who is trained in experiential psychology can determine this. This may or may not include credentialed professionals. Not every licensed professional is qualified to undertake the position of guide. The individual who has experienced recent trauma must recognize this and choose as wisely as they can.

I have laid out the criteria for making the choice to begin. This said, I know there is something I have left out—that will come in due time. Let me get on now with the Buddha of Fear.



The Buddha of Fear
marty kleva
written 9-4-05

Beginning the year 2001, six months after my accident, I began to come to terms with the trauma that was buried so deeply that I had yet to truly acknowledge it. Instead, I had hid in the recesses of the safer more palatable thinking that my accident had been an opportunity for spiritual awakening. Society listens more to those who turn a tragedy into an inspiration. It is easier to look only at the successful outcome of a tragic event than to dwell in the agony it took to get there.

Friends, and family seemed to withdraw and not want to be around me if I appeared wounded, sad, and depressed. They acted guarded, as if sadness might be catching. There is some bitterness that comes with the territory, especially once I realized that this would be a lonely path to travel. Except for one friend long distance, I could not count on company. It is not that I blamed anyone for it, it is only that I was not in any position to ask for that kind of steady commitment for support, and that I realized how much others were trying to deal with their own lives and had to appear to be doing so successfully. My senses were very open to detecting others’ emotions.

Reflecting on the accident and the ensuing result I began to recede from the experience of living. I had no verve for it. I was afraid to experience anything that resembled passion, or enjoyment. Not only was I afraid to be alive, I also feared to let it show — terrified that if I were to do so, that it would again be taken away. The effects of the accident had robbed me of my professional dreams and aspirations just as I was at the take-off mark.

More and more my life reflected the aura of fear. Soon, I could sense and also see a dark cloud around my head. I was reminded of the Charles Schultz character of Linus in the Snoopy cartoon. Linus is always depicted holding onto his security blanket, sucking his thumb, and having what looks like a cloud of dust swirling around his head. My cloud was dark and I desperately wanted a security blanket. I did not appear with my thumb in my mouth — I was too traumatized to put it there. It might have had some benefit.

As I went through my days, I became more and more aware of this dark cloud around me. It went with me everywhere. When I sat in meditation I could feel it more clearly. It became more and more evident to me all the time, not just some of the time. Many days, I pretended that it wasn’t there, but it was not something to be denied.

Finally, I realized that the cloud represented fear, my fear, a dark shadow of myself that was still unknown to me, and that I wanted to keep at bay. Yet it stayed. For months and months, it was my companion. It would not leave me. It would not go away.

Like those acquaintances and friends who withdrew from my sadness, I did not want to get too closely acquainted with this dark presence. It was very intimidating. What terrible secret about myself would I learn if I allowed it to get too close? Just having it hover around me was enough to deal with.

Over time, the dark murkiness began to thin out and I detected a vague form within the dark mist. Positioned in front of me at my forehead level as I sat in meditation, it never moved to threaten me more than to just be there. Using all my previous training, my shifting back and forth in awareness allowed me the freedom to move closer to it; not a lot, by no means, just to the edge of my comfort so that eventually I did not feel quite as fearful of its presence. I began to get used to it and to my feelings about it — after all they were with me twenty-four hours a day. Most comforting was that I could get as close as I wished and it did not move toward me. It seemed to allow me to be as close or as far from it as I chose. This process continued for months.

Then one day, a form began to emerge, and I saw what looked like the shape of a Buddha. It was still vague, but the outline of the body was becoming more defined, the head, shoulders, and apparent figure in a sitting meditation position. Now that I could at least identify what I considered a compassionate being, I did not feel as much fear about it, but I was aware that there was still so much fear present in my life in other ways: fear of going out socially, fear to be with others, fear of being injured again, fear of not knowing who I saw in the morning mirror, fear of having missed the point of my life, and afraid to get too close to the truth of knowing it. Within it all, I began to see the figure as a being willing to embody my fear, to hold my fear for me, and it became my Buddha of Fear.

I was so grateful that something was willing to be with that dark tormented part of me. Whether or not this figure was a made up figment of my tortured mind, I did not care. My observation was that it helped me to relate to my fear and I was not stopping here.

Finally, after almost over a year, one day the darkness cleared, and the Buddha became more and more defined. I began to see the folds of cloth draped across the shoulders and down the still body falling as they did over the bent knees of the meditation posture. I saw hands resting on the thighs, and could feel breath moving in and out of the body with the chest rising and falling. The lips were gently curved and the eyes softly closed against its cheeks.

I explored, getting to know it in greater detail. One day, as if sensing my perusal, it raised its chin a bit higher and slowly opened its eyes. The figure looked at me directly with eyes of infinite love such as I have never felt before. I looked back, our eyes meeting in that way where pure communication is transmitted. Like the refugee rescued from the freezing cold, unabashedly, I soaked up the warmth flowing from those eyes and did not waver from them. We were indelibly linked for an interminable time. Neither of us retracted, there was only an infinite allowing of each other to be as we were without the need to hide anything for fear of being judged or rejected. The mutual acceptance was unequivocal as we were here, now and for all time. There was a mutual exchange of breath and beating of hearts. Its breath was my breath, its heart beat in sync with mine, our thoughts were as one.

Time was not present, it had ended as if a great noise had finally ceased its cacophony. I had stepped into a space that was beyond time, where the figure resided. It had patiently waited for over a year for me to move through my fear, to see through the darkness. Infinite understanding blossomed, and now I realized that the compassion streaming from the Buddha’s heart and love from its eyes was simply a reflection of myself. My Buddha of Fear was not only holding my fear, all my dark shadows as well as the light of me — it was me.

I was overwhelmed by the realization as I looked at myself gazing back at me. The streams of love overtook me as I sobbed in overwhelming comprehension and dawning realization of the infinite love and compassion that some part of myself had for the rest of me.

The fact of how all comfort and security had been wrenched from me by the accident became totally clear. All the repercussions of the absence of feeling loved and secure were made known to me. I had felt like a coward all that time — as I cringed from life and myself. The difference between fear and courage took on new dimensions in my life.

The Buddha of Fear transformed into a benevolent guardian who has stayed with me as a symbolic companion and helped me to advance self-compassion.


Until next time when I will be back with the next part of this series on fear.

May everlasting peace prevail in all our lives.

Con Amore,

~ mek


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Series on Fear-l: Fear & Survival

GemFireAir
Series on Fear-l: Fear & Survival
marty kleva
6-18-07
permanent url


(marty is scheduled to present @ this conference)
3rd International Women’s Peace Conference
~ Empowering Peacemakers ~
July 10-15, Dallas Texas


Introduction:

Since the fear of terrorism is so much in the forefront of today’s stressful living, I have decided to publish a series of writings having to do with my experience of fear, especially as it surfaced around the trauma event of my auto accident in July of 2000, the account of which is presented as the first part of my book Soul Dancing.

In the article below, the first depiction of fear as it existed in my life then, comes a full year and a half after the accident. When I wrote this piece I had retreated from the stressed-out city hustle of Santa Fe to a remote place deep within the ponderosa forest of New Mexico. Even as I knew I had felt fear for a long time, it is only here that I could begin to put my fear into any coherent piece of writing.

Fear exists in many forms and can be couched behind things like ‘hoping against hope’ or being ‘afraid of one’s shadow’. Stress is an effect of fear, and along with it comes with the appearance of anxiety, apprehension, lack of confidence, hesitation, restlessness, trepidation, mistrust, palpitations of the heart, a cold sweat, dread, despondency, horror, panic, terror, cowering, quaking, shaking and shrinking.

Honestly, I can attest that I have been visited by all of the above. Learning to work with them in a deliberate choice to not demean them or deny they exist has been a most challenging and yet also most rewarding period of my life. The event of my accident provided further opportunity for me to utilize Mindfulness as a daily practice to promote peace within and to self-manage the effects of stress. That practice, which I strongly relied upon throughout my post-accident recovery also allowed me to go even deeper into the exploration of fear as it invaded my life.

Today, fear in all its shapes and appearances still visits me; the difference being in the way I can now work with this powerful energy. Here is my first written accounting of the fear I lived with.

Fear and Survival
marty kleva
(written: 01-13-02)

It was in the early 90’s when I first became aware of the combination of fear and survival as a backdrop in my life. I mean viscerally aware of them as my constant companions at a time when I was in the extended process of a divorce. Then, much of my attitude and behavior about fear was still sourced in denial, and had it not been for the fact that I had begun to train in Mindfulness practice, I almost missed the underlying foreboding energy that was ever-present.

After all, I was a very intelligent mature woman who at the time also had a secure job and held a degree in science education. It was so strange that I should also be apprehensive about my ability to make it on my own. Now that my access to income had just been diminished by about two thirds, and faced with the fact of living alone for the first time in my life, I had grave concerns about how I was going to survive.

The subject of fear that lingered in the wings of my awareness was a by-product of my survival concerns. I was quite successful keeping it at bay by planning into the future to study for a master’s degree. According to accepted statistics at the time, the level of my potential and future income would raise by virtue of the mere fact of procuring an additional degree. That potential never became a post-degree reality, because just as I was searching for a location to set up a professional practice, I had an auto accident.

Since that accident of July 2000, I have lived in the presence of abject fear [ed-time of writing is 1-13-02]. Each time, as I sit in meditation, this figure of fear sits directly in front of me: face-to-face, knee-to-knee. It does not go away. It is this fear form that I feel forced to finally pay attention to. It manifests internally as an energy that grips my insides, and painfully holds on. In terror, I cling to every semblance of who I am.

I am aware of this nebulous form of fear all the time. It permeates my existence and never lets me off the hook. I have lost the ability to make a living, as I cannot work where I am expected to perform systematically on a regular basis. Due to the concussion and subsequent closed head injury from the accident, I can never rely on the condition I am going to be in when I wake up in the morning. Abject fear is a major factor in my life and I know I have to address it by at least acknowledging it.

It can be a positive step to investigate and know what fear feels like, so that when it shows up it can be recognized. This knowledge can be used to inform me that I am in a circumstance where it is/is not appropriate to feel that there is some danger present, real or perceived. With this understanding in hand, I may move forward and make suitable decisions regarding my safety.

Fear shows up in instances such as today when I again question my decision to have left Santa Fe and come in retreat to the land near Taos and heal. All types of fears are here today, principally in the form of questions such as,

“But how can I leave town for such a period of time? Everybody will be getting ahead of me!”

“ I will lose valuable contacts if I go away.”

“My friends will desert me.”

“People will forget all about me.”

These considerations run through my mind and bring up an immense amount fear about the wisdom of my decision to leave town and retreat to the country. ‘Retreats’ even spiritual ones do not provide points on a professional resume.

As I continue to listen to the messages from my body—the mind of my cells, it is clear that I will have to face this fear provoked by the cultural-based competition of keeping up with the Jones’, and the knowledge that professionally someone may get ahead of me. It is simply peer pressure in another form, and it all comes from within myself, although admittedly my environment has also shaped the standard for my performance. The point at hand asks, “Which am I going to listen to?”

One day back, after living here in the ponderosas, beneath Basket Mountain for about a month, I went into town for a seminar presented by my medical doctor who had last seen me more than three months previous. When she greeted me at the seminar she exclaimed how different I looked: grounded, radiant, complete, whole — she went on and on about how I was hardly recognizable. At the time it was the verification I needed to remind me that I was on the right track.

So what is it exactly that I am afraid of? Am I afraid of dying or am I afraid of living? Dying represents a loss of all that I am and who I have been in the past — who I am now and the promise of who I may become. Fear of losing these identities is directly proportional to the amount of invested interest I have in being known as ‘somebody’. My attachment to those identities is what has me cling to life. The interesting thing is that when I spend more of my time securing what I perceive to be my position in life rather than living my life, I am not happy.

Looking at it in another way, my fear of living is based in the fear of being overwhelmed by the presence of my relationship with my Creator/Creatrix, the one who some might call God, Allah, and other personified names, but which I experience as beyond these connotations. The enormity of being in touch with the orgasmic aspect of ‘union’ with Creator/trix pushes a lot of my Puritan-based buttons that has to do with morality, sexuality, and more. How can I be orgasmic with that awesomeness? How much joy do I have the capacity to experience? How much can I expand to house it?

So momentarily, I am presented with my choice: life or death, and I either experience the fear of surviving, or attempt to fool myself into believing that it does not matter and deny that it does not even exist.

Consciously, I know that I have decided as a professional to allow myself to explore whatever the accident has provoked. Grateful to the Mindfulness practice I have cultivated now for the past ten years, I choose to tune into my breath and the feelings of fear to further discover what it has to teach me.

>>> Until next time, when I relate a discovery of the Buddha of Fear — walk with Peace. <<<


Con molte Amore,

~ mek


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Taking A Stance For Peace

Gem Fire Air
Taking A Stance For Peace
 marty kleva
June 10, 2007
permanent url

“Were it not for the darkness, we would never know light.”


Recently, Bill Moyers interviewed poet, writer, Maxine Hong Kingston, highlighting her work with over 500 veterans from every war since WWII, to honor “all those soldiers who have served our country in war and peace.”

The scope of her work is staggering considering the fact that she chose to use writing workshops for veterans to have them transfer their war experiences to some form of the written word. Experiences that heretofore were too dark to think about much less share.

As both a trauma therapist and one who has experienced a personal trauma through an auto incident, I know that one of the mediums that helps a person to move through and beyond the trauma is to share the deepest expression of the fear, anger, despair, and helplessness one goes through, and which has been compressed into mere seconds of time.

Mostly, in our Western culture, the modus operandi is to “forget about it and move on” not realizing that despite the persona we put on, we still carry the deep wounds within us, and that they show up regardless of how much we wish otherwise and try to bury them, or deny that they exist, saying instead, “Oh, I’m just fine.”

Even many of today’s professional treatment protocols expect the client/patient to push on and to get over some imaginary line that exemplifies outward healing. Treatment is mostly measured by demonstrating behavior that the system considers normal, and anything outside those parameters is considered abnormal. If the client/patient does not ‘get over it’ within the period of time that an insurance company has decided is time enough, then the client/patient is further classified into a system that provides less and less possibility to truly allow healing to occur.

What we as a culture have failed to fully realize, and which some people are now beginning to acknowledge in the face of the overwhelming dis-ease that our Gulf War and Iraq War veterans have come home with, is that any person who has experienced the field of war is also highly exposed to the trauma that comes with it.

Simply being in a war zone places a person at risk of PTSD. They do not have to actually be on the field of battle to experience the ravages of trauma. Seeing the daily toll that war imprints on the public environment can embed the effects of trauma into the human psyche.

Due to the mindset of military training, a soldier is conditioned to be hardened against such effects — and that is what they believe to be the truth — until some of them experience differently.

But like the familiar hall closet that we constantly use as a catchall, a place to hide away various and sundry things we prefer not to be seen, sooner or later, we find that it is stuffed to the gills with all the unpleasant looking belongings that we did not want to deal with otherwise — and we find ourselves forced to deal with the explosion that comes tumbling out one day when we try to stuff yet one more unmentionable into it. The psyche does not wait forever for us to decide to deal with this accumulation, and once the saturation point is reached, it acts on its own and forces us to the task at hand, whether or not we are ready to come to terms with all that we have hardened ourselves against. Wilhelm Reich called it ‘armoring’.

With the age of modern communication, and since the Korean War, Americans at home have been more immediately exposed to the stories and pictures of war than ever before. There has been a greater sense of awareness by the American people towards the human costs of war; a difference that can be seen in the manner and way we send our soldiers off to war. We used to wave flags and have bands play martial music in the streets as the soldiers marched to war — their mothers and fathers, wives and girlfriends, and sisters and lovers cheered them on.

Modern communication systems have caused a greater awareness, and although we may not be outwardly vocal against sending our sons, husbands, and lovers to war, now we also send our daughters, sisters, and wives. Mostly we put on a strong, face wrapped up in the flag thinking that we are doing our patriotic duty.

Inwardly we hide those not-to-be-spoken-of feelings of fear, dread, and possibly even dissent. No, we stuff those into our personal hall closet. We stuff those feelings of being chilled to the bone by the knowledge of what our loved ones will be exposed to, and by the cold realization that they may not come back alive, and perhaps even worse, that they will come back — maimed or wounded to such a degree that their life will forever be changed.

In Moyers’ interview, Pauline Laurent, wife of a veteran killed in Vietnam says:

“These men who served in Vietnam even though they came back their lives were forever changed. They weren't the same men."

Maxine Hong Kingston responds:

“I think all these people have come back and they are not the same. But my hope is that through art, through telling their stories, by having people hear what they went through, it changes them again, you know. There's the coming home from war, being broken, feeling losses, but then there is a wholeness that takes place if the person were able to write their story, to write their poem, to have people hear them and listen and understand. Then they are changed again.”

Writing about our trauma experience adds another level of expression to the telling of it via the voice. We can hear the voice yet we do not see it. Sound, although it is powerful and has its own place in the healing process, it is also fleeting and momentary. Writing adds another dimension and also places a permanency to the expression. It gets shared; not only in the telling, but also in the availability to have others read it, both silently and aloud. This adds multiple opportunities for the trauma to ultimately be released from the nervous system and eventually to be forgiven.

Connecting the thoughts and feelings that are embedded in the psyche, with the fine motor act of writing those thoughts and feelings out, acts as the conveyance and helps to release the trauma from the psyche and overall cellular structure of the body. Trauma literally embeds itself in the cellular makeup as emotions that we experienced during the trauma and which are frozen there.

In my own experience both personally and professionally, I also use body and breath awareness, and movement within the context of several different expressions of Mindfulness practice to assist in the release of trauma. The combination provides one of the most powerful means to move through and recover from PTSD.

Unfortunately for the population of the world, and specifically the united States, others have also seen the impact of war trauma, and now use it as a tool of psychological warfare against whole societies—9/11 and the present administration’s official “War on Terror.” Since 2001 the administration and politicians of the country have used the WOT as the basis to remove American rights o