Category Archives: The Art of Living

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

In my late 20’s I created a holistic lifestyle service called Ecclesia in Laguna Beach, California. The simple and beautiful ways to care for one’s  body/mind I began then and continue to this day.  Here are some of my favorites for this time in which we are being pushed to enhance and refine our under appreciated and miraculous Immune System:

I usually teach these as Morning, Afternoon and Evening Rituals but I am massing them altogether for you to pick and try several:

Cleansing/Building/Maintaining Rituals: Working with the Seasons. 

1.  Tongue scraping and Oil Pulling (holding sesame oil in mouth for 15 minutes.)
2.   Neti Pot:  Cleansing nostrils with warm salt or essential oil water. Then add some alternate nostril breathing.
3.   Using an eye cup with Dr. Christophers Eye formula to cleanse eyes.
4.   Skin brushing entire body including face.
5.   Hot and cold water treatments especially in an outdoor jacuzzi, shower and cold plunge.
6.   Warm ayurvedic oils to massage into body creating friction especially after skin brushing.
7.   Kundalini breath of fire and seated spinal flexes to jump start day along with The 8 Tibetan Rites.
8.   Rebounder jumping for activating G Force.
9.   Natures’ Way is Movement and Rest so add 5 minute exercise routines intermittently.
10.   “Secret Ball Club” using small balls to roll out tensions in the body (a used tennis ball can work).
11.   Yin yoga (long-held poses for regulating the nervous system and flexibility) before bed.
12.   Brushing teeth with essential oils and massaging gums (using a rubber tip between teeth and gums).
13.  Foot massage in bed to stimulate entire body and organs.  (use “foot wakers” to stand on as well).
14. Using pure essential oils as part of daily routine to strengthen systems of the body and raise immunity.
15. Morning fresh celery juice for keeping body cleansed or coffee enemas.

I will not go into diet as everyone has their recommendations except to say find a balance place to allow “goodies” and treats but have a base line of excellent living fresh fruits and veggies and protein to sustain higher well-being.  Listen to your body and work with the seasons.  (what I find works great for me is morning celery juice and steamed kale and greens to stay happy).

Don’t feed the microbes as they have the power to crash our moods energy and well-being.

We Begin with the Beautiful.

What we truly crave and long for in life is a demonstration of the beauty that mirrors and reflects the lost Paradise within.

Our current cultural mythology is suffering from the last two great taboos:  The knowing and living from our true Self that is the only constant in life and aesthetic amnesia– the loss and repression of beauty in every aspect of personal and cultural life.  

Revivifying and living with Soul is the center of a sacred life and is truly the highest calling.  Appreciating and creating beauty is the sine qua non of a sacred and soulful life where art and reverence are the basis of everything we create. We have it backwards in placing technocracy as indispensable but beauty as just an accessory; a luxury rather than a need for soul to thrive.

Autumn Equinox falls in the month of libra a time of balancing the scales and equalization of light and dark energy.  A portal opening for walking into new and unknown territory.  A time for asking dangerous and beautiful questions:

What is presenting itself to be seen into and released and what is asking to come forward actively in my life?

What is the most important thing to me?  What do I truly value in life?

To clear the artifice  and “authentic fake” self and live into my authentic nature am I available to the Silence and listening?

Do I realize Wholeness is already here now and is my True Nature?   Therefore, do I demonstrate from wholeness or from lack?

Am I taking total responsibility for my S.O.B (state of being) and level of consciousness realizing I contribute to the vision I have for the world from the soul qualities and Presence I bring to every moment?

Have I looked deeply enough into the paradox of living from both the celestial and terrestrial self (my eternal true nature and the temporary body/mind self and come to terms with which I align with, yet including both?

Can I see how the primary task of our “Age of Consequences” and the “Time of the Great Turning” is to live from deep soul and heart, to both uncover soul in life and simultaneously bring soul into every aspect trusting in our deepest interiority the radiations emitted from this understanding are powerful to change the field in the world.

THE 5 NATURAL SANCTUARIES:

1. Space
2. Simplicity
3. Solitude
4. Stillness
5. Silence    

Do I allow myself the necessity of the Natural Sanctuaries for contemplation and imagination to show and guide my life without need for outer authorities to know what is best for me?

Am I the author (authority) of my life as creator/co-creator?

Can I take in the fact that I am truly the artist of my life allowing my genius and life vision for self and world to emerge in my daily life?

Summer Solstice is a sacred seasonal portal culminating in the flowering of a cycle of life lived from seasons past; and an expansive out-breath: a pause to ruminate, re-constellate and review our life from a larger more timeless higher vista.

If we are capable of inviting the 4 Sanctuaries:   Silence, Stillness, Solitude and Simplicity to visit–informing us with their messages; we bloom into a fuller Self latent with potentials to reveal to us more of our multidimensionality pulling from our ancient futures.

In the summer I am beckoned by the sacred ritual of morning tea-mind outside on the land in the gardens I have created. Birdseed is placed in urns, statuary, and bowls awaiting the array of birds and creatures attracted to forrest and mountains. The winds inform me with unconscious messages from far away places evoking the chimes to sing and the landscape to dance. Crows call, chickens cackle and I am reminded to learn to listen more deeply. We can be aware that mid-summer opens us to months ahead of light and warmth and all that represents; but also to the approaching fall and the preparation psychically and physically to be ever-more experienced going into the next seasonal cycle with greater awareness and presence allowing for the deepening and enriching of claiming the largess of a lifetime both in time (duality) and yet out of time in the dimension of timelessness. Even more is available if we can navigate with some adroitness, both the surface of events and the reflections they offer us but also the depth dimension inside ourselves where all things spring from the center of our being.

To be aware awake and alive in this time on Earth witnessing the “The Great Unwinding” of civilization as we have known it, to be living more in the unknown collectively and personally, and yet to be quickened by the opportunities of greater awakening to the most important understanding of a life time: To realize, know and learn how to live this realization are gifts beyond measure for one desiring to know the deepest truth and how to turn in into beauty and the Art of Living.

Even if I don’t look inside to notice and be with the energies around the Equinox this opening time always seems to acknowledge me, causes me Pause, and initiates deeper listening and telling myself what’s really true rather than skimming the surface and being content with concepts I’m telling myself or platitudes I’m not aware of.

When I gave myself the space  to tune in I realized, when we are in the Spacious Present consciously we have the ability to be a “New Way of Life.” No matter the high or low of the Spacious Present we are Aware, Knowing we are Aware, and can choose to be Present to Presence, and not undervalue or overlook it. When we come back to the root bulb of Who and What we really are, then we can create freshly, newly. What do I choosing and what am I  intending?

Self-Inquiry is always a de facto place to begin: Some “Courageous Questions” came up to inquire about:

1) Can the masculine in us learn to be transformational rather than just be operating as the “mad-male-machine-mind” that has become The Tyrant rather than The Hero?
2) How can we regenerate a New World as we watch the demise of civilization as we have known it?  Is it possible to    build a new world from the ashes of the old or do we have to literally envision and create a new model, a new way that begins from the inside out, from the conscious individual rather than a top down directive from leaders who do not represent the Commons or the people in a collective?
3) Could the very forces that we perceive  are making life impossible in so many ways be also affording us the greatest stimulus we could ask for to stand as Self-empowered, True Knowing and Self- Sovereign beings rather than unconscious victims depending on outside “authorities” to take care of us, tell us what to think, and make us believe they can solve our collective issues and overwhelming challenges?

To be each, ourselves a “New Way of Life” we require an unholy amount of tenacity, clarity and perseverance to stay our TrueNess to Self and to keep coming back from the brink–the abyss.

When the sleepers awaken they re-member their Earth- brain -heart- mind -connection to Nature and ritualize these portal days with joy & appreciation to strengthen Earth’s immune system.

As we live into yet another Cosmological “Great Turning” and the fabric of life starts loosening things become more impossible yet more possible at the same time.  Regarding our collective concept of  reality being our so-called civilization something new is being birthed and transcending it:  A possibility of a parallel culture which goes beyond civilization as we have known it. A way to contribute to “saving the world” by walking out of the dysfunctional system that no longer values or supports  the individual but uses the individual to support a collective insanity leading to our potential demise.

The world is too mysterious and too large to contain into any world view.  The potential available to those who can see and would ask more of themselves in this time of endings and new beginnings is to resurrect a mythical mystical and metaphysical life where everything is sacred and counts.  Where we turn away from a soul-less existence on fast-forward and come to ground in a life that revivifies and enlivens our passion for embodiment in a way that answers the courageous question:  “how then shall we live?” in the times we find ourselves in?

Trusting that we  are here at a time when we can be useful to creation by tapping into our unique talents and gifts that are most needed by our world right now.  By using our personal suffering to awaken to the truth of our eternal Being and becoming aware of the lie of our culture and its sickness, we find ourselves impelled and inspired to resurrect an inner psychic blueprint or mythology of an alternate or parallel culture that we create to live by.  A culture that we envision that not only enables us to survive but goes beyond into thriving because we touch meaning inside ourselves.  We tap ourselves to  find alternate ways to live, to eat, to be whole, nourished and to be with others in ways that serve our higher selves.  We find daily sacred rituals that lead to greater health, holiness and wholeness.

We cannot change the system by fight or might, we must find a new model that honors our individual freedom sovereignty and self-empowerment to be all we can be.  To create the possibility of an earthly paradise in our own lives.  We can’t wait for everyone to wake up, to get it, to love each other and come from unity.  You only can be/do this for yourself right now.  What you do for you, you do for me, you do for all of us.

“Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.” Jean Cocteau

To me, garments, like most possessions, can be intensely personal works of art which express my passion for creativity and beauty as a reflection of Spirit. All aspects of life are sacred, a way through a daily practice of natural magic. All of Life is Art and food for Soul.