My horse-loving 8 year old daughter received the Horse-oply game for Christmas. Horse-oply is just Monopoly with a veneer of horses. The board and cards are changed to horsey things but it is basically the same soul-killing game of merciless capitalism. I had forgotten how soul-killing Monopoly is because I haven’t played it for 30 years or more. We, of course, could not deny my daughter playing it at least once before it was buried deep in a closet and marked for Goodwill and somebody else’s problem. So we set aside a few precious hours on Sunday afternoon to do the deed.

Since my children have not wasted time in their youth playing such games as I did and since some of them are not old enough to do the math and read the cards, a lion’s share of the game fell on me. This only made it all the more soul-killing. By the time all of the properties had been acquired, the game had gotten ‘unhh.’ (This is a term my kids use when a game no longer has any fun left in it.) I helped move the game along by brokering a series of trades so that monopolies could be formed and houses and hotels could be purchased – or in this case, so that straw bales and barns could be purchased. The youngest player, our seven year old who bought up 30% of the properties at the start of the game, mercifully and gleefully put an end to it after 3 frustrating hours. And we knew nothing new about horses or farming when it was all over. The game was what it appeared to be when we looked at the box, i.e. just another excuse to purchase the same tired old game of greed that taught us all how to be slum lords in our youth. The Horse-opoly game was just one more material item that was produced at a much greater cost than we are permitted to see, the consumption of which left us worse off than we were before, and the trashing of which will cause a temporary headache for us and a permanent headache for the earth’s inhabitants.

Interestingly, after the game ended my wife told me she had something to watch on the computer. It was a 20 minute video on our linear economic system called The Story of Stuff. I suggest you watch it if you haven’t already. Over 250,000 people watched it in its first week of free distribution. It documents with a fast-paced, information and concept- filled narrative what I think many of us kind of know. What the world has is a consumption problem, whether that is the parts of the world that do the consuming or the parts of the world that are sacrificed so that we may do the consuming. Above all else, “the system” is about getting us to buy, consume and throw away. This crosses political, racial, religious and all other lines. Consuming is meant for all and we are all expected to do our part regardless of who we are, what we believe in or what we look like. Global warming, the War in Iraq, the War on Terror and the nationwide trend towards epidemic obesity and cancer, to name a few, are just a very short list of symptoms of the wreckage caused by our overwhelming focus on consumption. They are only a few of the warning signs of the disastrous direction that putting desires at the forefront of our civilization has in store for us.

The party is over. We either choose to adopt radical changes to our lifestyle by first and foremost throwing off our collective attitude of entitlement or we face the inevitable massive reduction of the population on the planet. I am sure we are not the first species to face this predicament. Either way, I have no doubt that Nature has an exit strategy for us.

The Story of Stuff does an incredible job of making the connections between extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal crystal clear. It also makes crystal clear the implications of this 50 year old approach to life with regards to the future of the earth and our future on the earth as a species.

All the best,

Paul

What do you get when the narrow self-interest of the few hops a ride into the widely dispersed future on the backs of the lack of consciousness of the many? You get degradation on an enormous scale. You get pollution, toxicity, poverty, and man-made disease. You get profound cultural displacement, war, and global warming. You get bleak future’s, devastated present’s, and shadowy past’s. And now, finally, 50 years later putting this truth into brilliant clarity with regards to the creation and disposal of material goods, you get Annie Leonard’s The Story of Stuff.

The willingness to study a complex subject so long and so well that you can share its nuances and implications with others with ease provides a service to society. The ability to convey those complexities with well-formed phrases within a fluid, engaging, often funny narrative is a gift to society. To illustrate rapid fire nuggets of information and painful concepts with seemingly simple line drawings and the judicious use of color is the gift wrap required in this day and age. This is exactly what Annie Leonard and Free Range Studios have given us all.

The newly launched The Story of Stuff is a 20 minute film you can download for free to your computer as soon as you finish reading this. As a matter of fact, there were over 250,000 views during its first week alone. It is being shown in classrooms and meeting rooms all over the world and is creating a stir.

What are some of the effects of humanity having moved so far away from any kind of natural simplicity? What are some of the costs of people - particularly Americans - filling their lives, their homes and offices, and their landfills with stuff and stuff and stuff? In addition to pervasive inner emptiness, fractured families and communities and rat race lives, the costs include a devastated earth and an economy that will crash. Probably spectacularly and probably with everyone in power feigning surprise.

After studying environmental health issues for 20 years and then investing 10 years and travel to 30 countries to uncover the real story of how goods are manufactured, dispersed and then thrown away, Annie Leonard can explain it all to us now.

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world.

What is that statistic again about what percentage of the world’s population lives in the United States and yet what percentage of the world’s resources that percentage consumes? How many football fields worth of trees are being cut down per minute? What percentage of man-made goods are still in use 6 months after being manufactured? (The answer to that question literally took my breath away.) What substance at the “top of the food chain” contains the most toxic chemicals? What disposal method not only further releases toxins into the environment but creates even worse ones in the process? Learn these things and much, much more. As a matter of fact, go beyond the statistics and learn the story. Learn when this consumption-based economy began. See its big picture which is deliberately shielded from our views and our pocketbooks.

A paradigm is a collection of assumptions, concepts, believes and values that together make up a community’s way of viewing reality. Our current paradigm dictates that more stuff is better, that infinite economic growth is desirable and possible, and that pollution is the price of progress. To really turn things around, we need to nurture a different paradigm based on the values of sustainability, justice, health, and community.

Learn the story. And then learn your own story.

Why do I consume what I do? Where did I learn to live this way? How do I keep myself vulnerable to continuing to live this way? What am I modeling for my children? What about myself, my habits, my goals, my deepest feelings and longings, and my character induces me to consume too much? Learn your own story.
How do I change this? What does “living simply” mean to me? Can I assume that I really know what this even means? Is changing light bulbs and grocery shopping with cloth bags enough? Is getting rid of toys and extra clothes enough? Is going on spending fasts enough? Does “living simply” imply something profound just like switching to a consumerist economy implied something profound (in this case negatively profound) 50 years ago? Should I be searching for a paradigm shift within myself? What would it mean to have simple thoughts, for instance?

Learn the story. Learn your own story. And then change the story.

Watch The Story of Stuff. Share it with others. Look around the equally well done web site. And then start digging within. Social action is important but digging within is where the story should start.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,

Leslie

My favorite part of our winter “Faith in the Light” celebration took place in our living room on Christmas Eve. It was very soft and simple and quiet. You might say that it was the heart of our family time for this holi-day.

First we scattered all over the house gathering up all of our candlesticks and brought them to the living room. We have quite a few by now. Our method of adding to our Christmas decoration collection is to pick up more candlesticks and prisms and candles and so on as we come across them during the year. This year we went to Angels in the Attic which is a thrift store with a mission in Floyd (it is run by volunteers and donates proceeds to local charitable organizations). We found a beautiful brass swan candlestick made in India as well as a pillar candle with colored carvings of the figures from the Nativity around the base. So these were the new additions to the collection in the living room.

I think that as far as the children were concerned, just gathering all the candles together and lighting them would have been enough. They were excited to see the effect of the candles massed together and were especially excited to light so many candles themselves. It turned out that my husband had gotten me some lovely tall tapers for Christmas so he gave me my present early. We put them in tall candlesticks and I lit them in the center of the living room floor. The effect was quite dramatic. I am sorry I didn’t take a picture. I guess I was too busy living the moment…

Once the candles were situated, we all found a seat and sat quietly taking it all in for a few moments. Then, as I already described in my last post on this subject, we talked together about the dark time of the year and this dark time in history. We talked of Christmas and Hanukkah and how those celebrations also have to do with faith and light. We talked of the spiritual plans for changes on the earth that will allow it to be bathed in light in the distant future and inhabited by open-minded, soft-hearted, light-filled people. We spoke softly about having faith when times are dark and cold and difficult. We have faith because we know that He is always there. We have faith because things always change. We have faith because He has a plan and through our faith and willingness, He allows us to participate in that plan in unique ways. We shared examples of this kind of movement of light and dark and faith and change we have already experienced. We shared gratitude for where those seemingly dark times have brought us. We thusly reminded ourselves, as we sat there in the candlelight, that the light always prevails eventually because it is in the nature of things that it must.

We then gave each child a special book that illustrated such faith moving in the lives of people. One child received In Story-land by Elizabeth Harrison. What a delightful discovery this book has been. The back cover notes that this book is, “A collection of fifteen original stories ideally suited for young children. Each of the stories features a light-filled being whose radiance illumines the path for those who follow…”. I skimmed through the first story in the book here and was so enchanted that I bought it immediately. It was this story of “Little Beta and the Lame Giant” I read aloud after each child had received their book. Everyone loved it and begged for another story every day thereafter. All the stories have been charming and - I don’t want to say character building as that seems a bit dry in this context - faith affirming.

The next child received Our Island Saints by Amy Steedman. Even in black and white, the illustrations are beautiful. From Edinburgh in 1912, the author wrote, “We love you best, dear saints, because you are our very own.” These lyrically written stories of saints of the British Isles will both edify and nourish the young minds and hearts here.

Our animal loving child received God’s Troubadour - The Story of Saint Francis of Assisi by Sophie Jewett. The back cover says, “We wish this charming book might be the introduction of most children to this medieval saint.” As I am writing this, my eye falls upon this passage on page 30, “From that spring morning, at the gate of the leper hospital, until the day of his death, Francis of Assisi never met the man who was too filthy, or too loathsome, or even too wicked, for him to love.” This certainly illustrates faith in the light in a very active way.

Finally the fourth child at our Faith in the Light celebration received As My Heart Awakens - A Waldorf Read for Early Third Grade. Soft, simple pencil drawings adorn these nicely written stories about saints and animals all of whom illustrate ways to live life faithfully. I wonder if we are perhaps one of the few households in which you may find the eminently practical and well-behaved Amish Pathway readers sharing a bookshelf with the dreamy, imaginative Waldorf readers? Never mind. I think they balance each other and together provide a varied diet. This book is not available on Amazon. You can find it here in hardback at Bob & Nancy’s Bookshop for $10.

The first three books are all on Amazon:

After we finished reading, it was time for prayer and bed. Deep in thought of Him and His ways, we slept. We awoke to our Christmas in the Barn with our minds and hearts joyfully focused on the meaning behind the gifts.

This time together was so uplifting that I am already looking forward to next year’s Faith in the Light winter holiday celebration. What will we be shown between now and then about faith and light? What experiences and insights will we share with each other in hushed tones as we gather quietly by candlelight a year from now? This is the opportunity inherent within yearly spiritually oriented celebrations. We are drawn forward, as He intends and as His nature guides.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,

Leslie

How do Blueberry Cardamom Pancakes sound for breakfast? And how do Blueberry Cardamom Pancakes for eight people made almost entirely by your nine year old sound? Yes, yes! They do sound even better!

While it is true that I am gradually re-working our breakfast menu so that it is made up entirely of savory breakfast dishes, Thursdays are different. On Thursdays our nine year old makes us all pancakes. This week we had Blueberry Cardamom Pancakes which tasted even better than they sound, not the least of which was because Will made them. He has even learned to eat a pancake on the side while working his way through the enormous mound of pancakes it takes to feed a family of eight so that he doesn’t starve to death before he reaches the bottom of the bowl of batter. He is becoming a real professional! And every Thursday morning he steps out of the kitchen a bit tired but with the quiet glow that comes from successfully fulfilling his family responsibilities/opportunities.

Here he is in action:

And here is the recipe:

Kefir-Cultured Blueberry Cardamom Pancakes

6 cups freshly ground whole wheat or spelt flour (4 cups berries)

4 cups real kefir plus enough water to form a thick batter

4 or 5 farm fresh eggs, lightly beaten*

1 1/2 tsp. sea salt

3 tsp. baking soda

3 tbl. melted butter or oil

8 0z of blueberries, the wilder the better

2 tsp. ground cardamom

1. The evening before, grind the flour and put it into a large bowl. Add the kefir and stir vigorously with a fork. Keep adding water until the mixture is thick and well blended. The batter should be very thick, particularly if using spelt flour which tends to get runny by the next morning.
2. The next morning, beat the eggs in a bowl or glass measuring cup. Add the salt and baking soda. Stir well and then use your fingers to mash the mixture well and break up any remaining lumps of baking soda.
3. Add the oil and then the blueberries to the egg mixture.
4. Sprinkle the cardamom on top of the partially risen, fluffy batter in your large bowl. Pour in the egg and blueberry mixture and stir everything together quite vigorously until well blended. The batter should be light, fluffy, and moderately thick. If it is too thick, the centers of the pancakes will not cook enough; if it is too thin the pancakes will not reach their potential as little “cakes”. If necessary, thin the batter with water or milk or kefir or buttermilk until you achieve the desired thickness.
5. Cook pancakes on a moderately hot, buttered cast iron griddle. Watch the heat as you proceed through your batch of batter. Don’t let the griddle get too hot as the thick, cake-like middles of these pancakes need a little time to cook before the outside gets too browned.

* If using farm fresh eggs, you can usually (depending upon the size of the eggs) use one or two less than the recipe would otherwise call for. If using grocery store eggs, use 1 egg per very cup of flour.

(Recipe ratios so you can adjust for size: for every cup of flour soak in 1 cup buttermilk or real kefir or 1 cup water with 1 tbl. whey or yogurt. [Soaking with real kefir gives the very best results in my experience.] Add 1 egg, 1/4 tsp. sea salt, 1/2 tsp. baking soda and 1/2 tbl melted butter or oil. Add blueberries and cardamom to taste.)

Serve these delicious pancakes hot with plenty of nutritious fresh butter, and maple syrup, homemade Pancake Syrup, or raw Blue Agave Nectar. Deepen their flavor with a prayer of gratitude before eating. To maximize enjoyment, share them with your eager family and anyone else who has a way to make it to your breakfast table.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,

Leslie

What is the essence of the Christmas/Hanukkah/Winter Holiday season? Beyond changing fashions, beyond differing creeds, beyond varying traditions, what might this season unwaveringly offer a sincere seeker on the spiritual path?

Many say that we humans are born partly of spirit and partly of nature. We are sparks of God caught for a brief while within bodies of nature. We are a dynamic combination held together by His breath and given direction by His word. The spirit level and the nature level arise each out of the other at the same time that they also reflect each other. Therefore, when clarity, simplicity and love make the spirit and nature levels within us congruent, then with both wings we can fly swiftly to Him. Otherwise we flounder about feeling like “one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star,” and we are left with the uncomfortable feeling that we are not progressing as we should be.

Holidays - or rather Holy Days - are important stretching and resting points for keeping our wings in rhythm and our eyes focused on the goal of human life. Yet most holidays seem to be lived through thoughtlessly and unconsciously these days. Whatever special opportunities they might hold for us are completely missed.

One of my most cherished duties as wife and mother, then, is to claim what I call “natural holidays” for my family. I must say that I find this to be a somewhat large endeavor so we are patiently working out a piece at a time each year for each holiday. (I will have to post our Family Calendar of Holidays sometime. It is sort of unusual..!) Working out what a Natural Holiday is for us requires both a thought piece and an action or actualizing piece in order to become a meaningful and enduring family celebration. I would like to write a bit now about our thought piece for the winter holiday season. I will write about the actualizing piece we enjoyed this year in another post although Paul described much of it in his post Our Christmas in the Barn.

I should explain first that when searching for a simpler, more essential approach to a holiday, I look to four things. First, I look to the teachings of Sahaj Marg. These teachings have nothing to do with modern holidays but they do have everything to do with spiritual insights and the exposition of spiritual laws which Nature necessarily reflects. Secondly, I look to what our natural environment is doing during that specific time of year. Thirdly, I research some of the traditions developed by peoples of the past who were more in tune with nature and her ways than we are now. Fourthly, I look to whatever I may understand about the future our children will face. What will be important for them during difficult times? These four threads invariably weave together into a tapestry of ideas that is simple, flexible, beautiful, and timeless and yet unique to each holiday .

So back to the original question: What is the essence of the Christmas/Hanukkah/Winter Holiday season?

For us, our special opportunity during this time is to refresh our faith in the presence of light. During this darkest time of the year and during this darkest time of human presence on the earth, we remind ourselves that there is Light here now. No matter how little of it we may see at any given time, the light is there because it can’t not be there. It can be covered up. It can be obstructed. It can be coming in at an angle we cannot see or experience but it is always there. Not only that but in the distant future, there will be much more Light here. It is whispered to us that there will come a time when this lovely earth will freely move in Light and her inhabitants will have open minds and illumined hearts. It is towards this we may look now. It is towards this we must work now.

A sacred light in the darkness is a compelling image for us humans. But it is also an image that is easily lost with any kind of busyness, noise, carelessness, thoughtlessness or clutter of any kind (hence the Christmas noise that erupts very year starting around Halloween). As our children are growing up in a culture that predominantly stops for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, we do the same only more simply and more to the real point every year. What happens when you cling to an essential idea and then cheerfully strip everything else away? Well, this year on Christmas Eve we were “left with” sitting together by candlelight talking about our world and its future. We talked about the light that is always present even when times are dark. We talked about the cycles of light and how being aware of these cycles can bolster our faith during trying times. We talked about warmth and hope and love and possibilities. Then each child received a special book that in some way touched on this theme of faith and light, faith in light.

The action of setting a theme for small gifts for coming years, of lighting candles together, of talking quietly together about something so central in our lives and receiving special books and reading aloud was a truly blessed time. There was no mess. There was no fuss. We were uplifted and changed. We were set apart. In sacredness, we went to bed in the consciousness of Him.

I will post a little more about this and about the books each child received in the next few days. I will leave you now with the closing sentence of the story we read together:

Perhaps some day you may go to this valley yourselves and learn how to do many wonderful things, which now seem impossible to you.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,

Leslie

My wife, children and I aren’t practicing Christians but we do believe that Jesus was part of the divine hierarchy that has guided the overall evolution of the human being. We have celebrated a somewhat traditional Christmas as a family ever since Leslie and I got married years ago, but we gradually started making small alterations to the way we celebrated together that were consistent with our spiritual practice. For years Leslie has done an excellent job of working out how to mold our holiday celebrations into something more Sahaj or natural. One example of this she describes in her post about transforming Independence Day into Inner Dependence Day.

This year, after our big move and daily hard work of setting up our homestead, we felt like we had little energy left to whip up a big Christmas holiday. We figured we would have a lean Christmas and prepared the children for that. One of the issues was logistics. Every time you move into a new place, you have to figure out where everything goes all over again. Then when Christmas rolls around, you are suddenly committed to additional unpacking and more rearranging. We are still moving things around here in Floyd as it is and we could not figure out any appropriate place to put a tree in the midst of all of this. Money is tight and, even more importantly, for years we have wrestled with the whole idea of chopping a tree down just for decoration in the first place. It seems extravagant and vaguely wrong. We love the smell of the tree and love having one in our home and Floyd County is the Christmas Tree Capital of Virginia after all, but ironically this is the year we finally decided against getting a Christmas tree at all.

I have had an idea in the back of my mind for a while to stack hay bales or straw bales in a ⊏ shape like a manger and decorate accordingly rather than going the usual Christmas tree route. This idea came to me when many of the people who saw our first straw bale cowshed back in Louisa commented that it looked like the Christmas stable/manger. If we went ahead and actually decorated with bales, I thought, then we could use the bales for our livestock afterwards rather than waste a tree’s life.

So as we had just completed the exterior of our straw bale milking barn while I was thinking about all of this again for this year, the idea quickly got converted into the somewhat larger idea of an all-out “Christmas in the Barn” family celebration. Since we feed our animals from the back of the barn and milk our cows right there in the barn, our winter holiday kind of turned naturally into a Christmas in a manger approach through sheer proximity. I needed to find a way to get light into the barn anyway as we have to milk after dark during the winter. It turned out that white Christmas lights did the trick perfectly. The pieces continued to fall into place for us until it became “Christmas in the Barn” with light providing the central theme.

In the dark world in which we now live, it is helpful to find the essential goodness in everything including Christmas. The original Christmas story was one of a light in the heavens showing the way to the light who was being born in a manger down below. By getting back to basics, we replicated this idea to some extent and this gave us a happy, simpler outcome. As our children said, “This is the best Christmas ever.” But, of course, they always say that.

One aspect of life that gives me hope is the strong effect places, events, animals and people can have on us human beings. I became particularly aware of this phenomenon 13 years ago when I started practicing a Raja Yogic meditation system simultaneously with beginning work as a counselor at a treatment center for children who had committed sexual offenses.

For almost two years my weeks consisted of pretty much the same experience. I went to the physically, emotionally and spiritually draining prison-like atmosphere of the treatment center four days a week where I was surrounded by people filled with despair, anger, hatred and bitterness. By the end of the four days, my tank was on empty and my attitude and my view of the world were both negative. Then for the next three days I dove into my spiritual practice and spent time surrounded by people who radiated the higher qualities of spirituality. Through this and through having the time to focus on my own inner connection to the divine within, I became recharged. This accidental see-saw experiment vividly revealed to me how much we can pull each other up and down. With the world being in an increasingly negative phase these days, we can remain hopeful with the knowledge that eventually there will be people who can pull it back up.

Our current leadership, media, internet, radio and television programming as well as corporate advertising and attitudes have us hemorrhaging character and goodwill. It is easy to find fights to get into and insults to hurl in such an atmosphere. It is not so easy, however, to find people who draw our higher qualities out of us and inspire us and pull us up. It is imperative, therefore, that we draw to us as best we can people, places, ideas and events that actually raise our spirits and contribute to our collective upward movement on a spiritual path.

On our homestead this principle even extends to the animals that come to us and to the plant life that we develop. When we consider bringing in a new animal, we of course look at qualities like conformation, breeding, milk production and the various other qualities the animal possesses. But the deciding factor for us always comes from our sense of what kind of vibratory field the animal gives off. We look for an evolving animal that wants human contact. We want curious animals that are eager to learn and grow. We want animals that can live in symbiosis with the existing atmosphere and personalities already here on the homestead.

The first livestock we purchased years ago was our Nigerian Dwarf goats, a mother and her two does. They ended up being delivered to us in the middle of the night by folks who couldn’t quite find their way around. The people who sold them to us were nice but we eventually figured out that they were culling from a larger herd of somewhat ordinary goats that were somewhat neglected and under socialized. We did not know much about purchasing livestock at the time, nor did we know about any developments that would be particular to our new goats. With time we began to perceive stubbornness in the mother goat, for instance, and a sort of coarseness. Later we encountered other Nigerian Dwarf goats that just seemed more conscious and evolved than the goats in our little herd. Plus as our homestead began to fill up with other animals, we found our goats to be lacking a little bit comparatively. They didn’t quite fit in. This coupled with the fact that our new homestead has pasture and not much to browse on meant that our goats really didn’t fit in. We started talking about selling them and starting over with higher quality goats sometime in the future.

However, about a month and half ago we visited an alpaca farm that also turned out to have a herd of Nigerian Dwarf goats on it. These goats are not only registered but are actual descendants from the original herd brought to the States some years ago. Every goat had such a nice energy and personality. We really liked them. Leslie and I began talking again about the possibility of selling off our herd and purchasing a couple of bred does from this farm.

Then we met their Ramón. Ramón was a six month old buck with a golden color and a sweet disposition. We all immediately felt a connection to him. As soon as he walked up to us from within his pen of other eligible males, we all burst into smiles. He had been bottle fed and so thoroughly socialized that he was very affectionate and sought out human companionship. We bought him a couple of weeks later and brought him home to mate with our does. Since that time he has completely transformed our goat herd as our does are now friendly and just plain out better.

Ramón has made his corner of our homestead a happy place. For me he is one of the many beings in my life that brings a smile to my face and a warm feeling to my heart when I see him. He still makes us all laugh.

Here are some videos that capture Ramón at his best.

All the best,

Paul

Anyone can look within. Anyone who feels His call can respond. Anyone who hears His suggestions can follow them. Anyone who prays sincerely (i.e. without ceasing) for His direction and aid can receive both and more. Anyone who wants to work for others and for the future may do so through alertness, faithful waiting, wordless craving, the careful tending of harmony and an open-hearted willingness. Therefore, anyone who feels the call to help create a space that is set apart for meditation, prayer, contemplation and spiritual study for self and others may find a way to do so.

The idea of working towards creating an ashram/meditation building and grounds came into my mind nearly twenty years ago. As I moved from one city to another, the idea of doing this appeared in my mind together with a sense of urgency. Over the next several years, I occasionally caught glimpses of such a place in my mind’s eye during odd moments but nothing more. I was restless with the idea for years. You can’t force timing, however, so restlessness was the work for the time being.

Three or four years later, I chanced to live in Crestone, Colorado for a brief albeit instructive period of time. Crestone is a very unusual place in many ways, beyond even its extraordinary geography. Primarily, it is host to very diverse spiritual communities and is a laboratory for alternative home/ashram/monastary construction. While living there, I started to think a lot about alternative construction and felt drawn to straw bale construction in particular. I just love the quiet that comes from the thick walls and the light that comes through the deep window wells that straw bale construction provides.

I visited straw bale homes while living in Crestone and experienced the calming atmosphere in them. I realized that this would be a great technology to use for building meditation spaces. I watched people building their straw bale homes there and read a great deal about people building their homes and realized that the process of building with straw bale allows for the deepening of community ties in a way that most modern building technologies do not. Many stages of this low tech building process require participants who need only be enthusiastic, energetic, and have the ability to follow directions and work together harmoniously. The elemental nature of building with natural, golden straw can easily provide a vehicle for an individual’s self-reliance, a family’s shared goals, and/or a community’s highest visions. Its simplicity can give rise to elegant, artistic and flexible solutions for many important aspects of a natural life.

My husband’s wonderful narrative in the post below, entitled Doorways, details how we came to consider and build with straw bale as a family. It also explains some of his thought processes and experimentation through which he led us to building with straw bale in a uniquely thrifty way. We have worked hard as a family on a number of these straw bale buildings so we are all familiar with the process by now. We have a feel for the rhythm of these projects and work roles have developed for each member of the family right down to the five year old. It has been incredible for all of us to create these permanent structures together under the leadership of my husband. Every day we move in and out of buildings we built ourselves, as we saw fit, in order to meet the concrete needs of our daily lives, as we saw them. Such achievement builds confidence not only in our hands’ abilities to execute but in our hearts’ abilities to hear Him and in our family’s abilities to work together - each in his or her own way - to create that which is needed.

So now, after years and years of each piece falling into place (many more pieces than can be mentioned in a few posts), we stand before the doorway of a long dreamed of straw bale meditation hall:

There are even flower pots there already waiting for spring and the planting of color.

The building itself will stretch from just a few feet shy of the fence you see on the left, back to the evergreen you see behind the doors, all the way over to the evergreen branch you can see in the top right of the photo. (So the building will measure approximately 26′x14′ or about 364 square feet.)

The doors are facing east so the room will fill with morning light. The side towards the fence faces south and a beautiful view of rolling pastures and woods far beyond. There will be especially big windows on that wall to bring that pastoral view inside. The north and west sides will have fewer windows and be protected from the weather by the evergreen trees. When the deciduous trees are in leaf, the whole area is secluded. The back corner (see above photo) is intimate with smaller trees and long grass and we have plans for special plantings for this area. The north side (over by the hammock which you can see in the below photograph) is furnished with magnificent maple trees and decades old English ivy. It is a lovely spot, like an outdoor living room, with a protected atmosphere.

Here is another view which gives a different perspective.

The bit of building you see to the right is our house. The little white building directly ahead is an old spring house which we hope to bring back into usefulness. The fence in the foreground is the same fence you see on the left hand side of the top photo. It fences in a large area that is currently the pasture for our rare breed Nigerian Dwarf goats. Someday that pasture will be a raised bed vegetable garden. Meanwhile the fence will be built up with straw and stuccoed to create a solid wall. This wall will then be extended from the fence post on the right edge of the photo up to the right front corner of the spring house. It will start again at the other corner of the spring house and go across the side and around the back of the building all the way to the pasture fence/now stucco wall. In other words, the meditation building, front courtyard and remaining sides and back will be contained within a solid wall about four feet high. The wall and the meditation building will be limed so that they are white to match our house, the spring house and what we call the granny house (which you can see in a number of videos). The other straw bale outbuildings we have built are all stuccoed in a golden color but all the buildings in the compound around the house will be white.

Way back in the spring, my husband picked out something beautiful to use as an ornamental gate leading from the yard behind the house into the courtyard in front of the meditation building. He has found special materials to use as stepping stones from that gate to the French doors. I am starting to plan out the herb garden that will fill the courtyard. I have longed for just such an herb garden for years and years so I am very excited about this aspect. Densely planted healing plants create a quietly charged, calmly alert sort of atmosphere that will complement the meditation building perfectly. It is important to change one’s inner state as one approaches a place of spiritual work. The act of walking through an artistic gate and following a path through a healing garden to the dramatic front door will provide just such an opportunity to shake off everyday life.

So those are the plans so far. We look forward to laying the concrete floor in the spring and some weekend(s) having a bunch of willing workers come help us erect walls. Once the building and the garden walls are stuccoed, then we can break ground on the herb garden and pick out a spot for a small pond.

People often say these days that we should understand that our children are only on loan to us as parents. Personally I don’t think that “loan” is even the right word either. I think that word implies more ownership than is legitimately the case. I think, rather, that our children are His and we have been appointed to be their parents on His behalf. Our experiences of responsibilities, joys and challenges flow from this appointment.

I feel this is equally the case with the property we “own”. It is of the earth and it is His. We have been appointed the caretakers of this patch for this period of time. If we listen carefully, we will find that certain things, sometimes surprising things, ensue. As with raising children, the responsibilities, joys and challenges flow out of constantly seeking how to mold the property into that which will best serve others and the future. In my understanding, attempting to fulfill this goal of service in the highest, most natural way also turns out to be the way that will best feed both the children and the land, incidentally.

It is in this spirit that my husband and I take steps as inwardly directed to construct a meditation hall here on our homestead that will be open to many people. It is my greatest joy and the fruit of well watered harmony that my husband and I both share this attitude and now share this satisfying work.

When the idea of building a consecrated place within a natural environment came into my mind decades ago, I could never have guessed this result of a hand built straw bale building on the homestead in the mountains I share with my dear, dear family. There is a saying in the Tao Te Ching that goes something like “In timing be precise.” One of the chief exercises that allows perfect timing to create the right results is that of waiting. We have to wait even if that means less time than you think you need or more time than you think you have. Indeed, if we are willing to wait, and pray sincerely and work towards harmony and bear the pain of craving then as P.R. Krishna commented in the July 2007 Constant Remembrance, “… the ashram will appear as if by magic, and it will exceed your wildest imagination.” (p. 68) This is true of ashrams, meditation buildings, homesteads, family life and virtually everything else.

May we all go within so deeply that we find the softness to hear His voice and the courage to follow it. May we all create the necessary harmonious environment in which we may fulfill His best wishes for us. May we all step through doorway after doorway after doorway.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,

Leslie

Doorways represent a shift in consciousness. They are the defining point between one world and another. Both literally and metaphorically, they have to be recognized and gone through in order for movement to happen. In some instances, a doorway just represents a subtle change between the varying conditions of two different rooms or inside and outside. Other times, you can walk through a doorway and feel like you have walked into a completely different world, dimension or reality. When we are really intent upon creating change in our lives and in the world, inevitably a doorway will appear through which we must step.

Every chance we get, my wife and I attend spiritual gatherings at Shri Ram Chandra Mission (SRCM) ashrams. Since starting this meditation practice of Sahaj Marg 13 years ago, I have found no better way to recharge, evolve and grow than attending spiritual gatherings at ashrams. My wife, who has been practicing for over 28 years, feels the same way. Our spiritual practice is geared toward the overarching goal of connecting with the divinity within by going inside oneself. Although no rituals or external forces are used to make this happen and connecting with the love within one’s heart can be pursued by anyone anywhere, these ashrams provide a special opportunity for spiritual seekers. The SRCM ashrams offer only the bare minimum of physical comforts but a maximum of spiritual opportunity. Their simplicity and purity make them doorways that hearten one’s journey within. For this reason, my wife and I have made every attempt to make as many pilgrimages as possible to these gateways to what is known in our fold as the ‘brighter world.’

In the United States there are two ashrams so far as well as a number of meditation centers of various kinds. We also gather for individual and group meditations in aspirants’ homes. Each venue provides opportunities to go within. All are charged with a subtle condition that makes cultivating one’s innate spiritual nature easier. I have frequented the various ashrams, meditation centers and homes of fellow practitioners as well as practiced this system of meditation in my own home every day for years. I have gained a great deal in all of these places but the deepest and most significant experiences came from my two trips to India to be in the presence of the current President and fellow practitioner of this system of Raja Yoga. During my most recent trip two years ago, a new doorway was opened and that was the doorway to my family’s homestead.

I have mentioned this in other blog posts and videos but what happened was that before leaving for India, my wife and I were mulling over an opportunity to purchase a particular dairy cow. While in India, I happened to visit an ashram that had a cow out in the courtyard one morning. Being newly interested in cows, I went over to see her. As I looked at her, something passed between us. I got a powerful sense that we were meant to purchase the dairy cow under consideration. The rest, as they say, is history. We went ahead and stepped up to that now open door and a homesteading flood poured through. Interestingly as the doorway to our new homestead opened through the action of my spiritual life, another door just as fundamental to our spiritual life consequently slammed shut.

Based upon my experience in India, we went ahead and purchased the milk cow we had been considering. With the passage of time we also purchased this cow’s heifer as well as her older sister who was about to calve. We were in the thick of beginning homesteading and committed to milking cows (and sometimes goats) twice a day, every day into the distant future. All of these animals, of course, need to be fed, watered and checked on several times daily. The kefir we culture in the kitchen with kefir grains and the fresh milk needs to be replenished daily and the grains kept alive. In other words, we are surrounded by living things rooted in our homestead that require daily care and attention from us. So the door that slammed shut was our ability to travel. With no ability to travel goes also our ability to visit ashrams, meditation centers and fellow practitioners’ homes for meditation as well as our ability to have personal contact with the Master of the system. As in days of yore, our travels are now limited to any spot where the round trip is less than the time between the morning and evening milking. What irony that as the doorway to our homesteading was opened through my personal contact with our Master, the very doorway that was consequently closed was the one necessary for us to have personal contact with our Master. However, with the graciousness and generosity that is the cow and the total care provided by the natural path, a new door is now opening to facilitate our spiritual practice.

Two weeks before our new cow arrived two years ago, I came to the stressful realization that we had no suitable place to milk her. Leslie and I weighed our various options and finally an idea of building a straw bale cowshed began to take root in my mind. A design came to me. We met some local people building a straw bale house who helped to fill in the gaps. A week later we as a family built a 10’ x 16’ straw bale cowshed for about $1000. We all loved this building; my wife particularly loved this building. The walls were thick and solid. It was tucked away in the trees. It opened towards the southeast so it was filled with light in the mornings. It had an incredibly peaceful condition. Leslie had talked for years about building a straw bale mediation hall or ashram. With the success of this cow shed, I realized that we could use this same straw bale technology to create a wonderful meditation building right on our own property. Not only would this give us a place to meditate and do all things spiritual that was quiet and separate, it would also give us the ability to host gatherings for local and regional practitioners to come and meditate. I picked out a spot on our property and started to plan out the building. However, we moved away from that property to establish a more suitable homestead here in Floyd County so ground was never broken for this there. However, with our first viewing of what would become our new home, I immediately found a spot that would be perfect for the meditation building. I also envisioned a courtyard in front of the building surrounded by a straw bale wall that would contain an herb garden and a pond. Leslie was in love with the idea. For her more than anyone else I have to complete this project.

So after years of practice, Leslie and I are finally in a position to address one of the major principles of Sahaj Marg in a dynamic way. Shri Ram Chandra, the founder of our Mission, conveyed a set of ten maxims to guide spiritual aspirants in their daily lives. The first maxim is as follows:

“Rise before dawn. Offer your prayer and puja at the fixed hour, preferably before sunrise, sitting in one and the same pose. Have a separate place and seat for worship. Purity of mind and body should be specially adhered to.” Complete Works of Ram Chandra, Volume 1 p. 191.

Everything and everyone creates a vibrational field. It is these many fields we are sensing when we interact with the world. For instance, people with a heavy field will pull out the negative or lower tendencies in those with whom they interact and will bring down the places that they frequent. A group of people thinking hateful, mean and negative thoughts are not only negatively affecting each other but also contributing their negative vibrations to the world at large. The opposite is true regarding people who are thinking about and feeling the subtle vibrations of divine thought. By connecting with the subtle essence of the universe, people can help elevate those around them and contribute love to the world at large.

By the same token, when we have a separate place to sit and connect with lighter and more subtle vibrations, love arises and the atmosphere of the place where we sit becomes charged with this condition. That place begins to automatically pull our thoughts and feelings towards the divine whenever we sit there. For us to construct a simple, handmade building with thick straw bale walls, lots of windows and French doors and then meditate, pray and reflect within that building means that we can create a stronger spiritual field here. This will be a tremendous blessing for all in our family, including our plant and animal family members. It will in fact elevate our entire homestead which will, in turn, elevate us.

So in this way the ashram in India and what we call the “inner Master” brought to us our homestead. In return our homestead and its inhabitants are bringing to us the ability to build a meditation building and draw to us the Master. This is a beautiful example of what we think of as the natural path. We know from vivid personal experience that once people collectively turn away from the unnatural and disastrous course we are presently on and return to a natural path, we will discover a return to this world of symbiosis in which the Earth’s collective processes take turns paying each other forward toward a more natural, spiritually based future.

Even the purchase of the French doors themselves (which you can see in the video) was in a way foreshadowed years earlier by my return trip home from a spiritual gathering in Austin, Texas. The gathering was over and I boarded my plane in the deep state that often accompanies a visit with the Master within. I hardly noticed the two men in suits sitting behind me arguing about business. I hardly noticed the many men in suits wearing ear pieces and talking into their sleeves all over the plane. Rather I was drawn inward thinking about the next time I might be able to attend a gathering and be elevated by the presence of the Master. I gradually heard someone trying to connect with me. I looked up and saw Jimmy Carter extending his hand for me to shake. My mom loved Jimmy Carter and he seemed like a sincere person. I shook his hand.

Now years later I have found our doorway to our mediation building at a Habitat for Humanity ReStore. Habitat for Humanity is an ecumenical Christian ministry that has the goal of eliminating poverty housing and homelessness throughout the world. It has been championed by Jimmy Carter since 1984. Through a posting on Freecycle, my wife discovered that there is a Habitat for Humanity ReStore 30 minutes from our home which contains inexpensive recycled and surplus building materials that would otherwise contribute to the enormous trash pile that is enveloping our world. By pulling out these used but far from useless creations, we find that we can elevate them and give them new life. In the case of our French doors which I found there, they will provide the opening to the building that will be at the center of my family’s homestead. That is certainly a worthwhile cause.

It is through just these sorts of doorways that we will all have to walk in order for us to evolve into human beings that leave the world better than when they found it.

The video embedded below shows the French doors I have been talking about. I installed them in their proper place on Thanksgiving Day as a tenth wedding anniversary present to my wife. Leslie and the children come out and see the installed doors for the first time. Having “a separate place” for meditation large enough to also invite many others to gather together here is now a certainty on our homestead.

The doorway is there.

All the best,

Paul

One of my very favorite things about homeschooling our children is the easy daily intimacy we all have with each other. This intimacy started from the days even before they were born and has proceeded without interruption, all the way to today and stretches deliciously into the bright future. As a matter of fact, my husband has been working at home for years also. It is a large and busy group here. While it is certainly challenging to orchestrate many people living in a tight space, all of whom are very busy learning new skills and giving their all to live up to high ideals, living together through our hearts and with a great deal of margin away from “the marketplace” has been freeing and extraordinarily rich.

Some fellow homeschoolers have been discussing how to respond to parents who claim that they could never stay home with their children. They say they could never tolerate being around their children for such long periods of time. Such a daily life would be grindingly unpleasant, some say. Others maintain that they would end up serving time if cooped up with their children for too long!

Some of the homeschooling moms say that the problem here is that these parents have obviously not done an effective job of training and disciplining their children. Unruly ill-mannered children are difficult to be around whereas well-trained children, by contrast, are very pleasant to be around. I agree that one level of the problem of parents and children learning at home together every day is related to parents being accustomed to filling their days with pursuing their own objectives and children being accustomed to public school levels of behavior, values, use of time and so on. However, I think a deeper and even more significant level of the problem is related to intimacy or the lack thereof.

Living daily life within the currents of true intimacy is as different as moving from the land to the sea and needing to find your “sea legs”. True intimacy is subtle, pervasive and all encompassing. It requires constant, careful attention to all the others within the intimate circle. Its sweetness depends upon our evolving self-discipline, willing sacrifice, and able guidance and/or responses in both word and deed available at all times. In its essence, familial intimacy is quiet in the way that a fragrance is quiet. As with other delicious fragrances, the danger of acclimating to it so quickly that you are no longer conscious of its scent is ever present. As with other delicious fragrances, the coarseness and bustle of the activities of mundane daily life tend to overpower this subtle scent to such a degree that it disappears and you forget that it was ever there. How can you maintain something you have utterly forgotten about?

American culture does not value intimacy. As a matter of fact, American culture stands out from most of the rest of the world through its emphasis on “rugged individualism” and “independence”. Here, not only is pursuing material gain at the cost of fractured intimate relationships expected, it is lauded. Here young children are stripped of biologically programmed comforts and modeling for the sake of fostering a precocious “independence”. There is generally little attachment to the land. There is little attachment to extended family. There is not even the same level of attachment within the nuclear family as there has always been historically within human families. There can’t be because family members just don’t spend enough time together these days to build and maintain intimacy. It takes time to learn how to live together harmoniously. It takes time to know each other so well that not only are family members understood in the present but are anticipated in their futures. The fashionable idea that spending quality time together will make up for a loss of spending quantity time together is, of course, completely false. As with all dichotomies, the answer invariably is that you need both. Within our family circles, and especially with our children, we need to spend both quality and quantity time. In other words, we have to surrender to being together and accept whatever that entails. If we can also accept that this is for our good (both the parents and the children) then we are more likely to live our family intimacy fruitfully.

In my experience, to move from lives together of mere familiarity to lives together based in an ever growing intimacy requires enormous change. All parties (except perhaps for young children who have not forgotten what intimacy is but rather are ideally suited for drawing us into it) have to be willing to change their goals, their modes of behavior, and their use of time as well as their views of themselves and their family members. If they succeed in making enough of these changes that a real intimacy starts to flourish, then they have to be willing to tend it, pay unwavering attention to it and be, if nothing else, courteous.

Probably one of the biggest challenges in this day and age is safeguarding family intimacy. Everything in our consumerist, complex, activity oriented, outwardly directed society is designed to pull us away from the quiet satisfactions found within the warm embrace of an intimate family. We have to develop discernment as to what activities and modes of thinking are bad, good and best. We need the energy to fend off the bad. We need true strength to bypass what is simply good for what is best and we need determination and faith to live out “the best” as we see it. These are all really big things to do. In fact, what better discipline is there than learning to live peacefully within the family group? What better training ground for personal development is there than learning to live peacefully within the family group? Furthermore, the power intimate family life has to transform us becomes exponentially more powerful if you take “family group” to mean something more than two adults and two children.

For all the parents who say that they could never stay home with their children, you can be absolutely sure that they could never successfully stay home with their spouses either. In this day and age, real intimacy is hard won. Sadly, the fact that many wondrous achievements, developments and happenings can only occur within the warmth and rhythm of close daily intimacy is so far from being understood today that it is now one of the many secrets of nature waiting to be rediscovered.

Given how much I think about all of this, I have probably even less idea of what to say to parents who say they could never stay home with their children than some of the other moms. Depending upon the person, I might say that it can be challenging but that I have discovered that there are great secrets hidden within spending lots of time learning with my children. I am definitely a better person for it after this many years and I look forward to the further refinement future years of being close with them will bring.

The simple truth is that I experience my husband and my children as absolute gifts from the Divine. I am so grateful that we are all keeping each other company as we go through this challenging life together. I literally cannot think of anything better than to spend my days with them, in service, in learning, in prayer, in fun, and in whatever other mysterious twists and turns life presents. Homeschooling is about learning and developing, being organized and having goals, fulfilling a vision and all of that. Yes. I appreciate all of that and strive mightily in those directions. But homeschooling is also just a way of being together. And I love that.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,

Leslie