Comments Please…

I’ve gotten feedback that many of you reading the Personal Permaculture Blog have tried unsuccessfully to post comments. I don’t know what that is about, I have not had the opportunity to track down if there is a glitch or if Google just made it more difficult than it should be. I do want comments as they will help me in the process of honing the content of the site and more directly, let me know if I am making progress.

At the moment I'm living in a jungle on the edge of an island in the middle of the pacific and feeling so very connected & utterly disconnected. From this point I have absolutely nothing to say...Mahalo?

This is one of those times where dialog would be greatly help. I'll be home soon and my brain will find its reset button, and I'm sure it will be all the better for the down time. In the meanwhile the Pema/Prima, culture concept can steep in my belly.

I’ve now got my email address under personal info, but just to make it easy;
gardeners.organic@gmail.com

If inspired to comment, try the blog option and if it doesn’t work, please feel free to email me directly. I’ll work to address the comments in future blogs. Thanks everyone for your on-going support.

Ownership of the Kingdom of Self

Permaculture of land is about relationship of elements. Managing recourses like rain run-off into cisterns for later use as irrigation. Or, good bugs which eat other bad bugs which eat my crop. So I may create a pond or cistern and or choose to manage the food and habitat which support the beneficial bug.

Permaculture of self and life is about relationship, relationship of the elements both within and without. At some point I’ll have to evolve Personal Permaculture into Primaculture, the first culture of self. Healthy Primaculture, healthy self, healthy planet, but too soon for that. So back to stories we go.

Ownership of the kingdom of self begins with stewardship of stories. I keep returning to stories because stories are the fabric which bind us together or tears us apart. A well cherished story can launch us beyond the world into which we were born or serve to bind us to a life unlived. They are potent little buggers which hide in plane sight.

A wise friend and guide had an interesting psycho-story equation;

Take any persons prevailing story,
Stand it next to the stark reality of their lives,
The space between those two…
=
Their neurosis and general mental wackiness.

I have used this map personally. Finding too much sky visible between the story I was telling myself and the base reality. The trick is, I need a story big enough to grow into, but not so big that I get lost or bullshity in the process.

I have a friend who was the first to operate a western style business inside of Poland at the time of the fall of communism. The second biggest obstacle to overcome, besides corruption/bribery, were the stories. Whereas America has its classic rags to riches stories; communism’s version told of the person who wanted to do better, be more, or earn more.., it ends badly, they allll end badly. Very badly every time, they dared to want more and bad bad things happened. As a business person, my friend needed to inspire excellents and optimum production, to do so he needed to navigate around giant monolithic obstacles in the form of stories. Stories designed to maintain the party line.

Most of us have such internal Stonehenge built of stories we consider reality.

In navigating my story I keep a close eye on what stories I am telling myself about others. If I think that someone had done-me-wrong, I have to consider what I get out of telling the story. From a victim position on the wheel, its rather tuff to become master of my kingdom of self, let alone a conscious creator. I have a good friend who has a narcissist for an Ex. She always knows what he is up to by what he tells her, she is thinking. Projection, it’s dead common and a worthy beginner map. Just like in dreams, one way to track them is to see all characters’ and elements of the dream as a part of self. Only for a time, then the rules reverse.

Perception & Wholeness

I was awake last night thinking about awakening others. Not to my insomniac state, as that gets old but activating others to be wired into the web of life. To do so would allow everything else I’d like to download to go smoothly and seamlessly. Like the concept of personal wholeness.

Being in ones head, and thinking along the lines of thought which society has favored over the millennia, only leads to more of the same. On the other hand through meditation, joy, yoga, knitting, crocheting, weaving, disruption of the status quo, sex (when one can surf the opening,) enthiogenic plants, personal disciplines like Aikido and so forth, inroads are made into Right-brained dimensional perception. From the right-brain, one can become aware of intrinsic energy lines which run through everything. Everything including each of us. When one learns to navigate the energy which flows along lines an intelligents, independent of the linear, begins to unfold. The energetic side of the brain has an order, integrity, and an authority, but it is not derived though logic but connectivity.

What if the reason people do not experience their wholeness, is that they have been trained away from using the part of their brain which was designed to do so? I’ll attach a video link to A stroke of Insight, you may have seen it, where a brain scientist, Jill Bolte, maps her own brain and its potential to experience the energetic connectivity of life while suffering a massive stroke. One of the reasons she fought so hart to make her way back from the stroke was to let everyone know that ecstatic oneness was there for everyone.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

When one is linked to the web of life, the knowing that comes with it, follows original pattern. Original pattern is the very nature of a situation or thing. It allows for thinking to move from idealized to integrated.

When I am connected, there is an energy flowing through my body, sometimes it’s low and steady and purrs like a cat. At other times its huge, and roars. It takes me having containers and body stamina to sustain the roar and even then I am grateful when it settles back in to the purr.
The moment I allow for thought or deed to stray, I’m outside of the lines. The energy shuts down. I’m naked in the cold with only my thoughts and ideas of what and how I should proceed.
Perhaps that why people fill every moment of their lives with chatter, music, TV, work, drama, puzzles, so as not to fall through the crack between worlds. When instead there could be practice disciplines to strengthen the inner containers to hold the energetic.

The two sides of the brain and the two worlds are one, energetic and linear, two sides of the same coin. They connect to the map to sustainable integrated self and planet in the most sublime way…
But that’s another blog.

Map to the map…or was it a vessel?

In reading this blog, one is looking at work-product. In another time I would develop the maps under cover of hermitage. Honing, testing, tweaking, then massive editing, (apologies for all typos) before anyone saw the map. The thing is, I believe that there is something to be learned in observing the process. I’ve even had a couple of people ask me how I set about mapping.


Without breaking down the process used to map (another day or blog), for those who follow along, I would hope that something can be gained, in observing the muddling through. First, I should explain that I can feel the connections. They are alive and intact both with in me and throughout the planet. What has to be mapped is how to bring others to the awareness of what already is. But if that were easy we’d be there, and we are not. Or so I’ve been told.

I’ve got a hunch that I’m losing everyone by telling them that in Personal Permaculture, rule number one is; view self and life as whole. If by chance, your personal wholeness is obvious, please write in the comment box, describe how wholeness configures in you. If wholeness in a given that would save a lot of time and energy. And we could use that as starting point.

Sadly I think that I could get more attention if I started with; “Every soul shatters into 16 pieces upon birth, and the point of life is like a big scavenger hunt, we need to locate the fractured 16. Then offer a ceremony to reconnect the part back into wholeness. Explain that once connected all glories and riches befitting an whole being would be yours, love, health, money, spirit, fame, I’d have to come up with 16 highly desirable words. With that as my map I would have a best seller. I could write it too, but I won’t.

Just for the record, no mater how well executed the map of the 16 fragments would be from the top (mind, idealized) down. The planet, our bodies, and our weary souls can’t take much more of that tired old map. Besides it’s been done and the planet had not been healed, and more importantly, it would not be my joy. This is. And so; Personal Permacuture begins in wholeness, whole planet, whole eco-systems. Without and within. No exceptions.

Now I have my skeptics. My Mother for starters. She can not imagine how I’m going to map Y’all into shape let alone wholeness and a sustainable oriented mind-set. I think, she thinks, Y’all are a mess and maybe even slightly dim. Or perhaps it’s me she thinks a starry-eyed granola-cruncher.

Me; As I write this it dawns on me that it may be less of a mapping project (masculine) than about container-building (feminine). Yes, that feels like the plan…

From the Botom of the Well

When we lived in Sedona AZ, I’d take people out to Montezuma’s Well. The place felt sacred, but energetically dark. There were ruins at the ridge of the well which was more of a giant sink-hole. The ground was harsh, volcanic chunks, and rather desolate. One could hike down to the bottom of the sink-hole, where human remains that had been ceremonially buried in the ruins. Nothing lived in the large dark pool but turtles.

Looking up through the volcanic rock walls to the sky, the water dark and reflective would open doors within me. Not all of them pleasant. Stagnant arid air, whooshing forth with the opening, then raw silence. What had been released, I could not say.
But always unnerving.

Then the hike out, body feeling dense and drained. We’d follow the path up and then around the corner and dropping down the backside of the rim to a lovely canyon with a chatty stream. There the light glistened, dancing merrily through large sycamore trees. The place was sweet. It felt somehow kissed by wonder. There where water flowed forth from the rock wall of well, it always seemed to wash away the feeling of having been touched by darkness, even if the darkness may have been a reflection. The creak side of the well transmuted,...somewhere in the play of light and shadow healing happened.

The water which flowed forth from the side of the wall was harnessed into an irrigation ditch. The ditch was believed to be over a thousand years old and was still in use to irrigate land. In the first 50’ of the ditch lived a little fresh water shrimp-like thing. The critter was unique to that spot, the first 50’ of ditch was the critters universe as it didn’t live anyplace else.

Ecosystems live and evolve. They live in the first 50’ of an irrigation ditch and they live in us.

Even if you do not own a piece of land, have never picked up a shovel, and never intend to pick up a shovel you are in relationship with self, nature, the physical word, and the unseen worlds. You are the caretaker. We the people have are mini-gods we develop and cultivate our own ecosystems. How does your garden grow?

Beyond the many critters that live in and on you, there are the stories you keep. Stories are like food, some nurture while others steal food from your soul or others. It is out of our stories that we dream, from the stories that we create.

Permaculture asks us to observe how the elements behave and interrelate…

Are the recurring themes and stories in your life grounded and integrated? Do they support your wholeness? How does one identify ones stories?
Better yet, how can one upgrade?


Like my garden in springtime, it may be time to pull some weeds in the form of week-ass stories. It’s okay if the shelves have to sit barren for a while. Sitting in the vacuum of empty is harder than it sounds. But radically productive in a non-doing sort of way.

More Basic, More Slowly, More Depth

I once went out hiking with a nature guild. He led on a walk up a stream bed at the foothills of the Angelinos Crest, all the while gathering edibles, and educating us on other uses for the plants. At the end of the walk we cooked some of the gathered food. It was a tasty but meager snack.

Had we hiked outside of the stream bed, gathering food would have been even more labor intensive. The cultivation of food was a prerequisite for building communities. When humans stepped in, cleared land, and planted a lot of one food in one spot, every bug and beast that liked that food came to dine. And the struggle began…

When science appeared, with its shinny promises of no bugs, no weeds, many felt that salvation had come at last.

Once it became clear that –that dog don’t hunt. (Putting toxic chemicals on our land, in our food and water,) someone thought to ask themselves;
WWND- What would nature do?
Why, nature has sustainable systems.
How do we get ourselves one of those?
At which point, Bill Mollison & David Holmgren broke it down into rules to design permanent agricultural which would mimic nature in establishing relationships found in natural ecologies.

Permaculture is a map to sustainable.
Sustainability is important because…
We (closing in on 7 billion of us,) sit upon, one round planet hurling through the vacuum of space, made up of diverse eco-systems within eco-systems. Eco-systems which humanity has altered with little to no regard for the space they were holding. And it has just become apparent to some, that our small isolated planet is not getting any bigger and we either become sustainable or render ourselves extinct.

Here is where the map will take a leap. Not to worry as I will circle back in another bolg.
Remember the song from Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young:
“We have got to get ourselves back to the garden.”
Well perhaps they were profits of the times.
We do have to get ourselves back to the garden.
The first move is into self.
How does one get reconnected to the WEB of Life?
Because unless one feels the direction and pulse of the web of life, everything created is from good intentions and an ideals. There was a time when that was enough. That time has passed.

Connecting into the web is doable, I’m in, and I’m not here alone. Yes, my mind will jump in, spin a good story and act outside of the integrity of my Personal Permaculutre. But when I can stay awake and ask the right question, then continue to stay awake long enough to support the answer into action, the result is something which is real. It is integrated with the web, life, the planet and me.

Like in the story the Secret Garden, nature is magic and has healing powers.
There are a lot of things in need of healing.
Nature lives inside of each of us. Granola not required.

Personal Permaculture-It may not work.

I sent out a link to this site to my friends and asked for feedback. And I got some, very cool.
People said nice things about the site and content. Thank You. And good reflection was offered. Even better.

Christopher said; “You race through it all, and only people who already are at your level would get it and agree.” He wanted me to take my time. True. But for the moment, I’m just laying the framework and pissing in the corners. From there I can revisit it all again… and again.

Mary warned; I would be careful of your use of the word polarity and stated; “I have been working with a man named Barry Johnson who has mapped out polarities in a very different way, as an infinity loop that is self supporting and self sustaining.”

I thanked her as it was a good point. I was going to edit it out but it seemed more interesting to expand the dialog. While I am not familiar with the work of Berry Johnson, I did spend about 10 years exploring and writing about the Divine Feminine. The point for me was to reestablish polarity as a way to heal ourselves, and use the energy generated from the poles to create from a new paradigm and heal the planet. Perhaps Berry feels the same way.

I define polarity for myself from how it configures within my body.
Duality/Polarity as; This or That, Or, one of the two must go or die.
Polarity as; This & That, this one has an ecstatic, creative charge. Yhee Ha!

They are very different…like night & day. Hence, opposite polarities of the word polarity.

The third comment came from Mike, who argued; “Isn't Personal Permaculture an oxymoron? Since Permaculture is all about symbiotic relationships and biodiversity, and personal is of or concerning a certain person?” Hmmm, not for me it’s not. It’s diverse & symbiotic in here. Personal; as a whole element within the larger Permaculture, & Personal; containing a permaculture within. From the food the person eats, to the archetypes who argue what to eat, there are inescapable symbiotic relationships at play.

Guess what? This is an exercise. I am taking an established structure of Premaculture, a term used in sustainable agriculture and retro-engineering it as a structure to explore a systems based model for consciousness. It may not work.

I’m attached to the dialogue about the systems/symbiotic, ego/eco-structures not a perfect meld with the permaculture format, but I’ll take it as far as it goes. So far I’m liking it.

Duality was born of the idealized.
It came from the top down.
There was God, all good.
And that which was not God.
Duality.
Permaculture comes from the ground up.
It works in nature, can it work in us?