Pathway
Gaia has helped clarify my Pathway. In many regards, my LCR ad LIPD painted the picture of a soul who aims at being a modern day renaissance man. This year for many reasons has helped ground some of this energy and acknowledge that I want to enhance my skills in a meaningful way that is more effective than a privileged dilettante. I hope with good design, I can continue to invite new skills into my pathway toward Permaculture Wizard by which I mean to embrace the Health of our selves, our communities, our mother Gaia through myriad strategies in which I am fascinated: mycoremediation, soil builiding, community building, holistic medicine, seed saving, cooking, fermenting, and gardening. I am grateful for the documentation of my intentions and the encouragement to recognize the points of intervention. I am flowing circuitously on this serpentined path and recognizing more than ever that the journey is the destination. Understanding the patterns of nature and understanding when and how to intervene with nature follows the path of the wizard. Seeing the patterns of nature and the archetypes of humanity helps create ease within the world. On the human scale, I aspire to hold space for my personal transformation as well as in other’s lives.
Personal outcomes
Key facets of learning in my life include physical, spiritual, emotional, creative and mental development. After 16 years in academia I have spent much of my adult life in Zen monasteries, kitchens and new age retreat centers working on physical, creative, emotional and spiritual growth. I am grateful for this path that largely defined who I am today; while recognizing that returning to values of academia including the creative and mental aspects of Liam represents a welcome shift this year. Inevitably, key 'mental' learnings around design or babies have impacts on my emotional and physical development; however, I recognize that this year felt like the taking in of a new paradigm and a lot of mental information. I believe that I will feel repercussions on many levles for years to come. As an action learning institue, the physical, emotional and spirtual development are certainly encouraged within GaiaU, I have simply found my focus and worldview inspired to concentrate on the ignored mental/creative aspects of Liam.
- Herbalism — Conception of the myriad application techniques of herbalism : tinctures, salves, liniments, pastes, syrup, bolus, natural ferments, tinctures, pills, capsules, electuary, pastes, fomentations, compresses. In addition, practical experimentation was at play, and I see much of my growth with herbs this year in my head. I gained vast understanding of diagnostic methods and available techniques.
- Lens of who I am —I see myself as an adult. I see myself as a Thinker. I am a 7 who can inspire people and clearly communicate information and purpose. Opportunities for growth include awareness of self presentation and organization around design and clarity of purpose. Creating a Portfolio with Gaia has offered considerable self awareness.
- Acceptance — I sense that acceptance is deepening in my soul for myself and all other beings. Twofold aspect of emotional experiences generating this necessity and the studied perspective that there are so many ways to accomplish any goal — acceptance of the other/self is crucial in my own path, my relationship, my professional life, my community.
- Causality — This is perhaps a keystone topic for me. Key learnings this year include a recognition of how interrelated everything truly is. My OP and research with bees and studies regarding Health have yielded to me recognition of the Web we weave. The book “You are not so smart” shows the myriad ways in which we attempt to construct meaning/causality/story in our world, largely to construct confidence and a sense of place and security.
- Babies — Living and nannying for my 2-5 month old nephew for the past 4 months has been quite the gift for learning about infant development and my own values around raising children.
- Baby massage
- Solid foods/timing — i like raw liver and egg yolks around 6 months .. cod liver oil
- Breastfeeding nourishment — Vitamin ADEK, cholesterol, egg yolks, liver pate, fermented foods
- Formulas — organic/soy — we went with a German brand to avoid any soy fats in the formula which were even in all the organic
- Vitamin ADEK — Cholesterol is the mother hormone developing babies bodies and brains.
- Skin to skin
- 5 S’s to calm fussy baby = Swaddle, Side/Stomach, Shhhh, Swinging, Sucking
- Limbic system development — including the importance/opportunity for emotional development that precedes cognitive development. I hugely believe that cooing/smiling/skin to skin is significantly more important in the first few years than reading to baby
- Vaccines — avoid all that I can for my baby, potentially all, there is a trail of money that I am very uncomfortable with. Even if vaccines effectively stop some Acute illnesses, I believe this paves the way for Chronic conditions (i.e. eradication of whooping cough —> increase of asthma)
- Infant massage — hopefully i will upload the video from baja
- Design (my life) -- inspired by the conscious design encouraged by Gaia toward our life -- I have always set intentions during winter soulstice and that is all. . . How do I implement my goal articulation. . . .Key learnings include articulating next steps
- Digital Literacy -- iMovie, Aperture, Keynote, Pages basic understanding of navigating a Mac and navigating websites
- Primitive skills — When helping to cater a primitive skills event, I recognized how much this community feels like my family. I enjoyed the slight engagement I had with metal forging, skin tanning, basket weaving, fermentation, rendering fat, wild herbal walks.
Planetary
Key Learnings
- Connecting with world-changers from around the world through Gaia.
- The value of a knowledge commons in this age of controlled media. Gaia has encouraged me to reflect upon how what I present can be acknowledged as a verifiable source of information.
- Recognition that many problems today are systemic — the bees, poverty, neuroses, poor health. It’s becoming harder and harder to isolate factors because the system itself is diseased.
- Bees are not suffering from mites or miticides or cell phone towers or neonicatinoids or industiralized beekeeping or orgiastic almond pollination. They are suffering from all of these.
- I begin to see neuroses escalating off the chart as our societies/our communities become fractured, as our food systems and our jobs become industrialized, as our time becomes counted by the seconds rathers than the seasons. We have created ingenius tools, if only we were wise enough to use them well. Many neuroses today are a function of increased efficiency demands of industrialization and increased isolation ironically yielding the craving for more digital connection. There are a myriad of neuroses available today: Fukishima, Babies, GMOs, Organic, Baby Formula, supplements, CCD, peak oil, peak water, vaccines, chemtrails, military industrial complex, allergies, gluten free. Many neuroses both indicate a kink in a system and point toward a deeper systemic problem; however, I contend that our collective insanity around the insanity is fueling the insanity.
- Planetary patrix activism comes home to Zone0
Opportunity — As I see the scale of appropriate neuroses suggesting a critical emergency regarding humanities relationship to mother Gaia, I recognize that process becomes more important than progress. One of the failures of the progress of industrialization is when we set the goal above the journey. Therefore, I wish to remind myself that becoming neurotic about — choose your issue (peak water, GMOs, CCD, Fukishima, 1%) — is akin to putting the goal ahead of the pathway. Becoming active and taking steps is wonderful; whereas, I see the most common response disempowered neuroses. I want to validate that all of these are significant aspects of life in 2014 and certainly need and justify concern; simultaneously, i would like nothing to justify neuroses in my life. I would like to remain competent while attentive.
Peer
Key Learnings
- Communication is paramount
- Active follower/supporter. There is skill in being a supportive follower. I don’t want to be or enjoy always being the leader. I like being a good supporter at times.
- I am able to create diferently with the enthusiasm of a group
- I enjoy writing after buddy meetings as I feel like I have explored aspects of what is ruminating for me.
Opportunities
- Create more buddy meetings — strategically timed with my OP’s
- Create projects with others that I enjoy spending time with.
Professional
- GENERAL
- Key learnings
- Presenting myself through my portfolio is my plate presentation to the world
- I need to be willing to market myself as an aspect of a being self-employed.
- Creation of my website
- Opportunity — Expand the website. Start a newsletter. Practice concise forms of communication to let people know what I am doing.
- Key learnings
- CATERING
- Key learnings —
- Designing catering events
- Establishing action sheets
- Clear communication with staff and employers
- Weston Price Nourishing Traditions
- Pregnant/Nursing Mama nutrition
- healthy fats
- pates
- Whole wild pig roast underground
- Rendering fat
- 600 person event
- Braising meats
- Opportunity for professional development lays in enhancing my catering design including setting up templates, coupled with managerial delegation and always staying fresh with culinary skills.
- Key learnings —
- Healer
- Key learnings
- Reiki level 2 training
- EastWest Herbology studies
- comfort with tinctures, poultices, compresses, fomentations, boluses, liniments, syrups, electuaries
- Good TCM diagnostic tools + some more understanding Ayurveda
- touch for health kiniesiology
- all health is interconnected — hard to isolate singular causality
- Opportunity I see myself expanding as a medicine man. As opposed to more hands-on massage classes, I am growing on energetic levelReiki, Herbalism, Flower Essences and Kineisiology.
- Key learnings
- DESIGNER
- Key learnings
- Design is an iterative process
- Design is a way to create structure within which to improvise.
- Opportunity Design skills are crucial for running my own catering company and will also ease my flow with facilitating the 8 person massage crew that works at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. My sense as I begin my pathway of digital literacy that good design in the computer realm can create a lot of space and substance.
- Key learnings
- Advising
- Key learnings
- Empowerment
- Empathy
- Listen
- Take notes
- Ask open questions.
- Opportunities: I am excited to utilize advising skills in all of my relationships and I hope to have an explicitly articulated advising role within GaiaU. Advising, facilitating, mentoring all have similarities and peculiarities. My role as facilitator of workshops, manager of events all will benefit from advising learnings.
- Key learnings
Political and Patrix effects
Patrix
As I get older, I see myself becoming more political although I have often had resistance to engaging in what I see as foolishness. I am torn between the ineffectiveness of daily toiling in news and disempowered neuroses and effective activism. I am even more saddened by the many that are drawn to politics and policy for power. I recognize that policy and communication between billions of people and rights towards natural resources and regulations regarding toxins needs some structure, yet I am constantly discouraged at how quickly these structures become corrupted by Power.
Key learnings
- Manufacturing Consent “Propaganda is to a democracy what Violence is to a dictatorship”. I find this documentary about Noam Chomsky to be the epitome of patrix busting where he questions the sources of our information/beliefs. Our worldview is greatly shaped by what we read and hear; whether there is an agenda or merely a bias in all the news that’s fit to print is a question of intention but regardless, we need to sharpen our critical eye. I believe we fundamentally see “news” as holding a mirror up to nature whereas when an agenda or even a simple bias is at best filtering and at worst actively manipulating the beliefs of our entire culture, we must question the sources of our information/beliefs in our epistemic community.
- Power corrupts or Follow the trail of money. — Seeing that the Coalition for Hepatitis B vaccine is fully funded by Merck who makes billions of dollars off of this useless and potentially harmful vaccine is hugely discouraging.
- "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" — I often don’t think this is deliberate at personal levels but I think the salespeople of pharmaceuticals and vaccine proponents (as most of us) legitimately want to believe they are valuably contributing to the world. Confirmation bias makes it easy to believe what our salary encourages us to recognize. This has helped me tease out that there isn’t always layers of malevolence/manipulation but rather a human feature of wanting to feel good about what we do. I, too , need to be careful that in my desire to contribute, I don’t shortchange my process.
- Conspiracy theory — This again touches on whether there is a malevolent agenda (of conspiring) or a happenstance that occurs from actions and someone seizes an opportunity. I certainly believe that people have and do conspire to gain power, wealth and fame. I don’t have clear delineations of where I believe conspiracies happened and where opportunity was seized. One of my key learnings around conspiracy theories this year is that the subversive seizure of the phrase itself has become an effective way for the Patrix to dismantle any critique of people conspiring. Simlilar to Fox news simply putting a 180 degree story up. Nobody knows who to believe anymore and many acts of conspiracy can walk away as conspiracy theorists are the "people who are crazy." Unfortunately, anti-trust laws show that powerful individuals and corporations do clearly conspire when there is no regulation. It is discouraging for me that the phrase conspiracy theory for many is a way to dismiss any theory that they do not believe in. For Watergate is not a 'conspiracy theory,' it is 'investigative journalism' (so the theory goes).
- New Jim Crow Laws — I don’t personally believe that the war on drugs was instituted to legitimize oppression of blacks any more than I believe the sodomy laws were put on the books in puritanical days to harass homosexuals. (again malevolent intent or seizure of an opportunity). However, I certainly can see that this is how these laws get used in this day and age. This points toward the importance of re-evaluating elements as systems mature. I am not sure if the current gun mania is sane individuals such as myself attempting to limit access to automatic weapons or if it is already an insidious (conspiratorial) plot devised by the Military industrial Complex to horde all the guns themselves. Regardless of the design, in reality, it could turn out that way. Maintaining our rights to privacy, free speech, bearing arms and information (new internet laws) seems paramount in these days of the widening gap between the oligarchy of corporations and the 90%.
- Pluralistic Relativism — Admittedly, I err toward pluralistic relativism. It was nice to get a name for it. I disagree with Andrew that we can’t challenge our own cultures abhorrent capitalism under this philosophy although I agree that we can’t judge another’s culture genital mutilation. I see pluralistic relativism as aiming toward acceptance. However, in our own body, lives and culture (which we are a part of and understand deeply, we can and possibly should attempt and affect change.) I am sure that pluralistic relativism from an anthropological perspective would not judge the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's in the U.S. I am not clear whether allowing apartheid would be pluralistically relative since it was an imperialistic move of the past several hundred years (this would play into what we see as culture). Clearly we are part of a global culture as well so the question arises When am I part of this community of humanity? and What inalienable rights do I hope to institure for the whole planet?
- Consuming Kids : The Commercialization of Childhood. This movie disturbed me to recognize how consciously the marketers are gearing their ads and profits towards kids. In the neverending bubbles and growth, our unhealthy fossil fuel driven consumptive materialistic culture destroys the earth for the sake of more money and control. It is sad for me that technology could make less needs for us but encouraging kids that they need more is a clear example of a growth sector that was manufactured out of someone wanting to make more money.
Key Outcomes: I recognize the grand cycle in all cultures of elites seizing power and this power being leveraged to maintain and gain more power until a breaking point or resource depletion or foreign threat shifts the status quo. The U.S. Constitution attempted to institute many wonderful rights: free speech, bear arms, protest the government; some of which I fear are being seized by those with vested interest. Decreasing our personal freedoms in the name of homeland security is insane. I recognize myself in a clear way that I would never be a mindless soldier for a Hitlerian army or a George Bush army carrying out horrors against humanity in the name of freedom and justice; simultaneously, I do not feel the need to be an activist. I am finding solace in the Buddhist approach to living the good life, designing systems that could replace these dysfunctional stuctures and a clear determination to not do evil (even to the evildoers.)