Random Musings – Lisa Z. Lindahl

December 21, 2017December 17, 2017

Winter Solstice 2017

The celestial doings in our corner of the Cosmos often pique my own doings. The Winter Solstice, when the light begins to gain time in our days, is one of those significant “doings.” Light lifts me up, extroverts me, helps me.

“From out of the deepest, darkest night of the year comes a “new-born” sun, full of promise for days of greater light and warmth. It is this event that symbolically reminds us that light comes out of our darkness, the chaos of our lives, the heartbreak and the pain we sometimes endure. Yule is about promise.”
-From Wicca: A Year and a Day, by Timothy Roderick

As is traditional, at least for me, I use this time to reflect. Try to get up & out of the rut of my daily thinking and habits and take a look at this life I am living.

What am I liking these days?
What am I avoiding lately?
How’m I doing with that whole procrastination thing I’m prone to…
What are my actions saying that my words aren’t?
And the ever popular: that which no longer serves me: out!

I have a burn pit in my back yard. It’s not fancy, but oh so effective. It’s not for regular, uh, trash…but special refuse. (Now there is an interesting word, refuse. It can be both a verb and a noun, but basically meaning the same thing! I use it here as the noun).

Special refuse: things that once held a special place or meaning that must now be given up to disengage from any energetic hold they may have on/with me. To make space for anything new, a Solstice Burn is a cleansing, of sorts…

…Old drawings. Love letters from sundry exes. Recipes never successful in my kitchen. Years ago an acquaintance once burned 3 years worth of her old diaries at my Winter Solstice burn pit, the handwritten pages sparking, charring and flaring up into the night sky.
This year it will be just me at the burn pit. I will feed it some artwork, the crinoline from my wedding dress, and reams and reams and reams of papers with once meaningful words on them.

It will all be transformed in my heart, a fire feast to feed the returning light. To clear away the darkness that resides not on the physical plane, but in the energetic one…
…in our little corner of the Cosmos.

May 21, 2017

Teachers

Teachers show up in our lives in the most unexpected forms. Today I want to talk about one kind of teacher that has popped up repeatedly for me: The Adversary.

Sometimes this adversary is obvious: an open competitor in a structured scenario, or someone in conversation with a declared opposing position about whatever, from politics to child-raising or best ice cream makers. While these are often situations that might provide us the proverbial “teaching moment,” these are not exactly the ones I want to explore here.

Rather, I want to discuss those teachers who are closer to us, those who are in our lives as a friend, a colleague, or a family member – on our “team” — yet this person is also reliably adversarial.

An example may clarify. I sat at dinner with a friend the other evening. An outspoken person, our somewhat new friendship is based in part on our mutual enjoyment in engaging in spirited repartee. We might spar over a wide range of topics from art, politics, or business. Sometimes I find our exchanges either intellectually or spiritually challenging – or both.

This particular evening she was darker than usual. She stated that money was all-important, declaring shamelessly that having enough and a lot of money was all that mattered. I countered with the rather usual chestnut that while money was convenient and surely made one comfortable, it could not buy one love or insure happiness. This is bedrock for me; a given. Imagine my surprise when she vociferously, sincerely disagreed. “Of course it can!” she roared. Then she leaned towards me and looked me hard in the eyes, saying with force, “Don’t be all stupid and an Aquarian-age myopic! See! This world turns on money, money, only money!”

I didn’t, couldn’t, reply. She was absolutely sincere. All at once I was inextricably and very aware of a deep core positional difference between us. As I sat there I suddenly saw my friend in her role as my current Adversarial Teacher. A spiritual teacher, gifting me once again.

As it happens in such moments it was just a microsecond in which all the similar such teachers who had come before in my life paraded before me. I won’t list them here – we all have them. But in that instant I saw them and knew them for the integral role they each played in my spiritual awakening. At the time, even though I may have given it lip service (“Oh, that witch is in my life to teach me a lot of lessons!”) I don’t know that I really, really, got it. Really. Appreciated. Lessons.

Sitting there at that table, looking at my friend with my eyeballs while in my mind’s eye seeing the march of others who in my (now long) history had challenged my opinions, beliefs, actions and accomplishments…
Without whom I would never have known who I was, really. What lines I drew and where. What made me fight. What didn’t. What made me passionate. What didn’t. And how very differently others do walk through our world.

And I was suddenly, astoundingly very, very grateful for these difficult teachers. In fact, I quite love them.

My friend and I hugged as we parted that night.

April 23, 2017

Matter vs. Consciousness as the Chicken & the Egg

In our current age of the almighty Reason and Logic, everything has been about matter. You know, stuff — the physical world. If you can see, touch, measure it – then it is real. Our reality is made up of atoms and photons, wavicles and quarks that form earth and stars and plastic, music and lipstick. Matter is primary…Right?

Not so much anymore. This is currently under debate. Consciousness is giving Matter a run for its, er, money.

In philosophical, spiritual and I guess quantum physics circles the debate is raging: which is primary: matter as we have always thought, or in fact consciousness?

The theory of the primacy of consciousness (vs. the long-standing incumbent Primacy of Matter) states that it is consciousness that’s responsible for creating reality. Under this thought it might be a “divine consciousness” that creates reality as easily as it may be any individual consciousness creating their reality. So, Joe Pizza Guy and God are co-creating our world. Well, that could explain a lot.

Kidding (?) aside, there is the popular doctrine that holds we all do carry a spark of the divine. So maybe the fact that we are busy creating what we call reality is that very spark of the divine that is being referenced? The god/goddess within creating our physical world?

A big but: if our understanding of what it is to conscious is to be aware of something, then how did that something come into being in the first place? It is a chicken or the egg conundrum. So these questions evolve:

can we have a consciousness without anything to be conscious of?
Does consciousness imply an observer and observed?
Or is consciousness by its very nature “aware” of and in fact is the wholeness that we name the Oneness…the very Isness?
In other words, is the state of awareness as pure consciousness experiences it foreign to the concept of duality so inherent in our matter-driven psyches?

To this last question I say yes, I think so. I think the human brain, so busy differentiating for, among other things, the love of control and organization cannot easily grasp that consciousness is a very different chicken. There is no “other.”

There is no other. That is the essence, the beauty of consciousness.

Why spend time pondering such?

Because we humans are evolving. Our consciousness, specifically, is evolving. To even make that statement can bring up a slew of questions for those who haven’t yet explored this area, as well as for those who have. Part of the current cultural unrest we are experiencing is that the tug between what I will call “old conscious” (and I do not mean this judgmentally, it is just an expression to delineate parts of a dynamic) and this consciousness evolution. Both live in individuals but also get expressed among like-minded others and result in a “group-think.”

None of this is bad. It can just become uncomfortable. Sometimes very uncomfortable. So some of us spend time pondering the ol’ chicken and egg…

Your thoughts?

April 9, 2017

Skill Building? Snow Shovels & A/C Filters

There is always something new to learn. A new horizon to befriend…especially for the homeowner. And where I live, in just the past week, both my heat AND my air-conditioning have gone on. Fickle spring weather? Climate change? Doesn’t matter…I still have to cope.

After over 40 years in Vermont, I know about cold weather. I know, for instance, how to shovel snow. I don’t particularly like to, but I know how. I even have a preference about which sort

of snow shovels are better. (The ones with crooked handles.) I know there are tools especially designed to remove snow from roofs, and ice from sidewalks. There are even sharp, clumsy looking cleats you can strap on over your shoes or winter boots so you won’t slip on that pesky snow or ice. I know about all these things.

But I am still learning about the seasonal changes, their nuances, here in the south. I am largely ignorant about how to cope in the hot and humid southern weather. I know nothing about air conditioning, specifically, air conditioner filters.

I was surprised, after living here in a Southern state for three years, to learn that I should have changed those filters! Who knew? In fact, I was informed by the sincere young a/c repairman, that every 3 months was preferable. Oh. Frankly, I’d forgotten I even had them; no alarm had gone off or anything, even after 3 years.

So I took a look. The cardboard throw-away ones were easy. The size was printed very big on the side, which was visible once I scraped off the layer of gray dust bunny-like stuff that had crept around that edge. So I just had to go buy another! But then I noticed that the 3 vents in the house were all different sizes. How inconvenient is that? Poor planning I ranted to anyone who would listen.

This time it was a nice young neighbor, born and raised here, who explained to me the relationship between square footage and vent size and placement. Oh.

Well, but not all my a/c filters were those cardboard ones. It turned out I had some sort of “microstatic” reusable somethings in a couple of the vents. I was supposed to clean and re-install these.

Okay; but there were no directions on how to clean said items. And boy! were they filthy. I only knew just how dirty because there was one corner in the larger filter that wasn’t quite clogged up yet; I could see through it, and see all the pieces of yuk shaking around while trapped in its reusable screen grid.

So using my common sense I tried vacuuming it. And vacuuming it. And then with a different brush head, I tried vacuuming it. All to absolutely no avail. I googled “how to clean re-usable air conditioner filters” and found nothing. Evidently this is so self-evident it is not even on You Tube. Hesitantly I took the smaller of the two reusable filters to the kitchen sink and tried water. I used the sink hose on it for a looong time. As I suspected, it all just turned to mud in all those tiny screen chambers in there.

I was beginning to wish for the old Vermont me who knew what she was doing.

I gave up and went to the local bargain store to replace the cardboard one. While there I looked at the packaging for the reusable kind and, Voila! finally saw some directions – in tiny print – for cleaning them. Hose. Outdoor hose. Full throttle. OK! Success!

Except…when I got home I realized that I had bought the wrong size throw-away filter. …Heavy sigh.

However I spent a joyful hour spraying the heck out of those reusable screens, watching over 3 years of accumulated crap wash out onto my patio stones. I made a concerted effort not to think of what I had been breathing in in my oh-so-very-closed-up-in-JulyAugustSeptember-house.

Ah, the satisfaction of house-wifery!

Now I can add air conditioner filter replacement and cleaning to my list of skills, right there after snow shoveling.

July 17, 2016

The Curiousity Asset

“Curiousity killed the cat!” so begins an old sing-songed taunt tossed about when I was a child. It was meant to shame or deter someone who had poked their nose where it wasn’t — according to someone or something — supposed to be. The usual retort was “Satisfaction brought him back!” often accompanied by a final “Hmph!” and perhaps an appropriate sound effect.

I find it interesting that curiousity was discouraged. For me that curiousity is the very basis, indeed the seed of the desire to learn. It is the puzzle, the mystery to be solved, the great unknown leading us forward…

The asset of being curious…

What part does a curious nature have to do with with the pursuit of a formal education? Education is the passing along to upcoming minds that which is already known. As we progress through the educative process it can be augmented with the research process: “what’s next? what does this lead to/infer/prove?” And this is usually only entered into by those with the “Iamcurious” gene. So, while formal learning is most definitely lubricated by curiousity, a desire to know, it is really quite different from curiousity itself. And curiosity is nurtured and fed by triggers too often absent in a schoolroom.

So here’s what the curiousity cycle might look like: as a child we are full of wonder and curiosity, it is all about learning: there is a whole new world to discover. Then the teen-ager becomes know it all, having settled on his/her opinions and justifiably needing to feel independent and in charge. Next we humans tend to embark on the busy work of creating, managing and controlling; the productive years. This can be a very long cycle; some people never leave it — dying “in the saddle” as that saying goes. We carve out our lives, might get into our routines, some might negatively say “ruts.” Personally, I find stability very good for fostering creativity.

But as age and the longer perspective all those years gift us with, sometimes we begin seeing over the edges of our respective ruts once again, discovering anew. We get curious again about things that may once have been taken for granted, or thought we understood, or had forgotten, or didn’t have time to notice, care about or pursue.

For me some of these are birds, clouds in the sky, shamanism, science stuff like physics — which I always assumed was way over my head — and just the beauty of everyday sunlight, the Isness; that incredible beauty everywhere. I find I am curious about a great many things.
I am grateful for the time and wherewithal to indulge my curiosity, and despair only of my inherent laziness that stops me and says: “Let’s just sit and read a book, now.”

Well, that’s not so bad either.

To be curious is definitely an asset, not some annoying stick-yer-nose-innit bad habit. It is the foundational block for life-long learning. That old saying about the cat should be banned!

P.S. You may have noticed that I am using what is now referred to as the “British spelling” of the word curiousity, with a second ‘u’. That’s how I was taught it was spelled. I mean, without the -ity on the end, it is curious, correct? Spell check is always trying to make it “curiosity” — which just looks weird and mis-spelled to me. I don’t understand the fashion for changing the root word spelling when adding ‘ity’. Why do that? Just curious…

P.P.S. Oh, and in case you were wondering or worried, the cat in the uppermost left hand picture isn’t dead at all; she just likes to lie around like that.

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July 10, 2016

Aging: Knees, trees, 30’s…

photo by Lisa Z Lindahl I’m at the forefront of the baby boomers. Bet you couldn’t tell by my previous posts…

But for those of us who chanted “Don’t trust anyone over thirty!” we are now more than twice that and many of us no longer have the luxury(?) of a roadmap of how this aging thing goes. Granted, my situation is a little different, in that my parents were older when they had me, so I grew up with “seniors” in the house. Many of my friends are only now dealing with aging and dying parents, whereas I dealt with that in my early 30’s.

But mine is a generation for whom “old” is a dirty word. “Aging gracefully” means looking young for the most part. Being “Fit & Healthy!” is understood (too often) to mean being able to do stuff you did in your thirties, just like you did it in your thirties — like tennis, jogging, boating and you know.

So this sets up a paradox between my body and me. For instance, today I was watching the neighbor’s kid trying to take a large branch off a tall tree. The branch was at about second story height and he was having a tough time trying to saw it off; sorta wobbling on the tall ladder as he power-sawed. I started paying attention when I heard the squealing of wheels and looked up from my desk to see the kid’s pick-up truck with a rope tied to its hitch, the other end of which was tied to the big branch. I kid you not. I went to my front door for a better look-see. As the kid hit the gas the branch moved not one whit, but the whole tree shook. I thought it was going to come straight out of the ground. Or his bumper was going to land on the street.

I thought maybe this was being filmed. I remotely remembered a Laurel & Hardy skit, or was it the Three Stooges, doing something similar. When the rope snapped with a loud POP I jumped back, pivoting away from my glass door. Half laughing, half horrified. Until the pain shot through my knee.

Damn! Old knees! Can’t pivot on them at all — ever. So now, here I am on the couch with a wrecked knee. The branch taken down successfully — as am I. Nosy old lady got her just desserts!

Not graceful; doesn’t feel graceful. Not at all

In my defense, I spent this morning body-surfing. I wasn’t graceful there, either, though. But it was way fun! Caught some good ones. My mother, at my age, wouldn’t be caught dead in the ocean beyond her knees.

Hmmmmm.

So, no road maps about how to do this aging thing, how to do it gracefully, how to keep all the pieces and parts working so I can at least do, whether the doing is graceful or not!

Off to try and find the knee doctor’s number. Can’t remember his name…

June 26, 2016

Magic, Octopuses & Butterflies

What do butterflies and octopuses have in common?

Magic. Magical cells & jumping genes. A natural ability to transform themselves. Personal alchemy!

photo by Lisa Lindahl Oh, don’t we all know about how caterpillars transform into butterflies. Yet the science behind it cannot obscure the magic of it. The actual cells responsible for the transformation of fuzzy creepy-crawly into winged flutterer are called “imaginal.” Imaginal cells. What a great name!

So these little biological units we call cells have genetic orders to morph themselves into whatever is needed to complete the butterfly design. Cast yourself into those inner workings:

“Hey, you! Yeah, you! Hairy cell! Now you’re gonna be a wing cell! Whaddaya mean, how? Look around in your files — somewhere in there are the directions! And be sure to coordinate with the other guys that used to be hair cells. Yeah, alla youse! Flatten out and fly straight, haha! Be sure to get your color specifics! Some of you are black, some might be orange. Have fun with it!”

Magic. Science. Genetic code. All words for the same miraculous phenomenon.
And now octopuses! With even neural cells that can rapidly change to whatever the whole organism is needing! Read this excerpt from The Nature Journal:

According to researchers from the University of Chicago, the octopus genome is enriched in transposons, commonly referred to as “jumping genes,” which can rearrange themselves on the genome. Even though their role in octopuses is unclear, researchers found elevated transposon expression in neural tissues. Transposons are known to have the ability to affect the regulation of gene expression and are believed to play major roles in shaping genome structure. (Source)

The headlines for such reports and articles are things like: “Octopuses Have Alien Genes” and such. Because, I guess, nowhere else are these jumping genes found.

Further (emphasis mine):

… the octopus genome turned out to be almost as large as a human’s and to contain a greater number of protein-coding genes — some 33,000, compared with fewer than 25,000 in Homo sapiens.

This excess results mostly from the expansion of a few specific gene families… One of the most remarkable gene groups is the protocadherins, which regulate the development of neurons and the short-range interactions between them. The octopus has 168 of these genes — more than twice as many as mammals. This resonates with the creature’s unusually large brain and the organ’s even-stranger anatomy. Of the octopus’s half a billion neurons — six times the number in a mouse — two-thirds spill out from its head through its arms, without the involvement of long-range fibres such as those in vertebrate spinal cords. The independent computing power of the arms, which can execute cognitive tasks even when dismembered, have made octopuses an object of study for neurobiologists … and for roboticists who are collaborating on the development of soft, flexible robots. (from www.nature.com)

Okay, a lot of verbiage, but I mean, really! How amazing is that! Is all of this! I don’t think I will ever eat calamari again! (These genes are found in squid and cuttlefish as well).

I’ve always liked butterflies. Now I think I’m falling in love with octopuses (not, octopi, I’ve been corrected!)

PS Related reading: The Butterfly Story by Norie Huddle

June 12, 2016

Once Upon A Fraud

My mother, in her wisdom, would intone:

“Horses sweat, men perspire, women glow.”

Give me a bathing suit and point me towards ocean surf. No boards please. That was, still is, my idea of being “active.” But in my mid-twenties, living in Vermont, there was no ocean nearby. I started jogging, and found my land-based equivalent of active joy.

My running never grew into a desire to compete. Rather, running connected me to the natural world – put me back into it and became, frankly, one of my first spiritual practices. It is totally ironic that this practice spawned my financial success and exposure to the grit of the business world.

The deeper irony is that for me to start running at all was out of character, at least historically speaking. While I remember enjoying recess and dodge ball in elementary grades, by the middle grades at the girls’ school I attended I was self-conscious and uncomfortable in gym classes. Perhaps many girls were; my best friend was. But then there were those “jock” girls who relished gym and understood the rules of field hockey and were eager to get out on the tennis courts. They intimidated me. It seemed to me I was somehow less for not getting the whole sporty thing. When possible, I opted for Beginning Bowling as my gym class choice.

I didn’t like to glow.

So avoiding gym classes, playing around in the summertime ocean, doing some body surfing, and climbing the occasional tree was my idea of “sports.”

Until I discovered the meditation of running. Then my world did change. My body and I became more intimate. We glowed, we sweated, we gloried. When I started running I tried to jog around an indoor track – a whole quarter mile. And it was tough! The day I actually made it all the way around I felt like I’d won an Olympic medal! I was so proud of myself! When I eventually settled into a 30 mile a week routine over Vermont trails and back roads, well, I’d found not my sport, but my practice.

Fast forward a few years and many logged miles to my invention of the sports bra and creation of a business around it. Because I was clear that the Jogbra was athleltic equipment, not lingerie, we were selling it in sporting goods stores around the nation.

Sporting goods stores!?

Before taking my bra into such places to sell it, I had never been in one ’til I had to buy running shoes. And then I didn’t hang around. Heck, all I needed to do my thing was shoes and, yes, a comfortable bra. The sporting goods industry was as foreign and intimidating to the woman I had become as those long ago gym classes were to my girlhood self. But even more so. To me sporting goods stores were rank with the culture of competition; everytime I went into one I felt I was in a totally alien environment. Yet I smiled and played the part. And I sold sports bras.

One day, back in 1988 or so, I found myself at a very large national sporting goods show. My little company was quite successful by then. I recall walking around the noisy, people-filled convention center. The aisles were lined with booths aggressively selling everything from athletic clothing to fishing rods, from dart boards to health drinks. Every athletic shoe manufacturer was there. The place was a bustling mosaic of color, people and commerce.

And I wondered: How the hell had I ended up here? I felt a complete fraud, with little in common with all these enthusiastic jocks and jock-ettes. The choices that brought me here mostly made sense at the time, and in many ways still stood the test of time. But…?

The ironies were not lost on me. They are not lost on me still. One of the most authentic aspects of my self, the meditative runner, had spawned this persona of sporting goods queen. Bra Lady. And it follows me to this day.

The further irony is that I can no longer be that runner. Both my knees blew out. I’ve found no activity – not bowling or body surfing – that fulfills me as running did. I miss it to this day.

But I no longer feel a fraud. Years ago I read an article, in Psychology Today I think, that purported that many who gain rapid success feel “like a fraud;” that somehow they are pulling off an illusion that could be “found out” by others. I know I felt that way – I wasn’t a jock! Then, after a bit I wasn’t even a runner anymore! Egad!

The article made sense to me, explained and alleviated my secret guilt. Eventually I left the sporting goods industry; having launched the sports bra I was done. The altruistic young entrepreneur evolved. I am still learning how to accept and integrate all the disparate bits of my ever-evolving self: artist, businesswoman, spiritual seeker, and bumbling, glowing journeyer.

May 22, 2016

Wandering Eye

I’ve been traveling a bit lately. Did I write that already? My head, heart and vision have been mightily exercised.

It was wisteria time in SC when I left:

And my lemon tree was blooming, smelling so luscious

But I left to go to an art workshop in Vermont…

…where friends find springtime gardening a bit rough:

After a productive week in Vermont I came home briefly before flying off to L.A., or LaLa Land for a brief two days. Was shooting a small documentary for ESPN on the history of the Sports Bra, no less. A shot of LA’s sunset:

Then back home before heading up to Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley for a Shamanic Retreat. Such fabulous natural beauty, different from SC. Although similar to Vermont with its mountains and deciduous forests, it has a quite different feel, a different spirit. It seems somehow gentler…

Two of my companions wading in the Rapidan River. I followed shortly thereafter…

I learned a great deal on each leg of my travels… I find that the body may be aging, but this mind is as curious and inquiring as ever. It was simply the devilish goddess of scheduling that caused all these

events to converge within such a short time span (and not done yet, actually). Ideally I’d choose to have months after each one to integrate the teachings, my observations, any new techniques, any “homework.” I’m that sort. Ah, well! But I’m not complaining! Far from it, really! I am amazed and feel blessed to have all such explorations and opportunities on my plate.

And/but yes:

It’s nice to go home and be greeted by my loved ones…

Home again, home again, jiggety, jig!

May 15, 2016

Tomato Grace

From a near-by correspondent:

This week I have my first ripe heirloom tomato. In march, the unlikely plants emerged from a weed filled box in my greenhouse. They must have grown from seeds I saved last season and in an obviously foolhardy act, like someone buying a lottery ticket, I cast them into the dirt. I may as well have planted redwoods. I knew better. All those years of pouring hope and fertilizer onto Lowe’s bought plants with visions of that perfect mid summer BLT, only to experience another failed harvest. Growing tomatoes in South Carolina is a valuable primer on life.
But for the grace of mother nature and that leak in my ceiling, I am rewarded with one meager tomato and one great lesson. This is a thing of wonder and beauty.

Ah. Fabulous!

I must rush to say, however, that the accompanying photo here is not my correspondent’s excellent and rare single heirloom. No, these two are simple market-boughts from last summer. But beautiful enough to have caught my camera’s eye. A bit more, uh, Tomato Grace?