My 2008 Airplane Fast

Kurt Hoelting http://www.insidepassages.com/ last Fall told me his plan to not travel more than 60 miles from home in 2008, and not drive anywhere. I knew the minute I heard him that my goose was cooked. The worst thing I do in terms of Global Warming is fly around the world educating people on lifestyle change. I decided that in 2008 I would not fly - and promptly went to Brazil, then California, then Florida. Enjoying them all the more knowing that in weeks I'd be grounded.

I will still travel as the need or desire arises, but only by car, boat, train or bus. Mostly, I wanted to do this fast to see what would show up in by slowing down an activity I'd come to count on for stimulation, novelty, respite, a bit of admiration when I'd speak, and the sense that despite the evidence of daily life, I was making a difference. Not flying felt more radical in this era of excess than anything I'd accomplish by flying. Not only that but my average of 10 trips a year meant at least 20 days of travel and 20 more days of packing and unpacking. That's over a month i'll get back. For what? good question. Beyond that, those days are fairly mindless and increasingly uncomfortable. If I want to be mindless with less impact, there's plenty to do at home.

Will my apartment be cleaner? Will i write more? Will I spend more time with my local friends, developing those intimacies i truly desire? Will I read and learn more, seeking the stimulation of great and rich minds rather than mindless novelty of ... what? another airport, another rental car, another city with Green and White Interstate signs. Further, can i keep connected with the people and cultures I love through other means? More phone calls (I've got my Skype set up and the videocam is coming soon), more letters (with stamps?). We'll see.

When I bounced up and down in silver sausages with wings on behalf of YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE I used to do a prayer for take-off and one for landing. On take off I'd express gratitude for this great gift of soaring above the earth, viewing her beauties from on high. On landing I'd pray that every person on this plane would achieve their highest intent for travel - even if they are all self-canceling. Even then I knew I could stay home and if the guy beside me going to a sales meeting for marketing useless widgets that pollute the earth in each moment of their brief life from oil, to factory to WalMart to the dump would stay home. But his drive to make a living by making a dying for the earth seemed to require us to file together onto planes and do our work. I'm finally acting on that irony. Of course, I also don't have a best selling book to tout, but even if I did - or do in the future - is there a way to stay home physically while traveling electronically?

I'm just 7 weeks into the experiment. I've canceled one teaching trip, the result of which was the organizers "discovered" someone in their hometown who also teaches YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE. Hmmm. Does flying famous people around diminish our capacity to see the rich intelligences in our hometowns? I've declined to fly to CA to a quarterly meeting with a think/feel/be tank I've been with for 7 years. I'll go once on the train. But amazingly, at least one member of this group is going to be in my area and I've been invited to an afternoon of deep reflection with her. And I'll hang out with others more on the phone.

I've already been on the web and plotted my next trip to Brazil. A train to Miami and a boat to Rio will take me a few weeks, but then it's not 'traveling' in the dessicated sense of flying hither and yon, but rather a road trip, a cruise, an adventure all by itself. I'm even thinking of getting in my car a bit more and driving to vacation locally.

Pablo Neruda's poem applies...

KEEPING QUIET

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still
for once on the face of the earth,
let's not speak in any language;
let's stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.

Life is what it is about...

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with
death.

Now I'll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go

BRAZIL, WOMEN, TRANSITIONING AND TALKS

I am writing this on the long flight home from Brazil, just 6 hours into a 16 hour haul. Given that air travel shoots my Ecological Footprint from eco-heroine to eco-hog, from the decency of a Northern European to the gas-hog habits of North America, I have wondered often in this trip if it is my last. I am considering going on an airplane fast for a year and with oil prices rising, by the end of that experiment I might not be able to afford the flight, even if the planet could.

As with all my inner and outer conversations about resource constraint in the future, I've gotten a lot already just by contemplating life after air travel. I have actually lived through the air travel boom. My first flight was when I was about 7 years old. I was dressed in MaryJanes and white gloves and a dress with a white peter pan collar. It was elegant to fly. My first trip to Europe when I as 16 was on a Flying Tiger prop plane left over, I was told, from WWII. It took nearly a day and we had to stop for fuel in Iceland. Today that flight takes about 6 hours. The next time I went to Europe at 19 for a year of study in Spain, I went on a student ship which took, I believe, around a week - but what a week. We partied and had classes and flirted and by the end of the journey I had new friends and a boyfriend. Not bad. Several years after college, I took my Great American Road Trip with guy, dog and van which became the Great American Alternative Life with "back to the land" living and spiritual exploration and deep inquiry into the cultural and political norms and community. For 20 years I didn't fly. Then YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE came out and off I went again into the wild blue yonder, flying so much that for a while I had United Airlines Elite status. So flying became a habit. Leaving the earth's surface in an aluminum sausage at first felt like that early experience of luxury, but became a norm. So it is within my life experience that airplane travel is rare and special - and traveling the globe is possible without leaving its surface. So returning to Brazil might mean a train to Miami and a boat to Rio. That would likely take 2 weeks. Not 2 weeks of cramped suspension of normal life, but 2 weeks of adventure, relaxation, reflection. Of course that would require a less crammed to the gills life. I think the phenomenal wealth of resources we've learned to transform into daily comforts has given us, rather than the leisure society, the overworked society.

I have gone on about this as I think our imagination about life with less - less oil, less natural gas, less convenience, less variety of ready made products - has become impoverished. We become panicked like a smoker who's run out. We forget that people just like us - and even us - lived 60 years ago with far less and actually had interesting, intellectually stimulating, loving, happy, challenging lives. My father, for example, was the classic 1950's do-it-yourselfer who subscribed to Popular Mechanics and had a full shop in the basement. He built the furniture for my bedroom. He fixed everything. He even assembled from either a kit or a set of plans our first television which had a 5 inch screen with a magnifier in front of it to make the picture big enough for a family viewing experience. If we view the luxuries of highly technological existence as habit and not necessity and recall that less won't mean being bombed back to the stone age but rather put into a situation just 3 generations ago found normal, we might be willing to engage creatively in the changes that are coming due to resource constraint.

Why this meditation on the plane? I am so deeply imbued with the "living well on less" idea - from my mother's depression era training to my rural hunting/foraging/gardening days to my teaching frugality days - that I think about this the way an artist might notice how the afternoon light brings out the ochres. These days that conversation has gone from alternative to mainstream. Less is the order of the day. Of the future. Living in the US we may feel the constraints later than countries that have neither the money nor the military power to commandeer others' bootie much less protect their own from the global piracy called capitalism. On a finite planet, though, logic says even the last man standing eventually falls.

In Brazil there is greater recognition of coming collapse and of the insane strategies being used to delay it. Taxi drivers - the great popular informants about what is really going on - talk of Lula's folly of making a deal with the US to turn Brazil into a sugar cane plantation to feed ethanol into the world's cars. Productive orchards and farms are being transformed into mono crops. Cattle production is being driven deeper into the rain forest so more acres of the earth's lungs are being cut down.

I was surprised by how many end-times conversations I had in Brazil. The three questions are:

How soon will the collapse come?

How many will die?

What are you personally doing?

I think about these things, but do so mostly in secret as the dominant conversation is still so bullish on technology and growth. Even the Ecological Footprint, which is a clear, sharp mirror of our condition of overshoot (using more than the earth can restore), is not inspiring sufficient adaptation and planning. There is a wide gap between what a fair share for every human would be and the tinkering going on in most public and private enterprises.

The general answers to the questions are:

Within five years

Over half of all humans

Moving to rural communities

God, I don't know. As if to underscore the point, though, after writing the above the second film of the 9 hour flight came on. EVAN ALMIGHTY is about an unlikely congressman being chosen by God (Morgan Freeman as God) to build an ark to save us from a flood. Maybe it really is the end of the world as we know it time. Maybe, it is as unbelievable to us that life could REALLY change, that we could REALLY be thrown back on local resources with our current communication and transportation and technology luxuries cut down dramatically by the coming constraints. I've joked with some seriousness that we are in a frantic game of Musical Chairs but can't afford to stop dancing as most of the chairs now have disappeared while we've invited more and more folks into the dance. "Pick your chair" I've said, because soon you're gonna sit down and stay there. I've not so much picked mine as having followed an intuitive trail since getting cancer that landed me in a small village on a semi-rural island. As for timing, my guess has been that we will be in transition for several decades and that life and the global money system are far more elastic and resilient than 'doom and gloomers' would predict. As for die off, yes, I do think global populations will be decimated, though my hope would certainly be that

1. the decrease is through people my age and older kicking the bucket naturally rather than hanging on through resource intensive medical interventions (yes, I do get the implications) and making room for stronger, younger and less addicted to stuff people. and

2. that enough people wake up and change voluntarily in communities to build local arks.

I also found that people who asked these questions were, like me, beyond rage at having this predictable and preventable outcome here upon us and were into a sort of unreasonable lightness of being. Not giddy. Indeed, with much sorrow about the pain ahead. But engaged in the changes, and in opposing further destruction, with love instead of hate.

Well, even though I am probably more vigilant and informed than most on the topic, I am still on an airplane returning from my beloved Brazil.

The final week was 4 back to back lectures, three long interviews (Istoe, the Brazilian TIME, Folha-the NY Times of Brazil and Vidas Simples magazine) and several fascinating meetings.

My primary sponsor was AKATU, a Brazilian organization concerned with conscious consumption, in cooperation with my publisher, CULTRIX. In preparation AKATU did a study linking three values - simplicity, environment and post-materialism (think new cosmology or integral spirituality) - with consumption choices and found that committed to and interested in these values were of conscious consumption - voluntary simplicity, environment and post-materialism (think new cosmology or integral spirituality) - to consumer choices. Their event on Wednesday was very high class wtih simultaneous translation and half a dozen VIPs coming to the stage to welcome and praise and take a bit of credit. Helio Mattar, founder and honcho of AKATU leads a team of several dozen, nearly all women, and his comments on the panel and the event reflected that. He said feminine values were the key to conscious consumption and it was quite by design that women were presenting today. Here was reference to the feminine again, so frequent in Brazil. Was I attracting it? Was it a particularly Brazilian take on the future? Or was it a pointer to some key?

As always in Brazil, we started late but that didn’t blunt people’s openness to a fascinating morning of lectures. Samyra Crespo, President of GreenPeace of Brazil offered the history of the environmental movement and an analysis of the deep ecology vs policy and technology types of consumers. Lia Diskin offered a rousing history of the Universe, Western thought, and perplexities of the science of consciousness. I wound up the morning with a brief overview of the "voluntary simplicity" and YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE, which the Brazilian publisher changed to "Money and Life" (and will hopefully change back with the next edition).

Afterwards i went out lunch with four AKATU employees - yes, all women - and we reflected on what, if anything, feminine values had to do with the transition to conscious consumption. We tallied the feminine values that seem so important now: household resource managers, nurturers, whole systems thinkers, care, and cooperation. These values can't compete in the masculine world of commerce, ambition, winners and losers - indeed, when imposed through domination techniques they seem to lose their inherent beauty and generosity and become simply different cards in the same game. Then we looked at what ways Brazil itself is feminine - flow, spontaneity, affection, warmth, ease, the capacity accept/include it all. Perhaps this is another reason why the feel of that country is so dear to me.

My thoughts turned to why Brazil – which was also the “new world” exploited by Europe – turned out so differently from the US in spirit. Last year friends pointed out that it’s the difference between the British and the Portuguese. The British were spreading Empire. The Portuguese were getting in, getting the gold and getting out. So you have the difference between Northern and Southern Europe. And then there were the slaves. Brazil has, as with everything else, less inner conflict about that time in their history. In the US we are so wedded to our ideals and our founding documents are nearly biblical to us. Brazil has no such illusions about itself as a nation – it’s culture is where it hangs its hat, and the African influence in Brazilian culture is very well loved.

I did two other talks in Spanish (I’m fluent having lived in Spain), one where no one was around to translate the Portuguese for me. Imagine being on a panel where the audience and other panelists speak a language you can barely understand. Imagine it’s a very animated discussion. The topic is one where you are something of an expert. People in the audience are sharing deep insights. And suddenly the microphone is handed to you for your comments on it all. Good thing I was Brazilian enough by then to just flow with it J.

The final presentation was in a huge downtown theater as part of an every Saturday inspirational seminar where a popular talk show host brings in speakers. Very professional, very fun and very good it was the end of the trip as I was ready to stop!

So now I’m back, still infused with the perfume of Brazil. Boat next year?

And I’m deep into Transition Whidbey. Sign up at http://twhidbey.collectivex.com to see what we are doing.

BRAZIL, BRUNTLAND AND THE POWER OF THE FEMININE

Last night in Sao Paulo I heard Gro Harlem Bruntland speak, invited by the BANCO REAL, a Brazilian bank that is leading the financial institution pack in implementing sustainable development.

For those who don’t know Bruntland’s name, she led the UN World Commission on Environment and Development in the mid 80’s in the search for win-win-win rather than zero sum solutions to economic growth, social justice among a growing population and environmental integrity. They held hearings around the world (not in the US as here there was no support) and published 20 years ago the watershed OUR COMMON FUTURE which brought forth the global conversation about and conversion to sustainable development. She went on to head the World Health Organization and participated in the UN Commission on Global Threats.

I encountered this report in 1989 at the Globescope Pacific Assembly – the first US hearing on it – and it changed the direction of my life. I learned there from the UN and NGO glitterati that the biggest driver of unsustainable development was the level and pattern of consumption in North America, but, given our economy’s addiction to consumerism, that problem couldn’t be touched with a ten foot pole. Yet there I was, in the back row, knowing that Joe Dominguez’s financial program had, for a decade, helped thousands of Americans lower their consumption by 20% and have a better life. I was on a mission!

Needless to say, I was thrilled to have the chance to hear her assessment 20 years later.

Overall, she was firm, clear and determined. Given how deep we are now into unsustainability, I found her measured positive outlook inspiring – if only for the dignity of it.

She started by talking about Al Gore and the IPCC winning the Nobel Peace Prize (in her country) 10 days ago. Gore, she noted, awakened the conscience of the world. The IPCC demonstrated what a respected international institution, working steadily for years across boundaries and cooperatively, can do in creating change. She seemed to be saying need morality, good science and resolve to change in these times of threat.

She then reviewed other recent Nobel Peace winners – Wangaari Mathai, Shirin Ebadi and Mohammed Yunus – pointing out that now Peace in this world is far beyond simply resolving conflicts, but has to do with environment, human rights and closing the gap between the rich and the poor. Peace is now connected to every issue facing us – they are all connected. She also pointed out that these three laureates mobilized women for peace – and the essential role of women as both the victims of “man-made” crises and the strongest voices for a more whole-system way forward.

She went on to talk about her roles after the WCED. As the head of the WHO she participated in the first global convention on health regarding tobacco. Having worked on both UN and US government consensus documents that involved hours of debate over every word only to have the final reports gather dust, doing nothing to change anything in the short term, I have sworn to never again pour months of my life into such apparently useless palaver. Yet hearing her I saw that work from the view of a woman and bureaucrat who stakes her life and reputation and hope for the future on building institutions with good governance practices that can, over time, with patience and resolve, move the world steadily towards justice and sustainability. I could see that forming commissions, developing clear principles of operation (respect, transparency, fairness and such), developing clear objectives/targets/timelines, engaging the research community in providing high integrity, accurate information, issuing recommendations that are then monitored and hopefully resourced – all of this slowly moves the human enterprise towards comprehensive solutions. In short, I admired and went to school on her maturity, patience and reason.

She told the story of the WHO’s response to SARS. She called the outbreak a ‘sharp, short shock’ and as such it mobilized a collaborative effort across normally competing governments and labs which, in 6 brief months, eliminated the threat. This story showed how human systems, once mobilized to address a clear threat, are capable of miracles.

In her view, Global Warming is such a whole system shock that must be addressed. It creeps upon us so response has been too little by a very long shot, but now the sharp short shocks of Katrina and the IPCC report and the Stern Report and the rapidly melting glaciers and ice caps has the world on alert. She recounted her work on Global Threats that showed that there is no such thing as an isolated threat anymore – that terrorism for America is not isolated from starvation or environmental refugees or droughts. We are in an interconnected world and Global Warming is the perfect expression of how we need shared solutions to this biggest threat to our collective survival.

She recounted as well the story of smokestacks in the industrializing UK. Health officials showed how the smoke was affecting the health of the villages around factories so they solved the problem by building taller smoke stacks. The villagers’ health improved… however the downwind countries like Norway were now feeling the effects. A great deal of debate and demands and denials ensued until the science minister told Margaret Thatcher that beyond a shadow of a doubt the downwinder’s claims were correct. She could no longer assert the science was equivocal and not be caught with her knickers down. Soon she promised to reduce sulfur by 30%. In other words, Bruntland was showing us again and again how solid science coupled with consistent pressure from public and private sectors coupled with democratic processes can and will solve our problems.

But, she absolutely added, we haven’t a moment to lose. What is now different is that we know that we have a global warming problem. That debate is over. Even Bush, she said, has changed some of his tune this last year (though with great restraint she did not add “but not enough by a long shot”). So we must mobilize the world community to face this threat while strengthening democratic institutions.

On the face of it, this was nothing new, nothing bold, nothing dramatic. But as a wise global grandmother she was taking us all by the ear and sending us upstairs to wash our faces of lies and clean up our dirty hands (our actions).

THE RETURN OF THE FEMININE

This message so resonated with insights I had over the weekend in Florianopolis. Three days ago I engaged in an all-night ceremony with musicians and singers chanting and praying and seeking visions for their lives, supported by the most amazing lightening and thunder storm that sent buckets of purifying rain down upon the hut we were in. Pachamama, Mother Earth, they said, was calling us. The phrase “longing for limits” came to me in the night as I contemplated the very global, interconnected and seemingly out of control problems that Bruntland feels we can address through good science, good governance and good will. Our Western Enterprise looked to me like children – boys mostly – out of control on a playground, exhausting themselves, engaging in ever more destructive games, sensing danger but unable as a gang to stop themselves. A sort of Lord of the Flies scenario but instead of sticks and stones we are playing with weapons and wealth and carving up the spoils of the earth while ignoring the obvious longer term consequences. Deep inside, like spent children, we know we have to stop but as long as the frenzy continues, stopping seems more dangerous than keeping on. I could see that the mature feminine – the mother or grandmother – needs to bring her full compassion coupled with stern rebuke, saving the boys from their mounting violence by telling them they must stop, come inside and go to bed. Now! Some aspect of humanity must call a halt to the dangerous games and men in gangs are notoriously unable to stop themselves from collective evil that no one of them would ever commit on his own. Mob violence unleashed. Only the grandmothers – the mature feminine – can call these boys to account. Only the grandmothers can forgive them their excesses – knowing they themselves are heartsick, spent and lost - while making them face the consequences and clean up their damage.

Many these days recognize that the feminine – be it in women or men – is the antidote to the hyper-masculine domination of the earth and her peoples. Women are finding in themselves new strength to confront the wrongs without vengeance or fear. Women are finding their voices, singing sweetness as well as saying in no uncertain terms what must be done. Women are exercising the power of the mature feminine, unmovable yet full of love. Women are the creators and preservers of life. They care for the family. The steward the resources so all the children flourish. They are wired for whole system thinking and connectivity – the very qualities that Bruntland in her own way both demonstrates and calls for. The woman knows how to hold, contain and constrain with fair, no nonsense love. I could feel in myself, in this most warm and feminine place – Brazil – a call to be in my own way a grandmother to my rowdy tribe of guys. And I got from the gathered group a profound reflection of this same energy I carry – of warmth, compassion, love and clear calling to account. These don’t feel like marching orders. These feel like rocking orders. Like gathering in with love those I might touch through my words and actions, making them safe and also making them look at, mourn and correct the messes we’ve made.

OTHER CONVERSATIONS

The evening before this powerful ritual I spoke to a dozen people about consumerism and the YMOYL approach to recovering from this powerful addiction. These days, as I pay more attention to the complex issues around Peak Oil, I see how oil has been our binge food of choice. It has enabled this massive expansion beyond our social and biological limits. I used to see credit cards - unsecured debt - as the biggest enabler of excess but I now see below that the gush of oil through the human enterprise and of course, the ideology of 'freedom as no limits' as key components.

A fascinating dialogue ensued between a sociologist and an Earth Mother artist woman. It was about Bolivia. In his view, a social and political approach is needed to the wealth gap to lift the poorest people out of poverty. He cited Bolivia where apparently the poverty is comparatively profound. He had statistics to prove it. The artist, who had traveled extensively in Bolivia, begged to differ! In her view, the subsistence way of life there supported rather than inhibited people's survival. To her, the culture was rich, the communities strong. To him, infant mortality was high and diets were restricted. It showed me again how our worldviews influence our strategies for 'fixing' what is clearly going wrong globally. Were these people my artist friend saw as rich impoverished? It reminded me of my first trip to Latin America when I had an opportunity to take take a journey with a shaman in Ecuador. A sociologist would have judged his family and tribe in the worst condition possible - all sleeping on one platform bed in a hut without walls, the children dirty, the women clearly serving men who lounged around 'doing nothing.' Yet within the space of the ceremony was the richest, more lavish experience of the divine one could ever imagine. One way I resolved that incongruity - and still do - is to ask myself, an educated and relatively well off westerner, to use my knowledge, capacities, intelligence, skills and connections to make sure the way of life the Achuar prefer continues to be available to them. To make sure they have the money to send representatives for their interests to international meetings, to make sure their stories are told in ways that bring respect and protection to them. And all the while, making sure i am open to what they have to teach me so that my life can be ever more beautiful and useful and humble.

Then, on my way back to Sao Paulo from Floripa I was stuck in the airport waiting for two hours, fortunately by a young man who spoke flawless English. He's a middle class Brazilian who has taken to studying and playing the stock market to better himself - a real critic of central government planning (that's spelled corruption, by the way) and a real booster of the free market's capacity to create wealth and well being. He gave as an example iron mining in Brazil, a major extractive industry. He criticized the locals for their resistance to the big corporation engaged in mega extraction. If they aren't getting enough money, well, it's their leader's fault for filching it, not the corporation's fault since they are being quite generous with the local people. I told him two stories from my own experience. First, how the American military, when negotiating treaties with Native Americans, had to first rearrange the Indian's culture of decision making since they had no leaders who were empowered to negotiate with the hierarchical army - they decided as a community using consensus. Eventually the army had to find those in the tribe most willing to sell the others out for a price, name them chiefs and having them sign papers that held up in hierarchical American courts of law. And so the West was lost to those who lived there. The other was how tribes in Ecuador are successfully resisting the oil companys' claims on the oil under their parts of the jungle. To whom do resources belong? To the people who live in the land, or to corporations with money to exploit whatever resources there are wherever they are? The young man smiled at both stories. "Of course you are right" he said. Here again are the clashes of cultural norms that reveal very different stories about fairness and the good life. I am ever with the question of a way forward that has integrity.

IN SAO PAULO
These next few days I will give several talks in and around Sao Paulo to large groups of people. I now have copies of the Portuguese translation of YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE in hand; it is beautiful … and I can even read it. I hope to mobilize my masculine capacity to make waves with my feminine capacity to make hearts melt – we shall see.

Plans A and B at Visao Futuro

Plans A and B in paradise

I am sitting on the veranda that surrounds the dining area here, feeling the peace of the air, the rolling landscape, the pond with the windmill. Murals of a jungle paradise are painted on the walls where the food is served – vines, flowers, animals and if you look, a small person as much a part of the landscape as the colorful birds. The columns holding up the tiled roof are wound with bright mosaics of vines and flowers. Paradise.

But wait. The water catchment pond where the windmill lazily turns is half empty. Yesterday we had a brief thundershower, but not enough. It’s been dry here for far too long. The rains usually begin in august. Now it is October. And its hot. The pond reminds me that this exquisite retreat center that has awakened the hearts of probably thousands of Brazilians depends on the rains. The climate. Has enough of the rainforest been taken down to affect the weather here, far, far away? Amalia da Souza who works with Global Greengrants is here again (we shared a room last time I was here) and she confirms that the American appetite for biofuels (enabled by a deal between Lula, formerly the champion of the workers, and Bush) is turning so much cattle land into crop land that cattle ranching (for McDonald’s burgers) is encroaching further into the jungle. No, she said, it is not anywhere near a tipping point, but the destruction continues.

Susan Andrews, the visionary and source for this whole center, told me as we talked about the underpinnings of the global economy, that she and her staff are thinking about Plan A and Plan B. Plan A is that everything continues more or less working over the long haul. It simply acknowledges that no matter how bad the signs and signals of ecological or economic collapse, both nature and financial markets are far more elastic than we can imagine. In Plan A, people from all over Brazil still drive and fly, still have disposable income, still come here for restoration and spiritual education. The rains still come, the students still come, everything works. But they are now developing Plan B. In Plan B oil production diminishes year by year, disrupting the basics of the industrial way of life. With transportation more expensive, people’s livelihoods and lifestyles become more local and possibly more difficult, time consuming and closer to the bone. Global financial institutions and money flow is disrupted. In that scenario, this center might be less a retreat for city dwellers and more of a survival unit for the people in this area. I can look around and see that here as well. The dormitories become living quarters. Some of the meeting rooms become production factories for necessities – cloth, rope, clothes, building materials, etc.

When I met Susan at the airport just two days ago, she was returning from Fortaleza where there is a VisaoFuturo center and also where Neem trees grow. The Neem tree is knows for its many uses, including medicines. Vandana Shiva has taught us all a great deal about this tree as it is crucial to village life in India yet it is being patented (not sure the status of this fight). Susan is increasing the production here of Aryuvedic medicines, as this treatment system is part of her teaching. Growing the Neem tree works in both Plans A (this becomes an Aryuvedic teaching, treatment and medicine center) and Plan B, these medicines are used to treat those who live here.

While my friends and I don’t talk that much about it, I do think about plans A and B for where I live, Whidbey Island. Plan A would be business as usual – a growing tourist and commuter economy, a shrinking agricultural economy, land prices increasing as more and more people with wealth buy up retirement and second properties, young people moving off ‘the rock’ to seek their fortunes elsewhere because housing gets ever more expensive, a place known for the arts where artists can little afford to live… you know, the development story everywhere. In the midst of that, people like me will create home based businesses using their minds and their technology to create value for others scattered around the world. The arts will flourish because every other person sings or acts or dances or writes poetry. In Plan A, all the relocalization efforts we engage in will, of themselves, add value. More gardening means more fresh food means more health. More local currency and local businesses and local exchanges will weave tighter the bonds of community. More bicycles and solar electricity and heating and wind power will mean more health and self sufficiency. More catching water from roofs in cisterns to water gardens will mean protection for limited island water supplies. None of our efforts will be wasted and life for those who pay attention to these shifts to “less, local and love” will simply have more wonderful lives. Plan B will for a while look like Plan A, but eventually be necessary, not just nice.

And that is it for today. My lecture went famously this morning. I am now officially half Brazilian as everyone has welcomed me into this softer more loving culture with open arms.

Visao Futuro - Dreaming the Future Center Brazil

I am at Visao Futuro again and feeling so at home in many ways. Greeted by a soft, spacious landscape, friends from past years, some familiar routines and discovering that somehow my Portuguese has ripened even while on the shelf and I can speak and understand far better than practice would predict.

This is a rural yoga/meditation/spiritual education retreat center about 2 hours from Sao Paulo, drenched in natural beauty and the years of love invested by the founder, Susan Andrews, and the staff and the maybe thousands of students who've refound themselves here. Susan and I met 'by chance' on a ferry when she was attending a future visioning events in Seattle nearly 10 years ago and we created a sisterhood in that short water crossing. We are the same age and bent - passionate about spiritual/social transformation. Her path post Harvard led her to India and PK Sarkar, a guru in the tantra tradition and social philosopher (google PROUT). After his passing she was inspired to live and teach in Brazil and create what he called a Master Center, a self sufficient rural, ecological and spiritual community - what we might call and ecovillage.

Engaged as I am in "relocalization" - imagining a flourishing future with less oil and therefore more local production of "the good life" - I am looking with new eyes at this center. The teaching of profound spiritual truths here happens as much via the arts as it does via traditional spiritual practices. There are always actors and dancing and ceremony and play mixed in with Susan's lectures on biopsychology and principles of yoga and long meditation, yoga and changing sessions. Right now on the lawn in the spring sunlight and heat perhaps a hundred people have just done a patty-cakes game and are now doing a joanna macy exercise.

To decorate for this spring festival (it's the day of the child here in Brazil so the spirit is childlike), they painted old 2 liter pop bottles and then sliced them like peeling an apple in one piece so they hang like bright corkscrew streamers from the trees. A "bulletin board" was made by lashing bamboo poles together with twine (made from coconut shells) and stretching fabric over the frame. Flowered fabric was also cut in strips and has wrapped all the building poles. In other words, an oil-depleted world may be an art-rich world where the leftovers from industrial society become the art materials. While I haven't been to Bali, I am told everyone there is an artist. We humans have had paint and fabric and twine - not to speak of hugging and laughter and games - for thousands of years. We have to remember that easy cheap oil has brought us new and easier ways to do what we have always done - communicate, create, care for one another, grow and harvest food.

The design of this center is also a model of ecological living. They process gray water through purification ponds and reuse it for everything but drinking. They have dug several water cachement ponds to supply the center which hosts a hundred or more people every weekend. Organic gardens grow most of the food we eat and the growing, cooking and cleaning employs dozens of locals who otherwise might have migrated to the favelas of sao paulo to survive. They have photovoltaics and solar hot water. i believe many of the bricks for building were made here.

Ahh, everyone is dancing now towards the next activity. it's a day of theater and play celebrating spring and to the degree i can understand (sometimes I'm helpless but someone will point me right) I will participate.

Ate mais! Seeya soon.

Brazil - March 13, 2006

Someone once said "it's not over til it's over" and I think that might be true about this trip. I am in the home stretch, with three talks to go, but this weekend of relaxing with a friend of a friend turned out to be a turning point. Rosa Alegria, a futurist and close colleague of my friend Hazel Henderson, was gracious enough to organize a little get together for me - just on Hazel's say so. A 'few friends' turned out to be a lot of people from the advertising, business, publicity and media communities, all very very interested in my views on consumerism, brazil, simplicity, YMOYL and more. I am discovering that there is concern and awareness in brazil about rising consumerism and in some ways it seems more mainstream to express these concerns and seek solutions. As with everywhere Ive traveled outside the US, people feel like the 'kid sister' to the US. EVerything (except Bush, neo-conservatism, globalization) in and from the US looks a little better than anything at home... newer, more sophisticated, more optimal, more intelligent, more of everything leading edge and good and desireable. And so they sell themselves out! Everywhere this óne down'' attitude takes hold, the consumer culture takes hold and people do not know they are abandoning precious cultural qualities for this chance to have the american dream. since there were so many advertising people there, we asked the question, `what if advertising dedicated itself to sustainability/simplicity/cultural integrity`? and what if that could be done and people could still sustain themselves financially? As it happened, the head of the national advertising association was there and perhaps this question will go somewhere.

it has been easily 3 years or more since i have done any concerted YMOYL/Simplicity education and the intense, intelligent interest in what i am saying is pulling it all out of me again. I really love this difficult to define quality that is Brazil, and do sense it is a nation, a set of ecosystems, a people that still has ecological and social room to change for the better. So the interest in the simplicity message is reactivating the activist in me. I am so very cautious feeling, thinking and saying this because how i 'did' activism in the past was exhausting and ultimately in conflict with my deepest sense of well being. I know my personality - a sort of tendency to get flat out engaged when i sniff an exhilerating possibility - and I am seeking a place within to ground that is different from before. all that occurs to me is love and surrender... that i can use my gifts and knowledge without the anxiety and subtle desire to manipulate the world that infected my work before. it is a fine line one must walk to be in this world passionately and wisely... too detached and one can allow the degradation of living systems to persist, yet too impassioned and one can lose both the inner peace and perspective that are the qualities the world needs far more than any one project. I just know now ever more clearly it is not time for me to hang up my spurs and grab my knitting needles and just give sideline advice to younger folk.

After the meeting, Rosa and her friend Oriana White (a psychological researcher and consumer activist) took me to Oriana's beach home 3 hours north of sao paulo. It was so much fun - three high spirited, english speaking (and sometime spanish when the english got too hard for them), mid-life social activist women chattering away in the car, over food, on the beach like the oldest of friends. Sunday morning they went to get a newspaper and checked out EPOCA (like Newsweek for Brazil) to see if my interview had come out... and it did!!! here is a link which will may not work after a bit: http://revistaepoca.globo.com/Epoca/0%2C6993%2CEPT1152830-1666%2C00.html. of course, it is in Portuguese... but know it is a two page very good very respectful and intelligent spread. so here we go again, folks, the media slurping up this message like a cat laps sweet milk. back at the beach house our fantasizing expanded about ways to moderate, redirect, transform brazil's headlong race off the consumer cliff. Rosa and I talked about her being my Brazil çonnection as she knows so many people and knows the ins and outs of reputations, relationships, capacities, etc. Rosa and Oriana are quite determined to get me back... and no resistance from over here in vicki land to that possibility. the book AFFLUENZA is coming out in Portuguese within this year and that would be a great time to do some education on enoughness here in brazil. and of course, with the Epoca article the translation of ymoyl into portuguese just got 1000% more likely.

we also talked a lot about the Conversation Cafes and ways they might use this method here. We talked about what it would take for brazilians to be awake and alert to the subtle good that would be lost if the american dream were to wash completely over this country. the conversation got around to the topic of the CC i did with Jorge Mello and partner Marge in Florianopolis:
what makes brazil brazil?
what makes you a brazilian?
what do you want to see in brazil in 10 years?

Rosa, Oriana and I imagined many conversation cafes on this theme - a Socratic way to get people to name for themselves the invisible - and visible - wealth that is brazil. and in naming it, love it. and in loving it, want to protect it. of course all this was just blue sky thinking under wonderful blue skies - but everything begins with dreams.

Of course another importantissimo aspect of the beach was the beach itself. i spent hours in my beloved warm atlantic ocean playing with the waves, floating gloriously in the sun. in the early morning i meditated and did yoga on a large rock at the end of the beach - as the sun rose in the east, a rainbow grew in the west. one of those mornings when you cannot gulp enough goodness to really anchor it in your soul. everything passes, and there are so many of these gorgeous human and natural moments here in brazil that i just had to let go of as they were knocking my socks off.

I reconnected with Susan yesterday in the airport for the final leg of our journey, and we flew to Uberlandia where I sit today writing this and resting up for tonight's talk. This morning we were interviewed for TV and then went shopping for a more brazilian looking pair of shoes. I cannot tell you how dowdy i feel in my american clothes - as pretty as most of them are. brazilian women wear towering stilleto heals and tight everything with much of the belly and boobs uncovered. and they are by and large so beautiful that you actually like looking at all the flesh. the down side, as Rosa and Oriana told me, is that brazil is becoming the plastic surgery capital of the world and sensible brazilian women think this focus on perfect bodies is all pandering to male chauvinism. in addition, rio is now one of the easy sex capitals of the world. so there is a light and dark side to this natural brazilian beauty. none the less, i got a tasteful pair of sandals with tastefully tall stilleto heels (not 4 inches, more like 2).

Our last talk in Sao Paulo went very well (150 people) and we are now functioning so smoothly as a team. i know her needs and rhythms and style and can weave my presentations around her greater wisdom. and it is just plain fun to have susan for a friend - an impressive spiritual presence with a good sense of humor and a depth of interest in and understanding of the world. we are feasting on this companionship and will likely do more together in the future - at very least for the fun of it. Now that EPOCA has come out, tonight's talk in Uberlandia is sold out with sro and people begging to come. so we will have 250 people waiting for us in just 2 hours.

I am feeling my return coming toward me - and feel ready. Happily I am not thinking I dont want to go back to the US after the luscious love here in brazil... i am thinking how good it will be to dive into rewriting my freedom book, to start seeing how i can contribute to the south whidbey community, to work on the fledgling AFFLUENZA PREVENTION AND TREATMENT CAMPAIGN the simplicity forum is launching this year, to explore some new writing projects, to get back to painting, singing and dancing... and to have the quiet of my home for inner communion as well.

and who knows... there are still three days left and ANYTHING can happen.

Brazil - 10 March, 2006

We are in the home stsretch and I am feeling it. Tonight is a talk in São Paulo, the weekend in free and then Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are talks in Belo Horizonte, Uberlandia and São Jose... and then I get on a night flight to start the long slog home to my little island and to the life that awaits me.

Our talks on Sunday and Monday went quite well, though I had the uneasy feeling that we were two speakers with two messages, not one message with two very different styles of speaking it. By Wednesday's presentation in Joao Pessoa, that flaw showed up in technicolor. Many things were less than wonderful about the situation. The Visao Futuro facilitators had booked an inexpensive hall, but... it belonged to a religious group whose reputation apparently made some people unwilling to come. and it was a cavernous auditorium with 800 seats and a stage 5 feet off the ground with a monumental dais for a panel of speakers that would have fit right in to the old Soviet Union. Intimacy was not easy to create. Plus, about 120 people came who scattered themselves in the auditorium, making it feel creepily empty. My translator was on her maiden translation voyage and so nervous she became stiff, loquatious and often just plain wrong. Neither Susan nor I felt able to spiritually touch the people scattered in the vast emptiness of this hall. there was no bounce, no lift, no light and we both need to feel a connection to connect with the deepest source of speaking.

We processed for several hours this failure with the facilitators, two high spirited women who ended up way down in the dumps. Then we stayed up for another two hours searching for the way through... especially with 6 more talks to go.

So much of what I have relied on for public speaking was missing. I can't make jokes. I can't use slang. I can't feel what is real for Brazilians like I can feel with American audiences. We are sort of locked in to using powerpoint so that if the translator is off at least the slides on the screen are correct - so I can't be spontaneous. I am sharing a time slot barely big enough for me to get it all across... and needing to leave the audience alert and alive enough for susan to have something to work with. In trying to adjust the talks until then, susan had been getting feedback from her facilitators in each place and then trying to steer me into better choices. Each correction seemed to move me further from the ease and intuition i rely on to hit the mark.

what a perfect set up for breakthrough! all we needed was to understand what this wall we hit meant. i staunchly navigated through the dark forest of doubt - and the desire to just throw inthe towel and let her do it all in her charming Portuguese. I settled again and again my ruffled feathers as susan would try to steer me to choices that didn't feel quite right... but what do i know as i am so at sea with the language and culture. i needed her - badly - to steer or i would sink. and I knew that my uneasiness had nothing to do with her... but with being so very challenged on every front, unable to use most of my normal speaking skills. so we sat in this fire of not knowing and the breakthrough came. We searched for the one message - what is true fulfillment - that would link our two presentations. With that key, we each tossed chunks of what we had been doing and massaged what was left. I searched for ways to have my intuition and personality present with the awkward rhythm of pausing every sentence for translation. in that fire we also became more 'one' with one another, more of a team, deeper friends and companions.

AND, the talk last night worked very well. I did little skits and pantomimes to make my points, the translator had a sense of humor as well so could support me in playing with the audience, the setting was perfect, every chair in the auditorium filled (about 250), and the group so happy about the result.

There are some deep teachings in all this... about pulling within for deeper ways of connecting beyond words and culture. I have long felt that i wear my personality like an overcoat - it isn't me, it's what i run around in. But being so stripped in high demand situations with lots of people witnessing my nakedness is certainly a crucible for transformation.

it's time to go for tonight1s talk so, to paraphrase jimmy durante, goodnight mrs calabash and the rest of you reading, wherever you are...

Brazil - 8 March

It is International Women's Day and i am so aware that in the US many of my gender compatriots are very actively bringing women's values, perspectives and basic embracing nature to the fore. Here I've bumped into quite a few expressions of appreciation of women, so I am feeling connected.

I am now in João Pessoa, our third city on our tour. Again met at the airport by loving, smiling faces of people who have taken Susan's courses in the beautiful Visao Futuro ecological park. In a way, our speaking tour is also a tour for her to nourish these budding centers across the country where people who have been inspired beyond belief by the courses are trying to maintain the practices and offer to others a bit of the magic. It is hard, to be sure, so all of our hosts are also problem solving with Susan who holds the whole network and the whole vision in her slim being.

I am daily appreciating more the gift of Brazil to our world. This place is rich in cultural, emotional, spiritual and ecological resources. the very vitality of the land (we are now in the tropics with heat heat heat and lush vegetation) gives the country a sort of young, gonna live forever feeling. the tendency towards happiness here, towards going to the beach rather than at each others throats, is to me a real resource. I think about other places in the world... africa, india, china, even the US... and i see places that are getting used up, heading towards the barren realities of Easter Island. But Brazil still has so much in its original state, and this alone makes be believe that we are on the ascendant continent. the darker realities of our times are not far away, though... global warming or 'something' is changing the climate here. they say it is hotter now and summer is lasting longer. my last city - fortaleza - and this one are bristling with new high rise apartments that look as flimsy as the ones i saw growing nearly overnight all over beijing.

yesterday i stayed in a little beach resort near fortaleza and was treated to a wild dune buggy ride plus a delicious hour in mother ocean. today somehow the local coordinators pulled some strings and i am in a 5 star hotel. i so remember this life... a different city every day, doing media interviews, getting up in front of different people doing the same speech. i am checking in with myself... do i like this anymore? the old missionary zeal is rising as i sense how eager people are for the ymoyl and conversation cafe messages, so we shall see.

gotta go... today it's a date with the sunset.

Brazil - March 7... I think

It has been a wild week since I had access to the Internet, and I only have time for a few short thoughts before going ... ahem... shopping in the middle of this intense tour to alert Brazilians to the dark side of the American Consumer Dream.

Susan Andrews and I have done two talk of the nine scheduled, each time to groups of 200. Her network of facilitators for her stress management/yoga/meditation course... there are well over 100 such around the country... are organizing in every city. They are all so happy to have her - their prime teacher - come to their area so she is the queen here and i the princess getting showered by much second hand love and grace. My Portuguese is rapidly improving and I sometimes even understand everything that people say. Sometimes, though, I only get 50% and the interpretation I derive is often pretty far off. And sometimes I get nothing and am just the happy village idiot, smiling in all the wrong places but somehow endearing. This language opportunity and challenge is a blessing and a curse. Mostof the time I am clueless about where we are going, what we are doing, who is talking to me and why. Surrender is the key. and lots of smiles and hugs and `tudo bom`.

Our messages are getting daily better woven together and the shared presentation - me re ymoyl principles and her re psychobiology/love - fit and really turn people on. and we are having such fun as `girlfriends.`

My 5 days in Floripa were nigh on to eccstatic - my mini vacation between teaching gigs. Ocean. Parties. Dancing. Singing. Drumming. Chanting. Blissing. And even a Conversation Cafe the last night to top it off.... question was... what makes brazil BRAZIL... and/or what makes you brazilian. I learned a lot about this country I am loving more every day.

Lunch now... more to come.

Brazil - 28 February, 2006

The last night at Visao Futuro, Susan's education center where I took her biopsychology course, we had Carnival! A small one without any pagentry, but it was great, and with everything else in the course, exquisitely created. We gathered in the dining pavillion, a 12-sided structure with glass walls looking out over lush tropical vegetation. Various groups prepared funky entertainment - skits about the experiences of the week, or regional songs and dances - and then a couple of the excellent musicians who are integral to the teaching program played non stop traditional carnival music for an hour and a half solid. The whole dance floor was alive with people singing and dancing and doing conga lines. I didn't know the music, the words or the steps, but it didn't seem to matter. Everyone was so happy and it was great, after an intense week of emotions and learning, to just let loose.

the last morning was a good gateway into returning to the 'real world.' as is the case most of the time here, i was clueless about what was happening and what was being said. I thought, when the class started, I would have plenty of time to pack and do a few essentials before leaving at 4, but the final exercises kept turning out to the the semi final exercises and i found myself blindfolded (to increased interiority) in a sharing circle with everyone clasping sweating hands, crowded into a cheek by jowl circle and hearing "shares" that - since i understood very little - seemed to go on and on... and me, feeling my time for leavetaking activities slipping away, squirming. So after 10 stress free days, I was sufficiently stressed to remember what life outside might be like.

In the airport I had to call the woman from the guesthouse where i would stay in Florianopolis to be sure she was picking me up. Oy! My Portuguese is 1000% better, but totally insufficient for making a phone call to someone who doesn't speak English. Thankfully, my vulnerability was attractive enough to call in some help and all basic needs were handled. I met one young woman returning home from 2 months in alabama. seems there are agencies in brail - and elsewhere? - that arrange for young people to go to america to learn english. but they are actually agents for McDonalds and other low paying employers. This young woman worked in McDonalds and was housed in McDonald's dorms struggling with Southern English and burger flipping. Ever new ways for slavery to show up in our world.

Yesterday I spent time with my friend Jorge Mello's girlfriend, Marge, who kindly got me oriented. Jorge is at a zen buddhist meditation retreat - his preferred way to spend carnival - and will return tomorrow night. On thursday he has arranged a Conversation Cafe with friends - he was in my course in Schumacher College in England and learned the method there.

Yesterday I went to the beach - ahhh, miles of fine white sand to walk and a warm ocean to swim in and hundreds of exquisite young bodies in string bikinis - i defintely felt overdressed in my one piece bathing suit and may screw up my courage and buy a cheap bikini to parade around in and claim my body.

Last night, a fellow I met at the Parque invited me to a Carnival party here - a costume party. The only costume I had was as an aging writer and public speaker from the US... BUT, for some reason, i had thrown a crocodile hand puppet in my suitcase at the last minute so i wore it and used it to talk to people i met. Also, my friend Alvaro had bought himself a gold tinsel cleopatra wig which he stopped enjoying wearing, so i put it on and felt more like i fit in. I was a bit nervous going - not knowing anyone, the language or what would happen - but managing to switch on my basic sense of joy and danced for 3 hours solid with people in all sorts of get ups. So, my friends, I have certainly had enough experience of Carnival - without pagentry - to know I am in Brazil.

Brazil - 25 February, 2006

Probably my last post before leaving.

After the fire ceremony, people were extremely moved, and the group sessions became deeper, with many tears and lots of hugging. This is quite an intensive "new age" workshop, and even tho some seems old hat to me, the information about the chakras is brand new - and of course the people are new and each a jewel. For many it is their first exposure to opening the heart, and for sure any opening of the heart - even for a seasoned inner traveler - is always a profound experience. the group chanting and meditation also sends me very deep.

I have taken more alone time these last days, needing to let impressions settle and my poor overheated portuguese confused brain cool off. I am shedding a bit the eyes of a newborn in Brazil and beginning to toddle. The staff at the Parque - including Didi - is becoming more three dimensional to me, with whiffs of loves and longings among the staff, of human ups and downs even in paradise. Watching Didi work - teach, go about running this big spiritual center with a staff of 40 and non-stop guests - is being instructive not only about chakras, but about my own reinhabiting passion for outer work. I am holding as a paradox my attraction - borne of two intense years of solitude and healing - to a more quiet life AND my natural extraverted and giving side that just overflows with ideas for opening minds to new ideas and designing ways for people to be humane with one another. A fear surfaces in that holding... a fear of loss of self, of getting swept up all too soon in yet one more big project that lifts me out of my skin, inflates me like a balloon, and sends me sailing over the simple pleasures of daily life. Didi is so fully surrendered to mission - and is a nun - so every ounce of energy goes into designing and facilitating programs here. She does it magnificently and I have watched a group of strangers open their minds, hearts and arms to one another - and to themselves. She is working magic. I am not her by any means, but I know within me is that capacity to inspire, to crack open dull paradigms and let the sweet juices of life flow again. This seems to come naturally and seems to want to come out of me again. In holding this paradox of the private and public selves, seemingly vying for the scarce resources of my time and attention, I realized that I have actually changed so why won~'t my outer work change? In the old days, simmering under everything I did was the urgency of the times we are living in, feeling the necessity for a profound metanoia globally as we head into the blowback of our 30 years of overshoot. Now, I believe i will do my work in love, not fear. it is the love that makes all the difference at home and on the road. I'll probably pick at this theme more as this month goes on since it is my first big tour since the old days. 9 cities in 12 days!

Susan and I spent some time planning our talk. She is a consummately prepared presenter so we are together carefully crafting a two hour shared stage evening that will really wow people. She has so much fire for every word being an arrow right into the soul and we complement one another in style, in focus, in language, in topics. And we are planning together so smoothly, changing one another's good ideas, tossing the ones we don't like without any stress. I think we will have a wonderful time. I learned yesterday that this is the first shared tour she has done... so i feel honored and deeply trusting of the spiritual forces that cooked up she and i meeting and 7 years later taking on this tour. And what are you up to Grandmother spirits... we shall see.

Tomorrow I head for Florianopolis (called Floripa by the locals) and 4 days on the beach and doing fun things for carnival. i already have invitations to three parties and people happy to show me around, so I think I'm going to love it. My portuguese has improved by leaps and bounds, so I feel ready to leave this very nurturing, totally safe, infinitely caring hothouse and get my feel planted on the ground in the Brazil beyond the Parque Ecologico.

Brazil - 24 February, 2006

The fire ceremony last night was beyond magnificent, a group, solemn, fierce pagent that gave so many of us the sense we had really burned off karma and opened the space for transformation.

In the afternoon, we had all make 3 dimensional representations of our fear, hatred, anger and aggression, our endless hunger, our timidity, our anxiety and the rest of the third chakra egoic expressions. At the appointed time after dark, the staff - actors, facilitators, didi - turned off all the lights in the compound as we all stood in silence in a circle with our "voodoo dolls" so to speak in our hands. The darkness and silence deepend as we waited. And then the drums came, and figures dressed in white appeared with torches. Didi and one of the main actresses called the circle and ceremonially, slowly, marked each of us with the hindi bindi mark, representing our determination to burn our karma in the fire. we then were led in two long snaking lines around the property and towards a huge fire laid in a field. As we walked, a young man in line to be a trapese artist in cirque du soleil breathed fire while others, dressed in steaming red and yellow outfits, shreiked and ran around us, carrying torches and another one ran pounding a gong. Clearly we were in for no light weight little 10 minute new age ceremony.

the fire was huge, reminding me of the fires we used to build for the lakota inipis - sweat lodges - that i attended faithfully for the year or so after Joe died. But perhaps twice the size. We had learned several chants and dances in the afternoon for the ceremony, so we did the first with our bodies semi lit by fire, circles around and then letting go and everyone dancing wildly, whooping and generally letting out that uninhibited testosterone spirit of the third chakra. We then, in three groups as we are nearly 100 people, did the ceremony to burn our "voodoo" objects. We first crouched down, hands firmly on the earth, crying out with all our gutteral force, fire, burn my anger, fire burn my fear, fire burn my aggression. Then, at the signal, we all rushed in and threw our paper objects in the fire. After all the groups had done this - and believe me every person there was holding the fiercest intention they could - we did a chant: fire, transformation, feel the force of my will, fire, transformation, feel the brilliance of my splendor, fire, transformation, feel the heat of my love. three times we chanted this, faces lit by the fire, and you could really feel that the dark forces of your ego had a place to be reborn - in will, in splendor, in love. My own voodoo object was a steaming volcano, with dark forces within. As I moved through this ceremony, I thought, "These have been with me for years, and will be here again and again, but as long as my intention to face and transform these forces rises up one more time than the forces themselves, I am on the path." In a Vipassana retreat we did "fierce determination" meditation for an hour a day, a time when we really focused without moving a muscle. This ceremony was fierce determination. At the end, which was not the end, we sat and suddenly a tableau was lit across the field, enacting the eternal dance of shiva and kali. Suddenly we were in the middle of a pagent with horrible demons dancing across the field, teaching us about battle of the demons within and how we must, in a way, eat every ounce of our own karma, transforming it all - every scrap - into devotion. This way of tantra, of "it-allness", asks us to encounter the dark and light of our own lives with a fierce and open heart.

Then the play was over, the musicians packed up, but many of us remained as the fire was still huge. suddenly, the totally clear sky clouded over and we were blessed, washed with rain. Many skittered off at that time, but some of us stayed, chanting the basic chant we use here on and on and on. I curled up by the fire, went to sleep for a while and woke as the very last people were leaving. I stayed, chanting, breathing, feeling the solitude and power of that moment and eventually went off to bed. It was 5 hours after the ceremony began.

Brazil - 23 February, 2006

Well, folks, I finally hit the wall today. I am now understanding about 60% of what Susan/Didi is saying and I AM learning my body parts through repetition in the yoga class, but for the rest, understanding is really hit or miss. And today I just got tired on not understanding unto getting up to do an exercise that was only for men... and spending hours watching skits that were incomprehensible but everyone else thought were hilarious. Those who speak English are being so generous in translating but sometimes it just doesn't work for them... or me. I think I am also accustomed to a lot - i mean a lot - of alone time, and the program this week (an introduction to the basic teachings of Sarkar explained by Didi with metaphors from modern chaos/complexity/cosmology understanding) is morning til night with 75 other people. The focus is the Chakras and we are covering 1-4 this week in great detail. I have never learned this system so even thought i am grousing at the moment I am deeply grateful for the education.

One highlight of the educational program here is an extensive use of stories and actors who vividly enact the stories being told. It is lots of drama and pagentry - as well as doing skits and theater games and dances of universal peace so the teaching really gets into the body. In a few minutes we are going to a major bonfire to burn our thrid chakra vrittis - our anger, hatred, fear, jealousy, aggression and such. As usual here, there will be actors, drummers, musicians and lots of opportunity for passion. I think I'll also burn my frustrations at not being able to understand and burning up my brain in the effort.

Another highlight is a new brother - Vincente - who travels the world as a diver, as an expedition leader, and more. He has the most abundant love I have almost ever experienced. Half italian, half indigenous indian, he has a tenderness for living things, myself included. Today there was a poisonous snake in a tree by the dining room. everyone was freaking, demanding the snake be killed (this from vegatarians who have meditated long and hard to attain inner peace). He said, "you are frightening the snake," and talked to it, picked it up, carried it gently a half a mile to the forest and let it go. It went right to sleep in his hands during the walk.

Another new friend is a young dude who is brazilian but grew up in arizona so we can hang out in english. and slang. it feels good to have a couple of people I can just be my personality with and not struggle.

My abdominal pain seems to be clearing, so that is very good.

okay, off to burn some karma,
vicki

Brazil - 22 February, 2006

For any of you reading this daily, I am happy to report that all my tests from yesterday came up negative for anything really wrong; the doc gave me pills for muscle spasms in the intestinal tract which I am taking faithfully. This morning I was in less pain and whether it is the pills or the faith, I feel confident that I will get better and once again forget that I was ever in pain.

Speaking of the doctor, yesterday's health crisis got me out of this paradise of a spiritual center finally and out into the real world. One of the shining lights who works here - a young acrobat named Jai - drove me to Tatui where I had a very thorough exam by a very nice doctor who laughed at my jokes and gave me a big hug - and two prescriptions - at the end. This is Brazil... where you doctor laughs and hugs! Tatui felt like a medium sized city (60,000) in any 2/3 world country. Small shops lining the street with metal garage doors that are lowered at night. Many squares. A few more 'developed' big stores that are far from WalMart but still not the old small shops of yore. The X-ray facility was about 30-40 years behind what we now have in hospitals in the US. My father was a radiologist so I have those details more firmly planted in my mind than other things from the past.

The countryside is pastoral, the sky huge and ever changing (it rains at least once a day here) and Jai and i had a great portuguese lesson naming things we saw. I read road signs aloud to him.

I had a rich conversation with a lawyer who has been attracted to this Ecovillage and to Didi; she is working on several projects at a tenth of her ordinary pay. Her specialty is forming blended ngo/for profit enterprises and franchising them so I nabbed her for a long, fun conversation about how to further develop the Conversation Cafes. Her view is that Brazil's vocation, gift to the world, is in the social joy and social glue here, so the Conversation Cafes might actually go over better than in the US. We ended up dreaming together about forming a partnership between a major bookstore chain and the CCs and developing a 4 year business plan, raising money and really making it go. Of course, we were only dreaming, only playing... but I wouldn't mind coming back here and playing more seriously with this idea.

For the rest, daily life in the Park is becoming more familiar, the routines, the food and especially the language. Every class I am in, every conversation, my capacity to understand portuguese takes another leap, and I am finding that I can respond in Spanish and get along. This morning, getting dressed and choosing what to wear, i found myself speaking to myself partly in Portuguese so I know I am making progress.

Brazil - 20 February, 2006

As Kurt Vonnegut said in Cat's Cradle, "Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God." Today I'm dancing. But not like two nights ago in the all night kirtan. Not like yesterday in my first day of the Biopsychology course, learning about the Tantra system as taught by Prakar to Didi and Didi to me and a hundred others in this course. Not like my delight in getting to know my new roommate, the amazing Amalia Souza (a link - in portuguese - just to see her picture: http://www.amaliasouza.net/amalia.htm), deep ecologist, environmentalist, world traveler and recent host of Joanna Macy's tour). No, these peculiar travel suggestions are a more gut experience - as in a persistent and growing pain in my gut which by this morning i could no longer ignore. I am pretty certain it's a small unraveling of the repair done in September for a hernia that developed at the cancer surgery site. I am a bit bionic since they had to install a 6" square mesh in my abdomen to hold it all together, and I think that mesh isn't sitting right. But my normal strategy for physical pain - ignore it, the body is the great healer - has not working with this one and this morning it was strong enough that I had to let go of my floating bliss and get down to business. So people are mobilizing to get me some ultrasound and it is time to go. Besides this, I am having rich inner reflections on my favorite topic - freedom - and how it unfolds here. And I am learning a different way to teach from Didi. And portugeuse is flowing over me like a sweet river all day long, and more every hour enters my body and comes out my mouth. i was even able to explain my problems this morning to two brazilian docs who happen to be here for the course. It helps that I speak fluent Spanish and if I go slowly many people can understand perfectly. It's when they answer that it gets interesting.

Okay, one set of thoughts about freedom...
I am feeling very free here - a sort of happy, soft freedom that seems to come from being in such a loving, beautiful environment. For one thing, Brazilians are very physical - laughing, hugging, smiling, touching, speaking with bodies as well as mouths. The feel what they feel and express it. You who know me know I also carry a lot of expressive energy with me. It is, as with all personality traits, a blessings and a curse. The blessing is that I experience a lot of life, I get a lot done, I throw myself into work and play fully and with good results. The curse is that this energy can be a bit much for others. Some run for the hills when I show up, or just click their life energy purses shut with a firm snap, as if to say, "Don't you dare ask for an ounce more from me." I thought I was offering a hug, and they feel at risk of being strangled. One metaphor is that I am like a baby tiger who found herself in a litter of kittens. For a while we are all soft and adorable together, playing and being fondled. Then one day I play - just like yesterday, just like the other kittens - but this time my playmate screams in anguish and runs away bleeding. I often don't understand the impact of my play - how painful some of my gestures of affection can be. If you know the Enneagram, it is the blessing/curse of the 7 with a big 8 wing. Here I don't feel so vibrationally gigantic because everyone is a bit more out to play - I'm just one of the kitty pile.

Reflecting further on this, I realize that it is a combination here of love and trust. In the US, where we are just basically a lot less expressive and affectionate, we are also now, since 9/11 - more skittish. As a nation, we are making fear the dominant feeling tone and security the dominant need. Our gestures as citizens are less and less effective as the national government takes more and more "war powers" for the endless war on terror. As more national resources go into this endless war, and into the pockets of investors and corporations, less and less basic service is available for the general public. This increases the ambient frustration level; in environments of increasing scarcity, people become more competitive and sly. Even in my most gentle part of the nation, the Pacific Northwest, I think some of this national infection is spreading. We don't notice this as we live in it - but out here in Brazil, I can feel the lack of fear in the environment, and I feel it as freedom.

If you want to free another, cease to fear them. This gives them room to find their natural way. This lack of fear feels like the dance floor at the Deer Lagoon Grange where I do ecstatic dance every Wednesday, held by several phenomenol musicians. Not only am I free to move in that big space, but there is no judgement from others about how I move - and our dancing itself serves the drummers who hold us in melody and rhythm. It is that freedom of "One of these mornings, gonna wake up singing, gonna spread your wings, and take to the sky, until that mornin comes, nothin's gonna harm you..." Living in a harmless world - that is freeing. Here I feel this kind of free.

I talked with Amalia about the Brazilian dream, how it is different from the American dream. She said one of their national songs is a Samba! We laughed about what if Brazil, not America, set the tone for the world. What if the bottom line of any endeavor weren't the 'business bottom line" but "can you dance to it?" What if Brazilian freedom set the tone for the world, not the American freedom of I can have and do whatever I want - a sort of entitlement that our dominance allows us to feel as freedom because the consequences become invisible.

Ate logo, until later...

Brazil - 19 February 2006

Prior brazil posts below...

Last night was an all night kirtan, an ecstatic ceremonial way to get legally high.

We were silent all afternoon and made our way at dusk up to the main hall at the sound of a gong. As we dropped our shoes outside and entered, we were handed either a flower or a candle by two of the many exquisite, lithe brazilian young adults who live here as performance artists. A candle and a flower person would then pair and at the beginning of a haunting version of Om Namo Naraya we slowly circled the room. Spokes were taped on the floor leading into a central altar and around the circle pairs would procede into the center, bow and proceed out. The whole effect in the darkness and silence was like souls returning to the light and being reborn again and again. For reasons I cannot say, I was in tears much of the time.

Then we all gathered in a circle and people had a chance to speak about their spiritual journeys, most of it focused on Baba (here's the wikipedia summary of who he is: Prabhat Rainjan Sarkar (1921-1990) was an Indian philosopher, social revolutionary, poet and linguist. Above all this, however, he is usually remembered for his role as one of the foremost spiritual teachers of Tantra and Yoga of the twentieth century; the founding figure behind Ananda Marga, he is often known by his spiritual name, Shrii Shrii Anandamurti. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prabhat_Rainjan_Sarkar.)

At that time and for the rest of the evening, I was translating from devotion to the guru to my own mongrel devotion to love, truth and beauty - not too hard really. Then the music began and continued for about 10 hours with many musicians playing for hours at a time. There were congas, snare drums, symbols, shakers, guitars and voices singing various melodies for the basic ecstatic chant Baba Nam K'evalam which, as I said, I just translated to basic Beatles, "love is all there is." The options for participation were to walk around the central altar with hands in prayer or arms up in ecstatic reach OR to stand on the rim of the walkers OR to meditate OR to sleep around the edges until again inspired to arise and walk while singing. the walk itself was also specific, balancing from one foot to the other, tapping the opposite big toe beside the weight bearing foot. It looks like bouncing back and forth and some people did it very slowly while others bounded around the circle totally blissed out. It is a good example of freedom through limits, as the very narrowness of the doing liberated our spirits to soar.

For the first hour, as with the first while in any meditation, so much that ISN'T ecstatic in me arose to be held until I eventually - as I always do - found my way through the thicket to the simple truths of love. Once that layer burned off, I was right there with everyone, transported. It was like a ten hour generator of bliss. I chose to sleep there rather than bag it and go to a quiet, comfortable bed, wanting to absorb that amazing, unending drumming and chanting even while dozing. I'd wake from time to time, join the circling chanters, sometimes many, sometimes few, and then sleep again. Very heart opening and I found that having joined in this ceremony - a very sacred twice a year event here at the ecovillage park - deepened people's inclusion of me.

This afternoon, the people in the course I helped teach left and as with all workshops I had that bereft feeling of losing a new family. In the quiet space between courses - this week I'm attending their core curriculum on "biopsychology" - I was given a tour of this amazing ecovillage. When I first visited 5 years ago there were only 3 buildings - now there are dozens. It reflects part of Sarkar's social vision of "master units" - fully functional ecovillages around the world. His social philosophy called PROUT inspired me when i stumbled across it in the old YMOYL days; I felt such a resonance with it. You can read more at http://www.prout.org/Summary.html. The Master Unit is part of this, a vision of places that are self sufficient in food, water, clothes, housing, health and education. The ecovillage is well on its way to filling out that map. i saw their ponds that serve as water collection systems, their windmills and solar panels for pumping the water to gravity fed tanks, their biological treatment systems for gray water to return it to the environment, their organic food gardens, their medicinal gardens used to make homepathic remedies, their Montessori like schools, their center for the arts where actors and artists prepare for the powerful mini-dramas that are integral to Susan/Didi's teaching... and more. They are fully water self sufficient, 60% food self sufficient for the 40 people who now work here and the hundreds who come through every week for courses, have a workshop for local women to make clothes for their families and for sale, have housing for guests and staff alike (much of it built as hexagons as the six pointed star for Prakar is the symbol of union of heaven and earth and the tantra spirituality central to his teaching. I won~t bore you with more, but rather later put pictures on my flickr site so you can see for yourself.

My "rest" days when I am not with Didi teaching or in this biopsychology course are starting to fill. I have met some wonderful people from Florianopolis where I chose, somewhat arbitrarily, to wait out - and enjoy - carnival next week. And I now know even more people who might throw parties for me or host talks to tour me around in Saõ Paulo.

So, my friends, this trip so far is going from blessing to blessing, as tho the divine really wants me to get it that there is more brazil in my future.

Now, to bed, having danced all night, as they say. When I learn more about what 'biopsychology' is, i'll let you know.