What *IS* Freedom Anyway? July 4, 2006

Death by Hyper-Freedom
Vicki Robin
July 4, 2006

This morning the coastal fog hugged my little village tight, the sunny feeling of blue skies, parades and expansive American freedom very far from our shores.

I love that sunny feeling. I love that most American part of myself: my optimistic, generous, can-do self. The world is my oyster… and I’ll share because there’s plenty.

But a fog has rolled in on freedom in America and before it rolls out for the day, yielding to sunshine, potlucks and parades, I want to reflect on the fog of self-centeredness, self-importance and overall self-ishness that now passes for freedom in America. Underneath the rhetoric, both on the streets and in the ‘halls of power’ you hear playground taunts. “It’s mine and I can do whatever I want with it. You can’t tell me what to do. I got here first and you can’t have it.” This bully freedom, entitlement freedom, numero-uno freedom has troubled me for a very long time. Almost as long as the can-do freedom, the generous freedom, the expansive, inventive, creative freedom has fueled my life.

I recently offered a workshop on freedom using one possible title for my upcoming book: If this is a free country, why don’t I feel free? Nobody signed up. Thankfully, I found it curious rather than devastating. One friend offered this explanation: “I don’t see that I have a freedom problem. What would I, or anyone, get from it?” In other words, he has real problems. Relationships. Food. Job. Aging. Money. Insecurity. Discrimination. Parents. Kids.

Actually, I think these are all freedom problems. Problems with the partial – and therefore devastating – current idea of freedom in America.

Here’s why. The very hallmark freedoms that permit the sunny version of America have now gone hyper because we’ve made anything that limits us the enemy of our freedom.

Limits, though, enable freedom. They shape and direct freedom. We all place boundaries to protect what we cherish and express what's within us. Art, design, houses, games, marriages, markets, traffic, values are generated by limits. Rather than talk intelligently about limits, though, we rail against them. We want to grow without limit. And this hyper-freedom is killing us.

Competition in an open and free marketplace has become hyper-competition, a war of all against all. From pre-school to board rooms, the competition for the few seats at the wee table is fierce. As the wealth gap increases, the race to occupy the top 10% gets more ruthless. If you want your kid to go to Harvard rather than flip burgers, gotta start his education early. Like in the womb. Birth is way too late.

Choice has gone hyper too. From being able to select from a range of products rather than one state issued pair of shoes, we’ve entered the era of oppressive, obsessive choosing – picking the right cell phone, internet service provider, car, computer, cereal, investment, vacation and on and on. And who has the time – we have to work 2 jobs to afford it all.

Which brings me to time. From the freedom to work hard to get ahead we’ve gone to hyper-speed: 24/7/365. If you don’t keep pace, someone else, right behind you, will get ahead of you. The need to exceed the speed of those you are competing with has us sacrificing sleep to keep up. As John deGraaf, founder of TAKE BACK YOUR TIME, contends, we need time to care – to love, parent, learn, worship – and as a society we are not time friendly. Even activists suffer, urgently keeping pace with the train-wrecks of injustice, war, global warming and more.

Each individual’s freedom to have, do or be what we want has become hyper-individualism, a burdensome loneliness of people cut loose from community, who pay for connection by bonding with companies that don’t care about them, eschewing churches then going to workshops and therapists to simply be heard, losing first loves and not knowing where to find the next one. The up and coming household is single. With cat. Like mine.

How many of our relationship, food, job, aging, money, insecurity, etc. problems are rooted in this hyper-freedom world where the only way we know to feel free is to get away from what holds us. It is harder to bond today. Harder to stay bonded. Harder to have job security, harder to care for our bodies and families, harder to find love because the forces of dissolution – away – are so much stronger than the forces of connection. The ties that bind immediately pinch – and we move on. Studies show that loneliness and isolation lead to body and soul disease and early death. We treat the symptoms, but do not question this toxic freedom that convinces us all that to be free is to be on top, at choice, on the go and on our own.

Sustainability is certainly a freedom problem. How can we address overshoot – the condition we’ve been in since the mid-70’s of using up more of the earth’s resources than can be replenished – if we can’t tolerate the fact of limits. Hyper-freedom says we can just get away from problems: invent something new, farm in Siberia, live in space, live in a gated community, find a substitute source of fuel. How, pray tell, will we substitute for water. We are up against major limits and in total denial, and hyper-freedom is the major enabler.

No, it’s not a free country anymore. We are not free to rest, to eat good food, to hang out with people we love, slow down, live at a sane pace, feel secure in our communities without sending armies to our borders or distant lands to stop people before they come and get our good life.

Oh, except for our few holidays, like 4th of July. Today. Freedom day. And what are we celebrating again? I’ll celebrate freedom in America when we get off the hypers and settle down to being a decent kid on the big planetary block, working and playing well with others, valuing our souls and collectively setting some boundaries we collectively respect. Give me grown up liberty or I fear we are all choosing death by hyper-freedom.

*****

p.s. later in the day after the fantastic picnic and parade

Today George Lakoff in the Boston Globe also wrote about the framing battle over freedom in America*. He, like me, counted the number of times...

"President Bush, in his second inaugural address, used ``freedom," ``free," and ``liberty"... 49 times in 20 minutes. ``Liberty" has become the watchword of the radical right. The right has taken over the use of these words as part of its appropriation of patriotism. Progressives must reclaim not merely the words ``freedom" and ``liberty," but the ideas that made this a free country. To lose freedom is awful; to lose the idea of freedom would be worse."

A political advisor yesterday, hearing me speak, said the "right" wins in the voting booth because of our uneasiness with "hyper-freedoms." It stands for "law and order" (who wants lawlessness and disorder?), "safety" (who wants danger as a collective way of life?), "protection" (no one wants to be defenseless). Can you see how the conversation needs to shift to where we place our limits to get more of what we value, not freedom vs. limits? Yes we all have "family values." How absurd to think "the left" wants a rootless, valueless, disconnected, dissolute America, but that's how the "freedom" issue shows up.

We need to ask: "What values do we actually share here in America?" Answering that seriously will take real soul searching. Consumerism wins because it's the one common good, or goods. Americans (so the myth goes) all want, deserve and have a right to more stuff. Don't fence me in when I'm at the store!

But if we agree, for example, that good families are essential to a good society (as they always have been!), then we ask, "What are the qualities of good families that we want more of?" There's a great conversation for you! Safety? Protection? Care for the young? Education in "knowing right from wrong"? Love? I am certain "left" and "right" would generate very similar lists. Then we ask, "What minimal limits must we collectively place on ourselves - through laws and culture - to get the good families we want? How do we win the 'good family' game?" Okay, we're back to the debate, but with a lot of respectful conversation and shared understanding. We arrive someplace in the vicinty of families where there is love, stability and decency over time. So how do we get that? Well, now we're into the very lively diversity that is America.

We need to get out of the debate with its dueling frames. We need to get into the respectful conversations about "what we hold dear" and "what limits we agree on to protect those essential goods."

Lakoff is correct. The left has lost all the important marbles: freedom, values, morality, law, order, family. What's left is not recapturing the flag, but questioning the game. We all want freedom, values, morality and such. How - through what permissions and prohibitions - will get us there... that's actually the essence of the conversation that is democracy in America and in that conversation all the jingoistic, bombastic, ideological bullsh-t (left and right) will be as convincing as an Emperor who has no clothes.

Remembering on Memorial Day 2006

They died that we may be free
Vicki Robin
Memorial Day, 2006

Today is Memorial Day, memory day, the day we remember all who have given their lives to save their people from losing what is more precious than life, to protect and preserve family, land, ideals and dreams.

First and foremost we think of young men and women who died in American wars. They died horribly and too soon - by guns, knives, bombs, suffocation, torture, starvation, poison, drowning and finally, if the war they fought haunts and hounds them into civilian life, suicide. Perhaps before they died a love they’d never known – for comrades, ideals, the present moment – entered them and exalted them. Probably, though, they were numb, terrified, cowardly and ashamed, out of their minds, hopeless, heartsick, homesick and depressed. Maybe an even more frightening feeling came – of love for the enemy - a sense the people being killed deserved to live, had been little boys who made their mothers proud, had families of their own who would grieve beyond bearing. Mai Lai and now the slaughter of innocents by Marines in Haditha, Iraq dramatically remind us that we ask our soldiers to not only sacrifice their lives but their souls.

The ones who served and survived often never actually leave the war – the brotherhood, the immediacy, the sense of mission and purpose bond veterans of the better wars into lifelong legions. The rest of us cannot understand, really, what both the living and dead endured. No matter what we think about the wars these men and women have fought, we must love and honor them and thank them with all our hearts. No matter how angry we might be with our country, how cynical we might have become about human goodness, these people are heroes because we will never know if their sacrifice actually allowed us to live in our homes, villages, cities, families and enjoy barbeques and storytelling until darkness falls and the fireflies wink their friendly “all clear” at the end of the day.

Others, too, have given their lives for a better world. Some, like Gandhi, King, Jesus, Romero, Robert Kennedy and on and on, also died in the middle of their fight for freedom. Some, like Allende, John Kennedy and Sadat, sacrificed their private lives for elected public service and were assassinated by the secret armies of the dominators, be they governments or Mafias or gangs or fanatics or, as we label them to reassure ourselves we are good, terrorists. The world is full of terrorists – full of cruel people who would kill, main and torture once the fire in their souls has gone to cold ash. The frontier of terrorism is everywhere – and in everyone who struggles to keep love alive in the middle of the horrors that come when fear turns to rage turns to impotence turns to hatred turns to predation on one another. Thank God for every single person, every nun in South America, every forest dweller, every social worker in slums, every nurse, doctor, mother and friend who has kept the light of love alive in terrible times. I remember them, not their innumerable names but their sacrifice and pray to never be so comfortable in my small, peaceful corner of the world that I forget. That I forget.

We wake each day on the frontier. Will we face the enemies squarely, pushing back those rivulets of cruelty, indifference and cowardice before they become a torrent and push us to greater brutality and shame? Will we remember the fallen by getting up ourselves in the emptiness of the morning and picking one enemy within to meet toe to toe, eye to eye?

I ask myself on this Memorial Day, “What would I die for?” Fortunately a pretty serious brush with death a few years ago helps me find an answer I can imagine is true. I too give my life for freedom – for the courage to love the dark and light of this world, to accept it just as it is, to put in my oar towards a better future with humility and irony intact, to be precisely honest with myself and others, to be grateful for the infinite number of small pleasures there to be tasted if only I can stay awake, to risk humiliation if the seed of creativity insists on growing up through the concrete of my caution, for saying “I’m sorry, please forgive me” as many times as need be (and they are many). I am not afraid to die physically. I now know for certain that I will – and it’s not the end of the world, so to speak. I am afraid of the living death of encroaching resignation and lies. So this Memorial Day, after breaking my heart thinking about the young who died in wars not of their making, I vow to remember to fight the wars before me with all my heart and soul.

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.

Brazil Journal

February 18, 2006 [note, i am posting most recent updates at the top. for feb 17, scroll down]

First a couple of recollections from the trip here. In the Seattle Airport I ran into an old friend, Virginia Hoyte - Jungian psychologist and long time concerned person for the earth. We chatted re the state of the world side by side at the sinks in the ladies room. Her latest amazing book is Lester Brown's [title?] 2.0 so, having plenty of time, i went off to the main terminal to find it at Barnes and Noble. No luck, but just as I was giving up a woman came up to the counter and asked for YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE by Joe Dominguez! She'd been reading the simple living website and wanted THAT book for her flight. We chatted and, tho they didn~t have our book [it's been years since i've found it in airports... I used to visit it in all the airports I went through, just to have a cozy friendly feeling], I felt this little coincidence boded well for this trip. I prepare, prepare prepare and then, once out the door I just let go and allow the true purpose of any travel to reveal itself. Then, in Dulles Airport, on my way to the plane to Saõ Paulo, I saw a big billboard advertising France as a good place to do business. It read: FRANCE. SLOW FOOD AND FAST CARS. There it was again, affirmation that the simplicity movement with all it' cousins - frugality, slow food, sustainable living, take back your time - is alive and not only well, but spreading.

even as i glory in this place and the people, I am trying to understand, put words on, this experience. Of course, these are 75-100 very special Brazilians - they have taken time and money to attend a spiritual retreat. Even so, I am learning about the spirit in this country that so speaks to me waaaay below words. For example, Didi, my friend and the spiritual leader of this ecovillage, teaches in the most unusual way. She gave a lecture this morning about the Great Turning, acknowledging Joanna Macy who was here a few months ago to teach for a week. It was done with a powerpoint presentation projected on a huge wall - very few words, mostly stunning pictures, and frightening pictures. four times in the two hours, giant puppets or very stylized actors arrived to do a highly dramatic enactment of the point Didi was making. Apparently Brazilians are not a text oriented culture, so such artistic and dramatic approaches to teaching go right in. She also is my sister in the importance of conversation; after every section of teaching she had people talk to one another, and then a few share with the group.

And here~s something else so enchantingly different. We do a lot of chanting and dancing, all full of laughter and errors and heart. It~s like we are kindergarteners playing, even as we do sacred rituals. But when people get up to speak you understand how deeply they are informed about the state of the world, how substantial they are in their professions, how educated, how aware. We have had some very serious, lengthy whole group discussions about the teetery dollar, about politics, about 911, about the dark and light of the current moment in brazil... and then we dance and chant and laugh and hug and run through the rain getting soaked but so what.

we shall see how much of these first impressions hold when i am traveling around the country.]

all the facilitators and Didi and I met last night to plan our presentations for the tour. They know her teachings well (they teach them) and had had two days of listening to me. There was a bit of everyone talking at once, of course in Portuguese with me using Spanish to get across and Didi to translate - somehow, amidst the hubub, the tour was planned. I came to understand the gift of this tour even more; each facilitator is doing publicity to attract enough people to cover the costs of Didi's and my travel. I am very excited about the ever clearer ways the teachings I've been developing with NRM and through my own initiation dovetail down to great detail the teachings of Prakar and Ananda Marga - of course, my practices aren't traditional yoga, chanting and meditation (i could use more of all of them) but the essences are so similar. In part because Prakar was both a realized teacher AND a social philosopher. ahem, it's the social philosophy i'm talking about in saying we are similar, not that 'realized being' thang.

I've also been taking long solo walks; the vegetation is much like California but lusher as the humidity is thick. nothing dries out, at least not while i've been here. we eat food from their organic gardens - lots of fruit and vegetables, which is agreeing with me.

One more image before signing off... last night i left the circle dancing when my eyelids gave out. the chanting and laughing was still coming from the large meeting hall as i drifted off. then i hear what sounds like a bunch of drunks with guitars singing outside my window. I don't understand any of the Portuguese but i do understand every time they say 'vicki' and bang on the wall. so i get up, stick my head out the window and there are a dozen smiling faces singing to me. i just laughed and blew kisses. and today many people asked me slying if i enjoyed the seranade. would we dare do anything like this in the US. even my cool friends and more inhibited than these 'free and easy' folks. as rick ingrasci says, the future belongs to whoever throws a better party. i think the future might belong to brazil, then... this is some combo of a better party, a serious symposium, a spiritual retreat and who knows what else. gotta go, as tonight we are chanting all night and even tho it seems unlikely, i might make it at least for an hour or two. we've been on silence all afternoon to prepare.

ciao from a corner of paradise,
vicki

February 17, 2006
Day 3 at the Ecovillage about 2 hours outside of Sao Paulo, a spiritual center affiliated with the worldwide Ananda Marga movement founded by Prakar, an Indian guru and visionary social teacher. I am already fantasizing spending the rest of my days here. Not this eco village per se but here in Brazil. Honest, there is something very different in the people - a sweetness, an ease in their bodies, a joy, an affection... all infectious. Of course it helps that i have taught here for two days solid, so all eyes, ears and hearts have been attentive to me. It helps me feel so very welcome.

I am the guest of Didi, meaning teacher. Her American name is Susan Andrews and after a traditional Harvard education she met Prakar, became a nun and has been in love with the divine ever since. After his death, she came to Brazil and was inspired to start a center here. From that has grown a vast network of teachers throughout the country. There are 60 regional facilitators here now, and later in the month Didi and I will travel to 9 of their cities to give lectures.

Dear God, how did I get so lucky to end up here. Of course, by chance... and design. Didi and I met on the ferry back to Seattle after a gathering with some mutual friends. In that half hour, we recognized one another as sisters on this crazy path of spiritual AND social transformation. Several years later, a dear friend gifted me with a trip to the jungles of Ecuador to visit the Achuar people and learn about the work of the Pachamama Alliance, seeking to help these people preserve their way of life in their as yet unspoiled part of the Amazon headwaters. Well, having made it to South America, I wasn~t about to turn around and go home! I discovered news of the first world social forum somewhere on the web and even though no one i knew knew anything about it, off i went. since i was in Brazil, i visited the eco-miracle of Curitiba and made a side trip to see Didi's place. The friendship deepened, we went off to the WSF together and have stayed in touch ever since. She KNEW and I suspected we had more to do together so she patiently waited until i was done with cancer, done with writing my new book on freedom and then brought me here. based on the response of her students to both the Conversation Cafes and to YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE, her intution was spot on. Many are going to fan out across Brazil to start CCs - and they are now clamoring for a Portuguese translation of YMOYL. Fortunately, there is a summary of YMOYL on the YMOYL website, and a tech guru here has a translation program so ~very soon we'll have that up on the website. They also translated my two powerpoint presentations and between my fluent spanish and a great translator i was able to stand there for 6 hours solid speaking.

Friends, it~s been 3 years of inner adventure thanks to the cancer and the big job of writing a wee book about freedom. I have actually relished every minute of solitude and inner search and have learned lessons that have profoundly changed my life. Even as my health returned I had little appetite for anything but intimate, local, personal connections - i want to relate to people and things i can feel and touch and hug and smile at and comfort and learn from. Gone was the will to 'change the world' - to act on large global systems. Yet now, here, in Brazil, after two days of teaching to about 75 very eager learners, I feel welling up within NOT gradiosity about world changing but rather a feeling of love overflowing and a sense i will again be speaking and writing from love, not urgency. I could have lived the rest of my life without this impulse returning, but now that it is here, it feels natural and right and embodied (not heady).

It~s time for dinner. I will write more in a day or so.
Ate logo
beisos
Vicki