Consider for a minute that you are merely an organism on this planet. You are the result of every effect following another effect so far back that we cannot make out the fuzzy long distance image of what an original cause might have been. This moment you are experiencing right now is exactly what needs to happen and is what creates the moment you are experiencing now just seconds later. Imagine that there are countless timelines all moving forward and intersecting each other, with every person, every animal, every molecule experiencing a varied experience of the very same shared moment in history.

Life is so beautiful because of it’s diversity/difference and rich lush landscapes with one complex harmony of structures meeting another. The intricate network of nutrients in transit in the structure of a leaf sits against the cold lifeless concrete that’s been from the soil, to the factory, to the truck, laid down by a worker and has now seen thousands of these leaves live and die against it. When I slow down and think about the complexity of every object, every being, every aspect of my daily experience, I find that not only is the world inherently forever in motion and constantly changing but that each and every state of every thing is perfect.

“With whom in my life am I more committed to being right then being kind?”

Being right and being love can’t occupy the same space.  I am considering that my insistence on being right is an addiction, and like any addiction, being right creates an alternative reality, an alternative to love.  Wars are fought, families are destroyed, opportunities are squandered, friends are abandoned – all in the name of being right.  Being right is a mainstay of the ego’s machinery.  The Dalai Lama, whose religion is kindness, has lots of evidence for being right about the Chinese atrocities, but he doesn’t fall for the ego’s trickery.   Being right and enlightenment are incompatible.  His commitments are not sidetracked by the intoxication of righteousness.  In “being right” I trade Divine Love for self-righteousness.  Being right only creates positions.  Someone’s on the attack, someone’s defending and justifying.  When a relationship is caught in the bardo of attack-and-defend, the only way out is for either party to surrender, to relinquish their position, to be more invested in workability then divisiveness.

‘When God sends rain, rain is my choice.’ – Werner Erhard

There's a worm addicted to eating grape leaves.

Suddenly, he wakes up,

call it grace, whatever, something

Do you ever worry about someone you love?  I certainly do.  Sometimes I worry about myself, that my own future will not turn out the way I have planned it.  Other times, I worry about friends of mine, who seem to be making bad decisions and heading down the wrong roads.  In the past, I have worried about lovers leaving me, or not loving me the way I love them.  And just recently, I noticed that I also worry about my family, and dread that some of them might die before I get to spend more time with them.

Anger is not my favorite emotion.  I do not consider myself an angry person, and I do not frequently experience anger in my life.  Situations that are uncomfortable for me usually elicit frustration, sadness, or hurt, before they ever touch the nerve of anger. 

I am beginning to realize, that even though I do not feel angry when people betray my personal standards of conduct, my anger does surface in other ways: silence, avoidance, and irritability.  I am beginning to consider that anger is actually on my side, and is trying to help me become more empowered in my relationships.  I push it down because of fear that it is not socially permissible, or that it will not be taken well.  Sometimes I am even afraid that if I let my anger out, it will simply be too much and run amok. 

I woke up this morning with scarcity on my mind.  I’m sure many of you have had this experience.  Before my cup of tea, before letting the chickens out in the yard, or taking a hot shower, my mind was churning with fear and disappointment.  The theme today was: “I am not making enough money.”

It's not every day that I turn on the radio.  I make up that most songs on the radio are about indulging messages grounded in separation, longing, and fear.  I've listened to this kind of music before, and in the past I have empathized with messages like: "I'm better than you, I'm the top of the top," "I just can't live without you," and "Everything is messed up, so put your hands in the air."

Nowadays, I'm living life from a more internal approach.  Taking responsibility, practicing love and forgiveness, and choosing beliefs that serve me.  One of my long standing beliefs that does not serve me is that mainstream music isn't worth listening to.

When is the last time you heard a song on the radio that was about finding your voice, living from your heart, or healing the planet?  Well, I heard some songs like these just the other day, and so I'm going to take this opportunity to dispel my (and maybe your) misgivings about what popular music has to offer.

Numbers have a way of making me space 
out, they've always astounded me; but 
breast cancer statistics just floor me. 
In reading them, I feel suddenly on 
high-alert.

“About 1 in 8 women in the United States 
(12%) will develop invasive breast cancer 
over the course of her lifetime,”
according to the CDC, and “for women in 
the U.S., breast cancer death rates are 
higher than those for any other cancer, 
besides lung cancer.”

This is where I need to pause and take 
a breath.  There’s a story in these 
statistics, waiting to be told, and I 
want it to find me...  

It’s not the story of cancer survivors, 
powerful as those stories may be, and 
it’s not the story where we all Race for 
the Cure, raising money to conquer this 
insidious disease with science.  It’s not 
even an exposé about the endocrine-disrupting 
chemicals in our bottled water, the 
electromagnetic energies that we are bathed 
in as city-dwellers, or the soy products you 
should-no wait, shouldn’t, OK, maybe should, 
be eating.  

This is a love story, through and through.  

This is the story about how collectively, 
we women have forgotten to love and adore 
the most life-giving and comforting parts of 
our bodies.  Not with a sweet indifference, or 
an appreciative nod, but through the dis-ease 
story that women across the western world are 
telling themselves about how their breasts are 
NOT ENOUGH.  

Of course, this story comes in as many forms as 
there are women: too much, uneven, marked by time, 
too attention grabbing, invisible... Our breasts 
endure these repetitive thought patterns on a daily 
basis and I can't help but assume what affect they 
are having on our health. While we may never go under 
the knife in the quest for some cultural breast ideal, 
even highly conscious and evolved women can get sucked 
into the trap of dishonoring our bodies.  I know that 
I still can.  I have seen how water crystals change 
when exposed to loving and unloving thoughts (and 
if you haven’t, please check out Messages from Water 
by Masaru Emoto) and as a health educator, I understand 
holistic interconnection. Yet, I’m still not immune from 
sending less-than-adoring messages to my own body.  
Battling the constant wave of disempowering affirmations 
embedded in our culture seems to be an unending practice 
as long as I’m still working, living, and playing within it.


The Abounding River teaches us that sometimes the strong 
medicine we need is CONSCIOUS AFFIRMATION that re-aligns 
us with the positive flow of life.  To battle an epidemic 
of negative affirmation, we need powerful CONSCIOUS medicine.  
Can you imagine that we have the power to change these 
statistics just by changing the way we are collectively 
"talking to" our bodies?  Love may not heal all, but it 
certainly illumines the places that need healing.



My commitment is to taking a stand for all of the women 
and girls in my life, even the ones who have done their 
share of Women’s Movement curriculum.  We get to be the 
change.  Through our conscious re-claiming of the life-force 
in our bodies, we can pave the way for women everywhere to 
find healing relationships to womanhood, sexuality, and empowerment. 

It starts with us.

I invite the women reading this post to take on a healing
 affirmation practice with me, based on the 
Hawaiian Ho’oponopono, for the next 30 days. I'm calling 
it the "Breast Friends Practice". 

Once a day, sit, take a few long, deep breaths with your 
eyes closed and repeat these words, for 5 minutes, or until 
you feel complete:  

“Please forgive me.  I love you.  You are healthy, whole, 
complete, filled with love and light. You are beautiful 
just as you are. ”



Thank you for taking on loving yourself.

Thank you for changing the world.

Being human is a unique kind of joy, a unique kind of sadness, and pain, and ecstasy.  An old woman sat at my bar the other day, and told me she was having a bad day.  She said, "Not all days can be good days, you know."  As short as my life has been, I know this as well.  Not all days are happy days.  Some days are full of anxiety, others brim with sadness, and some seem dark but are laced with hope.  On days like these, I sometimes have trouble accepting my life as it is.  I think "If only they didn't have to go," "If only I hadn't been that way," or "Why is this happening to me?"

At times like these, I try to pay attention to the opportunity that I have.  I chose to have a human experience, and that means that I will find many challenges in my life: separation, death, and parts of myself and others that I do not like.  The tremendous opportunity that I have is to love it all, especially these things that I do not like, and to remember that each of these is a gift from the universe to make my life even more amazing.  Rumi (a 13th century Muslim Mystic and poet), muses on this in his poem Guest House: