2013

Year 2013 will start off with some very positive life changes for Moonbeam and I that will challenge us and help to start this new year off right. The number 13 in Goddess religions is a very lucky number which I think is not a mere coincidence :)

While Moonbeam goes on his two-week bike ride around the state of Florida (and correct me if I'm wrong), I will be doing a 10-day master cleanse known as the "lemonade diet" but it is NOT for the purposes of dieting. I was reading up on this cleanse and it seemed like the purpose for many people was to lose weight; this is not my intention. Originally the cleanse was designed to help people to flush out the toxins in their bodies and fast for 10 days. The first three days are the toughest and the fourth is the "hump day", but after you get past those days of healing, you feel an increase in energy and well-being. I think this is appropriate to start the new year off cleansing my body and my soul of all the toxins from the previous years and I feel honored to be experiencing this transformation at the same time that Moonbeam will be on his own journey. I feel as if being in these meditative states of concentration, appreciation and discipline will bring us both closer to each other even though we will not be able to talk to each other during this time.

To ease into this fast, I have bought a juicer that I plan to juice my dinners every night until I begin the fast so my body is pumped full of nutrients but is also experiencing liquid "meals" until I will completely depend on liquid meals. The recipe for the cleanse asks for:

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice (organic)

2 tablespoons Grade B Maple syrup (organic)

1/10 teaspoon cayenne pepper

10 oz. purified/spring water

6-12 of these glasses a day

As well as the lemonade, I have to do a sea salt water flush (2 teaspoons of sea salt to 1 quart of room temp. water) every morning and an herbal laxative tea at night to flush all the toxins out of my body. The lemonade will sustain me with all the nutrients I need (apparently citrus and real maple syrup are EXTREMELY healthy for you and have all the needed nutrients for those 10 days [well think about it....maple syrup is tree nectar] ) and then I will flush all the toxins out of my body during the entire day. 

I will blog for every day of my cleanse!

January 2, 2013

I think this cleanse will help me to love my body more than I ever have before because the pain I will have to go through will make me realize how much damage I have inflicted upon it and that damage will be leaving my body through the love I will be giving it. Maybe that is how true love really works. Maybe that is what happened with T. She was experiencing my love for her and was loving me which was bringing out all that damage out of her life. Most people, like the cleanse, experience so much pain that they give up before they are able to feel the positive results. This will be my motivation to continue - the end result.

January 4, 2013 Day 1 of Cleanse

I hadn't gotten to bed as early as I had originally planned because I was shopping with my mom and  preparing for my cleanse by importing all the Celtic music in the house onto my Ipod to help with the anticipated stress I knew I would be experiencing. I did some Stress-Relief Yoga last night and some meditation in the sauna and felt very energized last night as well. Today, I  started my cleanse with the salt water flush and within the hour  that I drank it,  the full quart left my body. It was intense! I have been experiencing some thoughts about food and what would taste good but then I realize...oh! I can't eat that!  I have also been experiencing some sharp irritability and have struggled to keep it under wraps. I warned my family what I was doing and what I would be experiencing so hopefully they will be understanding. I have also found a great article about the "side effects" of the cleanse and read other cleansers path on their cleanse which gave me some encouragement! 

January 5, 2013 Day 2 of Cleanse

Today started off great. I didn't have much hunger pains for the majority of the day and I was busy doing all sorts of errands with lots of energy. I was in an overall very chipper mood and thought to myself "I can do this!" Then the late afternoon came rolling around and I was having hunger pains that didn't seem to go away. My parents took a neighbor and I to a Mexican restaurant, which was a very bad idea for me. I realized just how much I loved food and flavor as if it was an addiction. I tried my best to look away and not pay attention to the smells but I was exhausted, starving and had little to no energy left. I did have a good conversation with my father about overcoming obstacles which made the experience better, but when I returned home, I was too tired to do anything so I just swallowed two tablespoons of maple syrup instead of making the entire concoction, watched part of a movie and went to bed.

January 6, 2013 Day 3 of Cleanse

This morning I was able to sleep in some more and get as much rest as possible to allow my body to heal. I was feeling pretty normal and did my salt water flush. I was going to the bathroom several times and I noticed that I still had something to flush even though I hadn't eat the last few days! This made me realized just how much my intestines have suffered. All that waste was still being absorbed back into my body because it wasn't able to properly leave my body. I told my folks about this and they are amazed as well. My mother has had digestive issues for years now and has even had a colonoscopy (I think that's what it is called) and still has issues. My father suggested that she try this cleanse because it might be what finally works for her. She then goes on a rampage about how much she despises Western medicine because the doctors just want our money and don't actually care about their patients nor do they actually know what really works. It makes me happy that what I do with my life, at first, it seems like my family and those around me reject it, but then they see what I make of it and the positive results and it seems to inspire them. Perhaps that is the way life works when you live a life of your own and you don't force your lifestyle on others. They first reject it and insult it but when you respond passively and they notice the positive and content life you life, they want to incorporate it into their own lives. I think that is a lesson to live by. Passive positivity.

January 7, 2013 Day 4 of Cleanse

Today has really tested my strength. I am back at work where I had my second and third day at home resting and I have had more cravings for food than I have had the first three days. I want to eat everything and it doesn't help that I am sitting at a desk, unable to leave or distract myself with running errands or something productive. It is later in the afternoon and I feel exhausted and am wondering if the maple syrup can cause sugar highs and crashes. Today is supposed to be the hump day so I sure hope tomorrow will be looking much better.

January 8, 2013 Day 5 of Cleanse

I would say that today is the kind of day of well-being, contentment and relief that the struggles I had to face before are over. I had to go through all the strife to feel this amazing later. I have a small amount of craving but mostly I feel happy and grateful for the things in my life. I was going through my new purse planner and seeing all the wonderful adventures I have ahead of me! All the money I have been making is going to pay for my debts, then after those are paid for, I am saving the rest. I spent around $100 ish on trips to see my good friends in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania (maybe NY) and the grand adventure in Ann Arbor, Michigan with Moonbeam. I think that all the stress (that I will be overcoming!) I will have with schoolwork and money will be worth these adventures I am about to have. I am so FUCKING blessed to make these opportunities happen for me and I am proud of myself  for knowing what I want and going through whatever it calls to allow myself to receive them. I feel like I am really understanding what it means to have drive and to acknowledge a strength of mine and to find joy in myself in that strenght. Thank you life for giving me such gifts of love in these people I meet and thank you for allowing myself to love them and love my Self! So happy.

January 9, 2013 Day 6 of Cleanse

Today started out being pretty tricky. I was irritated for several of the first hours of the day due to financial stress and due to my lack of finances, I fear that I won't be able to finish the full 10 days of my cleanse because maple syrup is so expensive. Actually, now that I think about it, I WILL be able to continue my cleanse, just in a different way. I might finish my full 10 days on just a vegetable and fruit juice diet. Juice fasting has the same effects and I will still technically be fasting and won't feel like I didn't fulfill my whole cleanse. I think this will be a positive way to continue what I set out to do and I won't feel like I missed out. Today I spent a lot of time researching future possibilities and adventures with Moonwolf so I am super excited for what our future holds! Today has ended up being a wonderful day.

January 10, 2013 Day 7 of Cleanse

Today I feel like a completely different person. I waited to blog because I usually start my day on this cleanse positively and later on in the day my cravings usually increase and set me back into a negative state but it is now mid-day and I feel fantastic! I went to the gym last night (the first time I tried to run on this cleanse I was only able to run a little over a mile before tiring) with the mindset that I was going to attempt to run 3 miles so I wouldn't get too behind in my running. I ended up running 4! I  was almost up to 3 miles and I thought to myself "You know, I could run a little bit more, I'll try running 3.5 miles." I ran up to the 3.5 mile mark and said, "you know, I only have 4 more laps until I would have run 4, I think I'm going to try to finish 4." And I did it! I was so happy and proud of myself that not only had I accomplished that much while I was fasting, but 4 miles is more than I have ever run without stopping. I went home and spent a good hour juicing 13 different fruits and vegetables to last me all of today. Today is just fabulous. I am full of energy and positivity and have been exploring my many different options for New Zealand! I am so glad that I'll be able to finish my 10 days even if that meant making a few minor adjustments. I am doing it!

January 11, 2013 Day 8 of Cleanse

Every day is a battle, but when you fight that battle strong and allow the goodness to come back to you, it is no longer a battle but a place where you can live in courage. I would say that today has proved that once again. I was really struggling for a couple of hours and wanting to break my fast early. I was hungry and that hunger couldn't be filled. I felt that I had done my share of fasting and it was more convenient for me to break the fast early. I felt guilty and did not want to tell Moonbeam because I wanted to prove that I was stronger than my hunger to him, my sister and my mom who were going through the fast as well. I decided to tell Moonbeam that I was really struggling and as soon as I admitted my vulnerability, it seemed everything changed. My hunger seemd to dissapate, I was learning about community living and then my boss and team members gave me a card and gift card (it is my last day of work before I head to school again) and that completely warmed my spirits. I can do this. Stay strong. 

Blood of the Moon

"Strength does not lie in what you have, it lies in what you can give."

The quote on one of my Yogi tea bags for monthly Moon Cycle. As I have been going through some PMS symptoms, I have been angry and guilty for the symptoms I have been experiencing: the irritability, anger, clutter and headaches but what I have realized with this is the conditioning  I have been taught by my society when it comes to menstruation. Instead of being understanding and loving of my body as it undergoes these changes, I find them to be a burden. I should be honoring my body and allowing myself to be at this vulnerable state of roller coaster hormone changes, sensitivity of my body and giving myself permission to not be 100% positive and happy all the time. If I was happy all the time then I wouldn't know what happiness really was.

Also, on honoring my body, and I can't tell which is a cause of what, but after my four day detox I have been experiencing these headaches in the middle of my forehead, which I never get. I have been feeling exhausted and completely out of whack. It was the holiday but I was trying to stay away from sweets for the most part but I think the small amount of coffee (one cup), alcohol (half a beer and half a small glass of champagne) and sweets (a small sliver of pie and small bit of cake) I had had really affected my body that I had just purified. This made me realize after talking to one of my health Nuts at work, just how bad substances are for our body and we have become so desensitized to their effects. It also makes me appreciate how strong my body must be to have survived years of damage that I had suffered upon it. Now, to only find the strength for Self-Control. Self-Control is the next step.

Visual Joy

Little dancing tree spirits!

Little Pixies!

Higher selves

Tane Mahuta - Maori Tree God 

Spiral Goddess

The beginning

I guess the reason for this particular post is to understand where all this is coming from, what I was experiencing before I met Moonbeam and the basis for this blog as a documentation for our journey. Since there have been several incidences that I have thought to have been significant to understand why certain aspects of our journey are so important, I guess I'll try to list those as chapters of my life in the last several years, but more recently, the last several months where these incidences REALLY picked up. I was tempted to apologize for having so much to say, but that is a habit that I am trying to get out of...why apologize for something that isn't wrong? I think while simplifying is important, sometimes it's in the details that make simple  concepts make sense. The above picture was taken the morning after Moonbeam and I had talked for the first time via skype and I think it is monumental as it documents the first day of the beginning of my consciousness of this journey, which is interesting because this is a Journey of Consciousness. Sunrises and Sunsets are something that we both seem to really enjoy, which now that I think of it, is significant because they both cross the binaries between night and day, light and dark, and in those crossings result in some of the most beautiful sights.

                                                                        Chapter 1

I think the first experience I had where I really felt like the Goddess (Goddess is the term I use to put a word onto the All, the metaphor for living earth, the balancer of Nature and life and death. The Goddess is not a Being in the way that "God" has been understood, she is merely energy and the laws of the universe) was talking to me was a few years ago when I was taking an Eco-feminism class. I had learned about the Goddess culture and what the Goddess was all about, as well as how everything is connected. I understood matter and energy and it was just nice to put a word in front of it that worked for me (as opposed to "God" which has had all these negative connotations for me for years) but the word Goddess  wasn't a substitute for "God," either. I can explain Goddess more so in other blogs. I was in a serious and unhealthy, emotionally abusive and controlling relationship with a guy I dated for over 2 years, and he broke up with me for reasons that just didn't quite make sense and were rather hurtful. In my mindset at the time, and this was the weakest and most submissive I have ever been in my life, I decided to "fight" for him and bought a plane ticket back home (I was living in Georgia at the time) for my Thanksgiving break to show up on his door step and beg for him back. I know, it was COMPLETELY ridiculous but at the time this was what I was going through. Just a few days after I bought the ticket, I met a beautiful girl who had a Sun tattooed on her arm which obviously caught my attention. She told me that she had plans to get the tree of life tattooed on her other arm and with several other things that just seemed to click, I took it as a sign from the universe that I was making a mistake in flying back home to get back together with my boyfriend. I fell in love with the girl and even though she broke my heart and we didn't end up staying together for very long, I know that I was meant to meet her because she saved me from making the worst mistake of my life.

                                                                     Chapter 2

The second time where I really felt like the Goddess was trying to talk to me and get me to listen as I had stopped for the most part due to my lack of self love and awareness was a few nights before I was to head on a 4 month study abroad trip in New Zealand. I had been planning and preparing for this trip for the last 3 years of my life, overcoming challenge after challenge that certainly made sure they were in my way. I had put off thinking about my trip for the most part due to being scared that I would completely lose my cool and I was laying in the bed of one of several guys I was talking to that summer who I didn't much care for and while he slept, I started to have a full-blown panic attack. I was beating myself up because I had brought myself so low to have compromised my integrity for the sake of having some company and affection, I was terrified as to what was the come on my trip to New Zealand where I was thousands of miles away from anybody I knew, but mostly, I was just scared that I wouldn't make my several plane trips on time or lose my luggage on the way! I think, due to the nature of this attack and the intensity of it, it triggered something that led me to have one of the most insane and blissful experiences of my life -
              I saw myself come out of my body, turn around and look at myself laying on the bed, reach out and hold my face. I saw MySelf look at me in complete and utter calm and say, "It's okay. Everything is going to be alright. Just breathe, calm down, you're fine." It was as if my Self had split into two; the calm, wise, confident, loving and understanding part of me was one half and the insecure, scared, unloved and weak part was the other half. As my Wise Self looked at my body on the bed, she shrugged as if blowing off all this "silly" stress, I then saw my Lost Self laying on the bed in front of me, as if I had switched into the perspective of my Wise Self. I looked at my Lost Self laying on the bed, tried to understand her through My perspective and then went back into the body of my Lost Self. There, I perceived my Wise Self and tried to see through her perspective. I began to understand both of my Selves and saw how beautiful both of them were and I began to love each of them. I knew that everything was fine and everything was going to work out no matter what happened. After I began to accept what was and what was to come, I calmed myself down and fell asleep.

                                                                        Chapter 3

This chapter is a hard one to put into words because so many things had happened. I guess this chapter I will focus on the motivation for the reclamation of my life and how I found courage in the depths of myself. This chapter is for D. Here I was in New Zealand for just a couple of weeks and getting into the monotonous groove of regular college kids at a co-ed Uni, which was something I wasn't used to being part of due to the fact that I have attended a Women's college the last several years of my life. The drinking, the partying, the going out. I met D based on our almost identical taste in music; we lived in the same hostel together and had all the same friends but had never talked before until one day we connected over a facebook chat and talked for hours. That strong connection quickly turned into the first real relationship I had been in since the abusive boyfriend a year before. I felt like I had finally met someone I could enjoy life with, have intellectual talks with, enjoy the same music, go on adventures etc. I had high hopes and hopes that couldn't be fulfilled because of our hectic academic schedule at the time we met and then finally I started to noticed that this person I was falling in love with was distancing himself from me. My friends told me that I was over analyzing  everything, "like always" but I could feel in my bones that this once wonderful and stimulating relationship was crumbling as fast as it had started. We had plans to spend our fall break together so we went on a ski trip with his Aunt and family (I had never gone skiing before) and it seemed like everything was back into place. I had my D again. On the second day of skiing, I was trying out the intermediate and advanced slopes, something I didn't feel ready for at all, but due to D's pressure to just go for it, I slowly made my way down until I reached the most terrifying slope I wouldn't dare to have done in a million years called the Waterfall. Skiing reminded me of rollerblading as a child and I loved the feeling of freedom when I just let myself go and flew down the hills and curves, but this Waterfall....this was the end of me. After ten minutes of waiting at the top, psyching myself out, one skier went right past me yelling "Don't be afraid! Just do it!" I repeated those words and FLEW DOWN AT TOP SPEED SCREAMING THE WHOLE WAY DOWN. The fulfillment I felt after conquering my fear and STILL being terrified after I did it was the most incredible feeling I had ever experienced and ended up being the motivation to live for the rest of my time in New Zealand.
      D and I finally returned home from our trip and after a few days of him being distant again, he finally ended up our relationship because he was tired of dealing with serious shit. He was in NZ to have fun. I was going to leave in a few months and he left his country to come to NZ so he wouldn't have to think about girls he couldn't be with. He knew we were already attached and were going to become more attached and instead of facing the inevitable and having life be in control, he was going to put the control back into his hands and end our connection. He didn't want to suffer the hurt in greater quantities further down the line. I was devastated. For a week I was self destructive boozing and getting high which is something I never did. I had asked D that we could still have that close friendship that we had obtained because that was what was most important to me and he agreed but I still felt like I had lost something great and would probably never get it again. I was angry because I felt he was a hypocrite. He had no fear in his life when it came to snowboarding or living freely yet he was afraid to open himself up to vulnerability. When my friends returned from their fall break in Figi one Sunday morning, I looked around at these beautiful people and realized that I had spent more time with D than with these people on all the adventures I could have had instead. I made a promise to myself right then and there that I was going to expose myself to as many things that I feared as possible and even if I was scared to death, like D was of getting hurt, I was going to overcome that fear and not let it control me. I signed up for sky diving (which I had absolutely no intention of doing) which I was going to have to drive on the opposite side of the road to get to, a three-story high ropes obstacle course (I'm deathly afraid of heights) and I started putting myself out there to people trying to get to know them, and  letting them get to know me. It was the best time of my life at that point. I felt pure bliss making friends and learning just how much I could do if I set my mind to it. I was free.

Chapter 4

This chapter I have been putting off for a few days because it seems to take a lot out of me to write out all that I went through during this time. IT was when I learned how to truly love someone unconditionally and how to be a friend. Unfortunately it ended in the worst pain I have ever experienced, but as I look back on everything Moonbeam and I have gone through, it was worth it and it was necessary for me to be able to fully understand and appreciate what was to come. I had gotten into a forbidden relationship with an abuse victim named T who took me on a roller coaster ride of love, romance, wonderful communication to confusion, distance and hurt. I gave more of myself than I had ever given any person I have ever been with and made promises to myself to be there for T in whatever way that she needed me. Due to many circumstances of which I still do not understand or know the truth of, the up and down existence I was living in full of self-sacrifice ended with the deepest cut to my heart that led to a death of that existence and to be born into a new life. That life included loving myself, loving my friends, loving my family, especially in the time of need with the death of my grandfather, and a new outlook of life that required myself to be fully open to the world and the joys that are in it. This rebirth opened something in my soul that made it possible to experience the connection of my mind, body and spirit and to be able to listen to the universe and all the messages it held for me. This pain and being able to overcome what could have been detriment to my spirit was rewarded with the unconditional love, passion, vulnerability and connection that I was to be given in the form of Moonbeam. The world that we are both able to live in is beautiful, hopeful, real/unreal, and full of the dreams that we have always had in the deepest, darkest of our minds and it is where we are able to exist as our whole Selves. I am thankful for the pain I had to endure with D and T because that pain enabled me to find freedom in myself, where I had once built a cage. It gave me strength to take on any challenge put in front me  of me, and having Moonbeam in my life made me realize that I have never been and never will be alone and will always have many to share this beauty with me.

Happiness Belongs in a Jar of Cinnamon

Happiness belongs in a jar of cinnamon

No, happiness does not belong in a formation of limitation

a cylinder or a box or something constraining

Happiness belongs in those who wish for it

Happiness belongs in those who make it happen

Happiness belongs in you

Happiness is something that most search their entire lives

searching for and never find

Why? Because they aren’t looking hard enough

they aren’t looking in the right places.

They are looking for something pretending to be happiness

They are looking for some false advertisement they saw on TV

They are looking at some lying predicament they read in a magazine

They are looking for a disease that will consume them until they are numb

so they don’t have to feel pain anymore.

But happiness is something that doesn’t really have to be searched for

because it was never really lost.

A man once told me

that a dog knows how to be a dog,

a tree knows how to be a tree,

but humans are the only creatures on earth

walking around lost, not knowing what their purpose is…

We think we are the advanced species

but what is advanced about being lost when you can’t find your way back home?

What is advanced about disconnecting yourself from something that is biologically

innate in you?

We are designed to seek happiness but just as we are designed to seek it,

we are designed to find it

and most of the time it is spitting on our shoes asking us to acknowledge it

and we. turn. away….

and walk in the other direction.

How did we get to this point?

How did we become so disconnected to each other?

Who can I blame? What can I blame?

I could say America, the British, the Romans, the Greeks, the system, Patriarchy!

Would it matter?

It’s bullshit.

Since when does blaming get us closer to happiness?

It doesn’t. That’s why we don’t feel any better when we blame others

or when we blame ourselves

  

So fuck it.

Happiness is freedom to be ourselves

to be loved by us

and to be loved for us.

Happiness is a wishing well

and no matter if we receive our wish

it’s the fact that the well exists,

that we may wish

whatever we may wish,

and that wish exists

in the depths of our souls

to carry through this life of being lost

and lead us to the place of being found

for there is always happiness in a place where there is hope for a home.

Before the Moment of Collision

It all seems so simple, to me, in my mind. This path I've followed. It couldn't be described with anything more than meandering. But it's quite more than that, and I know it. For everyone's sake, including mine, it would be good to lay-out the breaths I'd breathed before all this started to occur. Before the day I met Sunshine.

I say the day, meaning the first time we talked face to face, or rather on Skype. It was monumental, I think we both felt that from the moment we started talking. The entirety of this blog may not be able to cover the topics covered in our first conversation. The amount of acceptance and positivity felt that day was unalterably one of the most freeing moments I'd had. Then the next two weeks happened.

My memory is more like an impressionist painting than anything else. There's not actually a whole lot there, but the more you look at it the more you'll see. I'm going to have to sit with my memory for a while. But hey, at least it's something pleasing to stare at!

Samwise Gamgee Leaves The Shire

 The summer after 8th grade I started reading. Reading everything. Mostly nature essays, adventure, accounts of journeys, classics, poetry,  philosophy, and scientific and textbook writings. I started to get really into expanding my mind, dreaming about amazing things that I could do with my life. Instead of venturing into the woods only when I could find a reason, I would go just to be there. That's where I preferred to be. Simply experiencing the naturalism. I began to derive my values from what I saw in nature. Survival of the fittest, seeking our your own life through what was around you, patience, and being calm. This was also the time that I learned I didn't need to think the way everyone else did. Not only did almost every great person from my books think differently than the people around them, but all the people in my books from different eras thought differently than my people. Classic books taught me the relativity of human kind, culture and society. I was then able to see through the veil I had been wearing that told me to dress, act, and think in certain ways. From this point on I saw the different masks people would wear, or the walls that would put up that tried to show they were something more than human. I became a human. I became a free-thinker.

Mother Nature Opens my Third Eye

Freshman year of high school I discovered Buddhism and shortly after opened myself to many Eastern religions. The first change in reality was the thought that everything is impermanent. Not only was death inevitable but even the particles that made up my body were changing. I started to feel much more present, and actively happy in my life. The most vivid experience I had was in a nature preserve near the house I grew up in. I would climb up a tree as high as I could in an area where people don't normally go. That specific day I found myself feeling a deep emotional connection to that tree. All of the sudden I was re-experiencing the texture of it's bark, and the gentle rocking of the trunk in the wind, all as if it was alive as any human. Mostly running my hand over the bark felt like the skin of a human. I felt a deep connection with that tree that was unlike any connection before. I saw every aspect of that tree; roots, truck, branches, leaves, xylem, phloem, bark, etc. in a symbolic nature and learned a lot about what it means to be alive. Compassion, patience, simplicity and all the basic principles of Buddhism became something I continually worked for.

Through this entire progression, and in the continuing parts of this narrative, my growth was realized only beneath my life. I played many sports and had some friends but I didn't think about those thinks until I was alone. The difference with the rest of the story is that I started to become aware of the other side of my life while I was being active. Very slowly, some of those things stated to have an effect on who I was in front of people.


 Love Writes a Letter to Hate

In sophomore year of high-school I met Anna. We were very different people but she liked me despite my shoulder length hair. I didn't realize it at the time, but that was enough for me to totally ignore our differences. I quickly became thickly intertwined with her family. I gave my entire self to remedying the suffering she was experiencing through a dying family member and subsequently an immediate family that was temporarily dysfunctional. Looking back, it felt good to accept the suffering of someone else and live totally outside myself. Eventually though I started to feel repressed, stir crazy, and guilty for the inevitable pain I would eventually cause Anna and possibly others. Inexorably, I broke ties with Anna in an experience that was extremely painful for me, mostly to see her pain as well as the letting go of the close bond I had developed with her family members. Nonetheless, I felt like an uncaged bird.

Apple Meets Head

The resulting few months I spent analyzing my feelings towards other girls. I developed relationships about four or five times. Each experience I found the amount of love or compassion I was willing to provide was far too much, ill spent, and sometimes ill received. Meanwhile I spent all my extra time pushing the boundaries of philosophical thought. I toyed with ideas about perception (How do we know objects exist when we see them, or touch them? How do we know the brain isn't constructing a different reality, or manipulating the one that we live in? Why color, why sound? I realized all the senses are picking at the same whole and are simply processed differently. Sight, sound and also touch all react to frequencies and vibrations.), dimensional existence (What does it mean to be three dimensional? Is it possible to perceive what existence would be like in a lower or higher dimension? Are we actually even three dimensional?) The most concrete changes that occurred at this time were a real love for science and logical thought. I started to fall into the reality of a cause and effect existence. God, to me, was matter and the law of physics. Buddhism and my spirituality fit neatly into this thought process as well.

Wanderlust or Bust!

In senior year of high school I met Cassady. we had a lot in common and saw eye to eye on a lot of topics. We very quickly developed a meaningful relationship. For an entire summer, I was nothing but happy. I found exuberance in music, being childish, and so forth. Looking back I again immediately gave all of myself to Cassady. It turned out that most of our similarities were on the surface. This is where to beginning of the story come in I went to college and everything that was in my life undernearth the surface began to explode into my everyday life. BURNING PASSION for being EXACTLY who I wanted to be and nothing else. I wanted adventure and nature. Love, and absolute kindness and care. Indescribable amounts of energy and longing for so much. I became very unhappy with the current state of my life and I wanted change. I disregarded money, possessions, and the grasping to myself, or what I thought I should be. Cassady had decided to go to school quite far from me. We found that are differences were too great and our relationship had become strained. It was a mutual division which ended in a period of relaxed care for each other until we grew further apart.

Arriving Home and The Solar Eclipse

So far my school hadn't provided me with much more than a whole lot of time to think about who I really was. The area, and the students, were generally not like minded, but even more so were closed minded. Upon discovering myself I felt more alone than ever.

What I found  my junior year of college was not affirmation or like mindedness. If was a group of people with a common notion that you don't need to be similar to love each other. My school friends became true family and we rejoiced in our differences and likenesses with a general regard for enjoying the outdoors and ourselves. Beautiful souls, every one of em'. Particularly K, S, Z, P, A, J, and N. This continues through to this day! I began making my desire to live a simple life a reality. Giving many things away. I started sleeping on the ground. I (to this day) started to ween off my car, and bought myself a bike that could make long distance transportation possible. Through K, I rediscovered my creativity. My passion for permaculture was born out of this era as well. I started getting involved with organic farming, and my interests for such topics exploded. These interests quickly became the vision of my future, beyond traveling and finding what it's really like to be human. Though, something occurred and I have not been able to identify whether it was only me or a shared experience. I started to identify with the reckless hedonism in our lives. Because I was happy I had met people I really loved I allowed my life to run away from me. I lost sight of what I wanted to be. I would have moments of clarity in the middle of parties thinking "What the fuck are we doing? We're simply being obnoxious." I realized I had been using alcohol excessively for a few years and I was almost unable to let go of that habit. A general unrest occurred in which I strived go seek new things in my life, but kept getting sucked into the life of strictly sensual pleasure. In the weeks before I met Sunshine I had been struggling with frustration with my life, boredom, and apathy for things I knew I truly loved. The result need not be explained, rather the aftermath is intended to be documented through this blog. What I'm experiencing now is a rebirth of all my passions, love, and energy. A connection I previously didn't know was possible and a true openness to experience. Those moments of clarity I had turned into a shared meaning.

.                                                                                                                              -Moonbeam

Ho Hey Horticulture!!

This video is a wide open view of society from an agricultural point of view with a true perspective. The first half can be demoralizing and terrifying but just stick with it. You will be saved! He seems to have a very realistic view of the state of affairs concerning our food and the direction were headed. The house towards the end is a spectacle of the new ear. If ever I find a permanent residence it will be in a home I will construct it to meet these visions. Also, I found inspiration in the community that took matters into their own hands to really turn the farm into a beautiful sight for people to see! Hi Ho Horticulture!