Asamee Blog

I am reminded of the famous restaurant orgasm scene in the movie, When Harry Met Sally. While Meg Ryan has a very loud fake orgasm in the middle of a crowded restaurant, Billy Crystal is flabberghasted, staring at her in amazement; and very aware of all the people in the restaurant who were staring at them. That whole scene is chock-full of metaphors for the condition of human relationships, but the cherry atop all the metaphors is when the lady sitting a few tables away says to her waitress, "I'll take what she's having."

That's what we all want; to live life in an orgasmic way; to be filled with love and joy and excitement, and not care what others think. We each want to express our selves this way. But we're afraid to. And because of our fear we put down others who do express that way, but it's only an expression of our fear. We all really want that. Living in an orgasmic way is what happens when we feel and express the entire spectrum of emotions and feelings all at the same time. But we only allow ourselves to express those emotions and feelings that we judge to be socially acceptable and personally acceptable. We repress certain feelings and emotions, and because of that we can't experience the full spectrum, thereby missing out on the orgasmic state, even though some of the other emotions are being expressed. The tormented, fragile, brooding, jealous, stormy, haunted, and obsessive emotions are all part of the spectrum. If we can express them without judging them and succumbing to those judgments, then we are a lot closer to living life in an orgasmic state of joy and love.

But it's hard not to judge them. It's been hammered into our heads from an early age that some emotions are good and some are bad. If we are judging them in any way, then we're not getting to the bottom of those emotions, and at the core of every emotion is love. So it's not our emotions that keep us from love (and enlightenment), but rather our judgments about those emotions.

God came into this dimension in order to know itself. To do this, God split itself into two so that it could look at itself and interact with itself. In order to know itself, God had to experience the entire spectrum of feelings involved in the interaction between the two parts of itself. The interaction and relationship between two people is God getting to know itself and trying to attain the knowledge of life lived in a state of orgasmic ecstasy.

Einkorn: Recipes For Nature's Original Wheat

"I walked out of court a free man."

That's kind of how it felt. Of course, I was just leaving court after finishing jury duty; it's not like I had just been exonerated of any heinous crimes or anything. It sure felt good to be done with it. I was terribly afraid I would be stuck in a trial that promised to last around a week. But alas, after 8 long hours in the courtroom I was dismissed and told I didn't have to come back. Yippee!

That's a good thing because I have a hot date tomorrow. I feared having to cancel it because of the jury duty. Tomorrow is my 19th wedding anniversary and I have a lunch date planned with my matrimonial partner. That was the only time she had open in her busy schedule so if jury duty had continued into tomorrow I would have missed that opportunity. This is what magnified my feelings of freedom upon leaving the courthouse.

Something else that fueled my euphoria and relief was the fact that I was done sitting on the hardest wooden bench I've ever spent 8 hours sitting on in my life. Now that was pure torture! The benches were long and wooden and very much like church pews. After a day on that hard wooden bench my butt and legs were numb and my back was writhing in agony. Now that I've done my duty I certainly hope I'm not called again for a long time but when I am I now know to be sure to bring a pillow and a book.

While it felt great to walk out those courtroom doors, once outside I realized that it was just starting to rain. Since I live just a few blocks away from the courthouse I had walked there so I couldn't just head to my car to get out of the rain. I briskly walked home as the rain intensified and lightning and thunder filled the sky. The walk would have been exhilarating if it were not for my aching back. By the time I got home the rain was pouring and my back was screaming.

My honey was home working on notes for her rehearsal tonight. After greeting and hugging Shawnee (I'm rarely gone from her that long) I lay down on the floor and "fixed myself" while I talked with my honey. I think that bench really threw my back out because it took me almost half an hour to fix myself but it was wonderful conversation time. I felt wonderfully better when I got up to kiss my honey good-bye as she left for rehearsal. I was eager to get online as I hadn't even been on the computer all day. But first, there was the matter of dinner for myself and my beloved four-legged ones.

With the animal children fed and my dinner cooking on the stove, I headed for the computer to turn it on. But I never made it. I got detoured by the television. Normally, the TV has little power in grabbing my attention but suddenly tonight with the house being so quiet it sounded like a good idea to watch a tiny bit of TV while I ate dinner before I got on the computer. So I stopped and turned the TV on.

I looked at the clock and saw that it was 6 o'clock sharp. "Simpsons time," I thought. Maybe 15 minutes worth of The Simpsons was just what I needed. I don't think I've watched more than one episode of The Simpsons in months, so I turned it to Fox, ready for a little humor but to my dismay the Simpsons episode that was on turned out to be that very one and only same episode that I've seen in the last few months. And it was still too fresh in my mind so I didn't want to watch it.

With the remote in my hand, I was about to turn the TV off when suddenly my hand went spastic and, of its own volition, turned the channel. I didn't even see what channel number my hand was turning it to. On the television screen a beautiful scenic picture came on. It was one of those old Panavision shots that being adapted to a TV screen had the black space above and below the picture. The scene immediately grabbed my attention. It was a nature scene and, as I looked closer, I realized the setting was the savannahs of east Africa. A jolt of electricity coursed through my body. As the camera panned across mimosa trees, baobab trees, gazelles, and zebras, I suddenly said aloud, "Oh my God! Is that Born Free?"

I had my answer within just a few seconds as the scene progressed to show a land rover pulling into a camp. The driver's wife came rushing out to greet her husband and her husband then proceeded to show her the lion cubs in the back of the jeep. Yes, it was Born Free! Goodness, golly; how long had it been since I saw that movie? 35 years? 40 years? Once again; Oh my God!

Born Free, by Joy Adamson was one of my favorite books as a young boy. I had read it a few times already before I ever saw the movie, which was a huge hit back in the Sixties. I cannot begin to explain how much I loved that story when I was a kid. I wanted so very much to go to Africa and find my own lion soul-mate to be friends with. At that young age I so empathized with Joy's intense unconditional love for Elsa the lion (and Elsa's intense unconditional love for Joy). Having a lion as a pet seemed so right to me and, of course, as a kid I desperately wanted an animal companion but my mother would not allow animals anywhere near the house. I had an imaginary pet tiger for a while but the Joy Adamson books made me also want a pet lion. I certainly had no fear back then of big cats. The love Joy had for her lion was something I felt before--even though that didn't make any sense to me then since I had no pet. Since then, I've learned of the roots of those feelings of love that were so very inexplicably strong in me as a kid. I learned that I did in fact have a lion as a pet once in a different life.

Well, I ended up having my dinner while watching Born Free and I ended up watching the whole movie, in fact I simply could not take my eyes off of it. I was thoroughly engrossed in it and it was more than just a flash from the past. I watched it with the same rapt enthusiasm as I did when I was a kid watching it for the first time. It wasn't until the movie was over that I realized that there were no commercials--and that I hadn't gone to the bathroom in two hours. I was utterly engrossed in it.

Oh, and what an absolute joy it was watching that movie! And it was sad, too. My eyes actually watered up pretty good when Joy released Elsa back into the wild not knowing if she would ever see her again. All the emotions from 40 years ago were still there--and I'm not one who easily cries with a movie. No, there haven't been many movies at all that can make me tear, in fact I can't seem to think of any right now.

Oh, and what a joy it was seeing the landscape of Kenya. That is something that has always made me melt in warm soothing feelings. The landscape itself makes me want to cry. When I was a young one I devoured every book on Africa I could find, no matter the reading level. I had to know everything about Africa, especially Kenya and Ethiopia. And the wildlife was at the top of my interest list. My young 9 and 10 and 11 year old noggin was a walking catalog of East African species information. Even though they were filmed in Florida--or where ever--Tarzan movies were never missed by me. I watched every nature show I could that was filmed in Africa. I read the Dianne Fossey and Jane Goodall books and I read about Dr. Leakey's digs in Africa and I read about what Africa was like before Whitey showed up with his big guns and started wiping out the animals. I read about the mythical ancient African civilizations and I loved pretending to be a Gorilla sitting on the slopes of a volcano in the rainforest. I simply couldn't get enough of Africa.

But what really burned the deepest impression on that young me was the pure unconditional love expressed in that story. Now I can see the many layers of metaphors in the story but back then I only saw the love. Animals are here to show us unconditional love and it is so blatantly obvious to me that I can't understand how some people cannot see it. My parents and siblings couldn't see it and this confused me as a child. But I've since learned that many, many people cannot see it. A lot of people can see it but don't want to. Some can see it only under certain conditions.

I am extraordinarily lucky in that my dog shows it to me every single solitary day. She reminds me constantly how pure and joyous love can be. Of course, to truly love her unconditionally I must let her "live free," but, as with Joy Adamson, that is very difficult for me. In the movie, Joy finally was able to set Elsa free and then it turned out the love was so strong that she eventually came back. It's just like the greeting card butterfly metaphor. Of course, when Elsa and Joy were reunited Elsa then had three little cubs with her. (Oh dear, I better not draw too many parallels there.)

Anyway, watching the movie, one wants Joy and Elsa to be together forever. Luckily, the movie ends before either of them die but one knew at some level that the love would certainly last forever. Love is like that; especially unconditional love.

So after I finished dinner (I hardly remember eating it) I got horizontal on the floor again and Shawnee lay down in front of me, spooning me. We watched the movie together and let me say that Shawnee really took interest in all the lion noises. Of course, she fell asleep halfway through the movie. I've never known her to stay awake through an entire movie. It sure felt good to have her with me for this viewing. That was missing for that first viewing close to forty years ago.

Watching that movie was such a delight. It made me tingly all over. It may just be a silly old fashioned movie to some, but it was very special to me. I was done with the TV after the movie but I did see a host come on after the movie to announce that there would be other lion movies coming on next. Apparently, lions were the theme for the night. And why? Because we just entered the sun sign of Leo! I laughed when the host said that. Now that's something you wouldn't have heard on the TV 40 years ago. Wow, what a great way to enter Leo!

We live in a dimension of duality. Everything has its opposite. You cannot have death without birth, and you cannot have birth without death. When we die to our physical bodies we are born into spirit, and when we're born into bodies we are experiencing a death from the spiritual. It's a matter of perspective, but you can't have one without the other.

Birth is generally considered a joyful event. Since every death is also a birth there should be some joy in death, too, no? And since every birth is also a death, births can be painful and fearful, too. Birth can actually be more of a traumatic event than death. Imagine dying to your life in the spiritual then entering a helpless little body and shooting out of the birth canal. And then you're stuck in that little helpless body and all your memory is gone.

Dying in the spiritual dimensions is similar to dying in the physical. First, you lose your body then you go through some kind of tunnel-like thing, and then voila! you're in a different dimension. Death and birth are the same thing! They are the very same thing!

Death and birth are two sides of the very same coin. This polarity is ubiquitous in our reality. Birth/death is going on all the time. The person we were five minutes ago is already dead. They no longer exist! Every single minute of every day we are dying and being born. We birth a new self with each passing minute. All we have to do is look to nature to see the endless birth/death cycles. We cannot birth something unless we die to something. Death is important.

It is the human tendency, however, to think of the phsyical deaths of our bodies when we think about death. This brings up fear, so we start trying to mentally block out death. We no longer see the importance of and beauty of death in its integral part of ongoing life. When we shift our focus away from death, we no longer give it the energy it needs and what happens is we stop birthing as much. Any diminishment in our level of dying leads to a diminishment of birthing. For instance, in order to birth new ideas, we must let some old ideas die.

Birth/death, birth/death, birth/death. They go together. If you try to do without one, then eventually you start doing without the other.

So let's change the focus and talk about the joys of death excluding death of the physical body. Let's talk about the joys of death that happen on a daily basis; the little deaths that happen continually. How many times do you die on a daily basis?

What about anger? Say you hold a lot of anger for a particular person. Can you die to that anger? Would that be a good thing? What birth would occur simultaneous with that death?

What about the death of communism? Was that a good death? And what was birthed in conjunction with that death?

What about beliefs? What if you've been holding the very same beliefs all your life? Does that prevent the birth of new beliefs and ideas? What happens when you die to a belief?

What about boyfriends and girlfriends? Remember when the relationship was being birthed and how exciting it was? But then you fell into a deep rut where nothing was being birthed anymore, so it seems the only way out is to kill the relationship? How could a more joyful approach to death have saved the relationship? Did the relationship go sour because the two of you stopped dying on a regular basis, thus creating a need for a big death finale for the relationship? Is it the birth of something new that spurs us to die to relationships?

What about jobs? Been working at the same job for 32 years and you're ready to kill yourself? I would say kill the job instead. Either way, there's a need for death because there is a need for birth. A new job is easier to get than a new body. So dying to a career can be a positive thing, no?

Can dying to a bad habit bring joy and birth? To get a new attitude about something, do we need to first die to our old attitude? Have a brilliant idea that could make millions? But you won't die to your beliefs of lack, so the idea never gets birthed? Still holding on to a traumatic event from your childhood? If you won't let it die, the knowledge and wisdom to be gained from the situation can never be birthed, or realized.

Anytime we hold on to something, we are preventing death, and we miss out on the subsequent birth. And then we end up holding on to something that is dead anyway because it ends up in the past. To stay in the NOW, we are going with the natural birth/death cycle and we experience constant birth, constant death, constant motion, and vibrant life. To be in a state of joy we must be in the NOW. We can't be in the NOW if we haven't died to everything in either the past or future. So the very act of being in the NOW is utterly dependent upon death.

Death is present in every layer of our physical existence. How can we replace fear of death with joy of death? If we can do that in our everyday lives how would that change how we finally experience death of the body? And if we fully utilize death during life would that make death of the body unnecessary? Is the death of the body a result of not fully utilizing death on a constant basis during life?

Are Your Ficus Trees Getting Enough Wind?

I lucked out that I got a window seat in the back of the car. Being one of four kids in the backseat of a '57 Chevy for three and a half hours, I would have died had I not been able to sit by the window. My attention was focused outside the car; on the night sky, the stars, the black landscape shooting past, the barely discernable undulation of arroyo and mesa. It was like watching a dream floating by. The reflections on the car window further played on the dream-like effect. It was like daydreaming at night. Soon, I was floating above the desert; above the car. I could see the headlights of my parent's car down below me. I could feel the cold black night air flowing over me and it was wonderful. And then! Small white lights began popping up on the horizon. They seemed to multiply. A bump in the road slammed my face up against the car window, and I came to full consciousness. Squinting, I saw those city lights in the distance and became excited, for I knew we would soon be in a strange city, and that we would soon be stopping for a much-needed car break. I couldn't wait to get a whiff of that cool desert night air, and I couldn't wait to see and feel a new place.

So what do Crazy Horse, St. Bernadette, and Edgar Cayce all have in common? Just for fun, let's take a look...

Interestingly, the lives of Crazy Horse and St. Bernadette were pretty darn co-linear. Crazy Horse was born in either 1840 or 1844 and was assasinated in 1877. St. Bernadette, the young French girl who was visited by the Female Christ in a grotto outside of Lourdes, was born in 1844 and died in 1879, at the age of 35. Crazy Horse was either 33 or 37 when he died. Their lives were going on at the very same time on the opposite sides of the globe, and they were as opposite as could be. (Or were they?)

Edgar Cayce wasn't born until 1877, the year Crazy Horse died, and two years before St. Bernadette died (to this day her body has not decomposed). Cayce probably had more in common with Bernadette than with Crazy Horse. Both were very Christianity oriented, and both had encounters with the Female Christ. But Crazy Horse's religion--that of the Lakota--was all based on the Female Christ/White Buffalo Calf Woman. So all three individuals are tied into the Female Christ. That's what they have in common.

Another curiosity they have in common is that they are all three Spring babies. Cayce was born on March 18th, a late Pisces just a few days away from Aries. Bernadette was an Aries born on April 16th. Crazy Horse's birthday is unknown, but it is recorded that it was a Spring birth in the Indian months that correspond with our March and April.

Something else they have in common--to some extent--is that they were all three persecuted by Christians. With Crazy Horse it was more indirect. His people were simply wiped out by a people carrying the dual flags of Christianity and the United States. His people's spiritual foundations based upon the Female Christ/White Buffalo Calf Woman were attacked and vilified by the conquering white Christian army.

With St. Bernadette it was more personal. When news broke of her miraculous meeting with the Female Christ, the very first one to attack the reports was the Christian Church. Bernadette's local Christian church put her on trial, threatening to banish her from the church for her claims to have spoken to the Female Christ. It was the village people; the ones who had been cured by the miracle waters brought forth by Bernadette's meetings with the Female Christ, the ones who had thrown away their crutches and wheel chairs and eye patches and such, who finally convinced the local priest that Bernadette was not evil. Once the priest was finally convinced, Bernadette was still not off the hook for the priest had to convince the Holy See--which took an incredibly long time. The Christian Church was Bernadette's biggest enemy, but they finally called her a saint. To Bernadette, it didn't matter.

It was personal for Cayce, too. While he was living in Bowling Green, Kentucky, the church Cayce belonged to--and for whom he taught Sunday Bible school--actually initiated excommunication procedures to have Cayce removed from their church because of his psychic abilities. Cayce was utterly horrified that his own brethren would do that to him. Cayce considered himself an extremely devout Christian and to be accused of evil was earthshattering to him.

The church administration was shocked to open the proceedings for the excommunication to a standing room only audience. It seemed every member of the congregation showed up, and they all testified, one after the other, in Cayce's defense. They told of their babies who had been so sick that the medical establishment had given up, and how Cayce's "evil psychic" advice saved their babies and restored their health. They told of endless medical miracles, and spiritual miracles, too. After a day's worth of people testifying on Cayce's behalf, the church's governing body dismissed all charges against Cayce. If they hadn't, they would have been mobbed by practically the entire congregation.

Cayce never forgot!

Cayce, St. Bernadette, and Crazy Horse are all considered saints, or near-saints, by their followers, yet all three were branded as evil, at one time, by the hierarchical elite aspects of Christendom. This is something everyone eventually confronts who follows the way of the Female Christ. One can get mad and hold a grudge and fight back, like Cayce or Crazy Horse, or one can be totally oblivious, like Bernadette. It is assumed that both Cayce's body and Crazy Horses's body have decomposed, whereas Bernadette's body is as fresh today as it was when she died 125 years ago.

Something to think about, anyway.