These three

These three should we mind ourselves closely over if we wish to draw closer to God: 

1. attachment
2. fear
3. anger.
   
   

I guess it all boils down to attachment, really. At the foundation, it is attachment that provokes fear and anger. 

Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 4, verse 10: Being freed from attachment, fear, and anger, becoming fully absorbed in Me, and taking refuge in Me, many persons in the past became purified by knowledge of Me, and thus they attained My divine love.

Missing

On average, about 4 people per day go missing in America's national parks. But did you know that if a person goes missing on federal land, it's not counted? There's no complete federal database of people who have disappeared within these national parks, which makes it hard to spot any trends or commonalities from case to case. Some are reported, because some families push harder, but nowhere near all. [further reading]

This is where David Paulides' work comes in. I came across him last year and was immediately enthralled. But my fascination took me a little too deep and ended up messing with my wilderness adventures that I've cherished my whole life. Instead of enjoying being outdoors in wild nature, I was feeling a little hesitant and frankly scared. So- I backed off for a while.

"But how many of those disappear in the wild is unclear. Neither the Department of the Interior, which oversees the National Park Service, or the Department of Agriculture’s US Forest Service keeps track."National parks like Yosemite operate almost as sovereign states. When somebody goes missing in their territory, they’re not inclined to seek help from outside government agencies." [source]

In this strange case, Kara Moore wandered home weeks after her disappearance, but remembered very little of the experience. "A search-and-rescue effort doesn’t always make a difference. In 2017, a middle-aged woman named Kara Moore disappeared in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan’s Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. Almost immediately, dozens of searchers with canines covered 73,000 acres and found nothing, only to have Moore wander home a week later on her own."

Here's another great article on the topic.

Then recently, David's work came back into my field of awareness and I watched the documentary Missing 411: The Hunted one night with my husband. You can watch it free on YouTube, by the way. And I recommend you do.

This film didn't focus as much on the national park relationship, instead it highlighted hunters who had gone missing, many of them in very strange ways, and often not a trace was ever found of them despite hundreds of search and rescue teams scouring the area for days, even weeks, and canine teams being employed. Nothing- not even their rifles or bows- were ever found in some cases.

This really intrigued me because hunters know the woods. They know the wildlife. They're equipped, armed, and attentive.

But it was toward the end of the documentary when I really got fascinated. The Sierra Camp story. In a nutshell, a large group of men sojourn high up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains once every year. They've been doing this since the 70's. Because they stay for a couple of weeks, in order to get all of their supplies up and out to this very remote location, they take a mule train. These men are professionals. Successful men. They aren't looking to get famous. In fact, they've kept their experiences quiet for a very long time, and David Paulides is the first to bring what they heard to public awareness. The recordings they made were analyzed by linguistic and electrical professionals and found to be non-human vocalizations.

For more in-depth details on this, you'll have to watch the documentary for yourself. 

Throughout the Vedic literature, the oldest written history that humanity has, there is mention not only of the history of Earth and other planets and realms, but also of other beings, some of which coexist here with us. Some are benevolent, and others malevolent. 
Let's also not forget that late last year, the former Israeli space security chief publicly stated that we have been in contact with "aliens" for some time now, and have asked the government agencies not to publish that they are here, as humanity is not ready yet. You can read more on that in this article. So I have my theories as to what could be going on.

And, sigh, of course I begin revisiting this a couple of weeks before we move back out to the rugged and remote mountains of the Inland Northwest, an area David coincidentally mentioned in a video I watched this morning. 

Saturday Intensive

 A strong wind blew through late in the night while we were sleeping, leaving a fresh--early Spring--dusting of snow on the high foothills, which I stood and admired out the window early this morning as I sipped coffee.

But I couldn't stand and sip coffee and coo over beauty for too long as this weekend is my Ayurvedic intensive. We have one each month. It's 20 hours of school in one weekend. Arduous as it is, because the school is done via Zoom these days, I usually manage to get some craft projects completed on intensive weekends.

There was a purple hat that needed finishing, so I tended to that.

Then I began knitting a scarf, but turned it into a cowl, deciding it would make a boring and stiff scarf. I think for this kind of wool, a scarf would look better if I held two strands together to create a looser knit. Or something to this effect. So, a cowl it was! And since chunky cowls are pretty quick going, I finished it in one sitting, working in a basket weave stitch.

Now, as the shadows stretch out and the end of the day grows nigh, I'm just going to finish my latest embroidery, which means stitching a piece of fabric on the back to hide all of the thread chaos. 

My brain is weary with so much new information, as it always is with these intensives, and to think I still have a full 10-hour day tomorrow... phew...wish me luck.

Memory's Vault

Despite having lived here for two years and walking this same patch of nearby woods and trails each week, today, somehow, we stumbled right into a new area. There was a feeling of strangeness, coming upon something new in a place you believed yourself to know well, but the peculiarity soon gave way to unexpected delight. 

Memory's Vault is, as one of the first pillars told us, "a place for contemplation-- of nature, of man and his intentions." The trails we walk here each week are within what was once an active military artillery corps in the late 1800's and early 1900's to protect the Puget Sound from invasion by sea, so this made some lines of the poems inscribed in bronze onto pillars all the more poignant.

It was a nice space to spend some quiet moments in, as the afternoon sun slowly sank down into the west, spilling its golden rays and imbuing the whole experience with a dreamy quality.

At The Great Northern

Twin Peaks fans will appreciate this: a little while ago, we took a little drive out to Kiana Lodge, otherwise known as the Great Northern Inn from Twin Peaks. Though the exterior of the hotel was portrayed from shots of the Salish Lodge in Snoqualmie (with the waterfall beside it in the opening credits), the interior scenes and the beach outside with the log where Laura Palmer's body was found, and where Pete would go to fish, were all filmed here at Kiana Lodge. It was perfectly strange with not a soul to be seen, except one native maintenance man in a hoodie who could've cared less about us wandering around the place.

Pete would walk down this path to go fishing 

This set of doors was portrayed as the main entry to The Great Northern

The log where Laura Palmer's body was found

Inside The Great Northern. Recognize the wall paintings? This is the room where Leland exclaimed, "Somebody dance with me!"

And that concludes our little jaunt into Twin Peaks. Luckily, we didn't run into Bob. At least, I don't think so.

Quinault

Bordered to the west by the vast Pacific ocean, and nestled right into the wild  and remote edge of the western Olympic Mountains, in an enchanted valley that is home to several of the world's largest trees, is Quinault. 

The very definition of verdant, if there is such a place that could sustain you by environment alone, it is Quinault. The dewy wet air, the lush tree-covered mountains, the glacial rivers ripe with fish, the pristine lake, the mammalian mossy forests, herds of wild elk, the sweet earth fragrance so palpable...

If breathing is our umbilical cord to God, to the unified field, I've never felt it so potently as I do in Quinault.

Each time we've gone there, it does feel like entering a portal, and the entire outside world feels very far away, if it exists anymore at all. Eric and I both feel held, nourished, and begin to think crazy thoughts like how we could just stay there and never have to leave for anything... couldn't we though?

We would buy real estate there and disappear into it, certainly, but... in the two years I've been checking, I've never seen a single property go up for sale. Not that there are many homes out there to begin with. In fact, there's only one road. I'll never stop keeping an eye out, though....

Can you imagine calling such a place home!?

Somehow, without plan, we found ourselves in Quinault again last weekend. Which is odd, considering it's about 4 hours away and we had no real intention of going to begin with... but you know how things can turn out when love and longing are involved.

Ferocious outside, cozy inside

Tonight a wind has blown in off the north Pacific with a vengeful force to it. In the two years we've been here, I've grown to love these winter winds that pummel the house some evenings, and it is almost always at nighttime these storms blow in, but tonight is a little different. Tonight the door over there is creaking like it really could blow open, busting the lock and chain. We've put a chair and a 7-gallon jug of water against it to help bolster our defenses. The little bit of lamplight I have going is flickering and we've filled a thermos of hot water just in case we lose power, there can still be tea. 

The wind isn't howling or whistling through the windows, it's stampeding right into them, like in Lord of the Rings when Arwen summons the flood brigade at the Ford of Bruinen. And I am sitting here enjoying my nightly cuppa cocoa, and reading, as ever. When really intense gales hit, I glance sideways over my right shoulder toward the window, as though avoiding direct eye contact will maintain fortification.

As terrible as it is, I do love it. I love the wild chaos outside, and the warm coziness inside. I love imagining the tumultuous sea just down the hill, and how it must be turbulently churning right now, while I sit here only a few hundred yards away, safe and snug by the fire. 

I already miss the unpredictable moodiness of the weather here, for the days soon coming when we'll have moved on. One day I'll have to write about these nights, and how they often transported me into some other [mari]time, when I was a lighthousekeeper in the 1700's on some cold and brutal remote northerly coastline, or weathering the storm down in the cabin of my old wooden boat in the 1850's, praying to God and sipping whiskey, with only one golden beeswax candle for a companion. 

I knew we were in for it tonight, as the weather all day was strange and unstable. In the span of a few hours, we saw hail, sleet, gray skies, new snow on the foothills across the bay, then golden sunshine and blue skies. The sea went from dark blue to Caribbean turquoise, calm to white-capping, and everything in between. 

Here are some of the pictures from just before sunset...

Knitterly Things

This knitting hobby of mine is beginning to stack up. It seems I almost have a small knitwares shop on my hands, kept neatly tucked away in a brown paper bag in my crafts closet. Though it'd have to be a shop offering only hats, cowls, and ear warmers. 

I even designed a logo and had it printed onto suede tags to give things a more professional and finished look. 

Maybe when Autumn comes 'round again, I'll open a real shop.

Maybe.

Piloting the pair in harmony

 A new embroidery to add to the collection. This one contains some symbolism that I won't go into too much detail on, other than to say it was inspired by the Vedic-Celtic connection I've been learning about. 

A Celtic Druid rides a chariot with 8-spoked Dharmachakra wheels, pulled by a pair of winged horses, one mortal, the other immortal, which speaks something to the daily work of navigating this material impermanent human life, alongside the journey of the eternal soul that lives within, which is certainly the most important of all in my view- that devotion to and connection with God, requiring much more [especially inwardly] of us, than most modern people understand or are willing to give. The committed dedicate daily to piloting this team as harmoniously as possible; if one horse becomes weakened, the whole effort is in vain. And some of us, certainly myself, are seeking to understand these ancient ways our ancestors communed with the Divine [because I do feel they were closer to original truths than we are today.] 

When studying such things, and you come across interesting overlaps, it can feel like a magical secret has the tiniest brief beam of light shining on it, just for you to see. I've been fortunate to have such moments over the past several months, hence the inspiration for this Vedic-Celtic inspired stitching.

And here's a fitting photo I took a couple of years ago near Taos, New Mexico.

Honoring the Longing

Something that happens to me every so often is I get stricken by an intense desire and nostalgia for what I simply refer to as "The Old World." The sight of modern anything--cars, wires, sports shirts, tennis shoes, neon signs, tupperware, styles and lingo of the day, memes, speech patterns, all of it--dulls my mind even moreso than usual and I long for somewhere or somewhen that I really have a hard time putting my finger on, or putting words around. But the essence of it is captured here, here, here, here, here, and on a more philosophical level here and here. As quick examples.

When this whirlwind comes over me, I fall quiet and inward, and all I know to do is to make my own world resemble this imaginative place as much as possible. I mind my thoughts, my words, my quickness and try to sink into the headspace of that time (though I still don't know if linear time is the right way of thinking about it). 

So this morning, we woke, he a little before I, and the former meditated and the latter showered. Then I told him how I'm feeling- and wondered out loud if maybe going to the Scottish Highlands for a few months would be feasible. I think you can stay for 6 months at a time, maybe then heading up to the north of Sweden or over to the west of Ireland... then switching back again when the 6 month visa ran out. Repeat. Just to be immersed in that world where the tales, rituals, and mythologies of my own kin and blood are buried in the soil and carved into stone. Would I feel a familiarity? Would I experience deja vu unexpectedly like the Barra boy? I idealize a life there, assuming, perhaps quite unrealistically, constant enchantment, where the doors of my creativity are swung open and a convocation of eagles thunders out, relieved to be released, their spirits soaring across that landscape, brushing shoulders with the ghosts of my forefathers who still require bread and water offerings. 

When I feel this way, the best thing I know to do is either go out to some mythical and inspiring landscape and to meander and sit there, or to stay home with my teas and coffees and steep my mind in appropriate documentaries, books, or my own creative projects. If honed correctly, I've learned that this terrible longing, like a lost love, can be a source of inspiration. 

Anywho- this morning after our talk, we decided to meander into town, grab some hot breakfast from the local market to-go, refill our thermos' with hot coffee, and go sit by the lighthouse with it all. On the way, we listened to Dylan Thomas' Under Milkwood, the 1954 radio drama of the innermost thoughts and feelings of the inhabitants of a small Welsh fishing village. It helped kindle and hold onto this atmosphere I was hoping to sink into for the day.

As we wound through the streets of our own seaside town, headed for the lighthouse, the air smelled of seaweed and breakfast, and the pedestrians began turning into characters themselves, just like in the story we were listening to. Amazing what a shift in perspective can do.

We perched on a large rock and sat quietly as the churning sea tide rolled in, actually out, a few feet beneath us. I chewed the buttermilk biscuit dipped in gravy, and let my gaze free to do as it pleased out across the sea, sometimes focused, sometimes blurred and wide and dreaming. A speckled body broke the milky blue surface, her deep black eyes looking into ours, and we gasped- a harbor seal, or maybe a Selkie woman. Who knows in this time when we've made everything mundane with our categorized folders of so-called facts, which we all feel we have an authority over, a monopoly on truth. But maybe the harbor seal was a Selkie. Let's live in the question.

Back home now, I'm curled at my desk with the heater on, about to start on a new embroidery, and through the wall I can tell that Eric is singing songs I've never heard before, of his own making I do believe, and strumming guitar. I'm glad the creative feeling is permeating and we have, for a bit, gotten our minds off the ol' to-do list which can distract you for a lifetime if you don't watch it.

I'm going to go fill the coffee cup and thread the needle, with a picture in my mind involving a dharmachakra-wheeled chariot, a druid charioteer, with a black and white horse pulling them both. In the druids hand will be either a torch or the branch of a Holly tree. Do you know the ancient relationship with druids and modern rulers (who program the masses) with Holly wood? 

To what degree are we living in illusion?

There exists a state of illusion, known as Maya in the Sanskrit language, and a percentage of our experience exists in this state. As human individuals, we experience Maya mostly as ignorance of our real nature, which is the true self, the non-linear and infinite Atman that inhabits our temporary vessel. All other illusions seem to branch out from this one primary misunderstanding or forgetting. This ignorance of who we really are, as you might imagine, can be seen playing out in hundreds of ways throughout daily life. Think of all the ego-driven behaviors, which compose 98% of our lives, of any given day and you will understand what I mean.

This morning, as I was getting ready, the question came to me: Just how much illusion are we under? Of course, the nature of being in illusion implies that it would be really hard, if not impossible, to answer this. So my thought meanderings here aren't meant to be taken too seriously, since I assume, or rather- I know, I also exist largely in illusion. It seems though that each individual probably contains varying degrees of illusion, just as each individual contains varying degrees of health, self-awareness, and so on. In some ways, I feel I can even see the illusions over me almost like a grand to-do list, aware of and working to shed them as I go, but also understanding this is a lifetime of work so incorporating gentleness and acceptance of some illusions, too. Letting the illusions stay there and be. For now at least.

But what I was wondering about this morning is just how much illusion we live under now, especially in the Kali Yuga--an age of spiritual depletion with primary focus being on material existence--compared to, for example, beings of the Satya Yuga or Golden Ages of the past. (For me, it is evident even in more modern history that humanity has undergone and is undergoing a process of devolution moreso than evolution).

We have lost the understanding of genuine rites, rituals, and offerings. If we are able to learn about and understand them in an original way, it seems to come from a purely action-oriented pathway, which leaves out the spirit or essence that should be held around the action, and is probably the most important purpose of the whole act anyway.

We live in an age dominated by Rajas-- busy, frenetic without depth of purpose other than material gain and fleeting pleasures, endless doing and activity. How do we break through the illusions that layer themselves over and within us, without merely trading one illusion for another? Cultivating Sattva in daily life is vital, but I also believe a detachment from the flow of modernity must happen in order to brush up against and maybe just grasp the bone-deep Truths and ways of being in a more pure state.