Your Story Matters, Chapter 32 "What's a Channel?"

 

 

        

Chapter 32

What is a Channel?

 

It's a ravine, a ditch, or a device through which water flows, right?


Or a person who represents another and appears to speak for them.


One night, a group from The World Healing Center gathered at someone's house. There we were, sprawled about on the floor, heads on people's laps, some sitting lotus-style, all of us watching the recording of a channel called Ramtha.


When I saw J.Z. Knight channeling a warrior from 35,000 years ago, I thought it was the best show going. I had to investigate.


After my World Healing Center experience, I declared I wanted my next teacher to be a master, and for a while, I thought Ramtha was—at least, I was giving him a try.


I attended many retreats, and eventually, Ramtha formed his attendees into a school. I always had doubts about it. Was he/she for real? Or was she an exceptionally verbal person who could spout spiritual concepts and tell us she cared about our immortal soul?


Being told that if I quit the school, I would be standing alongside the road with dust on my eyelashes while watching the other students march ahead didn't bode well with me.


I quit the school.


Even though I declared myself my own master after the Sai Baba experience, it took me a long while to integrate that belief.


A significant part of the Ramtha experience was when a group of women started a weekly meeting where we shared our feelings and what it was like to have a spiritual life. We read and spoke of science, what new or unique was happening, and we liked each other.


As a result, two women and I decided to leave the school and give ourselves a graduation gift. After reading about an Indian woman called Mother Meera who lived in Germany, we decided to visit her. (Frequent flyer miles to the rescue.)


So, we three flew to Germany and, in the evenings for two days, we sat in darshan with the silent guru called Mother Meera. She was a beautiful young woman dressed in a brilliant orange sari who didn't speak while in the room.


How does one tell if the "master" is fully realized?


Beats me.


And really, there should be no separation between the master and the servant. For you never know who the master is. You could walk down the street and pass one without knowing it.


It was fascinating that she had a metal gate with a peacock embossed in it.But then peacocks are often displayed in Indian art.



There must have been 100 people in the room, on chairs or cushions. One by one, we went up to her, knelled at her feet while she touched our heads, and supposedly removed tangles from our brains.


Her presence and the room's ambiance were so silent it felt like swimming in warm Jello. No one wiggled, coughed, or cleared their throat. I left the house in a warm bubble and thought I would never talk again.


That was the experience. And I'm talking.


After visiting Mother Meera, I was appointed the designated driver as we three toured Germany. The Autobahn taught me to use the rear view mirror as much as watching the road ahead. Those Mercedes, BMW, and Porsche drivers will bump your rear end if you don't drive fast enough or are not over in the right hand and lane.


I had a problem while in the right hand lane, though. I would suddenly find that we were off the Autobahn and would have to circle around to get back on. I never figured that one out. I learned that "Ausfahrt" means exit, and a sign with a straight line means to stop or don't go in there. I drove through a street that was so narrow that we could pick the flowers displayed outside a shop from the car window—but didn’t.


One evening meal recommended by our B&B host was a restaurant above a horse arena. We had our dinner, exquisite white wine, and stunning fresh salad greens. (I don't know how they do it, but Germany had the best salad greens.) Our entertainment was watching a girl ride her horse in the arena below. The host must have seen me coming.


After walking the path built into the wall surrounding the medieval city of Rottenburg, we entered a restaurant where Sue suddenly said, "Hi Steve."


Steve Reeves was sitting at one of the tables, reworking one of his travel books. We were using one of his books to find Zimmer Frees—B&B homes that would rent for the night.


The owners of various homes would place a sign in their window, "Zimmer Free," which meant a room was available. So, you could simply drive into a town and look for the windows. Everything turned out great—down comforters and breakfasts served--usually similar to the others: a boiled egg in an egg cup, cold cuts of meat, bread or muffins, coffee, or tea.


One house, however, looked as though it was taken from the set of The Addams Family TV show. Upon knocking on the door, it opened to a c-r-e-a-k. We looked at each other, beat feet out of there, dove into the car, and broke into a laughing fit.


We skipped that house.


We drove into Salzburg, Austria, to visit the location for The Sound of Music, and saw the famous Gazebo where two romantic scenes from the movie were filmed. The first scene was of the romantic dance of young Liesi and Rolfe. The second was where Captain von Trapp gave Maria that long-awaited kiss.


When I looked up the Gazebo on the Internet, I found that filming those two scenes was wrought with trouble. In the dance scene, Liesi leaped upon a bench, slipped, and crashed through one of the glass windows. She wasn't severely injured except for a sprained ankle. She finished the dance on medication, a wrapped ankle, with added stockings to cover the bandage. If you look closely you will see that one leg is larger than the other.


When Captain Von Trapp was about to kiss Maria, the lighting in the Gazebo farted.


Thus began a laughing jag from which they never recovered.


Julie Andrews said that every time she and Christopher Plummer were about an inch from each other's faces, the lighting would give a raspberry, they would begin laughing, and fail to complete the scene.


The kiss was added later in silhouette.


It's a good thing they don't make pretzels in my hometown like the ones in Germany; I had one at every opportunity.


Those pretzels were about a foot in diameter. That shiny, coarse, salted dough had been twisted so that the top was thin, and the bottom was thick at the twist, bread-like. That way, you had crispy and soft. Just writing about them makes my mouth water.


Much to our surprise, we three agreed that the pizza in Germany was the best we had ever tasted. And eating leftover cold pizza for breakfast on a hillside in Germany is an experience I wish for everybody. (Maybe their dough is better there. That would help account for the excellent pretzels and pizza crust.


When my two friends and I were preparing to leave Germany, Maryanne, one of the friends, and I took the rental car to the Frankfort garage under the terminal while Sue guarded our luggage. A man in a white jacket said he was accepting car returns, so I dropped the key into his open palm. But as I began to walk away, I had a foreboding feeling. It didn't seem right. The man was sweating and seemed to be, as my mother would say, "Three sheets to the wind." Meaning a little inebriated.


He was trying to steal our car!


I turned around and said to him, "I left something in the car. Can I have the key to go get it?" The moment I had that key in my hot little fist, Maryanne and I began to run as though being chases by a wolf. We stopped at the car rental kiosk and breathlessly rattled out what had happened. She confirmed that, indeed, he was trying to steal the car.


Thank you, God. Thank you, thank you. I'm grateful to this day. What would have happened if he had stolen the car? Would I have to pay for it?








Warrior Women Unite. We can Keep Trump out of the White House.


Remember what a wise matriarchal mare does with a bully? She drives them out of the herd until they shape up. (Out of the herd is the worst punishment for a horse.) Once they have learned their lesson, they get a lot of love and wither scratching.


That's a momma.


Many of us are mommas, and those who aren't are imbibed with care.


Does money win elections?


I thought votes did.


Are you so undecided about what to do that you are swayed by an ad each day?


Throw money into the campaign and think that you will win it. More ads, more name-calling, more exposure, more bluster, more rhetoric. The media gets richer, the people get poorer, and the leopard doesn't change his spots.


Haven't you made up your mind already?


Don't we have a determination that doesn't rely on money?


Social media drives people. Influencers, they call them. It's free. We have voices, we have pens, we have lofty visions of a greater tomorrow. We have determination and belief on our side. Our visions are ahead, not back to lawless, gunslinger days where the little woman was kept barefoot, pregnant, uneducated, and subservient.


Women, we can win this election.


Women voters outnumber men by about one million. And we have many men behind us who also think letting a criminal slip through the cracks is criminal. Do ethics and morality matter anymore? Are blatant lies normal?


Someone asked the anthropologist Margaret Mead when civilization came into being. She said, "A femur bone."


The day anthropologists found a healed previously broken femur bone in a skeleton marked civilization's beginning.


It used to be that if someone broke a bone, they were lion fodder. If you found a healed femur bone in a skeleton, someone cared for that person and nursed them back to health.


Are we worth saving?


I hope so


The animals and the earth depend on us. Let's not screw it up.




“If you need time to chill out, refresh, and just sit quietly with what has transpired the past 24 hours, you aren't alone ...


“All I know right now is this: Vice President Harris has my full support.


“I will be looking for the rainbow after this angry storm we’ve been through, but right now I am going to just sit with all that has happened, and let things be.


“I’ll pivot in my own way, and on my own good time, thank you.


—(D Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. Follow @EarlofEnough and on his website.)

By Jo at 6:13 PM

Your Story Matters, Chapter 30, Judgments

 

 

Thank you all you readers. I appreciate you!

Here we go...

 Chapter 30

Judgments

 

Yesterday, I was listening to an audio tape in which a woman asked for help with what she felt was her problem: judging people.

In many of the metaphysical circles I've attended, one central question is, "How can I get rid of judgments?"

 You can't.

 And why do you want to? 

The person speaking on the tape was being bossed by her mother-in-law. I would expect her to be angry. But women aren't supposed to be angry.

 No, it makes others uncomfortable.

Anger is a step up from depression. The lady on the tape needed to take back her power. It was her house. Her mother-in-law was a guest. 

 And, from the sound of it, her mother-in-law was a pain in the butt. We understand. Although we are looking in from the outside and do not have the emotional attachment that the lady did. It's easy for us. Isn't that what therapists and coaches do?

Supposedly, they are unbiased observers who can see what others, under the influence of adrenaline, or ego, cannot see. It was dis-empowering for the mother-in-law to live with her son and daughter-in-law, yet it was her daughter-in-law's house.

I am growing into the philosophy that we aren't broken and do not need fixed.

 We need to grow.

 You are a discerning person. You will judge.

 How would you know if you wanted to befriend that person? How would you get the message that you should stay away from another? Did something tell you they were dangerous? How could you see that you are being manipulated and that being a doormat does not serve your magnificence?

 Being made small in one's own home is not an option.

 Do not wipe out your intuition under the guise that you are judging. Loving unconditionally is for yourself, to see yourself as whole and capable of judgments that serve you and others.

We notice what is right and what is wrong. We notice when justice is done, not injustice. We see when we are being stalked under the guise of love. There are many ways in which judgments are valuable.

 Remember the children's story The Emperor Has No Clothes?" It took a child's discernment to say, "You guys are nuts; that Emperor is butt naked."

 However, if you judge a person to be a certain way because they are different from you, black or white, male or female, child or adult, and you have categorized them before you know them, maybe you should think again. That is prejudice—to pre-judge without the facts.

 Isn't a judge someone who decides to impartially resolve a dispute?

 The impartial aspect—that's the rub.

 All too often, when people judge, they look for faults that will make them feel superior. 

 "To find the medium takes some share of wit, and therefore 'tis a mark fools never hit." —William Cowper.

 Once, I crawled the length of a football field, then back again, and my instructor was ready to ask for a return trip when someone intervened. I was supposed to have some sort of "Breakthrough," but to this day, I still don't know from what to what. 

They wanted me to believe something I couldn't accept. And they couldn't force me into it. Stubbornness built in by my mother in trying to spank me into compliance.

 I used to think self-growth had to be hard. And I admit that changing is. However, that unwritten law that we are broken and need to be fixed needs to go.

 Growth is our desire, our natural right, and our heritage. When something stops growing, it becomes stagnant and dies.

 Let's not do that.

 

 

Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right

Women, stop this atrocity!

If the Republican party can't find a better candidate for the highest office in the land, one who respectively represents us to other countries, one who has the people's interest at heart instead of his own, they ought to be kicked to the curb and be overrun by the independents.

·         Oh, it can get worse. The Republican nominee can choose a running mate that has supported a nationwide abortion ban and even criticized exceptions for rape and incest. The candidate said, "Two wrongs don't make a right."

·         He has called Social Security and Medicare "the biggest roadblocks to real fiscal sanity."

·         He said women should stay in violent marriages.

·         He admits he wouldn't have certified the election results immediately on January 6 if he'd been vice president. He even said he's "skeptical" that Pence was in danger.

 (I guess a gallows doesn't represent anything. And then we're surprised that we have shooters in America?)

And why is the US—the land of the free, home of the brave, afraid to have a woman as President?

The suffragettes fought to give us the right to vote. Ladies, it's time to stop supporting the errant child.

A mamma horse has enough sense to kick an errant foal out of the herd until he shapes up. A mare is the Matriarch of the herd, the one who runs the day-to-day living. The Stallion is the sentinel and the protector.  A physically strong male passes on strong genes to his children.

·         People should stop giving the center of attention to the errant child.

·         (Remember women, The Trojan Women stopped the warring by refusing to sleep with their men until it stopped.)

·         Stop listening to the Pundits 24/7.

·         Stop giving the Republican Party money--oh it's the billionaires, Well, stop giving them your hard-earned money.

·         Stop allowing the candidate and his cohorts to stack the deck in their favor and take away our rights as women.

Remember Franklin D. Roosevelt? He set America back on its feet again after the Depression, and he had help walking to the podium, as he wore steel leg braces because of infantile paralysis. However, the government wanted to present a strong president, so no pictures of him in a wheelchair were shown.

John F Kennedy said, "The one who governs best is the best governor." What a concept.

We revere Cleopatra—once a Pharaoh of Egypt (for 21 years), touted as a seductress, she was actually noted for her brains, highly educated, had great command of oratory, and an ability to speak seven or eight languages—thus a good negotiator.

Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel, 69-74: "There is only one thing I hope to see before I die and that is that my people should not need expressions of sympathy anymore."

Eva Peron, the first lady of Argentina, champion of the working class and the poor, won the nomination for VP after she was diagnosed with cancer. (She stepped down.)

Eleanor Roosevelt is ranked ninth on a list of the 18 most admired people of the 20th century. She was the first lady of the US and served as the US Delegate to the United Nations Assembly from 1945 to 1952. She had a leading role in designing the text and gaining international support for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Old story, I've told this a few times:" Dr. Gabor Mate, MD, who treated people with addictions, believes that most addictions are caused by childhood trauma, even ones we weren't consciously aware of at the time.

Mata's mother called the pediatrician when Mate’ was an infant. "Little Gabor is crying all the time."

"All the babies are crying," responded the doctor. Germany was about to invade Poland, and the mothers were anxious. The babies were responding.

What are we doing to our people?

Your Story Matters, Chapter 29, "Thursday"

What a Difference 40 Years Makes, Chapter 28

 

Chapter 28

What a Difference 40 Years Makes

 

When I was about to be married, I sold Boots to a cowboy who said, "Marry people, not horses." I thought there was some truth to that statement, so I agreed to sell my beloved horse. Also, Mike said if I didn't sell him, he would.

 

I cried all day.

 

Mom eventually got tired of my crying and told me to stop. When I was younger and cried, she told me I was feeling sorry for myself, so I learned not to cry. That day was different. I deserved to cry. I should have cried as long as was necessary. I was feeling sorry for myself. I was grieving over a lost love. It was the most significant loss of my life. And it wasn't through death, as was the loss of my dog, Silver. I was abandoning Boots.

 

Boots had been living with a group of horses at a farm across town, and the new buyer picked him up there, so I didn’t see him go. And I have learned since then that crying is a healthy way to release tension. I’m sorry, but sometimes parents get it wrong.

 

“Forty years later, my daughter asked me, "Mom, don't you want a horse again?'

 

She was thinking of getting a horse and was tempting me to do the same. I decided that, yes, I did want another horse.

 

I found her on my birthday. After driving to Portland to look at my Uncle Al’s Morgan horses and not making a connection with them, a girl visiting his farm told me a young girl was selling her elderly mare because she wanted to move up to a jumper.

 

Sweet Duchess. I fell in love with her. I couldn’t ride her bareback, though; her backbone would kill me. The day I finally decided to buy her, after looking at other horses to make sure she was the one, I lay in bed that night telling myself, "I'm going to be happy all the days of my life."

 

I thought I was finally relieved of my grief over selling Boots. Duchess was 24 years old, which is old for a horse, but she had Arabian blood, and Arabians are known for their longevity and endurance. She could out-walk any horse in the valley. However, a few years later, I noticed Duchess's hip occasionally jerked, so I knew I couldn't ride her much longer and decided to get a young horse and let Duchess raise it.

 

DD and I went to the Hermiston Horse Auction in Hermiston, Oregon. That Auction used to be such fun. One of the auctioneers had a gallop in his voice. Once, three guys played musical chairs on two Icelandic Horses, hopping from one to the other, one guy on one, the other pulling him off, ripping jackets, and setting the audience into a roar.

 

DD bid on one of the Icelandic horses, but another outbid her.

 

The Hermiston Auction held an extra bonanza horse sale in February, and for a couple of years, DD and I used it as our birthday celebration, as her birthday and mine are two weeks apart. One year as DD entered the motel room from getting snacks, I said, "This television has gone psychedelic."

 

"Oh no,” she declared, “it’s gone Ice Cream Cake!"

 

We had put an ice cream cake on top of the TV to keep it away from Cherish, DD's Great Dane dog. 

 

I called the office and told them their TV didn't work—sorry.

 

DD "flipped" a horse once. It was a sweet little mare named Sweetie. DD bought her at an auction in Eugene, we drove her to Hermiston, and sold her for a profit. The owner had neglected her feet, and the Ferrier I hired to trim them said, "You're too sweet a horse to have this happen to you." (When hooves grow too long, they can cripple the horse.)

 

A mother and her little girl bought Sweetie, and a few months later, the buyer called DD and asked what stallion had bred her. During the night, Sweetie had given birth to a foal.

 

They were delighted. We were shocked.

 

When I spotted a beautiful six-month-old filly whose coat looked like charcoal brown velvet being led down an aisle, I decided she was my horse. But first, I had to outbid another person who also wanted her.

 

I was so nervous bidding that DD held up the numbered paddle. I would nod, and DD would hold up the number. Someone else would bid. I felt I was going over my price, but I wouldn't give up. The auctioneer would look at me, and I would nod, and DD would hold up the paddle. I outbid my competitor—put her on my American Express card and got frequent flyer miles. 

 

We were exuberant. The crowd applauded. 

 

Afterward, a cowboy approached us and said, "Watching you girls buy a horse was more fun than buying one myself."

 

A year later, I bought/adopted another six-month-old filly, a Mustang, from the Bureau of Land Management in Burns, Oregon. That was Sierra, a curious gem of a horse. The sweetest thing.

 

She was born at the Burns facility, so it was apparent that the mother had to do the run while pregnant. What a character that horse was. My pickup truck’s hood carried "Monster claw marks," aka Sierra’s teeth marks for the rest of its life. People thought they were funny, so I kept them as a conversation piece.

 

Duchess became the matriarch of the herd living until Sierra was five and Velvet was six and is buried on Davis Mountain.

 

I would turn the horses loose, and they would stay around the house. (We lived in the forest, so we had privacy, a cleared area around the house, and access into the forest. However, I kept a close watch on them, for once Velvet and Sierra ventured along a path up the hill into the forest, and when Duchess and I went searching for them, a man had his tee shirt around Velvet’s neck and was leading her to his place. He thought he was rescuing them. I said it was a white man’s thing: a horse must be confined. (I trust they would have come home for dinner.) Later I worried about what would happen if he had confined them, and I wouldn’t know what had happened to them. I was always outside with them after that.

 

I fed them morning and night and kept their 12 x 24 run-in barn and paddock clean. My morning meditation was with the horses while they contentedly munched their hay. That was after they had greeted me with a whinny and raced across the paddock coming to a screeching halt at the gate. I held two grain buckets on the six-inch diameter log that served as our gate, and kissed the tops of their heads while they licked and slobbered the rubber containers clean. After pushing a wheelbarrow of hay under the log, they would politely walk with me, not stealing hay along the way, to the barn where I spread their meals. The three- sided barn was easy to clean as it had rubber mats on the floor, and the horses used one side for a toilet and kept the other side clean.

 

A freed horse is such fun.

 

They would race up the gravel drive that served as an emery board for Sierra’s strong mustang feet. Velvet’s not as perfectly formed Quarter Horse feet had to be trimmed, she, though, could do a perfect Lipizzaner leap from the hill above the retaining wall down to the driveway below. Both horses would roll in the Oregon red soil, crack their knuckles, and settle down to graze the green grass that grew around the house. 

 

Those were eight happy horsey years.