Slowing Down

The road of life twists and turns and no two directions are ever the same. Yet our lessons come from the journey,
not the destination.
– Don Williams, Jr.

I remember a story I heard long ago about a man who had worked hard all his life and finally earned enough money to take his dream vacation. He wanted to go on a Safari to a remote part of Africa. So he hired porters to carry his camera, camping and hunting gear and headed off across the Serengeti. He only had 10 days scheduled and after looking at the map saw, that if he hurried they could probably reach their destination, the elephant mating grounds, in 3 days, just in time for the start of mating season. So the first day he was up at the crack of dawn, waking up the Africans he had hired to carry all his equipment, saying “come on we have to get moving. Let’s get everything packed up.” They started out their journey at break-neck speed. All day long he pushed them to move faster with their heavy loads under the hot African sun...

At the end of the first day the men collapsed after setting up tents and making dinner. But, the man was unhappy because they had only covered about three quarters of the distance planned and were behind schedule. The man was very frustrated and the next morning he woke up hours before dawn and started rallying the men to pack up and get moving. Amidst much grumbling he finally got them packed and moving, practically running across the desert, only stopping for short water breaks. The men were exhausted by the end of the day and collapsed again after setting up camp. The man was still not happy as they were still way behind schedule and he vowed to get up even earlier the next morning...

The next day he was awake very early and went around yelling and beating on the tents to wake up the sleeping porters to no avail. They took their time finally arising, then sat having breakfast and telling stories. The man became quite frustrated and started yelling, "Come on, we are going to be late, we have to get moving..." An old black tribesman with a gray beard sitting against a tree weaving a piece of rope looked up slowly and said, "Boss we’re not going anywhere today. We are going to take a break to let our spirits catch up with us."

We live in a moment of history where change
is so speeded up that we begin to see the present
only when it is already disappearing.
– R. D. Laing

Read the entire letter from Michael here.

Upcoming Events

Satyana’s Power of Reconciliation Workshop
Healing and Transformation between women and men
Ghost Ranch Retreat Center
October 7 - 9, 2011
Abiqui, New Mexico
(Satyana has agreed to extend the early registration to Sept 28th for Well of Light readers)
www.satyana.org/POI_2011.html

Lisa Schrader and I have been looking for people who have been doing in depth gender reconciliation work and have found what we believe to be one of the most profound experiential programs available on the planet today. For Flyer and registration please click here.

From Boys to Men
October 7-11 Auburn, CA

It's easier to build strong boys than to repair broken men.
– Fredrick Douglas

The Boys to Men Rite of Passage weekend is designed to help boys become the man they want to be. Boys to Men provides boys with a “rite of passage” adventure weekend where positive qualities such as integrity, courage, respect, passion, and leadership are modeled by adult male staff. For more information, click here.

Navigating the Coming Chaos:
Carolyn Baker Lecture and Workshop
Thursday evening 7-9:30pm November 17th with Mat Stein
Saturday all day 10-6pm
Sierra Center for Positive Living

As institutions crumble and the world as we have known it becomes increasingly unfamiliar and uncertain, how do we align with the deeper story that we came here to live? What fibers of our being must we strengthen in order to navigate the collapse of the old paradigm and co-create the one waiting to emerge? It is possible to forsake our denial and face what is so if we are inspired by a host of ancestors from the past who have shown us how to navigate monumental changes in other times and places. Amid the threads of unraveling in our world, we can pluck the threads of ancient wisdom in order to live resiliently. In this public talk, and in the workshop to follow on Saturday, we will draw upon the timeless truths of our ancestors through song, story, poetry, and embodied community building in order to reclaim our truth and power amid chaos. For more information and registration call Michael at 530.477.7757. For more information about Carolyn go to carolynbaker.net.

Experiencing the Shamanic Journey

My friend Sandra Ingerman is doing an online Shamanic training called Experiencing the Shamanic Journey: A Direct Path of Revelation. I hope you will join me in participating in this powerful interactive program. For more information click here.

Moving Meditation News

Starting next month Moving Meditation News will become a separate quarterly newsletter from The Well of Light, focused on movement, meditation and ecstatic dance. Please watch for our upcoming newsletters.

Presence Workshop Module 3 (registration is open to all)
Oct 1, 2011, Sacramento, CA
11-5pm

To enroll online, or for more information, click here.

This third and final module will focus on emptying the mind & being fully present in the moment. Building on the first two modules, yet standing alone, we will focus on learning to empty the persistent mind chatter and enter into the realm of pure presence. To find out more or to register go to www.bodyjoy.net

Special Moving-Meditation Wave Offer

This month: Indigenous movement wave – with $25 donation to Conversations – Monthly wave program.

Free Personalized 5R type music wave or book — For $25 a month contribution to KVMR's Conversations you will receive a new dance cd or book each month you contribute... Or book and cd for $40 for both. Keep Conversations going and support the Well of Light. Thank you for your ongoing support. We need it now more than ever... May it come back to you a hundred fold.

New Podcasts

Click here to view the Podcasts page, and to listen to the following podcasts:

Conversations Co-Host, Stephanie Van Hook, Michael Nagler, and you: Lessons learned Ten years after 9/11
click to listen
Join Conversations Host Michael Stone as he talks with Professor Michael Nagler, Metta Center Director Stephanie Van Hook and you the listener in this interactive discussion about what we can learn from 9/11 and our global actions of the past 10 years. Would a Non-Violent approach have worked, has the world become safer as a result of our actions, what is the best way forward from here? Join us in the dialogue of remembrance and vision… Is it possible to move towards a non-violent future?

Stephanie N. Van Hook is a recently returned Peace Corps volunteer who served in Benin. Her interests in nonviolence and forgiveness have intersected with activists and academics working for nonviolent social change in the global peace and justice community. She studied conflict resolution at Portland State University in Oregon and is currently co-director of The Metta Center for Nonviolence Education. www.mettacenter.org

Michael Nagler is Professor emeritus of languages at the University of California, Berkeley, and founder of the University's Peace and Conflict Studies program, He is the author of several books, including America Without Violence, Upanishads, and Is There No Other Way? The Search for a Nonviolent Future. Dr. Nagler is on the editorial board of The Acorn: Journal of the Gandhi-King Society and the advisory board of Tikkun magazine. He is the founder of the Metta Center for Nonviolence Education in Berkeley, California. www.mettacenter.org

Brian Swimme and Ivone Gebara: The Universe Story - The unification of science and religion
click to listen
Brian Swimme, PhD, is a cosmologist, and the author of the Hidden Heart of the Cosmos, The Universe Story (with Thomas Berry), The Universe is a Green Dragon and the video series The Canticle of the Cosmos and Earth’s Imagination. He co-authored the new book Journey of the Universe with Mary Evelyn Tucker and the storyteller in the new film by the same name.

Ivone Gebara, PhD, is a Brazilian Sister of Our Lady (Canoneses of St. Augustine) and one of Latin America's leading theologians, writing from the perspective of ecofeminism and liberation theology. Gebara claims that ecofeminism is born of "daily life" and thus considers garbage in the street, inadequate health care, and other daily survival crises faced by poor women to be central issues in ecofeminist liberation theology.

S. Brian Wilson: Blood on the Tracks, A nonviolent patriot
click to listen
S. Brian Wilson is a Vietnam veteran whose wartime experiences transformed him into a revolutionary nonviolent pacifist. On September 1, 1987, he was thrust into the public eye when he was run over and nearly killed by a U.S. navy Munitions train while engaging in a nonviolent blockade in protest of weapons shipments to El Salvador. Since the 1980's he has continued efforts to educate the public about the diabolical nature of U.S. imperialism while striving to "walk his talk" (on two prosthetic legs and a three-wheeled hand cycle) by creating a model of right livelihood including a simpler lifestyle. brianwillson.com

John Gray: Venus on Fire, Mars on Ice – How men and women cope with stress
2 hour special edition
listen to Part 1 - Listen to Part 2
John Gray Ph.D., is the bestselling relationship author of all time. He is the author of 16 best-selling books, including Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, and the number one best-selling book of the last decade. An expert in the field of communication, Dr. Gray's focus is to help men and women understand, respect and appreciate their differences in both personal and professional relationships. John Gray's latest book, Venus on fire, Mars on ice, reveals how men and women can improve relationships by understanding how they cope differently with stress. www.johngray.com

Contemporary Slavery and Human Trafficking in Your Backyard!
Nicholas Sensley, Chief of Police, Truckee, CA
click to listen
Nicholas Sensley, Truckee Police Chief shares about the human trafficking in Nevada County. Contrary to popular opinion, trafficking isn’t just limited to the sex trade. It also appears in the form of domestic servitude, sweatshop factories and migrant agricultural work. Traffickers use violence, fraud and coercion to compel women, men and children into slavery. Many of these victims do not speak or understand English and are unable to communicate with anyone who might be able to help them."

Farmageddon
click to listen
Farmageddon is a powerful film documenting the U.S. government’s constant attacks on innocent farmers and consumers in an attempt to protect massive corporate interests. When the government controls the food you eat and the healthcare you receive, sickness is pervasive – this is exactly what has happened in the U.S.”
farmageddonmovie.com

Kristin Canty
Kristin Canty is the Director/Producer of Farmageddon; The Unseen War on American Family Farms. When Kristin learned that farmers and co-ops all over the country were increasingly getting raided by the government, she set out to make a film about it. She hopes that when people see it, it can change the tide of public pressure so that our government stops harassing and adding costly burdens to our small, organic farmers.
Cathe' Fish
Cathe’ Fish is the Leader of the local Gold Country chapter of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Director of Practical Permaculture Research Institute, a Permaculture Designer, Consultant and Teacher as well as a Local Food Activist in Nevada County.
Mark McAfee, CEO, Managing Member
Founder of Organic Pastures Dairy, Mark is internationally recognized as an expert in raw milk production, and has spoken in over fifteen states and three countries on the subject. He invented the first -dietary supplements- made from fresh raw colostrum, and secured their certification from the FDA and DHS. Mark created and published the first international raw milk safety standards at www.rawusa.org

Ed Tick: War and the Soul, July 26, 2011
click to listen
Dr. Edward Tick, author of the groundbreaking book “War and the Soul” and founder of Soldier’s Heart, is a practicing psychotherapist specializing in veterans with PTSD. He has been in private psychotherapy practice since 1975 and began focusing on veteran’s issues in 1979. A practicing psychotherapist for more than 25 years, he is a nationally recognized authority on the psychological, spiritual, historical, and cultural aspects of war in the healing of PTSD. For more go to soldiersheart.net

Dr. Barbara Fields: A Season for Non Violence
click to listen
Dr. Barbara Fields is Executive Director of the Association for Global New Thought (AGNT) and is the co-founder and project director of the Gandhi King Season for Nonviolence. She is Co-founder and Project Director of the Synthesis Dialogues with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama of Tibet and Co-director, with Dr. William Ury, of the Harvard Global Negotiation Network’s Abraham Walk Initiative in the Middle East. She serves on the Boards of Earth Action, the Foundation for Conscious Evolution, and La Casa de Maria in Santa Barbara, CA. She is co-founder of The Earth Network, a non-profit alternative television organization dedicated to the environment, social action, and the human spirit. www.agnt.org

Book of the Month

The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality
by Richard Heinberg

The End of Growth re-evaluates our cherished economic theories and describes what policy makers, communities, and families can do to build a new economy that operates within Earth’s budget of energy and resources. We can thrive during the transition if we set goals that promote human and environmental well-being, rather than pursuing the now unattainable prize of ever-expanding GDP.

This is one of those must read books that takes a systems approach to economics and shows us how we can begin to live within our means and begin to protect our natural capital... You can also hear 2 upcoming interviews with Richard Heinberg at 1pm on September 20th or from noon to 2pm.
www.richardheinberg.com

Articles

How to Cultivate a Rich Inner Garden

Many of us attach the experience of joy to what is happening in our outer world rather than allowing joy to flow through us. When we attach our joy or any feeling -- such as love -- to outer events we become dependent on what is happening outside of us in determining how we feel on a particular day.

And the truth of the matter is, when we do this the good feelings of joy, love, wonder and harmony will be fleeting, as conditions of life change moment to moment. Safety and security also fall into this principle, for as our outer world changes one day you feel safe, and the next day you do not. One day you might feel secure in your job, and then the economy changes and your job security might now be at risk. You might start to feel as if you are riding a rollercoaster of emotions.

To read the full article, click here.

Does Inequality Make Us Unhappy?

In 1980, the average American CEO's income was 40 times higher than that of the average worker. Today, it is well over 300 times higher. A new study suggests this rising income inequality in the United States doesn’t just affect Americans’ pocketbooks; it affects their happiness. Over the past four decades, according to the study, the American people have been the least happy in years when there was the widest gap between rich and poor.

To read the full article, click here.

Top NASA Climatologist Protests Transnational Oil Pipeline

As President Obama’s deadline to approve or disapprove licensing of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline draws closer, NASA’s lead climatologist, Dr. James Hansen, addressed reporters at the National Press Club to explain the grave consequences of approving such a project.

“We have a planetary emergency,” Hansen, an adjunct professor at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University and at Columbia’s Earth Institute, told reporters Monday.

To read the full article, click here.

Empathy and Compassion in Buddhism and Neuroscience: Alfred W. Kaszniak, PhD

A central insight of The Buddha, also directly realized by generations of meditation practitioners over the centuries, is that our common experience of an independent and permanent self is an illusion. In deep meditation practice, this sense of self is directly observed to be constructed out of the constantly changing mental continuum of form, sensation, perception, mental formations and consciousness. An aspect of this experiential deconstruction of the self is the realization of interconnection, or what Zen Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh has termed “interbeing.” This insight appears contrary to a sense of separateness and independence that may seem fundamental to Western culture and modern life. However, recent scientific research in the rapidly developing new domain of social neuroscience has provided evidence resonant with the meditative insight of interdependence.

To read the full article, click here.

It's the Empathy Crisis, Stupid

Brian Moench
CommonDreams.org

I'm sure everyone reading this already knows that our "debt crisis" is a mirage, a canard manipulated by the radical right wing who are theologically devoted to allowing society's rich to become even more so. Our supposed spending problem is nothing more than a "We won't tax the rich no matter what" problem. The media has played along; Pres. Obama and many of the Democrats are also playing along. And the political barometer has taken yet another sharp lurch to the right. But while we don't really have a debt crisis, we do have an empathy crisis and it's the empathy ceiling that has come crashing down on us and desperately needs to be raised.

To read the full article, click here.

More than 1 billion tons of food lost or wasted every year, UN-backed report finds

UN News Centre

11 May 2011 – About a third of all the food produced for human consumption each year – or roughly 1.3 billion tons – is lost or wasted, according to a new study commissioned by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The study, compiled by the Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology and unveiled today, finds that food waste is more of a problem in rich countries and food loss during production is a bigger issue in poor countries because of poor infrastructure and technology.

To read the full article, click here.

The Courage to Stop Pretending: Tim DeChristopher Sentenced

After being found guilty in March (of making a false statement and violating the Federal Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing Reform Act), activist Tim DeChristopher was sentenced today in federal court to two years in prison and ordered to pay a $10,000 fine. He was taken into custody immediately.

If you haven’t yet heard the details of the now-famous action that got him arrested, the short version is this: While protesting at an auction of oil and gas leases on Utah's public lands, he was asked if he was a bidder, and said “yes.” He proceeded to bid millions of dollars he didn’t have, upping the price of some parcels, winning others, and eventually shutting down the entire auction—which was later dismissed as illegal by the Obama administration.

To read the full article, click here.

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On Giving-Thanks

For it is in giving that we receive.
St. Francis of Assisi

We need your support to continue to provide Conversations, The Well of Light and other up to date information on what is happening in the environmental, spiritual, and social justice arenas. If you get value from these offerings I invite you to support their continuation by funding them. Your contribution makes a difference and so do you. Thank you for being a supporter of Conversations...

Free Personalized 5R type music wave or book — For $25 a month contribution to KVMR's Conversations you will receive a new dance cd or book each month you contribute... Or book and cd for $40 for both. Keep Conversations going and support the Well of Light. Thank you for your ongoing support. We need it now more than ever... May it come back to you a hundred fold.

Blessings,
michael

You are like a candle. Imagine you are sending light out all around you. All your words, thoughts and actions are going in many directions. If you say something kind, your kind words go in many directions, and you yourself go with them. We are ...transforming and continuing in a different form at every moment.
– Thich Nhat Hanh

Upcoming Shows on Conversations

Sept 20th
Richard Heinberg: The End Of Growth
Richard Heinberg is one of the world's foremost Peak Oil educators. He is the author of eight books, journalist, editor, lecturer, a Core Faculty member of New College of California where he teaches a program on "Culture, Ecology and Sustainable Community," and a Research Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute. His latest book is The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality. www.richardheinberg.com

Sept 27th
Donna Gates: The Baby Boomers Diet
Donna Gates, a nutritional consultant, author and lecturer has helped thousands of people overcome candidiasis and other immune system disorders. Her book, The Body Ecology Diet, was written after years of research to find a cure for her own candida- related health problems. Frustrated with conventional medicine, she embarked on a long course of study into many different healing concepts, including ancient Chinese medicine, macrobiotics, natural hygiene, raw foods and mega-supplement therapy. Incorporating the most beneficial components of each concept into her own system of health and healing, her success inspired her to share it with others. Her latest book is the Baby Boomers Diet. www.bodyecology.com

October 4th
John Travis: Finding Center
John Travis has been a student of Vipassana since 1969. John has been teaching meditation since the mid 1980's. He leads retreats in Northern California and around the United States and abroad. John is the founding teacher of Mountain Stream Meditation Center in the Sierra Foothills, and is a senior teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, in Woodacre, Marin County, CA. www.johntravis.org/

October 11th
Peter Gleick: The Bottled Water Myth
Dr. Peter H. Gleick is co-founder and president of the Pacific Institute and one of the world's leading experts on water and climate issues. His research and writing address the critical connections between water and human health, the hydrologic impacts of climate change, sustainable water use, privatization and globalization, and international conflicts over water resources. Dr. Gleick was named a MacArthur Fellow for his work and dubbed a "visionary on the environment" by the BBC. He was elected both an Academician of the International Water Academy, in Oslo, Norway and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He serves on the boards of numerous journals and organizations, and is author of many scientific papers and eight books, including the biennial water report, The World's Water, and Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water. www.pacinst.org

October 18th
Alberto Villoldo: Ancient Medicine of the Amazon
Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D. is trained as a psychologist and medical anthropologist. He began his research in the Amazon, working with medicine which led him to the high mountains of the Andes and the Inka medicine people, where he discovered a group of healers who specialized in treating illness before it manifested in the physical body. In 1984, Dr. Villoldo founded the Four Winds Society to bring the teachings of these master healers to the West. The Four Winds Society is preserving a thousand year old tradition of knowledge to achieve personal and planetary healing. Dr. Villoldo's many books include: Mending the Past, Healing the Future with Soul Retrieval; Shaman, Healer, Sage; and The First Story Ever Told. www.thefourwinds.com

October 25th
Pledge Drive Show / Noon to 2pm
Richard Heinberg, Mat Stein, & Carolyn Baker: Navigating the Coming Chaos

Richard Heinberg is one of the world's foremost Peak Oil educators. He is the author of eight books, journalist, editor, lecturer, a Core Faculty member of New College of California where he teaches a program on "Culture, Ecology and Sustainable Community," and a Research Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute. His latest book is End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality. www.richardheinberg.com

Matthew Stein is an MIT-educated engineer, author and building contractor, Matthew Stein has built hurricane-resistant, energy-efficient, and environmentally friendly homes and designed computer disc drives, water filtration devices, solar PV roofing panels, medical bacteriological filters, and automated assembly machinery, among other things. An avid outdoorsman, he currently resides with his wife, Josie, in the High Sierra Mountains near Lake Tahoe, California. His latest book is When Technology Fails: A manual for self-reliance, sustainability, and surviving the long emergency. His web sites are at www.whentechfails.com

Carolyn Baker, Ph.D., was an adjunct professor of history and psychology for 11 years and a psychotherapist in private practice for 17 years. Much of her writing offers emotional and spiritual tools for preparing for living in a post-industrial world. Carolyn's latest book is Navigating The Coming Chaos: A Handbook For Inner Transition. Her other books include Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse, Coming Out From Christian Fundamentalism: Affirming Sensuality, Social Justice, and The Sacred, U.S. History Uncensored: What Your High School Textbook Didn't Tell You and The Journey of Forgiveness.
carolynbaker.net

Nov 1st
Clarissa Pinkola Estes: Untie the Women
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D. is an award-winning poet, diplomat senior Jungian psychoanalyst, and a cantadora (keeper of the old stories) in the Hispanic tradition. She has been in private practice for twenty-five years and is former executive director of the C. G. Jung Center for Research and Education in the United States. The author of The Gift of Story and an eleven-volume series of bestselling audio works published by Sounds True in Boulder, Colorado, Dr. Estés heads the C. P Estés Guadalupe Foundation, a human rights organization that has as one of its nascent missions the broadcasting of strengthening stories via shortwave radio to trouble spots throughout the world.

November 8th
Cyndi Dale: Energetic Boundaries
Cyndi Dale is an internationally renowned author, speaker, healer, and business consultant. Her books to-date includes bestseller, The Subtle Body: An Encyclopedia of Your Energetic Anatomy, published by Sounds True, which has won four internationally recognized Publisher's Awards. Her latest book, Energetic Boundaries: How to Stay Protected and Connected in Work, Love, and Life is a definitive guide for maintaining health, integrity and vitality. www.cyndidale.com

Conversations airs every Tuesday at 1pm PST on KVMR.
For current shows or more information go to www.AreWeListening.net

Videos

Is Climate Change a Global Security Threat?

Running Dry: Call To Action

The Top 1%: Wealth Inequality and the New Gilded Age

Afghans' Dire Need for Clean Water

Hundreds Arrested in Sustained Tar Sands Protests at White House

"Criminals" for a Stable Climate

John Travis / Spirit Rock Meditation Center

Hot Site of the Month

Waging Nonviolence:
People-Powered News and Analysis

Waging Nonviolence is a source for news, analysis, and original reporting about nonviolent activism, as well as for discussion of the theory behind it. These stories often go overlooked by the mainstream media, yet they are happening all around us in response to the most pressing challenges. They are reshaping our world. Please visit this inspiring and informative collaboration of people committed to giving us the tools and motivation to create a non-violent future... www.wagingnonviolence.org

A Call to Action!

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Well of Light Seva Team

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
— Mohandas K. Gandhi

Seva is selfless service to a cause you believe will benefit others. It is the willingness to perform any task for a greater cause without prospect of recognition or reward.

Well of Light has many opportunities to serve our community. If you would like to participate on the Well of Light Seva Team please call Michael Stone @ 530.477.7757 or email michael@welloflight.com

"I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve."
- Albert Schweitzer

Poetry Corner

Boundaries

The universe does not
revolve around you.
The stars and planets spinning
through the ballroom of space
dance with one another
quite outside of your small life.
You cannot hold gravity
or seasons; even air and water
inevitably evade your grasp.
Why not, then, let go?

You could move through time
like a shark through water,
neither restless or ceasing,
absorbed in and absorbing
the native element.
Why pretend you can do otherwise?
The world comes in at every pore,
mixes in your blood before
breath releases you into
the world again. Did you think
the fragile boundary of your skin
could build a wall?

Listen. Every molecule is humming
its particular pitch.
Of course you are a symphony.
Whose tune do you think
the planets are singing
as they dance?

- Lynn Ungar

My life is not this steeply sloping hour,
in which you see me hurrying.
Much stands behind me; I stand before it like a tree;
I am only one of my many mouths,
and at that, the one that will be still the soonest.

I am the rest between two notes,
which are somehow always in discord
because Death’s note wants to climb over—
but in the dark interval, reconciled,
they stay there trembling.
    And the song goes on, beautiful.

– Rainer Maria Rilke

A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted

When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight,

The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.

Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.

The ride you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.

You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken for the race of days.

At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.

– John O'Donohue, from "Blessings"

Donate to Conversations

Dear Friends,
For the past six years I have been funding Conversations, The Well of Light and other associated projects out of my own pocket and fund raising events. In order to keep this newsletter coming and keep moving towards syndicating Conversations we need your help. Please consider making a tax-deductible contribution if you enjoy receiving our monthly newsletter or listening to Conversations.

It’s easy, just click here to visit the Conversations Investors page, or click the button below:

Free Personalized 5R type music wave or book — For $25 a month contribution to KVMR's Conversations you will receive a new dance cd or book each month you contribute... Or book and cd for $40 for both. Keep Conversations going and support the Well of Light. Thank you for your ongoing support. We need it now more than ever... May it come back to you a hundred fold.

Thank you so much. Your support is greatly appreciated.

Blessings,
michael