This person's thoughts after a dream

 I think it's the stop sign of death.

The falling off the cliff of life.

Nothingness.

So how do I deal with it? Think about it? Feel emotional about nothing?

I have a new sense perhaps from my recent dream. In it I saw my son Marty carry a huge stack of magazines and newspapers from a coffee table out of the house. That was it. I had spoken with him earlier the evening before. But that was just about as much reality as the dream had. I have no coffee table. I have no magazines or newspapers.

But I have thoughts of how my family will have the burden of clearing out my apartment after I die.

I have only that emotional sense of duty, to try to do more to lessen that burden.

But this morning, as I felt again the dream, I realized my after-life (whatever it might be or not be) is actually also something besides that  last burden to my family. It's not final. The stop happens. Then I can continue on whatever road might be before me.

So I've got more choices after death.

Of course they (these choices) are all in the same imagination of my day to day life now. But it gives me something more to consider than the dread "final arrangements." Which I haven't made yet.

See Robertson's nice piece about his life as an Elder which I just posted earlier.

A few years ago, Marty and myself in St. Petersburg, FL

An Elder speaks

 From my friend Robertson Work - his Substack post

An Elder Awakens on an Autumn Day

Relieving suffering by embracing impermanence and interbeing

Robertson Work

Nov 03, 2025

(painting deleted)

I am suffering and aware of suffering. I know that this is true for all sentient beings, but this is my suffering. I also know that “my” includes everyone and everything.

At eighty-one, I am experiencing loss, loss of friends and family members due to death, illness, or lack of contact, loss of some of my mental and physical capacities, as well as the loss of a country and world which I have loved and have come to understand.

My ego, identity, and pride are under assault. I have always seen myself as strong, capable, caring, and hopeful. Now I am experiencing weakness, limitations, grief, and depression.

This is all natural and to be expected but is also new and disorienting. How can I accept and embrace these changes and transformations? What can I do to care for myself and others at this time in my life and the life of humanity and planet Earth?

I can accept and embrace these changes by contemplating the realities of impermanence and interbeing. Everything is in a state of perpetual arising, changing, falling apart, returning, and transforming. Everything embodies, and is interconnected with, everything else.

I can recall what I am grateful for at this moment. I am grateful to be living with my wise, loving wife, being near my children and grandchildren, living with kind neighbors, having a body and mind that are still active. I am grateful to be writing to you, and caring for family, neighbors, and friends.

Something is awakening in me. Have I been arrogant? Have I believed that taking compassionate actions justifies ones existence? What is karma? What is “just being?” What is it to love being alive just as it is as an unearned gift? For now, I can still keep writing, waking up, and taking actions. Gratitude.

Throughout my life, I have tried to be useful. Having the family name “Work” has been a symbol of what my life was about. Now that I am no longer facilitating, consulting, training, giving policy advice, traveling, managing projects and organizations, teaching grad students, giving keynotes, and making podcasts, who am I? I have not walked the dog for six months.

I used to say that when I could no longer be useful, then it is time to let go of this life. Is that still true? I did not ask to be born, to struggle, and to die. What a mystery this life is! How can I live each moment in gratitude and humility?

Am I narcissistic? Am I jealous of others wealth and fame which I have never sought? How do I care for myself as the unique being that I am? How can this “I” care for others?

Why am I often in despair? Did the heart ablation traumatize my body? Is it that my writing is not flowing? Is it that I am not sure about publishing my 114 new essays? Is it the cold weather with winter coming? Is it the uncertainties around the neighborhood workshop?

Is it my tiredness, floaters, difficulties balancing and walking, not getting out of the house much, not being with other people often, not having a lot to look forward to, worrying about BMT’s health, uncertainty about our future location, the harm being carried out by a fascist oligarchy, my belly, my old face, knowing that aging will continue, that climate disasters will increase, and that death awaits?

I am happy being with BMT, being with son Christopher and his family, staying in touch with son Benjamin, being able to see and hear, being with Chickabee the cat, being at home, being in touch with friends, posting on social media and Substack, having some income, savings, and a house, having caring neighbors, having a career serving people around the world, having five published books and contributions to thirteen other books, having no atrial fibrillation for one month, the daily shining of the sun-star, and anticipations of the coming of spring.

I can embrace and accept the real as the good. I can embrace impermanence and interbeing. I can learn how to suffer less. I can let go of ego, pride, jealousy, craving, and attachments. I can create new initiatives of thinking, creativity, and caring. I can continue to wake up.

Disasters of climate change and oligarchy are waking many people up around the country and the world. We the People are being called to create compassionate, ecological communities, networks, nations, and planetary society.

We can care for each other and for all ecosystems of water, air, soil, fungi, plants, and animals. We can vote and help get out the vote (GOTV). We can contact our representatives. We can write, speak, and organize for social justice and democracy. We can get food to the hungry. We can call for peace in Sudan, Ukraine, Palestine, Israel, and around this world.

After the bleakness and dying of winter, spring will appear with new life, new colors, and new hope.

Let us continue to awaken in truth, love, and humility. Let us overcome vertigo with calm, confidence, and patience.

May it be so."

Carlos, myself, Hannah and Robertson at Earth Day celebration 2024

On life and death - consider this

 A video with things to consider...

The Egg Story by Andy Weir Animated by Kurzgesagt A Big Thanks to Andy Weir for allowing us to use his story. The original was released here: http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/thee... Visit his website here: http://www.andyweirauthor.com/

Celebrating Joanna Macy

 

WATCH • READ • LISTEN • ENGAGE Photo by Adam Loften Honoring Joanna Macy “You are not a separate being. You belong to the living body of Earth. You are the Earth, looking up at the stars. You are the Earth, becoming conscious of itself.” –Joanna Macy On Saturday, July 19th, eco-philosopher, Buddhist scholar, and dear friend Joanna Macy passed away at the age of ninety-six. Undoubtedly one of the most influential leaders of deep ecology, she dedicated her long life to the Work That Reconnects—a body of practices fostering a remembrance of the interconnectedness between people and the greater web of life; and frameworks for alchemizing despair, anger, and apathy towards loss and harm into constructive change and action. Of our current cultural and ecological polycrises, Joanna said, “The darker the circumstance, the more brilliant the invitation.” Joanna’s voice was one of the first we sought in our early publishing days, and she repeatedly offered insight and wisdom over the years through her writing, and as a teacher for our Seeds of Radical Renewal leadership program. In her interview with us, she traced the ways a life-long heart connection with the living world cultivated a resounding ecological awareness within her work, alongside a recognition of what she called “the Great Turning”—the possibilities of societal transformation that exist at the core of our unfolding destruction. “I have a lot of grief for what we’re doing to our world and to the future,” she said, “but I know at the same time that whatever happens, there’s nothing that can happen that will ever separate me from the living body of Earth.” Her exploration of how we might return to this “ecological self” as a way to be of service amid the climate catastrophe was central to many of her books, including World as Lover, World as Self, Coming Back to Life, and Active Hope. Joanna was also a seminal translator of Rainer Maria Rilke’s work. Moved by his contemplations on the entwinement of grief, beauty, and spiritual life, she often quoted a particular stanza from Book of Hours:   I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world. I may never complete this last one, but I give myself to it. I circle around God, that primordial tower. I’ve been circling for thousands of years and I still don’t know: am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song? Through her work and life, Joanna imparted a way of being that does not shy away from collapse, but listens for what is emergent within it. She reminds us that grief is not a failing, and that to feel sorrow for the burning world is to be awake to its beauty: “In the face of impermanence and death, it takes courage to love the things of this world and to believe that praising them is our noblest calling.”

Thanks Emergence Magazine. Other touching obituaries have been shared by many others who's lives she impacted.

Here's a Substack article which just popped up in my In-Box.

https://drewdellinger.substack.com/p/bodhisattva-of-the-biosphere-a-tribute?utm_source=multiple-personal-recommendations-email&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true

Mindfulness meditation class

 Topic was anxiety and pain.

I went and joined 4 others as well as a licensed teacher, where we had 2 episodes of meditation. A bit of discussion of pain and anxiety, and treatments of same.

It was a good hour for just $5.

I will try it again. 

Did I get an answer to a question I posed?

Not really. The anxious awakening in the night and not being able to go back to sleep.

One woman said 4 cups of sleepy time tea. (and didn't mention how my bladder would respond to that).

I do like the idea of doing some mindful breath focus, just to get my mind away from worrying about the state of something that I did, or am about to do. I'll see how that works before the next class.

Channeling

 When a word catches your attention, it's meaning says "this should be considered more deeply, more fully," there's a wonderful thing that starts to happen. It reappears in other contexts. It seems to be like a gnat that comes by and then disappears, but only to reappear later. Bothersome. But perhaps that's just because you really need to do something about it. Built a gnat catching hotel for it. (whisper that a bowl of old fruit skins with a piece of plastic wrap stretched across and a few holes punched will entice your tiny friends into their own happy capture.) For the word "channeling" I just sit and wait.

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. ... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others”― Martha Graham

Another quote goes with helping us through traumas, like floods, accidents, fires, political destructions. 

Opening to that which is most naturally myself, then healing the structures which have been damaged.

That's where my thoughts this foggy morning are.

Getting clarity. Letting go. But still doing householder's tasks. I threw out the pretty nectarine which suddenly bloomed with a big patch of mold on one side, the side I hadn't been looking at. Fuzzy greenish grey says "danger, beware, do not breathe the spores which emanate from me."

Meditate on what is most healthy. I am just part of the whole that is.

A Kimmerer tale

 Robin Wall Kimmerer is such a great author. "Braiding Sweetgrass" was my first joyfully owned reading of hers. 

She is published often by Emergence Magazine, who has Sunday sharings on their newsletters. Here's one from last Sunday, the trees and life, and microbiology! Such images!

Becoming Earth: An Experimental Theology

The Trickster

 A podcast…about the trickster. The Emerald with Joshua Sherei.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-emerald/id1465445746?i=1000701811853

I took my time listening to this podcast…and about 3/4 way through I was struck by the metaphor of the body and culture. So I’m going to go back and listen to that again…it seemed to go very quickly, while talking about looking for slowness.

Summer Solstice

I may do a ritual for Summer Solstice this year...which I don't believe I ever have. Let's see, just have a circle to represent the elements and directions (N,S,E and W.) Earth, air, fire, water. Easy to find in all my collections. I can set this up as an altar, a place to meditate upon as the longest day of the year offers all that sun-time! Music helps set the mood of reverence, probably some sunshine songs.

"Sunshine on My Shoulders" by John Denver (from the Wildlife Concert)

It's up to God

 Commodification of everything is the biggest problem of how things are run these days, in my humble opinion! 

For (Heraclitus), reality is not a constellation of things at all, but one of processes. The fundamental ‘stuff’ of the world is not material substance but volatile flux, namely 'fire,’ and all things are versions thereof (puros tropai). 

Process is fundamental: the river is not an object, but a continuing flow; the sun is not a thing, but an enduring fire. 

Everything is a matter of process, of activity, of change (panta rhei). Not stable things but fundamental forces and the varied and fluctuating activities they manifest constitute the world. 

We must at all costs avoid the fallacy of materializing nature.

—Nicholas Rescher

Thanks to Love is a Place blog.

-----------------

For me I've been considering how scientifically thinking people approach problems so differently than religiously thinking people.

My maintenance man put a new part in to replace the crumbling one in my air conditioner. I said but what about the cause of the problem? Can you fix the thing that made it crumble in the first place into rust particles?

He mentioned we live in a rain forest. He apologized for saying he was going to be religious (a nice touch.) And then he said it's up to God. 

I said it needed to be born again!

This is what it's like to live in a red community...a right wing Christian neighborhood, while many of my friends are Democratic liberals. I never realized it would extend to the approach to repairing things!

----------

So while looking at machines which fall apart and those who fix them just pray about it, I'm considering the process rather than the thing itself.

This process for me is cause and effects. Try this or that, if it works, then the way has been found. A process.

For my maintenance man, he only goes to the thing that works...just replace the broken part, and don't even think about what caused it. All causes in his mind are to a great force beyond all understanding, to which he prays, I'd imagine, regularly.

Which brings me to climate change.

Many neighbors have experienced some drastic events here in western North Carolina, with the hurricane last September changing the faces of many valleys and mountain-sides. Some of them just cope with what needs to be done (food, water, shelter) and say it's God's will. 

They actually find comfort when someone dies, has unfortunate circumstances, or even does something illegal...to say God is the answer to your questions...He wants this to happen this way.

I can't approach any of this in this manner, excuse me very much. I have too much faith in a scientific process, to figure out what things might be done by us to change the results of what's happening in nature, so we can still survive and maybe thrive, a few generations coming along. This also requires my owning responsibility for much of climate change...and looking at men (generic I mean) who have caused it.

So we're responsible. We're able. We can change our behaviors. We can support ideas that might offer solutions to problems. OK, I've gotten off on a tangent here.

But my concept of a divine force isn't that I can just let it do it's thing, and I don't have to do anything.

 Link to the following: 

Supracellular: A Meditation by Sophie Strand

“I want to think and feel and weep and grieve with my whole multispecies, polynucleated mind.”

Letting her consciousness slip from the confines of her brain into the long tubes of hyphae that make up the mycelial network beneath her feet, author Sophie Strand wonders how much better we might think if we involved the wide web of more-than-human beings around us. She challenges the idea that our minds are individual—like siloed cells resisting exchange with the outside world—and offers a practice of opening up to a “supracellular state” in which thinking is less bound to an organ and more a relational process that moves through the fungal, geological, microbial, vegetal, ancestral threads that connect us with our ecosystem. This exercise in embodied empathy enables Sophie to enter the minds of rivers, black bears, and chanterelles; and as the borders between physical matter dissolve, her self flows into a wider space of multiplicity. She feels in the extended web of her cognition both the wonder of the land’s otherness and the pain of its increasing disruption. This essay is the first in a series of four we are sharing over the next month in partnership with the Center for Humans and Nature.

Emergent divine feminine

 “The Goddess doesn't enter us from outside; she emerges from deep within. She is not held back by what happened in the past. She is conceived in consciousness, born in love, and nurtured by higher thinking. She is integrity and value, created and sustained by the hard work of personal growth and the discipline of a life lived actively in hope.”

~ Marianne Williamson

Stained glass, artist unknown

On thinking

 Evan Thompson describes:

Part of the problem, however, comes from thinking of the mind or meaning as being generated in the head. That’s like thinking that flight is inside the wings of a bird. A bird needs wings to fly, but flight isn’t in the wings, and the wings don’t generate flight; they generate lift, which facilitates flight. Flying is an action of the whole animal in its environment. Analogously, you need a brain to think, but thinking isn’t in the brain, and the brain doesn’t generate it; it facilitates it. The brain generates many things—neurons and their synaptic connections, ongoing rhythmic activity patterns, the constant dynamic coordination of sensory and motor activity—but none of these should be identified with thinking, though all of them crucially facilitate it. Thinking is an action of the whole person in its environment.

Evan Thompson, “Spring Forward or Fall Back: Changing Times for Neuroscience,”
Psychology Today, May 13, 2015, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/wakingdreaming-
being/201505/spring-forward-or-fall-back.

I quoted this from an article which I'll link tomorrow!

Meryl Streep - excellent philosophy

From  Midwives of the Soul, Facebook

 Meryl Streep once said: Let things fall apart — stop exhausting yourself trying to hold them together. Not everything is meant to last forever, and forcing what is already breaking will only drain you. Sometimes, the best thing you can do is let go.

Let people be upset. Let them misunderstand you. Let them criticize and judge. Their opinions are reflections of their own perceptions, not a measure of your worth. You do not need to explain yourself to those who are committed to misunderstanding you. You are not responsible for how others choose to see you or how they react to your truth.

Stop fearing the unknown. Stop asking, Where will I go? What will I do? as if the universe has not already carved a path for you. Loss can feel unbearable, but sometimes, it is simply clearing the way for something better. What is meant to leave will leave, no matter how desperately you try to hold on. What is meant to stay will find a way, no matter how uncertain things seem. Life always finds a way to balance itself, even when we can’t see how.

There is a rhythm to life, a natural order of endings and beginnings. When we resist that flow, we create suffering. We cling to what is breaking, fearing that nothing good will replace it. But this is an illusion. The universe is abundant, constantly unfolding new opportunities, new love, and new purpose. The only thing keeping you from it is your attachment to what no longer belongs to you.

And never, for a second, believe that the best is behind you. Life does not stop offering beauty just because you have endured hardship. The good has not run out. There is still more joy to experience, more love to receive, more peace to be found. But you must be willing to make room for it.

So, ask yourself—What am I holding onto that is holding me back? And when you find the answer, trust yourself enough to let it go. Something better is already on its way.

Image | Meryl Streep by Kurt Markus

Not so much inner life as just notes about life

 Got my COVID booster yesterday. Sort of rushed in between all kinds of other things. Picked up my box lunch and took it home to eat. Good rice, fish (maybe with parmesan on it - couldn't taste it.) Jello (orange!)

Hey yesterday was Gun Violence Awareness day, wear orange - I didn't have anything orange. Wore red (which used to be the color to wear.)

Definitely true...!

After tossing the lunch foam box into the bear-proof garbage bin outside, drove to CVS and as I arrived they sent a text canceling my COVID appointment. I asked the pharmacist if it was because I was 2 minutes late. No, he said, it was that a my insurance wouldn't cover it...did I have my Medicare card? I gave it to him, and the shot was covered that way. It was a Pfizer shot this time. I had had my last booster last fall, so was due for one. I just hope the one this fall will be including the latest strain.

I did as a nurse had shown me (being in line before me one time for a booster) and swung my arm around a bunch, hoping it would disperse the drug more. It was still sore that night and the next morning. Oh well. I didn't have to take a pain reliever at least.

I had a $4 coupon, and received another $2 coupon when I got there. So I had to find something to buy (that I might use!) I started with a folding camp chair (priced at $29.) By the time I paid for it somehow it was $14...less than half price with tax! I like to go up on the Blue Ridge Parkway and sit at one of the overlooks and just absorb the beauty - when they are open again, and when weather is ok too. Some of Parkway will be closed for a year I've heard.

Pain now is in my right hip, running on the outside of my hip down my leg. So walking activities have been canceled for today. I continue to do my early stretch each morning. After all, if cats do it... Some back stretches and some hamstring stretches. Yesterday I was proud of myself for doing 8 minutes of Qigong breathing exercises. Didn't help that much. Lots of coughing by evening, and even woke me up a few times.

I skipped the evening nebulizer treatment, just huffed a couple of times on the albuterol inhaler.

 Do Not Skip Nebulizer, Barb!

That's not my inner mother talking (I hope) but maybe the cheerleader or coach who wants me (really wants me) to win. Another day, another night.

So today add that 20 minutes before doing anything, and again before going to bed. My inner child really rebels at discipline. I do have a good book to read, so will give myself that reward.

My friends don't use behavioral modification to give themselves incentives.

I do, but don't know if it really works. But it's fun to look at chores and figure out a reward.

I didn't like the last person who cleaned for me. She would be a good "organizer" and take everything apart and put it together the way she likes, if I would let her.

So now when I mop the kitchen floor (which I did, seriously, all by myself) I call myself her name. And do I pay myself? You betcha! That's how I got the new book to read. I maybe mentioned it on another blog, 

Visual Learning by Temple Grandin. I am pretty sure I learn with visual cues - by my age I should know what works and  what doesn't. But I'm not sure I think with pictures. I  process a lot about verbalization but not by listening (particularly by writing so many thoughts down.) So I definitely do have a verbalization methodology. But I have an innate sense of my place in the world...in relation to where I'm standing, which way is north, how close I am to other people, and how noisy it is before I'm really uncomfortable.

I have an inner map, and can usually find my way back to where I started on most new trips...give me visual cues - not turn left, right 3 blocks etc. directions. These are visual thinker's methods.

It's playing with raining outside today. Perhaps some severe wind. We shall see. It rained quite a bit last night, waking me up a couple of times with it hitting against the window. I've finally dried out the air inside so I'm able to move about comfortably.

Off I go to nebulize saline solution and then inhale more albuterol! 

I hope whoever reads this can add their own opinions. Thanks to one person who does comment! I wonder if anyone else even reads here.