Our Journey to a Sustainable Future

THE HOUSE

The theme of our "farm house" is "Sustainability." It is a great place to talk about, think about, and experiment with a lifestyle that is more sustainable than the one we've inherited. It is helpful to have friends and family members who are supportive.

Mutual encouragements, combined with humor, can help keep us steadily on the path towards a more conscientious lifestyle. I am an environmentalist because our kids deserve to have what many of us were lucky enough to have: Clean food and water, access to nature and natural resources, Peace, and the knowledge that we are part of something bigger.

ON MINIMIZING TRASH

1. RECYCLING & MINIMIZING WASTE

We have five bins in the kitchen at our house.

1. One bin is for packaging that can't be recycled or composted (trash; mostly plastic packaging);
2. One bin is for recycling plastics, glass, and aluminum;
3. One bin is for recycling paper and cardboard;
4. One bin is for the city compost (organic waste that would attract raccoons, like meat); and
5. One bin is for the household compost (organic waste that doesn't attract raccoons).

2. USE OF PLASTICS
The use of plastics should be avoided where it can, especially as disposable packaging for food (see below). After I've recycled and composted the things that might otherwise be trash, I am primarily left with un-recyclable plastic packaging in the trash bin. Even plastics that go into the recycling bin are oft not recyclable and end up as trash. I am voting with my wallet by buying things that are sustainably packaged. The following are some good websites to look at.

• Ecology Center
• My Plastic Free Life

3. USE OF DISPOSABLES
I avoid the use of disposable, "one time use" things. I try, or at least make an effort to:

• avoid the use of disposable, one-time-use items like plastic utensils, straws, cups, etc.
• If I have to choose between a bio-degradable disposable paper cup versus a non-biodegradable plastic cup, I always use the bio-degradable one.
• carry around :
• a water container at all times, so to not use disposable water bottled in plastic. 
• a set of utensils (my favorite chopsticks in a Totoro case) to minimize waste.
• a small container to take home take-out food in, to minimize the use of doggie bags. (My Nalgene bottle doubles as a take out container - I wish steel water bottles came with bigger mouths.)
• ceramic tall mugs with silicon lids to avoid the use of disposable paper cups.  They are the size of a Grande at Starbucks. If I'm lucky enough to remember to have it with me, great.

The Japanese have another phrase that they use a lot. It's the word "mottainai" meaning that at all times we shouldn't throw things away if it's "good enough." The Western lifestyle is, in general, mottainai, IMHO. The Japanese also have a concept of aesthetics called "Wabi Sabi," which is an aesthetic that is sustainable. The concept teaches us that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It's just all perspective. And yet the Japanese wrap everything excessively in plastic, which drives me crazy.

Other good sites:
http://www.facebook.com/100thingchallenge

ON MINIMIZING OUR CARBON FOOTPRINT

According to the online carbon calculator my carbon footprint is way lower than the average American's, but way above the average World citizen's. We have to continue to make hard choices to dial down our carbon footprint. 

Some of the below concerns the secret life I haven't been blogging about:

1. DRIVING
For now, it is a necessary evil in my life. I have a bio-diesel car. I pack 10 gallons of the veggie oil in my trunk, and together with the 10 gallons in the tank, I have plenty of fuel to go to L.A. and back (about a 12 hour drive), and then some. Diesel engines have double the efficiency of a normal car engine.

I did try out City Car Share (a non-profit, car sharing service in the S.F. bay area) while my sister was here this summer. It was cool to have access to the car models that I like to drive: hybrid (Prius), cool (Mini), cute (Scion), or useful (Outback, Tacoma). At $10/month, it was a no brainer, and I would use their services again. The for-profit version of City Car Share is called Zipcar, which has spread to most other major cities in the U.S. If you must have a car in your life, it's better to share. Two thumbs up!

2. FLYING
I am considering various options to minimize flying, long term. Some of the options involve teleconferencing with skype on the iPad. I can have a pretty effective meeting with anyone, any where in the World, as long as we are both connected to the internet. I know I said I was on a journey to a sustainable past, but to me the ability to video conference with people from around the globe instantaneously is an integral part of that plan. (Or is that wishful thinking?)

It takes a lot of fuel to carry us to far away lands, no matter what form of transport we choose (airplane, train, car, etc.) I try not to travel to far away places, but I am the first to admit that I have plenty of exceptions to this rule. When I do, I try to do less of it. This has been the most difficult adjustment in my life, because I have family in two continents.

3. BUYING LOCAL

When I buy local, I save a lot of gas that shippers might have otherwise expended bringing the stuff to me. I am also supporting local businesses and the vibrancy of my local community by keeping my money local. At a minimum, I try to buy food grown in the Western side of North America. Luckily, California has many options when it comes to local produce, and our local supermarkets have evolved to a point where the supermarket labels where our food is grown, and if it is from abroad, whether it is a fair-trade produce or not. Buying local is harder to do if you live on an Island. The most ideal thing to do is to have a garden locally where you can grown your own food.

ON FOOD

1. EATING LESS MEAT
Meat tastes good, and most people agree. It's just that we should eat less of it, at a minimum. For now, I'm letting myself eat meat that I'm willing to kill the animal for, at least in my mind. Also, some people need to eat meat, like people who do physically taxing work or children. So I don't think we can exclude meat completely from the human diet, so I've been looking for a reasonable alternative to industrialized meat.

When I first gave up meat, I craved meat. My housemates and I experimented with raising nine edible bunny rabbits. Bunny stew can be delicious (tastes like pork)! The baby bunnies were extremely cute however. After spending several months raising the fluffers, my housemates declared that they preferred being Vegetarian - so our bunny experiment was a bust.

Michael Pollen says that we should treat meat as a side dish, a type of seasoning. Americans eat more meat than any other population in the World. Eating less meat would be a good thing to do for most Americans to decrease obesity, heart disease, etc.

2. SEAFOOD
I follow the guidance of the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I don't eat Sushi anymore, unless it's a special occasion. Vegetarian sushi is surprisingly good.

Or, if I really feel like eating seafood, I eat seafood that are lower on the food chain. For example, eating a pound of tuna is like eating 30 pounds of a fish that the tuna eat. Eating things lower on the food chain (especially creatures that are herbivores) is better for the environment. This also doubles as a way to consume less mercury, which are found in creatures that are higher on the food chain (like tuna) because the mercury accumulates as you go up the food chain. For now, U.S. farmed rainbow trout, catfish, and tilapia, have a green stamp of approval from the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

3. FAST FOOD
In a pinch, bean burritos (@ Taco Hell or Green Burrito) offer a quick snack that is both delicious, inexpensive, vegetarian and has minimal, biodegradable packaging (a piece of wax paper).

HOUSEHOLD ISSUES

1. USING TRADITIONAL, NON TOXIC CLEANING PRODUCTS
I've learned a lot about using old fashioned ingredients to clean, and they work!! Some basic ingredients are: borax, baking soda, and vinegar. Here's a good websites about making your own non toxic household products:

• Green Divas
• Young House Love

2. USING HOUSEHOLD CLEANING PRODUCTS THAT ARE NOT PACKAGED IN PLASTIC

This has been a challenge, but luckily in Berkeley and in San Francisco, the local supermarkets sell bulk household cleaning products like shampoo and conditioners. I take an empty container to the store and a store clerk weighs the empty bottle. Then, I fill up the bottle with whatever I want. They weigh the bottle for a second time, and I pay the difference. I don't have to keep buying plastic containers this way. I've been able to significantly cut down on the consumption of household disposable plastics.

3. ON THE USE OF ENERGY IN MY HOUSEHOLD
Here's another good page, which I am implementing, bit by bit. (Weather-proofing, insulating, etc.)

You can compare your energy consumption with your Facebook friends if your local gas & electric company participates in OPOWER. It is interesting to see how you compare.

4. BUY LESS, BUY LOCAL, AND BUY WISE
Before purchasing that thing in your hands, consider the following:

• Can I supplement the purchase of this thingy by other creative means (for example, can I borrow something like it from a friend instead?)
• Is the thing bio-degradable?
• Is it locally made? Can I get something similar that is manufactured more locally?
• Do I really need this thing?
• Is it over packaged? If so, can I get a similar thing with less packaging?

The Ecology Center has further considerations before purchasing things.

4. WEAR LAYERS AND AVOID THE USE OF GAS TO HEAT THE HOUSE
I have several wool hats and wool gloves that I wear around house during the winter to cut down on the heating bill. Sometimes, however, you'll find me blasting the wall furnace for short periods of my time while I treat myself to a good soaking of heat to warm my bum up.

Here's a good link for dialing down our energy consumption.

SIMPLIFYING IN GENERAL

DECLUTTERING MY PHYSICAL SPACE
Am a bit behind schedule on this one. (Must finish blog soon, so that I have more time. Writing this blog is the opposite of simple.) De-cluttering my physical space does mean that I need to have less projects going on at any given time. Must do less.

Organizing annual yard sales with your neighbors is a good thing to do.

DECLUTTERING MY SPIRITUAL THOUGHTS
That place that is in our soul that is quiet needs to be the source of all of our outer calmness. Somewhere deep inside of us, many of us know that we are each a piece of the puzzle, and that we are capable of what our brains tell us is impossible. In order to find that higher-self inside of us, we need to create time in our lives to relax and reflect. I know that this is a luxury. But many of us DO have this luxury.

DOING LESS: THE BEST WAY TO SIMPLIFY MY LIFE
In order to simplify my life, I need to do less. And before I do less, I need to prioritize my life goals. I want to throw out all the b.s. in my life and only keep the necessary or good bits. That means that I need to know myself. At times like this, I think about who I want to be.

The best guide to simplifying my life is also online, by a guy named Leo Babauta. Good stuff!

IT'S ALL ABOUT BALANCE

Still, taking a "half-step" towards a "sustainable lifestyle" is the best I can do sometimes. No matter how much I do, I find that I could have done better in retrospect. This journey is, at times, frustrating. I try to balance effort with compassion: I make an effort to cut down on over-consumptive behaviors, but don't really judge myself or others when I/we fall off the wagon. Our over-consumptive behaviors are an addiction.

In a World devoid of spirituality, we'd learned to make pacify ourselves by over-consuming our resources. I find myself reciting the serenity prayer to myself sometimes, just to get through the Changes.

It's like perpetually being on a twelve-step program. But unlike Alcoholics Anonymous, I don't really believe in going cold-turkey about addictions, since I know myself enough to know that I'll crave it more if I do. I prefer dialing my consumption down gradually. That seems to work better. 

As I get better at this, I get more and more accustomed to my lifestyle choices, and in the end it feels normal and easy. For example, now I often prefer a vegetarian meal because I like how I feel when I eat vegetarian, both physically and mentally. I don't miss the things that I've intentionally cut out of my life. Life is simpler with less, and I feel great. There's no point in beating myself up during this process.

Dear Fellow Travelers

"Irrashai-mase (Welcome!)," he bowed with a silver-tooth showing between his smile. 

At Zuiganji, a man who worked for the temple stood at the doorway in his gray kimono, as he greeted visitors coming in. He was available for questions if needed. He had a bright, yellow, western-style rubber rain coat on because it was raining that day. At one point he asked me where I was from, and I told him I was from San Francisco. "Oh! San Furanshisuko!" He repeated back to me excitedly. "I have never met such an international person!" he exclaimed.

I was with another woman from the bus, a slightly chubby, affable and intelligent mother of two small girls. After our prayers, she and I just hung-out with each other, while we learned about the history of the Date clan via the exhibits at the Temple. They are a well-known war lord clan from the 16 ~ 18th centuries that ruled the Tohoku area. The outfit for the rice ball head (Musubimaru) is modeled after Masamune Date's stylish crescent moon bearing helmet. He was the most famous member of that clan.

She and I and the man from the temple (with the yellow rain coat) stood in the rain under our umbrellas for a couple of minutes, while he talked about how, after the tsunami, he didn't know that his friends in an adjacent town had died for three days, because he had lost all communication with the outside world. And then he said: "I think... I want to go back to the past, and stay there."

Therein I found, another piece of my puzzle. My journey to simplicity has been a journey to a technologically sustainable past, a point in history where we were not as dependent on the now dwindling reserves of fossil fuels that have become increasingly polluting to extract. Sure, we can keep living the way we do, but it will be at the expense of everything else. Please see the movie Gasland for more details about the practice of hydraulic fracking, which has been polluting many water systems in the U.S. It is available via streaming on Netflix.

There is a bill in Congress that will allow for the keystone pipeline, a colossally bad idea to keep feeding our addiction to fossil fuels at the expense of our water systems, forests, and other things that make life on Earth worth living. This pipeline would extend from Alberta, Canada to Nebraska, and would most likely ruin major water systems in-between given our stellar track record of preventing oil spills. See http://www.350.org.

Modern science has confirmed that an emotional brain is necessary for a healthy, functioning human being. And a healthy emotional brain is necessary for our pursuit of happiness, because happiness comes as a result of an emotional decision that we make about our lives, to see things as they are, and still say that the cup is more than half full. Many of us really do have enough. But our brains malfunction. When our emotional brains hold a negative bias, we continue to seek things outside of us (like food, shoes, electronics, vacations, etc.) for happiness. Rather, to be sustainable, happiness, and positive energy, must come from within. 

If we don't learn how to be happy with what's sustainable, we are going to be extinct as a species. We need to get together and make this work.

There is a force at play here, a shifting of energies that we can not measure, though many of us feel it. Since the advent of the scientific method, Logic has been King; Emotion, his under-appreciated Queen. But, unscientific/illogical traditions and intuitions seem to hold important clues to finding our sustainable futures.

Recently, Autumn Festivals were celebrated at Shinto Shrines all over Japan. Today, I felt cold for the first time this fall. The weather is changing, and so are we. So many people I know are changing their lives, and trying something different. If you are one of them: Bon voyage, we are fellow travelers in the storm.

Act Four: Epilogues

母と日本 (Mom and Japan)

English text is below.

２０１１年６月吉日

私は、今まで自分はアメリカ人であると信じていました。兄と姉が帰国子女として大学に帰国後、苦労をした日本。「自分は、日本人離れしすぎているので、日本では通用しない人間だ。」と思う事が良くあります。が、震災後の自分の日本に対する愛情の強さと気持ちの暗さに、自分でも驚きました。「これからの日本 は、どうなってしまうのだろう。」と随時悩む様になりました。（以下、所々、「です。」や「ます。」を省略させていただきます。）

私は日本生まれですが、父の仕事の関係で、生後2ヶ月で渡米、その後アメリカに在住。厳しい両親の下での教育で、平日はアメリカの学校、土曜日は日本語学校、夏休み中は東京の学校に転入、と言う忙しい子供時代を過ごし、大学を卒業してからはアメリカで弁護士になりました。

震災後、3ヶ月の日々があっと言う間に過ぎ去りましたが、依然として原発の心配は消えず、五月下旬に日本に居る母と姉家族に会いに日本へ。心が引き締まる感じで、4年間仕事が忙しすぎて帰ってなかった故郷、日本を「訪問」。

まず、東京近辺で気がついたのが、節電の様子。駅の中、電車の中、公共施設はどこもかしこも電球が外され抜けている。いつもより暗いが、案外町並みは普通。フムフム。So far, so good.

母 は毎日、温泉に行く生活を続けている。いつも温泉に行く時はゴキゲン。お風呂に入る前は駅前の定食屋で美味しい焼き魚定食。楽しそうに父が 育った町を歩く母は、この旧風呂屋では顔なじみばかりで、裸のお付き合いが沢山。そして、翌朝は、母の家の近くの公園でラジオ体操。なつかしい思い出が沢 山溢れ出てくる。おじいちゃんとおばあちゃんが歩いた商店街。変わってなくて、良かった。一安心。

母は常時NHKをテレビにつけっぱなし。ラジオ体操からの帰りに焼きたての菓子パンを駅前のパン屋さんから買ってきて、それから仕事に行くまでパンを食べながらNHKと仕度。朝の15分ドラマなど、暮らしに歩調がある毎日。リズムが懐かしい。

NHKからいろんな情報を入手。東北の人は自主的に２６％の節電をしている。日本中が復興作業を応援。現地の人達の引越し作業、苦難、活動、そして天気予報、交通情報、等、色々。普段、アメリカではテレビを見ない自分は、ニュースに夢中。

駅前の寿司屋の店内には、目立つ所に大きな張り紙：「謹んで地震災害のお見舞い申し上げます。頑張れ東北！！当店は積極的に東北の美味しい食材を使 用いたします。」店の外は待つ人で混雑。いつもと変わらない忙しさ。母は、「毒になるものは、出してないでしょ。」とパクパク。一国心中とでも呼ぶのだろ うか、私はおいしく、いつも通りのお寿司を食べさせていただきました。それが愛情であると思ったからです。この先どんな事が起こるかわからな い、不安な将来。その時、今を大切に生きることを重視しようと心に誓った。

つけ麵ブームの東京を散策しながら仕事に励んだ一週間。東京駅や新宿駅で、ちょっと迷子になったあげく、落し物をしたりして、駅員さんのサービスの良さに関 心。どこに行っても、手伝ってくれたり案内してくれる人が沢山。普段の感覚では考えられない親切。でも、一日に２、３回ぐらい「人身事故」で、電車が東京 各地で運行停止。「経済不景気が続いているせいかしら。人身事故って、殆どが自殺なのよ。」と母がポロリ。

最後の週末、宮城県のボランティア･センター（ボラセン）とのボランティア斡旋作業をJTBが手伝う企画の第一回目に参加してきた。菅原さんとおっしゃる方が、企画担当者。私みたいなアメリカ帰りが、一人でボラセンとの連絡、交通機関、宿泊施設等の手配をしていたら、能率が悪い。ボラセンとしては、40人単位でボランティアをリクエストする事ができる、と言う素晴らしい企画だ。週末は、宮城県のボラセンの指示により、私達は、東松島市へ行く事になった。

5月27日金曜日午後１１時に東京駅近くのバス停留所でバスに搭乗。隣の座席には小島さんとおっしゃる二人の男児のお母さん。二日間、小島さんの視点から観た日本の様子を色々聞く事ができた。小島さんと色々話す事が出来た事、神様に感謝。

土曜日の朝早く東松島市の臨時ボラセンで集合。当日は1000人もの方々が東松島市でボランティアされたとの事。被災地となった市町村の数を考えると、すごい人数。日本の復興活動は、力強い。私のバスは、４０人乗りのバスであったが、満席。全国各地から、このバスに乗る為に一日がかりで東京まで出て来た方が沢山。

まずは小岩さんという方の自宅へ行くよう指示をうけた。170セ ンチ以上の津波が押しかけ、１階が台無しになった後、ヘドロまみれになっている庭から、ヘドロを撤去するのがボランティアの仕事。小岩さんは、津波が押し かけてきた日の話しをしてくれた。「車を捨てて、逃げたよ。家族とは、２、３日連絡が取れなかった。」と。その後、もうちょっと内陸だけれど、広い庭に浅 めの津波が押しかけた家へ。半日かかって、深さ４０ｃｍぐらいのヘドロを５００袋ほど詰めて仕事は終了。その夜は、仙台の駅前（牛タンでなく、つけ麵を試食しました）で一時間半の自由時間の後、宮城県の秋保温泉へ一路。ちょっと古めのホテルの旧館を、ボランティアが４人づつ相部屋。食事は含まれてなかった が、温泉には入れた。が、地震の為、ホテルの湯量に変化があり、温泉の源泉は一時的に使用不可。風呂場は沸かし湯だったが、桶に養分がついているのであろ うか、湯加減は非常に良かった。泥んこになって泥掃除を一日したのであちこち筋肉痛だったが、日本のお風呂は、疲れがよく取れる。

日曜日のボラセン活動は、あいにく雨天中止。雨にセシウムが含まれていて、健康に悪い。急遽菅原さんはコースを変え、朝はまず南三陸町の復興市へと向かった。一路、バスは南三陸町の中の、津波の最上水位のちょっと上にあった志津川中学校へと向かった。南三陸町は、CNNで も何回か風景を見たことがあった町で、テレビに映っていた通りの惨状が残っていた。車や船がゴロゴロと転がっていて、人家は骨格も残っていない土台だけ。 所どころ、生き残った５回建てぐらいの鉄筋コンクリ構造の建物の天辺には、のりあがった車があったり。幻想の世界の中のような風景ばかり。足元に落ちてい たプーさん人形の持ち主は大丈夫だったのだろうか、など、頭の中は色々な思いが、駆け巡る。でも、津波のあまりのすさまじさに圧倒され、頭の中の半分ぐら いは、空っぽだった。

志津川中学校の敷地内は、あいにくの雨で泥んこ。泥んこの中を沢山の人が行きかわっていた。焼きそば、たこ焼き、魚市場、バスの中のモバイル・コンビ二、せんべいラーメン、T-シャ ツ、おみやげ、ガラクタ、等、ありとあらゆる店が並んでいた。誰もが元気そうで、太鼓の演奏を中心に、伊達政宗とオニギリを足して二つに割ったような仙台 と宮城県のマスコットの「むすび丸」さんもいた。南三陸町を応援しにきた沢山の人の数とエネルギーに、感動した。どのテントもおなじみの「いらっしゃ い！」で掛け声、客を呼び込む。大騒ぎで、楽しかった。

復 興市の後、バスは観光地として有名な松島へ直行。そこまでの道のりは、両側破壊された町並みがしばらく続いたが、松島自体は湾内にある為、膝の高さぐらい の津波が押し寄せたが、大きい津波の災害からは免れた。伊達政宗の瑞巌寺（すいがんじ）で沢山お祈りをしてから、その後またバスで一路東京駅へ。クタクタ になって梅が丘へ戻ったら、起きてきてくれた母が、腎臓結石で翌朝病院に行かなければいけない、と。翌朝、母と病院へ直行。「お父さんとお母さんが病気に なったら、ここに入院するから、場所を知っておいて欲しい。」と母は言う。色々忙しくしているうちに、成田空港へ向かう時間になってしまい、おじいちゃん とおばあちゃんの墓参りもできないまま、アメリカに帰国。

１０年前、９・１１の後、当時住んでいたニューヨークから大学の町バークレーに戻ってきてから、きままな生活をここ10年ほどしてきた私。今回の帰国を期に、今まで想像していなかった将来が待っている事に、今、気がつき始めている。

[The below is a re-write in English. I used the above as the first draft.]

MOM AND JAPAN
1. SPICY AND I

For a time now, I've thought of myself as an American. After returning to Japan as a "kikoku-shijo (directly translated as 'returning children')," some of my best friends were discriminated by other Japanese people. We are the "odd balls" that look Japanese but don't conform, and to make things worse, we speak English fluently.

The Japanese have a saying: "The Nail That Sticks Out Gets Hit." Commonly referred to as "IJIME (bullying)," this mentality to persecute those who are different is a huge problem amongst Japanese children. But this pattern of persecuting those with slight differences is not a problem that is specific to Japan. Unfortunately, this seems to be a common behavior in many animal species (think Spicy the chicken). We always try to exclude (at least in the beginning), even when we're chickens.

I was born in Japan, but was brought to California when I was two months' old. Mathematically, I am 100% made in Japan, and 95.886% raised in America. Because of this weird split in my heritage, Japanese people are sometimes fascinated by me. Because I speak Japanese fluently, they can't tell that I'm not really Japanese right away - but they can tell fairly quickly. For example, I sometimes speak as an equal to Japanese men who are my father's age, and sometimes this upsets people, and I don't care. At the Japanese Community Center in San Francisco, I'd recently taken to introducing myself as follows, so that people could understand me better: "I am here to support you, but I am here as an American."

2. THE RHYTHMS OF TOKYO

I visited Japan in May 2011. Three months had passed since the Earthquake. Emotionally, the news has been hard to swallow, as it affects my family directly. (I stopped reading the news re: nuclear meltdowns when they had the melt through.) For my own sanity, I needed to see my sister and her kids, and to know that they were OK. Also, I'd been busy for the last four years. It was a long time to stay away.

Once in Tokyo, I first noticed there were bulbs missing from every other light fixture. Train stations, public facilities, commercial districts and some private residences were all darker than usual, but otherwise the scenery was surprisingly normal. "So far, so good,"I said to myself.

MOM AND THE BATH HOUSE COMMUNITY

My mother goes to an "onsen (hot spring)" spa everyday. It's several stops away by train from her house. Attractions include an "electric" tub (the water lightly electrocutes you with intermittent pulses - my mom loves it - she says it's like getting an all body acupuncture), as well as a wet / dry sauna, a cold room, cold bath, and massage chairs. Mom is always in a good mood when going to the onsen. Beforehand, she likes to eat at her favorite Japanese Diner next to the train stop. (When I tagged-along, I ordered the "broiled mackerel set dinner with natto and jakko-oroshi." Yum!) She then strolls down a crowded commercial area to the bathhouse, about 1/3 of a mile down main street. She's been coming here since she was 16 years old, when she started dating Dad, because Dad had grown up in this neighborhood. At the bathhouse, Mom has many friends; there's a lot of naked socializing, and a constant, casual banter. No one talks about politics, though no one can ignore the big screen TV above the Women's bath area featuring NHK (Japan's BBC) 24/7.

Like my mother, many of the other women at the bathhouse come every day. The County gives six free vouchers to every person over the age of 62. Using those six vouchers, anyone can get in for free, so I went in for free several times. Otherwise, it's about $8 per entry (650 yen). This bathhouse is a true community, and it is a very important part of my mother's spiritual sustenance. To the bathhouse and the County that supports this facility, I give my deepest gratitude.

RADIO TAISO

My Mom and I attend the "Radio Taiso (the radio-guided Japanese national exercise)" at 6:30 in the morning, at a park nearby. They have these morning gatherings at parks all over Japan. It's mostly a bunch of old people there exercising at 6:30 a.m., but it keeps them vibrant.   Fond memories percolate from walking through town. I used to come here with Grandma and Grandpa. There is a picture of my brother playing on a monkey bar at this park, when he was five years old. It was my mom's favorite picture of him for a long time. Mom's hometown, more than any other place, has been my hometown, partly because I'd moved around so much in America. The place that my mother's soul resides seemed to be where I had left mine, because I was created from a fragment of her soul, like Eve was created from Adam's rib. I took a sigh of relief, because things almost felt normal. But then, there was the radiation.

NHK & SAVORY BREADS

Mom watches NHK religiously. After the morning exercise, Mom and I usually pick up fresh-baked pastries like "potato-cheese-dill rolls," "cheddar puff-balls," and "butter corn mayo croissant" from a local bakery. It's Just So Delicious. We go home, and then at 8:15 a.m., she watches the 15 minute morning-mini drama series, again on NHK. At 8:30 a.m. exactly, she rushes off to work. During this time, she is like a cruiser passing through a port. I anchor myself to the TV, and stay out of her way. In general, Mom's daily rhythm felt like a safe, calm ocean for me to rest in, while I prepared myself for the storm brewing outside.

I too watched NHK religiously while in Tokyo. From NHK, I learned that people in the Tohoku (the affected Northeast part of Japan, which includes Tokyo) had voluntarily cut down their power consumption by 26%. If true, it's an amazing feat. For example, Mom mostly opted to live in the dark (because she could), except that the TV was on most of the time. A lot of the news focused on Japan's reconstruction efforts. It was fascinating, and it was like free therapy. "It's not that bad." was the consensus on NHK. One is asked to bend reality, just a little bit.

SUSHI

There is an extremely popular sushi restaurant in front of the local train station. My Mom always takes me there when I visit, usually on the first evening I'm there. It's tradition. When I ascended the narrow staircase, a large poster prominently displayed the following message: "We respectfully sympathize with the victims of the earthquake disaster. Ganbare Tohoku! (Translation is something like: Good Luck Northeasterners!!) [We] will aggressively use delicious ingredients from the Tohoku ("Northeast") area." (This was in reaction to a media-campaign to discourage a secondary economic meltdown to the Tohoku area's farming industry. The Tohoku is home to Japan's rice industry. The mascot for the area features a rice ball head with a samurai outfit, Musubimaru.)

The restaurant was, as usual, crowded inside and out. There was a line of people waiting to get in. Once we were seated and served, my mother said, "They wouldn't serve poisonous food!" and started eating. I didn't share her opinion, but I ate the food anyways, because I thought it was the right thing to do. And the feast was sumptuous, as usual. I also thought that from now on, I would focus on the quality of my present life, instead of focusing on the future so much. It might be better to live a shorter, fulfilling life, than a longer, conflict-filled one. There has been a lot of loss; it's a lot of attachments to relinquish all at once, especially when it involves 127.5 million people. Right now, Japan is like a widower who has lost his spouse suddenly. (As discussed before in this blog, we should know that Grief comes in five steps. Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. These emotions are normal.)

There is a term called "shinju" in Japan. It is a word people use when a family, or any group, commits suicide together. Shinjus occur when misfortune befalls on people, and those people see no other way out. What is going on in Japan right now is like a "National Shinju." Baby boomers accept the fact that the radiation may give them cancer in 10-20 years. Some families with small children have already evacuated. Some U.S. universities had ordered all of their students to return to the U.S. immediately after the earthquake. But Tokyo boasts a population of 13 million, and another 22 million live within commuting distance. I'm hearing a lot of angry voices through the grape-vine, especially from University academics. A storm is brewing.

RAMEN

I spent a week working in Tokyo, while I tried out different ramen restaurants all over town. Ramen is extremely popular in Japan, and peoples' tastes evolve. The currently popular rendition of ramen is called "tsuke-men (translation: dipping noodle)." Purists want the noodles to be served separately from the broth, so that the texture of the noodles are preserved. You don't need to hurry when you eat tsuke-men ramen, because you don't have to worry about the noodles getting too soggy. (Like many, the Japanese are crazy about food.)

While working and eating in Tokyo, I got lost several times in the sprawling Tokyo and Shinjuku train stations. I was dumb-founded at the abundance of people available to guide my way. (I am accustomed to American style customer service.) Life seems easier, when people are more helpful. But two or three times a day, the train systems in Japan had temporary closures because of "personal injuries" on the tracks. "I wonder if it's due to the economic recession. They call it personal injury, but it's usually suicide." Mom quietly muttered.

3. VOLUNTEERING IN MIYAGI

The last weekend of May, I participated in Japan Travel Bureau's ("JTB") first "Miyagi volunteer bus pack," in which JTB teamed up with the Volunteer Center of Miyagi Prefecture ("Borasen") to coordinate the placement of volunteers visiting Miyagi prefecture. It was more efficient for the Borasen to work with travel agencies that could organize 40+ volunteers at a time. That weekend, at the direction of the Miyagi Borasen, our bus was assigned to visit Higashi-matsushima County.

At 11:00 pm on Friday May 27th, I boarded a bus at a parking lot near Tokyo station. Sitting next to me in the bus was a mom of two teenage boys, Mrs. Kojima. For two days, Mrs. Kojima and I talked about everything under the Sun. I give thanks, this time for this fortuitous seat assignment.

On Saturday morning, after spending the night on the bus, we disembarked at the Higashi-matsushima temporary Borasen. I was told that on that day, 1000 volunteers were in town. Given the many counties that needed volunteers, it's a huge number. Japan's reconstruction effort is powerful. On our bus, all 40 seats were occupied by volunteers, who each paid $187 (15,000 yen) to be on the bus. The cost covered the bus ride from and to Tokyo Station, two trip coordinators, two bus drivers, one night at the onsen hotel, and a special insurance for volunteers. In our bus, there were people from all over Japan (and one from the United States).

Our group was first asked to go to Mr. Koiwa's house. The tsunami was about six feet high when it flooded the first floor of their two-story house. Their yard was covered in toxic mud. Our job was to remove it. While we were there, Mr. Koiwa told us about the day of the tsunami. "I abandoned my car in order to escape the tsunami. It took 2, 3 days to find my family." he said.

Afterwards, we were assigned to another house which was located a little more inland. The mud in their yard was about a foot deep. 30 volunteers filled about 500 bags of mud, and we were done for the day. In the evening, we were given an hour-and-a-half to explore Sendai Train Station. (Though most people on the bus ate beef tongue BBQ, which Sendai is known for, I ate tsuke-men ramen for dinner.) Then our bus took us to an old onsen hotel near Sendai. Four volunteers were assigned to sleep in each room which was the size of eight tatami mats, and though a Japanese dinner (usually kaiseki at these hotels) was not included in the package, we were allowed to use the onsen facilities. The actual hot spring was under "repair" that day (it was reported that, since the quake, the flow from the hot spring had become intermittent). I had shoveled mud all day so I was sore all over, but the piping-hot Japanese bath washed away the mud and fatigue from me completely.

THE AFTERMATH OF THE TSUNAMI

We were rained out on Sunday, and could not work with the mud. Mr. Sugawara, our lead JTB trip coordinator, quickly changed the day's itinerary: we were to visit the "Reconstruction Fair" at Minami-sanriku. The bus took us to Shizugawa Middle School, which was located above the tsunami's water line. I had seen Minami-sanriku on CNN. When we got there, it looked just like it did on TV. Cars and ships were crumpled up like boulders, amongst the debris strewn all across the landscape. The only thing left of most buildings were the foundations. There were several steel and concrete structures that survived (though they all looked as if they were bombed out), and on top of one of the five-story buildings was a perfect-looking car, parked diagonally on a roof with no off ramp. It was a scene out of a movie. Thousands of thoughts ran through my mind. But because I finally understood the power and brutality of nature, I was speechless for a time.

We had to ascend a long staircase (from the bottom of the canyon) to get to the middle school on top of the hill. The Reconstruction Fair was a muddy affair, but hundreds of people were gathered in the rain to support Minami-sanriku. The rain contained cesium. At the fair, there were many booths featuring: yakisoba, takoyaki, a fish mart, a mobile convenience store in a bus, rice cracker ramen, t-shirts, good luck charms, junk, etc. etc. When I was there, there was a taiko performance in the center of all of it. Someone had planted pansy flowers in the ground. Miyagi's mascot Musubimaru was there. Every tent had several people inviting you in for a visit, as if we were at an omatsuri / festival. I had found love again, in Minami-sanriku. It spilled over the edges of my cup, and overflowed. And with that love, I knew Japan would be OK. My friend Yuki had been telling me: "Japan has survived 2000 years of history, and it will survive again." I finally knew what she meant.

PINE ISLAND (MATSUSHIMA)

After the Fair, our bus took us to Matsushima (let's call it "Pine Island"). (Pine Island is considered one of the three best views in Japan. Matsushima Bay boasts beautiful pine tree-lined islands inside of it, one of which is connected to the main land with just a long, red, foot bridge.) The road from Minami-sanriku to Pine Island was about 40 miles of destruction and abandonment on either side of the road. But Pine Island (which is not an Island) itself was spared the same destruction because it is inside a bay, shielded by islands. While the small villages on the outside islands were destroyed completely, Pine Island was visited by a mini-tsunami two feet high. I spent most of my free time in Pine Island visiting and offering prayers at Zuiganji Temple. I was told that the tsunami miraculously stopped at its gates. Residents from 1000 years ago had foretold of a safe area that would be protected, and Zuiganji had been built there. Afterwards, we boarded the bus again, which was followed by an eight hour bus ride back to Tokyo Station.

GOING INTO OVERDRIVE

Around midnight on Sunday, I got back to Mom's house, exhausted. Mom got out of bed to tell me that she was diagnosed with kidney stones and that she would need to go back to the hospital the next morning for more tests. The next morning, we woke up and went to the hospital, and Mom said: "Your Dad and I come here when we get sick, so I wanted you to know where this hospital is."

It became time to go to Narita Aiport, so I left my Mom at the hospital (regretfully), and flew back to the U.S. I didn't even have time to visit my Grandparents' grave, which was just ten minutes away from Mom's house.

The Ship and the Animals on the Fourth of July

"Ahoy! Ahoy! Red Alert! Danger Ahead!"
"Something's up. YOU KNOW WHO is not too happy with us these days." someone said.

We are like travelers on a ship (or a hand-basket depending on our destination). We know that there are "others" on this ship - other animals we don't know - some of us look like giraffe's, others like kangaroos. Some look like horses. Unfortunately, not everyone likes each other on this ship. （Shhh. Don't say that out loud.）

So, what should the giraffes and kangaroos and all of the other animals do about the fact that there seems to be danger up ahead? The animals thought about it, and decided to hold a town hall meeting.

The next morning, a large crowd had gathered on the bow of the ship.
Jeffrey the squirrel, who stood on the mainmast squealed: "Well, ideally, we should have a discussion, I guess!"
Pepper the buffalo, simultaneously chewing on grass, said: "But what if we don't get along?"
A hippo named Mike who was taking up way too much space on the upper deck yelled: "Ya!"
Sammy the donkey whinnied: "E, each of us will v-vote. We'll all have a say in the outcome that w-way."
Jeffrey said "So what are we going to vote on?" as he corrected his spectacles.
An alligator, Samantha spoke out in a low calm voice "I vote to eat the red alert." Samantha appeared to be on a leash which someone had tied to the staircase.
A little birdy named Tom, who was flying above Samantha, complained: "She tried to eat me before! Take her away!"
Samantha protested: "I am an alligator. What do you expect?"
Kuro (a dog) barked: "I vote for more bones in the cafeteria!"
(Kuro was a little confused about the subject matter of the discussion.)

So the discussion went on like this until everyone got hungry and it was lunchtime, and the animals decided to take a lunch break. During the break, there were still a few residual resentments in the room, so there were several naughty food fights, but most everyone managed to get back to the deck of the ship when discussions resumed. (Some had to stay behind to clean up after their own mess.)

After lunch, Jeffrey resumed the discussion by summing up what happened in the morning. "We can't agree on anything!! We're a mess!! Meanwhile, we keep getting closer to danger!"

Sasha the salamander said (with a slight lisp because of his long tongue): "We should organize zis a bit. We should pick leaderz, zo that we can delegate zis task to zomeone who representz uz! How about a sleader for each family? Let's re-convene when we've picked a sleader."

For a time, there was much commotion all around the ship. Arguments could be heard from huddles in all directions. Most of the animals resumed their daily schedules during this time, mostly because they were not going to be picked, and they were bored.

After dinner, a smaller crowd of animals re-convened around Jeffrey, who shouted, "Are all families accounted for with a chosen representative?"
Sammy, again whinnying, said: "I t'think so!"

At that point, one of the kitchen chefs showed up on the deck and made an announcement: "If you help me keep my job, I'll give you more food. Thanks!"
Seeing what he just saw, an engineer on break from the engine room (after all, this is a large ship!) who just happened to be walking by, said: "Well - I can stop this ship if I want to. But if you want my help, you have to make it worth it for me." The Captain, hearing the commotion, shouted from his window: "Ya, I'll need some of that 'encouragement' too! Thanks!"

The animals, including Jeffrey, stood there not quite understanding what just happened.

Finally, Jeffrey spoke: "We're screwed. We don't have any money!"
Pepper said: "We're doomed!! What do we do?"
The crowd of animals broke out into another commotion.
Everyone threw out ideas like: What if we protested? What if we stopped paying our dues? What if we went on a hunger strike? What if? What if?
It was at that moment that Spicy the chicken started singing "I Will Survive" on the deck, towards the Moon. Many of the smaller animals started to pray. The monkeys on the deck proceeded with their original plans of throwing a party for themselves, since it was the time of day for a good soirée.

Several elephants were listening in from the starboard side of the deck, a few dozen feet towards the stern. They were huddled around each other and whispering. Finally, Plump, the wisest of them all, spoke loudly to whomever was gathered at the deck as twilight washed over the sky with a deep dark blue purple. Plump spoke clearly and slowly, though with a slight drawl:

"Accept that we must, at times, face danger, and that death is a part of life. To know danger is to celebrate life. We will go when it is our time. Until that day, let's XOXOXOXO."

Plump's last words were drowned out by a large popping sound from the stern of the deck where the monkeys were. Up above, several multi-colored fireworks brilliantly lit up the sky, lighting up the faces of a thousand mesmerized gawkers on the ship. Several other balls-of-fire soared upwards, and then crackled into a hundred points of light. When the popping sounds came to an end, the only thing left was the echo of the wind. Our ship, with the animals, had sailed away quietly into the darkness.

The Purpose of the Dead Tree In My Yard

Yesterday, I was talking about the design of our garden with my housemate Stacy, the Quaker. There is a big prune tree in my yard that died in the last year from over-watering. It was an old tree with years of neglect apparent in how its branches were gnarled into each other. It was a tree that gave me courage that even disorderly things were part of nature and could thrive, and I rather liked its imperfections. But now I had been spending time thinking about how I could remove it and its roots from my yard.

When I pointed out the dead tree to Stacy and how it needed to be removed, Stacy, being the Peace Corp serving environmental educator and ecologist she was, said to me this: "You know, even dead things have a place in nature. Mother Earth knows best. Look at the tree. Moss is starting to grow on it, and the bacteria are starting to break down the branches, making it hospitable to other beings. The insects and birds rely on dead trees for shelter, and THEY will enjoy this tree. EVERYTHING has its place in nature. Humans think we know best, but we don't. Mother Earth knows best, and we should trust her."

Act 3: Searching Outside, for the Change I want to See in the World

EVOLUTION STEP NO. 3: Learn How to (Better) Take Care of Myself

I was starting to get anemic because I wasn't eating meat. Yikes!

The Buddha sez:
We need take care of ourselves before we can help others, so I need to learn how to better take care of myself, so that I can be helpful to others.

N. B.

• If I'm eating a Veggie only diet, I need to make sure to consume enough:
• Iron
• Source: Green leafy things like spinach, kale, etc.;
• Don't like green leafy things like me? 
• Eat dark-colored dried fruit (like apricots, raisins, dates, etc.)
• Don't like chewing like me? (I'm lazy.) 
• The seaweed in Miso Soup.
• Ohitashi - yum!! 
• I should grow some spinach in the yard.
• Calcium
• Source: Hmm. Women tend to get osteoporosis. Pills, for now.
• Fat (like Omega 3)
• Source: Omega 3 tablets, in the form of fish oil.
• Vitamin B12 
• Source: Pills, Yeast.
• The body does a good job storing vitamin B12, so you won't feel a deficiency for a long time, even if you don't eat meat.
• You can get B12 from yeast. I put brewer's yeast or nutritional yeast on my popcorn (which is a very healthy snack if you make popcorn the traditional way). The yeast adds a cheesy taste, which is actually pretty yummy! You can make perfect popcorn every time - learn how!
• For more info, click here;

Conclusions:

• I will eat meat immediately in copious amounts, until I feel strong again;
• When I stop eating meat, I will supplement my diet with multi-vitamins; and
• Relax. Stop working so much.
• Too much stuff going on in the World. I need time to process.

See you later, alligator!

Stepping into the Light

ME

GOD

God? Who ARE you?

I am the Source.

A Source of what? vitamins?

Of Energy.

What kind of Energy?

Positive energy.

Are you then, the same as the Sun?

Sure, we both represent positive energy.

What about Love? Are you Love?

Of course I am LOVE!

I know. OK. Next question.
What is my purpose here?

That is something only you can answer.

Dear God. Please don't be so vague.

Many of you are still in search of Love.
Love, that most irrational, illogical process,
is that which you still seek,
after all else is said and done.
You SEEK love, and not ANY of the other material things that you coveted once.

Ultimately, the things you seek were made by Me - not YOU.

After all, I am your Creator, and the source of Good in you.

And you are a part of a World that was created to perfection already.
Love has always been within You.
You hold the key.

That's why it all begins and ends with You.
You are the Source of Love, Positive Energy, and the World you live in.
The World is Merely A Reflection of You.

And if you can understand this, you will be fine.

The Observations of Change: Noticing Patterns in the Universe, and learning about Love, Buddha style.

Noticing Patterns in the Universe: Positive Energy and Love

Sunshine is a ten year old girl. She is the French-Japanese hapa daughter of the Wonderful Me, my original kindred spirit. The Wonderful Me and I have been friends since we were ten, when we sat next to each other in an auditorium on the first day of our fifth grade Saturday Japanese school class. Her last name is similar to mine, and we are born six days apart. For some reason, when our eyes met in the auditorium that day, we both started to giggle. The Wonderful Me believes that we've known each other in our past lives. She has been one of my spiritual teachers, though we bicker an awful lot sometimes, especially when she's had enough of my continual verbalizations about how we should be combating climate change, and because I keep complaining about how much people drive in L.A. I've adopted the habit of going into silent meditation when she complains. And then she gets upset at me for not talking to her. It's very difficult to please women. We are very fickle.

A couple of days ago, I asked Sunshine if she had any questions about the Universe. She thought about it intently for a few seconds and asked: "What's the difference between positive and negative?"

"Great Question!" I exclaimed. I was excited that she asked such a sophisticated question. I am not a scientist, but I knew enough to tell her the following:

"When you study everything in the Universe, you learn that scientifically, we are just Energies. And you learn that Positive particles  (i.e. protons) share Energy with Negative particles (i.e. electrons).

To illustrate my point, I grabbed a yellow plastic Easter egg on Sunshine's bookshelf, and told her that the egg represented Energy. I told her: "I want you to be Positive. I'll be Negative. And now, I want for you to toss me your Energy." And then I tossed her the egg, so that she could toss it back to me. We tossed back the egg back and forth a couple of times, each time exclaiming, "Negative!" and "Positive!" as we threw the egg at each other. Pickle, their mutt dog (he looks like a cross between a beagle and a pitt bull) joined in on the catch-ball, as Kuro just watched not quite getting what all the fuss was about.

Then I continued: "Humans also manifest these Energies. Let's be Positive and Negative when we toss this egg back and forth. I'm Negative, so I'm going to say, 'I can't do anything.'" Sunshine caught the egg and didn't know what to say, so I told her as a Positive energy, she should say, "I can do everything!" And she did.

So we continued on;
Me:              "I'm not happy."
Sunshine:         "I'm Happy!"
Me:              "I'm tired."
Sunshine:         "I'm not tired!"
Me:              "This is no good."
Sunshine:         "This is great!"
She caught on pretty quickly.

Then I told her: "So, the Positive and the Negative elements simply share energies. It is a pattern in our Universe. I will also tell you that Positive energies stand for Love. Negative energies stand for the opposite of Love, like Fear. So let's change roles now. I'm going to be Positive now. You can be Negative."

Me:        "I love you." I tossed her the egg.
Sunshine:   "I don't love you." She tossed me the egg.
Me:        "I love you." I tossed her the egg.
Sunshine:   "I'm hungry." She tossed me the egg.
Me:        "I love you." I tossed her the egg.
Sunshine:   "I'm ...." Sunshine didn't know what to say.

So I continued: "Do you know what happens after we exchange these energies? Give me your hand. The exchange of energies will bring us closer to each other." I held out my hand, and pulled her towards me as I met her half way. I gave her a big fat hug and told her, "We become One. Does that make sense?"

Sunshine looked a little confused, and said, "Kinda."

Love, Buddha Style

After this discussion, it was time for me to join them for a Kid's Kadampa class at Silver Lake (I was in Los Angeles). Sunshine's Daddy recently moved back to France, so it was just the three of us (Me, WM, and Sunshine). Quite coincidentally (though I don't believe in coincidences - instead I believe in patterns) we talked about positive and negative people.

The Instructor had a board that was separated into three parts. He handed out to all the kids some plastic happy faces, sad faces, angry faces, and neutral faces.

• The Instructor first said, "I want you to think about all the people you love to spend time with that make you happy, and tell me about them as we put all the happy faces on the top half of this board. Sunshine was the first to jump up and name one of her best friends at school as someone that makes her happy. A couple of kids followed, and soon the top half of the right side of the board was filled with happy faces.
• The Instructor next said, "I want you to think about all the people you don't really like." One boy exclaimed, "I need more faces." Sunshine jumped up and again, named one of her best friends. Soon the lower half of the right side of the board was filled with sad or angry faces.
• The Instructor then said, "I want you to think about all the people in the World that you don't care about. Who might those people be?" I forgot that I wasn't a kid and exclaimed, "People I don't know!" Soon the entire left side of the board was filled with neutral faces.

So then the Instructor continued. "OK. So this is often how we see the World. Some people we like, some people we don't like, and most people we don't care about. This, in fact, may just be a reflection of how we see the World. We like to be with people that make us happy because they are positive. We don't like to be with people who are negative. And then the rest we just don't care about. But the Buddha teaches us that we should not distinguish how we treat any of these people. We should always strive to be Love, no matter who the person is. So let's do a meditation on how to do this."

Meditation Technique so that you can Love like a Buddha

Then the Instructor taught us a meditation technique. We were asked to partner up with someone we just met. My partner was apparently a soap opera star, which was fitting, since this was L.A. after all. The Instructor told us to just focus on our breathing, while we sat next to the Stranger - which in my case was OMG a soap opera star. First, the instructor asked us to find love for the person sitting next to us, as we focused our attention on breathing normally. I did my best to sit like a Buddha. Then, the instructor asked us whether we could expand that love to include everyone else in the room, and then maybe even beyond the room. Later, our instructor gave us each a small rock, as a reminder of our ability to feel Love for strangers. The kids painted their rocks with glitter but I thought MY rock was beautiful in its natural state so I kept it that way.

We are the Producer of our Own Lives, and we are a mere Supporting Character to other People

During Kadampa's General Program for adults, the monk, who was a woman, talked about Karma and how we experience life the way we do because of the Energies we have put into the Universe in the past. She talked about how, in fact, we are all Producers of our very own movies called Life, and that we all possess the power to write our own screenplay. Again, how fitting to be in L.A. to be told by a Buddhist Monk that I should envision myself in my own Movie. "Cool" I thought, "My movie would be a Dramedy."

Afterwards, I felt a sense of deep humility with a new found insight that the most I could hope to be for anyone else in this lifetime was to be their supporting character. The most I could do is to strive towards Universal Love, and be thankful if I feel exhausted, because sometimes it feels like all I did that day was be a supporting character. As discussed in the blog post about the malfunctioning brain, many of us suffer from a negative bias, so sometimes I think I feel like I'm not receiving support, even if I am.

Mystery Solved

When I stubbornly don't learn from the patterns in the Universe, the Universe keeps sending me the same lessons, over and over again, so that maybe I'd get off my high horse and learn to work with the flows of the Universe, not against it. And as I learn to be at Peace with what the Universe hands to me, hopefully life will become easier.

Since I was a kid I've been asking myself and others: "What's the point of all this?" Life is full of suffering and even as a kid I didn't understand why we had to drag our tattered souls through this lifetime only to experience life and it's patterns again and again. But now I feel like I'm getting closer to that "Point."

Now, where there used to be no perceivable "point" to my life, I've given my life a purpose. I have no other goal in this lifetime other than to be love and give love. It is a privilege, and I accept that that is what I need to do: To Be Love, tirelessly. Because our future is intricately interwoven with each others': Because we are One.

The Sprouts of Change: The Great Unleashing on May 22nd, 2011 in Albany, California, and SELC

It feels like God is crying right now. It's raining hard outside. The bad news continue from Tokyo.

----

We should be preparing for an earthquake in San Francisco. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayward_Fault_Zone

Albany, which is a town north of Berkeley, is having a "Great Unleashing" on  May 22nd. The following are some issues they will be addressing at the event:

• If the price of oil stopped trucks from running, how would we feed ourselves? Safeway and other food stores only have enough to keep us going for about three days.
• What if we couldn’t afford to buy the essentials we need? Do we have skills to share with others in exchange?
• What if pharmaceutical drugs became less accessible? Are there effective alternatives we could develop locally?
• Are our children equipped to deal with the practical demands of a life without gadgets and technological aids, most of them made overseas?
• How well do we manage during a power outage, or when the water’s turned off for a few hours, several days? What about sewage?
• How are we dealing with the realization that our children and grandchildren are going to be living with a lot less of what we’ve been taught is our “due”?

Shouldn't your community be discussing these things? See more at:
http://transitionalbany.org/albanys-great-unleashing/

Also in the neighborhood:
Scarcer Resources = We should learn how to share resources.
Check out: The Sustainable Economics Law Center, which seeks to explore what that might mean legally.

More Seeds of Change: The Crisis in Japan

I remember this feeling. It's the feeling I have in my gut right now. It's the realization that this time might be the last time I get to tell them that I love them. It's that moment when I've heard too many bad things, my cool starts to unravel. It's the same moment that I start bargaining with God.

"Dear God. Please don't let this be that moment." And then the relief, for us lucky ones, that God heard our prayers this time. Then we mourn for the ones who did lose, feeling like we just cheated death at the expense of another. But then, the circumstances just keep getting worse. The nightmare continues. And then I bargain with God, several more times.

The size of my present emotional experience is enormous, just like it was on 9.11.2001. I can only listen to the news a little bit at a time. I minimize my emotional involvement by sticking to print media as my source of information. I also have to be careful who I talk to, because some people exacerbate my fears. I saw a little bit of CNN on TV at the Thai restaurant the other day, and that was too much hype. My mind goes on over-drive with the "what if's." And I start to lose my cool.

I saw an article about the earthquake in Japan that reminded me of my own emotional experience during 9.11. Please read this article, because it's excellently written, and beautiful. http://www.odemagazine.com/blogs/readers_blog/24755/a_letter_from_sendai When things get really bad, we all can manifest the angels within us. Kindness, and generosity, can prevail.

I've seen this happen before. Being in N.Y.C. on 9/11/2001 was, quite ironically, the most beautiful experience of my life. It's the reason I know there is hope for us. When things get bad, we can change overnight, because Change is an emotional decision. I saw it happen in NY.

I'm seeing it happen again in Japan. It's beautiful to watch Change happen. We can be so strong. We can be so beautiful. We can become the Love within us, instantaneously. And at the same time, I continue to bargain with God. Not this time. Not this call. I'm not ready.

And then I think to myself.... or maybe I am. Maybe I am ready for Change.
Maybe if I knew that Change is hard but necessary, it'll be easier. The Goddess of Kali teaches us that destruction, or crisis, is the mother of all Change. Maybe this is how Change feels. Part of me mourns the passing of the pre-Earthquake Japan. But now, the recovery of the post-Earthquake Japan has begun. And I know it will be beautiful.

But for now, I want the destruction to end, Dear God.
"And please protect my family."
I continue to pray, powerless to do anything else.

[My mother, my sister, my nephew Sprit, my niece Em and my sister's husband are in Tokyo. They seem quite calm and think that wearing a hat is a sufficient response to the nuclear crisis. My brother's wife and three kids are also in Japan, trying to decide how far they should be from the failing Fukushima nuclear plants. My family in the U.S. is more freaked out than my family in Japan. The Japanese-media has continued to downplay the news, but I'm not certain yet if it's just to keep people calm. http://www.facebook.com/notes/paul-atkinson/japan-nuclear-update-british-embassy/10150111611771235]

The Germinations of Change: The Transition Movement

I've discovered Mars. And that I am, in fact, Martian.

My "Mars" is a movement called the Transition Town Initiatives. The movement is a grassroots effort to combat the affects of climate change, by making a difference one individual at a time. The movement has its roots in principals of permaculture (a gardening technique turned into a way of life - see http://patternliteracy.com/). Emphasis is placed on intentionality - a thoughtful and educated decision making process. It is so very zen and cool. My new friend Floyd, which is a spokesperson for Transition East Bay, told me yesterday that the permaculture guild meetings are like the meetings of the Jedi Counsel. I told him that I want to attend a meeting, just so that I can finally meet Yoda. Floyd said that he knows of three Yodas at the Guild - and that they are spiritual gardening Masters. In my head, I silently had a fantasy that they would perhaps wear judo uniforms and talk funny. Overjoyed, I was.

The Transition Movement is apparently a movement that started in England, and has made its way to the U.S. http://www.transitionus.org/ Transition Berkeley is just starting. There is no website yet, but the Ecology Center hosted the first Transition Berkeley Introductory Meeting the other night. The room was swarming with energy and interest. It felt like the beginning of a grassroots revolution grounded in NVC ("non-violent communication" - see http://www.baynvc.org/) principals. The excitement for the arrival of the movement to Berkeley was palpable. (There was also an article about the meeting in the local newspaper.) Finally, there is light where there was darkness. Finally, there is community where there was void.

Albany, which is one town north of Berkeley, has a wonderful chapter:  There is a woman named Catherine that is a huge proponent of Transition Albany, and I have heard her say that when she discovered the movement, she felt that she had found her life purpose. I knew she was a kindred spirit when I heard her say that.

I found out about the Transition Movement in a happenstance way. It's actually a long story.

My housemate Stacy and I went to a local vegetarian restaurant called Herbivore three weeks ago.  By the way, Herbivore is my new go-to restaurant when I am feeling both hungry and lazy (I have to cut corners somewhere in my life to have time for other things). I can have a delicious and nourishing vegetarian feast for under $12, including tip. My favorite is the curry-coconut udon noodles w/ tofu. This reminds me of how the Oracle and I used to go to a noodle restaurant near his house. It was our local go-to restaurant. I used to have the "Grilled Niman Ranch Beef Udon in a Coconut Lime Curry Broth" every time. It's poetry that now, I am having basically the same dish, except my new restaurant is vegetarian, walking distance from my house, less expensive, and just as delicious. The dish is also creative (they put some really yummy mushrooms in it that make the dish exotic and delightful). The shift in my restaurant choice symbolizes so much about the transition that I am experiencing in life at large, on so many levels. And the coconut udon dish can get me excited about life every time. What can I say, I still very much look to food as a source of happiness. For now, I believe that this is a healthy and normal relationship with food. I know that I am no Francis of Assisi, though I admire the man.

There are now many vegan / vegetarian restaurants within walking distance from my house. I never really even think about eating meat when I go out to eat anymore, as long as I get to choose the restaurant. Saturn Cafe, Gather, Flacos, and Herbivore are just several of the many stylish choices in fine Vegetarian cuisine around town. I love them all. I am especially addicted to the Flacos Fried Tempe Taquitos with avocado salsa, and their pozole or tamale are to die for too. Yum. But I've digressed - let's go back to Herbivore.

When Stacy and I were getting ready to be seated at Herbivore, we ran into Ann from the Bee House. Stacy had stayed at the Bee House for several months when she first moved back to the United States (after leaving Chile). The Bee House is a cooperative-living collective here in Berkeley, which has been in existence for twenty-six years. There are many of these "coops" in Berkeley, which is what I've modeled my current living situation from. Before moving to my current house, I had picked up experience living in a Berkeley cooperative. Of all the different living arrangements I've tried, I have found that living cooperatively with other mature adults provides me with the best growth opportunities that life can afford me. It's not for everyone, but it is one of the main ways in which I can keep learning about other people and the World around me while maintaining a busy life. Living this way forces me to understand others at a deeper level. It stirs the assumptions in life that I didn't know I had, and brings them into the realm of awareness.

The Berkeley cooperatives are very different from New York City's version of "coops." In NYC, coops are a group of people who get together, form a company, and then buy a building together and run it like a condominium. In Berkeley, cooperatives have their roots in U.C. Berkeley's student-run cooperative housing situations. But because Berkeleyites are "creative" social entrepreneurs, the legal construct of these Berkeley cooperatives are all over the place. Sometimes functional, sometimes not.

Because I had heard about the Bee house from Stacy, I went to town asking questions about the Bee House when Ann joined us for dinner. I wanted to know what kind of wisdom would be accrued the residents of a cooperative, after twenty-six years of living in an intentional community. Also, as it so happened, Ann and I were both Gleeks (people who love the hit musical T.V. show "Glee" on FOX on Tuesdays), and we were in no shortage of things to talk about. At the end of dinner, Ann invited us over to a party at the Bee House the following weekend.

When the day for the party came, I didn't feel very social. I have discovered recently that I am both comfortably introverted and extroverted. When I'm in I'm in. When I'm out I'm out. Whatever I'm doing, I usually want more of. So I had had an introverted day and the idea of going out seemed like a lot of work. But Stacy said that she was going to go anyways without me, so then I changed my mind and went to the party at the Bee House.

Stacy and I walked to the Bee House, which was a mile away. It was cold outside but I felt community with my environment and the night sky and the stars and the moon. I used to stare at the Milky Way in awe. I've started to do that again because I walk everywhere. The Buddhists have a spiritual practice called Kinhin. Walking teaches us to slow down and be in thoughtfulness. Walking is a practice that was built into our lives for a reason, and we should not forsake it. It helps me slow down and look around, for once, at the World I live in as if I were an audience.

Stacy and I got to the front of the Bee House, and heard chattering from inside. It was a well-kept Victorian building with white trims. It was right by the hospital where I had seen Perro in one of his last bursts of energy. In the oxygen tank, Perro had done a little happy dance when he saw me coming. Stacy and I knew we were at the right house, and I knocked, but no one answered the door, but the door was open. We opened the door and walked in, and Ann was standing right there, and greeted Stacy and I at the door. Ann was talking to a girl named Jen. We briefly introduced ourselves but Stacy had walked further down into the living room, so I swiftly followed. I was introduced to several other people and chatted some more, but when I found out that there was an outdoor fireplace, I didn't want to miss the opportunity to stare at the burning logs and smell the smoke-filled air and be, once again, in meditative silence.

There is something very deeply spiritual about sensing burning wood in all the different ways that I can. My friend who calls herself the Wonderful Me gave me a CD set of brainwave-enhancing "clinically proven audio programs based on 25 years of research." http://www.neuroacoustic.com/compactdisks.html The CDs have taught me that sounds found in nature (like the sound of falling rain, crickets and the wind) hold a scientifically-proven resonance with our brainwaves and thus these sounds automatically soothes us. Science has proven what we have known intuitively all along. Now I believe that things in nature, like burning wood, automatically possess a resonance with our brainwaves - not just as sound, but by the way it looks, smells, and feels. It's ALL good juju. It's like I've been a part of the Earth's grand design, and the very fabric of my genetic code responds to the natural world as if they belonged to each other. I selfishly think that maybe God made Fire, in part, to help us heal ourselves when we feel lost or broken.

So I went outside and seated myself in front of the fire. There were three other people conversing around the fire. I quickly joined the conversation and had an interesting discussion with an ex-city planner from Florida about the vision that Walt Disney had had later in his life about a "Community of Tomorrow."  Disney's vision encapsulated an attitude of an industrialized nation towards its environment. During that time in our history, humanity had taken the Earth for granted. Now we know better (I hope). But Disney was still ahead of his time because he emphasized the importance of a community, and the magic of walking down Main Street. He was absolutely onto something there.

At the party, I stepped away from the conversation about Florida to go get a glass of water. When I returned to my bench in front of the fireplace, the city planner from Florida was engrossed in conversation with someone else. I turned to the other direction, and met Jen and Catherine, who had just seated themselves there. I had met Jen at the doorway, and Catherine was Jen's housemate who had started Transition Albany. Jen had recently made choices to slow down her life. She had been re-trained professionally as a Baker (she formerly worked in fundraising & development for a non-profit). Catherine invited me to a Transition Albany event the next day at the Albany Main Library. They were having a movie screening for a movie about Permaculture the next day. I was excited. I went to the meeting, and met Floyd, who was (and still is) starting Transition Berkeley and Transition East Bay. Floyd is himself an accomplished writer of twenty or so books, one of them being about Climate Change. True to his convictions, he bikes everywhere and has his own war stories about his transition. It's fun to compare notes with him and see how universal some of our personal experiences have been.

The Circle is growing. I now regularly have conversations about my transition, and other people's life stories relating to their transition as well. We are all gathering, talking, exchanging ideas, practicing, learning, growing, evolving - having a lot of fun while at it. There is a Japanese phrase that says, "It's not scary when you're not alone." It's very true.

On another note - In general, I am feeling a shifting of energies in the Universe all around me. Many of us are making the choice to change, right now. The decision to try to change is one small step for man, and one giant leap for mankind.

And we are not alone.

The Seeds of My Change: My Life in Manhattan

I was woken up by a phone call from my boyfriend Dale that morning.
"You should go to the roof and look at the World Trade Center. It's burning."

I rubbed my dry eyes as I told him I would. Then, Mom called.
"I'm watching N.H.K. (Japan's version of the B.B.C.) and I can see the Twin Towers burning. Are you O.K.?" My Mom watches N.H.K. religiously, and she was in Los Angeles watching a news feed from New York via Japanese satellite T.V. from Tokyo. I told her that I was just on my way up to the roof to go watch, so I walked up one flight of stairs up to the roof. Up on the roof, my neighbors Susan, Rob and Rob's wife were already watching the Manhattan downtown skyline.

Susan, my neighbor from apartment 6D, was President Herbert Hoover's artist-rebel second-cousin (her father was a cousin to the Prez), who used to live up in the hills of Boulder, Colorado before relocating to New York City. She used to squat in the cabins up in the hills and shoot bullets into the sky to scare off any intruders. She's a short lady, but she wears platform sneakers (sneakers with five inch soles) everywhere, so she appears taller than she really is. To this day she's never told me how old she is - but the lovely deep wrinkles on her face don't lie - she's been there and back. A musical hippy of her time - Susan is a guitarist and a poet. Through the years, she'd taught me how to play guitar and write poetry. We'd been good friends ever since I moved into 6B five years ago, despite our age difference, because I guess we both knew a fellow artist-rebel when we saw one. We were Kindred Spirits, as Anne of Green Gables used to say.

Rob was Susan's Italian-American ex-boyfriend who lived downstairs - except theyd' broken up several decades ago when she was 40 and when he was 30. Since then, they'd both moved onto greener pastures and now Rob was married with a teenage son and a wife crammed into their small three bedroom Village Coop apartment on West 10th Street @ Bleecker. Our building was a short block north of Christopher Street between Seventh Ave. and Hudson St. It was a great place to watch the gay pride parade go by in the Summer, as it wound down those last several hundred feet towards Hudson.

Rob was videotaping the tower inferno - building number one - with his camcorder. I saw immediately that it wasn't just a fire - that there was a big fat hole in Building One, and everyone was talking about how the hole might have gotten there. "I hear there was an explosion." "I hear a plane went into it." No one knew for sure - but the number of neighbors on the roof had doubled after five minutes.

Suddenly - a powerful explosion rocked the building to the left of Building One. Building number two released a huge plume of gas and fire. I was still on the phone with my Mom, so I told her: "Mom - I don't know what's going on but I'll call you back later (in Japanese)." and hung up. Soon after, someone's radio delivered to us President Bush's message that this was most likely a terrorist attack on American soil. The radio informed us that two planes had crashed into the Towers.

The crowd of us had seen the explosion in Building Two - but not the plane, and we still stood in disbelief that it wasn't just an accident. I thought that maybe, the second explosion was caused by the first. But Rob, who had been videotaping the whole thing rewound his video and on his small camcorder, we all saw a shadow of a plane crash into Building Two. It was clear. It had been a plane and a terrorist attack. I looked at Building One, this time with binoculars that a neighbor had brought up. Our Coop was less than two miles away from Ground Zero. There were people in Building One, looking back at us. I could see them very clearly. And I saw some people jumping off of Building One. It was surreal.

And without warning, Building One started to crumble, as it created a plume of smoke that kept growing underneath it. We could see everything. At one point, the dark plume grew rapidly towards us, and we thought it might cover us too. Rob's wife went into a panic. Their teenage son attended Stuyvesant High School, which was across the street from Ground Zero. She left the roof to go find him.

It's all a blur from around there. I had gone downstairs to get a glass of water and by the time I went back to the roof, Building Two had crumbled too. Now - I could see from our rooftop that the towers were no longer. Before 9/11, I used to use the twin towers to help orient myself when I got out of the Subway. If I could see the twin towers, I  knew I was facing South. Now with them gone, the skyline seemed lonely.

Those days, I was working in midtown Manhattan at a law firm. With the ensuing fiasco, I called into work  and was told I didn't have to go in. Someone said that the subways had stopped running because of the explosions. There were people in suits walking up West Side Highway covered in ash from head to toe. Dazed, they walked their way uptown (presumably towards home), looking traumatized.

My part of town was closed down by the authorities immediately, except to those that lived or worked there. The police created a check point at 14th Street. 7th Avenue and Hudson St. were closed down for the ambulances to bring the injured survivors back to St. Vincent's hospital, which was at 7th Avenue and 12th St. Except no ambulance came carrying any survivors. The destruction had been complete. Doctors and medical attendants lined the sidewalk outside the hospital eagerly awaiting for survivors to arrive. People started to post "Have you seen ___" along side the South-side wall of St. Vincent's hospital.

My Mom had a hard time reaching me for the rest of the day, since our phone lines were maxed to capacity with everyone calling in from all over the World to check up on their beloved New Yorkers. My friends John and Amy, who lived in Battery Park across the street from Ground Zero, suddenly found themselves homeless, and they came to stay at my apartment. They had to go buy some clothes because they had nothing to change into. All we did that evening was get drunk. We were all in our late twenties, self-medicating our pain, not knowing what was happening or what else we could do. The local liquor store attendant told me that on 9/11/2001, a lot of people were flocking to his store in the Village to get some hard liquor. My guests and I imbibed Southern Comfort that evening.

In the days that ensued, we saw an increase in police and military presence in the West Village. There was an outpouring of volunteer police officers from all over to help out (I remember talking to this one officer that had driven up from Florida overnight), and everyone else seemed to be willing to help each other. Soldiers in full fatigue marched up and down Hudson Street. My car was parked in a City-owned parking lot that was turned into the Military Staging Area, so getting my car out was not possible for two months. The number of "Have You Seen ___?" posters and pictures grew along the South-side wall of St. Vincent's Hospital. The number of the missing kept growing. The air smelled funny, like burnt plastic, for many days. Ground Zero continued to smoulder for weeks. Some said the air was toxic. Banana trucks eerily lined the West Side Highway. They used the portable refrigeration facilities to store the bodies of the deceased, until family members could identify and claim the bodies. My boyfriend Dale found papers that clearly had originated from the Twin Towers strewn all over the yard of his Dad's house in Brooklyn. The wind had blown the papers deep into Brooklyn. My other friend Chia was downtown that day and reported seeing large chunks of the planes on the ground near City Hall.

The out-pouring of help was amazing. Everyone gave blood, and everyone wanted to help out with the clean up and rescue efforts. There was too much blood being donated and too many volunteers. So many of us who wanted to help didn't know how to. Some friends and I decided to get together the next day at a Cafe above 14th St. on 7th Ave. It was right outside the military zone, so that we could all get there without having to prove our identity. We gathered at the basement of the Cafe that day looking for community - something humans naturally do in times of crisis - to talk with each other about the unspeakable events that had unfolded around us. My friends were quite diverse - there were several Swiss nationals (one journalist, one human rights activist, one graduate student), a Jamaican-American lawyer / teacher, a Jewish-American accountant turned paparazzi journalist, a Long Island-Italian-American spa business owner, a Taiwanese NYU film school Ph.D. candidate, a White-American documentary film maker, etc. - some Gay, some Straight. We loved each other and our life in New York. We collectively asked ourselves, "Why did this happen?"

After 9/11, I developed a phobia for going into sky scrapers. It was especially uncomfortable the first year. I still don't like going into tall buildings or getting into claustrophobic elevators. It pretty much killed my desire to ever work in a traditional law firm, because that meant I would probably work in a sky scraper. This also made me realize that my time in Manhattan was ending. When I moved back to California a year later, I bought a cabin in Placerville, far away from the City - because I had imagined that I would need a place to escape to if something like 9/11 ever happened in my life again. (It was also because I couldn't yet afford to buy a house in Berkeley.) I was traumatized by the trailers on T.V. for the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" when the trailer showed the Golden Gate Bridge collapsing. To me, it was too uncomfortably close to reality and was incensed by its insensitivity. I think I stopped watching network T.V. around the same time.

9/11 helped me come back to Berkeley, the city I most loved. I chose Berkeley because of its progressive (thus forwarding thinking) values, amazing weather, and accessibility to nature. I chose Berkeley over Los Angeles (where my family lives) because the events of that day taught me that life is too short to live in a manner that did not reflect my ethics and values. And I guess I knew enough to know that if I lived here, I would find the person I'd want to become within me. I needed to become a student of change, before I could become the change I wanted to be.

As I search within for the change I want to see in the World, I am reminded of what began my process towards change: It was 9/11. Because of what I saw that day, I have a firm conviction that I would do anything in my power to create a better World than to not have tried at all.

Our Learning Abilities, and Why We Need Each Other

People should be taught what their learning abilities are when they are young. I'm not going to call it learning "disability" because it's not a disability a lot of times - it's just that we individually have different preferences about how we learn and absorb information from the external World around us. For example, most men are, on average, more visual than most women.

I think people's learning abilities can easily be measured if you take each measurable brain function and test for it. A good diagram of the brain's functions can be found at: http://hiddentalents.org/brain/113-left.html and http://hiddentalents.org/brain/113-right.html) Regardless of whether this website is completely accurate, you've got to wonder - what are MY strengths? For example, I have EXCELLENT visual memory. I never need a GPS, as long as I've been there once before. And I remember faces very well. But not names. Names, I suck. In my mind, I see the first letter and that's all I can recall sometimes. I also know of a genius who has exceptional taste memory. This one friend of the Oracle's could recall the taste of wine in minute detail - as in sequences as well as overall sensation on the tongue at any moment during that experiential taste sequence.

Another case in point: After graduating from Berkeley, I went to law school and then got another degree in tax after law school - and at the very tail end of my 38 year ascent through the educational system I FINALLY realized - oh, I have what other people call a learning "disability." I have trouble retaining "words" in my memory. I can remember pictures and concepts better than most other people, but not words. So becoming a biologist was not possible for me. I couldn't remember the different parts of our anatomy, even if my own life depended on it. I made up for it in other ways, obviously. The practice of law works for people who can memorize concepts - which is something I do really well because I see the World in pictures. (Because I'm bilingual, people often ask me whether I dream in English or Japanese. I always say I don't dream in either language. I dream in visual sequences - in other words - I dream in pictures, not words. And it's not that I'm completely incapable of memorizing weird words - it just takes me longer. But thanks to the Internet - most of the times, no one notices, because I can just look up the word that I can't remember on the Internet.)

Another thing is that concept driven people (me) are better at certain tasks. We make good Judges / Teachers / Business Owners because we can be given pretty confusing instructions but prioritize what's important and create order out of the chaos. Concept-oriented people thrive in the gray areas of life. People who are more literal prefer receiving more concrete instructions, and pay more attention to the details - and that's a good thing too.

Oh, and the other thing about my brain is that I tend to remember the small stuff (like statutes and case law), if it's useful or interesting. I enjoy tax law and immigration law both because tax and immigration policies are both full of politics and human drama. And I learn something about human nature in both of these areas.

Point is, I would have loved to have learned when I was younger that what works for Jane Doe didn't necessarily work for me when it came to learning. I wasted so much time trying to learn like everyone else!! Doth I protest too much? It's because I struggled for 30 years thinking there were parts of me that were retarded. I've known several people in my life who were considered geniuses, and none of them are perfect either. Point is, we are ALL flawed. And conversely, we all have individual strengths. I joke that our personalities are a composite of our respective brain damages - which is why we need each other. The point is that TOGETHER, we become more whole and can see the World more clearly.

I offer to you my flawed thesis in this blog, so that at least I could have a starting point to this conversation that I want to have with you. I offer them to you with the hope that we become better people as a result of this exercise. I just want us to start this conversation, a conversation about how we can create a better World, together. If we put our heads together - I think we will prevail. After all, there are seven billion paths to peace. Each of us is an integral piece of this puzzle.

EVOLUTION STEP NO. 2: How to Better Communicate, so that we can Evolve as a Species towards Enlightenment

Dear Friends,

I am really interested in finding better ways to communicate with others honestly. We have a lot of difficult things we need to talk about in America today. If the key to a better World is Communication, then I want to share with you the best communication tool that I’d ever been taught, from someone I respect.

The communication tool is called the Integrity Tone Scale (the "Chart"). It has really helped me overcome life's challenges when I feel stuck. It is actually a lot more than a communication tool - it helps me see the perspectives of the people I have conflict with, so that we can work together without getting "tripped up" by the small stuff.

Different Versions of the Chart on the Internet

Here is one version of the Chart.
A pdf version of the Chart can be found here.
It's a little confusing just looking at it, so I'll walk you through it.

(We all absorb information differently. It's a very useful exercise to stare at the chart, understand it, and then create your own version using your own words.) 

Samsara (Buddhism version)

In Buddhism, there is a concept called "Samsara." Samsara is:

• our training ground;
• the space that most of us fill while we reside in this Universe;
• the unconscious life that is somewhere under "Enlightenment (Heaven)"; and
• the realm in which we experience Life as Suffering.

Samsara is a place where I selfishly see the World through my own, myopic Dirty Goggles, where I often do not take responsibility for my own actions, and view the world in self-serving ways without bothering to learn the "other" perspective(s).

When I am in Samsara the only things I see are reflections of my own belief systems; because if I believe in something, I see more of it. Similarly, if I don't believe in something, I simply won't see it, because it just won't agree with my viewpoint.

The Chart is a Road Map To Enlightenment

The concept of Samsara overlaps beautifully with what the Chart says, except that the Chart adds one extra step. The Chart teaches me how to climb out of Samsara. The Chart allows me to see other possibilities, other perspectives. I do believe that we can awaken ourselves from within, using this Chart.

Below is my explanation of the Chart, as it relates to Samsara.
Samsara represents the bottom portion of the Chart(s). When my Spirit resides in Samsara, I might approach life from the following perspectives:

        Anger;
        Fear;
        Withdrawal
        Grief / Self Pity
        Apathy
        Blame / Victimized
        Shame
        Excessive Pride
        etc.

When my Spirit is in Samsara, I might blame anything and everything else if something goes wrong (just not me). I might kick a tire in anger and sulk. Conversely, an enlightened person may take the opportunity to enjoy the weather while they wait for help to arrive.

The Chart identifies many of the ways I have and still do harbor misconceptions. The Chart then shows me ways in which I can get "unstuck" from that misconception.

How the Chart works:

Example # 1:

We're having a disagreement. Both of us are arguing for our own reasonable versions of the truth:

Me: "The highway is the best way to get from point A to B."

You: "No it's not. It's the streets. "

Me: "Yes it is."

The Chart suggests that, in order to get beyond this adversarial situation, I may need to acknowledge that I am trying to be Right about something instead of moving beyond it. "Wanting to be Right" is one way I have gotten stuck in life. If I always think I'm right I'll cease to learn and grow.

I learned this lesson the hard way once when my friend and I got into a car to go somewhere, but we never got there because we couldn't agree on the quickest way to get there - we got into a silly fight and never went. A more evolved person might have kindly let the other person be Right.

Example # 2:

I might blame the 1% for getting us into this mess. The Chart suggests that I should be more honest about the situation and acknowledge my own responsibilities: that I have been complicit with the 1% all along by buying things and engaging in commercial transactions with the 1%.

By acknowledging our own responsibilities, we can shift our perspectives from blaming others to feeling empowered and responsible to create the change we wish to see from within ourselves. We each hold a key to unlock this power from within.

Above Samsara - the Path to Enlightenment.

Once we clean our goggles enough to escape Samsara, we'll see ourselves as active participants in the World. But we're still going to struggle, mostly to steadfastly believe in ourselves, and what we may be capable of.  So remember the following:

• WE MAY LIVE IN UNCERTAINTY (Meaning, we're still not going to be sure of ourselves at this stage, and we will experience self-doubt - so just choose who we want to be and persevere.);
• WE MAY NEED TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE GOOD THINGS WE DO (Take responsibility for them - in a good way.);
• WE MAY NEED TO BE REMINDED OF OUR OWN IMPORTANCE (Don't think that your thoughts are not important.);
• IT MAY TAKE EFFORT TO KEEP COMMUNICATIONS OPEN (Keep communicating whatever that comes up as important to you - believe in yourself.);
• IT MAY TAKE EFFORT TO MAINTAIN MOMENTUM (You're doing great - just keep it up - don't stop now - just keep getting better at what you do - practice, practice, practice!);
• MAKE SURE TO NOTICE THE POSITIVE RESULTS (Give yourself credit! Great job!); and
• AND KEEP DOING WHAT YOU'RE DOING (At some point, you'll KNOW that you're on the right track. You will feel exhilarated, grateful, and happy.).

Patterns in the Universe?

I love that, in the end, the teachings of the Chart overlap with the message that Steve Jobs delivered to Stanford's graduating class in June 2005: that I should follow my heart and become who I want to be, which is essentially the same thing that Gandhi said when he spoke about becoming the change that I want to see. They both say that I should become who I want to be. This also coincides with what Oprah talked about in her commencement speech at Wellesley College in 1997.

[I]f you were to ask me what is the secret to my success, it is because I understand that there is a power greater than myself, that rules my life and in life if you can ... connect yourself to the source, I call it God, you can call it whatever you want to, the force, nature, Allah, the power. If you can connect yourself to the source and allow the energy that is your personality, your life force to be connected to the greater force, anything is possible for you. I am proof of that. I think that my life, the fact that I was born where I was born, [in] the time that I was and have been able to do what I have done speaks to the possibility. Not that I am special, but that it could be done. Hold the highest, grandest vision for yourself.

Just like Mr. Jobs and Mr. Gandhi, Oprah agrees that we should become who we want to be, that we should envision our best self, and as long as that vision is connected to the "Source," she says that ANYTHING is possible for us. The Chart teaches us how to reach towards that "Source." The Chart has worked well for me so far. Knock on wood (real wood, if you can find it).

The Executive Summary

My Experience is affected by my perspective(s).

I can often change how I experience life by changing my perspective.

Stay Positive, because we do often have a negative bias.

Conclusion

I know of course that this isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, but one person that is able to use the Chart to dislodge stuck thoughts and communications can help improve the communication of a lot of people around him/her. By having these skills, we can help facilitate the changes we wish to see in the World directly around us. And I am comforted by the thought that we're going to be exactly where we need to be, wherever we go with this.

I am open to your criticisms and feedback.
Thank you very much for reading.
Namaste.

Post Script: Where am I on the Chart?

The Wonderful Me asked me where I am on the Chart via Facebook, and this is how I responded to her:

"I am all over the Chart at different times of the day, given different situations.

• Sometimes I catch myself in Blame, which is within Samsara.
• Last week, when I was in LA, I felt Apathy and felt Depressed and Hopeless as I was stuck on I-405 Northbound between Torrance and Westwood for THREE HOURS in traffic from 3pm to 6pm. Surrounding me was TEN LANES of bumper to bumper traffic stretching miles and miles on the highway. If I was exposed to that kind of traffic nightmare daily, I know that I would have a harder time believing that I am the Source of Change, that I have the potential to create the Change I wish to see. It is hard to know that that is reality for MANY people. I know this is a luxury but in my present lifestyle, I do not drive for the most part. I can go up to feeling like I live in "Choice" and that I can choose to be the Change I want to be.
• When I am feeling super good and rewarded, I can go as high as feeling Abundance, but it takes a lot of effort and constant "cleansing" of the negative experiences I collect as I go through daily life. Yoga, swimming, playing music, and dancing are the ways I cleanse my spirit. All of these activities help me release trapped energy or "chi" from my body, which helps me move forward and release stuck thoughts and feelings. It is a daily practice in maintaining self-awareness. Daily life is our spiritual training ground.

One thing: I do not judge myself or others for where we are on our respective journeys. We are where we are, and it is what it is. Shouganai. We're all just ambling down life's paths." Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." Let's live by example (positive reinforcement), and not in judgment (negative reinforcement)."