Being w/ Remarkable Beings
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Ram Dass: Grace is Something Given to You By The One
This telephone interview took place on July 21, 2003, prior to respected sage, author, lecturer and spiritual teacher Ram Dass' presentation on August 2, 2003, at Crater High School in Central Point, Oregon.
What do you plan to say in your lecture here?
How one spiritualizes one's life. A lot of people are expressing anxiety these days. It's wrong, well, not wrong, but they experience their lives on the wrong plane, the plane in which they undergo suffering.
What plane is that?
We are three-plane beings: one, the ego, two, the soul and three, the third plane, what the Quakers call the still, small voice of God within. Hindus call it atman. It's the mystical part of us. It's the way we know the Universe subjectively, rather than objectively.
What does being on the third plane do for us?
It allows us to be a witness of the suffering, though we still will suffer. You start as an ego, which means you are attached to your incarnation. The soul which comes into the incarnation goes from incarnation to incarnation. The death of an incarnation is not such a big deal as our ego thinks it is. I'd rather identify with my soul.
Do you teach your audience or give the techniques for this?
My lectures are question-and-answer periods. I'd rather the audience initiate the topics. I present myself as RAM--rent a mouth. They rent my mouth, to respond to questions by reciting information we all know. About number three.
What are your thoughts on aging and death now that you have come back from your stroke six years ago and are 72?
The age stage is awesome.
I should look forward to it?
You should. (Laughs) You can shift from ego to soul-perception. The changes are awesome--changes in friends, changes in body, changes in mind. It brings you as close to God as you can get in this lifetime. For me, I spend my waking hours in timeless states, spaceless states. That's really pretty good. You can go in and out of planes of consciousness and you can stack them like baklava-some nutty, some flaky, some sticky. (Laughs)
Is it like a window on the third plane?
Yes. It happens after realization.
What is realization?
That your awareness is connected with all and everything ... and nothing. It's Buddha, Christ, Mohammed, Moses and my guru. They have a perspective about life from number three.
I understand most questions of you are about relationships and people's search for love and their suffering in that experience.
Yes. The strings between souls is love. You can go the love ladder as bhakti (loving service done to please God, rather than for self gratification), with attachment at the beginning and then go to love of the One. You become love. It's like you get into a bath tub of love with another person. In the bath tub, the two of you are "in" love. It takes a lot of surrender.
To God or to the relationship?
To the situation of the relationship. It's like a corporation. People get together to form an entity. I see the love relationship, the marriage as a triangle. The two bottom points are the two partners. The third one is God consciousness. The two get close to each other as the peak of the triangle comes near and they merge with one another in God. That's love.
Most people probably don't know that or do it.
(Very long laughter.)
What's your take on the world situation now after all the big changes of the last two years?
I' d like to say we're headed for a change in government, with Dennis Kucinich as president. But I wouldn't bet on it. What we've got is untrammeled greed, greed, greed. Greed is overwhelming our compassion. The times when government becomes uncompassionate, our human hearts hurt. The war in Iraq is a hurt in our compassionate hearts.
Do you think that, as a human species, we're "getting it" and evolving in any significant way?
Yes. We're getting to the point where computer and television are not sufficient for our needs for communication. We need communication with our hearts and that is really a heart to heart deal. I see the human heart as the basic instrument for social change. Dennis Kucinich and I, we shared hearts.
How did you two connect?
The core, the consciousness, the compassion. We met twice. My heart met a human being. Which is very unusual when you meet a politician. (Laughs) I'd like my heart to be represented in the government.
As you look at the global stage now, what do you see as the big dangers we face?
I'd say the environment is number one. We have to stem the effects of what's happening to the environment, like global warming. The paranoia. We distrust those we call "them" and that's rife and stems from our president. This country is mobilized only when we have a good enemy, like the drug war, the cancer war, the cigarette war.
As you grow older now, how do you face death? What do you feel?
I feel wonder. I'm here Looking around and seeing the One manifesting. Looking at people and seeing God manifested. I'm not on the production line of society. I'm not writing books. I'm doing them. It feels like a very great privilege to not be in the work force.
How is your health and strength now?
I travel almost all the time. The wheel chair doesn't go a lot of places, like many hotel rooms. I get a kick out of it all, the effect of my stroke on my arms and legs. I don't mind. It would be good to heal all this, though. I do have a chair everywhere I go.
You seem completely lucid as ever.
Every now and then, my memory is hazy. It absolutely delights me, because there's a Buddhist story about that: speak not of the past, anticipate not the future, then you will dwell in the ... I can't remember it. (Laughs) Too many people think and spend time in the past and future and they're both just thoughts.
You mean they're not real?
That's right.
What do you think about what you wrote in "Be Here Now" (his million seller 1971 book).
I'm still here.
Is there anything you would add to the book now ?
I'd have to add: cultivate the faith that there are other planes than that which you deal with here. That faith allows you to experience the grace of your life.
What does grace mean to you?
It's like--to perceive your life as graceful, as a thing given to you from the One. My grace comes from my guru. He's dead but he's in my consciousness. It's that you think, that you feel, that your own life is spiritually blessed.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Jean Houston: Creating Social Artistry
Our society is changing faster, getting more complex and the old methods aren’t working very well, leading people like noted Ashland philospher-author Jean Houston to decide that a new generation of “social artists” need to be trained as leaders of constructive global change.
Houston, author of 26 books and a teacher of many consciousness-raising seminars around the world, has for 10 years, led her Social Artistry Summer Leadreship Institute at Southern Oregon University, training people to carry out projects in the US for health care reform, community development through the arts, environmental education, Native American housing, prison education and literacy to overcome poverty.
This August, she will lead her training on a cruise to Alaska, with a fund-raising benefit brunch, lecture and art auction July 17 at Blue: Greek on Granite Restaurant in Ashland.
Houston, an Ashland resident for 13 years, has located her nonprofit Jean Houston Foundation in Ashland -- and the event will be an attempt to reach out more deeply to the Ashland community, which, says the foundation executive director Peggy Dean, has a lot of retired people of accomplishment and means who want to do social artistry.
Working with the United Nations Development Program, her teams have been training social artistry leaders abroad - in Albania, Kenya, Nepal, the Philippines and the Caribbean to organize basic life functions, such as sanitation, food supply, small business support, dairies and literacy, said Dean.
“It’s giving people hope and purpose with hands-on skills, using a sensory-rich strategy,” said Dean, noting that social artistry incorporates local myth, storytelling, dance, music, theater and folkways, rather than coming in and imposing Western-style planning and organization.
“As the old structures fail, it becomes them-and-us but this brings about the ‘we’ again,” said Houston, noting that social artistry works to counter the hopelessness and immobility resulting “when 1 percent of the population has more income than the lower 90 percent.”
Houston adds, “Now, more change is happening faster, old traditions are collapsing and the economy is not going to get better. We’ve lived through the good times, having good incomes, comfort, scientific advances and good education. Now, instead of good times, we’re having what I call ‘great times,’ meaning that what’s expected is the unexpected at every level.”
To cope with such levels of change, instability and complexity requires people skilled in social artistry, Houston says, adding that at her trainings people often come in teams or form into networks, then leave to conduct specific projects
“We’re always looking for the emerging story (in the local culture), then you have your reason for being and you create that communal bond that allows the community to go forward,” says Houston.
Gloria Rossi Menendez, owner of Blue (the Ashland restaurant) and “creative working partner” with Houston, says, “We lift our local lives into the much bigger story and it carries and lifts you, creating a web that does not have a weaver.”
Houston adds, “It’s an artistry that focuses intentionality and brings out so many inner skills. This is important because we’re not prepared for this time. The average person now has 100 times the experience of people a century ago...the level of our development has to keep pace with our crises -- in the economy, ecology, terrorism...”
Houston, 74, works to integrate skills and wisdom from both genders and all cultures and quips, “Too many white males I meet are prepared for the challenges of 1926.”
Dean works on social artistry with Microsoft Corporation and says she teaches business people to move beyond the old models of management.
The social artistry model of leadership, says Dean, includes expanded intellectual capacity, systems thinking, strategic problem-solving, partnership building, “gender mainstreaming,” human rights, personal imagination, initiative and appreciation for the local culture and wisdom, along with lots of “rhythmic response, jokes and laughter.”
The difference in social artistry, notes Houston, is that it’s sensory, physical, psychological, mythic, symbolic, spiritual and integral -- all qualities developing beyond the old business and management styles.
Often employing mind-stretching phrases and concepts, Houston sums up the purpose of social artistry by saying, “Indigenous peoples know we have access to a wide spectrum of personas, which we can train people to take on. We’re not just these bags of skin we drag around.”
Houston says she wants to step up her use of skilled area residents because “Ashland is ancient Athens without the slaves. We have music, arts, the best theater in the country, tremendous healing centers, more mind-body workers per square foot than anywhere in the world. It’s a town vigorously involved with itself.”
Houston’s work has roots in ancient Greek mythology and values, as do her Mystery Schools, taught annually in Oregon and New York state. The event at the Greek restaurant is $35, includes brunch and will feature an auction of art, including some from her collection.
The Alaskan cruise training, called “Navigating the Wilderness, is August 3 through 13 and starts with a three-day training in Seattle. Information is at www.jeanhoustonfoundation.org. For tickets for the Ashland auction, call the Social Artistry Foundation, 541-482-4240 or the Jean Houston office, 541-482-1200.
Houston, author of 26 books and a teacher of many consciousness-raising seminars around the world, has for 10 years, led her Social Artistry Summer Leadreship Institute at Southern Oregon University, training people to carry out projects in the US for health care reform, community development through the arts, environmental education, Native American housing, prison education and literacy to overcome poverty.
This August, she will lead her training on a cruise to Alaska, with a fund-raising benefit brunch, lecture and art auction July 17 at Blue: Greek on Granite Restaurant in Ashland.
Houston, an Ashland resident for 13 years, has located her nonprofit Jean Houston Foundation in Ashland -- and the event will be an attempt to reach out more deeply to the Ashland community, which, says the foundation executive director Peggy Dean, has a lot of retired people of accomplishment and means who want to do social artistry.
Working with the United Nations Development Program, her teams have been training social artistry leaders abroad - in Albania, Kenya, Nepal, the Philippines and the Caribbean to organize basic life functions, such as sanitation, food supply, small business support, dairies and literacy, said Dean.
“It’s giving people hope and purpose with hands-on skills, using a sensory-rich strategy,” said Dean, noting that social artistry incorporates local myth, storytelling, dance, music, theater and folkways, rather than coming in and imposing Western-style planning and organization.
“As the old structures fail, it becomes them-and-us but this brings about the ‘we’ again,” said Houston, noting that social artistry works to counter the hopelessness and immobility resulting “when 1 percent of the population has more income than the lower 90 percent.”
Houston adds, “Now, more change is happening faster, old traditions are collapsing and the economy is not going to get better. We’ve lived through the good times, having good incomes, comfort, scientific advances and good education. Now, instead of good times, we’re having what I call ‘great times,’ meaning that what’s expected is the unexpected at every level.”
To cope with such levels of change, instability and complexity requires people skilled in social artistry, Houston says, adding that at her trainings people often come in teams or form into networks, then leave to conduct specific projects
“We’re always looking for the emerging story (in the local culture), then you have your reason for being and you create that communal bond that allows the community to go forward,” says Houston.
Gloria Rossi Menendez, owner of Blue (the Ashland restaurant) and “creative working partner” with Houston, says, “We lift our local lives into the much bigger story and it carries and lifts you, creating a web that does not have a weaver.”
Houston adds, “It’s an artistry that focuses intentionality and brings out so many inner skills. This is important because we’re not prepared for this time. The average person now has 100 times the experience of people a century ago...the level of our development has to keep pace with our crises -- in the economy, ecology, terrorism...”
Houston, 74, works to integrate skills and wisdom from both genders and all cultures and quips, “Too many white males I meet are prepared for the challenges of 1926.”
Dean works on social artistry with Microsoft Corporation and says she teaches business people to move beyond the old models of management.
The social artistry model of leadership, says Dean, includes expanded intellectual capacity, systems thinking, strategic problem-solving, partnership building, “gender mainstreaming,” human rights, personal imagination, initiative and appreciation for the local culture and wisdom, along with lots of “rhythmic response, jokes and laughter.”
The difference in social artistry, notes Houston, is that it’s sensory, physical, psychological, mythic, symbolic, spiritual and integral -- all qualities developing beyond the old business and management styles.
Often employing mind-stretching phrases and concepts, Houston sums up the purpose of social artistry by saying, “Indigenous peoples know we have access to a wide spectrum of personas, which we can train people to take on. We’re not just these bags of skin we drag around.”
Houston says she wants to step up her use of skilled area residents because “Ashland is ancient Athens without the slaves. We have music, arts, the best theater in the country, tremendous healing centers, more mind-body workers per square foot than anywhere in the world. It’s a town vigorously involved with itself.”
Houston’s work has roots in ancient Greek mythology and values, as do her Mystery Schools, taught annually in Oregon and New York state. The event at the Greek restaurant is $35, includes brunch and will feature an auction of art, including some from her collection.
The Alaskan cruise training, called “Navigating the Wilderness, is August 3 through 13 and starts with a three-day training in Seattle. Information is at www.jeanhoustonfoundation.org. For tickets for the Ashland auction, call the Social Artistry Foundation, 541-482-4240 or the Jean Houston office, 541-482-1200.
Todd Barton: the Consciousness of the Shakuhatchi
On several Friday lunch hours this summer, you can escape your kitchen or cafe, trip over to the Schneider Art Museum and catch the “haunting, breathy and mysterious” sounds of the shakuhachi as this ancient Japanese bamboo flute resounds in the excellent acoustics amid the art.
It’s free, fun, different and not planned out. Longtime local composer-performer Todd Barton -- and usually some friends -- will wing it, creating the music that comes to them as they interact with each other, listeners and whatever musical sprites happen to be influencing them on that day, in that museum, which is at the east end of Southern Oregon University, above the intersection of Ashland Street with Siskiyou Boulevard.
“Improv is all about listening to the notes I produce and listening to where they take me,” says Barton. “Improv with another person is even more exciting. The sounds grow and develop.”
The resident composer of Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where he’s worked for 42 years, Barton has a thing for both electronic and acoustical instruments and a love for improv that hatches performances “that are a surprise for me and the audience.”
In other words, get ready for some original music, never heard by anyone and frequently interwoven with “the haunting, breathy and mysterious tones of the shakuhachi, which sound like the wind in the trees.”
Where does the inspiration come from when you walk into a performance without any playlist or sheet music?
From your mind and heart, of course, but, says Barton, also from the audience. “As Pauline Oliveros (electronic composer and accordionist) said, ‘if the people on stage are listening, then the people in the audience are listening.’ When that works, the audience and performer are one.”
As the aural muse of the Festival chats, you suddenly hear tinkling, soothing music, but whence cometh these magical strains?
“Ringtone,” says Barton.
“Shakuhachi?”
“Absolutely,” he notes, adding, “I got tired of hearing all these hyper, anxious tones. They’d make me hyper and anxious. These shakuhachi tones take getting used to because they don’t grab your attention. But after a while they kind of say ‘I can’t wait to talk to you.’”
Note: you can listen and download 15 ringtones for $10 from www.toddbarton.com. The site says, “The shakuhachi flute has been used for meditation and breath work for over a millennium. With shakuhachi ringtones you’ll be gently reminded to take a breath before facing the unexpected.”
Barton has been an adjunct professor at SOU since 1972 and teaches music composition, orchestration and compositional technique and electronic and computer music. He refers to his electronic instruments as “my sonic lego set.”
It’s free, fun, different and not planned out. Longtime local composer-performer Todd Barton -- and usually some friends -- will wing it, creating the music that comes to them as they interact with each other, listeners and whatever musical sprites happen to be influencing them on that day, in that museum, which is at the east end of Southern Oregon University, above the intersection of Ashland Street with Siskiyou Boulevard.
“Improv is all about listening to the notes I produce and listening to where they take me,” says Barton. “Improv with another person is even more exciting. The sounds grow and develop.”
The resident composer of Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where he’s worked for 42 years, Barton has a thing for both electronic and acoustical instruments and a love for improv that hatches performances “that are a surprise for me and the audience.”
In other words, get ready for some original music, never heard by anyone and frequently interwoven with “the haunting, breathy and mysterious tones of the shakuhachi, which sound like the wind in the trees.”
Where does the inspiration come from when you walk into a performance without any playlist or sheet music?
From your mind and heart, of course, but, says Barton, also from the audience. “As Pauline Oliveros (electronic composer and accordionist) said, ‘if the people on stage are listening, then the people in the audience are listening.’ When that works, the audience and performer are one.”
As the aural muse of the Festival chats, you suddenly hear tinkling, soothing music, but whence cometh these magical strains?
“Ringtone,” says Barton.
“Shakuhachi?”
“Absolutely,” he notes, adding, “I got tired of hearing all these hyper, anxious tones. They’d make me hyper and anxious. These shakuhachi tones take getting used to because they don’t grab your attention. But after a while they kind of say ‘I can’t wait to talk to you.’”
Note: you can listen and download 15 ringtones for $10 from www.toddbarton.com. The site says, “The shakuhachi flute has been used for meditation and breath work for over a millennium. With shakuhachi ringtones you’ll be gently reminded to take a breath before facing the unexpected.”
Barton has been an adjunct professor at SOU since 1972 and teaches music composition, orchestration and compositional technique and electronic and computer music. He refers to his electronic instruments as “my sonic lego set.”
John Kalb: Winning at Aging
Dr. John Kalb: Winning at Aging
There are a lot of books published on how to have an active, healthy old age -- and Ashland chirpractor John Kalb has read them all and decided to publish a whole new slant on it called “Winning at Aging: Your Game Plan for a Healthy Living.”
Yes, it’s got chapters on healthy diet, exercise and mental activity -- the boilerplate of any such tome, but it proclaims that the real secret for good aging is not life extension or a big portfolio, but a better quality of life, one that comes from inside you and lets you experience and enjoy old age.
“It’s a middle path,” says Kalb. “You maximize health, of course, but you don’t live in denial of aging. You nurture that which improves with age and what is it? Character and wisdom. I call it creative aging or conscious aging.”
Aging Americans often live with “the shadow,” which is our mania for affirming youth, beauty and activity -- and it drives a lot of seniors to get face lifts, put on “gobs of makeup,” color their hair and try to look a decade or two younger, all the while denying the reality of death and not asking how it adds positively to our lives.
“If I identify too strongly with being a young, vital, sexy person and then aging starts changing my life, I’m going to hit a point of crisis and become an angry, bitter, frustrated person,” says Kalb.
From a million magazine articles, books and talk shows, older folks already know how to set up a good eating and workout regimen, though most Americans of every age, he notes, still “gain weight, eat junk food and sit all day at a screen.”
Kalb, 62, goes back to square one, using famed psychogist Abraham Maslow’s pryamid-shaped “Hierarchy of Needs,” established in 1943 and stating that we all need, at the bottom level, food, water, air, sex; in the middle: family, friendship, work, self-esteem and at the top level, morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem-solving and acceptance of reality.
“I turn that upside down, starting out by asking, why bother, why am I here, what’s really important, then, if I find that, I travel down the pyramid in style. What I recommend is to clarify your core values.”
Kalb lists 60 values most people have and asks patients or students to prioritize them. His top values are freedom, truth and service -- and for quality aging, he asks himself how he can live those, so as to “live on purpose.” Personally, Kalb’s top three values are freedom, truth and service.
The unexpected results, he says, are that people who report living “meaningful lives” also test lower for cholesterol, the stress hormone cortisol and have lower systemic inflammation, which he calls “the silent killer.”
Kalb suggests we “rustproof” our body with antioxidants, “fireproof” it from inflammation, “poison-proof” it from toxic foods and “sugar proof” it from diabetes-causing glycogens -- all of which points to a diet low in simple carbs, gluten, dairy, red meat, oil, fruit drinks and any manufactured foods.
A good aging diet, he writes, has rice milk, nut milk, lean meats like chicken and fish, starches like rice, millet, buckwheat, breads with quinoia and amaranth, oils like olive, flax and walnut -- and lots of plain old water.
Walking about his well landscaped yard, all done by himself, Kalb uses it as an object lesson, noting that, decades ago, he could work on a flagstone walk all day, but now he lets it be a couple hours.
“Lower the bar. Recalibrate unreasonable expectations about appearance and performance and accept normal losses.”
Many seniors think a high-performance portfolio will remove all the fears, stresses and dangers of aging, which Kalb calls “the money trap.”
“We need enough money to live well but having it is no guarantee of living well. Money gets us above survival mode but people with a billion are no happier than people with a million. If it gets obsessive, that’s a downside to aging and can become like a drug. I call it affluenza.”
In creating a game plan for healthy aging, he notes, keep in mind that “part of us wants to do the right thing but part of us has inner wounds, secrets and blocks and wants to do self-sabotage. It says I’m not good enough, not worthy and didn’t get enough unconditional love.”
To overcome these dark parts in aging, Kalb says it’s important to sustain health, keep exercising, build friendships and engage in service outside your own world, helping make a better community and planet.
“It’s been proven that we get physiological benefits from having meaning and purpose beyond our own selves.”
Ironically, as we move closer to the end of life, the doors open for us to be happier, says Kalb, but to get there it’s necessary to move beyond the glamor of youth and confront the reality of death.
The least happy decade in life is not the 70s or 80s, he says, but the 40s, as we peak out and begin colliding with the sceptre of losses -- in our beauty, power, importance.
“Confronting death is one of the key values of aging. Death becomes an ally for a better life. If I’m in denial of death, I’m wasting time and trying to fill the void. If I’m at peace with death, I’m free to make each moment the best I can.”
THE DO’S AND DON’TS OF AGING:
--Do eat your veggies, drink lots of water and avoid junk food, sugars, red meat, prepared dishes.
--Do exercise. It not only keeps you healthy but it reduces stress and makes you actually happier.
--Use money to make you secure enough, but “enough is enough.” Avoid “affluenza.”
--Be active, but let yourself gracefully slow down. You used to install a flagstone walk in a day but who cares if it takes a week now?
THE INNER GAME OF AGING:
--Identify your core values, gained from a lifetime of experience. Live these values to achieve a meaningful life. This is “the perennial wisdom of the elders” and produces inner peace, strength, health.
--Keep expanding your network of friends, using it to do greater good beyond your own personal world. Winning at aging is not about making just your world secure, but expanding to the big picture that includes us all.
--Be active, but let go the superficial things of youth that shout you’re sexy, full of energy and don’t have lines or gray hair. Old is groovy. It’s a legitimate, good and interesting phase of life that, once accepted, opens to wisdom, peace and spiritual growth.
There are a lot of books published on how to have an active, healthy old age -- and Ashland chirpractor John Kalb has read them all and decided to publish a whole new slant on it called “Winning at Aging: Your Game Plan for a Healthy Living.”
Yes, it’s got chapters on healthy diet, exercise and mental activity -- the boilerplate of any such tome, but it proclaims that the real secret for good aging is not life extension or a big portfolio, but a better quality of life, one that comes from inside you and lets you experience and enjoy old age.
“It’s a middle path,” says Kalb. “You maximize health, of course, but you don’t live in denial of aging. You nurture that which improves with age and what is it? Character and wisdom. I call it creative aging or conscious aging.”
Aging Americans often live with “the shadow,” which is our mania for affirming youth, beauty and activity -- and it drives a lot of seniors to get face lifts, put on “gobs of makeup,” color their hair and try to look a decade or two younger, all the while denying the reality of death and not asking how it adds positively to our lives.
“If I identify too strongly with being a young, vital, sexy person and then aging starts changing my life, I’m going to hit a point of crisis and become an angry, bitter, frustrated person,” says Kalb.
From a million magazine articles, books and talk shows, older folks already know how to set up a good eating and workout regimen, though most Americans of every age, he notes, still “gain weight, eat junk food and sit all day at a screen.”
Kalb, 62, goes back to square one, using famed psychogist Abraham Maslow’s pryamid-shaped “Hierarchy of Needs,” established in 1943 and stating that we all need, at the bottom level, food, water, air, sex; in the middle: family, friendship, work, self-esteem and at the top level, morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem-solving and acceptance of reality.
“I turn that upside down, starting out by asking, why bother, why am I here, what’s really important, then, if I find that, I travel down the pyramid in style. What I recommend is to clarify your core values.”
Kalb lists 60 values most people have and asks patients or students to prioritize them. His top values are freedom, truth and service -- and for quality aging, he asks himself how he can live those, so as to “live on purpose.” Personally, Kalb’s top three values are freedom, truth and service.
The unexpected results, he says, are that people who report living “meaningful lives” also test lower for cholesterol, the stress hormone cortisol and have lower systemic inflammation, which he calls “the silent killer.”
Kalb suggests we “rustproof” our body with antioxidants, “fireproof” it from inflammation, “poison-proof” it from toxic foods and “sugar proof” it from diabetes-causing glycogens -- all of which points to a diet low in simple carbs, gluten, dairy, red meat, oil, fruit drinks and any manufactured foods.
A good aging diet, he writes, has rice milk, nut milk, lean meats like chicken and fish, starches like rice, millet, buckwheat, breads with quinoia and amaranth, oils like olive, flax and walnut -- and lots of plain old water.
Walking about his well landscaped yard, all done by himself, Kalb uses it as an object lesson, noting that, decades ago, he could work on a flagstone walk all day, but now he lets it be a couple hours.
“Lower the bar. Recalibrate unreasonable expectations about appearance and performance and accept normal losses.”
Many seniors think a high-performance portfolio will remove all the fears, stresses and dangers of aging, which Kalb calls “the money trap.”
“We need enough money to live well but having it is no guarantee of living well. Money gets us above survival mode but people with a billion are no happier than people with a million. If it gets obsessive, that’s a downside to aging and can become like a drug. I call it affluenza.”
In creating a game plan for healthy aging, he notes, keep in mind that “part of us wants to do the right thing but part of us has inner wounds, secrets and blocks and wants to do self-sabotage. It says I’m not good enough, not worthy and didn’t get enough unconditional love.”
To overcome these dark parts in aging, Kalb says it’s important to sustain health, keep exercising, build friendships and engage in service outside your own world, helping make a better community and planet.
“It’s been proven that we get physiological benefits from having meaning and purpose beyond our own selves.”
Ironically, as we move closer to the end of life, the doors open for us to be happier, says Kalb, but to get there it’s necessary to move beyond the glamor of youth and confront the reality of death.
The least happy decade in life is not the 70s or 80s, he says, but the 40s, as we peak out and begin colliding with the sceptre of losses -- in our beauty, power, importance.
“Confronting death is one of the key values of aging. Death becomes an ally for a better life. If I’m in denial of death, I’m wasting time and trying to fill the void. If I’m at peace with death, I’m free to make each moment the best I can.”
THE DO’S AND DON’TS OF AGING:
--Do eat your veggies, drink lots of water and avoid junk food, sugars, red meat, prepared dishes.
--Do exercise. It not only keeps you healthy but it reduces stress and makes you actually happier.
--Use money to make you secure enough, but “enough is enough.” Avoid “affluenza.”
--Be active, but let yourself gracefully slow down. You used to install a flagstone walk in a day but who cares if it takes a week now?
THE INNER GAME OF AGING:
--Identify your core values, gained from a lifetime of experience. Live these values to achieve a meaningful life. This is “the perennial wisdom of the elders” and produces inner peace, strength, health.
--Keep expanding your network of friends, using it to do greater good beyond your own personal world. Winning at aging is not about making just your world secure, but expanding to the big picture that includes us all.
--Be active, but let go the superficial things of youth that shout you’re sexy, full of energy and don’t have lines or gray hair. Old is groovy. It’s a legitimate, good and interesting phase of life that, once accepted, opens to wisdom, peace and spiritual growth.
Conscious Rogue Valley
Lenn Laskow: Healing With Love
In a meditation one night, Leonard Laskow, a physician, had a vision that love is the key to healing. From there, he realized that if you accept that all things, including pathogens, have the right to live, then you can “introduce an intention” to greatly slow their growth rate -- allowing the body’s immune system to do the rest.
Now retired in Ashland from his ob-gyn practice in California, Laskow lectures widely -- France, Switzerland and India are coming up -- on ideas from his 1992 book Healing With Love: a Breakthrough Mind/Body Medical Program for Healing Yourself and Others.
Laskow’s game-changing meditation, 35 years ago, came as an “inner luminosity” and an inner voice telling him his life work would be “healing with love,” something he applied within hours, he says, intuitively sending a “radiant sun” from his heart into the tumor-filled lungs of a struggling retreat colleague. The friend’s pain went away and, when they met a decade later, was still gone.
“He said I was a real healer. I realized I was healing with love. It was a miracle, a spontaneous remission. They looked at his x-rays and said ‘this can’t be you; there’s nothing here.’ I can’t say I had anything to do with it,” notes Laskow. “He yanked out his chemo IV, accepted his fate, wherever it went, listened to Bach and Mozart and felt incredible peace.”
Not one to depend on healing light and miracles, Laskow approached these new dimensions within the bounds of science, working with several Bay Area labs and universities to quantify what works and checking it against controls and placebos.
Working with human subjects was one thing; they have all kinds of conscious and unconscious mindsets and behaviors, not to mention cultural and religious inputs, that can skew experiments. The perfect subjects, Laskow decided, were one-celled organisms, who had no enculturation -- and presumably no thoughts at all.
“I worked with bacteria and cancer cells in a petri dish. Looking at them through a microscope, I had this epiphany that they are created by the same Creator as we are. They have as much right to live as me, though I always regarded them as a pathogen.
“It was a shift in consciousness. All human conditioning dropped away and all that remained was my and this bacteria’s consciousness. We resonated and became one and that’s the important secret. When I totally and unconditionally accept them, that’s another way of saying love.”
In this “loving field,” Laskow “introduced an intention” that the bacteria reduce their growth rate. He got a 50 percent reduction compared to controls (bacteria to whom nothing was done), he says.
Working with cancer cells in a tissue culture, Laskow reduced the growth rate by 40 percent, he notes, adding, “The intent is not to destroy them. You come in loving resonance with them, then introduce the new intention. If you reduce the growth rate, the T-cells can finish the job.”
If love and a shared, sympathetic understanding between us and “pathogens” can achieve healing, then, clearly, we humans are conditioned with some serious baggage that prevents that.
True, says Laskow -- it’s that sense of separation, not just from other people, but from self, environment and the divine forces behind everything.
“It comes from that cultural, societal belief and judgment, from seeing others as different, which they are, but mistaking that for separation -- or it could be real wounds early in life or interpretations of events, leaving beliefs such as ‘I’m not good enough’ or ‘I was a mistake.’ ”
The trick about such healing, he notes, is not to make your mind or heart do something, but “to realize, in the deepest sense, that this sense of separation is what’s making us sick, that and our resistance to what is, which is oneness.”
Maintaining this sense of illusory separation takes a lot of energy -- and freeing up that energy allows it to be redirected, he says, to healing with love.
Cancer, based in our own cells, should be envisioned like this: the body is an orchestra of 50 tillion cells all playing the same music, except there’s a small group of musicians totally out of harmony and you are the conductor.
“You have to relate to them, make contact with them,” he says. “In lab research, I worked with five intentions and found the most effective one is, ‘Return to your natural order and harmony of pre-hyperactive cell life.’”
Laskow calls his work HoloEnergetic Healing, something he has taught at Esalen Institute in Big Sur for 14 years in a series of workshops called, Open to Oneness Through Love, Awakening Your Healing Heart and The Art & Science of Healing With Love.
Laskow occasionally leads workshops locally. He does phone and private consultations in Ashland and is reachable at 541-482-3033 or leonard@laskow.net. See his Facebook or site, www.lasknow.net.
In a meditation one night, Leonard Laskow, a physician, had a vision that love is the key to healing. From there, he realized that if you accept that all things, including pathogens, have the right to live, then you can “introduce an intention” to greatly slow their growth rate -- allowing the body’s immune system to do the rest.
Now retired in Ashland from his ob-gyn practice in California, Laskow lectures widely -- France, Switzerland and India are coming up -- on ideas from his 1992 book Healing With Love: a Breakthrough Mind/Body Medical Program for Healing Yourself and Others.
Laskow’s game-changing meditation, 35 years ago, came as an “inner luminosity” and an inner voice telling him his life work would be “healing with love,” something he applied within hours, he says, intuitively sending a “radiant sun” from his heart into the tumor-filled lungs of a struggling retreat colleague. The friend’s pain went away and, when they met a decade later, was still gone.
“He said I was a real healer. I realized I was healing with love. It was a miracle, a spontaneous remission. They looked at his x-rays and said ‘this can’t be you; there’s nothing here.’ I can’t say I had anything to do with it,” notes Laskow. “He yanked out his chemo IV, accepted his fate, wherever it went, listened to Bach and Mozart and felt incredible peace.”
Not one to depend on healing light and miracles, Laskow approached these new dimensions within the bounds of science, working with several Bay Area labs and universities to quantify what works and checking it against controls and placebos.
Working with human subjects was one thing; they have all kinds of conscious and unconscious mindsets and behaviors, not to mention cultural and religious inputs, that can skew experiments. The perfect subjects, Laskow decided, were one-celled organisms, who had no enculturation -- and presumably no thoughts at all.
“I worked with bacteria and cancer cells in a petri dish. Looking at them through a microscope, I had this epiphany that they are created by the same Creator as we are. They have as much right to live as me, though I always regarded them as a pathogen.
“It was a shift in consciousness. All human conditioning dropped away and all that remained was my and this bacteria’s consciousness. We resonated and became one and that’s the important secret. When I totally and unconditionally accept them, that’s another way of saying love.”
In this “loving field,” Laskow “introduced an intention” that the bacteria reduce their growth rate. He got a 50 percent reduction compared to controls (bacteria to whom nothing was done), he says.
Working with cancer cells in a tissue culture, Laskow reduced the growth rate by 40 percent, he notes, adding, “The intent is not to destroy them. You come in loving resonance with them, then introduce the new intention. If you reduce the growth rate, the T-cells can finish the job.”
If love and a shared, sympathetic understanding between us and “pathogens” can achieve healing, then, clearly, we humans are conditioned with some serious baggage that prevents that.
True, says Laskow -- it’s that sense of separation, not just from other people, but from self, environment and the divine forces behind everything.
“It comes from that cultural, societal belief and judgment, from seeing others as different, which they are, but mistaking that for separation -- or it could be real wounds early in life or interpretations of events, leaving beliefs such as ‘I’m not good enough’ or ‘I was a mistake.’ ”
The trick about such healing, he notes, is not to make your mind or heart do something, but “to realize, in the deepest sense, that this sense of separation is what’s making us sick, that and our resistance to what is, which is oneness.”
Maintaining this sense of illusory separation takes a lot of energy -- and freeing up that energy allows it to be redirected, he says, to healing with love.
Cancer, based in our own cells, should be envisioned like this: the body is an orchestra of 50 tillion cells all playing the same music, except there’s a small group of musicians totally out of harmony and you are the conductor.
“You have to relate to them, make contact with them,” he says. “In lab research, I worked with five intentions and found the most effective one is, ‘Return to your natural order and harmony of pre-hyperactive cell life.’”
Laskow calls his work HoloEnergetic Healing, something he has taught at Esalen Institute in Big Sur for 14 years in a series of workshops called, Open to Oneness Through Love, Awakening Your Healing Heart and The Art & Science of Healing With Love.
Laskow occasionally leads workshops locally. He does phone and private consultations in Ashland and is reachable at 541-482-3033 or leonard@laskow.net. See his Facebook or site, www.lasknow.net.
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