A Glorious Celebration

 I bumped into this picture yesterday and wondered what the heck?

And then I found out what it was…

It’s Holi, a Hindu Festival that celebrates the triumph of good over evil.

Far out!

It also marks the end of winter and the coming of spring. beginning on the last day of the full moon in March, and lasts for a day and a night. (28 to 29th) Night bonfires remind me of Burning Man.

It’s a time of unity, a time of play, laughter, music and dance, a time to repair broken relationships.

Imagine.

As a youth, Lord Krishna, a reincarnation of Lord Vishnu, liked to play pranks on the village girls by drenching them in water and colors.

Here is a chance to throw colored powders, to pelt each other with water balloons, and to squirt with water pistols.

It is a time to forgive and forget, a to drink bhang, a drink made with cannabis. It is a time the gods turn a blind eye.

After sobering up, people dress up and visit friends and family.

Live Joyously!

Are You a Writer, Reader, or Both?

 I’ve heard that there are only three rules for writing.

Unfortunately, nobody knows what they are.

So, there you have it, folks. If you want to be a writer, make your own rules. If you want to write, write your little heart out.

Or write and read. Stephen King says if you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time to write.

I know people are attuned to a story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. That doesn’t happen so much with blogs, but it ought to. Follow the Hero’s Journey, and it will stand you in good stead.

I think the concept of the hero’s journey began long ago when a storyteller stood at the campfire with the people eager for entertainment.

The hunter who brought home the bacon would get attention, but the one who embellished the story got more.

The one who died on the hunt was popular, too, for he met a consequence that didn’t bring home the bacon. The trouble was, someone else had to tell the story for him. That’s where you need a great obituary writer. Gosh, when I think about it, most obituaries I’ve heard were boring. Now, that doesn’t do the person justice. They’ve had a life. They loved, wept, had children, hardships, victories. (Born somewhere, educated somewhere, married, survived by.) I’m feeling sad for them.

People want to hear how the hero/heroine got kicked out of Paradise and had to find herself in the world. He/she had to endure hardships, and the stakes were high, the consequences extreme. He/she would, hopefully, come home victorious and bring honor to the tribe.

Let’s hope this happens now.

The following is a copy of my Newsletter, Jewell’s Happy Trails.

I intended that this Newsletter be only for people that request it, for I don’t want to junk up people’s email boxes without invitation. I placed it here to let you know it exists.

Those links aren’t live, so I will place them here:

Blog: https://travelwithjo.com

Books: https://www.jewellstrails.com Books leave a trail don’t they?

Store: https://jewellshappytrails.com Remember that store has “Happy” in it.

Newsletter sign-up

travelswithjo7@gmail.com

The Law of Attraction

Have you ever had the experience of finding something, let’s say a movie or a book, that you liked so much you wanted to keep it to yourself? You weren’t being fair, you knew that. You wanted the person who conceived it to be successful, and if the message could help humankind, it ought to be out there, but still, it was your find, your treasure.

I felt similar after finding The Law of Attraction. However, it was like the excellent book title by Gloria Steinem, “The Truth will Set You Free, but first it Will Piss You Off.”

I didn’t like the term, The Law of Attraction. I didn’t understand it. I didn’t like the hype associated with it, and most of the messages regarding it weren’t clear anyway. People raved that they were in “vibrational harmony” with it, and that was annoying. People were giving classes on it, but I thought most of them didn’t have a clue about what they were talking about. Some were so pedantic it was annoying.

The movie The Secret gave us an appetizer, but not a whole meal.

I stayed away from talking about it. I didn’t know what I was talking about anyway. I couldn’t explain it, except, sneaky little thing that it is, it leaked into my writing every once in a while.

On top of that, I didn’t want to be known as airy-fairy. I don’t know why. I guess I didn’t want to be lumped in with many other people who are proclaiming that they understand The Law of Attraction. I’m not saying that they are kooks, but some are. You know how hard it is to separate the wheat from the chaff.

So, there I was, talking about how life works, yet ignoring the one thing that might explain it all.

Except if you try to explain it, chances are you will end up in a puddle of confusion.

It’s simple, you say, “You attract what you are.”

Yeah, sure, but “I’m attracting many things not wanted,” you might say. “I don’t want them there. I didn’t ask for them. I want them to go away.”

How can people in Somalia attract their way of life? Why would a baby be born to starve to death?

You can find many reasons why creating your reality isn’t true.

Some people think it interferes with their religion. Still, if you read critically, you will find references to The Law of Attraction all over the place—like in the Christian Bible. “Ask, and you shall receive, Seek, and you shall find, Knock and it shall be opened unto you.”

What if, out there is a message—maybe a rule book on how to live, and we’re ignoring it?

We weren’t put here to be sniveling little brats. We are placed here to be strong creators.

“Create your own reality?” You say. “What have you been smoking?” “That’s a bunch of hooey.”  But, look at it this way, you can grumble and complain about your lot in life, and being a naysayer is so much fun, isn’t it? Yeah, right. How does it make you feel?

It feels crummy, doesn’t it?

It’s rather like taking the high road or the low road. People like to grumble and complain while traveling the low road, all the while proclaiming that they want to be happy.

It doesn’t work, does it?

Most of the time, the high road aspects and the low road aspects don’t speak to each other. Do they have different “vibrational frequencies”?

Maybe.

People talk about one’s “vibration, and that is another cliche’. Someone decided that vibration was a good way of explaining a phenomenon that has no words. It sounds odd, really, saying we are all walking around vibrating. 

Yet, I know what they are talking about, and for want of a better word, they say we vibrate at a certain level. It makes sense, doesn’t it, for you have known people who seem to skate through life on a high road, and you have known people who muck up regularly, with each day bringing a new crisis. Most of them complain a lot too.

We do speak of “vibes.” We say, “This building has poor vibes. This person gives off bad vibes.” And we know when there is a light heart.  

We could say our intuition told us, but we don’t know what that is either. I think the term “vibration” came from Quantum Physics, where we could say that all matter “vibrates.” The earth, too, has a vibration, like a tuning fork, and it is measurable.

People have struggled to explain the unseen for millennia, and now people are trying. They know the brain is powerful. They know we have electric, magnetic, chemical, and spiritual aspects to our bodies. They know that consciousness is the ruling master of the body, and many people believe it survives death. Now they are endeavoring to put it in understandable terms. We need to be patient with them.

Dip from the Source whenever you can. In other words, call upon your internal knowing, and ask if something feels right. (Including what I am writing about.) The more you rely on your intuition, the stronger it will become. It will say, Yea! You found me! Whoopi do da!”

I’m not a newbie to The Law of Attraction. I’ve read about it, I’ve attended seminars, and I’ve listened to talks.  I’ve been annoyed at it, riled against it, was a believer, and a practicer. Now I’m talking about it. Maybe I’ll get it eventually.

Now I have found a person who is the best at explaining it. He is an ordinary guy who found that this system--and he calls it The Law of Attraction—works. He sets up a video camera and simply talks.

His name is Justin Perry, and here is a link.

 

https://www.youtube.com/c/YouAreCreators/videos?disable_polymer=true&itct=CBIQ8JMBGAEiEwjsgu_8uPXtAhVRrcQKHWlDDEw%3D&disable_polymer=true&rootVe=3611&disable_polymer=true&rootVe=3611&disable_polymer=true&rootVe=3611&disable_polymer=true&rootVe=3611&disable_polymer=true&rootVe=3611&disable_polymer=true&rootVe=3611&disable_polymer=true&rootVe=3611

 

Thanks, Justin

 

What Can I Say?

I write an uplifting post, and then I get slammed against the wall figuratively.

 

I want to be uplifting, and then something awful creeps in. 

 

My daughter comes home ranting because her elderly charge wants to continually watch the news, driving my daughter nuts. The news will not let up. It’s one crisis after another. They search for worse case scenarios. They languish in it. And it is mostly about the Coronavirus. On the other hand, my daughter is into the Law of Attraction and how we create our own reality.

 

BAM! What a collusion.

 

At home, I write. And for research, I stumble upon the picture of a drop-dead gorgeous Somalian woman and find that the African country of Somalia is “The most failed state on earth.”

 

While the Western World obsesses over a flu pandemic, Somalians are dying of malnutrition.

 

Malnutrition is preventable. We worry over making a vaccine—yes, make one, but what about feeding the people of the world? Feeding people should be much easier than creating a vaccine, which I imagine is as complex as launching a rocket into space. We have food. We have planes.

 

We have the capability of growing food, thank heavens, and we have the capacity of getting that food to people who need it. These people are dying of preventable diseases, lower respiratory infections, diarrhea, meningitis, TB, malaria, malnutrition, and maternal conditions. For women, there is a lifetime risk of death in childbirth of 1 in 22. In Somalia, 1 in 7 children dies before they are 7-years-old. Only 14.6% of women have access to contraception. The average Somalian woman gives birth to 6 children and then watches many of them die. 

 

If that is not a crime, I don’t know what is.

 

And what is their greatest export? Terrorism.

I am of the thought that you teach a person to fish and they can take care of themselves, but people need full bellies to listen long enough to be taught. And when you worry about where the next meal is coming from you aren’t prone to long thoughts about the nature of reality.

 

In Somalia, Halima Omar said: “Maybe this is our fate — or maybe a miracle will happen, and we will be saved from this nightmare.”

 

I pray for miracles.

 

On the home front: Spend time out of doors.

 

This is what I wanted to write about when I got distracted.

 

In a study of 7,300 cases of Covid19 in China, guess how many caught the disease outside?

 

Two. 

 

Well, I was right about wanting a house with no walls. I love the outdoors, which makes me wonder about the lectures we are getting about staying inside. Go outside. Just keep your distance. The trouble with a house having no walls is you need to live in a warm climate. We live in Oregon.

 

The Dragon’s Eye School in Hawaii had an ideal construction. Poles held up the roof, but that was all. The school was a large roof, period. The parts that needed protection, tables, books, and such, were located in the center of that canopy, far away from the wind and the drifting rain. It was still too hot under that overhead, though. And when it rained—which it regularly did, everything needed to be protected from the moisture. 

 

It’s hard to get it right.

 

The children, though, had free run of indoors and out. That’s right.

 

When we lived in Hawaii, we kept the windows open all the time—with no heat and no air conditioning. A room, screened on three sides thus allowing a wonderful breeze to waft through, was shaded by a tree. The Lanai, we called it, had no glass and exited off the kitchen. We liked having our meals there by candlelight so much that we never installed an electric light. 

 

It did get cold some nights, but a comforter fixed that. (And wool socks in the morning.)

 

In Minnesota, early testing following the Black Lives Matter protests suggested that SAR-CoV2 outside is rare. With thousands of people gathering, talking, yelling, chanting (at least some wore masks), out of 13,000 protesters, only 1.8% tested positive. 

 

In the Western world, humans spend 90% of their lives indoors. The average American spends even more, 93%.

 

For years scientists have sounded the alarm that our disconnect with the outdoors is linked to many chronic health problems. Luke Leuring, director of sustainable engineering of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, says that a “misalignment with nature in buildings is partly to blame for the scourge of chronic diseases, and the current pandemic. Lack of airflow and sunlight is obvious. Temperature, humidity, and indoor air pollution play a role. Leuring says we need to cultivate our indoor spaces like a farm.

 

It’s complicated. Scientists know how to create an immunization better than we know how to balance our lives.

 

I used to think that nobody walked, that was until we moved onto this street. Our street runs for four blocks with no cross streets and no sidewalk, so everybody walks down the middle of the road. You can go out with your dog at 2 am, and chances are you will encounter somebody.

 

 I’m happy the people walking our street are healthy—adults pushing strollers, babies, kids on bikes, dogs.

 

When a doctoral student in Dubai asked the question: “What is heaven?” No matter the faith, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, heaven was always a place with a garden and running water.

 

Oh, say, we live in such a place now. 

 

 

“If you believe yourself worthy of the thing you fought so hard to achieve, then you become an instrument of God. You help the soul of the world, and you understand why you are here.”

—Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist.

 

When we have scenes such as this one, I, for one, believe that the world should and will continue. How about you?

 

 Protect the babies.